In the interests of continuing to add value to the Lesbian Historic Motif Project, I've put together an index of all the author interviews from the podcast. Have I interviewed your favorite sapphic historical author? Check them out!
This is an index of all the people who have been interviewed on the Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast. This includes both interview episodes and shorter interview segments as part of the On the Shelf episodes. This index is manually updated.
Clutterbuck-Cook, Anna
Ferreira, Jeannelle M. (5/12/18)
Lundoff, Catherine
Vandenburg, Margaret (2024/12/15)
(Originally aired 2023/04/29 - listen here)
Our fiction episode for this quarter features returning guests—not only a returning author, Catherine Lundoff, but the return of her 17th century spy and pirate duo, Celeste Girard and Jacquotte Delahaye. This is the fourth story of Celeste and Jacquotte that we’ve hosted on the Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast, which is a reminder of just how long this fiction series has been running.
Catherine Lundoff has worked her way through many roles: archaeologist, bookstore owner, author, publisher, and IT professional. As the founder and head of Queen of Swords Press, she publishes—as the website describes it—"swashbuckling tales of derring-do, bold new adventures in time and space, mysterious stories of the occult and arcane, and fantastical tales of people and lands far and near.” Or, as she sometimes puts it, “Stories that feel like Queen of Swords books.”
Her own fiction covers a whole gamut from historicals to fantasy to science fiction to erotica to horror, including a series of soon-to-be-three novels about menopausal werewolves: Silver Moon, Blood Moon, and a forthcoming title yet to be announced.
Catherine lives in Minnesota with her wife who is a bookbinder and artist, as well as with the cats that own them. The best one-stop-shop to find Catherine online is probably queenofswordspress.com, which gives you the opportunity to pick up some books while you’re at it. (I should add the truth-in-advertising disclaimer that this includes my own novella “The Language of Roses” which Queen of Swords published.)
The narrator for today’s story is yours truly. I love the chance to do some of the story narration for our fiction series, especially for stories falling in one of my favorite historical periods.
This recording is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License. You may share it in the full original form but you may not sell it, you may not transcribe it, and you may not adapt it.
“The Pirate in the Mirror”
by Catherine Lundoff
Celeste Adele Girard glanced up from the letter she was reading, her gaze moving automatically past the slow-moving waves that rocked The Lioness on a leisurely path through the Caribbean to the small huddle of pirates at the rail. Jacquotte Delahaye, their captain, was peering at something on the water through her spyglass and swearing loudly. That alone was not enough to distract Celeste. Jacquotte swore often and heartily and her men often gathered around her when they thought a fat merchant, or that greatest of gifts from the gods of the sea, a lightly guarded Spanish galleon, might be in sight.
It was not so much that the crew looked worried that captured Celeste’s attention at that moment. No, it was the flash of sunlight on Jacquotte’s red tresses, one that followed a thread of bright silver, that caught Celeste’s eye. It trapped her feelings in a net to realize that this life they led could not last forever and her heart ached at thought of giving up this wild freedom. And even more at the thought of trying again to convince the pirate captain that they must plan for a retirement that might come sooner than later.
But that was not the stuff of either her letter or of the crew’s concerns and she shook her worries about the future off with an effort. She walked across the swaying deck to the group around Jacquotte. The letter had taken two months to arrive, it could take a bit longer to address. She tucked it away in the pouch at her belt. “What is it?”
Jacquotte did not lower the spyglass, but Harcourt, the first mate, gave Celeste a worried look. “There is a ship pursuing us, Mademoiselle. The Captain believes that it may be one of Captain De Graaf’s fleet. Tigress is the one that his lover Anne Dieu le Veut, late of Tortuga, usually commands.”
Celeste’s blonde eyebrows rose. “Are we not all ‘late of Tortuga’? I thought all the pirates had been driven out. Is there something to fear from this Anne ‘God-Wills-It’ that we should be peering at her ship and swearing about it? I have never heard you speak of her before.”
Jacquotte’s thin lips twisted up in something like a smile, but wasn’t, not quite and her gaze suggested her thoughts were elsewhere. “If she is here, she has no great love for me. And De Graaf is likely to be not far behind. He would never let her ship sail so far out unescorted.” She handed the spyglass off to Harcourt and took Celeste’s arm. “Walk with me, my dear.”
Celeste simpered like a court lady and fluttered an imaginary fan in a futile effort to make Jacquotte laugh, but she dropped all pretense at joking once they were out of earshot of the crew. “What are we to do? Is she truly that dangerous?” She murmured the question softly, brushing some dirt off Jacquotte’s jacket collar as if they spoke of nothing significant.
“Alone, we should be able to outrun her. But it would be a near thing with so little wind. Our best hope,” Jacquotte frowned at the horizon, “is that this is pure chance and she does not recognize the ship.” She glanced down and gave Celeste a long thoughtful look, ice-blue eyes glinting in the later afternoon sun. “I could put you in a boat with a couple of strong men, send you off to Maracaibo. I’m told there is a representative from the King in port; you could ask for sanctuary.”
Celeste blinked in shock. Jacquotte had never proposed sending her off ship to safety before and she herself had never asked, always supposing the pirate’s strong arm and sword enough to protect both of them at sea.
And then there were her own wits to serve in any situation that didn’t involve an actual battle. Well, where are those wits now? She schooled her features into a blank expression. Her brain whirled, contemplating, then rejecting several schemes in quick succession. A rope snapped in the wind and she glanced upward.
Jacquotte followed her gaze to the Dutch flag flapping gently in the breeze, hung in lieu of her own fiercer flag to lure in merchant prey. “I’m not sure that being taken as a merchantman is an improvement. We’ll be just as dead if her crew decides to capture us.” She glanced back down. “So perhaps you are thinking of something else? What plot is spinning in your pretty head, my little spy?”
Celeste narrowed her eyes against the glare of the setting sun, wrinkles for once, far from her mind. “I think there is no moon tonight?”
The pirate gave the horizon and the ship that followed them a considering glance. “We might be able to pile on enough sail to outrun them until nightfall. If we went quiet and dark and avoided the reefs, we might be able to evade them until I can find a good harbor to hide in.” Jacquotte’s eyes went cold and storm-gray. “Or run them aground in the dark.”
Her lover tilted her blonde head back and gave her a narrow-eyed stare. “You know her well. What is this about?”
Jacquotte grimaced. “Later. I swear it,” she added, watching Celeste’s expression shift. “Escape first.”
“Indeed. Then we must begin at once. I know so little of your past, I would not wish to miss an offered morsel.” Celeste smiled slightly and went aft to talk to the other pirates to persuade them to do as she asked with a pretty word or two.
Jacquotte watched them gather a pile of expendable items to throw overboard to lighten the ship. She turned to the sails and the helm, barking orders to put on more of the latter and shift the former into the starboard to pick up more of the wind. Pirates tumbled on to the deck from all directions, tossing things overboard, clearing the decks, climbing the rigging.
It made Jacquotte’s heart sing a little to see it. Her crew. Her ship. And she would yield neither to Anne or De Graaf. She went to consult with her helmsman.
The Tigress was getting closer. Celeste didn’t need a spyglass of her own to see that. Not within cannon range, fortunately, but gaining in a way that suggested that a pirate captain had noticed prey and was giving chase. Celeste swore softly under her breath and glanced at the quarter deck and watched Jacquotte for a moment.
The captain was tense, angry in a way that Celeste had not seen her before other battles, other pursuits. She thought this chase was personal. Celeste felt a tiny flash of jealousy that made her grimace. For the first time, another woman was the focus of Jacquotte’s attention when she was only steps away. But more than anything, her spy’s brain whirled with questions about what had happened, what had pulled these two together and then, even further apart?
She could think of only a few things that spoke to the hearts of the pirates that she knew: love, revenge, or profit. Celeste tapped her chin thoughtfully. More importantly, what would dissuade an ardent pursuer motivated by all or some of those passions?
In a moment, she was moving swiftly across the deck toward Jacquotte where she stood talking to several members of the crew on the quarterdeck. Celeste asked softly, “May I borrow the captain for a brief conference?”
They looked for a moment as if they might object, but with a certain amount of grumbling, returned to other duties and left them to talk. “Why would Anne Dieu-Le-Veut pursue you at all? No, I don’t want to hear that you will tell me later. I want to know what drives her. We will need other plans if outrunning them in the dark fails.” Celeste crossed her arms and watched Jacquotte’s gaze shift down to her bosom. She bit back a small smile; going corsetless in a lad’s garb had its uses.
But this was hardly the time to be provoking that reaction in her pirate. “You do want me to help, correct? Not just hop in a row boat and go off to safety with crew that you will need if this ship is boarded?” She raised an eyebrow and dropped her arms, stepping up so that her golden-brown eyes met Jacquotte’s.
The pirate gave a wry grin. “For the shortest part: treasure and betrayal. I sailed with De Graaf for a time, years before I met you. I found Anne in Port Royal trying to figure out how to turn whore when she ran out of money after her fiancé turned out to be less appealing than his letters. I liked her spirit so I brought her aboard. We were wild and young and blood-thirsty and even then, Anne stood out. She was beautiful, fierce…and treacherous. We shared ships, crews, captured spoils, and more. I thought of her as the new family I had found here in this strange new world.”
Jacquotte paused and looked away. The sails strained in a newfound breeze and they could all feel The Lioness leap up over the waves with a will. The hands gave a small cheer while Jacquotte turned back to Celeste. “For a time, I fancied myself in love with her.” Here her face tightened. “Until we took the Santa Teresa. So much Spanish gold, chérie, you can scarcely imagine…”
Celeste shifted impatiently. “I can imagine quite a lot of gold. I take it they betrayed you?”
Jacquotte nodded. “They murdered most of my crew and would have done for me as well, but they thought I had drowned and De Graaf and Anne sailed away with the gold. By the time I floated to land and recovered enough to get a new ship of my own, they had a whole fleet and there was little I could do to avenge myself or the others.”
Celeste frowned. “Until now. You don’t want to run. You want to fight. But why does she follow you?”
“She’s hated me for surviving, for being respected in a way that she is not. Also, perhaps, a small issue with me seizing her former ship and marooning her and her crew some four years back. I imagine that she plans to finish what they failed to do before.” Jacquotte grimaced. “Yes, I want to fight. But this is not the ship to take on the Tigress. For that we need all my ships, especially if he comes to save her.”
Celeste glanced toward the cage where the messenger doves were kept. One was missing. The ship rocked starboard, clearly changing course. “You’ve already sent the bird. Is there another plan that you’re not sharing with me?” Celeste frowned.
Jacquotte bit back a smile, knowing how much she hated to be left in the dark. They could not run forever, even if they lost Anne and her crew tonight. De Graaf might be anywhere nearby with more ships. And they were not the only foes Jacquotte had in these waters.
“I need to plan for something that will bring this pursuit to an end, once and for all, leaving us alive at the end of it.”
“And, perhaps, achieve some level of revenge?” Celeste gave her an
appraising look.
Jacquotte gave a rare, sudden grin. “Perhaps.”
Celeste tumbled into bed next to Jacquotte well after sunset, hands raw from the ropes. The sliver of new moon was on its up and the wind with it and The Lioness was still making good speed, at least for the moment. The closer they got to the reefs near Hispaniola, the slower they would need to move and the greater the chance that the Tigress would finally catch them.
Or they would get where they were going, wherever that was. Jacquotte was keeping mum about their specific destination but Celeste had her suspicions. In any case, she was too tired to ask, so she wrapped her arms and one leg around her pirate and sank into a deep slumber.
In the end, it wasn’t the sound of guns or the scrape of rocks against the hull that woke her. It was still dark and The Lioness was motionless, barely creaking in the waves. Noises from elsewhere in the room told her that Jacquotte was already getting dressed so she rolled over and lit the candle. “What is happening?” she murmured as she rubbed sleep from her eyes. “Where are we?”
Jacquotte gave her a cheerful, bloodthirsty grin. “We’re in a defensible spot in familiar waters and closer to my ships than we were. So now we wait. If they are foolish enough to chase us into the harbor, the rocks will tear the bottom from them while we rake them with all the shot we have. If they wait outside thinking to trap us, there will be four to one odds some hours hence.”
“And what of De Graaf’s ships? What if they come too?” Celeste rolled out of bed and began to put her lad’s clothes on again. They were much better for fighting than skirts, if fighting there was to be. She sincerely hoped it didn’t come to that. Spywork had its own perils, but getting skewered on a cutlass or smashed to pieces by grapeshot were not usually among them. She shuddered as she dressed and tucked her weapons into her belt.
Jacquotte was already out the door bellowing orders. The bosun handed her a cup of ale and some salt fish as she emerged on the deck, not sure what she was going to see. Behind the ship was a wall of greenery that stretched up the tall hill behind them. Celeste could hear creatures moving in the jungle that seemed so close that she could reach and touch the vines. She gnawed on her fish and sighed. Perhaps Jacquotte could be persuaded to visit Paris again after this.
The seaward view was not prepossessing. The waves dashed hard against sharp rocks lining the edge of the harbor and for a moment, Celeste could not imagine how they had sailed into it unscathed. But beyond that thin shield, was a ship twice the size of theirs, based on what the crew had to say, so she was grateful for what protection it provided.
“Of course, that’s not the only reason that we’re here.” Jacquotte had a faraway gleam in her eye. “The Santa Teresa’s gold is supposed to be buried on this island.”
Celeste took a startled breath. “And you know where?”
“An old man sold me a tale in Tortuga before we left. He may have been too far gone in drink to be reliable, but we’ll see what we can find.”
“What if Anne simply blockades us in and fires on us from there?” Celeste gestured at the rocky harbor opening.
“You worry too much, my love. We will fire back. Now, would you like to help me go look for a shiny golden distraction?” Jacquotte’s grin gleamed in the fading light. “We’ll have to go ashore in the dark since we don’t, as you point out, have much time before we’ll be in a battle of one kind or another. She’s bound to send her men ashore too.” She snapped her fingers at a pirate who started to light a torch and he blew out the flame with a muttered curse.
Celeste realized that the pirates didn’t want to make themselves an easy target. Which meant that she was about to clamber into a longboat and go ashore in the dark to stumble around the jungle with Jacquotte and her crew. She closed her eyes and thought of piles of gold. And Jacquotte’s joy when she triumphed over her enemies. She gave a hearty sigh, tucked her hair up under her hat and made ready.
In the end, it was just Jacquotte, Celeste and twelve of the more trustworthy pirates who went ashore. Harcourt and the others stayed aboard to watch for Anne, ready to fire the moment a boat was spotted in range. In the meantime, even the metal that gleamed in the moonlight was covered so as not to be a target and not a candle shone where it could be seen from harbor’s mouth.
Jacquotte closed her eyes, shutting out the boat and the rapidly approaching shore for a moment. It was just as well that none of her companions could see her face right now. She wasn’t bluffing about what the old man had told her, at least not entirely. But even if they found De Graaf’s hidden cache in the dark after fighting their way through the jungle and whoever Anne might send ashore, there might be nothing left.
The old pirate who had told her about it was far gone with drink and the pox. He had wanted his own revenge on De Graaf and his crew for their past sins and saw Jacquotte as a means to that end. Well, she’d do the old lad proud if she could. Avenging herself and the others on De Graaf and Anne had been long delayed and it dizzied her to see it within reach.
An idea half-formed, then blew away as the wind picked up and the boat scraped against the shore. She jumped out and walked the last couple yards to the shore, leaving her crew to haul the boat up and secure it. The dark mass of trees ahead of them was relatively quiet, apart from the occasional bird call. The day’s heat was fading, but it was still warm and there was a whiff of rain in the air.
Jacquotte looked around and oriented herself, letting her memories of what the old pirate had told her tumble into place before she beckoned to Celeste and the others. “That rock, the one up there between the two larger ones. That’s where we’re headed. Ready, my love? Good. Stay close.” She led them along the edge of the trees, hunting for the traces of an old trail that might still be there.
But if it was, they couldn’t find it. Two of the pirates stepped forward with long knives and began to hack a path through the lush forest growth. Ducking and weaving under vines and around trees, they made their way upwards in the dark. It felt like hours before they stopped to catch their breath and rest just below the top.
Something caught Jacquotte’s eye and quickly resolved into the gleam of moonlight on metal from behind a rock above them. Celeste must have seen it at the same time and threw herself at her back, knocking her over and rolling her into some prickly short trees and the shelter of darkness. The pirates scattered as a shot split the quiet of the night. More followed and Jacquotte drew her own pistol, trying to see a target in the dark.
