Jane Sharp

LHMP #202 Donoghue 1993 Imagined More than Women: Lesbians as Hermaphrodites

Heather Rose Jones — Mon, 02 Jul 2018 05:42:12 +0000

The general topic of this article is the ways in which women who had sex with women in 17-18th century Britain were marginalized from the category of “women” via the imagined figure of the hermaphrodite, combining in the image of the tribade who was endowed with a penis-equivalent, either in the form of an enlarged clitoris or sometimes a prolapsed vagina capable of performing penetration. This article traces that image through various genres of literature, both popular and professional.

In early modern Britain “romantic friendships” between women were tolerated and even encouraged as long as they were considered non-sexual, and prosecutions for lesbianism, per se, were practically unknown. But a variety of other means were available for persecuting women who had sex with women, especially social satire. Women who passed as men, including those who married women--of which there are a surprisingly large number, when you dig though the evidence--were obvious targets for overtly transgressing the rigid gender boundaries. But lesbian activity was a motivation for accusations of gender abnormality even when cross-dressing wasn’t involved.

The idea of the hermaphrodite as a person with intermediate or indeterminate physiological sex had a long tradition with many changes over the centuries in how hermaphrodites were understood, defined, and regarded. Homophobia was a regular factor in attitudes toward hermaphrodites due to the problem of defining what constituted “natural” sexual activity for a hermaphrodite.

[Note: The historic concept of the hermaphrodite sometimes focused on physiology and thus corresponds to intersex conditions, but sometimes it focused on gender performance that transgressed heteronormative norms, and thus encompassed homosexual behavior. Because of these shifting definitions, it’s more useful to use the outmoded--and admittedly potentially offensive--term “hermaphrodite” as used in the historic texts under consideration, than to try to substitute a less offensive modern term that would fail to reflect the necessary ambiguity.]

In the early modern period, where “sodomy” had shifted to being used almost exclusively for men, the sexual implications of hermaphroditism had become attached almost exclusively to women, and specifically to the image of the tribade. That attachment went both ways: persons identified as hermaphrodites were assumed to be involved in tribadism, and women who engaged in sex with women were assumed to have hermaphroditic anatomy. Within this conflation, contradictory positions were asserted that female homosexual activity caused hermaphroditic anatomy, but also that hermaphroditic anatomy drove one to desiring homosexual relationships. By this means, women who had sex with women could be classified out of the category of “normal women” thus isolating them as freaks of nature and protecting the category “woman” as being inherently heterosexual.

But there is no clear progression of theory. Both contradictory positions regularly show up in the same texts. At the same time, many of the authors express doubts over whether “hermaphrodite” as a physiological category actually existed at all. (There are regular cases of women who had sex with women being examined to determine if they were hermaphrodites with a negative result, but the lack of the expected physiology never seemed to undermine the theory.) Medical manuals sometimes tried to develop specific metrics for how the “normal” clitoris should appear.

The primary category of texts discussing hermphroditism are medical manuals (or sometimes pseudo-medical literature that was intended more to titillate). Although these can be a useful source of information about lesbian activity in history, the works themselves are generally hostile in tone. Classical sources such as Lucian and Martial contributed to the position that if a woman made love to a woman she was, by definition, imitating a man. These texts also laid the groundwork for the confused causality. (Is a woman called a hermaphrodite because she has sex with women or does she have sex with women because she’s already a hermaphrodite?)

The legal implications of these theories, as well as the law’s role in enforcing gender performance, can be seen in an anecdote reported in the Supplement to the Onania about a person living in Toulouse who was initially described as having a prolapsed vagina that “some pretended...she had abused it that way.” That is, that she had used it to perform penetrative sex. Examining physicians gave their opinion that the organ was actually a true penis and that therefore the person was male, at which the magistrates ordered the person to “go in man’s habit.” Evidently the visual evidence was questionable enough that the subject of this pronouncement began making a living by exhibiting themself as a freak, whereupon contradictory medical opinions asserted that they were a woman after all and the prolapse could be cured. This cure was apparently effective, but “she [was] forced to resume her female dress, to her great regret.”

This anecdote demonstrates many of the confusions and contradictions around the topic. [Unremarked in the commentary is the role of personal gender identity suggested by the phrase “to her great regret”. But transgender readings were not as much a part of the awareness in sexuality research of the ‘90s.] The focus of the anecdote is on the question of correct diagnosis, based not only on anatomy but on desires and behavior. The subject must either be fit into the box of “male” and their behavior presentation required to match their apparent anatomy and desire for women, or they must be fit into the box of “female” and the anatomy treated to conform to expectations (and presumably the sexual desire be suppressed).

A similar case of shifting requirements and definitions imposed on an ambiguous person by the medical, legal, and religious authorities is that of Anne Grandjean in 18th century Grenoble. The teenaged Anne told her confessor that she experienced sexual desire for girls, whereupon her confessor told her that if she desired women she must actually be a man and should dress as one. (This approach follows a metric for hermaphrodites that dates back to Aristotle, where he directed that a hermaphrodite’s gender should be defined based on how they could best be fit into a heteronormative paradigm.) [Note: Anne Grandjean’s example is a good place to consider the difficulties of distinguishing transgender identity from an imposed transgender performance, whether it was imposed by external authorities as in this case, or by the paradigms available in the society for expressing same-sex desire.]

Stories like these are found in English literature in increasing numbers in the late 17th century. The 1678 publication Wonders of the Little World had a chapter entitled “Such Persons as have changed their Sex” detailing 24 cases from classical to contemporary sources. All but one of the 24 cases involved a change from female to male--a direction that was framed as the more logical as it was consider a change from the “less perfect (woman)” to the “more perfect (man)”. Donoghue notes that focusing on female-to-male stories also avoided the anxiety-provoking image of the loss of a penis. [Note: As is often the case, this observation is not discussed in the context of several hormonally-based intersex conditions which can, in fact, result in an assigned-female body developing a penis in adolescence.]

Medical theories on women with a hermaphroditical “penis-analogue” organ shifted from considering the organ to be a prolapsed vagina in the 16-17th centuries, to considering it to be an enlarged clitoris in the 17-18th centuries. Several stories in Wonders of the Little World involved the prolapsing of the vagina during sex and especially in connection with the breaking of the hymen (with both heterosexual and homosexual activity being possible of causing this). But this motif disappears from the literature after the early 18th century.

The clitoral theory appears in parallel earlier, but becomes the predominant model beginning in the late 17th century in texts such as Jane Sharp’s The Midwives Book (1671). This theory focused on the understanding of the clitoris as a source of sexual pleasure and assigned it the ability to become enlarged and erect due to stimulation, moving into hermaphrodite territory if it became large enough to be capable of penetration.

Authors, such as Sinibaldus in his Rare Verities (1687), did not necessarily assert this as a change of sex, even when it offered the possibility of enacting what was considered a man’s role in sex. He notes, “Wherefore heretofore there hath been laws enacted against feminine congression, because it is a thing that happens too common and frequent.” Despite the presence of a penis-analogue, but act is still considered “feminine congression”. But Sinibaldus, like Sharp, considered that lesbian desire was caused by deviant anatomy.

The opposite position--that deviant anatomy was caused by lesbian activity--was a concern of moralists such as the Italian monk Sinistrari, who discussed the definition of female sodomy, concluding that sodomy could only occur between women if there were a clitoris large enough to accomplish penetration. This became a significant preoccupation of the “enlarged clitoris” school of thought. The Onania has several stories (purportedly reported by the women involved) of how excessively engaging in trabadism resulted in permanent enlargement of the clitoris.

[Note: Donoghue mentions that the idea of clitoral penetration lingered “well into the nineteenth century” but the motif showed up being treated as a serious medical observation even as late as the 1960s in David Reuben’s Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex. Doing a fact-check on that item has reminded me of just how awful that book was, and now I need to go bleach my brain.]

