Heather Rose Jones's Blog, page 11
March 25, 2025
Halfway Between a General History and a Textbook
There's a whole genre of "a general history of lesbians/homosexuality in Britain" with approaches ranging from lighthearted (and often inaccurate) pop history to very serious academic studies and sourcebooks. (This genre may also exist for other countries -- I've collected a smaller set for the USA -- but I haven't run across them as often.) This one falls in the mid-range, probably intended as a textbook for a non-specialist social history course.
Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP LHMP #465 Oram & Turnbull 2001 The Lesbian History Sourcebook About LHMP Full citation:Oram, Alison & Annmarie Turnbull. 2001. The Lesbian History Sourcebook: love and sex between women in Britain from 1780 to 1970. Routledge, New York. ISBN 9-78-0-415-11485-3
The book, rather than being a “general history of lesbianism” (of which there are numerous examples) is intended for the study of specific historic texts speaking to particular aspects of lesbian history. Each chapter has an introduction and then a series of extracts from relevant sources. Due to the nature of the material, some chapters focus primarily on 20th century material, and so are largely out of scope for the Project. So I will spend less focus on those. As with many sourcebook type works, rather than trying to summarize all the content, I’ll give a high-level overview of what is included. The specific pre-20th century source material will be indicated by my index keywords. If there is no keyword (e.g., because I don’t view the material as relevant, or because it is too anonymous), I’ll list it within the chapter.
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Introduction: Who is the Lesbian?
For the purposes of this book, “British lesbian history” begins in the late 18th century. It was unclear to me if this was simply a chosen scope based on the source material they wanted to present, or if the authors believe there is no lesbian history prior to that date. They assert that “lesbian identity” is a late 20th century concept. “Women…did not necessarily have a language to describe themselves as lovers of women.” [Note: we can take it as given that I disagree with that position.]
The book’s definition “ideally includes some evidence of eroticism” but somewhat broadly defined. They’re looking for evidence of sexual activity with the caveat that “sexual” is often defined in male-centered terms. Secondly, their definition includes “the transgressing of gender roles,” with the caveat that gender transgression is more socially visible than femme lesbians. Somewhat less clearly, they are looking for evidence of self-knowledge by women who desire women.
The book is structured first to examine two archetypes (roughly: female husbands and romantic friendships), then public “expert” commentary in the fields of medicine, education, and law, followed by the cultural construction of lesbian identity (primarily restricted to the 20th century.
They discuss the history of lesbian history, the importance of developing a sense of lesbian history to social movements, and the development of a body of scholarship. They are interested in a broad scope of sources, not only the writings of the elite, but this interest is primarily found in the 20th century sources.
There is a discussion of the nature of the evidence: published sources (media, government publications, edited collections of personal papers), much of which is poorly indexed from the point of view of lesbian history. Documentation of women’s sex lives is rare, in part because personal papers were often deliberately destroyed. The documentation of working-class women’s lives is most often by outside observers, who typically are unsympathetic.
Somewhat more common than personal data is general commentary on the idea of the lesbian, especially by professionals. In every era, social norms constrained how people understood and discussed the topic.
The introduction closes with the importance of interrogating the sources and reading them in their historic context.
Part I: Archetypes of Love Between Women
Chapter 1: Cross-Dressing Women
The chapter begins with a survey of the motivations, contexts, and reception of gender-crossing. This is followed by excerpts from historic documents illustrating the subject, with brief contextual introductions.
1773 – A crossdressing woman marries an old woman for her money 1777 – A cross-dressing woman marries 3 different women and defrauds them of money. 1815 – A Black woman cross-dresses and works as a sailor, no lesbian elements 1861 – Mary Newell cross-dressed as part of absconding with her employer’s money (see tags for others)Chapter 2: Romantic Friends and Lesbian Couples
This archetype is associated with middle and upper class women (although the authors note that this may be due to the skewed nature of the sources, and evidence for working class romantic friendships may not have been recorded or preserved). They assert that romantic friendship belongs to the 18-19th centuries. [Note: This is incorrect, as there are early versions of the archetype at least as early as the 17th century.]
The texts in this chapter document shifts in how this archetype was framed. There is a contrast between the acceptance of f/f partnership and the difficulty of economic independence to enjoy it. The motif interacts with the theme of “surplus women” and female alliances within the women’s movement (the “New Women”). Both the expressions and the probably reality of romantic friendships existed across a continuum. There is a discussion of lesbian theorists regarding that continuum and how that idea expands the scope of interest. There are conflicting opinions on erotic aspects of romantic friendship. The example of Anne Lister acted substantially to break the image that all romantic friendships were non-sexual.
1858 D.M. Craik’s advice book to women 1887 Constance Maynard, diary entries (see tags for others)Part II: Professional Commentaries
Chapter 3: Medicine
The next 3 chapters look at professional discourse and how it reflects larger social attitudes toward lesbianism, as well as other social trends that the popular mind connected with that subject. 19th century British medical writing didn’t really address lesbianism much, or for that matter female sexuality in general. The texts that did exist tend to associate lesbianism with foreign practices or sex workers. Sexological writing arrived relatively late in Britain and only barely overlaps the very end of the 19th century. The texts do include a couple of references from the mid 19th century to lesbianism among sex workers or schoolgirls, or—later in the century—among actresses.
1939 M. Ryan work on prostitution that mentions lesbianism among sex workers 1840 T. Laycock’s book on “nervous disorders of women” that cautions against very euphemistically described schoolgirl relationships 1892 an early British sexology work that discusses homosexuality, but not lesbianism in particularChapter 4: Education
The texts in this chapter touch on school friendships that have a romantic or erotic component.None date to much before the turn of the 20th century, which reflects the era when such friendships came to be pathologized.
1893 An advice manual for girls that warns of “schoolgirl friendships” that lead to ignoring one’s familyChapter 5: Law
Other than an extended excerpt from the Pirie & Woods trial, this chapter is focused entirely on the 20th century, reflecting shifts in legal approaches.
Part III: Making Lesbianism in Culture
Chapter 6: The Well of Loneliness
This chapter concerns reactions to the publication of The Well of Loneliness and its content. By definition, entirely 20th century.
Chapter 7: Social Perceptions
As public discourse around lesbianism became more explicit, there is a wider range of texts reflecting that awareness. All included material is 20th century.
Chapter 8: Identities and Networks
In contrast to the preceding few chapters, this one dips back to the early 19th century to document personal writings of women expressing self-conscious desire for women and something resembling a lesbian identity. These texts also trace the connections and networks of like-minded women that their authors created, as well as details of how those connections were established. We begin, naturally, with Anne Lister and her circle of lovers in Yorkshire. But other diarists and letter writers of the Victorian era are reflected here, speaking of love and wooing, discussing such passions with others who shared them. But the majority of the material is 20th century.
Time period: 18th c19th c20th cPlace: EnglandScotlandMisc tags: emotional /romantic bonds between womenfemale husbandcross-gender roles/behaviorromantic friendshipsexual/romantic desireEvent / person: Mary Anne TalbotEleanor Butler & Sarah Ponsonby (The Ladies of Llangollen)James Allen & Abigail NaylorBill/Mary Chapman & Isabella WatsonHenry Stoakes & Harriet StoakesWilliam Seymour/Margaret HoneywellHavelock Ellis (Studies in the Psychology of Sex - Sexual Inversion)Llangollen Vale (Anna Seward)Anna Seward & Honora SneydHester ThraleWilliam WordsworthCharlotte Brontë & Ellen NusseyDiaries (Anne Lister)Desperate Remedies (Thomas Hardy)Geraldine JewsburyMichael Field (Katherine Harris Bradley and Edith Cooper)Amy LevyEthel SmythJane Pirie & Marianne WoodsThe Well of Loneliness (Radclyffe Hall)Mary BensonEdith Simcox View comments (0)
March 24, 2025
French Lesbians Move Into the 20th Century
This is the last article from this collection and brings the topic up to the late 19th and early 20th century, as well as focusing on the working classes and others who aren't well documented in earlier ages.
Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP LHMP #464 Sautman 1996 Invisible Women About LHMP Full citation:Sautman, Francesca Canadé. 1996. “Invisible Women: Lesbian Working-class Culture in Ferance, 1880-1930” in Homosexuality in Modern France ed. by Jeffrey Merrick and Bryant T. Ragan, Jr. Oxford University Press, New York. ISBN 0-19-509304-6
Sautman 1996 Invisible Women
This article looks at French working-class lesbian culture from 1882-1930 and notes that a lot of previous coverage of French culture in this era has focused on the demi-monde, artists, and salon culture. The author challenges the assertion by some historians that a history of this sort—at the intersection of gender and class—is impossible to write. The decadent esthetic and visions of the Belle Epoque stand in contrast to the experiences of the working class. This was an era of union and feminist movements. WWI stepped up women’s participation in the industrial workforce. At the same time, both psychological and political theory created feminized images of disorder and deviance. (The author explains how she is using the terms “lesbian,” “same-sex,” and “homosexual” in the article to make certain distinctions without implying “identities.”) The author claims that the terms “tribade” and “sapphist” were used in this era to indicate specific sexual practices (frottage and cunnilingus respectively) but gives no citation for this claim. Letters written by working class women that alluded to their same-sex desires used phrases like “being for women” or “feminine loves” as well as a variety of slang terms. [Note: I’m gradually assembling a database of terminology from primary sources—this article has a good chunk of examples to add to it.]
The author challenges the claim that lesbians of this era faced, at worst, mockery and were not taken seriously. This may have been true of upper-class lesbians, while working-class lesbians were often portrayed as old, ugly, rough in manners, and addicted to vice. The medical pathologization of lesbianism could also be used against women whose desires were seen as problematic.
Technically speaking, lesbianism was not illegal in France in this era, though public sex and cross-dressing were. Moral crusades against lesbianism ran into this barrier in not having legal tools at their disposal. [Note: This absence of laws against homosexuality also applied to men, though men were more likely to run afoul of the laws against public sex.]
Feminist activists sometimes deliberately shunned an association with lesbianism, perhaps the more so due to leaning towards “mannish” clothing. Artists and authors walked a tightrope of plausible deniability, depicting same-sex desire and affection while relying on a general social acceptance of non-sexual physicality between women.
There is an extensive discussion of women in the union movement and gender discrimination in unionized trades. Restriction to low-paying jobs contributed to a pervasive reliance on sex work. Homophobia was pervasive in leftist political circles, even those supporting “free love.”
Despite and because of this, we can find references to working class lesbians tucked away in records and letters: the audible lovemaking overheard between a cook and a maid, letters with sexual advances between servants in different households, an affair made legible by the results of a suicide pact. Other lesbian lives have been made visible by diligent research, such as artist’s model and painter Victoire Meurent. Women who publicly denied lesbian relationships might be contradicted in memoirs by their friends and lovers.
There was a regular association in the popular imagination between lesbians and sex workers. This existed side by side with the stereotype of the working class as moral and “innocent” unless debauched by encounters with the upper classes. A similar stereotype asserting that homosexuality was absent from high society and the middle classes pretty much narrowed the possibilities (in the popular imagination) to “café society and the theater.” [Note: What this means is that visible lesbianism tended to be restricted to these stereotypes, not that lesbianism itself wasn’t present.]
A contrasting theory was that gender transgression in dress or appearance would itself lead to homosexuality. (There is more discussion of contradictory psychological and popular theories associated with lesbianism.)
This image of lesbian sex workers (including those asserted to have a wealthy female clientele) was exploited by pornographers and those promoting “sex tourism” in Paris. The complex dynamics and attitudes around lesbian sex workers are a poplar theme in literature of the time. Regardless of popular imagery, lesbian relationships and domestic arrangements among sex workers were common. (A number of brief biographical sketches are offered.)
The article concludes with a discussion of lesbian culture within women’s prisons.
Time period: 19th c20th cPlace: FranceMisc tags: class issues View comments (0)March 23, 2025
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast Episode 310 – A Falling Star and a Flying Bird by Rhiannon Grant
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 310 – A Falling Star and a Flying Bird by Rhiannon Grant - transcript
(Originally aired 2025/03/29 - listen here)
Today’s story kicks off the 2025 fiction series with “A Falling Star and a Flying Bird” by Rhiannon Grant. Rhiannon lives in Birmingham, UK, with her wife and lots of books and teddy bears. She has been fascinated by British prehistory ever since visiting stone circles in Cornwall as a child. In addition to her fiction she researches, teaches, and writes nonfiction about the Quaker tradition and philosophy of religion.
I’ve had Rhiannon as a guest on the podcast a couple years ago, discussing her sapphic historical novels set in Neolithic Orkney: Between Boat and Shore and Carving a New Shape. The current story is almost modern in comparison, set in the British Iron Age a few centuries before those pesky Romans show up. As with her longer work, Rhiannon has built on archaeological knowledge to envision entire societies, including plausible ways in which queer people might have moved in those societies.
If you want to find out more about Rhiannon Grant and her work, check out her blog at brigidfoxandbuddha.wordpress.com via the link in the show notes.
I will be the narrator for this story.
This recording is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License. You may share it in the full original form but you may not sell it, you may not transcribe it, and you may not adapt it.
A Falling Star and a Flying Bird
By Rhiannon Grant
Singing Oak gets upset about the big stuff, like being humiliated in public or having her authority as our Druid undermined. I won't say that doesn't bother me on her behalf, but I have less power to lose and so it's the little digs which get to me. Take now, for example. Victory is holding my baby. I know she thinks of Tiny Spark as her son Brook's baby, and therefore in some sense her baby, but I was the one who carried her and when she cries to be fed, she'll have to come back to me. But for the time being she's happy enough being cuddled by her grandmother and it leaves me with my hands free to slice apples to eat with the pork when it's roasted.
