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Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 212 - On the Shelf for October 2021 - Transcript

(Originally aired 2021/10/02 - listen here)

Welcome to On the Shelf for October 2021.

News of the Field

This month, I’d like to spend a little time talking about discoverability and sapphic historical fiction. Book discoverability can mean a lot of different things, but they all boil down to: how easy is it for the people who want to read my book – whether they know it yet or not – to actually find my book and be able to buy it?

There are two sides to discoverability: distribution and recognition. Distribution is the logistical pathways by which the book makes its way to the reader’s awareness, and I’m not talking about that side today. I’m looking at recognition: the way that a book communicates its nature and content to a prospective reader. The way it waves its arms and shouts “Pick me! Pick me!”

Discoverability is particularly important for a relatively small genre like sapphic historicals. The distribution side tends to create visible categories and structures for a genre only when it grows to a particular size. So a small genre gets lumped in with other books that the distribution industry thinks it’s similar to. If you’re looking for a historical within the larger context of lesbian fiction, you want a way to easily figure out which books have historical settings—which may be less than 1% of the books on offer—and to figure out when it takes place and what sort of story you’re getting. (Not all historicals are romances, and that can matter a great deal whether you’re specifically looking for a romance or not.) If you’re specifically looking for a book focusing on female characters within the larger field of queer historicals you want to be able to skim past the 99% of queer books that don’t have the representation you’re looking for. And if you’re browsing through historical romance titles in general—which is an enormous field—you want to be able to find the vanishingly small number that put two women together.

The author has three main tools for making that connection for you: past performance, cover art, and cover text (which includes both the title and the cover copy). Once the book gets out to readers and reviewers, there’s also word of mouth, but that’s another topic I’m not covering today. Today I’m focusing specifically on what the book itself communicates. And I’m focusing on it because every month when I go to put together the new book listings, I become very aware of the ways these methods of communication can succeed and fail.

Past performance is only available once an author has already published in the sapphic historical field. If you spot a new title by someone that you know has already written books like the ones you’re looking for, it’s an easy win to check it out and see. Authors don’t always stick to one genre—and indie authors often don’t set up separate pen names for different sub-genres the way mainstream authors might—so your favorite historical author just might have written a contemporary this time, but that’s where the other information comes into play. Past performance can trip you up, though. If an author has always previously written contemporaries (or science fiction, or paranormals, or some other genre), then you might need a much stronger signal that this book is different. I had that happen with one of this month’s new releases. An author with a long track record of contemporary romance put her toe into the historical pool, but I only found the book because of word-of-mouth because the cover image didn’t shout “historical” to me (it only sort of whispered it) so knowing the author’s past subjects I hadn’t clicked through to read the description. (Also, the book hadn’t shown up in my keyword searches on Amazon, but that’s outside the scope of this discussion. Right now I’m focusing on filtering through the books that do show up for the keywords, or that are on major lesfic distribution sites, or are included in other people’s aggregate lists of forthcoming queer fiction.)

For me—given the context in which I’m trying to discover books—the cover image (in which I include the title) is the first big gateway a book has to pass. Whether I’m browsing the forthcoming books at Bella or Bold Strokes, or skimming through the aggregate lists at lgbtqreads.org, or working my way through the results of my Amazon keyword search, the art and title are the basis for clicking through to read the cover copy. Why not check out every book I find through those resources? Honestly, because I don’t have time. I’m starting with literally hundreds of possibilities each month, of which maybe half a dozen will pan out. And if that’s the hurdle a book has to make it past just to get on a list, think about how much harder it has to work to get into someone’s wallet.

So what communicates “historical” on a cover? Mainstream publishing has an entire formalized vocabulary to communicate genre that most readers are only aware of on a subliminal basis. The small press and indie publishing field is more fragmented and doesn’t have a unified approach. But if you’re an author with input into your cover design, it makes sense to have an awareness of how to communicate the setting and flavor of your book. Freelance cover designer Sarah Waites explains some of those design principles in her social media and is a great person to follow for tips and ideas. (I should probably have her on the podcast at some point to talk about it.)

There’s nothing quite like a cover featuring a person in a clearly historic outfit to communicate “this book is a historical”. It’s the classic method that mainstream historic romances use. The outfit doesn’t need to be precisely accurate to the date of your story, but it should solidly communicate maybe a general century? The figure on the cover of Elna Holst’s Lucas looks for all the world like she’s wearing a 20th century cardigan. My first impression was “maybe this is a 1950s story?” It didn’t shout Regency to me, but it did say “historical” in some fashion. Conversely, the woman on the cover of Courtney Milan’s Mrs. Martins Incomparable Adventure shouts late 20th century, not the Victorian era and if I saw it in isolation, I might assume the book was a contemporary.