Racism was another aspect of “othering” lesbian activity in the early modern period. British writers who wanted to mock lesbianism as decadent would assign it to the Italian or French aristocracy. When they mocked it as a product of gender segregation, they would locate their stories in Turkish baths, Persian harems, or French convents. The normalization of women driven by enlarged clitorises was transposed to India or Africa. (Stories of female genital mutilation were used as “proof” that the women in question must have enlarged genitalia that required removal. But note that one of the stories in the Onania about a woman with an enlarged clitoris in England ended with a claim that she had needed to have it surgically removed. And this is not the only example of female genital mutilation performed as "medical necessity" in early modern Europe.) By this means, the examples of lesbian activity in Britain could be dismissed as isolated eccentricities, not part of a normal range of variation.

With the rise of the enlarged clitoris theory of lesbianism, the term “tribade” became equated with clitoral penetration (in contrast to its earlier implication of simply rubbing the genitals together). But the question of causation was still unresolved. Donoghue quotes a number of different sources that alternate (often within the same text) between considering that lesbian activity resulted in enlargement of the clitoris, or that an enlarged clitoris--stimulated by regular casual rubbing by clothing--resulted in excessive desire (which evidently could only be satisfied by women?). In addition to a number of stories from The Supplement to the Onania, anecdotes are offered from Giles Jacob’s A Treatise of Hermaphrodites (1718). The latter in particular includes a number of detailed near-pornographic stories that suggest the normality of women engaging in sexual relations together with only penetration becoming problematic, although the anecdotes can’t be considered positive in any way.

The “lesbian as hermaphrodite” also appears in literature of the 18th century, as in Anthony Hamilton’s Memoirs of the Count Grammont with its predatory, mannish Mistress Hobart. Mistress Hobart’s desires are treated as fairly harmless by the other court ladies until rumors circulate implying that Hobart was a hermaphrodite with an organ that might be capable not only of penetration but of causing pregnancy.

Hermaphrodite imagery also features in William King’s vicious satire The Toast in which “Myra” (a transparent stand-in for his target, the Duchess of Newburgh) is mocked as a bisexually promiscuous hermaphrodite, surrounded by a train of “tribades and lesbians,” and described in terms of physical monstrosity. Toward the end of the poem, Myra is granted an actual penis by the goddess Venus, to better suit her desires.

Donoghue concludes with one more positive literary take on hermaphroditic imagery in connection with same-sex desire: the poem by Aphra Behn that is the source of the article’s title. Behn praises her subject as being desirable both as woman and as a youth, framing this as a way to excuse desire by a woman for another woman. This turns the hermaphrodite argument around, as gender ambiguity becomes the basis for being desired by both genders, rather than desiring both.

LHMP entry type:

Stand-alone

Donoghue, Emma. 1993. “Imagined More than Women: Lesbians as Hermaphrodites” in Women’s History Review 2:2 199-216.

Publication summary:

A survey of the intersecting concepts of the hermaphrodite and the tribade in 17-18th century British writing.

Project ID number:

202

Introduction:

[The following is duplicated from the associated blog. I'm trying to standardize the organization of associated content.]

This article, written in 1993 (which I will remind readers is 25 years ago) feels rather outdated with regard to both the language and views of the topic. This article was published two years before Donoghue’s masterwork Passions Between Women and no doubt represents some of the contributory research and thought that appears there. But given that the topic would be best considered through multiple lenses--not only a lesbian lens, but a transgender one and and intersex one--it should be considered an introduction to a topic that deserves deeper interrogation. That said, some of the primary sources that create the early modern image of the tribadic hermaphrodite are worth a closer look for those interested in portraying not only views of women who loved women in that era, but the context of ordinary interactions that they were considered to deviate from.

# # #

Event / person:

Onania or the Heinous Sin of Self-Pollution (Balthazar Bekker?)Anne Grandjean Wonders of the Little World (Nathaniel Wanley)Jane Sharp Rare Verities (Richard Head)Ludovico Sinistrari Tractatus de Hermaphroditus or a Treatise of Hermaphrodites (Giles Jacob)Memoirs of the Life of Count de Grammont (Antoine Hamilton)The Toast (William King)To the Fair Clorinda (Aphra Behn)

Blog post:

Excluding Lesbians from Womanhood in 17-18th c England

LHMP #145 2001 Andreadis

Heather Rose Jones — Sun, 11 Jun 2017 17:40:34 +0000

Preface

Early Modern England (16-17th century) was developing a vocabulary and symbology to describe and express intimacy between women and female non-normative sexuality. This was taking place in various genres, including travel narratives, medical texts, and works of marital advice. At the same time, women were developing an evasive coded language to express such desires in their own lives. In this context, Sappho was invoked not only as a symbol of female lyricism, but also to represent and make reference to erotic bonds between women.

England in this era is sparse in documentation of same-sex behaviors between women, in part due to the silence of the law with regard to such activity. So this book focuses primarily on textual representations (both by men and women) and thus necessarily is skewed toward the literate classes. This is an era before the evolution of a clear binary between homosexual and heterosexual identity, though the concept is beginning to emerge in the later part of the 17th century.

The material tends to fall into two approaches, based to some degree on the gender of the author. Female-authored works tend to focus on poetic expressions of emotional intimacy, while male-authored discourse tends to focus on physical sexuality in medical and advice manuals and travelogues. Some of the latter were written by women as well, but there are interesting differences in tone. And beginning in the mid 17th century, we also have female-authored works that are deliberately transgressive sexually. The image of Sappho makes her appearance across all these genres.

Toward the end of the period under study, Andreadis also looks at the court of Queen Anne in the context of an emerging concept of binary sexuality. In that era, the use of accusations or rumors of female homosexuality begins to be used to control or silence women’s erotic expression.

Chapter 1: An Erotics of Unnaming

When it comes to clearly named female same-sex relations, there is a textual history discussing tribadism going back to classical times. But this concept/term always carries a clear sense of sexual transgression and social ostracism. Women in early modern England who experienced same-sex intimacy would not necessarily have seen themselves reflected in this available vocabulary. Nor would they necessarily have considered their desires and the expression of them to be incompatible with socially obligatory things like marriage and children. In this context, they might instead use oblique discursive strategies to express their same-sex desire while evading condemnation.

In this era, individual concepts of identity were determined by external and social attributes rather than by interior self-image and individual subjectivity. Self-identity develops within a communal conversation, and the development of specific identities can be traced within that discussion. If the overt discussion of female same-sex erotics was primarily between men and focused on displacing that concept to “others”, what was available for women to express?

A vocabulary existed for transgressive same-sex activity between women: tribade, fricatrix, rubster, lollepot (17th c. Dutch), Tommy (18th c. English). Use of these words was marked by context and time/place and could convey nuances of approval or disapproval. While vocabulary can define specific behaviors, not all behaviors modernly considered to be sexual would have been so in all times and places--especially if they didn’t correspond to a heterosexual model of sexual activity. The prevalent vocabulary of “rubbing” interacts with the motif (popular in medical literature) of sex between women either being caused by, or causing, an enlarged clitoris. Male writers obsessed over this motif, imagining such organs to be capable of penetrative sex in imitation of heterosexual intercourse. Descriptions of enlarged clitorises were often “othered” into the past or into foreign lands.