She shoved Celeste away and pointed to a clump of rocks downhill, trying to get her to a safer spot. A woman’s voice rang out from above them, “Red! Come out before I hunt you and your boys down. If you surrender now, I might not kill you all.” Her voice was cold, distant and familiar. There was nothing in her tone that suggested that she wasn’t serious.
Jacquotte heard Celeste hiss softly between her teeth and utter a soft oath. She grimaced to herself in the dark. Of course, having one plan fail didn’t mean her next one would. Celeste was going to be very angry when she learned that there was a plan that she didn’t know about. Jacquotte looked forward to the argument almost as much as its aftermath.
Putting her fingers to her lips, she gave a sharp, shrill whistle that echoed through the woods around them as the guns of Anne’s men fell silent. It was an eerie sound, like a banshee’s call in the night and Jacquotte gasped a little when she finally stopped.
Then she jumped to her feet, running toward the sound of crashing branches and shouting men. Through it all, one woman’s voice could be heard yelling orders and cursing. Jacquotte followed that sound, pulling her pistol from her belt with one hand and her long knife from its sheath with the other. There would be bloody work tonight.
Celeste stared after her lover for a few seconds, her mouth dropping open. She’d suspected a trap and had a plan for that all along. But didn’t tell her. Celeste’s eyes narrowed as she, too, scrambled to her feet. If they survived the night, she was going to have a few words with a certain pirate captain.
She darted behind a tree as a huge pirate came crashing through the dark clearing where they’d been hiding. Was he one of Jacquotte’s men or one of Anne’s? It was hard to tell in the dark and now that the shooting had begun in earnest, the air was filling with smoke.
Someone charged into the clearing and there was a clash of blades, followed by a whispered, “What found we at Arnold’s Knoll?”
“Gold and blood,” the other answered and laughed softly. “Come on. The Captain said she’d pay a sack of gold for whoever brought her that redhaired bitch’s head. Let’s go find her and claim our prize.” They lumbered back out into the trees and rocks.
Celeste bit her lip and looked around. She could follow them, but barring ill-luck, Jacquotte could avoid or kill oafs as clumsy as those. But how many of them did Anne have? And how had a simple tale of betrayal and gold lust turned into a quest for Jacquotte’s head? There was much that she hadn’t been told about tonight’s doings, but there would be time enough to deal with that later.
She moved in the direction that Jacquotte had gone, listening for the sound of her voice. Or her blade, which seemed more likely. Smoke filled the trees and men ran to and fro, the sound of steel clashing amid the crack of bullets. This was a veritable pitched battle and for a long moment, Celeste thought about fleeing back to the shore and the boat. She was an adequate shot and a decent swordswoman, but neither would be enough to protect her in this chaos.
A huge hand shot out of the mist and grabbed her shoulder with a bellow. She kicked out hard, aiming for his knees, then slammed her elbow up into his jaw, just like Jacquotte had taught her. He howled in pain, but didn’t let her go until she kicked him again. Heart racing, she twisted, striking out and pulling the knife from her belt in one motion. With a yell, she slashed out, only to have her opponent drop like a stone.
Celeste squinted at her blade in astonishment. There wasn’t that much blood on it, was there? A motion caught her eye and she dropped into a defensive stance for the attack that was sure to come. A long-jawed, pale face topped with black hair bound in a scarf above burning dark brown eyes stared at her across the pirate’s body. “Come with me if you want to see the dawn.” The woman’s voice was raspy, commanding…familiar. Celeste hesitated and a bullet blew past her, embedding itself in a nearby tree. Her rescuer turned and vanished into the smoky darkness and Celeste followed a moment later.
The path ahead was a blur of men running and blades clashing right up to the moment that her escort came to an abrupt halt. “Here now, pretty. Where would you be taking my lady?” Jacquotte’s voice had a dangerous singsong croon to it that Celeste had only heard before when she was far gone in the heat of battle and she shivered.
Anne hissed softly, Jacquotte’s blade at her throat—she’d gotten a cutlass from somewhere, Celeste noted dispassionately—and Jacquotte’s pistol at her head. “I can call them off,” she began, her voice barely audible where Celeste stood.
Jacquotte laughed. “There’s my Annie! Always one to think you could stop the wind, once it started blowing. I couldn’t stop my own men now. They’ll fight until there’s a winner or there’s gold. Speaking of which, it’s time you told me where the treasure is.”
Celeste stepped closer and gasped at the sight of the two of them standing face to face in the moonlight. She blinked and the resemblance that had suggested they could be sisters settled into two hard-faced women, glaring at each other over drawn weapons while a battle raged around them. Celeste took the pistol from Anne’s hand and checked to make sure that was ready to fire.
“And don’t think to lead me on a merry chase in hopes that De Graaf will turn up. He’s as likely to be drinking and whoring in Maracaibo as he is to remember your grudges and where you’ve taken one of his ships. Tell me what I want to know or I’ll put you in our hold and leave you there until he sobers up enough to ransom you. Do you care to wager on that?”
“You could just shoot her.” Celeste murmured, suiting her actions to her words and firing at a pirate who was running toward them with a fearsome grimace. When she looked back at the women, they were both watching her, Jacquotte amused and Anne calculating.
“Yes, Red, you could just do that. But you want that gold more than you want my blood.” Anne gave Jacquotte a feral grin. “Come on then. Up the hill and I’ll show you where we buried it.” They turned and began walking.
So easy…Celeste bit back the thought before it crossed her lips. There was a game being played here, one that began on the sea and that might not end here. She knew that she could wait where she was to see what transpired. But her curiosity would never allow it. With a sigh, she scrambled after them.
Jacquotte stifled a flash of murderous rage. Betrayal, murder, theft and yet, somehow, the only person not to blame for that was Anne herself. Her litany of blamelessness was a low hum that got louder as they got further from the battle behind them.
“If you don’t stop whining, I’ll take your ear off,” she growled as Anne stumbled to a halt on a flat rock ledge. “Now, unless you chiseled into the stone itself, I don’t think this is the place.”
Jacquotte watched as Celeste walked cautiously past them to examine the stone wall in front of them. It appeared to be solid rock until she pulled back some of the shrubs and revealed a dark hole in the stone. A cave entrance, it had to be. Her heart raced and she reined in her imagination from picturing what that much gold could buy them. Far too soon for that.
“I think I found something.” Celeste leaned over, then slipped down into the dark space with a cry. Jacquotte winced but she looked back at them from the cave mouth a moment later as Anne laughed mockingly. Celeste’s eyes widened, visible even in the dim light. “Get down, Jacquotte!’
Jacquotte didn’t hesitate, throwing Anne to the ground and landing on top of her. The other pirate twisted hard and broke free just as a cannonball smashed into the rocks above their heads. Anne laughed again, the sound wild and echoing, as she scrambled to her feet, kicking away Jacquotte’s grasping hands as she ran to the edge of the cliff and the trail down.
Jacquotte cursed loudly and crawled over to the dark hole where Celeste had vanished. From below, she could hear a soft murmur of: “No snakes, please God. No snakes.” wafting up from below despite the noise and chaos around her.
“Can you reach my hand, chérie? Reach up and I will pull you out.”
“I think I’m better off down here.” Another cannonball whistling by overhead drowned out her next words. Celeste shouted up a moment later, “Come down here! It’s safer and likely to be more profitable.”
At the word “profitable,” Jacquotte slid into the opening, bracing herself for a sharp drop into the darkness below. “I’m coming down!” To her surprise, it was only a few feet.
She blinked until she could see Celeste outlined in the moonlight. “What have you found?’
“Not what you hoped, but enough to be useful, I think.” She guided Jacquotte to a couple of small chests tucked against a rock wall, well out of sight if one was looking down into the cave. As the noise escalated outside, she shot at the lock with the spare pistol that she pulled from Jacquotte’s belt.
The chest fell apart with a clang, spilling a few bags of coins, some jewelry and other valuables. Jacquotte grinned. “Not the full treasure by any means, but enough to buy us all a few comforts for our old age.” She glanced up. “Those of us who last that long.”
“I have an idea.” Celeste grabbed a bag of coins and scrambled back to the cave entrance. Jacquotte gave her a leg up and she stood up on the ledge with a mighty yell, “This bag of gold to the man who captures Captain Anne Dieu le Veut alive before Captain De Graaf blows us to bits! She is our ticket off this island if you stop her!”
The men on the mountain below bayed like a hunting pack. Celeste grabbed Jacquotte’s arm and tugged her up and out of the cave, and they ran off the ledge together. They darted down the slope in a wild rush, tumbling out into a sea of men and smoke and the occasional body, all yelling over the cannon fire, many of them still fighting each other, others looking wildly for Anne. Jacquotte grabbed a few of them and led them down the slope, heading towards the harbor, Celeste at her side.
Three days later, The Lioness sailed out of the harbor and they watched the Tigress make for the open sea. Celeste and Jacquotte watched her sail off, the latter with a distant thoughtful look on her face. “She’s not half the pirate that you are.” Celeste said finally, giving her a nudge with her shoulder as they leaned on the rail.
“I’m not half the pirate captain I was,” Jacquotte grimaced. “We’re fifteen men down, between the dead and wounded, and the rest barely fit to sail. If it wasn’t for my other ships, we’d be in irons in Anne’s hold. To have two plans fail is hardly a thing to be proud of.” She sighed heavily. “I don’t think there’s enough of the gold left to buy me a governorship like Sir Henry, but perhaps a small estate? We could settle down, raise sheep and chickens.”
Celeste laughed. “What did we know about sheep and chickens? An inn on the coast, gossip and news, smuggling on the side, some spywork when we feel like it—that’s the life for us. But not before we’re done with this one. She’ll be back, especially since we have the treasure now, and we’ll need a plan to deal with her then.”
Jacquotte squinted at the horizon, then glanced at her. “For now, let’s go home. I want to hear more about this inn of yours.” She leaned down to kiss Celeste and something crackled. The spy gave an odd frown and reached into the pouch in her shirt.
She held out a letter with a sigh. “I’m afraid I’ll have to tell you about it when I return from Paris. It’s a summons from the Cardinal. He says that the King’s life is in danger and I need to honor my oath to protect him.”
The pirate groaned and handed the letter back. “And I still have your letter of marque and sail under the French flag. Upon occasion. To Paris, then, with a stop at Saint Martin to refuel and bring on more hands. We may hope that your cunning fox of a Cardinal has more plans up his sleeve for saving the King than recalling you.”
Celeste nodded and kissed her. “I’ve been wanting to show you Paris. We had to leave so quickly last time. For now, let’s go talk about inns and smuggling.” They both laughed as Jacquotte gestured at the pilot to sail eastward.
This quarter’s fiction episode presents “The Pirate in the Mirror” by Catherine Lundoff, narrated by Heather Rose Jones.
A transcript of this podcast is available here.
Links to the Lesbian Historic Motif Project Online
Links to Heather Online
Links to Catherine Lundoff Online
(Originally aired 2023/04/15 - listen here)
Introduction
It’s never too late and you’re never too old. Well, at least in fictional romances.
This month we’re doing another installment in the favorite tropes series, looking at second-chance romances and older protagonists. The two don’t automatically go together. Second chances can happen at any age. But the two themes felt like they’d pair well together, sort of like caramel and salt.
A trope, in fiction, is a conventional story element that is used regularly enough that it carries a whole context of meaning, and connects the story to other works that employ the same trope. The trope could be a character type, a specific situation, or a plot element. This series is looking at how many popular tropes in historic romance work differently for female couples than for other types of couples, as well as looking at how specific historic contexts affect the trope, or how they play out differently than in contemporary romance.
The Tropes
To some extent second chances and older protagonists aren’t affected as much by era, setting, and gender as some other tropes. They don’t necessarily have to awkwardly work around finding analogies for heteronormative structures, the way that marriage-based tropes do. But there are still nuances where gender is relevant.
The “second chance” trope typically has the following structure. The protagonists have had some sort of close personal relationship at an earlier point in their lives. It might have been romantic, but it might have been platonic friendship, or a once-sided romantic interest. In any event, it did not at that time develop into an acknowledged, mutual, romantic relationship. Or if it did, something happened and the relationship was broken. Now the characters have been brought together again and a romantic spark develops that successfully produces a long-term romantic relationship.
Within that general framework, there can be a lot of variation. Perhaps they were lovers but something prevented them from establishing a permanent relationship or broke up the one they had. Perhaps there was romantic interest on one or both sides, but circumstances either got in the way of expressing that interest, or got in the way of converting interest into a relationship. Generally “second chance” isn’t used as a label for something that fits better into “friends to lovers” even if there is a hiatus in the friendship, so let’s stick to situations in which at least one participant experienced romantic feelings the first time around.
The trope of older protagonists exists mostly in contrast to the default expectation that romance is a young person’s game. Numerically, the majority of romance novels focus on younger protagonists and the throes of first love. So the older protagonist isn’t quite so much a trope as it is a demographic. Stories using this theme will include considerations of the past experience of the characters – or the reasons why they have no past experience of romance. Stories may be shaped by the different expectations that people have going into a relationship later in life, such as less expectation that the relationship will produce children (and perhaps the existence of adult children as secondary characters in the story).
But these are considerations that exist regardless of the gender of the couple. So what additional factors come into play for female couples?
Second Chances for Sapphic Romances
I have to say that second-chance romances are a really great fit for sapphic historicals. One of the regular themes in exploring how sapphic romances can play out in historic settings is the question of resisting social and economic pressures to buy into the standard heterosexual marriage plot. Those pressures were significant, even if they weren’t as overwhelming as people sometimes believe them to be. When a woman has passed through the period of her life when those pressures are at their greatest, there can be more opportunity to explore and embrace other options, such as a same-gender romance.
The pressure to follow a normative life path can come in many forms. Perhaps the most insidious is simply not presenting same-gender romance as a possible option. Some cultures had established concepts for establishing a long-term same-gender romantic partnership but far from all of them. So young women who fell in love with each other may not have had a model for what such a relationship could look like. Or they may have been taught to view all same-gender feelings as platonic rather than romantic. It can take more life experience and time to develop emotionally before one is willing to challenge those attitudes, either in oneself or in society. There’s great potential for missed chances if one or both of the characters is hesitant to express what they’re feeling, either from general shyness or lack of confidence, or because they aren’t sure how those feelings would be received or understood. Or, conversely, one character may express an interest in a permanent romantic relationship, but the other character doesn’t understand because they have no framework for it.
Even cultures that recognized and accepted same-gender emotional bonds often treated them as a separate sphere from the relationships that shaped one’s life path. The romantic feelings that two young women experienced might not be considered a reason to avoid heterosexual marriage. Alternately, economic pressures of employment or family needs might be the barrier to establishing a permanent bond between two women, just as it could be a barrier for other types of couples. One of the features of second-chance romances is that the specific reasons why the “first chance” didn’t work out don’t need to be gender-based.
We can see examples of opportunities for second-chance romance play out in the lives of both historic and fictional women, regardless of whether the specific pairs were romantically involved.
In the 4th century Greek novel The Acts of Xanthippe and Polyxena, there is something of a “Perils of Pauline” plot in which Xanthippe’s beloved young protégé Polyxena is abducted and goes through many adventures before being finally reunited with (and brought back to life by) her beloved.
Although Xanthippe and Polyxena are presented in the context of a Christian martyrdom story, the plot full of perils that separates a romantic couple is common in early Greek novels, such as the Babyloniaka in which one woman gets tangled up in the main story due to her resemblance to the primary heroine, and therefore is abducted from her girlfriend, Berenice, queen of Egypt, with whom she is eventually reunited.
There’s a 16th century example I found – I think 16th century, I’m having trouble finding the source article – that traced a pair of working class single women in London who set up a business together, but then were separated when they fell on hard times and needed charitable assistance, and later were back in business together. Even when women are economically independent of marriage, there may still be forces that become barriers when there’s no formal structure like marriage to bind their lives together. Migration to find work could split up a couple (or put a damper on a developing relationship).
A rare first-person account from a 17th century Iranian widow describes how, during her travels after the death of her husband, she is reunited with the woman she established a “sworn sisterhood” with in their youth, but from whom she had been parted for unspecified reasons (though marriage may have been reason enough).
The 18th century trial record of a cross-dressing woman details her relationship with anther woman, whose marriage (when passing as a man) was disrupted by a wide variety of factors: family objections, poverty, travel for employment, and personal conflicts. Theirs was not a particularly happy love story, but the dynamics of meeting, couplehood, separation, and reunion could be adapted for one.