If you want a strong signal that your book is an f/f romance, then two women in historic dress is a very efficient way to do that.  And although finding historic images that intended to communicate same-sex love is a tough project, I have a whole folder of art ideas that I got by searching a portrait archive with the keyword “sisters”.

Maybe your budget doesn’t include either that type of image or that level of art? Then objects that strongly evoke your historic era are a good choice. Something that clearly says “this does not belong to the current era.” Jeannelle M. Ferreira’s The Covert Captain does this with a closely-cropped image of a cavalry horse showing an archaic style sword. The antique typewriter on the cover of Margaret K. Mac’s A Lady’s Fine Companion definitely communicates a historic setting, even if the cover copy doesn’t narrow it down much between the late Victorian era up through the invention of the Selectric. Images that feature historic architecture can be another budget-conscious approach.

Even something as simple as an artistic design can communicate the date of the setting. A classical Roman mosaic, a medieval manuscript illustration, a William Morris design, an Art Nouveau arabesque—all of these will signal setting to the casual viewer.

The font you use for the title is another easy way to communicate a setting in the past. Obviously, readability is important given the thumbnail size of many cover displays, but a font with historic associations like a copperplate script or one of the simpler blackletter styles can convey an archaic feel. And that brings us up to the question of the text.

So, the cover copy for a book is supposed to hook the potential reader, convince them to care about the characters and their problems, and provide a sense of what type of story they’re getting, right? That can be a big job and it needs to be done with flair, not by simply providing a catalog of information. But for a reader searching for sapphic historicals, the cover copy also has to provide two key points of information: some indication of the romantic orientation of the central character; and some way for the reader to identify the setting in time and space.

For a romance novel, it’s fairly easy to indicate orientation at the same time that you’re providing the clues that it’s a romance. It can get a bit tricky if there’s a gender disguise plot involved, that that’s a whole other topic. But what if romance isn’t central to the plot? How can the cover copy indicate “This is a story about Anna, who likes girls, but that’s a side plot and I’m not going to make a big deal about it”? In a contemporary, you often see casual references to exes, but the same techniques don’t always fit in a historic setting. I’m going to say honestly that I don’t have specific suggestions on this one. All I know is that every month I find at least one book where I need to do some serious research to find out why the book turned up under the keyword “lesbian”. Because that keyword is no guarantee of anything. All I can suggest is that if you’ve written up the blurb for your sapphic historical , you might try it on some test readers to see if it communicates your intentions. There are books I’ve left out of the new release listings because I couldn’t confirm they had any queer content. Or ones I’ve only found a year later through word of mouth. From mainstream presses, this is often a deliberate strategy. They erase even significant amounts of queer content from the publicity to avoid “scaring off” straight readers, while being confident that the whisper network will bring in the queer readers. But if you’re an indie author or with a general LGBTQ small press, then you’re probably counting on reader identification as a major selling point. And those readers want to know what they’re being asked to identify with.

Finally, there’s time and place. It might seem obvious that book publicity for a historical novel would tell the reader where and when it’s set, but you might be surprised. About 5% of books in my database give no clue in the cover copy where the story takes place. If nothing specific is mentioned, it’s a reasonable guess that it’s either set in the UK or the USA, but that leaves a lot of territory. A similar 5% give no clue to even the general era. I can make some reasonable guesses based on other content. “This one sounds like it’s an American frontier story.” “It mentions pirates so maybe sometime between the late 16th to mid 18th century?” One popular technique that locates the setting without using up much space in the text is to start the cover copy with a simple dateline: “China 1826.” “In 17th century Paris…” “Harlem, New York, 1925.” Not all stories are quite so specifically pinned down, and book descriptions would feel a bit repetitive if every one started that way, but you have to admit it gets the information across.

All of these examples are simply by way of saying that people who are looking to read historical fiction want some way to know that a book is historic. And people who are looking to read stories about queer women want to know that the characters in a book are female and queer. Of course, there are people who are simply looking for a good book to read—any sort of good book—but if you’re aiming for the sapphic historical readership, make sure that your book is shouting “hey, over here!” loudly enough.