Turkey was a very popular locus for English writers to situate female homoerotic behavior. [Note: During the 16-17th centuries, the Ottoman Empire, with its capitol in Istanbul, was at the height of its political power and geographic spread, making it not only more familiar to Europeans, but a clear candidate to stand in for non-Christian foreignness in general.] Nicolas de Nicolay’s Turkish travelogues explicitly connected sexual activity between women in Turkish bath houses with the image of Sappho. Jane Sharp’s midwifery manual was explicit about anatomy and sexual practices between women, but also displaces both the sex and the motif of clitoral penetration to foreign lands. “In the Indies and Egypt [women with enlarged clitorises] are frequent, but I never heard but of one in this country; if there be any, they will do what they can for shame to keep it close.” De Busbecq (1589) was another writer who provided detailed descriptions of sexual activity between women in a Turkish context.

As the 17th century progresses, there is increasing interest in female sexual transgression, especially in foreign contexts, but there is a shift to avoiding explicit naming of behaviors, or reference to specific practices. Examples of this interest includes news reports of “female husbands” (i.e., married couples where one member is living as a man), “hermaphrodites” (ambiguously used to describe women who sexually desired women, women with enlarged clitorises, and possible also intersex persons), and passing women (women living as men, especially in military contexts). These sensational stories often implied, but now rarely named the possibility of sexual activity. Women serving in disguise as soldiers were an exception where their image was often desexualized in order to treat them as models of patriotic heroism.

This retreat from explicit discussion of sexual behavior appears in Lady Montagu’s 1717 descriptions of women’s baths in Turkey. Although she focuses on casual nudity in the baths and discusses the women’s beauty and appreciation thereof she deflects any suspicion of “wanton” or “immodest” activity. This “unnaming” as well as the need to deny the behavior serves the counter purpose of creating an expectation of the possibility.

Roughly in the same era, satiric texts such as the anonymous polemic Satan’s Harvest Home (1749) were more open in claiming that women were engaging in sex together in England (with the implication that it was due to foreign influence). Texts such as this introduce new vocabulary, such as “game of flats”, as well as invoking Sappho as a symbol of sexual activity between women. But even in this context, specific sexual acts are not described. Much more is known in this era regarding men’s same-sex practices and subcultures, not only because men’s activities are more likely to be recorded, but because English law took active notices of them. The various genres of text discussed above show that knowledge of female same-sex possibilities was available, but also that there was anxiety about women’s access to that knowledge. Later editions of texts such as Jane Sharp were bowdlerized for “women’s editions”.

In a context where overt discourse about sex between women was disapproving and oblique, how did those women who didn’t consider their own feelings and actions to be transgressive express those desires? Or, conversely, when women expressed passions for each other in writing, what physical behaviors might have accompanied those desires? There are textual genres that could speak to the question if we could identify examples. Anne Lister’s private diaries (1791-1840) are a clear example of a sexually transgressive woman constructing her own identity and vocabulary in writing, and to a limited extent, in correspondence with other women. Prosecution records might supply evidence [but, in England, tended to be focused on issues of fraud rather than sexuality].

The avoidance of “naming” physical behaviors may have been part of a somewhat conscious strategy by women to avoid condemnation. The behavioral boundaries between friendship, love, and sexuality were not solidly established, but we can examine the social frameworks around “passionate friendship” and see what behaviors they accommodated.

The shift of patriarchal structures from tacit assumption [“this is just they way things are”] to a consciously policed system in the 18th century parallels the emergence of a more modern concept of gender difference and sexuality. The naming of female same-sex eroticism is part of this dismantling of a tacit, unarticulated understanding of sexual behavior. This included distinguishing between friendship and erotic interactions. Sexuality between women could be invisible as long as it did not involve a penis-analo. When named, behaviors such as kissing, touching, manual stimulation, etc. could be categorized as sexual. As long as women didn’t challenge male prerogatives, there was no need to stigmatize what they did together, but as such challenges were articulated, behavior came under scrutiny.

When the language used to describe homoerotic sex acts appeared only in Latin texts, that textual knowledge was available only to an educated elite--primarily male. But as Latin texts began being translated into vernaculars in the mid 16th century, this textual knowledge became accessible to more women. And in parallel to this access, we see the increasing displacement of discourse about female homoeroticism into foreign cultures.

As this discourse became more available, female same-sex relations became a significant theme in 17th century English literature. Earlier, Ovidian motifs such as those in Shakespeare and Lyly were resolved via magical sex-change before the plot approached the enactment of sex between women. But as knowledge of the possibility of such sexual activities comes into focus after the Restoration, women (and men) begin embracing literature with real or feigned transgressive homoerotic acts, as in Manley’s The New Atalantis and Aphra Behn’s poetry.

So the wider dissemination of sexual knowledge in textual sources results in a coherent vocabulary and codification of certain behaviors as transgressive, which in turn produces a clear distinction between texts that name transgressive relations and those that don’t.

One fascinating example of this is medical texts that discuss the treatment of women’s “hysteria” by means of manual stimulation of the genitals (including digital penetration) by doctors or midwives to produce “hysterical paroxysm” (i.e., orgasm). Within a medical context, this was not treated as sexual activity. By “unnaming” such activity, it was framed as non-transgressive.

Overtly transgressive women writers continued to name sexual acts (often obliquely) while “respectable” writers adapted romantic and eroticized heterosexual tropes to describe relations between women that might otherwise be suspect. Poetry written from one woman to another was a vehicle for passionate feelings that went beyond the expectations of friendship, and in some cases there is clear corroborating evidence that the poetic language was not simply conventional and that there was a strong emotional bond between the women. But this literature of passion doesn’t indicate how the authors and the recipients understood themselves, or whether they would have seen any connection between their feelings (and behaviors) and those of “tribades”. Would they, in fact, even have had a name to identify their experiences?

Although it was common for such authors (and their audiences) to make overt assertions that their love was “chaste”, this didn’t necessarily mean anything more than that there were no men and no penetration involved. As with medicalized behaviors described above, within a heterosexist paradigm, behaviors like manual and oral stimulation or other non-penetrative activities could be excluded from the category of “sexual acts”.

The emerging construction of “Romantic Friendship” in the 18th century could be clearly erotic without being considered unacceptably sexual. Such relationships tended to become suspect only if they came in conflict with social expectations, e.g., for marriage. Modern historical studies--especially those that try to establish a continuity of “identity” communities”--often look for modern-style paradigms in people’s lives, rather than trying to identify the contextual self-understanding of historic subjects.

The chapter concludes with a review of various academic studies of pre-1900 “lesbians” that try to evaluate them in terms of modern sexual identities and ideals. On the other end of the scale, studies such as Faderman’s [Surpassing the Love of Men] can strain to avoid acknowledging a corporal erotic component in Romantic Friendship contexts. All of these studies of women’s same-sex behaviors in England are made more difficult by the lack of legal persecution, and so the absence of trial records. [Note: I’m sure that the women in question were happier for this “difficulty”!]

Chapter 2: Representing Sappho: Early Modern Public Discourse

This chapter looks at representations of Sappho as a symbol of female same-sex desire. Andreadis disputes DeJean’s claim that English treatments of Sappho were merely later copies of the French reception. Sappho’s passion for other women was well known to English people of the 16-17th century who had access to Latin. There were three primary representations: Ovid’s mythologized suicidal abandoned (heterosexual) woman; as the earliest example of female poetic prowess (usually presented with a glossing over of the sexual aspects); and as an early example of “unnatural” female sexuality. This chapter reviews examples of each of these. But these three views were not always distinct and specific treatments showed them as interconnected.

The myth of Sappho and Phaon traces back to Ovid but was also inspired by earlier Attic comedies that conflated a myth about Phaon and Aphrodite, substituting Sappho in place of the goddess. Latin commentaries on the Phaon myth continued appearing in the medieval period up through the 15th century and identify Sappho as a “tribade” who had “shameful intimacies” with women who were her “concubines”. The vocabulary leaves no room for doubt that sexual activities were involved.

