Heather Rose Jones's Blog, page 117
July 23, 2017
All These Boston Marriages
The Lesbian Historic Motif Project
This book isn't in-depth in context or details, given the purpose for which it was put together. And it is sometimes generously inclusive in subject matter, straining the limits of solid evidence. But what better place to look for lots of portraits of women in Boston Marriages than a book on the history of lesbians and gay men in Boston? I only wish this blog could show you some of the photographs of female couples--going back to the mid-19th century--who we know to have been in romantic relationships with each other.
In reviewing this entry just before setting it to go live, I was reminded of an unfortunate practice that I participate in: assuming a white default in the subjects of my postings. I notice it when I find myself including racial/ethnic information about subjects only when they are not white. To some extent, this is a reflection of a "default to whiteness" in the sources I'm summarizing. If my sources don't explicitly indicate a particular racial/ethnic origin, then it doesn't occur to me to track down and specify one. This is laziness, and I own it, but I also don't really have the time to re-research all the unmarked people mentioned in publications. I'd like to take this opportunity to recognize all the historic, archaeological, and anthropological research that reminds us that Europe (and hence, European-origin America) has always been home to people of color, and that very many of the historic individuals mentioned in the publications I cover could have been something other than white, if it isn't specified.
Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP
LHMP #151 The History Project 1998 Improper Bostonians
About LHMP
Full citation:
History Project, The. 1998. Improper Bostonians. Beacon Press, Boston. ISBN 0-8070-7948-0
Publication summary:
A companion book to a museum exhibition on “Lesbian and Gay History from the Puritans to Playland”.
This book is a glossy, photo-filled companion volume to a museum exhibit on lesbian and gay history in Boston, for a fairly broad definition of those terms. Due to this connection with a museum exhibit, there is a natural focus on material objects, accompanied by a relative minimum of explanatory commentary. The exhibit emphasized the importance of making a historic connection for modern visitors--a “usable history”. The scope extends to people who “lived unconventional lives” with regard to gender and sexuality, whether or not they can be confirmed as falling within the category of homosexual.
All events and individuals mentioned here had a personal connection with Boston--generally having been born there or living much of their lives there--even if the specific events discussed happened elsewhere. As usual, I have cherry-picked the material relating to women.
Boston was founded in 1630, so its history covers nearly the entire scope of the European presence in North America. In a valiant attempt to be inclusive, it begins with a discussion of non-cis/heterosexual understandings of gender and sexuality among indigenous Americans, but notes that there are no relevant records regarding sexuality for the specific cultures in the area that would become Massachusetts.
The earliest materials are legal statutes regarding sexual crimes, at a time when religious law and secular law were functionally identical. A 1656 statue addresses “men lying with men”, and acts of women that are “against nature” (though the phrase “against nature” doesn’t necessarily specify homosexuality). Very little of this early material mentions women specifically, even when homosexual behavior between men is explicitly targeted.
In 1677 a court record notes a charge of cross-dressing against Dorothie Hoyt who left town before the accusation could be lodged, leaving her father to answer for her in court. No explanation or context for her actions is given. Also in the 17th century there is a record that Elizabeth Johnson and a fellow maid where whipped and fined for “unseemly practices...attempting to do that which man and woman do” along with other unruly behavior such as insolence toward their employer. In 1649, Sarah Norman was charged with “lewd behavior on a bed” with Mary Hammon and warned against repeat offences. In 1696 Mary Cox asked the court for leniency for the “inadvertence” of wearing men’s clothing. (Since it’s hard to imagine one wouldn’t notice doing so, perhaps the inadvertence is that she didn’t realize it was forbidden?)
There are far fewer similar records in the 18th century, in large part because the legal authorities became less interested in prosecuting people’s personal lives in this fashion. Women in the 18th century had the social freedom to express emotional attachments to other women in romantic terms, though they were restricted in their ability to share their lives with a woman. In the 1750s, Sarah Prince, the daughter of a Boston preacher, exchanged romantic letters with Esther Burr, the mother of Aaron Burr. When Esther died, Sarah wrote of her heartbreak at the event.
Concern over women cross-dressing persisted, but reactions were mixed. Deborah Sampson enlisted in the Continental Army in male guise and was later granted a pension for her services by the government of Massachusetts. A contemporary biographer implied that she may have had romantic encounters with women while in the army as part of that disguise, though she later married a man. Another woman, Ann Bailey, was not treated as warmly when she tried to enlist in 1777. She was charged with “fraudulently” passing as a man and was fined.
In the 19th century, women gradually begin to achieve the ability to support themselves outside of heterosexual marriage, and thus to set up domestic partnerships together. Early in the 19th century, Margaret Fuller wrote a feminist treatise that argued for the possibility of same-sex love as equivalent to that in heterosexual marriage. She herself had a deep emotional attachment to a cousin, Anna Barker and recorded some revealing sentiments at Barker’s marriage. Fuller translated the correspondence of Karoline Günderode and Bettine von Arnim (a German same-sex couple whose literary works are full of themes of gender transgression), which in turn inspired writers such as Emily Dickinson.