The biographies of romantic friends in the 18th and 19th centuries are full of stories of family circumstance where the couple desires to live together, but one (or both) is responsible to care for a parent or family member and so the desired outcome is postponed. But often it was these very family duties that kept the women unmarried. One typical example is the life of Anna Seward whose known romantic relationships were all with women, and who escaped marriage (but also perhaps was hindered in how she expressed her romantic feelings) by being responsible for caring for her disabled father. One of her loves was for Honora Sneyd who joined their household when both were children, but Honora broke her heart by marrying. By the time Anna’s father died, leaving her a comfortable income, Honora had also passed, leaving the possibility of an eventual second chance to the realm of fiction.
Family duties were also the nominal hindrance to a romantic partnership between Anne Lister and Isabella Norcliffe, though by the time that was no longer an issue, Lister was no longer interested. The life of Anne Lister in the late 18th and early 19th century offers several models for second-chance stories, although she didn’t tend to let barriers to a dedicated relationship get in the way of an ongoing sexual relationship. Lister’s long-term devotion to Marianne Belcombe was blocked by Marianne’s decision to marry. They talked repeatedly about being able to live together some day if her husband died. That potential second chance never occurred and Lister had moved on.
19th century actress Charlotte Cushman had the right scenario for a second-chance story with her first girlfriend Rosalie Sully, who was left behind in New York when Cushman went to expand her theatrical career in England. But, alas, Rosalie died before Cushman returned from her extended tour.
Marriage could be a common reason for women who were devoted to each other to need to delay setting up as a couple. One late 19th century second-chance biography is that of Rose Cleveland (sister of President Grover Cleveland) who developed a passionate relationship with the widowed Evangeline Simpson. They exchanged love letters and traveled together, but Evangeline succumbed to social pressures and married again, which caused a break between the two. Only after the death of Evangeline’s second husband did she and Rose make arrangements to combine their households and share the rest of their lives.
These historic examples probably focus a bit too much on the situations that are unique to female couples. But almost any reason for needing a second chance that apples to other types of couples will work for female couples. Simple misunderstandings. Relocation for family reasons or due to work. Schoolgirl romances can be a good starting point. Drifting apart due to different goals and priorities. Pursuing a different relationship that didn’t work out. Or simply not having been ready for a serious romantic relationship at the time you were originally together. The beauty of this trope is that it doesn’t have to be about being queer.
Older Protagonists
If you notice a pattern in some of the historic examples above where the reunion (or potential reunion) between the women happens later in life when their responsibilities to parents, husbands, and/or children are left behind, then maybe you understand why I paired second chances with older protagonists for this episode.
Many of the social barriers to women sharing their lives together fall away with age, whether it’s a matter of no longer being responsible for other people, or no longer being subject to expectations regarding reproduction, or simply accumulating a sufficient supply of don’t-give-a-fuck. I’ve already discussed these factors in greater detail in the trope episodes about spinsters and widows, so I won’t rehash them all now.
Not all widows are older. And in the ages when becoming a spinster was a relevant concept, the age at which one was considered on the shelf could be anywhere between 20 to 30-ish, depending on the normative age of marriage. So a consideration of older protagonists isn’t simply a question of being free of other expectations, but of other aspects that come with age.
Non-married older women come in all economic flavors, each with its own considerations. As I discussed in the episode on widows, if you want to give your heroine substantial financial resources that she has control over, making her a widow is your best bet. But for those older women less comfortably situated, they will likely either be living with family, or will be looking for opportunities to stabilize their finances, perhaps by sharing living quarters with others, perhaps by leveraging any property they own by letting rooms, or at last resort by taking on employment that includes room and board. All of these have considerations for potential romantic possibilities and arrangements. (Keep in mind that, in pre-modern times, literally living all by yourself was not practical, and generally went along with extreme poverty.)
Regardless of the details, your older protagonist may be thinking about security. Or she may be thinking about doing things she didn’t have the time and freedom for previously. Or she may be having religious concerns about the end of life. Does she have a large network of friends and relations, built up over decades of adulthood? Or does she find herself alone and abandoned, looking for security? Has she already been everywhere and seen everything and is ready to settle into retirement? Or does she get a wild hair to go on pilgrimage or become a world traveler? What is her health situation like? Has life broken her down or made her a tough old bird? If your character has gone through menopause, do the hormonal changes affect her attitude toward the place of sex within a relationship? What experiences has she accumulated across her life that inform her attitude toward love and sex between women? Has her attitude changed from what it would have been when she was younger. This, too, can be part of the “second chance” dynamics. For that matter, has society changed during her lifetime in ways that affect her seizing a second chance?
In many ways, the differences in romantic possibilities for older women are very different depending on the gender of the potential partner. In historic records you often find women who are past childbearing age viewing male suitors as primarily looking for a housekeeper, nurse, or governess for their existing children. Outside of romance novels, the attractions of marriage for the older woman can be a bit thin on the ground.
And when it comes down to it, is there anything quite as attractive as a woman who has seen it all, been there and done that, has no more fucks to give, and is ready to embrace her own desires fully? Build your older romance heroine around that. And just maybe there’s someone from her past waiting in the wings to be given a second chance.
In this episode we talk about:
Links to the Lesbian Historic Motif Project Online
Links to Heather Online
(Originally aired 2023/04/01 - listen here)
Welcome to On the Shelf for April 2023.
It’s been a long, wet winter here in California and—though I always do the knock-on-wood type of deflection of bad luck by saying “of course, we need the rain”—I have to confess I’m thinking very fondly ahead to summer. Even the hot days. Maybe especially the hot days.
I’m also, increasingly, thinking fondly ahead to something else. I don’t tend to talk about my day-job doing failure investigations on this show much because there’s very little overlap. That is, there’s actually a lot of philosophical overlap between my writing and my day-job, but it takes a bit of explaining. Having a day-job means that I can be blithely oblivious to questions of monetizing this podcast. But more and more, my day-job has been crowding out the time and attention I have for my creative work: writing fiction, and the blog and podcast. In part it’s because I’ve been accumulating more managerial duties in addition to my investigation work. In part it’s because my department’s headcount keeps getting squeezed and we all have bigger workloads. So in addition to the increasing frequency of working evenings and the occasional weekend, it means that when I do close the corporate laptop, I often don’t want to do anything involving “braining” or staring at computer screens.
But there is an end in sight. If you ever spot me concluding a social media post with something like “2 years, 1 month,” it’s the countdown to my target retirement date. It’s depressing to think that I may not get back to serious fiction writing until I retire. But we all have our choices and priorities, and in the capitalist hellscape we live in, it would be a difficult choice to give up that sweet, sweet corporate paycheck and retirement fund for the laughably thin income of a lesbian historical fiction novelist. So I hang on, and I look ahead, and I scramble to keep this presence going so that I have some hope that people remember who I am and what I’m giving to the world. Some days, that’s the only thing that keeps the podcast going: the thought that it’s my only current way of saying “I exist, I matter, I am here" to the larger lesbian community.
Publications on the Blog
But this is all to say that I’ve spent the second month in a row without reading anything new for the blog. Which also means that the Gothic Fiction episode is going to get pushed out again.
Book Shopping!
But in the meantime, the book shopping came through and I have two new books (plus several downloaded articles) in preparation for that show. The most focused of these is Paulina Palmer’s Lesbian Gothic: Transgressive Fictions. It looks primarily focused on relatively contemporary gothic novels, though some with historic settings. The second new acquisition is The Cambridge History of Gay and Lesbian Literature edited by E.L. McCallum and Mikko Tuhkanen, which includes the article “The Gothic Novel and the Negotiation of Homophobia” by Steven Bruhm, although I’ll clearly want to cover the entire collection of articles on the blog. Looking through the table of contents, I see a lot of familiar names.
Fiction
This month will see the first fiction episode of this year’s series, which will be Catherine Lundoff’s “The Pirate in the Mirror,” another story in her Celeste and Jacquotte series.
Recent Lesbian Historical Fiction
And speaking of fiction, let’s look at new and recent sapphic historical fiction. There are several March books that only just caught my eye, all of them set in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Violet Cowper has put out another book in the Ladylike Inclinations series. Her Venetian Beauty doesn’t have a series number on the cover, but it looks like it should be number 4.
A fiery beauty and a scholarly spinster... together, will they find the happy ending they deserve? Alexandra Craven has a secret dream to escape the trap of the genteel birth and earn her independent living as a writer. She thinks that accompanying her brother on the Grand Tour would provide her with enough material. However, when her brother falls ill in Venice, she is left without a guidance - and has to look to the timid daughter of their noble host, Veronica Zanotti, for help. Veronica Zanotti, a young lady of more learning than charm, has no secret dreams at all. She is seemingly content to be left alone in her father's library while her sister enjoys the spotlight. However, when a ravishing Englishwoman asks for her assistance, she is plunged into a whirlpool of perilous adventures...
Another Regency-era novel, The Enemy Within by Stein Willard, seems to assume that the casual shopper will be familiar with the series the book belongs to, as the descriptive cover copy is very slight. So your guess is as good as mine on this one.
With their goal of receiving official pardons from the Crown finally in sight, Hirsh and her band of pirate sisters are actively planning for the future. Vows are made and new friendships are formed as the family continues to grow.
We get a lot more information on setting and characters for Eight Strings by Margaret DeRosia from Simon & Schuster.
Ever since her grandfather introduced her to eight-string marionettes, Francesca has dreamed of performing from the rafters of Venice’s popular Minerva Theater. There’s just one problem: the profession is only open to men. When her father arranges to sell her into marriage to pay off his gambling debts, Francesca flees her home. Masquerading as a male orphan named Franco, she secures an apprenticeship with the Minerva’s eccentric ensemble of puppeteers. Amid the elaborate set-pieces, the glittering limes, and the wooden marionettes, she finds a place where she belongs—and grows into the person she was always meant to be: Franco. The past threatens to catch up with Franco when his childhood friend Annella reappears and recognizes him at the theater. Now a paid companion to an influential woman, Annella understands the lengths one must go to survive, and she promises to keep Franco’s secret. Desire sparks between them, and they find themselves playing a dangerous game against the most powerful figures of Venice’s underworld. With their lives—and the fate of the Minerva—hanging in the balance, Franco must discover who is pulling the strings before it’s too late.
Moving up to the early 20th century, we have Her Female Husband (The Kendallville Librarian #1) by Julieanne from Western Michigan Publishing.
While many women in 1908 accept their lot in life to marry, rear children, and run a household for their husbands, Sarah, the Kendallville Librarian lives with her own private reasons to resist such a path. Despite having moved to Kendallville to "find a husband" alongside her best friend, Lydia, she has yet to allow any of the local men her favor. For her own reasons, Lydia also avoids tying herself to a man. While she yearns to do a "man's job" of being a journalist, and for a fair wage, she faces rejection at every turn. That is, until the day she overhears whispers of a woman in another city doing the unthinkable… living as a man. She can't possibly. Or can she? When the notion of donning men's clothing and pursing her dreams won't leave her mind, Lydia begins scheming, much to Sarah's simultaneous shock and burgeoning hope. Sarah, however, soon finds herself thrust into the center of local murder investigation. With everything at stake, will Sarah and Lydia get their happily ever after together? Will the Kendallville Librarian survive her perilous endeavors and finally find peace with her female husband?
I frequently take note when characters in a story fall in the ambiguous territory between gender disguise and transgender identity. When the first couple of books in L. Dreamer’s Heart series came out in 2020, I wasn’t sure how to categorize the relationship. Now that the third and final installment has come out, Heart’s Home, the author has confirmed that he views the story as a lesbian romance. The previous books were originally published under the author’s former name but have now been reissued with the byline L. Dreamer.
In the final installment of the Heart Series, join Thomas, Rachel, TJ, Charlotte, and all of your favorite side characters as they continue to navigate the highs and lows of the lives they’ve created. Follow their adventures through the years, from the Great War to the Great Depression and beyond as the family charts their own paths while learning the true meaning of love, loss, hard work, and family. This collection of short stories and novellas picks up a couple of years after Heart Sings and finishes off the Heart Series with new challenges, triumphs, heartbreaks, and joy.
Another series that recently wrapped up is Cameron Darrow’s “Ashes of Victory” supernatural stories set between the two world wars. The author asked me to let people know that the entire series is now available as a boxed set under the title From the Ashes of Victory.
The First World War is over, the old world shattered and overturned. But one didn't need to be anywhere near the fighting to have everything stripped away. Families, homes, identities lost, the witches of the clandestine group EVE were left at war's end with only two things: their magical gifts and each other. From the ashes of Allied victory and the Russian revolution, this group of survivors will forge for themselves something altogether new in a time when women aren't even allowed to vote, let alone openly practice magic in public. Or love one another. But not all threats to their budding coven come from without. Secrets, lies and the lingering trauma they've suffered could tear them apart as easily as the war tried to do, and they will have to overcome--and embrace--all that they are to ensure the peace is a lasting one, and that the horrors of a world war are never repeated.
The April books are a fascinating spread of themes and settings, starting with a mythic Norse tale, Legacy of the Valiant (Tales from Norvegr #2) by Edale Lane from Past and Prologue Press.
Humble Kai aspires to become more than the petite, inconsequential young woman her community sees. Persistence pays off when the village holy leaders reveal a prophecy. Kai might actualize her dream of being a hero if she completes three seemingly impossible tasks. Princess Solveig, descendant of the famous shieldmaiden Sigrid the Valiant, believes she was born to accomplish great things, but her poor eyesight, weak constitution, and lack of physical expertise hold her back. Convinced she can never realize her ambitions, Solveig settles for living vicariously through her warrior girlfriend. The appearance of a dangerous jötunn wreaking havoc in the kingdom brings the two would-be champions together. Solveig feels both threatened and skeptical when Kai arrives in her father’s great hall with a “magic” sword, claiming she’s there to save the day after more promising protectors have failed. With many lives at stake, will rivalry push Solveig and Kai apart, or will they inspire each other to realize the greatness both women desire to achieve and to survive the coming battle?
Well-known lesbian romance author Karin Kallmaker has only rarely dipped her toes into historical settings, but a current loosely linked series includes this medieval tale: Knight of Nights (The Coin of Love #2) from Romance and Chocolate Ink.
Left in charge of clan and lands while menfolk ride away to the Crusades, Lady Kirstine breaks with tradition by coming to the aid of the local green woman whose medicines once saved Kirstine's life. She's surprised to find the old woman already ably defended by a knight - a knight with no flag. A knight like no other Kirstine has ever met.
I dithered a bit about whether including this next book in the podcast is being true to the identities of the characters, but as usual I tend to err on the side of inclusivity and as long as there is sapphic content it needn’t be the central relationship. But I like readers to know what to expect, so in the case of Something Spectacular (Something Fabulous) by Alexis Hall from Montlake, the podcast relevance is that there is a romantic backstory between a female character and a non-binary but assigned female character, however the central romantic plot of the book involves both of those characters matched with a castrato opera singer. So: make of that what you will.
Peggy Delancey’s not at all ready to move on from her former flame, Arabella Tarleton. But Belle has her own plans for a love match, and she needs Peggy’s help to make those plans a reality. Still hung up on her feelings and unable to deny Belle what she wants, Peggy reluctantly agrees to help her woo the famous and flamboyant opera singer Orfeo. She certainly doesn’t expect to find common ground with a celebrated soprano, but when Peggy and Orfeo meet, a whole new flame is ignited that she can’t ignore. Peggy finds an immediate kinship with Orfeo, a castrato who’s just as nonconforming as she is―and just as affected by their instant connection. They’ve never been able to find their place in the world, but as the pair walks the line between friendship, flirtation, and something more, they may just find their place with each other.
When an author has a historic romance series that includes various gender pairings, it’s fairly rare for there to be more than one f/f romance, but Renee Dahlia has done just that in her “Desiring the Dexingtons” series with The Widow's Modiste.
A bored widow, an incredible dress, and a modiste with a secret. Jacinda Dexington wants to take her modiste shop to the haut ton, so when a client gives her tickets to the Soho Club’s Contrary Gods masquerade ball, she wears the outfit herself. It’s a sensation and everyone wants to know who created it. But only one person offers her refreshments… and a little bit more. Lady Merryam, widowed and bored, only attends the Soho Club’s latest ball to help raise funds for her son’s orphanage. The last she expects is a one night stand with the mysterious woman wearing ‘that’ dress. Could spending more time with her be the answer to her ennui?