The first Latin edition of Sappho’s work published in England in 1583 retains enough of this material for clarity. But these same-sex erotics were contrasted with her destructive unrequited heterosexual passion for Phaon. A 1567 English translation of Ovid makes clear that “Lesbian lasses” attracted her desire before she forgot them for Phaon. But a 1636 translation softens the sexual aspects, speaking only of her “love” for women and not emphasizing the “shame” of that love. In this version, the “Lesbian lasses” loved Sappho for her poetry, not erotically.

The Phaon story was mentioned in Thomas Heywood’s Gynaikeion, a collection of moral lessons for women. He presents Sappho as not only failing to win Phaon’s love, but losing the love of her former companions to him--companions with whom she once enjoyed “preposterous and forbidden luxuries” (but nothing more specific) whose loss led to her suicide. In these English editions, the nature of her former life is erased and only her despair over Phaon is blamed for her death. The loss of the cloud of erotic transgression then allows writer to redeem her reputation as a poet, as when the playwright Lyly uses Sappho as an allegory for Queen Elizabeth.

Sappho’s reputation as a poet existed in parallel with the Phaon myth and was revived in the mid 16th century with new published editions of her work, first in France. Full editions were published in English only in the late 17th century (with individual works earlier), by which time the French translations were also available there. Although the two most significant of her surviving works made clear her passion for women, Sappho held a place as the sole (known) ancient model for female poets and writers, and therefore was regularly used as a standard of comparison.

When comparing their contemporaries to Sappho, early modern English writers sometimes felt the need to disclaim Sappho’s “shame”, as in Abraham Cowley’s praise of Katherine Phillips, of whom he notes that her “inward virtue is so bright” compared to Sappho’s more questionable morals. In the 17th century, literary women were regularly compared to Sappho despite this strain of discomfort around her sexual reputation.

Sappho appears regularly as an icon of female same-sex desire. She is mentioned, for example, in medical texts in discussions of tribadism and the function of the clitoris in sexual desire. These texts were primarily in Latin and aimed at an elite male audience. When vernacular versions of these texts began to appear in the early 17th century, they retained the fascination with tribades and the motif of an enlarged clitoris, accompanying the descriptions with strong condemnation. The connection with Sappho is brought in later in the mid 17th century. [Note: the chronology here appears confusing but I'm trying to extract an overview from a more complex presentation in the book.] A few other classical figures were cited as examples of female same-sex transgression, such as Philaenis (mentioned in one of Martial’s epigrams).

The vocabulary of sexual activity between women, such as “tribade” was introduced in English vernacular texts in strongly moralizing and condemnatory contexts. And we see the beginnings of the use of accusations of same-sex desire to control or suppress female intellectuals, as in Ben Jonson’s satirical reference to the court poet Cecelia Bulstrode as a “tribade” who is (homosexually) raping a (female) muse. Male poets played with themes of transgressive female sexuality, as in Thomas Woodward’s imagery in a poem to John Donne of their muses engaging in “tribadry” to inspire a poem between them, or in Donne’s similar image of sex between women as poetic inspiration in “Sappho to Philaenis”.

A search through the various vernacular genres of the 16-17th centuries identifies a burgeoning vocabulary for sex between women. In 1653 we find “confricatrices” and “rubsters”, in 1595 “fricatrice” (though this word seems by 1700 to have broadened into an all-purpose sexual insult, even being used of men), and by the 18th century “tommies”. These slang terms imply friction (rather than penetration) as the focal activity, but male visions of sex between women considered it impossible for friction alone to be capable of providing sexual satisfaction, as in a 1673 poem which implies only penetration is capable of satisfying.

“Respectable” literature shifts to more evasive language in parallel with the rise of this language of sexual transgression in the more explicit genres. The 17th century may have seen the establishment of female homoerotic subcultures in parallel with the better documented male subcultures. The slang terms and a various popular culture reflections of a prurient awareness of female same-sex eroticism are the only solid traces. But the silencing of same-sex erotic sentiments in “respectable” discourse may be another clue.

The 18th century saw the definition of “sex between women” narrowed to a specific set of forbidden behavior which could still be associated with Sappho. The shift in how same-sex affections were treated by women who were not comfortable being associated with transgressive sex may have been a deliberate protective strategy to divert suspicion.

Chapter 3: An Emerging Sapphic Discourse: The Legacy of Katherine Philips

Female literary expression in the 17th century displayed a wide variety of erotic possibilities. Women’s works were addressed to both men and women and used a variety of styles. This chapter looks at those styles used to express female same-sex erotic affection, and how the means of that expression was both commonly known and increasingly circumscribed by deliberate silence.

Katherine Philips is a central figure in examining this phenomenon. Philips’ reputation is based on privately circulated poems addressed to intimate female friends. She established the acceptability of female poets and helped develop “chaste” vocabulary to express clearly erotic feelings toward women. She also wrote more public and conventional works, such as elegies. Though of middle-class birth, her talent and personality brought her into court circles after the Restoration. In her poetic persona of “Orinda”, she was lauded by her male contemporaries. Her legacy was somewhat diminished in the 19th century but she has been reclaimed in the 20th, especially for the eroticism in her work.

Philips’ poetry features a clear emotional focus on other women and an original use of literary conventions. Her work can be situated within a tradition of male friendship poetry with homoerotic overtones. And she is the earliest known example of printed English poetry expressing female same-sex love (as opposed to works recorded only in manuscript). Katherine Philips’ works depict a “society of friendship” and echo earlier conventions of the Cavalier poets and “préciosité”. Another feature is the use of pastoral nicknames. But the emotional vibrancy of her work doesn’t fit the “préciosité” mode of hyperbole and excess. Her early works are private and contemplative, focusing on platonic love poems to female friends. Her later work was more in a public, neo-classical mode, during and after the Restoration.

Her poems expressed a desexualized (with caveats) passionate and erotic version of platonic love. There is emotional eroticism, but not genital reference (hence the “desexualized” label, if sex is equated with genital activity). She uses the rhetoric of heterosexual love as it was imagined in the 17th century. In echoing heterosexual love poetry, she claims the “active” role typically associated with a male suitor. Philips had several very personal romantic associates. Mary Aubrey (dubbed Rosania) was a school friend, who fell from Philips' favor after she married. Philips’ next romantic object was Anne Owen (called Lucasia). Their relationship also became rocky after Anne’s marriage. Philips’ later relationships were with women who served more as patrons than companions.

The chapter continues with an analysis of several poems, examining the erotic imagery and comparing Philips’ work with that of John Donne. There is a consideration of Katherine Philips’ antecedents, whether or not she was aware of the specific works. One prior poem expressive of female homoeroticism appears in the Maitland Quarto manuscript (1586) describing a passionate friendship between two women, invoking famous male friendships as models (as well as iconic relationships between women, such as Ruth and Naomi), and bringing in a wish to change sex in order to marry the beloved. Regardless of the unknown context for this isolated poem, it shows a search for a non-transgressive vocabulary for expressing love between women.

The coded classical language of male passionate friendships in the Renaissance was socially sanctioned and more widely available as a model than the few known surviving female examples. The discourse of relationships between men in the Renaissance distinguished intense friendship and physical sexual enjoyment, but as part of a system whereby true friendship could only exist between equals. Thus true friendship was not considered possible between men and women or between “respectable” men and men of a class considered acceptable as homosexual sex partners. Parallel Renaissance models for female friendships were entirely lacking.

One of the things that shifted, moving into the 17th century, was the rise of the concept of companionate (heterosexual) marriage, reframing heterosexual relationships as an equal partnership, and necessarily elevating women as worthy of friendship. The emergence of acceptance is seen in writing like Kenelm Digby’s descriptions of his wife as being capable of such friendships because she has a “masculine soul”. [Note: Andreadis doesn’t touch on the issue that women didn’t always have the social power to maintain independent friendships, in the say that men did. This may also have contributed to the lack of female models. The literature and correspondence around the Romantic Friendship phenomenon often bewails the social or economic difficulties around maintaining friendships between women.]

