The motif of the passionless woman was invented by medical writers in the 18th century in England and then promulgated more generally initially via fiction. This totally upended the previous idea of female sexual desire, envisioning women’s sexuality as entirely distinct from men’s.
sexual/romantic desire
This tag is used broadly when there is discussion of erotic or romantic desire between women, whether or not specific activities are mentioned.
LHMP entry
This article examines themes of female romantic friendship and its limitations in the Restoration-era play Queen Catherine by Mary Pix. The play is a historical tragedy, centered around female characters, involving Catherine (widow of King Henry V) and her waiting woman Isabella, both of whom have heterosexual romances that drive the tragedy.
This article is one of those that eventually went into Traub’s The Renaissance of Lesbianism (chapter 6), but since I did a higher level overview when I covered that book, it’s worth examining more closely.
The Second Edition Material
As done for Mary Read, here’s a highly speculative timeline structured around key events in the General History narrative, though there are fewer anchor points to specific dates. (Both women’s narratives make reference to things like the King’s Pardon, but in ways that don’t align well with the known timelines.) I’ve included some details from the 2nd edition which elaborate on events but don’t add substantial changes to the timeline. Many of the dates are vague estimates based on trying to coordinate descriptions in the General History to documented historic events.
The LIFE of ANNE BONNY.
Only two events in Read’s narrative can be tied with certainty to a specific date: her husband’s death around the date of the Peace of Reswick, which occurred in 1697, and her capture and trial in 1720. The following highly speculative timeline is worked backwards and forwards around these dates. Note that this timeline attempts to make sense of the General History narrative, without otherwise evaluating its likely accuracy.
The LIFE of MARY READ,
The General History of the Pirates
And now we’re ready to see what the General History says about Bonny and Read, three years after these events. The text I have is the second edition. My understanding is that the first edition also contained the material on Bonny and Read in the main text, but that only the appendices were new to the second edition.
Sorting Out Rackham’s Crew
Given the wide variety of numbers given for Rackham’s crew, it might be useful to digress a moment and try to sort things out.
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