Sharon Marcus

I didn't quite finish this because I haven't read the Trollope novel she writes about at the very end and I didn't want to spoil myself.

I found the first third of the book insightful and useful, the rest less so. My perspective may be colored somewhat by the fact that I am reading for research purposes and the first third was much more relevant to what I'm working on. The final section, about female (same-sex) marriage in the Victorian era, was interesting and definitely piqued my curiosity because I didn't really know anything about it, but I felt that her treatment of it was a bit scattershot.… (mais)

In Between Women, Sharon Marcus aims to disprove the misconception that female friendship, desire, and marriage were not contrary to heterosexual relations in Victorian England, as well as to show that "the asexual Victorian woman able only to respond to male advances is a myth -- not a Victorian myth, but our own."

She presents three forms of female relationships. The first is female friendship, which was considered to be an important aspect of a woman's education in feminity. It was important in the Victorian era that a woman maintain friendships with other women, friendships that were intimate and passionate (but nonsexual), otherwise she may be deemed unwomanly by her lack of such friendship. In fact, Marcus shows how female friendship was vital to a successful marriage instead of opposed to it, and presents several novel plots in which the happy marriage at the end would not have been possible without female friendship.

The second form of relations involves female desire, namely in the eroticised figures of fashion plates and dolls. Marcus presents evidence that rather than being simply an objectification of women for male desires, fashion plates and dolls were meant primarily to represent and avenue for female enjoyment and pleasure.

The third relationship form she looks at are female marriages, in which two women merge their housholds, will their property to their partner, and behave in the same way as any married couple. Marcus shows these marriages were not the antithesis of heterosexual marriage, but an acceptable alternative to it. Women in female marriages were not outcastes, but for the most part accepted as couples in certain circles of society. And in fact it was partially the example of female marriage as contractual that aided in the reform of heterosexual marriages.

This book was a fascinating reading, opening my mind to new perspectives about Victorian England. Looking back on the past, it is easy to generalize, often to the result that some aspect of history and culture gets ignored in trying to define it. This book is a reminder that one should not assume that everyone bevaed a certain way in the past, and that culture is as infinitly complicated as in our every day lives.

I would certainly recomend this book to anyone interested in Victorian history.… (mais)