In the mid 19th century, a number of women were establishing international careers in the arts. One notable Boston-born example was actress Charlotte Cushman, who gathered a circle of artistic (and woman-loving) women both in Boston and in her second home in Rome. Cushman had something of a specialty in “trouser roles” on stage and was romantically linked to several of the female artists in her circle, including sculptor Emma Stebbins who had originally been introduced to Cushman via fellow sculptor Harriet Hosmer. Hosmer was another Bostonian by birth. She was described as something of a tomboy in her youth and continued to be criticized for “unfeminine behavior” in adulthood, though in some cases this meant her lack of an appropriate modesty regarding creating sculptures of male nudes. Cushman seems to have made a specialty of collecting sculptors. Another member of her circle was Edmonia Lewis, a Bostonian of West Indian and Chippewa heritage who preferred Cushman’s residence in Rome as a place where her gender and color were not a bar to artistic success.
An anonymous Boston woman writing under the pen name Mary Casal produced an autobiography in the later 19th century (though not published until 1930, under the title The Stone Wall) that included her coming to recognize her lesbian identity.
In the late 19th century social networks of unmarried women founded clubs and held social events that promoted singlehood as a positive state, in contrast to the image of the “old maid.” In addition to the clubs of middle-class, financially stable women, the opportunities for women to come together and form romantic bonds outside of parental view included single-sex schools and colleges where the same-sex “smash” was considered an ordinary and expected experience, and boarding houses for single factory girls.
Among the educated upper classes, the phenomenon of two unmarried women living together in a devoted long-term partnership was so well established and recognized that such relationships came to be known as “Boston marriages”. Among the female faculty at Wellesley College, female couples among the faculty were common enough to be known as “Wellesley marriages”. The catalog details a great many such couples, focusing on those for whom we have photographic and other records. Among these couples are:
Writer Sarah Orne Jewett and Annie Adams Fields (they had been close friends before the death of Fields’ husband and became romantic partners afterward).
Alice James and Katharine Peabody Loring may have indirectly inspired the label “Boston marriage” if one accepts that it came from the novel The Bostonians, written by Alice’s brother Henry James, which was inspired in part by their partnership. The two were inseparable for two decades.
Katharine Lee Bates, the author of “America the Beautiful” met her partner of 25 years, Katharine Coman, when they were at Wellesley.
Anne Whitney, another of the sculptors in Charlotte Cushman’s circle, was partnered with painter Abby Adeline Manning.
Poet Amy Lowell and actress Ada Dwyer Russell are also noted.
Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas also had Boston connections, though more famous from their residence in Paris.
The biracial poet Angelina Weld Grimké was associated with the Harlem Renaissance and paired romantically with fellow teacher Mamie Burrill.
Vida Scudder was a socialist and the founder of Boston’s first settlement house, partnered by writer Florence Converse.
Another couple active in social work among Boston’s immigrant community were Edith Guerrier and Edith Brown. (Many women in Boston marriages were deeply involved in social work and education.)
Susan Dimock met Bessie Greene while studying medicine. Refused admission to Harvard Medical College, she traveled to Europe for her studies.
Emily Greene Balch who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1946 had several close domestic relationships with women, though it’s unclear whether any of them was a romantic partner.
The Aesthetic artistic movement in 1890s Boston included writers Louise Imogen Guiney and Alice Brown.
The remainder of the book covers the 20th century and so falls outside the scope of this project. It focuses to a large extent on the infrastructure of social institutions such as bars and clubs that catered to a (largely male) same-sex clientele.
Time period: 17th c18th c19th c20th cPlace: USAMisc tags: court casecross-dressinggender disguise f>mhomosocial environments/communitiesmartial activityromantic friendshipBoston marriageEvent / person: Charlotte CushmanElizabeth JohnsonSara Norman & Mary HammonThe Bostonians (Henry James)Deborah Sampson (Robert Shurtleff)Sarah Orne Jewett & Annie FieldsBettina Brentano-von Arnim & Karoline von GünderodeGertrude SteinAlice James & Katharine Peabody LoringAmy Lowell & Ada Dwyer RussellAngelina Weld Grimké & Mamie BurrillAnn BaileyAnne Whitney & Abby Adeline ManningDorothie HoytEdith Guerrier & Edith BrownEdmonia LewisEmily Greene BalchEmma StebbinsHarriet HosmerKatharine Lee Bates & Katharine ComanLouise Imogen Guiney & Alice BrownMargaret FullerSarah Prince & Esther Edwards BurrSusan Dimock & Bessie GreeneThe Stone Wall (Mary Casal)Vida Scudder & Florence Converse
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Book Review: Silver Moon by Catherine Lundoff
bookreview.jpg
When reading a contemporary werewolf story, generally one’s first thought isn’t “I love the multi-layered allegorical resonances,” but that’s what I came away with from Lundoff’s Silver Moon (originally published 2012 by Lethe Press but now reissued as one of the initial offerings of Queen of Swords Press).
Becca Thornton’s quiet life in the rural town of Wolf’s Point seems likely to be troubled only by the occasional tiresome contact from her ex-husband until three experiences intersect at once: the first stirrings of menopause, an unexpected attraction to the woman next door, and turning into a werewolf. Fortunately, the local women’s club is there to walk her through her lycanthropic initiation into their not-so-secret inner circle. Wolf’s Point has a long tradition of calling on women of a certain age to join the supernatural protectors of the town and its surrounds.