Publications on the Blog

And with that, let’s look at what the blog has been up to. I have one more post to finish up Emily Skidmore’s True Sex: The Lives of Trans Men at the Turn of the 20th Century. It’s been an interesting journey tracing the study of transmasculine lives across several books and multiple centuries. Most of the scholarship that I’ve covered in the blog that addresses this topic has come from a default point of view of treating female-bodied persons as women, and therefore their romantic and sexual relationships with women as being homoerotic. These recent studies have triangulated from another position: that persons living lives read as male are men. In my view, neither position can be accepted without question and analysis. Even the direct testimony of the people involved—which is more available for recent times—may not give a definitive answer to how they viewed their own identities. And the question of how society viewed and categorized them is much more complex than one might think. And—coming back to the purpose of the blog—regardless of how specific individuals discussed in these books may have identified, anyone planning to write a gender disguise story would do well to study the actual experiences of those who lived and were perceived as something other than their assigned gender. And both Skidmore and Manion’s books offer plenty of study material.

Next I’ll be diving into a book I’ve been very excited about since I first saw it announced: the brand new English translation of Sandra Boehringer’s Female Homosexuality in Ancient Greece and Rome, previously available only in French. It can be very challenging for 21st century people to grasp the cultural differences that underlie the various Greek and Roman models of gender and sexuality. And much of the material that is available focuses primarily on men, simply because the majority of the surviving data is primarily concerned with men’s lives and behavior. So the luxury of an entire book focused on women is delightful. I’m going to try to finish blogging the book in about a month, so I’ll probably be breaking it up into more and shorter segments to do it justice.

Book Shopping!

Boehringer is still the most recent book shopping results that I’ve received, but I have a few things on order. So stay tuned!

Recent Lesbian Historical Fiction

I started this episode talking about discoverability because of some specific experiences in putting together this month’s new and recent book listings. And while I don’t mean to call out anyone to be mean—for goodness’ sake, I do this whole project because I love the field—but some concrete examples can show the difficulties in discovering sapphic historicals even for someone like me who makes it a major project.

I have one July book to mention. Usually I don’t reach quite that far back for the new book listings. If I don’t stumble over a book within two months of it coming out, I just silently add it to the database. I have to have some sort of cut-off or I’d be finding books two years later and debating whether to include them as “recent releases.”

Clare Lydon’s Big London Dreams from Custard Books is the first and so far only historical title in her London Romance series. Two women fall in love in the 1950s but society’s expectations for their lives tear them apart and leave them with lasting regret. This story follows them up to the present day when they once more come face to face and are offered a much delayed second chance at their dreams together.

So why didn’t I find this book when it first came out? Mostly because it isn’t tagged with a history related keyword on Amazon. I have to have some way of filtering down from the entirety of lesbian fiction, so I require a keyword indicating the book is historical. It’s possible I might have missed it even if it had turned up in my search filter. The cover art is a silhouette of two figures against a London skyline, matching the style for the other books in the series. Although the clothing of the figures is dead-on for the 1950s, it isn’t sufficiently different from something you might see people wearing today to pop out as historic. And since I’m familiar with Lydon as writing contemporaries, I could easily have skimmed past it, working on that assumption. As it happened, I spotted the title in a context where the historic setting was mentioned, but that was pure luck.

I’m also catching up with one August book: Missing in Milan by Edale Lane from Past and Prologue Press, the fourth and evidently final book in her Night Flyer series. The series is a bit of a mash-up of Renaissance Italy, superhero adventure, mystery-thriller, and a continuing romance. Our heroine must solve a tangle of theft, abduction, and an inconvenient ex-lover who turns up in the middle of things. I suspect this story is best enjoyed as part of a series, rather than as a stand-alone. But if you’re someone who likes to have the whole series available at once, it looks like this is your chance.

September books include two more that I almost entirely missed knowing about.

Matrix by Lauren Groff, from Riverhead Books came to my attention through a list on Autostraddle. It looks like a rather odd literary pseudo-history, set in Plantagenet England. The protagonist is banished from the royal court by her relative Eleanor of Aquitaine. Deemed insufficiently refined for a courtly life, she is set up as the prioress of an abbey on the brink of collapse. Melding two real-life historical figures about whom little background is known—the author of romances known as Marie de France, and an obscure abbess—this story reconstructs her as a charismatic visionary whose cult-like following raises concerns in the outside world.

There isn’t the slightest hint of queer identity in the cover copy, though the title does turn up under my keyword searches. I had to go to some early reviews to confirm that it falls within the scope of this podcast, though the only clear reference is to the protagonist having a major crush on Queen Eleanor.  The reviews generally seem to indicate this is a “love it or hate it” sort of book, best suited to people looking for literary stylings rather than uncomplicated romance.

