Passions Between Women by Emma Donoghue
Mar. 18th, 2019 03:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
violsvaThis is a post I found in my tumblr drafts from last September.
Extremely fragmentary thoughts on Emma Donoghue’s Passions Between Women: British Lesbian Culture 1668 - 1801
Donoghue mentions that the decrease of references to “female husband” cases in newspapers at the end of the 18th century is taken by some scholars as evidence that the practice died out. She doubts this very much, and indeed Alison Oram’s “Her Husband was a Woman!”, published about a decade after this book, focuses on similar cases reported in British newspapers in the early twentieth century, so I think it highly unlikely that there were no examples whatsoever in the century in between.
“On 14 December 1728 the Universal Spectator commented that every culture differentiated the sexes by dress for the sake of ‘decency’, and specifically ‘in order to prevent Multitudes of Irregularities, which otherwise would continually be occasion’d’.” (p. 90)
This seems to indicate a view that in the same clothes it would be impossible to differentiate the sexes - I am reminded of someone (but can’t remember who) pointing out that in Early Modern society the body was much less knowable than it is considered today, with even the poorest wearing at least two layers of clothes at all times, and shaping garments being normal, and clothes that hid or highlighted or enhanced certain features being usual for men as well as women.
“The radical sects formed in the seventeenth century, in particular, often allowed women to pull their friendships with each other to the centre of their lives. Quaker women such as Katherine Evans and Sarah Cheevers left husbands and children to travel and be imprisoned together.” (p. 151) (I don’t have anything to say here, just! Historic Quaker lesbians! Yay!)
“Nor is a study of erotica thankless work” (p. 183) – I’m just going to leave that sentence fragment there.
Extremely fragmentary thoughts on Emma Donoghue’s Passions Between Women: British Lesbian Culture 1668 - 1801
Donoghue mentions that the decrease of references to “female husband” cases in newspapers at the end of the 18th century is taken by some scholars as evidence that the practice died out. She doubts this very much, and indeed Alison Oram’s “Her Husband was a Woman!”, published about a decade after this book, focuses on similar cases reported in British newspapers in the early twentieth century, so I think it highly unlikely that there were no examples whatsoever in the century in between.
“On 14 December 1728 the Universal Spectator commented that every culture differentiated the sexes by dress for the sake of ‘decency’, and specifically ‘in order to prevent Multitudes of Irregularities, which otherwise would continually be occasion’d’.” (p. 90)
This seems to indicate a view that in the same clothes it would be impossible to differentiate the sexes - I am reminded of someone (but can’t remember who) pointing out that in Early Modern society the body was much less knowable than it is considered today, with even the poorest wearing at least two layers of clothes at all times, and shaping garments being normal, and clothes that hid or highlighted or enhanced certain features being usual for men as well as women.
“The radical sects formed in the seventeenth century, in particular, often allowed women to pull their friendships with each other to the centre of their lives. Quaker women such as Katherine Evans and Sarah Cheevers left husbands and children to travel and be imprisoned together.” (p. 151) (I don’t have anything to say here, just! Historic Quaker lesbians! Yay!)
“Nor is a study of erotica thankless work” (p. 183) – I’m just going to leave that sentence fragment there.