Becca is distracted from her uncertainty about this new stage of her life (heck, about all three new stages) by the incursion of a cult-like group of werewolf hunters, though their methods and opinions are more suggestive of gay conversion “therapy”--a parallel that is no more likely to be coincidence than any of the other thematic resonances.
Lundoff’s writing style is delightfully smooth and transparent, letting the story itself take the wheel. She evokes both the delights and annoyances of small town life--especially for a character who will be a newcomer however long she lives there--and mirrors them in the struggle to integrate into the alien dynamics of a werewolf pack that Becca seems to have had no choice in joining. This makes the thriller-style plot involving “conversion therapy” entirely believable as Becca is tempted by the possibility of “being normal again”. Conversely, the romantic subplot never raises such questions, only the standard anxieties around an unexpected attraction and the complexities of exploring it when everything else in your life is turned upside down.
I liked the overall pacing and how the various plot strands, both dramatic and humorous, were braided together. In an era when the “sexy dom/sub werewolf soulmate” plot seems to have taken over shapeshifter fiction, Silver Moon is a breath of fresh air: just a complex personal story of a woman going through The Changes. All of them.
Major category: ReviewsTags: Reviews: Books
Book Review: Magic and Romance: A Collection of Lesbian Short Stories by Niamh Murphy
I picked up this collection after seeing mention of the author’s novel Mask of the Highwaywoman, and seeing that it had the original shorter version of the same story (since the novel isn’t yet available for iBooks). I’m always looking for lesbian historical fiction that reaches farther back than the 20th century. Magic and Romance doesn’t have a focused theme (other than lesbian protagonists) and only four of the eight stories fall in my historical/fantasy target interest. The other four (In Rhythm: A ballroom dancing romance, Is She?: An on-campus student rom-com, Reason to Stay: A teen romance, and Delicious: A New Year’s Eve tale of food and infatuation -- and, yes, the genre-descriptive subtitles are part of the story titles) are contemporary romance and I’ll confess that I skimmed them lightly.
Enthralled: A dark vampire hunter story follows the usual conventions of the modern erotic vampire vs. vampire hunter story, with the protagonist infiltrating the lair of a vampire queen to rescue the object of her affection. The story veers away from being a rescue-the-damsel adventure at the climax when the protagonist’s understanding of what’s going on is turned inside out. A dark and violent story for those who enjoy charging single-handedly into danger.
The Lady Edris and the Kingdom in a Cave: A tale inspired by Arthurian legends also turns the protagonist’s initial understanding upside down, but is more of a traditional quest-and-rescue-the-damsel scenario. Edris is on a quest to seek assistance against the plague in her homeland from the sorceress-queen of Northgales, their traditional enemy. But the queen has other ideas for the female knight who has penetrated her enchanted realm--ideas that involve the queen’s bed. A deep familiarity with the themes and tropes of Arthurian legend shines through, though the plot feels like the summary of a role-playing game, where the character passes through a sequence of tests and challenges to emerge victorious with the McGuffin and the girl.
Mask of the Highwaywoman: The short-story that became a novel is the story that led me to pick this up in the first place. The plot itself follows the usual formula for highwaywoman romance stories: our heroine’s coach is stopped by a masked highwayman (with or without accomplices) who betrays a brief sympathy or erotic interest in the heroine, but takes a piece of sentimental jewelry from her. The highwaywoman uses returning the jewelry as an excuse for another meeting in which sparks fly, and... Well, presumably what happens next is in the expanded version of the story.
The Black Hound: A romantic gothic horror distills down the platonic ideal of a gothic novel. Our impoverished heroine has come to a lonely, sinister mansion to be the companion of a tyrannical distant relative. On being warned not to wander the woods as night, of course she does so, and barely escapes an encounter with The Black Hound. Curses, nightmares, and supernatural events come to a head as our heroine takes comfort in the arms of her employer’s lady’s maid. A forced separation, another flight through the haunted woods with the hound in pursuit, and a bloody denouement that...well, that would be giving away whether this turns our to be gothic horror or gothic romance.
I liked the story premises and how they dodged around some of the usual formulas, but the writing style was often choppy and too reliant on short declarative sentences and long passages of dialogue. I’m always hoping for something a bit more lyrical. The impression of a choppy style also comes from the stories being broken up into short chapters (as short as 300-400 words), sometimes breaking in the middle of a scene. Murphy has the potential to turn out some very enjoyable historical and fantastic fiction with a bit more work on the technical side and I will probably try out the expanded version of Mask of the Highwaywoman to see if it’s addressed some of these weak spots.
Major category: ReviewsTags: Reviews: Books
July 22, 2017
Looking for Lesbians in Early Modern Spain
The Lesbian Historic Motif Project
Can you know a lesbian when you see one? What characteristics did people in early modern Spain think a lesbian would have? And what did that say about how they conceived of sexual orientation? The concluding chapter to Velasco's book covers an assortment of loosely-connected topics having to do with visual signifiers. It's interesting how old the trope of the "masculine-looking ugly lesbian" is. One aspect in this regard that I don't recall seeing addressed is the extent to which "feminine beauty" as a concept is actively and deliberately created rather than being a natural and spontaneous state. Is the mythical "ugly lesbian" simply the resting bitch face of sexuality? The trope also points out that the understanding of sexuality was still very much focused on an active/passive definition. Only the "active" desiring woman risked evoking the "ugly, masculine-looking" accusation.