Victory isn't happy, though. She's describing to little baby Tiny Spark, who's only been able to hold up her own head for a month or so, how she ought to be starting training to get strong and ready for battle. Ready for battle! Victory might have sent her son out to fight when he was too young to understand what was happening, and left him with all the nightmares you'd expect from that, but I don't want to let my daughter become a warrior unless she really wants to. If I've anything in mind for her, it's probably Druid training, but who am I to say what the gods will give her?
Such scruples about waiting for divine favour are important to Singing Oak, and although I'd be a bit more willing to hope for something specific, I also value the principle of waiting for a sign to be sure. Victory, on the other hand, likes to think she can make things happen. She brought her husband to her, a powerful man who fought well and died in the process, leaving her with the one child, a son who might have moved away – taking much of her money and all of his fame with him – if she hadn't arranged for him to get both a Druid wife who had already left her family and a lower-class woman who wouldn't want to marry him. Singing Oak is the Druid and I'm the lower-class woman, by the way.
Fortunately, I'm fond of Brook in a general sense and didn't mind getting pregnant, but I don't care about him enough to be longing for his attention all the time. Sometimes I wonder which would be worse, to love him less or to love him more. Since in fact I love Singing Oak dearly, and she loves me, and Brook loves riding out to be alone, we're all pretty happy when Victory isn't trying to tell us to do something different.
"Silver Wheat?" It's Singing Oak, and it sounds like it's not the first time she's asked. I blink and turn to her with a smile. "I asked if you saw something in the fire. You were staring."
I'd been resting my gaze there in an effort not to scowl at Victory or worry about whether Tiny Spark was going to remember any of the nonsense she was hearing, so I shook my head. "No, only the logs burning."
"You were miles away."
"Thinking about something else." I made myself refocus on the apples in the bowl, slicing another one open and cutting out a maggot. "How are the stars? Did you see better from the rampart?"
"Yes, but there's nothing new." Singing Oak sat down beside me and watched the young man who served Victory as he turned the meat over the fire. The smell was filling the air now and every mouth in the village would be watering soon. "I did see Spot tethered up to graze, so Brook must be back."
People gathered and we ate. It was one of those clear autumn nights when you can feel the winter's cold beginning, without it being sharp enough to stop you sitting around. Victory handed Tiny Spark over to Brook and she was fussing in his arms, trying to look around at however much a little baby can see. Singing Oak wasn't finished with the stars, and took breaks from her meal to watch the skies. Beautiful though she is when she's thoughtful, almost like one of the goddesses she's trying to understand, I kept myself focussed on trying to get plenty of food before Tiny Spark came back to me.
So it was that Singing Oak saw it first. She said, "Look!" and we all turned.
Burning through the sky was a star. It looked like a ball of light, and it flew over us for several breaths before it winked out. It was very bright, much brighter than the evening star which we could see not far away from it.
"I thought it was coming towards us," Brook said when it had gone dark. He bounced Tiny Spark, who was grizzling a little bit, perhaps getting hungry or disconcerted by the adults all looking up.
Then there was a thump.
It was loud enough to feel a little shake in the ground as well. It was somewhere on the far side of the fort, in the area where we dig our storage pits.
"What was that?" I asked, and I wasn't alone. People who hadn't been gathered around the fire started to come up to us, wanting to be close to their family members or find out what was happening.
Brook put on his booming voice.
He doesn't like using it but it does come in handy when there's an emergency or general confusion.
"The gods are sending messages," he said. "Singing Oak, where shall we look?"
She pointed, and we all traipsed back over to the storage area. With the sun almost gone we had to look around with lamps and torches, anything we could light. I checked the new storage pits first – if the gods had sent something to destroy our harvest, we would have had a very serious problem – but the seals were all intact. I went a bit further, testing my footing at every step – I didn't want to fall into an old pit in the dark – when something beneath my torchlight seemed a different colour. I knelt down to find a deep black dust scattered around the mouth of one of last year's storage pits.
"You found it," Singing Oak said behind me as I picked up some of the grit and rubbed it between my fingers.
"Do you think so?"
Singing Oak was carrying a branch, alight at one end, and she lowered the flame into the old pit. There were some little weeds growing on the walls, now covered in black dust, and earth freshly turned over, and at the bottom, below where we would be able to easily reach, a dark stone smaller than my palm.
"The fireball fell here," she said. "I suppose this is the ash it made, or perhaps it's soft like chalk and scattered this when it landed." People were starting to gather around now, including Brook. I stood up, still holding a handful of dark dirt, and Brook gestured for Singing Oak to speak.
She waited for quiet. There are about a hundred people living here at the moment, safely enclosed in our fort, farming the land around, trading with our neighbours when we can, and defending ourselves against them – or going out to raid their herds – when we can't. Some of the children were already asleep, or people were preparing themselves for tomorrow, or simply too tired to care about strange things in the sky, so perhaps thirty or thirty-five people were gathered to hear her.
"The gods have sent a blessing," she began. There were a few murmurs in the crowd, a few deep exhalations as people heard that and welcomed it. Any sign could go either way. The lamb's entrails in the spring had been complex and Singing Oak had told us, regretfully, that difficult times could lie ahead. There had been more rain than usual in the summer and the fields had turned golden later than usual, making it a rush to get everything cut and stored before the days started getting too short. A big flock of ravens had made their home on the east side of the fort, making everyone worry that fighting was on the way – although Singing Oak always told us that they could be waiting for something else. In short, when strange things started to happen, we were all on edge for bad news, and if Singing Oak thought this was a blessing, we were ready for it.
"There are two messages here," she went on. "The first was the falling star." She gestured with her torch, indicating the path of the light we had seen in the sky. The torchlight also shone on her red hair and lit her lively green eyes and wasn't quite bright enough to show all the freckles on her cheeks, freckles which I loved dearly and which she worried might form inauspicious patterns. It was lovely to look at. I had to restrain the urge to remind everyone that she was my wife, especially when they were all gazing at her hopefully as well.
"A falling star is like a bolt of lightning. It comes from Taranis and it means growth is coming. Lightning comes with rain and it means physical growth is coming; the falling star is a quiet, dry light, and it means we will be bigger and stronger as a people." I snuck a look around. Everyone was watching; even Tiny Spark wasn't fussing, perhaps even sleeping in Brook's arms. Singing Oak's voice had the power of authority and the mention of Taranis, her patron deity, probably helped. She had full authority to interpret his oracles. "The second message is this stone and dark earth, come to one of our old pits."
She paused, and someone took the opportunity to call out, "Is it the falling star? Is it a star that landed?"
I knew Singing Oak well enough to see her trying to decide about that. On the one hand, this thing had hit the ground so soon after the light in the sky it seemed they should be related. On the other hand, it looked like a stone; whatever made stars glow, it didn't have it. Slowly, she said, "Perhaps a piece of it. If a star is like a lamp, perhaps this is part of the frame."
Victory frowned. "I'm not sure..." she started.
I glanced at Brook, in case he was about to speak, but he bent his head to check on Tiny Spark and avoid getting involved. "The mystery of stars is far beyond us," I said. "Whatever fell, our question is about what the gods are telling us, not where it came from."
"Wouldn't you need to understand the origin to grasp the message? What if this fell from the sky and not from the gods?" Victory asked. She was as pious as you could wish for and sometimes more pious than I could stand when the gods were on her side, and could be an outright atheist when they weren't.
"Singing Oak, what does your wisdom tell you?"
In pausing, Singing Oak had risked losing the crowd. The bickering had given everyone a brief distraction. Now she was ready to take her cue from me. She adjusted her shawl and said, much more firmly, "This is a blessing on our harvest. We've seen two signs: the falling star for light and the stone for soil. The gods have sent it to bless even our old pits; our new pits will be full and safe all winter, and we will have plenty of bread. We are safe and well."
Everyone cheered, perhaps not as loudly as they would when that phrase was used in our spring-time rituals, but enough to show that Singing Oak had convinced them. She walked through the crowd towards the living quarters, torch held high, and people turned to follow her as she went.
Brook and I ended up at the back. Tiny Spark was mewling and once we were back on solid ground, I opened my tunic to feed her. It's not easy to walk at the same time but sometimes it's better than waiting until she screams.
"I'm sorry about my mother," Brook said.
I shrugged. It's not really his fault that she behaves like that. Even if it were, he should be apologising to Singing Oak, not to me. I didn't say that, though, because the whole messy ground of their marriage arrangement and its ending and my role in everything has been ploughed over so often that while there are very few stones left, it's also hard for anything to stand still long enough to grow. Instead I said, "I wonder if there will be another sign," and when he glanced at me questioningly, I added, "Things come in threes, you know, Singing Oak says that sometimes. Three great blows, three sad stories, three famous weapons."
"A triad of signs," he said, echoing the formal phrase. "But if there is a third sign to come, Silver Wheat, what question will it answer?"
I thought about that when I couldn't sleep that night.
Singing Oak was curled around my back. I could tell from her breathing that she was already asleep. We'd been too tired for more than a hug and kiss when we finally managed to get Tiny Spark to settle, but at least we were tucked safely into bed and behind the blanket which separated our sleeping space from Brook's. Sometimes I thought about how in this woolen cave I was surrounded by the hard work of many hands: the blanket on the bed, of which Singing Oak was currently using more than half, I had woven myself in my mother's house using wool she had shorn from my father's sheep. Although I enjoyed having food every mealtime and not relying on gifts from neighbours who were equally likely to be going hungry in the difficult parts of the year, I missed the laughter in my family.
The brightly dyed hangings which helped to keep the fire's warmth from escaping through the wattle and daub walls were Victory's work, perhaps aided by Brook at times, and had been in use since her husband was alive. We'd washed the smoke out in the summer and been surprised by how much difference it made to the colours. Of course, when I tried to make a joke about it Victory had been offended – I never did work out why, other than that I was both socially inferior and funnier than her – and thinking about them now reminded me how difficult I find it to live here.
Hanging from a roof beam was a blanket which might have been used on the bed, except that Singing Oak had chosen to use her work to separate herself from Brook rather than join him.
I was glad to be on the same side as her. I couldn't really see the blanket in the dark, but I knew it carried patterns representing her own name – oak leaves – and that although her parents had encouraged her to embrace her marriage, it didn't have so much as a shade of blue let alone anything suggesting a brook. I wondered again, as I often had, whether the situation hurt her more than she let on. Druids and the sons of queens can do almost anything they like, but they can also be put into positions they don't like without being able to see a clear way out.
People like me have even fewer options, unless the gods see fit to give us some. I was indeed surrounded by the work of many hands. It turned out that on closer inspection they were also reminders to the ways in which I felt trapped.
Singing Oak sighed and shuffled, unconsciously seeking more of the warmth of my body, and I gladly snuggled into her. Trapped in this case also meant loved. I liked being with her, and where else would I go?
Come to think of it, that would be a question worth divining: what choice do I have?
The gods don't usually bother to answer that sort of thing. In the absence of signs I considered the things I could think of for myself. Stay and spend every day swishing my tail like a horse, trying to flick off a fly which comes back over and over again. Leave alone and go hungry, either an extra mouth trying to make myself useful in my parents' house, or searching for whatever work I could do, or taken in by someone who wanted my body, or maybe enslaved. It didn't seem appealing and I'd miss Singing Oak and Tiny Spark – and Tiny Spark would have to be found a wet nurse or she'd go hungry too. Not that taking her with me would make anything easier.
Maybe in an ideal world, we'd stay and she would go. I pictured Victory riding out of the gates of her own free will, but I knew it would never be a long-term arrangement. She's too attached to the hillfort and the people here are too proud of her and her lineage. I briefly considered murder, but even if the gods would smile on something like that, there are the practical challenges like sneaking up on her at a vulnerable moment, dealing the death-blow, hiding my guilt, and burying the body.
It made for some entertaining images, though.
Perhaps I drifted off to sleep with this in mind, because when I woke I had another picture: Singing Oak and I rode out from the gates with Tiny Spark on my back. I didn't know why, and I immediately dismissed it as unrealistic, but I liked the idea.
I'd woken because Tiny Spark had woken. She was making little noises, not yet crying but on the way, so I slipped out from Singing Oak's arms, wrapped my cloak over the tunic I'd been sleeping in, and took her to the hearth to feed her.
Once she'd had enough milk, I didn't want to lie her down again immediately, so I took her out in the dawn light just to see the day. The sky was clear and the ground soaked with dew. Hardly anyone was moving; even the dogs slept, some of them opening an eye as I passed but ignoring me when they saw I didn't have any food.
Slowly, I walked down the main path through the fort, away from the great wooden gates and towards the far side where Shining Oak goes to commune with the gods. There's an oak tree there which Brook curses sometimes because it would block the view if we were attacked, but it would be ill-luck to fell it when so often the ravens which rest in the branches have served as the gods' mouthpieces.
Some of the ravens looked around as I approached. Not wanting to disturb them – or the people who would hear them if they started shouting – I stopped a good distance away and turned to the east. The sun was just appearing over the ramparts. Our good earthen slopes, topped with a wooden fence, are intended to hamper a raiding party or group of warriors, but they also slow down the sunlight.