There is general agreement that women’s status was determined by marriage--both determined by the married state, and within that by inheriting the status of the husband. Katherine Philips considered that marriage heralded the end of a passionate female bond. Fantasies of female friendships often focused on an imagined Arcadian retreat from “the real world” that would also remove them from the status relationships of urban court life.

Philips herself was married at 16 to a 54-year-old man. Though the marriage was amicable, they were different in taste, politics, and lifestyle. He was a parliamentarian and preferred rural life, she a royalist who preferred the intellectual life of London. They spent much of their time apart. Philips’ poetry never expressed unhappiness at this separation in distance and thought, in great contrast to how she addresses separations from her female friends. She was devastated when her special friends married, and expressed it poetically in terms of apostasy and grief. She reacts like a scorned lover.

Her final known passionate friendship was with a woman addressed by the pastoral pseudonym of “Berenice”, whose identity is not certain but appears to have been a member of the Irish nobility. To Berenice, the language of friendship is tinged with an awareness of class difference and supplication. Katherine Philips died at the age of 31 in London of smallpox.

An examination of the boundaries between friendship and love, and the acceptable and unacceptable expressions of them, were being openly debated at this time in Philips’ circle. The existence of expressions of love that “should be kept at a distance” are mentioned, but never specified. But anxieties of this type emerge in the evocation of Sappho, especially as a comparison for Katherine Philips’ poetry. In calling her “another Sappho”, the possibility of unacceptable eroticism is both raised and refuted by hasty claims that Philips was “more virtuous than Sappho.” [Note: one might call it an early instance of the “no homo” reflex.]

The discussion moves on to two other women writers of the 17th century: Margaret Cavendish and Aphra Behn. They were more willing to tackle female homoeroticism in a transgressive fashion. Cavendish was protected by her rank (Duchess of Newcastle) and Behn by having little social standing to lose and by tackling adventurous topics as part of building her reputation.

One of Cavendish’s key works in this field was The Convent of Pleasure, describing a women-only retreat. It directly tackles the potential for sexual desire between women, though framing it as transgressive. Behn addresses sexuality in a more playful and witty fashion, including (but not exclusively addressing) desire between women. A significant example is her poem “To the Fair Clarinda”. Somewhat later, Delarivier Manley’s The New Atalantis (1709) was a thinly veiled satire on her contemporaries, including discussion of an all-female group “The New Cabal”. The work both makes clear the homoerotic sexual exploits of the group and entirely avoids any description of specific physical acts, invoking the reader’s imagination to fill in the silences. The targets of this satire are Queen Anne and her court, especially her female favorites. Manley could write about these topics because her own moral position was fairly abandoned, but possibly also because she wasn’t depicting her own desires.

Chapter 4: Doubling Discourses in an Erotics of Female Friendship

This chapter looks at the development of a coded, sexually evasive language of erotic female friendship that developed in parallel with an identification of sexual acts between women as transgressive. Andreadis posits that it was the public discourse about sex between women that created the necessary redirection. [I.e., she considers it a form of self-censorship to avoid the need to identify oneself as transgressive, or to deflect one’s thoughts away from transgressive desire.] This was associated with an impulse to create idealized female communities.

Andreadis considers this in the context of the “fundamental uncertainty of the category ‘lesbian’” among researchers seeking to identify both past behaviors and persons as “lesbian”, combined with the erasure of those feelings and behaviors from the historic record. She discuses Adrienne Rich’s “lesbian continuum” versus Stimpson’s focus on sexual desire as the defining characteristic of lesbianism. The focus of historians on specific narrow behaviors parallels the historic use of stigmatized transgressive behaviors to manage women’s experience of desire.

By the mid 17th century, sexual transgression by women is increasingly discussed in two contexts. One is a genre of “expert” texts (medical, travelogue, and to some degree erotica) that was overtly misogynistic and often prurient. The second were allusions by male literary writers and the more unconventional female writers. More conventional women shifted to a vague and self-protective mode. [At this point, Andreadis is repeating many of the points and discussions already covered.] Their work emphasized “virtuous” and “chaste” friendship. Andreadis seems rather certain that “respectable” women did not see any connection between their passionate friendships and women who engaged in transgressive sex, rather than suggesting that their coded language was hiding the similarity. The erotic experiences of these women are then found in the silences when emotions are expressed but not acknowledged as sexual. The common genres for this expression included poems of praise or elegy, works on the topic of friendship, writing about feminine roles, and dedicatory texts.

The Restoration brought sexual permissiveness and social shifts including the potential for women to write professionally. There was a developing importance of the bourgeoisie and the rise of an ideal of domestic life. The chapter continues with a study of several women writers who worked in this tradition, including Anne Killigrew, Anne Finch, and Jane Barker. [Note: I’m trying to skim over the material a bit more, since a great deal of the theoretical analysis has become repetitive.]

Chapter 5: Configurations of Desire: The Turn of the Century at Court

This is largely a summary of what has gone before:

Transgressive women were defined in descriptive texts
This created knowledge and vocabulary about them
Which resulted in the denigration of specific behaviors
Respectable writers then took pains to dissociate themselves form those behaviors
Developing their own different vocabulary of passionate friendship

As examples, Andreadis discusses several treatments of the Calisto myth, showing approaches to female same-sex eroticism as a contrast to descriptions of “chaste” love. There is a discussion of the rumors and gossip about female friendships in Queen Anne’s court, as well as slightly fictionalized examples of transgressive female affection among the court members.

LHMP entry type:

Stand-alone

Andreadis, Harriette. 2001. Sappho in Early Modern England: Female Same-Sex Literary Erotics, 1550-1714. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0226020099

Publication summary:

An examination of diverging treatments of female homoeroticism in English writing in the long 17th century, and of how the image of Sappho was used both in discussing transgressive sexuality and “chaste” passionate friendship.

Project ID number:

145

Introduction:

[The following is duplicated from the associated blog. I'm trying to standardize the organization of associated content.]

Usually when I cover books of the density and length of those I'm doing this month, I break them up into multiple entries to spread out the work of reading and summarizing. But because I wanted to do this "Sappho Special," I'm doing a book a week, and it's being a big grueling (as well as making for some very long blogs). Andreadis is a very dense but readable work, though the theoretical interpretation gets a bit repetitive in later chapters. For this reason, I took more extensive notes in the first few chapters than later ones.

I'm not entirely convinced by her central thesis: that "respectable" women with same-sex inclinations developed a "language of silence" either in order to avoid being associated with (or associating in their own minds) with those sexually transgressive women whose activities were becoming increasingly discussed (if decreasingly described) in popular literature. Phrased in that way, it seems either a bit self-evident (i.e., that people who considered themselves part of "polite society" didn't talk about the details of physical sexuality in public) or perhaps a bit circular (i.e., that women who talked more openly about physical sexuality were those who didn't mind being identified as "transgressive" even if they participated in elevated literary circles).
What is the difference between a Katherine Philips and a Margaret Cavendish? Does it truly represent two separate spheres of thought, or are we sorting historic people into categories based on our own perceptions of what place their work held in society? Are they, instead, individual points on a subtler continuum of approaches to expressing (and experiencing) same-sex eroticism?

# # #

ISBN:

978-0226020099

Blog post:

Finding a Sapphic Voice in Early Modern England

LHMP #127 Hobby 1991 “Katherine Philips: Seventeenth-Century Lesbian Poet”

Heather Rose Jones — Mon, 04 Jul 2016 03:15:31 +0000

Hobby looks at the work of 17th century English poet Katherine Philips, and in particular the subset that expresses sentiments of deep emotional attachment to women that could reasonably be classified as erotic, though never in an overtly sexual manner.