As we come to the end of Velasco's book, I'd like to step back and once again marvel at how much material the author found to address her topic, and what that implies for many other historic cultures that have not yet had the benefit of a knowledgeable and interested researcher. I'll reitereate one of the main lessons I've gained from this project: the assumption that information is scarce and skimpy regarding the history of women's same-sex desires derives from a history of the field that often focused on types of data that were more relevant to men, and interpretations of the data that assumed "heterosexual unless clearly proven otherwise." Historians don't find things that they aren't looking for. Once you start looking, there is a greater wealth of data than we've been led to believe.
Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP
LHMP #149g Velasco 2011 Lesbians in Early Modern Spain Chapter 7
About LHMP
Full citation:
Velasco, Sherry. 2011. Lesbians in Early Modern Spain. Vanderbilt University Press, Nashville. ISBN 978-0-8265-1750-0
Publication summary:
A study of the evidence and social context for women who loved women in early modern Spain, covering generally the 16-17th centuries and including some material from colonial Spanish America.
Chapter 7: Looking Like a Lesbian
This chapter looks at the role of imagination, spectacle, and accusation in shaping understandings of female same-sex relations. These understandings, in turn, could create or enable same-sex erotic possibilities for their consumers. There is a contrast between writers who denied the possibility of desire between women and the regular use of female homoerotic imagery in popular culture. Spectacles involving female homoeroticism were meant to warn and punish, but could also inform and educate. Accusations against specific women assumed general knowledge of homoerotic possibilities and expectations regarding types of homoerotic activity.
Probable intersex cases tested the understanding and judgement of same-sex activity. Beliefs about the possibility of spontaneous physical sex change problematized investigations into potential transgressive relations when physical sex was ambiguous or did not match gender performance. Medical opinions presumed that people had an innate sexual orientation, though they differed on the underlying cause.
When same-sex relationships were performed in public (for example, when the specifics of relationships came out in public arguments or lawsuits) the evidence suggests that individual fear of punishment for sexual transgression was not an absolute deterrent for entering those relationships. [Note: when has it ever been?] Within all this, what was the public expectation for being able to identify lesbians from their appearance? How could you know you were looking at one?
Catalina de Erauso was depicted in a portrait from life by Francisco Pacheco, and that portrait was further publicized by engravings based on it. Her features were interpreted differently depending on how people perceived her gender. Physiognomy--the pseudo-science of identifying innate characteristics based on facial features and physiology--was not only applied to Catalina during her lifetime, but was taken up by psychologists and sexologists in the early 20th century to “diagnose” her in terms of supposed psychological and medical abnormality.
Simple economics meant that homoerotic scenes of women in art were typically designed to cater to the male gaze for the purposes of titillation. One exception was depictions of lesbian erotics in genre scenes of witchcraft that often drew on male anxiety about powerful and dangerous women, conflating lesbian sexuality with anti-male magical activity. (That is, the scenes may still have been created for the male gaze, but not likely for titillation.)
In religious art, images of close emotional bonds betwen women were often depicted using physical gestures to indicate spiritual connections and conferral of authority. This appears in art showing Saint Teresa and her rival spiritual heirs in a sort of religious propaganda art staking claims to her legacy using imagery of closeness and inseparability.
Velasco includes a discussion of visual art associated with Nicholas Chorier’s pornographic Satyra Sotadica showing a frontispiece with a group of upper class Spanish women shopping in a “dildo market” with wares hung up on display as in a butcher’s shop. This seems to be included on the basis that Chorier’s work was alleged to be a translation of a dialogue by the 16th century Spanish poet and humanist Luisa Sigea. Sigea did write dialogues between women expressing passionate friendship. [Note: Velasco seems at first to treat the connection to Sigea as solidly evidenced but then appears to agree with other sources that the connection with Sigea is entirely fictitious and was, in part, intended to imply a genuine female authorship for Chorier’s female-voice dialogue.]
Beliefs in gender essentialism with regard to sexuality led to an emphasis in descriptions of women with same-sex desires as being masculine in appearance (or at least unfeminine). Contemporaries of María de Zayas suggest she may have been viewed as “manly” in appearance as well as in literary talent. Other writers compared her poetic talent to Sappho, possibly intending implications about her sexuality. Zayas herself excluded Sappho from her list of dedicatory “foremothers” possibly suggesting that she herself was anxious about what people would read into the comparison. There is some evidence that Zayas lived with a fellow female poet, Ana Caro, but the nature of their relationshp must be entirely speculative.
The Mexican poet Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (later 17th century) wrote poems to multiple women (including her patroness) that used amorous language and imagery, such as, “I love you with so much passion...My love for you was so strong I could see you in my soul and talk to you all day long...Let my love be ever doomed if guilty in its intent, for loving you is a crime of which I will never repent.” And in another work, “I aspire that your love and my good wine will draw you hither, and to tumble you to bed I can conspire.” Historians writing of Sor Juana and other examples of suggestive evidence between nuns often dismiss the possibility of same-sex desire out of hand on a presumption that they would have needed to learn about homoerotic love before being able to experience it, and that they were “too young” to understand the implication of such desires. [Some things never change.]
