It was fashionable for women of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to develop intense, almost romantic friendships like those between Germaine and Juliette and between Thérésia and Joséphine. Inspired by the intimacy between fictional heroines like Julie and Claire in La Nouvelle Héloïse, women looked to each other to provide them with companionship and emotional (and perhaps physical) solace and comfort, especially when the men in their lives were remote or unloving.
