The Spinster and Her Enemies - Feminish

WOMEN’S FRIENDSHIPS AND LESBIANISM
have been younger. She was tall, deep-breasted, with long,
heavy but shapely limbs. She wore a black frock and a pearl
necklace, and large pearl earrings…. Her voice was an
insolent voice. 55
It is made clear that Geraldine is a ‘real’ lesbian. It is significant
that she is described as having irresistible and dangerous powers
of attraction which bring Judith also under her spell:
That broad heavy face and thick neck, those coarse and
masculine features, that hothouse skin; what taste Jennifer
must have to find her attractive!… Oh no, it was no good
saying that. In spite of all, she was beautiful; her person held
an appalling fascination. 56
Thus a stark contrast is drawn between ‘innocent’ friendship
and lesbianism. The book could even be seen as providing us
with the moral that too intense an involvement might lead to
the danger of succumbing to the repulsive and appalling powers
of a ‘real’ lesbian. Lesbianism is not seen as a positive choice
for Jennifer. She suffers a breakdown and drops out of university
under Geraldine’s influence.
The culmination of this process of differentiating between
innocent friendship between women and fully fledged lesbianism
according to the sexological prescription occurs in Radclyffe
Hall’s The Well of Loneliness (1928). The book follows so closely
the sexological writings, that we are presented with not only a
carefully crafted masculine stereotype of a lesbian in Stephen,
but also a model of the ‘pseudohomosexual’ in Mary Llewellyn.
Mary is never attributed any of the characteristics of the
masculine stereotype. She is gentle and feminine. Stephen has
to renounce her love for Mary after the onset of their affair. She
arranges for a man to court Mary and carry her off. This is all
done to protect her from the horrors of the lesbian sub-culture.
Mary is shown to be not a ‘real’ congenital lesbian, but a
basically heterosexual woman who is temporarily diverted from
her path. She falls in love with a woman who is depicted as a
substitute man. The book shows how the cogenital versus
pseudolesbian distinction could rigidify in later years into the
stereotypical roles of butch and femme.
Writers like Havelock Ellis and Stella Browne saw themselves
as progressive in their attempts to separate off lesbianism, which
included passionate friendship, from ‘innocent’ women’s
friendships. Once lesbianism was an isolated phenomenon it
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