The last April book has a somewhat experimental structure with a cross-time plot: The Weeds by Katy Simpson Smith from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Two women, connected across time, edge toward transgression in pursuit of their desires. A Mississippi woman pushes through the ruin of the Roman Colosseum, searching for plants. She has escaped her life, apprenticed herself to catalog all the species growing in this place. Crawling along the stones, she wonders how she has landed here, a reluctant botanist amid a snarl of tourists in comfortable sandals. She hunts for a scientific agenda and a direction of her own. In 1855, a woman pushes through the jungle of the Roman Colosseum, searching for plants. As punishment for her misbehavior, she has been indentured to the English botanist Richard Deakin, for whom she will compile a flora. She is a thief, and she must find new ways to use her hands. If only the woman she loves weren’t on a boat, with a husband. But love isn’t always possible. She logs 420 species. Through a list of seemingly minor plants and their uses―medical, agricultural, culinary―these women calculate intangible threats: a changing climate, the cost of knowledge, and the ways repeated violence can upend women’s lives. They must forge their own small acts of defiance and slip through whatever cracks they find. How can anyone survive?
What Am I Reading?
And what have I been consuming since last month? In general, it’s been books by authors I’ve enjoyed in the past, which perhaps indicates that I’m not in an experimental mood. I finished reading Meg Mardell’s latest holiday romance Christmas Masquerade, which is a bit of a comedy of manners, country-house story in which everyone thinks they’re playing matchmaker while also being matched by others. I’ll give away that the conclusion involves pansexual polyamory, just in case that affects people’s inclination to try it. This one didn’t grab me as solidly as Mardell’s previous books, but I admire that she’s telling stories that are so expansive in terms of identities and outcomes.
My other read was Into the Riverlands by Nghi Vo, which is the third novella in her Singing Hills series, set in an alternate China with light fantasy. The central character is a collector of stories, and as with the previous books, the telling of stories, and the way those stories interact with the framing action, form a complex structure that offers a slow reveal of hidden secrets. I liked that in this story, that final reveal was so subtle I had to page back to check on a point where I’d made an unsupported assumption that led me off track. The series continues its tradition of including normalized queer relationships among the characters.
Moving over to audiobooks, we have C.L. Clark’s The Unbroken, another historic fantasy that employs an alternate version of an actual historic setting—in this case, colonized French Algeria—and a light overlap of fantasy—just enough to keep you guessing about possible plot twists, and is full of normalized queer relationships, including between the two female protagonists. I loved the worldbuilding and the romance, but I didn’t enjoy the book as much as I hoped due to the bodycount and a fair amount of gory body horror. That doesn’t make it a flawed book, just one that I’m not the target audience for.
And finally, my other audiobook is K.J. Charles’ latest, The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen, which matches up a newly-inherited Regency baronet, who has abandonment issues, with the head of a clan of smugglers, who is overburdened with a sense of responsibility. This book has the sort of K.J. Charles plot that I love: very individual characters whose romantic conflict comes from their personal flaws, even as they both try to be good people doing responsible things. I can wholeheartedly understand why they’re attracted to each other and why they have to struggle to get their happy ending. That hasn’t always been the case in my recent reading, so it cheers me up greatly.
What’s been cheering you up in your recent reading? I’d love to hear about it.
Thoughts
When adding upcoming titles to my database, I once again was struck by the geography of sapphic historical fiction. These thoughts aren’t meant to poke at any particular author or book, but at a cumulative pattern that emerges. And specifically a pattern that some historic settings seem to exist primarily in a mythic space, as far as sapphic historicals are concerned.
I can back this up with data from my cumulative spreadsheet. One of the settings I want to highlight is Greece. With the sole exception of a series of WWII-set stories by Mary D Brooks, the titles I’m aware of are set in the Classical era or earlier. And of those 16 books with classical Greek settings, only 2 don’t appear to have overtly fantastic elements, primarily involving the concrete appearance of the pantheon of gods, or movement between the mortal world and that of the immortals. The two exceptions are a fictionalized biography of Sappho, and a story set in Sparta that stretches historic plausibility but doesn’t include any supernatural elements.
I think you could probably include the Brooks WWII series as having fantasy elements—and perhaps even Classical connections—because, as I understand it, the series was originally Xena “Uber” fan-fiction, so there’s a premise of reincarnation, and at least one book includes psychic phenomena. But they don’t fit the more general pattern on a surface level.
Now, I will grant you that—with the exception of Sappho herself—researching sapphic themes in Classical Greece is a bit tricky, although now that we have an English translation of Sandra Boehringer’s Female Homosexuality in Ancient Greece and Rome there’s a bit less friction to the process. Given that mainstream histories of classical Greece tend to surrender to the imbalance of information on male versus female lives, often making one wonder if women existed at all outside of myth and legend, it makes me sad that historical fiction authors seem to have swallowed that illusion. The pattern here is two-fold: that Greece has no significant history after the Classical era, and that sapphic stories can only exist in the world of mythic fantasy, and not among ordinary lives.
There is, perhaps, less of an excuse on the research side for the similar pattern we see for historic stories with Scandinavian settings. The spreadsheet has 18 stories set either in specific Scandinavian countries or nebulously in the region of Scandinavia. All but 3 of them are set either overtly or implicitly in an early-medieval or mythic “Viking era”. (The 3 exceptions include 2 in the 17th century and 1 in WWII, none of which have fantasy elements.)
But this is not the early medieval Scandinavia of the history books. Fourteen of the 15 stories feature warrior women. The 15th is a cross-time story. Ten of the stories also feature gods, monsters, or magic. Now, the question of women’s participation in warfare in Viking-era Scandinavia is complex. Women warriors definitely featured in Norse sagas and myths, regardless of whether they were part of ordinary life. But what is interesting is how strongly the motif seems essential to sapphic historical fiction with this setting. In many cases, the motif isn’t presented as a woman taking on a cross-gender identity, but rather that warrior women are normalized as part of the fictional culture of the setting.
As with the Classical Greek stories that bring in gods and mythic Amazons, within the fictional geography of sapphic historical fiction, the actual historic cultures of these settings have been erased and replaced with a mythic fantasy. Mind you, I have no problem with mythic fantasy stories! But I do feel uncomfortable around the way they become the only landscape to the exclusion of the realistic.
The presence of mythic or fantasy stories isn’t quite as overwhelming in some other settings. Of the books set in Egypt, only 2/3 have fantasy elements. There are similar numbers for those set in China or a clearly China-based culture. Compare to stories set in France where only 1/3 have fantasy elements. Compare to stories set in Canada or Germany or Russia which are almost devoid of fantasy. (The only reason I’m not tackling the statistics for stories set in the British Isles or in the USA is because I have a lot of gaps in the coding for this aspect and I don’t have time to fill them in enough to do the calculation.)
What does it mean that our imagined version of specific times and places is so heavily overlaid with myth? What does it mean that we seem to find it hard to imagine women loving women in some contexts unless we make those women stand outside the limits of ordinary life? And what does that say about our ability to see people in those cultures as whole, complex human beings? Each book stands alone on its own merits. But in the aggregate, those patterns ask questions that we should ponder.
Your monthly roundup of history, news, and the field of sapphic historical fiction.
In this episode we talk about:
Links to the Lesbian Historic Motif Project Online
Links to Heather Online
(Originally aired 2023/03/18 - listen here)
Introduction
This show could almost have been a “F/Favorite Tropes” episode. But that series is aimed at examining the tropes that are popular for mixed-gender romances and how they work in a same-gender context. “School friends to lovers” isn’t a standard pattern in heterosexual historic romance, for the salient reason that co-educational schooling was not the norm in most places before the 20th century. So instead I’ll do this as a thematic episode.
The history of gender-segregated education
Single-gender institutions and communities have always tended to be a context where intense and intimate same-gender bonds could flourish and even be celebrated. One contributing cause is obvious: lack of other opportunities. This has often been cited in contexts where the women had little or no freedom to leave the institution, such as prisons and pre-modern convents. But often such bonds between “particular friends” were actively encouraged, with the understanding that close personal bonds helped to stabilize the micro-culture and to provide emotional support, especially when the inhabitants might be separated from family for an extended period.
I discussed the ambivalent attitude toward “particular friends” in convents in an earlier episode dealing with that institution. But today I want to tackle the history of passionate or romantic friendships in schools, both between students and between teachers.
The idea of mixing the genders in educational institutions is rather recent, in a historic time-scale. And there are many contemporary cultures that still prefer to keep separate male and female schools for a variety of reasons, as well as individual institutions that consider it to be a more productive way of focusing on education and personal development. I’m not here to debate the pros and cons of single-gender schools—an extremely complex topic—but rather to focus on how that environment has intersected historically with same-sex relations.
As usual, my broad generalizations will tend to focus on Western culture, due to the nature of my sources, with many of the specific examples drawn from the English-speaking world, though in this case the general pattern is similar throughout western Europe.
One reason for gender segregation in schools, especially for older students, has been the historic exclusion of women from formal education. While some women challenged this exclusion on an individual basis, in many cases, girls’ schools and women’s colleges were created to redress this exclusion as a more practical solution. But another motivation of gender segregation was to reduce the risk of unauthorized romantic relationships, or sexual encounters—especially in contexts where the girls and women were not under direct family supervision. One theme I come back to regularly in the trope shows is the pervasive attitudes that unregulated mixing of the genders created an existential risk of sexual activity. Outside of marriage, respectable women and girls did not have the social permission to say “yes” to sex, and both in and out of marriage they had very little social permission to say “no”. Thus, strict supervision, codes of etiquette, and physical segregation were all employed to reduce this risk.
In Europe, religious shifts in the 16th century that encouraged basic education for all children led to the development of local grammar schools that were typically co-educational and non-residential. But more advanced education, and especially at what we would consider the college level, was mostly residential and single-gender (and, at that time, not available to women). Such residential schools were being established for boys in the later Middle Ages. Residential schools for girls began appearing in the 17th and 18th centuries. In Catholic countries, these were typically—though not always—run by religious orders and sponsored by convents, while Protestant institutions were set up either as philanthropic—or sometimes commercial—enterprises. Girls who had the opportunity for post-grammar school education might be sent to a boarding school or convent school that combined education with limits on their interactions with men. Here we’re generally talking about middle-class families and higher, not only due to the cost of boarding school but because it kept students out of the workforce. In urban areas, non-residential schools were also part of the educational landscape, but they aren’t the primary focus of this show.
Women’s colleges began to be established in the early-to-mid 19th century in England and the United States, with a scattering of women’s colleges elsewhere in Europe. In that era, there are isolated examples of women gaining entrance to established (men’s) colleges, but it was only with the creation of women’s colleges that higher education became generally available to women.
In the United States, public secondary education generally shifted to being co-ed in the 19th century with gender segregation continuing in private institutions, while in England secondary education typically remained gender-segregated well into the 20th century. Most Western countries fall somewhere within that range. Genuinely co-educational colleges appear at widely different times in different countries, with rare examples in the USA starting in the mid-19th century and in the UK in the later 19th century. But women-only colleges remained a significant presence into the mid-20th century.
This sets up a timeline for the social dynamics of women-only educational institutions. For secondary boarding schools, we would generally be talking about the 17th century and later, with the shift away from single-gender institutions depending on location, and sometimes on class or income. For the heyday of women’s colleges, we’re talking generally about the mid-19th century into the early 20th century. The specifics—not only of school systems, but of attitudes towards same-gender relations within them—can differ significantly within this scope, by time and culture, as we’ll discuss later.
This age of women’s colleges coincides and is intertwined with a number of other social factors that affect women’s intimate friendships and attitudes toward them, such as a significant rise in feminist movements, and the beginnings of the medicalization of homosexuality. We can see how awareness and attitudes toward homosexuality affected the perception of school “smashes” across this heyday, moving from an accepted, admired, and even encouraged practice, to one viewed with suspicion, and discouraged in its more excessive manifestations.
Romances Between Students
When we look for romances between women that began as boarding-school friendships, we can begin in the 17th century with English poet Katherine Philips. She attended a boarding school in Hackney run by a Mrs. Salmon from 1640 to 1645—when she was in her early teens—and it was there that she met Mary Aubrey, to whom she gave the classical nickname “Rosania” in her poetry and correspondence, and who was the first of her romantic objects.
At the beginning of the 19th century, Anne Lister engaged in her first romantic relationship with boarding school roommate Eliza Raine, when sent to the Manor House School in York when both were in their early teens. Although that relationship didn’t last past Lister’s departure from the school two years later, it may well have been the context in which she recognized her exclusive orientation toward women.
In the mid 19th century, future English novelist Mary Mackay (who would write under the pen name Marie Corelli) was shipped off at age 11 to be educated at a Parisian convent school, where she met Bertha Vyver. Their lives were intertwined from then on. When both women were around 20, Vyvyr moved in to care for Corelli’s invalid father. After his death, the two shared a household and supported each other’s careers for over 40 years, and Corelli left the profits of a best-selling literary career to Vyvyr when she died.
These are only a very few examples of known romantic couples who first met as schoolfellows. But finding isolated examples of female romantic couples who met at boarding school is a different matter from having an open culture of such relationships.
In the 18th century, literature about female schoolfriends didn’t tend to fantasize about their possible sexual relations in the same way it did about women in convents. But there are veiled allusions in manuals about education that suggest girls not be left unsupervised too much, in order to preserve their “discretion.” These references could be either to same-sex activity or to masturbation, but those two topics were not always distinguished at the time.
By the later 18th century, it became typical (although not universal) for middle and upper-class girls in England and the United States to be sent to gender-segregated boarding schools. Initially, these schools were typically small, family-style arrangements, but in the later 19th century there began a shift to larger, more institutional establishments with hundreds of students and more rigorous practices and standards. In this context both the schools and families encouraged girls to form close friendships, while at the same time warning against “excessive” affection. This concern was not necessarily sexual. There was an anxiety about friendships superseding the loyalty and duty owed to the family.
The Culture of School Crushes
Carroll Smith-Rosenberg includes school friendships in her study of women’s same-sex bonds in 19th century America, using family correspondence dating between the 1760s and 1880s. Although Smith-Rosenberg tends to view these ritualized female bonds as primarily non-romantic, even when couched in romantic language, we can turn directly to the relevant quotes to see how these relationships were viewed. Female friendships were expressed with warmth, spontaneity, and a sense of fun. Girls routinely slept together, kissed and hugged, and enjoyed dancing with each other. This sort of behavior was enjoyed openly without any expectation of suspicion or criticism. Indeed, schools often encouraged students to pair off and sponsored all-women dances and similar events.
Sarah Butler and Jeannie Musgrove met in their mid-teens in 1849 when their families were vacationing in Massachusetts. They then spent two years together in boarding school where they formed a deep, intimate friendship that included romantic gestures and the assumption of nicknames for each other. One of them took a male nickname, a pattern we regularly see among intimate female friends. They continued using those names to each other all their lives. Sarah married, but the two continued to write of their desire to spend time together, of their longing to be with each other and of how much they meant to each other. Passages from their letters include, “I want you to tell me in your next letter, to assure me, that I am your dearest.” and “A thousand kisses--I love you with my whole soul.” Jeannie married at age 37, precipitating significant anxiety between the two about how it might change their relationship. And it did result in a physical separation, though with no change in their emotional intensity.
A second pair has a similar story. Molly and Helena met in 1868 while attending college together in New York City. Over several years, they studied together, visited each other’s families, and became part of a network of artistic young women. They developed a close intimate bond that continued the rest of their lives. In their letters, they called each other dearest and beloved. They expressed this affection in kisses and embraces. After five years, they had planned to share a home together but when Molly bowed to her parents’ wishes and decided against the plan, Helena responded angrily, leading Molly to fear it would mean a break-up. The friendship cooled somewhat and both gained male suitors and married. During this time of upset, they expressed their feelings in romantic and marital terms. Molly wrote, “I wanted so to put my arms round my girl of all the girls in the world and tell her...I love her as wives do love their husbands, as friends who have taken each other for life--and believe in her as I believe in my God.” And she wrote to Helena’s fiancé, “Do you know sir, that until you came along I believe that she loved me almost as girls love their lovers. I know I loved her so. Don’t you wonder that I can stand the sight of you.”
Martha Vicinus takes a detailed look at formalized romantic dynamics within English girls’ boarding schools in the later 19th and early 20th century in her article “Distance and Desire: English Boarding-School Friendships,” specifically looking at the practice of “smashes”—another term for “crushes” or “raves”—ritualized romantic connections between students, or sometimes between student and teacher.