Time period: 16th c17th cPlace: SpainMexicoFranceMisc tags: artistic representationdildoessentialismlove poetryphysical affection (general)Event / person: Catalina de ErausoSatyra Sotadica (Johannes Meursius)The Academy of Women (L'Academie des dames) (Nicolas Chorier)Luisa SigeaMaría de ZayasSapphoJuana Inés de la Cruz
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Lesbian Desire on Stage in Early Modern Spain
The Lesbian Historic Motif Project
In the research I read though for this project, I regularly come across references to pieces of historic literature that come tantalizingly close to being positive queer stories. A few of them have been added to my "to write" list where I want to tweak them ever so slightly to overcome the deficiencies of the past. Aragón's play Añasco el de Talavera is one of those tantalizing near-misses, with its open homoerotic desire and the "mannish" woman who has the power to order people's lives within the story. It doesn't tempt me quite enough to add it to the list, but I'd love to read through a full translation of it some day.
Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP
LHMP #149f Velasco 2011 Lesbians in Early Modern Spain Chapter 6
About LHMP
Full citation:
Velasco, Sherry. 2011. Lesbians in Early Modern Spain. Vanderbilt University Press, Nashville. ISBN 978-0-8265-1750-0
Publication summary:
A study of the evidence and social context for women who loved women in early modern Spain, covering generally the 16-17th centuries and including some material from colonial Spanish America.
Chapter 6: Lesbian Desire on Center Stage
Female same-sex flirtation is a regular feature in popular Spanish drama of the early modern era. Erotic attraction to cross-dressed actrresses was cited in moral warnings. Velasco discusses the “meaning” of same-sex flirtation in cross-dressing scenarios, based on the several layers of “real” versus “apparent” gender, and considering different audiences. If female attraction to cross-dressed actresses isn’t quite all-out lesbian desire, it at least acknowledges its possibility. In-play dialogues about the attractiveness of the cross-dressed characters is coded in ambiguously androgynous terms.
Another context for dramatic ambiguity is the use of female actors for roles where a male character takes on a female disguise (within the story), as in the legend of Achilles. While this may have avoided having an actual male actor cross-dress as a woman on stage, it created the potential for female same-sex desire within the layered “woman playing a man playing a woman” scenario.
Moralists of the 17th century warned parents that their innocent daughters would be corrupted by consuming plays and novels. The expressions of concern are not specifically focused on homoeroticism, but the general idea is that young girls will “get ideas” from popular culture.
There is an extensive discussion of Cubillo de Aragón’s play Añasco el de Talavera (ca. 1637) which depicts lesbian desire without the mechanism of male disguise. The “manly woman” Dionisia’s desire for her female friend Leonor is an open topic of discussion within the play. Dionisia complains about the restrictiveness of female gender roles and has a serious case of “not like other girls”. She specifically expresses the desire to be touched (implied: sexually) by Leonor and say she loves her. Leonor demurs about the concept, but Dionisia presents her argument in terms of platonic love, and argues for the supremacy of (same-sex) platonic love over heterosexual desire. The dialogue acknowledges that women may “sin” together, i.e., that activity counting as forbidden sex is possible between women.
Leonor, alas, is irredeemably heterosexual, and the play ends up shoehorning Dionisia into a heterosexual resolution. But the resolution implies that Dionisia is still controling the situation driven by desire for Leonor. Dionisia marries the man who is mutually in love with Leonor (thus interfering with their competing relationship) and leaves Leonor to marry the man who has been vainly attempting to woo Dionisia.
Velasco considers the effect of homoerotic art and literature on female viewers. For example, homoerotic scenes of Diana and her nymphs may have been intended for male voyeurism, but had female viewers as well. Literary depictions of Diana were viewed as potentially corrupting and parents of daughters were specifically warned against Jorge de Montemayer’s 1559 work Las siete libros de la Diana (known more typically as La Diana). The same-sex love depicted in this work has traditionally been dismissed as neo-Platonic friendship, but it is expressed in terms of physical affection and verbal flirtation.
Two characters, Ysmenia and Selvagia, enjoy a passionate interlude, then Ysmenia falsely convinces Selvagia that she is a man in disguise and that Selvagia has been tricked into a heterosexual liaison. Selvagia remains steadfast in her love for Ysmenia, despite this apparent trick. Enter Ysmenia’s Convenient Twin Cousin (male) who takes advantage of the situation to take over Ysmenia’s affair with Selvagia. The story can be compared with other pastoral romances, most of which involve some type of gender disguise. But La Diana is unusual in showing Selvagia’s love beginning when she believes that love to be homoerotic. The steadfastness of Selvagia’s love regardless of the (believed) gender of the object supports the image of same-sex love being equivalent to heterosexual love.
In other similar works, there is more often uneasiness expressed about apparent or real same-sex desire, which is resolved by either the reality or a fantasy of a magical sex-change to permit a heterosexual resolution. These may include sexual interludes that could be interpreted as lesbian and involving an artificial penis. There is often a phallocentric assumption that only a penis can provide a woman with pleasure and that real female same-sex relations must remain unfulfilled.