Philips was married at age 15 to a 54-year old widower, and in the subsequent 18 years before her death of smallpox, produced large quantities of poetry, some of which was published during her lifetime. Like many of her contemporary poets, she wrote using a classically inspired “persona” name, Orinda, and addressed poems to friends by similar aliases (especially Anne Owen, who became Lucasia in the poems), which may in part of diffused concerns about the emotional intensity of the content.

Hobby begins with a general historic background of the English restoration era (mid 17th century), focusing on progressive social and religious movements, including ones that supported women’s professional partnerships. These partnerships were often expressed in romantic language. The purpose to this introduction seems to be to establish the normalcy is such emotional expressions in public discourse. This discussion moves on into a consideration of the relationship between non-sexual emotional bonds and erotic desire, when they intersect in conventional literary expressions.

In this, she challenges Lillian Faderman’s interpretation that pre-modern women did not consider their passionate feelings for other women to be sexual in nature and therefore did not act on them. Hobby notes [and I’ll discuss this in more detail when I eventually cover Faderman’s work] that this position erases the shifting nature of perceptions of women’s sexuality in general over time, which certainly does not support a blanket assertion that pre-modern women did not consider anything other than penetrative heterosexual intercourse to be “sexual.” Hobby’s position is that while one cannot assume that the erotic nature of the language used by Philips and her contemporaries is proof that they had sexual relations with each other, neither can one presume that such a possibility is out of the question. Hobby also spends a paragraph challenging Foucault’s position that a concept of “homosexual identity” is a modern invention.

As evidence, she adduces historical cases such as Greta von Mösskirch (16th c Germany), where contemporary commentary runs through several possible explanations for Greta’s erotic desire for women, including physiology, astrology, and bad morals. Also noted is the 17th c. medical treatise by Jane Sharp, which acknowledges erotic practices between women but situates it as a foreign practice.

As the title of this article indicates, Hobby is specifically concerned with identifying Philips’s work as having “lesbian” content. Philips’s contemporaries who published her work took some care to assert her “virtue,” while overtly comparing her to Sappho. While the comparison may have been intended to speak only to Sappho’s reputation as a poet, the two bodies of work share the characteristic of using the structures and tropes of heterosexual love poetry in contexts where both the lover and beloved are unmistakably female. Modern criticism of Philips’s poetry veers between asserting her lesbianism and proclaiming her expressions to be purely Platonic. Each position derives from different framings and omissions of the evidence.

The remainder of the article consists of close readings of several of the most overtly erotic of her poems, including “Orinda to Lucasia” (which could be read either as a love poem, or as a monarchist allegory), “Orinda to Lucasia Parting, October 1661, at London” (a poem commemorating a specific separation from her close friend Anne Owen), “Injuria Amicitiae”, “Friendship’s Mystery” (celebrating the joys of social equals in love), “To my Excellent Lucasia, on our Friendship” (an intense expression of Philips’s experience of their bond).

At least one of the members of Philips’s circle acknowledged the lesbian sensibility of her poetry, in a coded verse contributed as a preface to the 1667 edition of Philips’s work. The myth of Apollo and Daphne is used to imply that the laurels that Apollo took by force to represent poetic excellence (Daphne turned into a laurel tree to escape Apollo’s sexual assault) would be offered freely to Orinda (Philips) and those inspired by her. That is, Daphne rejected Apollo’s sexual advance, but would reward Philips with herself, both body and laurels.

LHMP entry type:

Stand-alone

Hobby, Elaine. 1991. “Katherine Philips: Seventeenth-Century Lesbian Poet” in Hobby, Elaine & Chris White (eds). What Lesbians do in Books. Women’s Press, London.

Project ID number:

127

Introduction:

I rather suspect that Hobby is being deliberately provocative in calling Katherine Philips a "lesbian poet", but it certainly caught my attention to track down when I saw it in a bibligraphy citation.

[Duplicated from the associated blog -- I'm going through to standardize how I organize introductory content.]

One of the questions raised by today's LHMP post is, "What does it meant to identify a poem or a poet as 'lesbian'?" especially in an era with different categories and expectations than our own. I raised a similar question in yesterday's blog about queer characters in historical fiction. When we write a character in a historic setting, we're telling two stories: the story of how that character relates to the past, and the story of how that character relates to present-day readers. When the character and the readers fit into cultural defaults (e.g., straight, white, middle-to-upper class, and usually male) the necessary distinctions between those two stories are not as often challenged as when either character or readers are marginalized. If someone had written a study of Katherine Phillips that presented the passionate expressions in her poetry as nothing more than metaphor, and her relationships with women as simply very close friendships, they would not feel the need to proclaim, "Katherine Phillips, Straight Poet".

# # #

Event / person:

Katherine Philips Greta von Mösskirch Jane Sharp Sappho

Blog post:

What does it mean to identify a work as "lesbian"?

LHMP #120 Lanser 2003 “Queer to Queer: The Sapphic Body as Transgressive Text”

Heather Rose Jones — Sat, 25 Jun 2016 05:12:33 +0000

The paper opens with a consideration of the use of the term “queer” in modern academia, combined with a more literal meaning indicating deviance from the norm. But then it dives into a somewhat unusual use of the word in the diaries of Anne Lister (1791-1840) who appears to use “queer” as a name for female genitalia—a use that doesn’t seem to have a clear origin or parallels.

This brief exploration of historic vocabulary gives way to a more theoretical consideration of how awareness and discussion of female homoeroticism in the18th century traces a shift from an anatomical understanding (i.e., that sex between women derives from physical anomalies, such as an enlarged clitoris) to being viewed as social transgression, where a physically “normal” woman might have homoerotic preferences. This shift is not in the practices and understanding of the women themselves, but in the public discourse use to frame it. But in turn, this discourse created the potential for the development of a self-conscious “Sapphic identity” toward the end of the 18th century.

There is a brief historic survey of beliefs about the nature and causes of female homoeroticism, beginning with Greek and Roman writers and continuing through the 16-17th centuries, including the ways in which the image of the hermaphrodite came to subsume other forms of sexual ambiguity. The hermaphrodite, although representing a fluid and ambiguous gender and sexuality, was constantly assailed by the desire to assign a “true [binary] sex” to individuals so designated. In the context of the 17th century, with increasing negative attention to “female sodomy”, the physiological model of homoeroticism (i.e., that the desire and behavior stemmed from physical abnormality) created a space where hermaphroditism (or its lack) might be used as a defense for accusations of homoerotic behavior. A woman in a sexual relationship with another woman—especially if gender disguise were involved—might claim to have physically turned into a man. Conversely, a woman in such a position might be treated leniently if she could prove to have an unremarkable female anatomy. Curiously, despite the obsession with the defining and causative properties of the enlarged clitoris, the common terminology for homoerotic women as “tribades” and “fricatrices” would appear to emphasize (or at least recognize) non-penetrative erotic activity.

This anatomical fascination/explanation became difficult to sustain over the course of the 18th century, when anatomical research and skepticism made it difficult to continue to associate female homoeroticism with physical masculinity. The was a concurrent shift to notions of behavioral masculinity. Social anxiety over “masculine” women in the 16-17th centuries was rarely associated with homoeroticism, rather with the idea of heterosexually aggressive women. Similarly, the usurpation of masculine social roles and power was not yet associated in the popular mind with homoeroticism. “Masculine” women—whether the subject of the pamphlet Hic Mulier or the cross-dressing Queen Christina of Sweden, or any number of literary amazons—were portrayed or accused of wanton sexual behavior with men, not with women. (Particularly notable in the case of Queen Christina, for whom there is solid evidence of homoerotic desires.) These anxieties, then, had to do with policing gender, not sexuality.

