Dildos and Material Sapphism in the Eighteenth Century

Abstract

Building on critical discussions of how female sexuality structured ideas about the modern world more generally in the eighteenth century, this essay examines how the dildo becomes a signifier of material sapphism. Restoration and early eighteenth-century texts describe the dildo in terms of its material make-up and its status as a consumer commodity available for purchase in England, revealing authorial anxieties about the ability of women to pleasure themselves without men. The discussion of female husband narratives featuring dildos further exposes how these fears turned into anxieties about female same-sex desires that could no longer be blamed on non-normative bodies or recuperated for the pleasure of the male gaze. By examining how eighteenth-century fictions of female sexuality describe and discuss the dildo as a material marker of lesbianism, this article argues that the dildo becomes specifically aligned with a usurpation of male power and sexual prerogative, as well as with sapphic pleasures.