While the schoolgirl friends mentioned previously involved couples of equal age, which seems to have been typical of relations in the 18th and larger part of the 19th century, the later practice of “smashes” in English boarding schools arose in a culture that encouraged an age-differentiated and more formalized love, rather than an egalitarian relationship. Note that Vicinus is focusing specifically on the era when the social perception and performance of such “smashes” was changing due to external social shifts, and they were beginning to be viewed less innocently.
It is not generally possible to know whether the participants in these school friendships were conscious of an erotic aspect to the relationship, but they typically spoke in terms that duplicated the language and symbolism of heterosexual love. Moreover, around the turn of the 20th century, as society began to view the strongly emotional nature of these friendships as something that should be controlled and channeled into religious or external social service, it is unlikely that the pressure to do so would have been as forceful if not for a recognition of the sexual potential.
The increased “professsionalism” of girls’ boarding schools toward the end of the 19th century contributed to this new dynamic. Rather than focusing on the individual personal development of the students, there was an emphasis on goals of public service and the option of a professional life for women. Students had greater autonomy and individualism but at the same time were encouraged to channel that freedom into supporting the values and organizational identity of the school. While this shift did not diminish the tendency of schoolgirls to form close supportive emotional friendships with their age-mates, a new pattern emerged from the growing sense of distance and emphasis on self-control, in which a younger girl developed an intense erotically-charged crush on an older student or a teacher, but one that was not necessarily expected to be reciprocal or egalitarian.
The ordinariness and expectation for this type of bond is reflected in the rich vocabulary that described it: crush, rave, spoon, pash (short for passion), smash, “gonage” (from being “gone on” someone), or flame. The vocabulary varied between English and American boarding schools, but the underlying phenomenon was similar, deriving from equivalent social conditions.
In the prototypical “smash,” love was expressed, not in physical closeness or mutual exchanges, but through symbolic asymmetric acts. Physical sexual fulfillment was not part of the official prototype. It would have meant a failure of the expected self-discipline and therefore a failure of the proper expression of love. The older object of the rave or smash might recognize the underlying urge as sexual, but she was expected to help channel those feelings into emotional rather than sexual expressions, directing the younger student’s emotions to a “higher cause” whether the school, religion, or social improvement movements. These age-differentiated friendships were sometimes institutionalized in a formal “mothering” system, in which an older girl was assigned as a mentor, which set up a “safe” symbolic context for the interactions.
British “Rave” attachments came to involve two contradictory features: public performance and ritualized secrecy. The public aspect came from the open discussion among schoolgirls about their crushes--discussions that normalized the practice and socialized new students in how it was to be performed. The secrecy was expressed in the often covert nature of the gifts and services provided to the target of devotion. These acts typically didn’t involve direct contact or interaction, but might include leaving gifts in the beloved’s room, or performing housekeeping tasks for her. Any indication of recognition or a return of affection carried great weight, with the down side that such signals might exist only in the perceiver’s imagination. The rules for these romantic rituals might even be codified in guidebooks and etiquette manuals.
Letters from American college students describe less hierarchical and less covert practices, as in this description from 1873. “When a girl takes a shine to another, she straightaway enters upon a regular course of bouquet sendings, interspersed with tinted notes, mysterious packages of ‘Ridley’s Mixed Candies,’ locks of hair perhaps, and many other tender tokens, until at last the object of her attentions is captured, the two become inseparable, and the aggressor is considered by her circle of acquaintances as ‘smashed.’” “If the ‘smash’ is mutual, they monopolize each other and ‘spoon’ continually, and if it isn’t mutual, the unrequited one cries herself sick and endures pangs unspeakable.”
Age-difference relationships were often by their nature temporary, as the older beloved would inevitably leave the school first. For this reason, authorities sometimes characterized the experience as being merely a preliminary or practice for heterosexual love. But some women who participated in rave relationships later reminisced that they never experienced love with a man that was as fulfilling as their school crushes.
The language of marriage was frequently invoked between such friends. In 1892 one woman writes after the death of her lifelong friend, “To me it seems to have been a closer union than that of most marriages. We know there have been other such between two men and also between two women. And why should there not be. Love is spiritual, only passion is sexual.”
This last provides a hint of how the participants may have reconciled their passionate friendships with conventional ideas of morality. Kissing and embracing and snuggling in bed together were not necessarily understood as sexual. Once the idea that such activities might be sexual emerged toward the turn of the 20th century, only then were intense female friendships increasingly looked askance. And, of course, for those relationships that had been sexual, the shift in attitudes might result in suspicion focused on relationships that had previously been considered admirable.
Romances Between Teachers
Among women in teaching professions in the 19th and early 20th centuries the vast majority never married. Cause and effect were tangled: it would have been nearly impossible to pursue a career in academia while fulfilling the expectations for a wife. Even pursuing the education necessary to become a college professor required personal and professional support that women could not expect to receive from a husband, much less support in a career itself. But even more importantly, schools and colleges usually required that female faculty be unmarried. So whether women entered teaching professions already having an emotional life focused on other women, or whether they chose the profession over the possibility of heterosexual marriage and then found life with a female partner to be an attractive option, the teaching profession became a fertile field for finding female life-partners with a wide variety of forms of relationships.
Whether such relationships were viewed as having erotic potential depended on the general attitude toward intimate female friendships. At the beginning of the 19th century, Marianne Woods and Jane Pirie co-founded a girls’ boarding school in Scotland and then became embroiled in a famous legal trial when a student accused them of having a sexual relationship. While the results of the trial were complex and not entirely satisfactory, the two women benefitted from their society’s rejection of the idea that two respectable women—however close—would engage in an erotic relationship.
Around the same era, Eliza Frances Robertson ran a school in Greenwich with her beloved friend Charlotte Sharp. When the school encountered financial problems, Robertson came under attack for a strange variety of charges, but including the assertion that she and Sharp had an unnatural relationship. As a novelist and pamphleteer, Robertson came to her own defense invoking Biblical justifications for intense same-sex friendships. Without weighing in on the truth or falsehood of the specific charges, we can see that within the numerous examples of female academic partnerships, erotic potential was imaginable. But for most relationships, the question was never raised, even when they had all the external trappings of marriage. To do so would have undermined the entire economy of female education.
Publicly recognized female couples were such a fixture at women’s colleges in 19th century New England that, alongside the term “Boston Marriage,” such relationships might be called “Amherst marriages” or “Wellesley marriages” in reference to those two women’s colleges.
The book Improper Bostonians details a great many such couples, focusing on those for whom we have photographic and other records, both famous and obscure. Many established couples among the female faculty of women’s colleges simply lived quietly ordinary lives, such as Carla Wenkebach and Margaretha Müller, both in the Wellesley German department in the 1890s, and Margaret Pollock Sherwood and Martha Hale Shackford, also at Wellesley.
But female academic couples include a number of rather well-known women. Katharine Lee Bates, the author of the anthem “America the Beautiful,” met her partner Katharine Coman while at Wellesley and both later joined the faculty there.
Not all romances between teachers arose at colleges. Black poet and playwright Angelina Weld Grimké and her beloved Mary K. Burrell met while fellow teachers at Dunbar High School, a segregated school for Black students in Washington D.C.
One particularly illustrative example is that of Mary Woolley and Jeannette Marks. The two met in 1895 when Woolley had just been made a full professor at Wellesley College and Marks (12 years her junior) was a student. The two hit it off and from there on their lives and careers ran in parallel. That same year, Woolley was offered a job heading the women’s college at Brown University and offered the presidency of Mount Holyoke College, a prominent women’s college. She chose the latter and a few years later became one of the youngest college presidents when she took over at Mount Holyoke. That same year, Marks (having finished her degree at Wellesley) became a professor of English at Mount Holyoke. The complexities of a two-academic-career household were simplified somewhat by Woolley’s ability to pull strings as president. The two were recognized publicly as a couple and lived together at the Mount Holyoke president’s residence for 36 years. After retirement, they continued to live together at the Marks family home in New York.
Despite this clear evidence of enjoying a marriage equivalent and a deeply romantic attachment, Woolley and Marks were not immune to shifts in attitudes toward their type of relationship. In 1908, Marks wrote an essay entitled “Unwise College Friendships” suggesting that such romantic relationships between female students were an “abnormal condition” and asserting that only a relationship between a man and a woman could “fulfill itself and be complete.” The essay was never published, and Lillian Faderman suggests that it may have been too out of step with public attitudes in the US, which still saw schoolgirl romances as harmless or admirable. Marks left other writings showing a developing homophobia, and one is left contemplating the tragedy of embracing a change in social attitudes that negates the validity of one’s own life partnership.
A Shift in Attitudes
In the first decade of the 20th century, love poetry between American schoolgirls could still be published “innocently” as an expression of praiseworthy sentiments. But the combination of anti-feminist backlash, the growing field of sexology and its theories about same-sex desire, and an increasing public awareness of the erotic potential of women’s romantic friendships was gradually changing attitudes towards both schoolgirl and fellow-teacher romances in the decades surrounding the turn of the century. The public culture of school crushes or raves became a focus of psychological concern. School authorities gradually began to characterize raves as disruptive and self-indulgent, or to try to channel the same emotions into a more distant and diffuse expression. As medicalized theories of homosexuality spread into people’s awareness, even the participants in rave culture might later view their experiences with misgivings.
One American woman who novelized the details of her own 1880s schoolgirl crush on a teacher, when writing in the 1930s, felt the need to turn the teacher’s happy, life-long Boston marriage with another teacher into a tragic love triangle that provoked the suicide of the teacher’s partner. Over the course of a single lifetime, the attitudes and understandings toward such school crushes had changed and a tragic ending was, perhaps, required in order to maintain the illusion of schoolgirl innocence.
Just as the shifts in women’s place in society opened up new opportunities that contributed to the rave phenomenon, the resulting social dynamics—especially when they expanded outside the school context—resulted in patriarchal anxiety. This in turn became focused on the very institutions of single-sex schools that had contributed to creating the “new woman” of the early 20th century. Same-sex bonds, whether between students, between teachers, or between student and teacher, became stigmatized and morbidified by the sexologists. Unmarried female teachers became figures of suspicion (ignoring the context that their singlehood was often a contractual obligation) and suspected of having twisted or at least frustrated sexual desires that made them prone to exploiting student crushes.
This professional re-labeling of crushes as deviant in the beginning of the 20th century did not have much initial effect on the phenomenon itself. Crushes continued to be a staple of single-gender organizations such as Girl Guides (the British equivalent of the Girl Scouts) and in the genre of boarding school literature. Not until perhaps the 1920s were such crushes regularly portrayed as a negative influence and suggestive of latent (or overt) homosexual tendencies.
Women’s Same-Gender School Relationships in Literature
There are several strands of academic same-sex romance that appear in historic literary works. Some come out of the culture of Romantic Friendship and depict devoted, loving couples who may or may not end up devoting their lives to each other. Some are more ambivalent, suggesting that these academic romances are transient and problematic and will give way to a marriage plot. Some engage with the motif of the predatory lesbian and the hazards of single-gender environments in bringing “innocent” girls and women into contact with predators who consider such environments a useful hunting ground. And some fall more into a libertine and even pornographic context, using the single-gender institution as an excuse for depicting lesbian interactions.
The love of schoolfellows or of a student for a teacher shows up in any number of classical novels where no suggestion of eroticism is present. Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (published in 1847) deeply loves her school friend Helen as well as a compassionate headmistress. We can find devoted school friends in the works of Jane Austen, such as Anne Elliot’s attachment to her friend Mrs. Smith in Persuasion. But works in this category generally draw a curtain on the erotic potential of such friendships by marrying their protagonists off to men.
In the extensive genre of girls’ school novels, crushes and romantic behavior between students at boarding schools are depicted unselfconsciously as sweet and innocent, though when the narrative is confined to the school years, there is no need to address whether and how the relationships persist later in the characters’ lives. This genre was popular in the later 19th and early 20th century and existed in parallel with the development of darker stories in which erotic potential was recognized, and typically punished.
On the more daring side of school stories, Colette’s Claudine at School (published in French in 1900) includes a series of sexual liaisons between students, student and teacher, and between female teachers. But the depiction—though hardly involving sincere long-term romances—is playful and sympathetic, with none of the looming threat of decadence and damnation seen in other works with similarly overt erotic content.
A Sunless Heart, published in 1894 by Scottish writer Edith Johnstone includes several archetypes: the racialized student Mona who falls in love with her lecturer, Miss Grace, who in turn wavers between discouraging her and a creepy erotic possessiveness, fellow lecturer Miss Gasparine whom Mona views (evidently with reason) as a rival for Miss Grace’s affections, and the older male professor who represents the temptations of heterosexual marriage for multiple characters. The book’s position with respect to same-sex relations can be seen in the plot’s resolution in which Mona and Miss Grace, after an angsty breakup, find each other once again as they are both dying in a train wreck.
Even more hostile to same-sex love is the 1917 novel Regiment of Women by Clemence Dane, in which the predatory boarding school teacher Clare Hartill courts and lays claim to younger colleague Alwynne Durand, gradually isolating her from other contacts until Clare’s controlling behavior finally drives Alwynne into the arms of a convenient male suitor. The novel ends with Clare contemplating possible candidates for her next conquest at the school.
The punishment of same-gender school liaisons with nervous exhaustion and mental breakdown is a contribution to the genre from the French decadent writers, where the motif shows up earlier than in the English literary world. In Adolphe Belot’s Mademoiselle Giraud, My Wife (published in 1870), the point of view character comments on the French casual acceptance of lesbianism compared to the greater concern showed by Germans. In the story, a young married woman refuses to have sexual relations with her husband (the protagonist) because she is sexually enthralled by a passionate friendship with a woman she’s been involved with since their school days. When the two women are forced to separate by their husbands, the wife goes into a decline caused by sexual exhaustion and dies. Belot’s position was that schoolgirl romances led inevitably to lesbianism, during an era when writers in America were still praising school friendships as a noble ideal.
The depiction of such passions as understandable but doomed, appears in Christa Winsloe’s 1933 novel (originally in German) The Child Manuela, later filmed in more than one version as Mädchen in Uniform, in which the entire girls’ school has a crush on the most personable and kind of their teachers, but Manuela believes she has been given reason to believe her love is especially returned and makes a public declaration, triggering a crisis. The teacher, already under suspicion of same-sex interests, gently rejects her, resulting in Manuela’s suicide (though the movie version has the student saved from death at the last minute).
The transition from “innocence” to suspicion of passionate friendships can be traced fairly precisely in the works of some authors. In the 1928 novel We Sing Diana by Wanda Fraiken Neff, the protagonist contrasts her experiences at college in 1913, when “crushes” between girls were widespread and considered normal, and the 1920s when she returns there to teach and finds everyone talking about Freud and making assumptions about the stereotype of the “masculine” lesbian.
A similar comparison can be made between two autobiographical publications by Mary MacLane, written in 1902 and 1917 that show the same shift. From these examples, it can be seen that the change was not in what women were feeling and doing, but in how they had been taught to understand those feelings and actions. In the later publication, MacLane admits to having kissed lesbians but is quick to assure the reader that she isn’t one herself.
A work mentioned earlier, Olivia by Dorothy Strachey Bussy was based on the author’s own school experiences around the turn of the 20th century when she had a crush on a teacher who had a romantic partnership with a fellow teacher. But by the time Bussy fictionalized her experience in the 1930s, the student crush and declaration of love becomes the catalyst for the breakup of the academic couple, resulting one partner’s death.
Conclusions
In summary, the culture of girls’ and women’s educational institutions, beginning in the 17th century, not only created a context in which many women found romantic attachments that might shape the rest of their lives, but came to encourage an unselfconscious public culture of courtship-like behavior. The social dynamics around women in academia similarly encouraged the creation of female partnerships that fell on a long sliding scale between friendship and marriage-equivalents.
Social changes toward the end of the 19th century began to introduce elements of doubt and suspicion into these dynamics, for both students and teachers, that eventually eroded the public culture of school crushes and undermined the acceptability of the “Wellesley marriage” arrangements previously popular among faculty. But these changes were gradual, taking different shapes in different countries, and one can find both positive and negative takes on women’s academic romances overlapping across several decades.
All of this makes the school environment a rich source of potential for sapphic historic romances full of angst and drama, but with the potential for happy endings.
In this episode we talk about:
Links to the Lesbian Historic Motif Project Online
Links to Heather Online
(Originally aired 2023/03/04 - listen here)
Welcome to On the Shelf for March 2023.
