Sharonmarcus Between Womenfriendship Desire and Marriage in Victorianengland Book Review
In Between Women, Sharon Marcus aims to disprove the misconception that female friendship, desire, and matrimony were not contrary to heterosexual relations in Victorian England, every bit well as to show that "the asexual Victorian woman able only to respond to male advances is a myth -- non a Victorian myth, but our own." She presents three forms of female relationships. The first is female friendship, which was considered to be an important attribute of a woman's educational activity in feminity. It was of import in the Victorian era that a woman maintain friendships with other women, friendships that were intimate and passionate (but nonsexual), otherwise she may be accounted unwomanly by her lack of such friendship. In fact, Marcus shows how female friendship was vital to a successful marriage instead of opposed to it, and presents several novel plots in which the happy marriage at the end would not have been possible without female friendship. The 2d form of relations involves female desire, namely in the eroticised figures of fashion plates and dolls. Marcus presents prove that rather than being simply an objectification of women for male desires, fashion plates and dolls were meant primarily to stand for and avenue for female enjoyment and pleasure. The third relationship form she looks at are female marriages, in which two women merge their housholds, will their property to their partner, and deport in the same way every bit whatsoever married couple. Marcus shows these marriages were not the antithesis of heterosexual wedlock, simply an acceptable alternative to information technology. Women in female marriages were not outcastes, but for the well-nigh part accepted as couples in certain circles of society. And in fact it was partially the example of female marriage as contractual that aided in the reform of heterosexual marriages. This book was a fascinating reading, opening my mind to new perspectives nearly Victorian England. Looking back on the past, it is easy to generalize, often to the outcome that some aspect of history and culture gets ignored in trying to define information technology. This book is a reminder that one should not assume that everyone bevaed a certain fashion in the past, and that civilisation is as infinitly complicated as in our every 24-hour interval lives. I would certainly recomend this book to anyone interested in Victorian history.
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Edited February seven, 2022 
Is in that location anything more written nigh yet less understood than the desire(south) of the Victorian woman? After Foucault, we no longer run into the Victorians as entirely sexually repressed, yet the ways in which those desires are articulated and performed remains problematic. Marcus enters the discourse with a discussion of relationships among females (friendly, maternal, and sexual), which are ubiquitous in Victorian civilization and 19th-century marriage plot novels, yet overshadowed by an accent on heterosexual coupling. Marcus shows how this emphasis, predicated on the belief that Victorian women institute value and identity solely in heterosexual and heterosocial relationships, may be misread. Using Victorian lifewriting, novels, and fashion plates every bit her prove, she argues that women of the 19th-century were primarily focused on their relationships with other women and that for a adult female to have her emotional needs and erotic desires met past some other woman was not an abnormality just rather a cultural norm. There are some fantastic leaps in logic here, and besides bang-up a reliance on Freudian interpretation of texts. The idea that a foot protruding from underneath a skirt in a manner plate is intended or perceived by anyone to correspond an cock clitoris is laughable, for example. However Marcus does, at the very least, open a discussion of friendship amongst Victorian women (and men), and invites more assay of the many varied meanings indicated in the word "friend," especially in the context of the traditional matrimony plot.
Oh man, this is the 19th century scholarship I love - lesbo involvement, bookish, good times. I oasis't finished this book, but if it were for a class in school I'd be all up in its grill. see quotes beneath... "I went with Emily to the skating on asphalt at Princes in Hans identify. I never saw a prettier sight - some 200 young women all in more or less graceful motion and dressed in all fashion of print dresses with nearly astonishing and picturesque hats. The beauty of the girls was something to make one scream with delight. The older I grow the more slave I am to beauty." "Today, a woman so susceptible to another adult female's attractions would be obligated to qualify her screams of please by explaining whether she was or was not a lesbian...Nothing could be further from the globe of Lady Monkswell, which never delineated a clear lesbian social type and thus accepted female friendship, female marriage, and female homoeroticism as components of conventional femininity. (my underlining)
- from the 1874 diary of Lady Monkswell, married Englishwoman
p. 113, "Between Women - friendship, desire, & marraige in Victorian England" past Sharon Marcus
3,five. A squeamish, informative volume virtually how victorian women saw other women and how they interacted with each other, as friends, family unit and lovers (or maybe all 3 -- it happened). Though, the book is much more dense than it sounds like, and I didn't like that the author took and then much space to explain something i.due east. how anthropology sees matrimony, to then subsequently explain the actual signal of the affiliate. Similar, I'grand studying anthropology and I can take information technology but I see some people might tire. Anyway, as much as information technology was informative and interesting all I got was that every adult female is a lesbian at heart, including Reggie'due south mum.