In the romance Tirant lo Blanc there is an episode of a woman engaging in sex play with another woman supposedly for the voyeuristic benefit of an observing man. Later, the sex play continues in the dark and the man substitutes in (unknown to his partner). The woman in this interaction is shown protesting that the supposed same-sex act is against nature, but she does not deny its possibility. The in-story implication is that sex between women is permited as long as it’s really a performance for the male gaze or for the reader. But the fact that both La Diana and Tirant lo Blanc were popular among female audiences suggests other possibilities. Heterosexual resolutions kept the text “safe” while allowing transgression between the covers (of the book).
The rest of the chapter takes a close examination of the novels of María de Zayas, which interrogate heterosexual relations and support the concept of female community and marriage resistance (although in the form of the convent). The themes send conflicting messages about heteronormativity and female same-sex love.
“Love for the Sake of Conquest” uses a male-to-female disguise plot to assert the superiority of love between women, though the arguments are put in the mouth of the male character (disguised as a woman) who it turns out is making those arguments purely for the sake of getting the other protagonist in bed. This creates a context for articulating the attractions of same-sex love and desire without the transgression of enacting it. After the male character reveals his identity and succeeds in initiating a sexual relationship, he loses interest and moves on, while the female protagonist is then murdered by her father for her (heterosexual) sexual transgression, whereas her apparent attraction to another woman was considered odd but not equivalent to fornication.
In “Aminta Deceived and Honor’s Revenge” a woman expresses romantic attraction to another woman without the artifice of a disguies plot, and her attention is found flattering. But it turns out the first woman was acting out of ulterior motives in order to further her relationship with a man and to deceive the supposed female object of her affection.
The third story considered, “Marriage Abroad: Portent of Doom”, includes a rather hostile depiction of male homoerotic relations, raising the question of whether this indicates that Zayas judged male and female relations entirely differently, or whether it’s evidence that she didn’t intend her female couples to be read as having physical relations.
Overall, although Zayas' novels include themes of the superiority of love between women, the actual plots undermine this message, showing deception and falsehood. Only in the framing story for the novels does the messge of that superiority prevail in truth.
Time period: 16th c17th cPlace: SpainMisc tags: cross-dressingcross-gender roles/behavioremotional /romantic bonds between womengender disguise f>mgender disguise m>fsexual/romantic desireEvent / person: Añasco el de Talavera (Alvaro Cubillo)Diana (Jorge de Montemayor)TIrant lo Blanc (Joanot Martorell)María de Zayas
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Un/Conventional Desires in Early Modern Spain
The Lesbian Historic Motif Project
The image of Spanish convent life in the age of colonial expansion often overlooks the social consequences of convents being the sole alternative to marriage for women of good birth and good reputation. That meant that a lot of the nuns were educated, sophisticated, and relatively lacking in religious vocation. Convent rules tried to find a middle gound between the ideals of exclusive devotion to God and the recognition that they were dealing with a lot of young women who were lonely and desperate for affection. While the dynamics discussed in this chapter are inspired by a consideration of lesbian desire in convents, a great deal of the material is less about sex and more about trying to manage that sort of hot-house emotional environment.
Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP
LHMP #149e Velasco 2011 Lesbians in Early Modern Spain Chapter 5
About LHMP
Full citation:
Velasco, Sherry. 2011. Lesbians in Early Modern Spain. Vanderbilt University Press, Nashville. ISBN 978-0-8265-1750-0
Publication summary:
A study of the evidence and social context for women who loved women in early modern Spain, covering generally the 16-17th centuries and including some material from colonial Spanish America.
Chapter 5: Special Friendships in the Convent
Concerns about same-sex relations in convents date back at least to the time of Saint Augustine in the 5th century. Those concerns covered even trivial actions like hand-holding and terms of endearment, showing that some of the concern was for the particularity of the friendship, not specifically the possibility of sex. Activities that were a cause for concern could be discouraged with corporal punishment as well as lesser penances.
Co-sleeping was a special concern, and care was taken that two women would not have private sleeping arrangements together. Sleeping arrangements in convents might involve single-person cells or communal dormitories, generally with rules against two people having privacy together. The forbidden activities that were specified included “talking together late at night” and thus breaking the rule of silence.
The rules against developing “special friendships” often mentioned a purpose of preserving harmony in the convent and avoiding favoritism. These concerns were not limited to same-sex interactions--there were similar concerns about relations between the nuns and the priests that attended to the spiritual needs of the institution, or visiting male relatives--but of course the demongraphics made female same-sex interactions the greatest temptation.
Visiting priests were sometimes instructed, in essence, to spy on the prioress to ensure that she herself didn’t have favorites (since she was supposed to prevent it in others). There’s an acknowledgement that the prioress may reasonably spend more attention on nuns “who are more discreet and intelligent” and thus might be assisting in administrative duties. In addition to the cautions and rules, there are regular loopholes, such as this type, that created the potential for a variety of approaches and responses. The visiting priests were also advised not to make a big deal out of unimportant behavioral infractions, lest the convent’s reputation be damaged. But visiting priests were not always on the enforcement side, witness an 1819 Inquestion investigation of a (male) confessor who urged the nuns in his care to engage in same-sex activity for his gratification.