The article explores an early 18th century treatise Tractatus de Hermaphroditus; or, a Treatise of Hermaphrodites which, despite the superficial trappings of science, was clearly prurient in nature (and published in combination with a treatise on erotic flagellation). Despite beginning with the image of an anatomically-driven homoeroticism, the three female “case studies” are diverse in their physical description, ranging from the stereotype of clitoral enlargement that allows for penetrative sex, to a couple who are assigned no physical abnormality but come together out of choice and preference.

As the 18th century progresses, there is a (perhaps unintentional) literary debate between the anatomical and preferential positions. The former side includes the pornographical Onania; or, the Heinous Sin of Self-Pollution (1723), and a number of works that displace the “enlarged clitoris” motif to foreign territories. (E.g., Jane Sharp’s Midwives Book, the anonymous Satan’s Harvest Home, Travels into Turkey.) On the “preferential” side, are texts such as Jane Barker’s “The Unaccountable Wife” (1723) telling of a woman’s devotion to her female servant to the detriment of her marriage, and even an aside in James Parsons’s treatise on Hermaphrodites that suggests homoerotic activity is a practical choice rather than an innate inclination. The displacement of the anatomical model into foreign parts may have been a response to the increasing difficulty of maintaining it in the face of greater medical knowledge.

With this shift came a rise in literary treatments (or fictionalized biographies) where “mannish” behavior became a signifier of homoerotic inclinations, without any reference to, or reliance on, “abnormal” anatomy. The article explores several of these works in depth, specifically The Travels and Adventures of Mademoiselle de Richelieu (1744), Henry Fielding’s The Female Husband (1746), an English translation of Giovanni Bianchi’s Breve Storia della Vita di Catterina Vizzani Romana (1744), the anonymous poem The Sappho-an (1949), and Richardson’s novel Sir Charles Grandison (1753). (I won’t summarize the material here.)

The article suggests the erosion of a previous “innocence” regarding the potential association of masculine dress or behavior with homoeroticism. [Note: I’m not entirely sure I buy this argument, as it seems to selectively erase a large number of 16-17th century cases that combined cross-dressing and sexual relationships between women.] The argument continues that if there is no physiological determiner of homoerotic inclination, then in theory any woman could be a lesbian. This presumption then called for greater scrutiny of behavior in order to identify and exclude sexual deviation. “Odd” (strange, singular, queer) behavior then becomes taken as a marker for homoerotic deviance and is policed accordingly. Within more scandalous literary forms, such as Cleland’s Fanny Hill, this potential for homoeroticism in all women is exploited for entertainment, while being carefully hedged about with assurances that the women involved are properly feminine and will prefer men, given the opportunity.

The article concludes with returning to the language Anne Lister uses to describe her own personality and desires, including “peculiar”, “odd”, and “whimmy” [i.e., whimsical, given to whims]. This claiming of difference mirrors the external view of some women as inherently gender-transgressive in behavior, and this transgression as being implicitly tied to homoerotic inclinations.

LHMP entry type:

Paper

Parent:

Kittredge, Katharine (ed.) 2003. Lewd & Notorious: Female Transgressions in the Eighteenth Century. The University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor. ISBN 0-472-11090-X

Lanser, Susan S. 2003. “Queer to Queer: The Sapphic Body as Transgressive Text” in Kittredge, Katharine (ed.) Lewd & Notorious: Female Transgressions in the Eighteenth Century. The University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor. ISBN 0-472-11090-X

Project ID number:

120

Sub-reference:

Lanser, Susan S. “Queer to Queer: The Sapphic Body as Transgressive Text”

Event / person:

Anne Lister Queen Christina of Sweden Charles/Mary Hamilton The True History and Adventures of Catharine Vizzani / Breve storia della vita di Catterina Vizzani (Giovanni Battista Bianchi)Turkish Letters (Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq)Jane Sharp Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (John Cleland)Hic Mulier The Female Husband (Henry Fielding)The Sappho-an The Travels and Adventures of Mademoiselle de Richelieu (Erskine)The Unaccountable Wife (Jane Barker)Tractatus de Hermaphroditus or a Treatise of Hermaphrodites (Giles Jacob)Onania or the Heinous Sin of Self-Pollution (Balthazar Bekker?)Satan’s Harvest Home The History of Sir Charles Grandison (Samuel Richardson)

ISBN:

0-472-11090-X

Lesbian Historic Motif Project: #69f Traub 2002 - The Renaissance of Lesbianism in Early Modern England (Chapter 5)

Import Admin — Mon, 06 Jun 2016 02:04:06 +0000

The general topic of this chapter is the historic association of the clitoris with transgressive lesbian sex (as opposed to culturally-acceptable same-sex relationships). Traub begins by reviewing Freud's theory that vagina = heterosexual, clitoris = homosexual, and points out that this was not a new concept with him but merely the culmination of a long tradition. To sum up a great deal of material: focus on the clitoris as a penis substitute, and especially the mythologized "enlarged clitoris", along with focus on mechanical penis substitutes, came to define the unacceptable, unnatural, gender-transgressive "masculine" lesbian, in contrast to the "insignificant" femme-femme desire that could be integrated within hetero-patriarchal structures. The association was so strong that it was assumed that any woman perceived to have an enlarged clitoris was presumed to be a tribade and any woman participating in lesbian sex was automatically suspected of having an enlarged clitoris. This was part of an overall distinction between women who appropriated male characteristics (physiological, behavioral, cultural) and were condemned for that reason (whether or not they had sex with women), and women who did not and were considered acceptable (even if they participated in sex with women). A few European examples of this framing are given (e.g., Montaigne's observations in a French town in 1580 regarding a female husband; Ambroise Paré's medical text Microcosmographia (1615)) but the chapter moves on to look at the extensive early modern "travelogue" literature that locates clitoral excess and the presumed associated lesbian activity in exotic cultures, especially in the Islamic world and Africa.

The following texts fall in this category:

Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq (16th c. Flemish ambassador to Turkey) - Discussion of female homoeroticism at the baths, and an anecdote about a cross-dressing female husband.
Ottaviano Bon (1587, Italian ambassador to Turkey) - Anecdote about fears that women of the harem will use cucumbers as sexual aids.
Jean-Baptiste Tavernier (1677, French traveler in Turkey) - Repeats the cucumber anecdote, discusses male and female homosexuality in Turkey.
Nicholas de Nicholay (1585, traveler in Turkey) - Female homoeroticism at the baths, including explicit mention of tribades as a class.
Leo Africanus (1600) - Discusses female fortune-tellers in Fez who use their profession to seduce women, identifies them as Fricatrices (Latin) or Sahacat (Arabic).
Jane Sharp (1671, English medical writer) - Discusses enlarged clitorises and presumes their use to have sexual relations with women, asserts they are "frequent" in the Indies, Egypt, and elsewhere in Africa; notes clitoridectomy as a treatment in Egypt.
Ludovico Sinistrari (1700, Italian) - Discusses definitions of female sodomy, attributes enlarged clitorises to women in Ethiopia and Egypt and discusses various forms of clitoridectomy performed there.

The last part of the chapter considers modern psychological theories of lesbianism and how they relate to these historical models of the morphology-driven tribade and the less definable phenomenon of "acceptable" female homoeroticism. One feature of erasing this previous destination was to pathologize all female homoeroticism, but that was a development after the period covered by this book.

LHMP entry type:

Chapter

Parent:

Traub, Valerie. 2002. The Renaissance of Lesbianism in Early Modern England. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. ISBN 0-521-44885-9

Traub, Valerie. 2002. The Renaissance of Lesbianism in Early Modern England. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. ISBN 0-521-44885-9

Project ID number:

Project ID letter:

Sub-reference:

Chapter 5: The psychomorphology of the clitoris: or, the reemergence of the tribade in English culture

Introduction:

If chapter 4 looked at the “acceptable” (because “insignificant”) side of female homoeroticism, this chapter addresses a major motif in the unacceptable side of the equation.