I feel like I have very little to discuss this month, but the extensive list of recent books makes up for that in content. And I felt inclined to ramble a bit in the “what I’ve been consuming” section, to make up a little for how far behind I am in posting book reviews.
News of the Field
I do have another podcast I’d like to direct your attention to. I can’t say a “new” podcast because evidently they’ve been broadcasting for five years or so at this point, but new to me, at least. The show is “Queer as Fact” and is based out of Australia. Their content tends to be relatively modern topics (that is, “modern” from the point of view of my interests), but the most recent episode caught my attention because it’s on women loving women in Classical Rome—a topic my own show has tackled. There’s a link to the podcast in the show notes. If you enjoy it, drop them a note to let them know where you heard about it.
Publications on the Blog
I’ve managed to get through February without reading anything new for the blog. This wasn’t my intent, but other aspects of life have been a bit intensive. Not all of them bad! I spent a lot of time in February processing my overly abundant Seville orange crop and now have the year’s supply of marmalades, candied orange peel, and other preserved items put away. Nature has a habit of reminding us that the seasons turn as they will and you need to get with the program and catch up.
Book Shopping!
I did acquire one new book that I may mention in the blog, though the queer content is extremely minimal. This is The Once and Future Sex by Eleanor Janega, subtitled “Going Medieval on Women’s Roles in Society” from which you may understand that it’s a popular-oriented work on women’s history in the middle ages. It appears to be a collection of material from the author’s blog and looks very readable, if you’re in the market for some basic grounding in the subject. But it only has a couple pages of content touching on same-sex issues, and is very basic on that topic.
Recent Lesbian Historical Fiction
The meat of this episode is going to be the new book releases. The list has some catching up to do, not only because the Harper Collins strike has been settled and I’m finally doing their books from the last few months, but also because I turned up some titles that I missed or had mis-categorized. So we’ll start with a couple of December books.
A Million to One by Adiba Jaigirdar from Harper Collins appears to be something of a girl-gang heist story, using a setting that seems to attract stories like a magnet.
Josefa is an unapologetic and charismatic thief, who loves the thrill of the chase. She has her eye on her biggest mark yet—the RMS Titanic, the most luxurious ship in the world. But she isn’t interested in stealing from wealthy first-class passengers onboard. No, she’s out for the ultimate prize: the Rubiyat, a one of a kind book encrusted with gems that’s worth millions. Josefa can’t score it alone, so she enlists a team of girls with unique talents: Hinnah, a daring acrobat and contortionist; Violet, an actress and expert dissembler; and Emilie, an artist who can replicate any drawing by hand. They couldn’t be more different and yet they have one very important thing in common: their lives depend on breaking into the vault and capturing the Rubiyat. But careless mistakes, old grudges, and new romance threaten to jeopardize everything they’ve worked for and put them in incredible danger when tragedy strikes. While the odds of pulling off the heist are slim, the odds of survival are even slimmer…
Evil's Echo by Jane Alden from Desert Palm Press seems to blend romance with a noir detective story.
In her heart, Eleanor “Butch” Tracy is a crime reporter. Her city editor at the Gazette doesn’t see it that way. He believes women should be covering society parties and fancy weddings, not chronicling murder victims and evildoers. Butch gets her shot at the crime beat when a mysterious killer chooses her to narrate his cold-blooded serial execution of prominent New York citizens. To fully report the crimes and prove herself up to the opportunity, Butch must find the connection among the victims. She partners with the striking NYPD detective Christine Carr to discover the link between the deaths of a judge, a billionaire, and a plastic surgeon. Will they be in time to prevent the final murder? The answer lies buried in the Gazette’s clippings morgue, deep beneath the streets of New York City.
There are several January books to catch up on, both new discoveries and those previously held back. We’ll start with the first of two French-language novels I turned up this month.
Aimer Mathilde self-published by Laurence Tardi is a romance set in Victorian-era Montreal.
Montréal, 1865, deux femmes, un amour... possible? Mathilde Hébert, une jolie blonde enjouée de 19 ans, fille de notaire, rencontre par hasard Elizabeth Rice, 25 ans, immigrante irlandaise vivant seule en chambre dans un quartier industriel. Mathilde est plus que ravie d’avoir enfin rencontré une jeune femme qui s’intéresse à autre chose qu’au mariage et à la mode. Leur sentiment l’une pour l’autre naîtra dans le décor d’un Montréal en plein développement, pourtant encarcané dans une rigidité de mœurs toute victorienne. Leur amour pourra-t-il trouver sa place ? Comment accueilleront-elles leurs propres sentiments ? Comment leur entourage réagira-t-il ? Comment, dans ce contexte, pouvoir aimer Mathilde ? C’est là toute l’histoire de ce roman.
Montreal, 1865, two women, one love...perhaps? Mathilde Hébert, the pretty, cheerful, blonde 19-year-old daughter of a notary, has a chance meeting with Elizabeth Rice, a 25-year-old Irish immigrant, living alone in an industrial district rooming house. Mathilde is delighted to meet a young woman interested in something other than marriage and fashion. Set in Montreal, their feelings for each other emerge hemmed in by rigid Victorian morality. How can they find a place for their love?
When We Lost our Heads by Heather O'Neill from Penguin Random House is—quite by coincidence—also set in 19th century Montreal. With the contrast of careless privilege and civic unrest, it seems the protagonist shares much with her namesake, as alluded to in the title.
Marie Antoine is the charismatic, spoiled daughter of a sugar baron. At age twelve, with her pile of blond curls and unparalleled sense of whimsy, she’s the leader of all the children in the Golden Mile, the affluent strip of nineteenth-century Montreal where powerful families live. Until one day in 1873, when Sadie Arnett, dark-haired, sly and brilliant, moves to the neighbourhood. Marie and Sadie are immediately inseparable. United by their passion and intensity, they attract and repel each other in ways that set them both on fire. Marie, with her bubbly charm, sees all the pleasure of the world, whereas Sadie’s obsession with darkness is all-consuming. Soon, their childlike games take on the thrill of danger and then become deadly. Forced to separate, the girls spend their teenage years engaging in acts of alternating innocence and depravity, until a singular event unites them once more, with devastating effects. After Marie inherits her father’s sugar empire and Sadie disappears into the city’s gritty underworld, the working class begins to foment a revolution. Each woman will play an unexpected role in the events that upend their city—the only question is whether they will find each other once more.
Your Goyle and Mine (The Magickal Underground #1) self-published by Nan Sampson mashes up several historic eras, thanks to a sprinkling of magic.
It’s 1921. The Great War is finally over, but trouble is again brewing for Paris’ most defiant witch. When Father Dominic knocks at Celeste Bérenger’s door asking her to find Eddie, one of the last living gargoyles, she jumps at the chance. For the last fifty years, she and her life partner, Astrid Tollefsen, have run an apothecary shop on the border between the hidden Magical Quarter with its cornucopia of magical denizens and the mundane streets of post-war Paris. Fifty years of punishment for a devastating natural disaster that wasn’t entirely Celeste’s fault. But this is her chance to feel useful again. Helped by her friend, the undead Lord Byron, Celeste’s hunt for Eddie leads her from the casinos and brothels of the Magical Quarter to the Bohemian intelligentsia of Gertrude Stein’s Saturday salons, and into a devious web of danger woven just for her. To protect Byron, save Astrid, and rescue Eddie, Celeste must defy the rules again and draw on forbidden magic…before time runs out for all of them.
The boundaries between fantasy set in history and fantasy with the flavor of a historic setting can be very fuzzy indeed. And as I’ve noted previously, I struggle to be consistent in what I include or exclude with these listings. The Daughters of Izdihar (The Alamaxa Duology #1) by Hadeer Elsbai from Harper Voyager could have gone either way. The setting is strongly based on recent Egyptian history, though set in a fictional land. You’ll just have to accept that sometimes I include books that are purely fantasy on a whim.
As a waterweaver, Nehal can move and shape any water to her will, but she's limited by her lack of formal education. She desires nothing more than to attend the newly opened Weaving Academy, take complete control of her powers, and pursue a glorious future on the battlefield with the first all-female military regiment. But her family cannot afford to let her go--crushed under her father's gambling debt, Nehal is forcibly married into a wealthy merchant family. Her new spouse, Nico, is indifferent and distant and in love with another woman, a bookseller named Giorgina. Giorgina has her own secret, however: she is an earthweaver with dangerously uncontrollable powers. She has no money and no prospects. Her only solace comes from her activities with the Daughters of Izdihar, a radical women's rights group at the forefront of a movement with a simple goal: to attain recognition for women to have a say in their own lives. They live very different lives and come from very different means, yet Nehal and Giorgina have more in common than they think. The cause--and Nico--brings them into each other's orbit, drawn in by the group's enigmatic leader, Malak Mamdouh, and the urge to do what is right. But their problems may seem small in the broader context of their world, as tensions are rising with a neighboring nation that desires an end to weaving and weavers. As Nehal and Giorgina fight for their rights, the threat of war looms in the background, and the two women find themselves struggling to earn--and keep--a lasting freedom.
Now we move on to three February books. A Defiant Devotion (A Truth Universally Acknowledged #2) self-published by E.B. Neal rather transparently advertises one of its inspirations in the series title. Although this is the only volume (so far) featuring a female couple, the series as a whole is very diverse in terms of race and gender. I get a little bit of a sense that the author is trying to capture the dynamics of the Bridgerton tv series.
The year is 1812, and Miss Katherine Knight has no desire to debut, let alone find a husband. An independent, feisty young woman, Katherine prefers hunting and horseback riding to dining and dancing, and spends most of her time eavesdropping at closed doors. When her eldest brother, Lucas, jeopardizes their family’s already precarious future, Katherine uses her talents and intellect to do what she thinks will save her family from ruin. But all her plans threaten to unravel when she meets Lady Rebecca Alwyn, a mysterious and captivating young woman from Amsterdam whose family’s meteoric rise in British society arouses suspicion. Katherine and Rebecca fall headfirst into a deep and intimate friendship, testing the bounds of propriety and morality as they sink ever-deeper into an attachment that might be their undoing. Together, they must tackle their complicated family legacies and come to terms with the actions they take in order to protect the ones they love most — including each other.
Our second French-language title this month is La Femme Falaise self-published by Hélène Néra.
Alice est tombée éperdument amoureuse de Lucia, son amie d’enfance. Leur liaison orageuse a bien failli provoquer un immense scandale dans la haute société anglaise du début des années 1920. Les proches d’Alice, pressés de mettre fin aux rumeurs, l’ont forcée à quitter Londres et à s’installer à Paris où elle tente tant bien que mal de panser ses plaies et de surmonter la perte de Lucia. Après deux années d’une existence solitaire et morose, Alice fait la rencontre de la princesse Sonia de Malanset, une figure du Tout-Paris qui semble prête à lui ouvrir les portes des cercles mondains. Alice tombe très vite sous le charme de Sonia qui l’entraîne dans un tourbillon de fêtes et de musique dans le Paris des Années folles. Mais malgré la promesse d’un nouveau départ, Alice demeure hantée par le souvenir de Lucia et de leur amour sacrifié.
Alice fell madly in love with Lucia, her childhood friend. Their stormy affair threatened a scandal in the high society of 1920s England. To suppress the rumors, Alice's relatives sent her from London to Paris, where she struggles to recover from the loss of Lucia. After two lonely, gloomy years, Alice meets Princess Sonia de Malanset, who seems ready to draw her into Parisian society. Alice falls under Sonia's spell amid a whirlwind of parties and music in the Paris of the Roaring Twenties. Despite this new beginning, she remains haunted by the memory of Lucia and the love they lost.
The Librarian of Burned Books by Brianna Labuskes from William Morrow Paperbacks goes a little bit overboard in setting up the backstory in the book’s cover copy. So bear with me.
Berlin 1933. Following the success of her debut novel, American writer Althea James receives an invitation from Joseph Goebbels himself to participate in a culture exchange program in Germany. For a girl from a small town in Maine, 1933 Berlin seems to be sparklingly cosmopolitan, blossoming in the midst of a great change with the charismatic new chancellor at the helm. Then Althea meets a beautiful woman who promises to show her the real Berlin, and soon she’s drawn into a group of resisters who make her question everything she knows about her hosts—and herself. Paris 1936. She may have escaped Berlin for Paris, but Hannah Brecht discovers the City of Light is no refuge from the anti-Semitism and Nazi sympathizers she thought she left behind. Heartbroken and tormented by the role she played in the betrayal that destroyed her family, Hannah throws herself into her work at the German Library of Burned Books. Through the quiet power of books, she believes she can help counter the tide of fascism she sees rising across Europe and atone for her mistakes. But when a dear friend decides actions will speak louder than words, Hannah must decide what stories she is willing to live—or die—for. New York 1944. Since her husband Edward was killed fighting the Nazis, Vivian Childs has been waging her own war: preventing a powerful senator’s attempts to censor the Armed Service Editions, portable paperbacks that are shipped by the millions to soldiers overseas. Viv knows just how much they mean to the men through the letters she receives—including the last one she got from Edward. She also knows the only way to win this battle is to counter the senator’s propaganda with a story of her own—at the heart of which lies the reclusive and mysterious woman tending the American Library of Nazi-Banned Books in Brooklyn. As Viv unknowingly brings her censorship fight crashing into the secrets of the recent past, the fates of these three women will converge, changing all of them forever. Inspired by the true story of the Council of Books in Wartime—the WWII organization founded by booksellers, publishers, librarians, and authors to use books as “weapons in the war of ideas”—The Librarian of Burned Books is an unforgettable historical novel, a haunting love story, and a testament to the beauty, power, and goodness of the written word.
Finishing up with six March books, this may be the longest collective list I’ve ever included. Starting chronologically, we begin with a pair of books set in ancient Greece—a Greece that, as usual, includes a heavy overlay of mythic fantasy.
Lies We Sing to the Sea by Sarah Underwood from Harper Teen.
Each spring, Ithaca condemns twelve maidens to the noose. This is the price vengeful Poseidon demands for the lives of Queen Penelope’s twelve maids, hanged and cast into the depths centuries ago. But when that fate comes for Leto, death is not what she thought it would be. Instead, she wakes on a mysterious island and meets a girl with green eyes and the power to command the sea. A girl named Melantho, who says one more death can stop a thousand. The prince of Ithaca must die—or the tides of fate will drown them all.
As is often the case, that description doesn’t give any indication of the book’s sapphic content, so you’ll have to trust in the tags in Goodreads. The second Greek book is a bit more forthcoming: Now the Wind Scatters by J Donal from Asteria Press.
Iphigenia seems to have it all. As the eldest daughter of the House of Atreus and princess of Mycenae, Iphigenia has had an idyllic childhood despite her family's bloodstained history. She is the darling of the people of her city, and at her side are her endearingly annoying sister Electra and adorable baby brother Orestes. As she comes of age, however, that fragile peace is threatened by strange, burgeoning feelings for her handmaiden. Amidst this crisis of identity, another looms as an ancient goddess only Iphigenia can see simmers beneath the surface of reality. All of this falls to the back burner when war with the Trojans looms high on the horizon, and Iphigenia's father summons her with a proposal of marriage she would go to the ends of the earth to avoid. In a desperate attempt to circumnavigate her fate, Iphigenia discovers a dark truth: the altar her father intends for her is sacrificial rather than matrimonial. It is only by an act of divine intervention that she survives, and it is by divine retribution that she will have her revenge. It is from the desecrated shores of Aulis that Iphigenia will embark on a journey that will take her from the furthest reaches of the ancient Mediterranean to the underworld itself. Amidst romances with goddesses and her own terrifying deification, Iphigenia plots. Despite the pleas of everyone around her, she vows that blood will soon stain the marble halls of the House of Atreus once again. Vengeance is sweet, but as Iphigenia soon discovers, it comes at a price that could cost her everything.
When Daughters of Nantucket by Julie Gerstenblatt from MIRA turned up in my search terms, it had all those vague queer-coded descriptions like “the secret wishes of her heart.” Fortunately I was able to confirm with the author that it definitely has sapphic content.
Nantucket in 1846 is an island set apart not just by its geography but by its unique circumstances. With their menfolk away at sea, often for years at a time, women here know a rare independence—and the challenges that go with it. Eliza Macy is struggling to conceal her financial trouble as she waits for her whaling captain husband to return from a voyage. In desperation, she turns against her progressive ideals and targets Meg Wright, a pregnant free Black woman trying to relocate her store to Main Street. Meanwhile, astronomer Maria Mitchell loves running Nantucket’s Atheneum and spending her nights observing the stars, yet she fears revealing the secret wishes of her heart. On a sweltering July night, a massive fire breaks out in town, quickly kindled by the densely packed wooden buildings. With everything they possess now threatened, these three very different women are forced to reevaluate their priorities and decide what to save, what to let go and what kind of life to rebuild from the ashes of the past.
