Flexible Friendships: Martha Vicinus Explores Women’s Intimacy

Abstract

M Vicinus is one of those rare scholars whose mere name instantly conjures the history of a field of study, a vision of research breadth and depth, of analytical originality and brilliance. Her reputation has transcended the geographical and chronological limits of the context of her primary research, nineteenth-century England. Indeed, the boundaries that define and separate disciplines cannot contain her: she is, herself, professor of English, women’s studies, and history. One suspects that there are other departments, centers, and research fields that would wish to claim her as their own as well. This is the context in which Vicinus’s work is read, and this accounts for the almost unreasonable levels of expectation the reader brings with her. Yet for all that baggage, Vicinus does not disappoint: Intimate Friends: Women Who Loved Women, 1778–1928 is a landmark in whichever field of research the reader wishes to locate it—women’s / gender history, the history of sex / sexuality, nineteenth-century history. This is a work of immense learning, written in an accessible style. It will serve to enlighten, entertain, or even affirm scholarly and popular audiences equally well. Intimate Friends comprises a series of case studies or microhistories. The intimate life and relationships of various women are recuperated and discussed, as far as possible, based on their own words and those of their friends and relations, both female and male. Stretching from the legendary Ladies of Llangollen (1778–1829) to the equally legendary Radclyffe Hall (1880–1943), Vicinus presents lively portraits of fascinating women alongside her analysis of the qualities, structures, and social contexts that informed their lives. By examining both the internal dynamics of relationships and the external perceptions of them by individual and institutional observers, Vicinus reveals the opportunities and challenges that confronted women as they sought to structure their lives in ways that accommodated and nurtured their same-sex desire. Over the 150 years considered, women employed a variety of models to develop emotional and erotic relationships with other women, to express their feelings to each other, and to present themselves to the world. Some of the models women invoked to structure their relationships and to make sense of their individual predilections, desires, and identities will be familiar, even comfortable; others may prove disquieting or disturbing. The exemplar available to the earliest couples was that of traditional pairings