Tiny Spark fussed a bit, not yet ready to go back to sleep nor awake enough to look around, and I rocked on the spot while she settled again. I watched the wisps of cloud over the sun and wondered what they meant; I didn't think any god would speak to me, but perhaps a goddess would leave a little trail of clues I could use to work out what to do. Did I have a choice I hadn't seen?
A raven flew past me. Watching, I expected it to go off into the fields or perhaps towards the houses, where they would take dropped wheat grains which the dogs spurned.
But the raven landed on the ground, almost at my feet. I stopped moving. Fortunately, Tiny Spark was quiet. The huge black bird walked a few steps, ignoring me although it was less an arm's length from my feet. It stuck its beak into the grass and came out with a beetle, which it crunched down. I breathed in, and perhaps I made some other noise, because it cocked its head to look up at me before spreading its wings to fly away. I felt the wind as it left the ground, climbing into the sky in an unhurried, deliberate way.
I wished for Singing Oak to tell me what that meant. Then I wondered what it meant to me: the ravens are associated with Brook as our king but also with our people here. We'd been close enough to touch, the raven and I, but it had flown away so that I couldn't follow. It could have walked, as they often did when they searched the ground for food. Did that mean something? Did it mean that I should leave, or that I couldn't, or that the gods were close, or that they were ignoring me? I tried to think of a story in which a raven flew away, but I could only think of stories in which they were forewarnings of battle to come or gathered around the dead afterwards. They weren't hopeful tales and I was pleased that they didn't seem relevant, although it also didn't help me understand whether the raven's actions were a sign.
Another cloud passed over the sun, dimming the light for a moment, then moved on. That was the second and a third one followed behind. The clouds could be us; I looked for, and found, a small one just above the others to represent Tiny Spark. I wondered whether that could be a sign.
The image from my dream came back to me then. Here was Tiny Spark's cloud, slightly above and to the left of the one I had chosen as my own. My cloud was following the one which might represent Singing Oak. But the first one I had seen, which had crossed the sun and drawn my attention, the one which was for Brook, had started to change shape. It was breaking up. Singing Oak's cloud could no longer follow it.
I didn't see a cloud for Victory. The rest of the sky was clear.
Not having a proper offering with which to thank the goddess for her guidance, I pulled a strand of my hair and let it fall to the ground.
I tried to wake Singing Oak quietly, thinking that we could pack and be gone before anyone else noticed, but of course she wanted all the details of the sign, and to interpret it properly, and by the time I'd told her everything and she'd explained to me three reasons I knew nothing about the gods, even though I'd had a prophetic dream and an augury from birds and an explanation in the skies, Brook was awake and on the verge of telling Victory and my plan was about to fail.
"Wait," I said, before he could get out the door. To his credit, he did wait, taking a seat by the hearth and beginning to stir up the fire. That was good, he'd need it to cook his own breakfast when we were gone.
"The interplay between last night's signs and..." Singing Oak began. I think she heard me sigh, because she stopped talking and looked at me, really looked in the light from the refreshed fire, for the first time that morning. "A god did speak to you, didn't they? I can see it in your eyes."
"I think so," I said. I didn't want to be too set on it, although telling the story to Singing Oak had made me more convinced that it was real.
"Yes," she said, slowly, considering. "You've always been special, observant, kind, open... you love me so well, and now the gods have rewarded you."
That was putting it a bit strongly, I thought, although I didn't like to argue with her and we were at risk of getting distracted. I answered her with a kiss, making it strong and sweet but keeping my mouth closed and pulling back when Tiny Spark made a noise. "I do love you, and so do the gods, and maybe they love me enough to help me. My question now is... do we obey? Do we go? Do I go, and do you come with me?"
"And do you take my daughter?" Brook asked. I jumped, having almost forgotten he was there. "More to the point, what do I tell my mother? She won't be pleased, and she won't have much time for anything Silver Wheat says about the gods."
Singing Oak looked into the fire. Perhaps she was searching for a sign of her own; the shapes in the embers are sometimes said to give clues in much the same way as clouds. Perhaps she found one, or something inside her changed, because when she lifted her head I could see that she'd decided that we would go.
"Tell Victory that we've gone to give an offering at the shrine to Brigid," she said to Brook. "Tell her – tell everyone – that we saw signs this morning that we need to give thanks for last night's blessing, and that Brigid brought us the fire and the metal and so we have gone to repay her, on their behalf. It will save us sacrificing any more of the harvest. And tell them to leave the rock where it fell. And get a sword ready to give to the river when the spring comes, because these blessings don't come for nothing."
It was a good plan. The shrine to Brigid was several day's ride away, not so far that we would be expected to spend a long time preparing for the journey but not so near that they would expect us back tomorrow. The other instructions would distract people – especially Victory, who loved the fine work of our excellent blacksmiths and resented it every time we had to kill a perfectly good sword and hand it over to the other world.
Brook stood. "Is this goodbye, then?"
Singing Oak smiled at him. "We'll see each other again, my official and dutiful husband," she said. "We'll bring your daughter when she's old enough for the combat training her grandmother wants to give her."
"Can I see her before that?"
"When the gods will it," I said. I'd had enough talk and handed Tiny Spark to Singing Oak to hold while I threw a few things into a leather bag: some spare clothes, the end of yesterday's bread.
"I'll have them ready your horses," Brook said.
Singing Oak relaxed once we were alone, rocking the baby and handing me things to pack. "Remember your thick cloak," she said. "The weather's already turning."
As we went out the door, I paused to thank the spirits of the hearth and the house who had sheltered me. It wasn't their fault I couldn't stay.
At the gate, Brook was waiting. I took Ivy's bridle from his hand and gave her a brief glance over – my little mare is willing and friendly and prone to scratching herself on sharp posts, so I always look to see if her skin is sore before I ride. Today, fortunately, she seemed fine. One or two people were already walking around, watching us as they went about their business, and if we did anything which seemed remarkable we'd have a crowd before we could blink.
"Give my greetings to Brigid," Brook said loudly once we were mounted, and the groom who had helped Singing Oak echoed the sentiment. Hopefully nobody would think to question that story for some time.
We rode down the hill and onto the plain in silence. We turned west towards the shrine of Brigid, knowing that in some places along the route we could still be seen from the fort; and Singing Oak said, "We might as well make it true, at least to start with, unless we get another sign."
"We'll pray for one," I said, adjusting Tiny Spark as she slept on my back. But the sign that I got that afternoon was nothing more and nothing less than the fulfilment of what I had already seen: Brook's cloud dissolving until there were just the two of us; the raven flying away from me as I was leaving the fort; riding away as I had seen in my dream; the blessing of the full grain pits so we wouldn't be worried about the people at home even if we went hungry in our travels; and the light of Taranis coming overhead and heralding a change. I couldn't make it add up to a neat set of three. I had a feeling that Victory would be proud of the way I made it all fit the answers I wanted to reach.
I didn't mention that to Singing Oak. Instead, when we stopped by a stream to refill our water skins and rest, I hugged her close. "I'm glad we get this time."
"It's a gift," she agreed, and kissed me. The water chattered beside us and Tiny Spark woke up, but I ignored it all for a few more moments thinking only of her lips.
Show NotesThis quarter’s fiction episode presents A Falling Star and a Flying Bird by Rhiannon Grant, narrated by Heather Rose Jones.
Links to the Lesbian Historic Motif Project Online
Website: http://alpennia.com/lhmp Blog: http://alpennia.com/blog RSS: http://alpennia.com/blog/feed/ Twitter: @LesbianMotif Discord: Contact Heather for an invitation to the Alpennia/LHMP Discord server The Lesbian Historic Motif Project PatreonLinks to Heather Online
Website: http://alpennia.com Email: Heather Rose Jones Mastodon: @heatherrosejones@Wandering.Shop Bluesky: @heatherrosejones Facebook: Heather Rose Jones (author page)Links to Rhiannon Grant Online
Website: https://brigidfoxandbuddha.wordpress.comMajor category: LHMPTags: LHMPpodcast2025 Fiction SeriesLesbian Historic Motif Podcast Episode 309 – Lesbians and Sex Work
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 309 – Lesbians and Sex Work - transcript
(Originally aired 2025/03/22 - listen here)
Introduction
There are a number of interesting themes that intersect with women loving women across history, but one that might seem, at first, to be unexpected is the association of lesbianism with sex work. I mean, here you are thinking, “Isn’t sex work mostly about women providing sexual services for men? And isn’t that a bit in conflict with women loving women?” And yet we find this association repeatedly in many different contexts. So what’s going on?
Obviously a significant underlayer is simple misogyny, whereby all women who stand outside the approved sexual norm get lumped together. But when we start sorting through the data, we find four distinct motifs. I should note that these motifs don’t necessarily reflect patterns of women’s experience, as opposed to social archetypes. And the ways in which these motifs are framed are sometimes informed by other models of gender and sexuality embedded in a particular era.
The four motifs can be summed up first as “some women are oversexed and they incline both towards sex work and lesbianism;” second as “women are trained into sex work by being seduced by an established female sex worker;” third “female sex workers view men as a job and therefore turn to women for their own love and pleasure;” and fourth “there is a specific marketplace for women providing sexual services to women.”
When I do this sort of historic survey, usually I try to organize it by culture and then by era, but in this case the data is so sparse and scattered that I’m going to organize it by those four themes.
Over-Sexed
The first motif stems from the idea that if a woman transgresses approved sexual norms in one manner, she is likely to transgress other norms. But in some eras, we also find an explanation that the reason why women might turn to sex work or to sex with other women is because they have an excessive sex drive that can’t be satisfied by sticking to approved objects and relationships. This motif doesn’t necessarily treat sex work and lesbianism as distinct concepts. Perhaps the most direct expression of this idea is in derogatory language where a woman might be insulted by simultaneously calling her a whore, a slut, and a lesbian—something we find in early modern English drama. So we might see this not so much a conflation of sex workers and lesbians as a failure to distinguish them.
This conflation may be present in Plato’s invention of the word “hetairistria” in the Symposium dialogue about the origin of sexual orientation in the separation of two-bodied creatures who are forever trying to find their “other half.” As Boehringer explains, the root “hetair-” covers a cluster of meanings in the sense “friend, companion” but with gendered nuances. The masculine “hetairos” only ever has a neutral sense of “friend” whereas the feminine “hetaira” developed a contextual meaning of “courtesan, mistress.” A verb derived from the same root occurs in the context of male prostitution. While Plato’s invention “hetairistria” clearly refers in some way to women loving women, though the context suggests that it may mean specifically “a woman whose love for women goes beyond the accepted norm.” However Plato intended the word, it was later interpreted and used to mean a woman-loving woman generally, used in parallel with tribade and lesbian. But the connection with hetaira as courtesan also anchored this sense in the semantic realm of sex work.
We see this same evolution of overlapping meanings in the shifting images of Sappho where she is reimagined as a courtesan in combination with her reputation for loving women.
Taking a somewhat different angle we see a connection between gender transgression and sex work in the popular association of the latter with cross-dressing. On the 16th century Italian stage, characters depicting courtesans are often given cross-dressing scenes, mirroring habits attributed to real life courtesans. In English court records of the 15th and 16th centuries, cross-dressing women were assumed to be sex workers, whether because cross-dressing gave them the freedom to be out on the streets illicitly or because their clients may have found it titillating. While this isn’t to say that most sex workers cross-dressed, the law assumed that a cross-dressed woman was engaged in sexual transgression of some type. There are specific records of a woman being “enticed to whoredom” in a process that included cutting her hair short and dressing her in men’s clothing. The women in this category were not assumed to be engaging in sex with other women, but the motif links via the cross-dressing theme. Notorious 17th century gender outlaw Mary Frith was accused of being involved in prostitution purely on the basis of her mix of male and female garments, and dramatic characters based on her were also depicted as bisexual. It’s also worth noting that in this era calling a woman a whore or prostitute didn’t depend on whether she accepted money, but could simply refer to any sex outside marriage.
This motif of prostitutes wearing masculine clothing as an advertising statement continues into the 19th century in the American West, alongside other types of signifiers such as wearing overly sumptuous dress.
During the same era in France, writers and artists documenting the demi-monde associated lesbians with the spheres of sex work and theater. These depictions echoed the developing medical theories of homosexuality, which viewed it as a direct byproduct of criminality and prostitution.
Lesbianism as Training
Male anxiety about lesbian relations among sex workers was defused, to some extent, in the motif of same-sex seduction as a means to provide an erotic awakening for prospective sex workers. In this scenario, an older, experienced woman introduces an innocent young girl to the pleasures of sex and then—in the male-centered context of this motif—leaves her eager for the supposedly more enjoyable encounters with male clients.
This is a popular motif in dramas and novels of the 16th through 18th centuries, such as the 16th century Spanish dialogue La Celestina and its many derivatives such as the English translation as The Spanish Bawd. The theme is strongly implied in the 17th century English play The Three Ladies of London and is overt in the 18th century French pornographic novel Thérèse the Philosophe, though in the latter case the supposed ingenue already has a lesbian history before being taken under the wing of a procuress. Perhaps the most widely known example is in John Cleland’s 18th century novel Fanny Hill, in which the innocent Fanny is initiated into sexual pleasure by an older prostitute. Her mentor is described as having a preferred taste for female partners, while Fanny is eager to move on to men.
The motif of lesbian seduction into sex work may not have been entirely restricted to fiction. In one 17th century Spanish court case, a lesbian couple on trial are also accused of collecting a group of “wayward” young women supposedly to deliver them to a convent for reformed sex workers, but believed to be instead recruiting them to set up a brothel. Though in this case there isn’t direct evidence that the couple were engaging in sex with their recruits.