I admit I skipped some $.25 of this book (I have not read Tin can Yous Forgive Her, for example, although at some indicate I plan to; therefore I want no spoilers!) only what I read, I found interesting and thought-provoking. This book taught me a lot virtually female-female person relationships in Victorian England, e.thousand. that being a skillful female friend was every bit important for a woman to exist as being a dutiful daughter, loving wife, and caring mother; also, female marriages were manifestly non exactly common only non unheard of either, and were generally respected? Who would've thunk!
Odd enough, this gay guy rather enjoyed this lesbian slash dominatrix slash feminist slash can't-tell-the-difference-between-children'southward-literature-or-a-lady's-domicile-journal-commodity-or-pornography-because-they-pretty-much-all-read-the-same book that explores the underbelly of women in Victorian club.
Jane Austen opens her book Pride and Prejudice set in the 18th century with coming into the motion picture of a young rich man and his pursuit by various female characters. This idea of a conjugal relationship between man and woman is central to novels belonging to that era - wedlock to a homo beingness the main end of a adult female'south beingness. On the other mitt, for a long time, gender historians looked at the Victorian era with a biased view - women and women could merely mean a sexual relationship. Marcus breaks these discourses and scholarly inputs and tries to look between the lines of various novels and reads texts and sources by setting aside the 20th-century opinions on deviance to normativity.
What comes out of her conclusions is rather surprising. Between women were friendships, eroticism and spousal relationship. Female friendships existed along with heterosexual marriages; they, in fact, promoted the latter. Friendship betwixt women was often cardinal to the lives of Victorian women and was deemed necessary. These were moreover, loathed with words of honey and commitment like marriage. Women every bit spectators of femininity (gazes at fashion plates and dolls) and agents of maternal discipline enjoyed erotic bonds that ran parallel to pornographic trends of the time. These erotic desires nearly vehemently brand their appearance in domestic magazines that were widely circulated. The idea of female marriages was non preposterous but was quite ordinary. Women living together and sharing lives and wills was not uncommon. This rubberband ideal of friendship, the mobile object of desire and the plastic institution of matrimony are investigated past Marcus via Victorian novels, children's books, life-writings, anthropological narratives and fashion iconography.
The analysis of Victorian women in the text stands apart, their relations were non deviance but were accepted and embedded in society. Marcus tries to move away from the idea that every adult female-woman relationship was divers by sexuality. She instead defines that being friends was different from being spectators of fashion plates which in turn was different from being the wife of a woman. The Victorian society was rather a complex one and the relations that existed between men, between women and between men and women were rather ambiguous and need an in-depth assay!
Sometimes, Marcus seems to exaggerate her assay, in order to accommodate to her hypothesis. For example, trying to analyse the excitement for a new toy as erotic or to analyse female person friendships as but preparing women to be good wives. Women were not always just friends, rivalries existed; not every mother-daughter dynamic was erotic and homosexuals were looked down upon. She tries to justify all that she could in the final few lines of her text: "...marriage and family, gender and sexuality, are far more intricate, mobile and malleable than nosotros imagine them to be. We cannot and should not tidy up that complication,..."
I'yard no professional, only this may be the best volume of academic literary criticism I've always read. It'southward definitely 1 of the nigh delightful. She writes like a dream -- with a wonderful knack for piling on the info and reasoning and then giving you the summary bespeak every bit a well-formed witty, elementary sentence. Cartoon upon a formidable depth of what she calls life-writings of Victorian women, interspersing it with fine, deft readings of Victorian novels -- and (this is really the fun function) excavation into mag writing, advice columns, fashion plates, porn, "doll fiction" (who knew?) -- Marcus takes a generation of tardily 20th century feminist scholarship, writing and feminist agendas near women's relationships during the Victorian era, gives information technology a proficient shake, and comes out with a reasoned, reasonable, convincing view of a set of complex dynamics. Going beyond agendas while respecting the importance of agendas, she helps us see ourselves as well. I'1000 non doing it justice. But I'll probably be back to try again.
This book inverse everything I thought virtually women's relationships and female person-female person homoeroticism in Victorian England, and really opened upwards a lot of the texts I read - including some of my favorite novels. This book examines friendship, sex, business and social relationships, and even female person marriages. If you lot're interested in Victorian novels, the history of women, or LGBTQ issues, read this volume.
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Source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/119846.Between_Women
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