The possibility that a relationship with another woman could replace wedlock emerged in the late nineteenth century, when clerical jobs opened to women, as did coed universities and some prestige professions like medicine, creating more options for women to strike out on their own. During this time, pairs of women—typically well-off or well educated—lived together and supported each other in what were known as Boston marriages. The historian Susan Freeman describes these long-term relationships between two unmarried women as “a kind of cousin of romantic friendships.”