Women for Love
But what if, like Fanny Hill’s mentor, a sex worker actually prefers to take her pleasure with other women? Then we have our third motif. This one provokes a bit more male anxiety than the “seduction into sex work” motif, because it undermines the necessary fiction that sex workers have a more-than-commercial relationship to their clients. It also undermines the fiction that women turn to other women for sex only because men aren’t available. As Brantôme laments in 16th century France, “Even courtesans, who have men at their disposal at all hours, yet have recourse to these fricarelles, seek each other out and love each other, as I have heard of sundry doing in Italy and in Spain.
Among the various myths that arose about Sappho, one strand turned her into a courtesan—perhaps from the misapprehension that only courtesans would have the education and sophistication to be poets. There are images of Sappho on Greek pottery that depict her as a part of a symposium of courtesans participating in a female pederastic tradition.
A genre of teasing and satirical poetry in medieval Spain includes references to homosexual relations, including three verses that make clear and explicit reference to female same-sex encounters by sex workers serving military camps.
Brantôme, along with some of his contemporaries even name names in this context, contrasting the “chaste” love between two female aristocrats with the more lascivious desires of “the great prostitute Cecilia Venetiana” and a famous Spanish courtesan in Rome, Isabella de Luna, who herself kept another courtesan named Pandora as her mistress.
In an era when women on stage found it difficult to escape a second career as mistresses to wealthy theater patrons, a number of prominent actresses were famous for their female lovers, including 18th century French actress Mademoiselle de Raucourt who was said to have “married” her lover, the singer Sophie Arnould and had succession of other female lovers. (Though Raucourt is perhaps not an ideal example of the category as she struggled to avoid the need for having male clients.) The motif of actresses competing with men for the affections of courtesans and mistresses was prevalent enough to become a standard trope in French comic media.
Sometimes these relationships were complicated. Betty Rizzo explores one 18th century couple who combined a romantic and (probably) sexual relationship with a business partnership, Sophia Baddeley being a sometime actress and courtesan, and Elizabeth Steele being her companion, lover, pimp, and business manager.
Guy de Maupassant’s late 19th century French novel “Paul’s Mistress” features the protagonist’s suicidal despair when his mistress deserts him for the “more certain affections” of a band of lesbians.
A Russian psychiatrist’s case study of the late 19th century tells of a female couple who met while working together in a brothel and were fired for neglecting their customers in favor of each other. After the two eventually broke up, one of the women returned to working in the brothel, picked up another girlfriend, and again was kicked out, taking her new girlfriend with her.
Lest I give the impression that these motifs are restricted to Western culture—honestly, it’s the old problem that the vast majority of my research sources have that focus—I’ll offer two other items. Among a 9th century collection of songs and stories from the Islamicate world, there is an anecdote of the famous courtesan Bathal daringly singing a song about her preference for sex with women.
And in India, within the curious genre of Rekhti poetry—an Urdu genre in which a typically male poet writes in a female voice addressing a female beloved—there is evidence of courtesans performing these poems for each other.
Lesbian Sex Work
Our fourth motif is a bit harder to pin down, especially with regard to whether it existed in real life as opposed to literature. Were there circumstances in which women provided sexual services to other women as a commercial enterprise? What sort of evidence would that leave? What is the dividing line between a woman providing financial support to her female lover, and sex as a financial transaction? In this essay, I’ve been treating a wide variety of non-marital heterosexual liaisons as falling within the category of sex work, including ones where the women are characterized as “courtesans” or “mistresses.” But female couples didn’t have the option of formal marriage; is it fair to apply the same definitions to them? These are some of the complications.
In Lucian’s fictional Dialogues of the Courtesans, we have a clear example of a professional courtesan (who appears to be much more on the “sex worker” end of the scale than the “intellectual companion” end) hired to entertain a female couple, including engaging in sex with both of them. (For the moment we’re going to skate over the question of whether the character of Megilla should be treated as transgender, because Lucian clearly intended her to be read as female.) This courtesan’s profession includes providing entertainment to her clients, that entertainment clearly is expected to include sexual services, and while she is a bit surprised to be asked to provide those services for women, she is perfectly willing and appears to be continuing to engage with these clients. Was this an actual feature of 2nd century Greek culture? Not proven, but neither does Lucian present it as something the reader is expected to disbelieve.
In late 15th century English legal records, there is one tantalizing reference to a woman named Thomasina keeping in her household a cross-dressed woman who was a concubine. While there’s enough ambiguity in the record for doubt as to whose concubine the woman was, the most straightforward reading is that she was Thomasina’s concubine. However there’s even more doubt as to whether the relationship should be read as transactional, as “concubine” simply meant a non-marital relationship and may have been the only word available to the clerk to describe the situation.
Less ambiguous, though not clearly certain, is an inquisition record from mid-17th century Spain in which one member of a female couple was recorded as having boasted that her girlfriend was willing to pay her for sex (but evidently was not actually doing so). The most straightforward interpretation would be a culture where sex work for a female client was understood as a possibility. But in the specific case, this is a long-term couple, although with a stormy relationship, where neither woman is considered by the court to be a sex worker.
Returning to the realm of fiction, Delariviere Manley’s early 18th century novel The New Atalantis includes an anecdote in which a female couple—one crossdressing as a man—together engaged the services of “Creatures of Hire” who were happy in “obliging [their] peculiar taste.” A similar event occurs in Eliza Haywood’s mid-18th century novel The History of Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy, where a character named Lady Fisk goes on a cross-dressed adventure in Covent Garden that ends in picking up a (female) prostitute, though in this case the sex worker was not amenable once she learned Fisk’s assigned sex.
Interacting with sex workers while in gender disguise does add another twist to interpretative difficulty, especially if one is viewing the situation through trans possibilities. 18th century English actress Charlotte Charke’s autobiography records flirtations with sex workers while crossdressing, though the demands of her audience meant that she generally depicts it as attracting not-entirely-wanted attention and that the sex workers were not aware of her assigned sex.
Another complication? Where is the dividing line between a brothel, where women go to pay for sex, and a sex club, where they gather to have encounters with other women? The potentially fictitious 18th century Anandrine Sect in France is clearly a sex club rather than a house of prostitution, and the description by a German visitor to London in the 1780s of organized societies for “females who avoid all intimate intercourse with the opposite sex, confining themselves to their own sex” similarly sounds non-commercial.
A complaint in 18th century Amsterdam against 4 women who shared a house “where disreputable people gathered” is unclear on the nature of the establishment. The house was said to be one where women came to caress and kiss one another and feel under each other’s skirts. While one of the women said she was “seduced with coffee and alcohol,” it isn’t clear that the house was a commercial establishment as opposed to a meeting place.
The most explicit descriptions I’ve found of English brothels catering to lesbians have turned out to be an elaborate game of telephone, with sources citing each other in circular fashion, adding ever more specific details as they go. If you’re interested in going down that rabbit hole, check out my podcast on “Researching the Origins of Lesbian Myths, Legends, and Symbols” (linked in the show notes). But in the end I could find no verifiable evidence for lesbian bordellos in 18th century London.
Summary
So as you can see the question of a historic connection between lesbians and sex workers is complex and full of uncertainties, not only due to the nature of the sources and the biases of the people recording them, but due to the often ambiguous nature of sex work itself within societies where even relationships with official imprimatur are transactional in nature. But perhaps this exploration has offered new ideas for historic stories and characters.
Show NotesIn this episode we talk about:
Four motifs that connect women loving women and sex work in historic sources Sources used Bennett, Judith and Shannon McSheffrey. 2014. “Early, Erotic and Alien: Women Dressed as Men in Late Medieval London” in History Workshop Journal. 77 (1): 1-25. Beynon, John C. 2010. “Unaccountable Women” in Lesbian Dames: Sapphism in the Long Eighteenth Century. Beynon, John C. & Caroline Gonda eds. Ashgate, Farnham. ISBN 978-0-7546-7335-4 Blackmore, Josiah. 1999. “The Poets of Sodom” in Queer Iberia: Sexualities, Cultures, and Crossings from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance ed. Josiah Blackmore and Gregory S. Hutcheson. Duke University Press, Durham. ISBN 9780822323495 Boehringer, Sandra (trans. Anna Preger). 2021. Female Homosexuality in Ancient Greece and Rome. Routledge, New York. ISBN 978-0-367-74476-2 Burford, E.J. 1986. Wits, Wenchers and Wantons - London’s Low Life: Covent Garden in the Eighteenth Century. Robert Hale, London. ISBN 0-7090-2629-3 Cheek, Pamela. 1998. "The 'Mémoires secrets' and the Actress: Tribadism, Performance, and Property", in Jeremy D. Popkin and Bernadette Fort (eds), The "Mémoires secrets" and the Culture of Publicity in Eighteenth-Century France, Oxford: Voltaire Foundation. Choquette, Leslie. 2001. “’Homosexuals in the City: Representations of Lesbian and Gay Space in Nineteenth-Century Paris” in Merrick, Jeffrey & Michael Sibalis, eds. Homosexuality in French History and Culture. Harrington Park Press, New York. ISBN 1-56023-263-3 Craft-Fairchild, Catherine. 2006. “Sexual and Textual Indeterminacy: Eighteenth-Century English Representations of Sapphism” in Journal of the History of Sexuality 15:3 DeJean, Joan. 1989. Fictions of Sappho, 1546-1937. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-14136-5 Donoghue, Emma. 1995. Passions Between Women: British Lesbian Culture 1668-1801. Harper Perennial, New York. ISBN 0-06-017261-4 Engelstein, Laura. 1990. "Lesbian Vignettes: A Russian Triptych from the 1890s" in Signs vol. 15, no. 4 813-831. Garber, Marjorie. 1992. Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety. Routledge, New York. ISBN 0-415-91951-7 Faderman, Lillian. 1981. Surpassing the Love of Men. William Morrow and Company, Inc., New York. ISBN 0-688-00396-6 Gilhuly, Kate. 2015. “Lesbians are Not from Lesbos” in Blondell, Ruby & Kirk Ormand (eds). Ancient Sex: New Essays. The Ohio State University Press, Columbus. ISBN 978-0-8142-1283-7 Habib, Samar. 2007. Female Homosexuality in the Middle East: Histories and Representations. Routledge, New York. ISBN 78-0-415-80603-9 Haley, Shelley P. “Lucian’s ‘Leaena and Clonarium’: Voyeurism or a Challenge to Assumptions?” in Rabinowitz, Nancy Sorkin & Lisa Auanger eds. 2002. Among Women: From the Homosocial to the Homoerotic in the Ancient World. University of Texas Press, Austin. ISBN 0-29-77113-4 Ingrassia, Catherine. 2003. “Eliza Haywood, Sapphic Desire, and the Practice of Reading” in: Kittredge, Katharine (ed). Lewd & Notorious: Female Transgression in the Eighteenth Century. The University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor. ISBN 0-472-11090-X Jones, Ann Rosalind & Peter Stallybrass. 1991. “Fetishizing gender: constructing the Hermaphrodite in Renaissance Europe” in Body guards : the cultural politics of gender ambiguity edited by Julia Epstein & Kristina Straub. Routledge, New York. ISBN 0-415-90388-2 Jones, Heather Rose. 2021. “Researching the Origins of Lesbian Myths, Legends, and Symbols” (podcast). https://alpennia.com/blog/lesbian-historic-motif-podcast-episode-201-researching-origins-lesbian-myths-legends-and Katritzky, M.A. 2005. “Reading the Actress in Commedia Imagery” in Women Players in England, 1500-1660: Beyond the All-Male Stage, edited by Pamela Allen Brown & Peter Parolin. Ashgate, Burlington. ISBN 978-0-7546-0953-7 Klein, Ula Lukszo. 2021. Sapphic Crossings: Cross-Dressing Women in Eighteenth-Century British Literature. University of Virginia Press, Charlottesville. ISBN 978-0-8139-4551-4 Kranz, Susan E. 1995. The Sexual Identities of Moll Cutpurse in Dekker and Middleton’s The Roaring Girl and in London in Renaissance and Reformation 19: 5-20. Merrick, Jeffrey. 1990. “Sexual Politics and Public Order in Late Eighteenth-Century France: the Mémoires secrets and the Correspondance secrète” in Journal of the History of Sexuality 1, 68-84. Merrick, Jeffrey & Bryant T. Ragan, Jr. 2001. Homosexuality in Early Modern France: A Documentary Collection. Oxford University Press, New York. ISBN 0-19-510257-6 Rizzo, Betty. 1994. Companions without Vows: Relationships among Eighteenth-Century British Women. Athens: University of Georgia Press. ISBN 978-0-8203-3218-5 Sears, Clare. 2015. Arresting Dress: Cross-Dressing, Law, and Fascination in Nineteenth-Century San Francisco. Durham: Duke University Press. ISBN 978-0-8223-5758-2 Shapiro, Michael. 1994. Gender in Play on the Shakespearean Stage: Boy Heroines and Female Pages. Ann Arbor. Van der Meer, Theo. 1991. “Tribades on Trial: Female Same-Sex Offenders in Late Eighteenth-Century Amsterdam” in Journal of the History of Sexuality 1:3 424-445. Vanita, Ruth and Saleem Kidwai, eds. 2000. Same-Sex Love in India: Readings from Literature and History. St. Martin’s, New York. ISBN 0-312-22169-X Velasco, Sherry. 2011. Lesbians in Early Modern Spain. Vanderbilt University Press, Nashville. ISBN 978-0-8265-1750-0 Wahl, Elizabeth Susan. 1999. Invisible Relations: Representations of Female Intimacy in the Age of Enlightenment. Stanford University Press, Stanford. ISBN 0-8047-3650-2 Walen, Denise A. 2005. Constructions of Female Homoeroticism in Early Modern Drama. New York: Palgrave MacMillan. ISBN 978-1-4039-6875-3Links to the Lesbian Historic Motif Project Online
Website: http://alpennia.com/lhmp Blog: http://alpennia.com/blog RSS: http://alpennia.com/blog/feed/ Twitter: @LesbianMotif Discord: Contact Heather for an invitation to the Alpennia/LHMP Discord server The Lesbian Historic Motif Project PatreonLinks to Heather Online
Website: http://alpennia.com Email: Heather Rose Jones Mastodon: @heatherrosejones@Wandering.Shop Bluesky: @heatherrosejones Facebook: Heather Rose Jones (author page)Major category: LHMPTags: LHMPpodcastMarch 22, 2025
It Keeps Coming Back to Marie Antoinette
I'm not quite sure why I keep forgetting that I have blogs all written up and ready to post. (This is why I plan to have a posted work schedule in retirement: so everything gets pushed along the path at regular intervals.)
Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP LHMP #463 Colwill 1996 Pass as a Woman, Act like a Man About LHMP Full citation:Colwill, Elizabeth. 1996. “Pass as a Woman, Act like a Man: Marie-Antoinette as Tribade in the Pornography of the French Revolution” in Homosexuality in Modern France ed. by Jeffrey Merrick and Bryant T. Ragan, Jr. Oxford University Press, New York. ISBN 0-19-509304-6
Colwill 1996 Pass as a Woman, Act like a Man
Among the political propaganda published during the French Revolution against Queen Marie-Antoinette (MA, for convenience) was a prominent theme of her sexual profligacy, and in particular the charge that she engaged in lesbian sex (as well as other sexual charges). In this context, her lesbian relations were depicted, not an accompaniment or “appetizer” to heterosexual acts (as often presented in pornography of the time), but as a preference.
This association of MA with sapphic relations informed her public image—though not always overtly sexually—in succeeding centuries. But as much as lesbianism was used as a weapon against MA, MA’s alleged lesbianism tells us much about attitudes toward lesbians in her era. The intersection of these two themes can make a study of both subjects a bit fraught from a historian’s point of view. Political tracts are deliberately exaggerated and use parody, making it impossible to separate fact from fiction. Was MA a lesbian, with the satirists fastening on this as a weapon against her, thus creating an atmosphere of anti-lesbian sentiment deriving from animus against the queen? Or was there a general social anxiety about lesbianism, leading satirists to choose it as a weapon against the queen? Was there an actual lesbian subculture in France that provided the framework for the specifics of the charges? Or was the alleged network of lesbians among the queen’s circle entirely an invention of her enemies?
Historians of sexuality have conflicting ideas and chronologies of models of sexual difference, but generally agree that the 18th century was an era when older metaphysical models were shifting to medical and “scientific” models, in line with the Enlightenment in general. Many of the underlying ideas remained the same, only the superficial explanation changed—such as “women’s sinful nature” shifting to “woman’s inherent weakness and hysteria.” With a shift to same-sex desire and activity no longer being ascribed to sexual natures existing on a continuum between male and female, new identities must be posited (Trumbach’s “four genders”) to account for desire that broke heterosexual models.
In France, public discourse around gender and sexual non-conformity was increasing across the 18th century and became intertwined with ideas about the state, rather than merely being individual foibles. MA complicated ideas about gender and sexuality, at once being seen as hyper-feminine and dangerously masculine. She “passes as a woman but acts like a man.” The authors of this article assert that MA cannot be pinned down to one specific reading precisely because the frameworks for understanding sex and gender were in flux. Official structures and opinions were intolerant of anything “unnatural” by older models, but Enlightenment ideas were challenging the definition and boundaries of “natural.” Political pornography attacking MA as lesbian did not merely reflect understandings, but shaped them.
One thread of the hatred for MA was the image of her as wielding inappropriate political power. This bled over into the image of her ceding that power to sexual partners (in much the same way that kings’ mistresses became targets if thought to have too much influence). King Louis’ well-known sexual failings generated the image of a frustrated and thus sexually voracious MA. While accusations against MA included several men of the court, sex with women was framed as superior and inexhaustible.
Another thread was a shift in the social and economic place of pornography. Previously intersecting several other genres (medical, philosophical), after the Revolution pornography came to be seen and defined as a distinct genre. This segregation of the sexual from the philosophical and political turned pornography from public discourse into private vice. It became apolitical and focused on personal sexual arousal—a shift that had not yet taken place during the propaganda campaign against MA. Before that shift, pornography was one of the tools used for establishing and maintaining political and social order, by helping define the boundaries of the acceptable.
This article has an extensive analysis of the symbolic hierarchies inherent in depictions of various sexual pairings and acts.
Within this context, satires against MA focused on her supposed relations with the comtesse de Polignac and the princesse de Lamballe (who were, objectively, her closest friends and confidantes in the court). The net expanded outside the aristocracy to artists patronized by the queen, including singer Arnould, actress Raucourt, and painter Vigée-Lebrun. These rumors circulated before the Revolution. Early in the Revolution, royalists might try to displace criticism of the queen onto these favorites who had “led her astray.” But a focus on the queen herself overwhelmed ever these efforts. Eventually, the alleged sexual depravity of the queen became the supposed proof that monarchy itself was unsupportable.
In contrast to Renaissance pornography that celebrated pleasure, these publications served as a warning to police morality and a rationale for the queen’s execution.
Interestingly, the subjects, treatment, preoccupations, and tone of the political sexual satires closely parallel those of libertine pornography by authors such as Sade, even to the fascination with lesbianism. Within the context of political attacks on women who stepped outside “proper” role, lesbianism was primarily charged against aristocrats, even when charges of “masculinity” were in play against others—primarily, but not exclusively, as some women pushing for equal rights were added to the roster of MA’s alleged lovers. Overall, a contrast was established between the immoral, libertine, sapphic aristocrat and the moral, domestic, heterosexual bourgeoise woman—a contrast that reverberated into the 19th century.
Revolutionary attacks on MA were scarcely uniform or coherent. Beside the continuing theme of lesbianism were allegations of more broad-ranging sexual transgressions, and pamphleteers often inserted their own personal preoccupations into the attacks. MA’s alleged abandonment of material impulses fed into anxiety about declining birthrates.
The article concludes with a discussion of the image of the “hermaphrodite” both physiological and behavioral, and how MA was fitted into this tradition.
[Note: Although some historians have defined “tribade” (the term generally used in these documents) as being associated with the motif of the macro-clitoral woman, the specific sex acts described in this political pornography focus on manual stimulation, dildos, and sometimes oral sex.]
Time period: 18th cPlace: FranceEvent / person: Marie Antoinette View comments (0)March 15, 2025
Queer Consequences in the Midst of Revolution
Mademoiselle de Raucourt is on my short list for "historic lesbians who deserve a major media property about them.
Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP LHMP #462 Merrick 1996 The Marquis de Villette and Mademoiselle de Raucourt About LHMP Full citation:Merrick, Jeffrey. 1996. “The Marquis de Villette and Mademoiselle de Raucourt: Representations of Male and Female Sexual Deviance in Late Eighteenth-Century France” in Homosexuality in Modern France ed. by Jeffrey Merrick and Bryant T. Ragan, Jr. Oxford University Press, New York. ISBN 0-19-509304-6
Merrick 1996 The Marquis de Villette and Mademoiselle de Raucourt
While this article purports to compare differences in reception for male and female homosexuals in later 18th century France, there are more differences between the two focal characters than just gender. One is an aristocrat, one an actress. One had the option to use marriage as a "beard", for the other, marriage would have been a snare. One could dabble in various professions, the other relied on her profession for her livelihood. But the differences in how they were talked about and treated is still worth comparing on a gendered basis.
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Following a long tradition of framing f/f sex as “something newly prominent,” the French Mémoires Secrets of 1784 asserted it had “never been flaunted with as much scandal and show as today.” But while male homosexuals were arrested by the hundreds, far less attention was given to women, leaving fewer traces for historians to reconstruct. One notable exception is the actress Mademoiselle de Raucourt. This article compares her context to that of the Marquis de Villette to examine difference in the treatment and reception of male and female homosexuality among social prominent figures. [Note: My summary of this, as usual, will focus primarily on Raucourt.]
Villette was a wealthy aristocrat with philosophical and literary interests. He dabbled in both legal and military careers, but ran into trouble over a misrepresented duel, as well as his notoriety for homosexual relations. This notoriety took the form of gossip and satire, but despite occasional encounters with the police (and being the subject of investigations) he did not face legal penalties.
His marriage in middle age went some way to changing his reputation. During the Revolution, he took something of a moderate position, which resulted in more radical voices linking his sexuality to the decadence of the court.
Raucourt was the daughter of an actor and began her own career at the Comédie Française at the age of 16. Early mentions of her praised her beauty and intellect. Sexual speculation began with guesses as to which aristocrat would take (or had already taken) her virginity, as actresses were assumed to all moonlight as mistresses to the wealthy. Her disinterest in that path resulted in her becoming notorious for her romantic affairs with women. Her rejection of the career of paid mistress, combined with a profligate lifestyle, led her into bankruptcy four years into her career, though she was rumored to have income from some female aristocratic admirers.
Due to finances, she temporarily fled France for several years in company with her lover Mademoiselle Souck. She returned under the sponsorship of Marie-Antoinette, and this later resulted in Raucourt being named as one of the queen’s female lovers in political pamphlets that framed Marie-Antoinette as a lesbian.
Gossip also linked Raucourt’s name with singer Sophie Arnould, with one source claiming the two had “married.” Arnould had both male and female lovers and several of the latter moved between her bed and that of Raucourt.
In pornographic literature, Raucourt was cast in the role of leader of a secret society of lesbians, known as the Anandrine Sect. These texts also referenced Arnould and Souck as part of the Sect. This fictionalized version of Raucourt proclaimed the long history of lesbianism and promoted it as a better choice and option for women. These pornographic texts, however, typically ended with a young female protagonist at risk of being seduced into the Anandrine Sect being “rescued” by a male lover.
Raucourt was said to sometimes dress as a man, not only for stage roles, but when visiting her female lovers. Raucourt had no revolutionary sympathies, and political pamphleteers once again depicted her as leader of a band of lesbians and sodomites against the prostitutes of Paris, which latter were framed as representing the Revolution. Raucourt, along with other actors of suspect politics, was arrested but eventually revived her career, with some (perhaps surprising) support from Napoleon, who included her in a group of entertainers traveling with him.
She spent her last years in company with a woman she had met in prison and had engaged in long correspondence with.
Both Villette and Raucourt were used as examples of the decadence of the Ancien Régime. Their sexuality was a theme of personal attacks, but also as a context for political attacks. Due to the nature and purpose of these attacks, they do not represent reliable history, but represent prevalent attitudes toward sexuality.
Time period: 18th cPlace: FranceEvent / person: Françoise-Marie-Antoinette-Joseph Saucerotte (Mademoiselle de Raucourt) View comments (0)March 14, 2025
Queer Philosophy in France
I've had the several relevant articles in this collection written up for a couple weeks, but somehow kept not getting around to uploading them to the blog. But I have a "free" day today, so it was on my to-do list. The other main thing on my to-do list today is to contact the financial services company that has my 401K and start getting things arranged for my retirement income. It is not a comfortable time for this process. The instability of the markets mean that the balance in my 401K has been fluctuating wildly. It's hard to hold on to confidence in the long term when you see yourself "losing" thousands of dollars overnight. I'm also still waiting for the Social Security Administration to approve and start my payouts. I never entirely believed the "30 days" they advertised on the website, even before (waves hands wildly) all this. But since I allowed for 4 months from application until my salary stops (5 if you count my unused vacation payout) one might hope it would be enough.
I got a lovely fan email (for my fiction) this week from a reader in Romania. (Romania!) I also had a wonderful fan email in February. Never doubt that dropping a note to an author you enjoy will make their day. (Fan mail for the blog and podcast are also greatly appreciated, though less common.)
Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP LHMP #461 Ragan 1996 The Enlightenment Confronts Homosexuality About LHMP Full citation:Ragan, Bryant T. Jr. 1996. “The Enlightenment Confronts Homosexuality” in Homosexuality in Modern France ed. by Jeffrey Merrick and Bryant T. Ragan, Jr. Oxford University Press, New York. ISBN 0-19-509304-6
Ragan 1996 The Enlightenment Confronts Homosexuality
In general, this article feels like a fairly superficial survey/overview, rather than an exploration and presentation of new conclusions.
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In 18th century France, philosophy and pornography intersected to a degree such that “philosophical texts” became a euphemism for sexual content, including a regular interest in same-sex relations. Among critiques of society and politics, enlightenment philosophers debated traditional understandings and condemnation of homosexuality. This included the radical idea that all sexuality was natural and morally neutral, and that the state should not regulate it.
Moral traditionalists cited biblical references while being hampered by a suspicion that being too explicit about what they were condemning might induce people to try it. Sodomy was characterized as a type of heresy.
Legal authorities discussed sodomy in much more specific and detailed terms, focusing on same-sex relations, rather than the alternate definition of sodomy as anal sex regardless of gender. The traditional penalty for sodomy was death by burning.
