The Spinster and Her Enemies - Feminish

WOMEN’S FRIENDSHIPS AND LESBIANISM
provided a much clearer target for attack and by the early
1930s the climate for women’s love was becoming increasingly
hostile. Loveliest of Friends (1931) by G. Sheila Donisthorpe,
an American novel, seems to have been popular in Britain, and
went through three editions here in as many months. In the
novel the innocent Audrey becomes involved in a passionate
and exciting relationship with Kim. Very soon it turns sour and
Audrey twice attempts suicide. At the end of the book, when the
affair is over, Donisthorpe turns to pure propaganda and
concludes, about the forsaken Audrey:
This, then, is the product of lesbianism. This the result of
dipping the fingers of vice into a sex-welter whose deadly
force crucifies in a slow, eternal bleeding.
And yet there are those who hug as a martyrdom these
sadistic habits, who clamour for the recognition of the sinister
group who practise them, those crooked, twisted freaks of
Nature who stagnate in dark and muddy waters, and are so
choked with the weeds of viciousness and selfish lust that,
drained of all pity, they regard their victims as mere stepping
stones to their further pleasure. With flower-sweet finger-tips
they crush the grape of evil till it is exquisite, smooth and
luscious to the taste, stirring up a subconscious responsiveness,
intensifying all that has been, all that follows, leaving their
prey gibbering, writhing, sex-sodden shadows of their former
selves, conscious of only one ambition, one desire in mind
and body, which, ever festering, ever destroying, slowly saps
them of health and sanity. 57
To make the message absolutely clear, the dedication of the
book reads To all the contemplating Audreys of this world the
message in this book is offered’.
Through looking at novels by and about women, we can see
the effect which the sexological injunctions were having on
women’s relationships with each other. Once women’s
relationships might have spanned a continuum from casual
friendship through intense emotional and physical involvement,
to, in those cases where it seemed appropriate to the women
concerned, relationships involving both lifelong commitment
and genital sex. By the late 1920s a distinction had been clearly
drawn between an acceptable level of friendship and lesbianism.
The middle ground had been cut out. Women were no longer in
a position to engage in passionate involvements with each other
without being aware that they were on the edge of a precipice
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