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A review by evewithanapple
Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England by Sharon Marcus
2.0
I have no idea what I just read.
I mean, okay, I get that her basic premise was "we assume that lesbianism was taboo/not thought of in Victorian society, but actually things were more complicated!" But even after reading the book, I don't know how she came to that conclusion. She offers up examples (little girls and their dolls, lesbian couples advocating for marriage reform, the Estella/Miss Havisham subtext in Great Expectations) but the writing was so dense and academic, I couldn't make heads or tails of what these examples were supposed to mean or how they supported her thesis. Like, in the conclusion, she says (paraphrased) "people hold up Oscar Wilde as an example of how homosexuality and heterosexuality were at odds in Victorian society, but he wrote a lot about women's relationships with each other!" It's like a Mad Libs game: none of the conclusions match up with the evidence given in the previous paragraph.
I mean, okay, I get that her basic premise was "we assume that lesbianism was taboo/not thought of in Victorian society, but actually things were more complicated!" But even after reading the book, I don't know how she came to that conclusion. She offers up examples (little girls and their dolls, lesbian couples advocating for marriage reform, the Estella/Miss Havisham subtext in Great Expectations) but the writing was so dense and academic, I couldn't make heads or tails of what these examples were supposed to mean or how they supported her thesis. Like, in the conclusion, she says (paraphrased) "people hold up Oscar Wilde as an example of how homosexuality and heterosexuality were at odds in Victorian society, but he wrote a lot about women's relationships with each other!" It's like a Mad Libs game: none of the conclusions match up with the evidence given in the previous paragraph.