This chapter looks at how female suffragist couples commemorated their shared lives (or had them commemorated by friends) after death. Loves that women might not have felt safe expressing during their lifetimes might find an acceptable expression in the context of mourning rituals, such as memorial poetry, shared graves, or the erection of funerary monuments with dedications mentioning both parties. Fellow suffragists might support such mourning in a context where society did not recognize that there was a relationship to mourn.
female co-habitation
Sharing a household is not a pre-condition for participation a close same-sex romantic or erotic relationship, but cultures which normalized co-habitation by unrelated women created a context where such relationships could be more easily accommodated.
LHMP entry
This chapter looks at a variety of ways that women associated with the suffrage movement “performed queerness” in public. Obviously, not all suffragists took part in the following, but those who did helped create the image of the transgressive “unfeminine” suffragist. The following is something of a catalog of these transgressive activities, which the book describes in connection with specific women who embodied them:
This chapter expands on the previous. While chapter 2 focused on individual romantic/domestic relationships, this one looks at larger non-traditional households that might include couples (or not) as well as un-coupled women. The focus is on mutually supportive arrangements, not simply people sharing an address. These chosen families (to use a modern term) provided emotional, financial, and medical support for each other, as well as mentorship for younger suffragists. They might include biological or adopted children of the members.
This chapter looks at the personal lives of some prominent suffragists. It was not uncommon for such women to have been married to men at some point, and they might leverage their status as a widow to deflect concern about domestic partnerships with women. These arrangements disrupted heterosexual norms regardless of whether the women involved considered them to represent a specific “identity.”
This chapter once again shows a certain incoherence of narrative, in that Sarah Scott had close connections with two women named Montagu: her sister Elizabeth Robinson Montagu (discussed in chapter 6, the founder of the Bluestocking Society) and lady Barbara Montagu from a completely unrelated family. Rizzo’s tendency to refer to Elizabeth Montagu simply as “Montagu” during the early part of the chapter is extremely confusing, as Barbara Montagu doesn’t enter the story until somewhat later.
This chapter, though just as packed with the confusion of life details as the previous ones, provides a much clearer picture of a particular configuration of companionship. The two women in the relationship were both from the comfortable middle class, but each with disadvantages to be overcome, and each had a certain amount of good fortune--or at least a good outcome that left them quite happy and comfortable. I’m going to take each of their stories separately at first and then blend them together.
This chapter provides a somewhat more coherent theme with regard to companionship, and it presents an entirely positive model. It contrasts the lives of Frances Greville, the wife of Fulke Greville who has been mentioned previously, and Georgianna Spencer. But I must clear up the identity of this Georgiana because I spent half the chapter being confused. This is Georgiana married-name-Spencer, who is the mother of the Georgiana Spencer who married William Cavendish and thereby became the unhappy Duchess of Devonshire.
This chapter feels a bit incoherent, as if Rizzo is simply trying to put together biographies of minor 18th century personalities who happen to have left significant correspondence, which can be forced into a narrative by means of random excerpts.
This chapter looks at a fairly complicated relationship between two women, one a courtesan, and one fulfilling the role of companion, along with also being her manager, her pimp, and her lover.
While the previous chapter looked at examples of women conspiring together against the man in the household, this chapter looks at cases where a female companion enters the household to conspire with the husband against her mistress. Three of the examples are biographical and one fictional.
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