The Spinster and Her Enemies - Feminish

WOMEN’S FRIENDSHIPS AND LESBIANISM
There is no suggestion in the novel that any genital sex took
place. Neither of the main characters is described in terms of
the masculine stereotype, though in one minor scene where the
heroines are visiting Joan’s sister in London where she is involved
in a circle of women living in rooms and engaged in passionate
relationships with each other, a minor character, imbued with
some of the characteristics of that stereotype, is portrayed.
In The Crowded Street Muriel becomes passionately attached
to a school friend Clare, although the attachment is not recipro
cated, and Clare eventually marries. Holtby indicates her
awareness of the social constraints that were developing to create
a climate in which passionate friendships between women were
regarded with suspicion. Muriel comments:
The world was alright. It was she who was wrong, caring
for all the wrong things. She could not, however hard she
tried, stop herself from loving Clare, though passionate
friendships between girls had been firmly discouraged by
the sensible Mrs Hancock. 48
Mrs Hancock, the Headmistress, is described here as reacting
towards girls’ friendships in the same way as the Principals of
United States colleges are described as implementing a changed
attitude in the 1890s. 49 Mrs Hancock’s reasons are described
thus:
Their intimacy, she considered, was usually silly and
frequently disastrous. If carried too far, it even wrecked all
hope of matrimony without offering any satisfaction in return.
Love was a useful emotion ordained by God and regulated
by society for the propagation of the species; or else it inspired
sometimes the devotion of a daughter to a mother, or a parent
to a child. It could even be extended to a relative, such as a
cousin or an aunt. Or in a somewhat diluted form it might
embrace Humanity, engendering a vague Joan-of-Arc-
Florence-Nightingale-Mrs-Beecher-Stowish philanthropy, to
which Muriel aspired faintly, but without much hope of
realisation. 50
These sentiments indicate how far removed the attitudes of the
early 1920s were from the early nineteenth century acceptance
that love between two women was good and proper and to be
admired, and might even be expected to help a young woman
by training her in love which she could then direct to a man.
Muriel’s conclusion rules out for her the possibility of strong
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