Some real women from early Hollywood inspired Well Behaved Women by Caroline Lamond from One More Chapter.
When Maybelle Crabtree, a God-fearing farm girl from Kentucky, has a chance encounter with a charismatic stranger, her life changes forever. With an invitation to join the infamous Alla Nazimova and her Sewing Circle, Maybelle’s eyes are opened to a life of decadence and glamour. Able to freely discover her own sexuality, Maybelle embraces all that Hollywood has to offer in the hedonist roaring twenties. But both Maybelle and Alla have secrets that threaten to bring their gilded lives crashing down. Hearts will be broken, careers destroyed and friendships shattered because what happens behind closed doors, doesn’t stay hidden forever… A compelling story inspired by the real life of silent movie icon, Alla Nazimova.
World War II is a popular setting for sapphic romances, but usually more in the European theater. To Meet Again by Kadyan from Bold Strokes Books takes up the wartime setting in south-east Asia.
London, 1938. Evelyn has only one dream: to become a singer. Fleeing an arranged marriage, she leaves for Singapore in pursuit of a future brighter than the conventions of society could offer her. Evelyn performs in a Chinatown cabaret to survive, where she meets Joan, a young Australian doctor and avid fan. Little by little, Evelyn and Joan form a close bond that leads to a love stronger than either has ever known. But history has other plans. The Japanese army invades Singapore, and Evelyn must flee while Joan refuses to leave her patients. From prison camps to the deep jungle, through encounters and tragedies, Evelyn and Joan struggle to survive and to find each other again.
Gothic novels are all about atmosphere, and A Dark, Cold Touch by Megan E. Hart from Howling Unicorn Press has it in plenty. What it doesn’t have is a clear indication of where or when the story is set, but we’ll give it the benefit of the doubt.
The position of lady’s companion at the grand, isolated Hemford House was meant to save Estelle Glass from the scandal of her own making. But when she arrived at the mansion and was greeted by the stern, mysterious and intimidating Mrs. Blackwell, Estelle began to see what had been meant as a punishment might possibly become more like a reward…if only she could manage to find her place in the dreary household and the service of Mrs. Virginia Hemford, the childlike beauty Estelle had been sent to serve. Soon the secrets of Hemford House begin to reveal themselves, one by one, as Estelle tries her best to take care of Ginny and avoid her confusing feelings for the intimidating Mrs. Blackwell. Estelle finds herself caught up in a web of rules designed to keep Ginny “safe”…but safe from what, exactly? Or from whom? What accident claimed the life of Ginny’s previous companion? Why does Mr. Hemford avoid his wife’s company, no matter how charmingly she tries, and fails, to seduce him? And who’s reaching to take Estelle’s hand in the night with that dark, cold touch? Only when Estelle learns the deadly secret everyone at Hemford House has been keeping can she truly understand what it means to take care of Ginny Hemford…or to be cared for by Rachel Blackwell. Can the women of Hemford House escape the hauntings of its ghosts, or will the past consume them all?
That feels like a good set-up for the special show on sapphic gothic stories that I hope to do this month.
What Am I Reading?
So what have I been consuming lately? Although I’m currently in the middle of reading two titles in print, the works that I’ve finished in the last month were all audiobooks, dominated by going on a K.J. Charles spree. K.J. Charles, who specializes in gay male historic romances, sometimes with a fantasy element, might seem an odd obsession for someone like me who is focused so strongly on sapphic fiction. But the simple fact is that K.J. Charles is an amazing writer—she has an ability to create vivid and nuanced characters that fit their historic settings and yet are recognizable, and varied, “types” that resonate with this modern reader. And she finds ways for her same-sex couples to be together despite the challenges of the times. All of which makes me rather disappointed that the couple of times she’s written female couples, she just doesn’t seem to have found them as interesting to write about.
But another interesting aspect of reading KJ’s work is that, because I find her writing itself so satisfying, the books provide me with a useful way to define and calibrate how I feel about degrees of sexual content in historic romances, and various types of relationship dynamics. Overall, KJ’s books have far more sexual content, and it’s far more central to the story, than I’m interested in. It isn’t even a matter of the gender of the people involved—I’d feel the same way about that level of sexual content for a female couple. I’m willing to put up with it for the sake of the characters and story, in the same way that I’m willing to put up with boring fight scenes in superhero movies for the sake of the underlying story and characters.
But that means that when the relationship in question doesn’t work for me, the premise that the characters are fated to end up together because of their mutual sexual desire isn’t enough to make it believable. Or perhaps, “believable” isn’t the right word, because I’m quite willing to believe that people end up in bad relationships because the sex is good—I’ve seen it in real life among people I know. But it means that I become much less invested in the story because, for me, great sex isn’t sufficient motivation. So, for example, the central relationship in books 2 and 3 of the Magpies series (A Case of Possession, and A Flight of Magpies) is like pebbles in my shoe. The two characters profess their love for each other despite conflicting goals, lack of trust, and poor communication, based solely (as far as I can tell) on the fact that their sexual kinks are complementary. Mind you, I love the fantasy worldbuilding in this Victorian-set series, with its magically-based thriller/mystery plots. But I’m simply not invested in the couple.
There’s a similar theme in Spectred Isle, another fantasy-infused romantic thriller, this time set between the world wars. The protagonists not only deal with the legal persecution of gay male relationships, but with deep personal distrust of each other and very little in common other than being drawn into the same plot. So, in order to bend the plot to a romance, it’s necessary for sexual desire—unrelated to affection or admiration—to be an overwhelming force. That dynamic works better for me in The Henchman of Zenda, KJ’s alternate take on the classic novel The Prisoner of Zenda, because the central characters are not framed as a romantic couple, but as rivals, possible adversaries, and only incidentally fuck-buddies. (The listen inspired me to check out a couple of video versions or the original story, and I have to say, I love KJ’s spin on the “true story” much better.)
So aside from my immersion in gay male historicals, I listened to two audiobooks that cheered me up in their inclusion of incidental, casual queerness in genres that are only gradually allowing the reader to expect that as a possibility. Court of Fives by Kate Elliott is a YA historic fantasy, inspired significantly by the social and political dynamics of Greco-Roman Egypt. The protagonist is marginalized due to her mixed-class heritage and gender, but hopes to find fulfilment in a ritualized athletics competition. Personal and high-level political upheavals disrupt that plan but her training gets put to good use. The book puts a number of interesting plot developments in train for the sequels. In the background, we see how the same socio-political dynamics disrupt her sister’s sweet romance with another girl, and I’m looking forward hopefully to see if they’re allowed a reunion.
The queer elements in Lucy Holland’s Sistersong are much more overt. Inspired by a cross-over between Britain in the midst of the Saxon invasions, and the folk song about a murdered sister who is converted into a harp that sings her fate, we follow three very different sisters with magical connections to the land: one whose disfigurement makes her hungry for love, one whose self-centered spite brings disaster, and one who is destined to cross gender boundaries and become king. It’s a complex story with many twists and turns, revealing key elements of the past and present in a gradual fashion. (I did spot some of those keys in advance, which added to my enjoyment of the book.) The story was slow at first, and the conflict between Christian and non-Christian elements was a bit overdone, but the story picked up as it went along.
I’m not sure why I felt inspired to be more talky about my reading for this month. I guess I miss being in the habit of doing reviews regularly. Maybe I’ll go back and comb through these podcast notes and do something more formal. I hope your reading is giving you something to think about, too!
Your monthly roundup of history, news, and the field of sapphic historical fiction.
In this episode we talk about:
Links to the Lesbian Historic Motif Project Online
Links to Heather Online
Evidently at some point when I wanted an anchor to tag for talking about the next Alpennia book, I arbitrarily pencilled in an expected release date of March 2023. So if you happened to view the front page of this website at some point in the last four days, you may have gotten your hopes up that Mistress of Shadows had magically acquired a physical existence.
Alas, no. I'm not sure I'm going to get any substantial writing done before I retire at this point. The day-job seems to take more and more out of my brain all the time. At one time, I estimated that I might be able to finish the whole planned Alpennia series before retirment. Ha. Ha.
The books are all still clamoring to get out of my head, but they have to fight their way past the failure investigations and the new managerial duties and the constant pressure to get the work done with fewer and fewer personnel.
Two years and two months. That's the target. I love my job, but I want a life again too.
(Originally aired 2023/02/18 - listen here)
Introduction
It might seem a bit odd, when doing these shows on tropes in sapphic historic romance, to combine the “friends to lovers” and “enemies to lovers” tropes into a single discussion. But it seems to me that both tropes can be explored in a more interesting fashion by contrasting them with each other, while simultaneously contrasting them with how the tropes work in mixed-gender couples.
To review briefly (because you never know who might have just stumbled on this concept for the first time), a trope is simply a recurring, conventional literary device or motif. And in the context of romance fiction, it has come to mean any of a variety of fixed structures or scenarios involving the romantic couple that is used regularly enough that it has come to carry a weight of expectation and meaning, and that connects the story in the reader’s mind to other stories that have used the same trope. The trope could be a character type, or a situation, or even a plot-sequence or mini-script. In the context of historic romance novels, popular tropes include ones that describe attributes of the romantic couple, the context in which they meet, the barriers keeping them apart, or the mechanism by which they connect romantically.
Historic romance readers love their tropes, and in this series of podcasts, we look at how some of the more popular tropes function for female couples in historic settings—how they change the dynamics of the plot due to social expectations, prejudices, or assumptions around gender relations that are specific to the setting.
As usual, my examples tend to be drawn from Western culture. If you’re writing your story in a significantly different cultural setting, you should research what the differences might be with regard to expectations for friendship and for social conflict between women. However for this particular set of tropes, I’m going to be discussing general dynamics more that specific historic examples.
Trope Expectations
It helps to begin by dissecting how the “friends to lovers” and “enemies to lovers” tropes work for mixed-gender couples, and how they work differently in historic settings than in contemporary stories.
“Friends to lovers” plots for male-female couples lean heavily on the cultural expectations and stereotypes around the imperatives of sexual desire. Men and women in close social proximity—so the model goes—will invariably find desire entering the picture unless there’s an overwhelming counterforce. That counterforce could be a lack of physical attraction; it could be a significant social taboo such as a pseudo-sibiling relationship between two people who have interacted closely since childhood; it could be a matter of social classification, where the other person has been tagged as “inappropriate for romance” for any number of reasons.
As has been noted in previous installments of this series, there have been large swathes of cultural history in which non-sexual friendship between men and women was considered implausible as a concept, or at least only possible within very narrow contexts. (Contemporary settings are more open to the idea, of course.) So for a historic romance, there can be a significant hurdle to arranging for your protagonists to be non-romantic friends in the first place, if you have a male-female couple. And once a friendship is established as existing, there needs to be an ongoing barrier that initially prevents the characters from recognizing (or at least acknowledging) the romantic potential.
In contrast, a mixed-gender “enemies to lovers” trope often tends to lean into seeing romance as conflict. Whether the conflict is a generic “war between the sexes” where personal desires are in conflict, or whether there’s an external clash that gets personalized, the underlying theme tends to be that the heightened emotions of conflict is re-interpreted by the body as arousal. Arousal, in turn, when embraced, forces a reanalysis of the underlying emotional state.
In a historic context, the initial conflict sometimes stems from the coercive dynamic of courtship and marriage itself. A woman who—for any number of reasons—feels disinclined for marriage in general, or for marriage to the other protagonist in particular, may view the courtship itself as a hostile act. In a context where courtship is inherently an unequal and adversarial dynamic, setting up your characters to be in conflict can be extremely simple. Of course, they may also be in conflict over other issues: politics, personality or history, misunderstandings, conflicting loyalties. But maneuvering them through that conflict and into romantic alignment is, to some extent, simply an exaggerated version of default courtship negotiations. If one partner is expected to resist, and then to be won over, the reasons for the resistance don’t necessarily change the shape of the plot.
These dynamics of male-female conflict and resolution come from culturally-driven assumptions about gender essentialism, but keep in mind that even if you toss biological essentialism out of the mix (or even better, hurl it with great force), we’re still placing our characters into cultures that were steeped in essentialist beliefs. And those beliefs will shape what your characters are dealing with and how they react.
A Digression
I’m going to digress for a moment for a personal note. I have to confess that I have a hard time wrapping my brain around enemies-to-lovers romances when the enmity stems from aversion and distaste for the other person as a person. Even the ones that aren’t flat out “I totally hate you” but are just “you’re annoying, go away.” My basic attitude is, “Given all the perfectly reasonable people in the world, why would you put all that effort into fighting through dislike to see if maybe there’s love on the other side?” And don’t get me started on the topic of hate-sex. But that’s probably because I’m asexual and simply can’t imagine why you’d want to get intimate with someone you don’t even like. So stories that are basically, “I hate you but the sex is so great that readers will stick with our story up to the last chapter where we decide we actually love each other after all” … um … just not working for me. The enemies-to-lovers stories that work for me tend to be ones where the conflict is external—where the characters are set up by their personal histories to be in conflict, but where they see things to like and admire in the other person before desire enters the picture. Take this as context as we move on to look at female couples as friends and enemies, because I have some serious gaps in my awareness as a result.
Friends to Lovers
A regular theme of these sapphic tropes discussions is the simple fact that, all other things being equal, historically, women were more likely to do their default socializing with other women rather than with men. When it comes to friendships, there are pervasive expectations that women will be friends with other women. Those friendships may include elements of romance and sensuality, but the two aspects are not considered to be in conflict. So the same factors that make it challenging to set up a male-female couple as friends first, before there’s a romance, often don’t exist for a female couple. There may be other social factors in their lives that make this particular friendship difficult or unlikely, but it won’t be because of gender.
And in certain social contexts (like the romantic friendship phenomenon) there was an assumption that friendships between women could and would partake of romantic feelings and displays of physical affection. Whether you’re looking back in history or listening to contemporary stories of how female couples got together, you hear time and again that they were friends who came to realize that what they felt for each other was a different flavor than how they’d been viewing it. (I’m working very hard here to use language that doesn’t frame romance as being more or better than friendship.)
So the difference in the trope comes when one or both of the couple comes to the realization that what they feel or what they want is different from what their culture categorizes as friendship. Or maybe they don’t? We’ve talked a lot about how the emotions and displays of affection between female friends were often given license to be overtly romantic. In a mixed-gender “friends to lovers” romance there are generally behaviors that signal the tipping point. But in many historic contexts, those behaviors were part of a continuum of behavior between female friends. This means the “recognition point” when the relationship irrevocably becomes erotic (or moves toward an exclusive marriage-like arrangement) can occur much further along the scale.
Of course, there are also historic cultures where friendship behavior has more narrow limits, or in more recent times, when a hyperawareness of theories of sexuality makes it harder to put off that recognition point. These are factors that you need to investigate and consider for the particular setting of your story. What’s the normal range of behavior for female friends? At what point would your characters feel the need to discuss a realignment of their relationship? A major part of Lillian Faderman’s book Surpassing the Love of Men focuses on the gradual turning point in the early 20th century when that “recognition point” shifted significantly.
How would reaching that recognition point change the couple’s expectations for the future? Would that change be apparent to their community as a qualitative difference? How does this shift in their relationship affect how they act with other women they’ve categorized as friends? Do they consider the shift in their relationship to create an expectation of exclusivity? If so, exclusivity in what sense? They’re still likely to be leading lives centering around a female community, so a drawing away from other friends might be viewed negatively if they don’t feel able to be open about being lovers or whatever feature their exclusivity revolves around.
In this episode, I’m primarily focusing on the relationship itself, and not on external features like living arrangements, which have been discussed previously.
As noted earlier, for male-female couples, even when the initial relationship is understood to be a friendship, there will tend to be a social pressure to turn it into a romance, or simply an assumption that that will be the natural progression. But for female couples, the pressures and assumptions are different. There may be an assumption that long-term friends will tend to become closer and more devoted over time, but there isn’t a looming cultural expectation of erotic entanglement. At least, not necessarily, though such expectations may exist in specific subcultures. And the couple is less likely to have easily available social scripts for recognizing and negotiating the shift to an erotic or exclusive relationship. (Though, again, in some specific cultures, such scripts existed. For example, the late 19th and early 20th century culture of same-sex crushes in women-only educational settings.) This means that the most interesting complications, misunderstandings, and crises in the romance plot are likely to happen in a different part of the relationship arc than they would for a mixed gender couple.