Event / person:

Turkish Letters (Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq)Jane Sharp Jean-Baptiste Tavernier Leo Africanus Ludovico Sinistrari Nicholas de Nicholay Ottaviano Bon

ISBN:

0-521-44885-9

Lesbian Historic Motif Project: #100b Donoghue 1996 - Passions Between Women (Chapter 1)

Import Admin — Mon, 06 Jun 2016 02:02:33 +0000

Chapter 1: Female Hermaphrodites

The combination of the phallocentric model of sex and a heteronormative model for desire contributed to an early modern fixation and anxiety about physical hermaphroditism. If an apparent woman desired another woman, and particularly if sexual activity were involved, it raised a suspicion of the presence of a penis, or at the very least of an enlarged clitoris capable of penetrative sex. While unfamiliarity with normal variation in the size of genitalia may have inspired some part of this idea, and true intersex individuals may have contributed in some way, the magnitude of this preoccupation can only be understood as representing social anxieties about female sexuality far more than anatomical reality. This model of female same-sex passion served, among other things, to portray lesbians as a physically separate and identifiable class, driven by anatomical destiny rather than desire.

Several Classical texts were available as models for the idea of hermaphorditism: Ovid’s “Iphis and Ianthe”, Martial’s Epigram 91, and Lucian’s fifth courtesan dialogue. (These have been touched on in other entries so they will only be referenced here.) English writers of the 18th century discussed these as ancient texts but also interpreted them in relation to contemporary figures and practices.

Beyond these classical references, most serious mentions of hermaphrodites occur as case histories in “medical” texts (often barely-disguised sensational titillation), of which an index is given here:

Nathaniel Wanley's Wonders of the Little World (1678) was a book of “curiosities” that includes a list of “magical” sex-changes, all but one being female to male. Wanley followed an older classical model that saw the newly-appeared organ as a sort of prolapsed vagina, often appearing due to trauma or violent activity.

Jane Sharp’s The Midwives Book (1671) takes note of women with an enlarged clitoris which is thought to lead to sexual deviance with other women. As is common in literature of this vein, the phenomenon is exoticized, being described as rare in England but common in places such as Asia or Africa. As with many of the other references to foreign examples, female genital mutilation is described as being a response to this enlargement.

Joannes Benedictus Sinibaldus (mid 17th century) translated among others by Richard Head as Rare Verities (1687) described enlarged clitorises as the result rather than the cause of “feminine congression” (sex between women).

The English translation of Nicholas Venette’s sex manual as The Mysteries of Conjugal Love Reveal’d (1707) discusses “unnatural” sexual practices as a warning, as well as the acceptable ones the manual is intended to instruct in. He discusses the use of an enlarged clitoris in “vice” between women (citing “the Lesbian Sappho” as one practitioner), but is ambiguous as to cause and effect. He also lists five types of “hermaphrodites” with a range of variation in genitalia and functionality.

Thomas Gibson’s 1682 anatomy textbook takes as a given the existence of enlarged clitorises and their association with lesbian sex, as does John Marten’s early 18th c. treatise on venereal disease which cites him. The phenomenon is once again displaced into “exotic” locations such as Arabia, Ethiopia, Florida, and Virginia.

Richard Carr’s Medicinal Epistles (1714) notes the story of two nuns, examined due to suspicion, who were determined to have developed enlarged clitorises (presumably due to sexual activity) and were ejected from the convent, after which they took to living as men. But Carr dismisses the notion that size necessarily indicates “wanton practices” as he notes the enlargement may be seen in very young children and may, he asserts, be due to chafing clothing.

Anti-masturbation treatises such as The Onania (1708) saw enlargement both as a consequence of “self-pollution” and then as a means of enabling lesbian activity.

Several publications offer stories of a person originally understood to be a woman who, on official reconsideration of anatomy, was re-classified as male and required to wear masculine clothing. This reclassification may later be reversed with a corresponding required reversal of presentation. But desire as well as anatomy might be the trigger for such reclassification, as in the story of Anne Grandjean of Grenoble who, on confessing her desire for girls, was told by her confessor that she must therefore really be a boy and should dress and act accordingly.

The Onania (an anti-masturbation periodical) included a “letters column” of the true confessions type. Among many rather formulaic examples, there is one purporting to be from a woman who, after having her mind expanded (he says “debauched”) by Martial, Juvenal, and Ovid, began enjoying a sexual relationship with her mother’s chamber maid and as a result developed an enlarged clitoris. Somewhat refreshingly, the persona of the letter seems rather joyful and unashamed of her history and, although she has left off her sexual practices due to the enlargement, is still living in an affectionate relationship with her former lover.

Giles Jacob’s A Treatise of Hermaphrodites (1718) clings to the “anatomy causes desire” model but believes that the well-endowed woman can only give sexual pleasure and not achieve it herself due to the lack of an ability to ejaculate. This last position is countered by several literary examples representing pairs of sexual women who alternate in providing gratification to each other. In the examples above, taking on a masculine social role has been mentioned as something imposed by authorities, but Robert James’ Medicinal Dictionary (1745) gives the example of Henrikje Verschuur of Holland who, impatient with a female social role, crossdresses and enlists as a soldier, later enjoying sexual relationships with several women who apparently were aware of her original sex.

Samuel Tissot’s Onanism (1766) focuses primarily on the evils of mutual sexual stimulation between women, but includes a somewhat unusual note on the emotional side: “Women have been known to love girls with as much fondness as ever did the most passionate of men, and conceive the most poignant jealousy, when they [the girls] were addressed by the male sex upon the score of love.” [Note that the relationship is being portrayed as an older jealous aggressor and a younger object of affection who evidently is receptive to the affections of both men and women.]

Literary texts that include the motif of either physical or metaphoric hermaphroditism include Anthony Hamilton’s Memoirs of the Life of Count Grammont (1713); The Toast (1736) a vicious satirical piece by William King against the Duchess of Newburgh after failing to prevail in a lawsuit against her; and more positively, Aphra Behn’s 1688 poem “To the Fair Clarinda, Who Made Love to Me, Imagined More than Woman”.

LHMP entry type:

Chapter

Parent:

Donoghue, Emma. 1995. Passions Between Women: British Lesbian Culture 1668-1801. Harper Perennial, New York. ISBN 0-06-017261-4

Donoghue, Emma. 1995. Passions Between Women: British Lesbian Culture 1668-1801. Harper Perennial, New York. ISBN 0-06-017261-4

Project ID number:

100

Project ID letter:

Sub-reference:

Chapter 1: Female Hermaphrodites

Introduction:

Donoghue's texts is packed full of references to publications and quotations of relevant material. To a large extent, the best I can do here is to provide an index to the most significant ones.

Event / person:

Anne Grandjean Jane Sharp Dialogues of the Courtesans (Lucian)Metamorphoses: Iphis and Ianthe (Ovid)Memoirs of the Life of Count de Grammont (Antoine Hamilton)To the Fair Clorinda (Aphra Behn)Tractatus de Hermaphroditus or a Treatise of Hermaphrodites (Giles Jacob)Onania or the Heinous Sin of Self-Pollution (Balthazar Bekker?)Wonders of the Little World (Nathaniel Wanley)Rare Verities (Richard Head)The Mysteries of Conjugal Love Reveal’d (Nicholas Venette)Thomas Gibson Medicinal Epistles (Richard Carr)Henrikje Verschuur Medicinal Dictionary (Robert James)Onanism (Samuel Tissot)The Toast (William King)

ISBN:

0-06-092680-5