Saint Teresa of Avila, in her instructions for convents, laid out the potential consequences of allowing particular friendships. They could cause jealousy between nuns, but also interfered with focusing one’s love on God. Even as instructions like this provided lists of detailed prohibiltions, they normalized the expectation that “particular friendships” woud occur in ordinary circumstances. And there was a contradictory expectation that nuns should show love and affection for each other--just not too much, and not too specifically.
Saint Boniface listed seven potential signs of forbidden carnal love between nuns. (Note that “carnal” is contrasted with “spiritual” and doesn’t necessarily imply “sexual”.) 1: Conversation that includes jokes and laughter, 2: looks of affection and accompanying each other everywhere, 3: experiencing worry and anxiety, 4: jealousy, 5: anger between the two women when they fight, 6: exchanging gifts and favors, 7: defending each other or covering up for each other.
Why was the primary focus on non-sexual behaviors? Were sexual activities considered less important, or was there concern that if sex were specifically mentioned it would “give women ideas”? Recall that lesbianism was called peccatum mutum “the silent sin” because it often was not mentioned in specific terms.
These concerns about favoritism played out in Saint Teresa’s own life and her special friendships with two protegés who laid claim to continuing her legacy. The description of Teresa’s relationship with Ana de San Bartolomé reads like a template for forbidden “particular friendships”. They shared a cell, talked together regularly, and were inseparable. After Teresa’s death, Ana had other particular friendships with nuns, resulting in jealousy and protestations of exclusive love, as recorded in her letters. Letters are a fertile ground for data on the actual emotional relationships between nuns that express particular love and longing and a desire for affirmation. Convent records of the 17th century record numerous investigations of passionate friendships, all of which are recorded as having successful reform as a conclusion, often with supernatural elements in how the issue was discovered.
The text digresses somewhat curiously into a Chilean folktale that is clearly based on the medieval tale of Yde and Olive. A woman takes on male disguise to escape her father’s incestuous advances, had adventures, and eventually marries a princess who is delighted to discover that her “husband” is actually a woman. When this secret is betrayed and they are near discovery, the disguised woman is granted a miraculous sex-change. The connection with the rest of the chapter is that, like one of the convent investigations, there is a magical flying crucifix involved. [I included the reference here to keep track of the Yde & Olive variant.]
Not all same-sex relations in convents were consensual. An early 18th century Colombian nun recourts unwanted sexual advances from other nuns and becoming a cause of jealousy between other women.
There is a discussion of theatrical performances in convents, including nuns performing as actors. This was not considered a sin if done only for entertainment. Topics of the plays could include passionate friendships between nuns, as well as similar allegorical themes. This is another indication of the normalization of these relationships.
Another source of potential concern, espeically in Spanish colonial areas, was relations between (upper class) nuns and the lay serving women who lived with them. This pattern seems to have been less prevalent in Spain itself.
Time period: 16th c17th c18th cPlace: SpainColombiaMexicoChileMisc tags: bed-sharingemotional /romantic bonds between womenfriendshipmonastic communitiespenitentialsEvent / person: Yde and Olive
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Early Modern Spanish Gender Outlaw Celebrities
The Lesbian Historic Motif Project
The blog comes around again to Catalina de Erauso, who kicked off the current thematic grouping. It's an odd trio: Catalina the cross-dressing soldier of fortune in the New World, Eleno de Cespedes the transgender doctor who began life as a slave, and Queen Christina of Sweden who became the darling of the Spanish aristocracy (at long distance) when she decided to convert from Lutheranism to Catholicism--a decision that made them willing to overlook her long-rumored romantic relationships with women. And I am now imagining a buddy movie...
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LHMP #149d Velasco 2011 Lesbians in Early Modern Spain Chapter 4
About LHMP
Full citation:
Velasco, Sherry. 2011. Lesbians in Early Modern Spain. Vanderbilt University Press, Nashville. ISBN 978-0-8265-1750-0
Publication summary:
A study of the evidence and social context for women who loved women in early modern Spain, covering generally the 16-17th centuries and including some material from colonial Spanish America.
Chapter 4: Transgender Lesbian Celebrities
This chapter focuses on three specific individuals whose gender and sexuality brought them celebrity status in 16-17th century Spain: Catalina de Erauso, Queen Christina of Sweden, and Elena/Eleno de Céspedes. In comparing them, we can see the influence of race and class on how gender transgression was received.
Catalina de Erauso ran away from a convent in Spain at age 15 before taking final vows, began living as a man, and had a violent and turbulent career in the Spanish colonies of the New World before deciding to tell her history publicly. She returned to Spain where she was greeted as a celebrity and successfully petitioned the crown for a pension, went to Rome where she received dispensation from the Pope to continue wearing male clothing, wrote her memoirs, and eventually returned to the New World where she lived in relative obscurity working as a mule driver for twenty years until her death. [I’ve abbreviated her background due to its more detailed coverage in Steptoe & Steptoe 1996 and Velasco 2000.]
Elena/Eleno de Céspedes was a black enslaved person in 16th century Spain who, after a failed marriage and giving birth to a child, began living as a man and eventually embarked on a successful career as a surgeon. Eleno testified that he had undergone a spontaneous physical change of sex and, after obtaining testimony supporting this claim was given persmission to marry a woman. This assessment was later challenged and a second examination did not support the claim of male physiology. Following that, Eleno was tried for sodomy and “consorting with demons” along with “contempt for the sacrament of marriage”. The eventual conviction, somewhat confusingly, was for bigamy. That is, Eleno had failed to provide documentation of the death of Elena’s husband prior to Eleno marrying a woman. Eleno was sentence to whipping and to serving a sort of community service providing medical care in a hospital for indigents, whose administrator later complained of the crowds of curious people who came to see the celebrity. [For more details, see Burshatin 1996.]