The traditionalist philosophical position was that same-sex relations were “un-natural” because they were unique to human beings and not found in nature among animals. [Note: Of course, this was a flawed premise.] Another theme was the necessity of a contrast of difference in the participants for love and sexual reproduction.
Religious and legal prohibitions had less practical effect to discourage same-sex relations than theory would suggest, in part due to a French tradition of anti-clerical sentiment, and a disinterest by the courts in fully prosecuting the existing laws, especially against the nobility, where libertine attitudes were prevalent. A study of executions for sodomy indicates that many involved some other violent crime. To some extent, the courts were more interested in regulating m/f sex, especially around the consequences of illegitimate births. [Note: The author suggests that people deliberately turned to same-sex outlets as a strategy to avoid pregnancy, but this feels speculative.]
Examination of m/m behavior in France between the Renaissance and the 18th century shows a similar path to what is seen elsewhere. Such relations were common, though rarely exclusive, and required strict hierarchies of age and class to be considered acceptable. Information about women is less accessible. Reasons involve fewer court cases, a lower public profile, and an overlay of prurient interest on the part of those writing on the subject. During this era, women who engaged in same-sex activity were not perceived as being unfeminine.
The article embraces Randolph Trumbach’s model of the emergence of a “four gender” model across the 18th century. This included the idea of fixed preference in desired partners, and a shift away from age-based hierarchies. One eventual result was that exclusive sodomites became viewed as effeminate, and exclusive sapphists as masculine.
Among men, social subcultures emerged, focusing on pick-up locations already associated with prostitutes, such as the gardens of the Tuileries, Palais Royal, and Luxembourg. In-group jargon, rituals, and practices developed. This was the context for the emergence in the 18th century of a philosophical/pornographic genre of literature.
By the late 18th century, the idea of exclusive orientation had become well established, invoking Plato’s symposium for support. This distinction was less prevalent in pornography, which often celebrated bisexuality. Pornographic works often involved characters discussing and debating various sexual acts and experiences.
As pornography was primarily written by men, this affected how f/f relations were depicted. The women are presented as being focused on m/f sex even when in the middle of f/f acts, and m/f sex is usually presented as a preferred option, when available. The attraction of one woman for another is considered understandable and natural, because the authors themselves desired women, and the attributes that they described women as finding attractive in each other (in the texts) were those feminine attributes that men found attractive. These attitudes also underlay pornographic texts that treated f/f sex as desirable while deprecating m/m sex. As the trope of the “masculine sapphist” was not yet prevalent, f/f sex did not at this time challenge gender roles.
The association of philosophy and pornography also influenced an assumed association of philosophers and homosexuals, leading to euphemisms like “the philosophical vice” for homosexuality.
There is an extended discussion of how philosophers analyzed different sexual attitudes in other cultures. This consideration did not inevitably lead to promotion of tolerance, but some did conclude that morality was simply a matter of arbitrary social agreement. If the idea of the “natural rights of man” were extended to sexuality, there could be no basis for prosecuting acts that were consensual and affected no one else’s rights.
Time period: 18th cPlace: France View comments (0)March 2, 2025
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast Episode 308 - On the Shelf for March 2025
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 308 - On the Shelf for March 202 - Transcript(Originally aired 2025/03/02 - listen here)
Welcome to On the Shelf for March 2025.
If you’ll forgive me for obsessing about it: it is exactly two months until my retirement date. Currently it’s a bit hard for me to think much about anything but getting all my day-job projects finished or handed off, getting all my retirement financial arrangements in place, and…well, there are other significant distractions in the world at the moment. So I feel like these “on the shelf” episodes have been stripped down to the bare bones lately. No new book shopping, no author interviews, no special book appreciation discussions, not much in the way of news of the field. I promise I’ll have more brain and energy for enriching these round-up shows very soon. (I do have an interview planned for next month, as it happens.)
But there is one exciting piece of news, in case you haven’t visited the blog to see it. We have a fiction line-up! When I had my choices narrowed down to the top six, I realized that I could take them all. Two stories were short enough that, when combined, they still met the 5000 word limit of my budget. And when I checked the calendar, I realized that I also needed a story for January 2026 (a month with 5 Saturdays, which is when I air fiction). So here is the line-up, in alphabetical order by title. (The release schedule has yet to be determined, but since the first story airs at the end of this month, it will be one that I do the narration for.)
“A Falling Star and a Flying Bird” by Rhiannon Grant “An Encounter with a Lady” by Catherine Lundoff “Down by the Tumbling Stream” by EC Hallewell “Ma’am, This is a Fruit Stand” by Maya Dworsky-Rocha “The House of the Women” by Jeannelle M. Ferreira “Where You Go” by Jennifer NestojkoThe settings range from ancient Crete to the Victorian era. We have touches of fantasy, scenes of adventure and peril, and through it all lives revolving around connections and loyalties and love. And there were so many stories I wished I could include. As I’ve mentioned on previous occasions, the surest way to get into the “yes” pile when I’m reading submissions is for the story to have exquisite writing that grabs me by the throat. Each of the stories in this year’s season did just that.
Publications on the Blog
In February, the blog covered several articles in the collection Queer Iberia: Sexualities, Cultures, and Crossings from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance edited by Josiah Blackmore and Gregory S. Hutcheson. Much like the collection Queering the Middle Ages, which I blogged last month, there was a disappointing lack of articles focused on women’s same-sex relationships—the closest being two articles focusing on transmasculine figures which were perceived as women by their societies.
In the current month, I have lined up several articles from the collection Homosexuality in Modern France edited by Jeffrey Merrick and Bryant T. Ragan, Jr. By “modern” France, the editors mean the 18th through 20th centuries, so definitely within the Project’s scope. I’m also listening to the audiobook version of Anne Choma’s tv tie-in book Gentleman Jack: The Real Anne Lister, so I’ll be blogging that as well, though not in the sort of detail I apply to academic works.
Expect the blog to ramp up significantly in the coming months. Soon. Soon.
Recent Lesbian/Sapphic Historical Fiction
So you know how last month I commented on how few new fiction titles I’d found and how I expected there would be some catch-up on February books this month? Well, I only have 3 March titles, but a total of 22 new listings. A lot of that is due to multiple releases by only a couple of authors and I have some discussion on that, so I’ll save those books for the end of the segment.
In fact, let’s start off with a group of short stories that have been released in e-book format.
Canvas of Desire by Pippa Farthingale has a rather long cover copy for a short story.
In the heart of a sleepy mid-western town, where the rhythm of life was dictated by the rise and fall of the sun and the predictable cadence of gossip, Eleanor Vance felt an ache for something more. Cloaked in the constraints of her genteel upbringing, she drifted through gardens of roses and neatly trimmed hedges, struggling to reconcile the expectations of society with the powerful longing that stirred within her. Little did she know that a single art exhibit would shatter the facade of her everyday existence and lead her to the vibrant, uncharted territory of passion and self-discovery.
As Eleanor stepped into the town hall that warm summer evening, the air thick with anticipation, she was drawn not only to the brushstrokes and colours that adorned the walls but also to a captivating artist whose very presence seemed to ignite the space. Clara Dubois, a name whispered among the town’s elite with both intrigue and disapproval, wielded her palette like a key, unlocking the desires stifled beneath the surface of propriety. In that moment, surrounded by the murmurs of the elite, Eleanor would find herself at a crossroads, poised between conformity and the exhilarating allure of forbidden love. What transpired next would forever alter the trajectories of their lives, casting them into a whirlwind of emotions that neither could have anticipated. Thus began the journey on the canvas of desire, where art became the transformative bridge between a constrained world and the untamed realm of the heart.
My Heart On Your Sleeve by April Klasen takes place in the 18th century but the setting isn’t entirely clear.
At sixteen, Anne was in love with her best friend Isa. But Isa left her mantua maker apprenticeship to start a family with her new husband. Leaving Anne heartbroken. Thirteen years later, Anne never expected it to be recently widowed Isa coming into her dressmaker shop to apply for the apprenticeship on offer. Friendships are rekindled. And so are old feelings of love. But is Anne brave enough to give Isa her heart this time?
Taking advantage of a February release, we have Petals and Pages by T. Albright.
For Theresa, more is riding on this Valentine’s Day than the state of her heart. She’s entrusted the fate of her struggling stationary store to the new craze for handmade Valentine’s Day cards. Once a passionate artist, now all her focus is on making cards that people want to buy so she can keep her shop afloat for another week. But Theresa has also been secretly working on a Valentine’s Day card for her sweetheart Susan, to finally express the depths of her affection. When her project goes awry, Theresa’s insecurities surface and threaten to ruin their evening. Will Theresa find the words to voice what’s in her heart?
Moving on to the novel-length works, The Art of Unmaking by Parker Lennox from ONYX Publishing should have been included in last month’s listings, but it took me more time to track down a buy link for the book.
In 1922 York, England, Clara Bennett knows exactly who she's supposed to be. Or at least she thinks she does. As a promising young artist at the prestigious Fleming Academy, she perfects her style through classical training. Her days are filled with strict rules, proper techniques, and the weight of her mother's expectations. But when she encounters the mysterious Evelyn Price at a controversial exhibition, Clara's carefully ordered world begins to unravel.
Drawn into the mysterious Blackwood Society, Clara discovers art that defies reality itself. Torn between her rigid training and an intoxicating new freedom, she finds herself questioning everything she once believed. But the price of this freedom may be higher than she ever imagined, and the person she's becoming could be her very own undoing.
Clara will have to decide how much she's willing to sacrifice for greatness. Because as her art transforms, so does her heart—but nothing in the Society is quite what it seems, and some secrets are painted in shadows too dark to escape.
I’m always interested in early medieval stories with solid historic grounding, so I could wish that The Smith by Marine St. Jean could be purchased somewhere other than Amazon.
For eight years, Ama has been on the run and out of reach from the people who destroyed her life. Staying detached and moving quickly is all you can expect as a merchant-class woman with unnatural passions, even in the neglected areas of Gascony in the 800's.
But now a village that needs her skills, and more importantly, a woman who wants her heart, is trying to break through those walls. If they do, Ama is convinced disaster will follow. And if she learns the whole truth, Ama will lose her as well.
Love and Rebellion (Forbidden Whispers #1) by Ericka Schmidt adds to the growing micro-genre of sapphic fantasy viking stories. I have yet to encounter a sapphic novel set in early medieval Scandinavia that has a purely historic setting, but the mythic settings are very popular.
In the unforgiving wilderness of Vestfold, Norway, where Viking clan laws reign supreme and a warrior's worth is measured by blood and steel, two shield maidens will ignite a rebellion that will challenge everything.
Freydis and Thorarna—bound by a love more powerful than any weapon, more dangerous than any battlefield. Forced into a life not of their choosing, traded like property in the brutal game of clan politics, they refuse to be silent. Mere breeding vessels? No. They are fire. They are storm. They are revolution.
When rival warriors claim them during the sacred selection ceremony, Freydis and Thorarna make a choice that will echo through Viking history: they choose each other. Their love becomes a defiance—a burning challenge to every tradition that seeks to break them.
But freedom comes at a price. King Harald's vengeance is swift and merciless. The Blood Eagle awaits those who dare to challenge the old ways. Hunted by their own people, pursued by Karina—a shield maiden consumed by a twisted obsession—their journey becomes a raw, unfiltered cry of female rage and unbreakable sisterhood.
Some loves are whispered. Some rebellions are crushed.
Theirs will be legendary.
Lately I’ve encountered a number of stories revolving around the “affair of the poisons” in the 17th century court at Versailles. This latest is The Witch of Versailles by Jessica Mason from Murmuration Books.
At the dawn of the reign of the Sun King, an ambitious actress turns to magic to advance her dreams, then poison to keep them alive. Claude de Vin Des Oeillets rises from the bottom of Parisian society in 1660 to become both servant and lover to Madame de Montespan, a marquise with grand plans for a place in the new paradise of Versailles and the bed of Louis XIV.
A spider in a web of court intrigue and secret affairs, Claude rises ever higher, into the orbit of the King himself, but finds she must resort to dark arts and dangerous alliances on behalf of the woman she loves to stay in his golden light.
Louisa May Alcott’s novel Little Women throws out some intriguing sapphic vibes, especially in the semi-autobiographical character of Jo March. But in The Other March Sisters by Linda Epstein, Ally Malinenko, and Liz Parker from Kensington Books, a different sister is the one who brings this story into our scope.
I’m sure you believe you know their story from reading that other book, which told you an inspiring tale about four sisters. It told you a story, but did it tell you the story?
Four sisters, each as different as can be. Through the eyes and words of Jo, their characters and destinies became known to millions. Meg, pretty and conventional. Jo, stubborn, tomboyish, and ambitious. Beth, shy and good-natured, a mortal angel readily accepting her fate. And Amy, elegant, frivolous, and shallow. But Jo, for all her insight, could not always know what was in her sisters’ thoughts, or in their hearts.
With Jo away in New York, pursuing her dreams of being a writer, Meg, Beth, and Amy follow their own paths. Meg, newly married with young twins, struggles to find the contentment that Marmee assured her would come with domesticity. Unhappy and unfulfilled, she turns to her garden, finding there not just a hobby but a calling that will allow her to help other women in turn.
Beth knows her time is limited. Still, part of her longs to break out of her suffocating cocoon at home, however briefly. A new acquaintance turns into something more, offering unexpected, quiet joy.