Enemies to Lovers
So how about those enemies-to-lovers stories? Where are we going to see differences for our female couple?
One factor that drops out of the equation is the stereotype of the “battle of the sexes” — that is, the assumption that men and women will inherently be in conflict. Even when there’s a butch-femme dynamic to the relationship, it’s a different power negotiation from a mixed-gender couple.
Another factor that drops out—or at least is muted—is the external social pressure for the conflict between the protagonists to resolve in couplehood. Not only do the protagonists have to work past their mutual antipathy to find romance, but they have to do it without the support of societal expectations that interpersonal conflict is simply another form of courtship.
Sources of Conflict
So what are potential sources of conflict that could resolve into romance (or at least be worked through in the process of finding romance)? The basic one, which I’ve touched on already, is simple conflict of personality. Their surface presentations grate on each other—or perhaps it’s a one-way grating. This can intersect with some of the personality-based tropes, like “grumpy-sunshine”. But at a deeper level it can fall into the category I don’t really grok, the one where they genuinely despise each other personally, but some situation forces them into a proximity that sparks desire.
Another version of this—and it’s another one that I have some trouble getting into—is the stereotype of women jockeying for social status and identifying other women as enemies in this sort of rivalry. This is a motif that is too often seen in popular media of the “there can be only one woman” variety, the sort where female characters don’t seem to have friends and communities and always view other women as enemies. Quite frankly, it feels artificial and unrealistic to me that a conflict of this sort would resolve into romantic desire. But maybe that’s just me.
I think there’s a lot more promise in situations where the two female protagonists are rivals for some goal, but the resolution can involve discovering that they can both achieve their goals, or that the rivalry was misdirected. The 19th century socialites who vie for prominence as a hostess but end up combining their talents. Two business rivals who discover the joys of collaboration (and perhaps of monopoly once they aren’t trying to steal each other’s customers). And keep in mind that women have always been active in business in all ages, though the nature of the businesses open to them might vary. A similar dynamic can be seen in a competition for resources, such as an inheritance or a desirable job, where the conflict doesn’t come from personality but from desperation and need.
In a romantic comedy, there could be a lot of potential in overlaying the default heteronormative expectations with a same-sex romantic arc, where two women are set up to think they’re competing for the same man but realize they prefer each other. Or it could be even more complex if they’re each trying to arrange marriages for siblings or friends and come into conflict over misunderstandings about who is being matched with whom. (Think about every complex Shakespearean romantic entanglement plot you’ve ever seen and then add a layer where resolving into a same-sex couple is one of the options.)
One eternally reliable source of enemies-to-lovers stories is conflict that derives from family or national loyalties. Whether it’s the equivalent of Romeo and Juliet, connecting in spite of feuding families, or the spies who loved each other, or complex diplomatic negotiations that turn personal, a romance where there is no personal animosity but a vast external pressure arguing against the connection provides a satisfying storyline that brings in both internal and external conflicts. And stories like this can be set in almost any age and at any level of society.
Conclusion
Structuring historic romances between women using a friends-to-lovers or enemies-to-lovers trope offers a wide scope of story possibilities—wide enough that I’ve barely skimmed the surface here. Many of the enemies-to-lovers possibilities will be very similar to those available for mixed-gender couples, though without the overlay of the whole “battle of the sexes” nonsense. But friends-to-lovers stories operate out of a very different dynamic than the one that makes sense for male-female romances, due to the historic differences in how same-gender and mixed-gender friendships were viewed. And either of these will likely be combined with other tropes that address how the couple organizes their future life together, in contrast to the standard mixed-gender marriage plot. So find a context in the setting of your choice that either brings your couple together as friends or that sets them in conflict as enemies and let them have at it!
In this episode we talk about:
Links to the Lesbian Historic Motif Project Online
Links to Heather Online
I hadn't expected to be able to announce this quite so promptly! Often it takes a few days to get the contracts sent out and returned, but things got turned around immediately. Now that all the responses have been sent out, here are the acceptances (in no particular order).
First off, a commissioned story from Catherine Lundoff, "The Pirate in the MIrror", another Celeste and Jacquotte story in the continuing series.
From Rose Cullen, we have "Battling Poll" a story of female prize-fighters in 18th century England. I'm particularly delighted to be able to buy this story as it had almost made the cut in a previous year and came back with revisions that made it an immediate "yes".
B. Pladek sold us a historic fantasy, "The Salt Price," involving salt-smugglers in 18th century France and a fairy bargain.
And Annemarie KD provides us with "To the Fair Muse Who, Loving Me, Imagin'd More" dreaming up some sapphic adventures for poet/playwright/spy Aphra Behn in the Low Countries of the 17th century. When this submission came in, I immediately thought, "I hope it lives up to the title because I'm in love with the title" and it did.
The fiction episodes are scheduled for April, July, September, and December this year. My next task is to start finding narrators who will best suit the stories.
(Originally aired 2023/02/04 - listen here)
Welcome to On the Shelf for February 2023.
There’s a temptation to wait to record this episode at the very last minute in order to see if I can include the new fiction line-up announcement. As I’m writing this, there are still two days left in the submissions period (and I’m hoping for the same last-minute flood I’ve received in past years to bring the numbers up to the usual level). But while I’ll almost certainly have started reading submissions by Saturday, chances are I won’t be ready to make an announcement. If you want the up-to-the-minute news about the line-up, make sure to follow the blog.
News of the Field
In news of the field, I’m still holding off on promoting books from Harper Collins imprints, to support the ongoing strike by their workers. The list of postponed books is up to 4 titles now, but the company has recently entered negotiations with the union, so perhaps by next month I’ll be in a position to do the catch-up listings.
When working on the annual roundup of statistics on lesbian and sapphic historicals, I’ve been digging into the various connections and relationships between imprints to be able to give a more accurate picture of who’s publishing what. My database—which goes back at least 20 years, though much more spottily in the first half—includes slightly over 300 named imprints, with an average of 2.3 titles per imprint.
But that average doesn’t give an accurate picture at all. Almost 200 of those imprints have only a single book listed in the database, while the most prolific has 71 titles. Out of the 11 imprints that have 10 or more titles, 9 are specifically queer small presses.
But, again, that doesn’t show the whole picture because of the way mainstream publishing is a small collection of conglomerations of specialty imprints. So, for example, by my count, the Harper Collins group accounts for 15 different imprints in my database, for a total of 28 titles. Penguin/Random House accounts for 25 different imprints for a total of 51 titles. And Hachette, while including only 6 imprints in my database, accounts for 20 titles.
So while it might seem as if, on the basis of individual named imprints, the small queer presses are the major players, when you view the mainstream publishers as unified entities, you can see that they’re a significant presence in the field.
This is, of course, both a good and a bad thing. It’s a good thing that mainstream publishers are embracing books with queer content. Their books have larger reach. They’re more accessible to the general public through bookstores and libraries. But the down side is that, as more queer books are available from major publishers, their books are beginning to dominate some online book discussion spaces. There are practical reasons for this that I’ve discussed in previous shows, having to do with the way information flows within the literary ecosystem. But never forget that small, independent queer presses were what created the space for that to happen.
Publications on the Blog
In January, the blog delved into George E. Haggerty’s Unnatural Affections: Women and Fiction in the Later 18th Century. It’s a look at how various categories of transgressive desire shaped literary genres in the 18th century that helped give rise to the gothic novel. It’s one of several books I selected to prepare for a podcast on lesbian gothics, though I’m not sure I’m ready to do that one this month.
Book Shopping!
I went on one of my periodic online book shopping sprees, inspired by a calendar reminder to order a book that came out late last year: Wendy L. Rouse’s Public Faces, Secret Lives: A Queer History of the Women's Suffrage Movement.
While I was shopping, I followed up on a couple other notes and discovered that there was now an affordable paperback edition of Thomas A. Abercrombie’s Passing to América: Antonio (Née Maria) Yta's Transgressive, Transatlantic Life in the Twilight of the Spanish Empire. Like many biographies of so-called “passing women,” this falls more in the category of transgender history, but remains a continuing interest for the blog in order to provide context for one of the more popular tropes in sapphic historical fiction.
For similar reasons, I picked up Norena Shopland’s A History of Women in Men's Clothes: From Cross-Dressing to Empowerment. This work is from a publisher that specializes in popularized history, rather than an academic press, and a brief skim through the table of contents suggests that a more accurate title would be “a history of women in men’s clothes in the 19th century and later.” But I’ll review it and let you know if I think it would be useful.
The last item from the shopping trip is a collection edited by Ruth Vanita: Queering India: Same-Sex Love and Eroticism in Indian Culture and Society. As the collection is broad in scope in terms of eras and identities, I expect that maybe one or two articles at most will be of interest to the Project, but I’m always on the lookout for non-Euro-centric studies and Ruth Vanita has done a lot of good work in the field.
Recent Lesbian Historical Fiction
Now let’s move on to new and recent fiction. I found only one January book that I’d missed previously, so I’ll just fold it in with the February books, rather than separating it out, and follow my usual format of tackling titles in chronological order of setting. I don’t know if people notice that I do that! And sometimes I’ll do a thematic group out of order.
This month has another relatively invisible feature: it’s the first month since I started actively avoiding Amazon links when I was able to get a non-Amazon url for all the current listings. My ideal goal is to be able to provide an author, publisher, or Books2Read type link for every book, even if it’s simply the author’s website that itself has an Amazon link. The advantage is that it delivers your eyeballs to the author’s own information which may include other titles, blogs, or mailing lists.
She Who Would be King by Kim Pritekel from Sapphire Books is a historic fantasy that combines some solidly real-world grounding with an imagined country where the story largely takes place.
Cateline is the seventeen-year-old daughter of a nobleman in fourteenth-century France. It's a time when children aren't seen as those to be loved and cherished, but instead are used as pawns and bargaining chips on the chessboard of control and privilege. She is married off to a prince in the country of Sursha, a Gaelic-speaking island nation near Ireland. Fergus, her betrothed, is next in line to take over once beloved King Carthac dies. Or is he? Fallon, the youngest royal child and only girl, has been raised as one of the king's sons her entire life, for reasons she has never fully understood. A natural fighter, she was raised to be a warrior and head the Crown's Elite Guard assigned to protect her boorish brother Fergus. Forced to fill in for her brother in an unexpected way, an instant attraction between Fallon and Cateline forms. In a game of thrones filled with deception and betrayal, even the most secret love can mean death.
The Pirate's Pursuit (Sapphic Seas #2) by Wren Taylor from Epicea Press introduces two new characters to the series, but has intersections with the couple from the previous book.
Lisbet Clarke knows how to fend for herself in the growing pirate haven of Nassau, and is quite content doing it. When a woman from her past steps back into her life, she is forced to finally contend with old memories and betrayals. Yet, she can’t help but wonder what might have been had things ended differently between them. Kit Murphy never thought she would see the island she grew up on again. But face to face with her first love, there is no place she would rather be. Kit is eager to make amends and rebuild a connection with the only person who understood her, even if fate seems to have other plans. Thrown together on a dangerous voyage, Kit and Lisbet must fight for their lives… and their love.
Blood in the Tea Leaves, self-published by Beka Westrup, is another overtly real-world/fantasy intersection, in this case involving vampires. It’s a companion novella to another book by the author.
Marie is a woman sold into a loveless marriage in a 1700’s, secondary-world France. Under the close tutelage of the esteemed Lady Colette Valand, Marie has sewn a small corner of life for herself in their little town in the country-side. She even manages to find love and companionship in a secret affair with a prostitute, Alice. But Lady Colette has a few secrets of her own, and they all come to light on one fateful night, when their bodies and futures are forever changed by a mysterious tin of tea leaves.
The Secret Life of Spinsters: A Sapphic Regency Romance (Desiring The Dexingtons # 2), self-published by Renee Dahlia, is yet another case of a family-saga type historic romance series that includes one sapphic entry. The format is becoming something of a publishing category on its own!
Confirmed spinster Elspeth Dexington works in the Dexington family linen manufacturing business dealing with logistics. She believes that machinery will make clothing cheaper for the people, and therefore everyone can afford new clothes, not hand-me-downs and turned cuffs. But when her father declares they will stop manufacturing linen and shift to cotton, she has a new fight on her hands. Producing affordable clothing shouldn’t come at such a great human cost. Help comes in an unexpected form. Florencia Waulker is the daughter of one of the Luddite organisers. She does all her blind father’s correspondence, but when he orders an attack on the Dexington factory, she realises his belief in the need to rid factories of machines have gone too far. She sneaks out to warn the daughter of the factory owner, only to find herself caught up in a conspiracy. Can two spinsters work together to prevent a disaster, or two? Or is falling in love the real problem?
Dangerous Flames (Good Neighbors coda), self-published by Stephanie Burgis, probably requires reading the four stories in the main series first for context. Again, this is a historic fantasy, in this case somewhat lightly anchored in a vaguely late 19th century not-quite-England.
No killing until the wedding's over. No killing... It's such a simple, temporary rule - but Carmilla, the notorious Countess Cardenza, will still find it hard to follow when she's confronted by her most dangerous old flame at Mia and Leander's wedding. With appallingly respectable neighbors, shambling zombies, and old enemies on every side, will her reunion with Eliza de Mornay end with murder or kissing - or both?
For Lamb by Lesa Cline-Ransome from Holliday House is a young adult novel more on the literary side and dealing with heavy themes.
The book follows a family striving to better their lives in the late 1930s Jackson, Mississippi. Lamb’s mother is a hard-working, creative seamstress who cannot reveal she is a lesbian. Lamb’s brother has a brilliant mind and has even earned a college scholarship for a black college up north-- if only he could curb his impulsiveness and rebellious nature. Lamb herself is a quiet and studious girl. She is also naive. As she tentatively accepts the friendly overtures of a white girl who loans her a book she loves, she sets a off a calamitous series of events that pulls in her mother, charming hustler uncle, estranged father, and brother, and ends in a lynching.
What Am I Reading?
So what have I been reading? It’s been half and half print and audiobooks this month, with the print titles both being novellas that I could finish in one sitting.
I listened to Valiant Ladies by Melissa Grey, which I enthused about when it showed up in the new book listings. The story is inspired by the real life story of two young women in 17th century Peru who became sword-wielding vigilantes to fight crime. While the premise of the book is absolutely my cup of tea—or maybe mug of ale in this case—the story never quite grabbed me. The language felt repetitive and slow, and the main characters had a lot of anachronistically modern attitudes. Sometimes that sort of thing is a deliberate authorial choice to provide the reader with a more solid connection to the story, but in this case it felt like the author really wanted to be writing about modern teenagers, but dressed them up in costumes.
I definitely enjoyed Olivia Waite’s new short romance Hen Fever, in which two lonely women bond and fall in love over breeding chickens for the local poultry show. It had a lot of complexity for such a short work. The setting is several decades after her Feminine Pursuits series so I don’t think it’s meant to connect to it, at least not that I noticed.
Another shorter work that I read was Nhi Vo’s The Chosen and the Beautiful, which is a re-working of The Great Gatsby focused around the character of Daisy’s friend Jordan Baker. Jordan is re-imagined as a bisexual Vietnamese adoptee, but the story also throws magic into the mix, including explaining Gatsby’s rise as being due to a bargain with demons. My reading notes say, “Vibes, all vibes!” It’s very much a story where atmosphere is a central character, and I suspect that if you aren’t at all familiar with The Great Gatsby you might stumble in places trying to follow the plot.
I finished up the month listening to yet another of K.J. Charles’s gay male historic romances, The Gentle Art of Fortune Hunting. Like pretty much every book of hers that I’ve read, the prose and character studies are excellent…and like many of them, I feel like she leans in a little hard on “hate sex turns into true romance.” But as usual, the characters have good intentions even when they have conflicting goals and everything works out.
And that’s it for this month’s On the Shelf. For the essay show, I probably need something quicker to script than the gothic fiction episode I’m working on, so you’ll probably get another “Our F/Favorite Tropes” episode. And watch the blog and my social media to hear about this year’s fiction line-up. The first fiction show will be in April, so I have time to get things set up…I say with a hollow laugh knowing that I always mean to get the fiction episodes set up well in advance and often fail.
Your monthly roundup of history, news, and the field of sapphic historical fiction.
In this episode we talk about:
Links to the Lesbian Historic Motif Project Online
Links to Heather Online