Queen Christina of Sweden may seem an odd person to become a celebrity in Spain, particularly as she never actually traveled there. Spanish connections were a major influence on Christina’s decision to covert to Catholicism (necessitating her abdication from the Swedish throne). Christina had a lifelong habit of crossdressing and her romantic interest in women, including specific members of her household, was open knowledge. But these issues that Spanish culture, in theory, disapproved of, were overlooked due to her social rank and the high-level approval of her in Spain because of the coup her conversion was considered.
These three people had three very different receptions by the Spanish authorities. Eleno was a person of color whose life as a man included marriage to a woman and (at least the accusation of) performing sex with an artificial penis. Eleno went to significant lengths to establish an official male identity in the face of physical signs of female sex. An interesting contrast to Eleno is the situation of the nun María Muñoz, who developed male physical characteristics (possibly as a result of an intersex condition) but manufactured signs of femaleness (such as apparent evidence of menstruation) in order to conceal the issue and continue to be accepted as a woman.
Eleno’s transgression (in addition to being non-white) was laying claim to male priviledge despite anatomy. In contrast, although Catalina (white and upper class) didn’t dispute the judgment of female status once her story was told, even in the context of requesting permission to continue performing as male. Catalina never tried to marry a woman. There were several situations where the possibility of marriage was raised and Catalina deceived the potential brides for her own gain, but in all cases these women were mestizas and this may have contributed to a lack of concern over their experience.
Christina’s interest in converting from Lutherinism to Catholicism motivated positive reactions to her from Spanish authorities, despite regular comments in the Spanish diplomatic correspondence on her masculine appearance and rumors of her affairs with women. These were sometimes coded in phrases like “not being the marrying type.” After Christina’s abdication, Spain was excitedly preparing for a visit from her in 1656 when everything fell apart at the last minute due her choice to support Spain’s enemy France in certain concerns. Spanish rhetoric about her made an abrupt change from praise to satire, focusing specifically on romors of heterosexual affairs, including a fictitious illicit pregnancy, but curiously avoiding mention of her relations with women.
This omission of the lesbian rumors was not universal. There was a thinly veiled depiction of Christina as the character Cristerna de Suevia in the play Afectos de Odo y amor, which portrays her using the stock character of a mujer esquiva, a woman averse to love and marriage, and to men in general. The character in the play is defending her right to rule as a woman, in conflict with the antagonist/romantic lead Casimiro. The play toys with implications of same-sex desire in giving Cristerna a lady-in-waiting named Lesbia, and setting up a bait-and-switch marriage plot in wich Cristerna agrees to marry Casimiro’s sister (that is, within the play this is overtly a same-sex marriage plan). When Cristerna has committed to the marriage, the sister substitutes in her brother Caisimiro and Cristerna inexplicably capitulates all her feminist positions and declares that women should be men’s vassals.
Time period: 16th c17th cPlace: SpainSwedenMisc tags: class issuescross-dressingcross-gender roles/behavioremotional /romantic bonds between womenfemale sodomygender disguise f>mhermaphroditismmarriage between womensex between womentransgender identityEvent / person: Catalina de ErausoElena/Eleno de CéspedesQueen Christina of SwedenAfectos de odio y amor (Pedro Calderón de la Barca)
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LHMPodcast 14c: Book Appreciation with Genevieve Fortin
The Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast
Genevieve Fortin returns to the podcast to talk about her favorite lesbian historical novels.
The Lesbian-Interest website posted a nice shout-out to The Lesbian Talk Show and featured my episode on Sappho's poetry to illustrate it. If you're interesting in discovering lesbian media in a wide variety of formats and from the entire international scene, you should check them out! I'm going to go add them to my Feedly feed right now.
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LHMPodcast 14b: Interview with Genevieve Fortin
The Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast
This week I'm talking with Bella Books author Genevieve Fortin about her recent release Water's Edge, involving Canadian immigrants to New England in the late 19th century. Genevieve talks about how local and family history inspired her to write this story.
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LHMPodcast 14a: On the Shelf for September
The Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast
I've titled the first-week-of-the-month round-up podcast "On the Shelf" as a bit of a pun. On the one hand, it's referring to what books I have "on the shelf" to be covered in the blog, or talked about with our guest author. But it was also a term in the 19th century for a woman who was still unmarried at an age when society considered her too old to be an eligible bride. And, of course, a certain number of the women who were "on the shelf" were avoiding marriage to a man very deliberately.
In addition to a review of what the blog is covering, and an announcement of this month's author guest, the Ask Sappho segment takes a reader request for lesbian historical novels set during the US Civil War. (Due to a cut-and-paste error, the show notes repeat last month's question about the legal status of lesbianism through the ages.) Doing thematic book lists is a fun little project. What time period, culture, or historic topic would you like to see a list built around? I can't guarantee that I can find books on every possible topic!
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