Amy, traveling in Europe while she pursues her goal of becoming an artist, is keenly aware of the expectation that she will save the family by marrying well. Through the course of her journey, she discovers how she can remain true to herself, true to her art, and true to the love that was always meant to be.
By purposefully leaving Jo off the page, authors Liz Parker, Ally Malinenko, and Linda Epstein give the other March sisters room to reveal themselves through conversations, private correspondence, and intimate moments—coming alive in ways that might surprise even daring, unconventional Jo.
For a while, cross-time stories with parallel storylines in different eras seemed to dominate these listings, though they haven’t been as common lately. But this month turns up Under the Same Stars by Libba Bray from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
It was said that if you write to the Bridegroom’s Oak, the love of your life will answer back. Now, the tree is giving up its secrets at last.
In 1940s Germany, Sophie is excited to discover a message waiting for her in the Bridegroom's Oak from a mysterious suitor. Meanwhile, her best friend, Hanna, is sending messages too—but not to find love. As World War II unfolds in their small town of Kleinwald, the oak may hold the key to resistance against the Nazis.
In 1980s West Germany, American teen transplant Jenny feels suffocated by her strict parents and is struggling to fit in. Until she finds herself falling for Lena, a punk-rock girl hell-bent on tearing down the wall separating West Germany from East Germany, and meeting Frau Hermann, a kind old lady with secrets of her own.
In Spring 2020, New York City, best friends Miles and Chloe are slogging through the last few months of senior year when an unexpected package from Chloe’s grandmother leads them to investigate a cold case about two unidentified teenagers who went missing under the Bridegroom’s Oak eighty years ago.
I’m not absolutely certain, but the description for Blood on Her Tongue by Johanna Van Veen from Poisoned Pen Press is giving me definite Dracula vibes.
The Netherlands, 1887. Lucy's twin sister Sarah is unwell. She refuses to eat, mumbles nonsensically, and is increasingly obsessed with a centuries-old corpse recently discovered on her husband's grand estate. The doctor has diagnosed her with temporary insanity caused by a fever of the brain. To protect her twin from a terrible fate in a lunatic asylum, Lucy must unravel the mystery surrounding her sister's condition, but it's clear her twin is hiding something. Then again, Lucy is harboring secrets of her own, too.
Then, the worst happens. Sarah's behavior takes a turn for the strange. She becomes angry… and hungry.
Lucy soon comes to suspect that something is trying to possess her beloved sister. Or is it madness? As Sarah changes before her very eyes, Lucy must reckon with the dark, monstrous truth, or risk losing her forever.
For this next group of books, I want to talk about how the publishing landscape makes me paranoid. A couple of times previously, I’ve talked about encountering books that gave off strong “generated by AI vibes”—I’m not talking about covers, but the text itself. So when I was researching new releases and I came across an author with no prior presence or other online footprint who released 7 titles within a single month, I definitely gave the books much closer scrutiny than I normally would. And that also pushed me to give closer scrutiny to a 3-title author and even a 2-title author (even though releasing two books in the same month wouldn’t normally strike me as suspicious).
So I checked all the reading samples, and looked for other signs, such as releasing books across wildly different genres. The writing was…not superb, but definitely not bot-like. So I asked my professional writers group for a reality check and learned that there’s a specific indie writer strategy being recommended where you release a lot of titles in a short period to get Amazon juice. So…ok, I guess? I confess I don’t really understand the purpose of saving up 7 novels and then releasing them all at once. Especially if you’ve never published before. Generally it’s a good thing to step up your writing chops with each new book. But you do you, if it works for you. But for what it’s worth, for this particular book booster, coming out of nowhere and publishing a lot of books all at the same time does make me suspicious in the current circumstances. With that said…
Marina Tempest has released a duo of decidedly alternate history romances in a series entitled “Lesbian Pirates”—which provide exactly what it says on the tin. It isn’t clear if these have connected storylines.
In Bitter Winds Victoria Walsh lost everything when she was falsely accused of treason - her commission, her honor, and her family legacy. Now she commands a pirate vessel, leading her own loyal crew while searching for evidence to clear her name. She never expected her path to justice would lead her back to Eleanor Cavendish - the admiral's daughter whose troubled eyes at Victoria's trial suggested she alone saw the truth. Eleanor has spent six months investigating the corruption that destroyed Victoria's life, gathering evidence against the powerful men who framed her. But when their worlds violently collide, they're forced to flee together into a storm that will either tear them apart or forge an unbreakable bond.
Cursed Scar puts cold, cynical Captain Quinn Tanner in the path of Lady Diamond Haverford, a brilliant, beautiful noblewoman who is hiding dangerous secrets of her own.
V.C. Sterling has burst onto the scene with two different series, which appear to be thematically connected rather than involving continuing characters or settings. There are currently 5 books in the Roses and Rebellion series, which all appear to have Victorian-era settings.
In The Duchess's Companion, A widowed Lady Beatrice Pembroke fights against the expectation that she will remain in the shadows. Eva Blackwood, hired as her companion for her return to society comes with secrets—including her attraction to her employer. Together they navigate the treacherous world of aristocratic scandal, old enemies, and new conspiracies.
In A Lady's Reckoning Catherine Balfour escapes the clutches of London’s most feared physician and seeks refuge in the misty streets of Bath. Hiding under a false name, she finds sanctuary at Elinor Langston’s clinic—a place where the city’s forgotten can find healing. But safety is an illusion. The man she fled, Dr. Somerton, has eyes everywhere, and he will stop at nothing to reclaim his prized apprentice. Catherine and Elinor must risk everything to expose his crimes.
Lessons in Compassion pits Miss Eliza Townsend against Sophia Harcourt, sent as a council inspector to evaluate the orphanage Eliza struggles to maintain. As their battle of wills unfolds, so does an undeniable attraction—one neither of them can afford.
In The Lady's Secret Marianne de Lacy hides her scandalous past and uses her wealth to fund a radical new school for working women. But when rumors of her illegitimate birth begin to surface, her carefully constructed world threatens to crumble. Juliet Fletcher is a journalist who should be exposing Marianne, not falling for her.
A Lady's Final Stand introduces that potentially unhistorical element of a female ex-soldier, though perhaps there’s a background that makes the motif plausible? Margaret Hale hired as bodyguard to Lady Beatrice Foswell finds herself in a battle of wits with her employer among whispers of conspiracy in the halls of Parliament.
V.C. Sterling’s second series, Velvet and Vice, involves stories set during Prohibition at a speakeasy named The Velvet Viper.
In Whiskey & Lace Evelyn St. James is a socialite trying to escape the gilded cage of a respectable marriage when she meets Frankie Malone, a sharp-tongued, whiskey-slinging crime boss who rules her empire with steel and charm.
The Velvet Viper returns as the setting for Gin & Sin featuring a romance between dancer Dahlia LaRue and the club’s enforcer, a woman of few words and fierce loyalty.
Our final multi-book release is Delilah Kent’s Regency-era Scandal & Sapphire series, which looks to be somewhat on the erotica side.
In The Lady & The Thief Lady Eleanor Harrington is betrothed to a duke, but when she catches a mysterious thief in her family's garden, her carefully planned world begins to unravel.
The Heiress & Her Governess tackles the somewhat questionable topic of a governess-pupil romance when Charlotte Fairchild takes responsibility for the rebellious heiress Isabel Sinclair.
In The Widow & The Wallflower Margaret Langley newly freed from a cruel marriage finds solace in the most unlikely place—a small bookshop tucked away from the watchful eyes of the ton, where she encounters the proprietor Eliza Finch.
Other Books of Interest
I’ve placed one book in the “other books of interest” category because although some reviews and lists suggest that the book has sapphic content, I can’t find a trace of it, and the author’s past releases have been similarly cagey on the topic.
The Boxcar Librarian by Brianna Labuskes from William Morrow Paperbacks follows the career of WPA editor Millie Lang when she finds herself on the wrong end of a potential political scandal. She’s shipped off to Montana to work on the state’s American Guide Series—travel books intended to put the nation’s destitute writers to work.
Millie arrives to an eclectic staff claiming their missed deadlines are due to sabotage, possibly from the state’s powerful Copper Kings who don’t want their long and bloody history with union organizers aired for the rest of the country to read. But Millie begins to suspect that the answer might instead lie with the town’s mysterious librarian, Alice Monroe.
More than a decade earlier, Alice Monroe created the Boxcar Library in order to deliver books to isolated mining towns where men longed for entertainment and connection. Alice thought she found the perfect librarian to staff the train car in Colette Durand, a miner’s daughter with a shotgun and too many secrets behind her eyes.
Now, no one in Missoula will tell Millie why both Alice and Colette went out on the inaugural journey of the Boxcar Library, but only Alice returned.
What Am I Reading?
And what have I been reading? Only a couple of audiobooks this past month. One of them was the second in a sapphic space-mystery series by Malka Older: The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles. These are novellas set in a colony constructed around Jupiter after humanity fled an uninhabitable Earth. Murder mysteries get solved by a detective and academic duo who are also negotiating a revival of their romance. The books are enjoyable and have a fun time grounding the mysteries in the worldbuilding.
I finally got around to reading the highly praised The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker, which came out a number of years ago. The novel asks the question: can a naïve and brilliant golem who has lost her immigrant master on the voyage to America and a metal-working Jinni newly freed from magical entrapment find their way together in early 20th century New York and foil the schemes of the sorcerer who wants to re-enslave them both? This was beautiful and heartbreaking and ultimately triumphant and I don’t know what took me so long to come back to it, given that I’ve owned a hard copy since it first came out.
I keep looking over to the bookcase in my home office that contains all the hard-copy books I’ve acquired in the decade since I moved in, but have failed to read yet. Soon. Soon.
Show NotesYour monthly roundup of history, news, and the field of sapphic historical fiction.
In this episode we talk about:
The 2025 fiction line-up Recent and upcoming publications covered on the blog Blackmore, Josiah and Gregory S. Hutcheson. 1999. “Introduction” in Queer Iberia: Sexualities, Cultures, and Crossings from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance ed. Josiah Blackmore and Gregory S. Hutcheson. Duke University Press, Durham. ISBN 9780822323495 Blackmore, Josiah. 1999. “The Poets of Sodom” in Queer Iberia: Sexualities, Cultures, and Crossings from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance ed. Josiah Blackmore and Gregory S. Hutcheson. Duke University Press, Durham. ISBN 9780822323495 Gerli, E. Michael. 1999. “Dismembering the Body Politic: Vile Bodies and Sexual Underworlds in Celestina” in Queer Iberia: Sexualities, Cultures, and Crossings from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance ed. Josiah Blackmore and Gregory S. Hutcheson. Duke University Press, Durham. ISBN 9780822323495 Perry, Mary Elizabeth. 1999. “From Convent to Battlefield: Cross-Dressing and Gendering the Self in the New World of Imperial Spain” in Queer Iberia: Sexualities, Cultures, and Crossings from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance ed. Josiah Blackmore and Gregory S. Hutcheson. Duke University Press, Durham. ISBN 9780822323495 Burshatin, Israel. 1999. “Written on the Body: Slave or Hermaphrodite in Sixteenth-Century Spain” in Queer Iberia: Sexualities, Cultures, and Crossings from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance ed. Josiah Blackmore and Gregory S. Hutcheson. Duke University Press, Durham. ISBN 9780822323495 Recent Lesbian/Sapphic Historical Fiction Canvas of Desire by Pippa Farthingale My Heart On Your Sleeve by April Klasen Petals and Pages by T. Albright The Art of Unmaking by Parker Lennox The Smith by Marine St. Jean Love and Rebellion (Forbidden Whispers #1) by Ericka Schmidt The Witch of Versailles by Jessica Mason The Other March Sisters by Linda Epstein, Ally Malinenko, Liz Parker Under the Same Stars by Libba Bray Blood on Her Tongue by Johanna Van Veen Bitter winds (Lesbian Pirates #1) by Marina Tempest Cursed Scar (Lesbian Pirates #2) by Marina Tempest The Duchess's Companion (Roses & Rebellion #1) by V.C. Sterling A Lady's Reckoning (Roses & Rebellion #2) by V.C. Sterling Lessons in Compassion (Roses & Rebellion #3) by V.C. Sterling The Lady's Secret (Roses & Rebellion #4) by V.C. Sterling A Lady's Final Stand (Roses & Rebellion #5) by V.C. Sterling Whiskey & Lace (Velvet & Vice #1) by V.C. Sterling Gin & Sin (Velvet & Vice #2) by V.C. Sterling The Lady & The Thief (Scandal & Sapphire #1) by Delilah Kent The Heiress & Her Governess (Scandal & Sapphire #2) by Delilah Kent The Widow & The Wallflower (Scandal & Sapphire #3) by Delilah Kent Other Titles of Interest The Boxcar Librarian by Brianna Labuskes What I’ve been consuming The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles by Malka Older The Golem and the Jinni by Helene WeckerLinks to the Lesbian Historic Motif Project Online
Website: http://alpennia.com/lhmp Blog: http://alpennia.com/blog RSS: http://alpennia.com/blog/feed/ Twitter: @LesbianMotif Discord: Contact Heather for an invitation to the Alpennia/LHMP Discord server The Lesbian Historic Motif Project PatreonLinks to Heather Online
Website: http://alpennia.com Email: Heather Rose Jones Mastodon: @heatherrosejones@Wandering.Shop Bluesky: @heatherrosejones Facebook: Heather Rose Jones (author page)Major category: LHMPTags: LHMPpodcastFebruary 15, 2025
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast Episode 307 – Our F/Favorite Tropes: Sword-Lesbians and Horse-Girls
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 307 – Our F/Favorite Tropes: Sword-Lesbians and Horse-Girls - transcript(Originally aired 2025/02/15 - listen here)
I was lying awake brainstorming for this month’s podcast and thinking about topics for the “Our F/Favorite Tropes” series and it occurred to me that a panel topic from last year’s Worldcon made a good springboard. The central theme of the tropes series is to examine how popular historic romance tropes can work differently for female couples than for mixed-gender couples, but I’ve also been throwing in a few tropes that don’t necessarily have a direct correspondence. Furthermore, a sub-theme of the tropes series is that tropes exist because of a specific social and historical context, and don’t make as much sense outside of that context. The necessary socio-historical context is a negotiation between the text and the reader—if the essential elements are present from either side, then the trope can ring true. Anyway, today we’re talking about sword-lesbians and horse-girls.
