The chapter begins with a list of advertisements from 1772 either from people looking to hire female companions or from women offering themselves as such. The ads represent a wide variety of situations and job requirements. When compensation is discussed it’s in terms of room and board or, in some cases, only partial room and board. The ads—surprisingly--include requests or offers of female companions for men. In some cases, explicitly excluding the possibility of sexual services.
marriage resistance
In cultures where heterosexual marriage was normalized, the act of resisting marriage was sometimes considered a sign or a possible consequence of close emotional bonds between women.
LHMP entry
The content of this book is taken from letters, memoirs, and fiction produced by middle and upper class women. This is primarily a choice made due to the availability of materials. These woman talk about themselves, their lives, and their living conditions, both in personal and fictional representations. Less literate women must be studied by other means, alas.
Comic drama traditionally relies on and enforces the stereotypes and norms of heterosexual marriage. Most Elizabethan comedies do not present female singlehood and independence as a viable option, even when used as a transitional motif in the plot. Comedic resolutions overwhelmingly require the pairing off of single women into heterosexual marriages. Female resistance raises the questions: Must women marry? And must women marry men? Rarely are those questions answered in the negative. John Lyly stands out in offering a negative response.
The legend of the virgin martyr Katherine of Alexandria became immensely popular in the 14-15th century. It presents the fairly standard story of the Christian daughter of a pagan ruler who resists marriage and supports the Christian community despite increasingly violent threats and punishments. With her increased popularity in the later middle ages, there is a shift from the tone of the earlier texts as “passio” (focused on suffering and martyrdom) to a more detailed “life story” (focusing on the details and context of the subject’s life).
This paper looks at three female Anglo-Saxon saints, as depicted in Anglo-Norman hagiography: Osith, Etheldreda, and Modwenna. The women are doubly “other” within the texts: Anglo-Saxon lives being portrayed for a readership of Norman churchmen, and women being portrayed by and for men.
Preface
Garber details the thought process that went into developing an LGBTQ course for her university’s “global” core requirement, resulting in a course on Asian Gay and Lesbian Cultures. Garber’s academic focus was 20th century US lesbian writers so she worked in collaboration with a colleague with a focus on Asian history and literature.
Scholarship on medieval Arabic literature has tended to focus on scholarly works or on the specific set of stories that has come to western attention as the Thousand and One Nights. Only recently has the enormous corpus of traditional popular epics begun to receive more attention and analysis. This article looks at one specific episode in a longer epic that illustrates the popular motif of the warrior woman, and how she becomes a force either for disruption or stability.
The article takes a critical look at the concept of “chastity” as an attribute of the mythical goddess Diana, especially as interpreted in early modern literature and art, and at the depiction of Diana as the focus and leader of a community of women who reject romantic and erotic interactions with men, but engage in those interactions with each other.
LHMP #146 Vanita 1996 Sappho and the Virgin Mary: Same-Sex Love and the English Literary Imagination
Introduction: Imagined Ancestries
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