Tropes—as understood in romance literature—refer to a motif or scenario that recurs often enough across multiple works that it develops its own associated expectations or resonances. It could be a situation, such as “only one bed,” or a mini-script, such as a training montage. It can be a type of relationship structure for the protagonists, such as “friends to lovers,” or it can be a character type or occupation, which is the sort we’ll be talking about today. I thought it would be fun to juxtapose horses and swords, not only because they’re both based on character types, but also because many of the cultural resonances have similar roots in the tensions around the gendering of attributes and interests. And both rely on very specific cultural dynamics for their validity, but it can be the reader that brings the necessary dynamics. Here I’m going to be reprising some topics I’ve covered in the past, but examining them from a different angle.
So let’s start with horse girls and why they just naturally fit into sapphic narratives. The traditional theory about why horses and girls go together in fiction tends to lean on two motifs. One is the idea of the horse as best friend—the friend who is affectionate and supportive, but will never compete with you in human interactions. The girl can project her own emotions and motivations onto the horse-friend. Even if we move into the realm of fantasy horse-friends and horse-analogs that have human levels of sentience, the relationship remains eternally separate from human connections and therefore can never be disrupted by them.
The second layer of the horse-girl is the idea that a person marginalized by gender and often relatively powerless in society can develop a relationship with this large powerful animal in which she is the one in control—the one who guides the horse into lending her its power. Thus the horse-girl represents a fantasy of alliance with a powerful being outside of human gender hierarchies that creates at least a temporary illusion of mobility, freedom, and agency.
But the horse-girl motif isn’t simply an intersection of female characters and the presence of horses. In a historic or social context where everyone interacts with horses as an everyday function, the specialness of the horse-girl as distinct from other girls becomes diluted. And in a hypothetical context where interactions with horses are not variable based on gender (the gender of the person that is, not the horse), then the specialness of a horse-girl as opposed to a horse-boy is eroded.
So how does sapphic romance fit into this? Here I think we need to circle back and look at the historical gendering of horsemanship. The idea that horses and girls go together like…well, like a horse and carriage is relatively recent. (And by that I mean, within the last century or so.) For quite a long time, the riding of horses was coded as inherently masculine. You can see that as early as classical Greek images of Amazons, who demonstrated their defiance of expected gender roles not only by wielding weapons, but by riding horses. At regular intervals across western history, ideas about modesty and propriety have put barriers in the way of horsewomen in the form of restrictions on posture and dress. To some extent women accepted this gendering, such that when they developed a riding culture, they adopted and adapted hyper-masculine styles, borrowing from military uniforms for the tailoring and decoration of riding habits—at least for the part of the habit above the waist.
Riding—and especially hunting and racing—were considered the purview of men. To the extent that women claimed a space to participate, they were often viewed as unfeminine, or were permitted on an isolated basis as “not like other girls” rather than allowed entry as a class.
Within this context, the horse-girl has stepped outside the restrictions of gender in ways similar to the lesbian. She has claimed masculine prerogatives and privileges. In a context that frames same-sex relations in terms of gender difference, the horse-girl has positioned herself as a natural partner for a woman, regardless of where that woman herself falls on the butch-femme scale. As I noted in the trope episode on bluestockings and amazons, a stock character type in the 18th and 19th century was the pairing of the masculine horsewoman and the more feminine bluestocking. But those eras also give us the image of groups of horsewomen riding out together in their military-tailored habits, in defiance of the pressures to remain passive home-bodies.
But curiously enough, the horse-girl as a stock literary character emerges as horses become less a part of everyday life. With this shift, horses become something of a “special interest,” differentially available to young women based on either socio-economic standing or within increasingly smaller subcultures where horses still had viable functions. In parallel with the marginalization of horse culture, that culture became less masculine-coded. So there is a narrative tension between the horse-girl as gender outlaw and the horse-girl focusing on the personal and individual dynamic between rider and steed. The modern literary horse-girl is generally not coded as potentially sapphic (even though she may be coded as a tom-boy). It is the intersection between the older image of the sapphic amazon (in its early modern sense) and the more modern motif of the horse-crazy female protagonist that gives meaning to the trope of the sapphic horse-girl.
By the way, in recognizing this image of the lesbian pursuing masculine-coded interests, I want to emphasize that this is only one of the archetypes of female same-sex desire in history. There is another entire group of archetypes that emphasize attraction based on feminine similarity. But this is the archetype that connects our two topics today. So let’s turn to the sword-lesbian and set this up with the context of the panel discussion I referred to.
At last year’s World Science Fiction and Fantasy convention, I was on a discussion panel titled “Sword Lesbians: Discuss” with Ellen Kushner (author of The Privilege of the Sword), Samantha Shannon (author of The Priory of the Orange Tree), and Em X. Liu (who was a finalist for the Astounding Award for best new writer). This means that the panel was considering the trope of the sword-wielding lesbian not within the realm of historical fiction, but primarily within speculative fiction. Which raises not simply the question of “why lesbians with swords” but “why swords at all” given the scope of the possible settings.
There were a lot of great discussions during that panel, and I won’t try to summarize what other panelists said—much less remember all the great books that were recommended—but here are my thoughts on the central topic, which lay out why the sword-lesbian is a historically-rooted trope regardless of fantasy or science fictional settings that, in theory, should be free of real-world assumptions about gender and sexuality.
Within the historic context, and particularly in literature, the sword is not simply a weapon, but a symbol. There are many possible weapons that a protagonist could use, often to better effect in any particular situation. The sword is a weapon of the elite—it represents an upper class warrior, whether due to the difficulty and expense of obtaining a sword in very ancient times, or due to the time and training required to master it in medieval times, or due to its inherent irrelevance for serious combat in more modern times. The associated social status is why mounted cavalry officers carried swords up through the first World War—cavalry, because the horse, too, reflected upper class resources. The caché of the sword is why dueling with swords remained a viable, if rare, practice into the 20th century.
So one context the sword-lesbian operates within is an association with high social status, perhaps even aristocratic status if her culture has such a thing. She needn’t actually have that status, but by picking up a sword she lays claim to it.
The other thing she lays claim to, of course, is a penis. We all know that swords are phallic symbols, right? It says so right there on the tin. This returns us to the symbolic context that assumes that desiring a woman is an inherently masculine act. By picking up a sword, our heroine as much as states her right to desire women and to act on that desire. It also gives her the right to be desired by women. I examined a number of examples in historic literature where these dynamics are made explicit in the podcast episode on female knights.
All this makes sense for fiction in a real-world historic setting, but what is the logic behind the trope of the sword-lesbian in a purely fantasy setting, or a space opera? My own personal opinion is that the sword-lesbian can only be meaningful within a context that reflects both heteronormativity and sexism. Even if those attitudes are not features of the secondary world of the setting, the trope derives its meaning from the background of the reader (and author). Whatever our own personal beliefs and experiences regarding gender and sexuality, our literary expectations have been shaped by a society that assigns gender to sword use and considers same-sex desire to be a marked state.
To be meaningful as a trope, as opposed to a simple character description, the sword-lesbian must be a transgressive figure. She must be understood as clearly standing outside social norms and expectations. This makes her dangerous and desirable, but also occasionally vulnerable. Without sexism, it is not a marked action for a woman to bear a sword. Without sexism, she does not transgress any norms and attracts no special attention. Without sexism, a sword is not a penis.
Without heteronormativity, there is no special meaning to a woman adopting male-coded symbols. Without heteronormativity, there is no motivation for assigning masculinity to people who desire women. This doesn’t mean that in a speculative secondary world that was free of sexism and heteronormativity that there would be no women who happened to be lesbians and happened to use swords, but that the specific dynamics and relationship to society that we invoke with the label “sword-lesbian” would not exist. Not any more than being a girl and living in California makes you one of the California girls that the Beach Boys sang about. But I digress.
It's this contextual meaning that gets to the heart of romance tropes. And it’s one of the reasons I enjoy developing this series of episodes. (Because if there’s one thing I love, it’s over-analyzing something.) As I discussed in the first trope episode on “only one bed,” the trope loses its meaning if there is nothing marked or special about your two protagonists sharing a bed. That act is highly meaningful if there are expectations and taboos and consequences to sharing a bed. But while the social meanings assigned to two women sharing a bed can be vastly different from those assigned to a man and a woman sharing a bed, the trope still exists in sapphic romance because those resonances exist in the reader’s mind. Even if the author presents bed-sharing between two female protagonists as utterly expected and non-sexual within the story’s setting, the reader sees that single bed being introduced and sets up expectations that will either be fulfilled or turned on their head.
In the same way, the horse-girl and the sword-lesbian draw their meaning as tropes from the social forces, symbolism, and expectations assigned to their actions and situations, and especially those expectations that make their existence transgressive against social norms. And if they’re going to transgress, how about we set the two up on a date and let them transgress a few more norms together?
Show NotesIn this episode we talk about:
The trope of the horse-girl The trope of the sword-lesbian How these tropes are negotiated between story setting and reader expectations This topic makes reference to the following episodes: Bluestockings and Amazons Female Knights Only One BedLinks to the Lesbian Historic Motif Project Online
Website: http://alpennia.com/lhmp Blog: http://alpennia.com/blog RSS: http://alpennia.com/blog/feed/ Twitter: @LesbianMotif Discord: Contact Heather for an invitation to the Alpennia/LHMP Discord server The Lesbian Historic Motif Project PatreonLinks to Heather Online
Website: http://alpennia.com Email: Heather Rose Jones Mastodon: @heatherrosejones@Wandering.Shop Bluesky: @heatherrosejones Facebook: Heather Rose Jones (author page)Major category: LHMPTags: LHMPpodcastFebruary 14, 2025
Love is Love and Trans People Have Always Existed
I don't usually get quite so political in my blog titles, but the rage has to spill out somewhere.
Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP LHMP #460 Burshatin 1999 Written on the Body About LHMP Full citation:Burshatin, Israel. 1999. “Written on the Body: Slave or Hermaphrodite in Sixteenth-Century Spain” in Queer Iberia: Sexualities, Cultures, and Crossings from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance ed. Josiah Blackmore and Gregory S. Hutcheson. Duke University Press, Durham. ISBN 9780822323495
Burshatin - Written on the Body
Because of the ways that I define the scope of the Project, I end up including a lot of transmasculine content. I often say that there is no lesbian history without transmasculine history, regardless of how the historic individuals understood their own identities, because of they ways that society assigned masculinity to the desire for women or to any sort of transgressive behavior by women. But there are some individuals who--while shedding fascinating light on issues relevant to lesbian history--very clearly understood themselves to be men and demanded that society treat them as such. Eleno de Céspedes is one of those people and regardless of the language that I and other researchers sometimes use in trying to communicate the facts of his life, I want to recognize that.
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As might be expected given the author and subject, this article covers much the same ground as Burshatin 1996. The current article focuses on Céspedes’ position as a challenge to various sovcio-political doundaries: gendr, race, national, and sexual.
The official structures that documented and prosecuted Céspedes’ case both framed the narrative in specific ways and documented the subject’s own framing and identity claims that constructed a very different story.
Born female to an enslaved Black mother, Céspedes achieved freedom, became male, served in the army, and trained as a surgeon. After marrying a woman, Céspedes was recognized by a former army comrade who knew of the gender crossing, and was then charged with sodomy—specifically, engaging in penetrative sex using an instrument. In contrast to that secular offense, church authorities were concerned with the act of marriage. This latter became the focus of the trial. In the end, the conviction was for bigamy, because Céspedes could not offer proof that the husband they had married (prior to gender-crossing) had died before their subsequent marriage to a woman.
[Note: This is reminiscent of a similar instance in England, where the conviction for bigamy can be interpreted at some level as recognition of the “validity” of marriage between two assigned-female people.]
There were a number of complicating factors. Céspedes offered a defense of being a “hermaphrodite” who had undergone a physiological sex change. But medical examination contradicted this claim. There were side charges that the appearance of masculinity was due to magic. Céspedes’ sentence was harsh in absolute terms (two sessions of public whipping, a public confession, then public service as a surgeon), but this was aligned with typical punishments for bigamy at the time (and to some extent, more lenient than usual).
The article traces several parallel processes of “self-fashioning,” not only of gender but of occupation and economic status. Racial self-fashioning was beyond Céspedes’ ability, but they moved across a permeable racial boundary by manipulating other aspects of identity.
The article goes into much more detail regarding the racial/religious politics of 16th century Spain and how Céspedes maneuvered through them.
Time period: 16th cPlace: SpainMisc tags: cross-gender roles/behaviortransgender identitymarriage between womenEvent / person: Elena/Eleno de Céspedes View comments (0)