The second September book had to work fairly hard to escape my notice, given that it’s published by Kalikoi, which is on my list of websites to check every month. Complementary by Celia Lake is part of several connected historic fantasy series set in the early 20th century and can be read as a stand-alone. The basic premise of Lake’s world is that of a parallel magical society existing apart from but intertwined with the human world. In this installment, two magically talented women are thrown together to investigate the possible misuse of a magical artifact within an eccentric artists’ colony. Working together so closely sparks some feelings that may complicate what was meant to be a simple partnership. It’s a lovely slow-burn of a romance.

So how did I almost miss this one? This isn’t the fault of the cover art, the blurb, or anything else about the book itself, but simply the fact that it isn’t yet listed at the publisher’s website, despite already being released. I heard about it from a friend of the author who thought it just might be up my alley. (They were right.)

The eight October releases on my list are quite a varied lot. First up we have Longshadow by Olivia Atwater from Starwatch Press, part of her Regency Faerie Tales series. Regency fantasies are becoming a popular subgenre on their own, though quite diverse in their specifics. This one features a young lady with the somewhat improper ambition to become a magician, joining forces with a scruffy street rat who isn’t entirely what she seems—and who soon finds a place in her heart. Together they must defy the menace of a lord of Faerie.

There’s a bit of a theme with this episode’s books having that one book in a larger series that features a female couple. Next up is The Perks of Loving a Wallflower in Erica Ridley’s Wild Wynchesters Regency romance series, from Forever. Like many historical romance series, although the book shares characters with other books, it can stand alone. Thomasina Wynchester uses her skill at disguise to solve riddles and mysteries. Which might raise the question of just who her new client—the well-born Bluestocking Philippa York—thinks she’s falling in love with. Philippa doesn’t believe in love, she just wants her priceless artifact back. Yeah, right, that all she wants. Then why is her heart beating faster?

So you remember how I said that one aspect of discoverability is sorting out what types of identities a book’s characters have? Well one complication of the glorious diversity of gender and sexual identities that we’re seeing in fiction these days is that it can be complicated to determine whether to include a book under this podcast when it isn’t clear whether a character considers themselves to be a woman. In Urchin by Kate Story from Running the Goat press, the protagonist Dor is non-binary but since the cover copy does use female pronouns for her I think we can open the gate. In early 20th century Newfoundland, the arrival of electricity—and wireless inventor Marconi on a secret project—disrupt Dor’s isolated community…and their relationship with the local fair folk. Threaded through is a sweet love story between Dor and a girl named Clare (though I got that part from reviews, since the cover copy makes no mention of it).

The female ambulance drivers of WWI are a very inspirational setting for lesbian romances—perhaps inspired by, but much more successful than the one featured in Raclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness. In Suzanne Feldman’s Sisters of the Great War, published by MIRA, two American sisters find freedom from the roles demanded of women in the ambulance corps in Belgium, one finding a chance to practice medicine, the other as a mechanic. There is a romance between the mechanic sister and another ambulance driver—a romance that is nowhere indicated in the cover copy, although it’s encoded in the search tags and I’ve learned to read some fairly subtle hints. The coyness about this aspect in the publicity may not be doing the book any favors as several advance reviews complain about being blindsided by the same-sex romance and wishing they’d been “warned” about it. Discoverability cuts both ways, it seems.

Clear communication of content is not a problem for Ava Freeman’s self-published collection of erotic stories, The Sweetest Taboo. I don’t know whether all the stories have historical settings but the brief summaries mention several that fall generally in 20th century American contexts, including the Harlem Renaissance.

The aftermath of WWI and the American prohibition era are the setting for Of Trust and Heart by Charlotte Anne Hamilton from Entangled: Embrace. Lady Harriet Cunningham is adrift after serving as a nurse during the war and finding love with her fellow nurses. Now she’s been packed off to relatives in New York City with instructions to find a husband to settle down. But one last hurrah in a secret speakeasy derails her intentions to settle down when she finds herself obsessed with the star talent, Miss Rosalie Smith.

By the way, Of Trust and Heart is a great example of successful discoverability. The cover art signals the theme with an image of two women in flapper-era dresses in a semi-embrace. The cover copy elegantly lays out the time and place, confirms the protagonist’s past and future desire for women, and signals the expectation that this is a romance novel. There was never any possibility that I’d miss finding this book with even minimal effort.

And then there’s the technique of appending “A Lesbian Romance” to the book’s title which, while inelegant, is at least unambiguous! In Warm Pearls and Paper Cranes: A Lesbian Romance by E.V. Bancroft from Butterworth Books we trace the parallel stories of an older female couple, separated when they need nursing home care, and the granddaughter of one of them, struggling with her own relationship, who may be their only ally, if they can mend the wounds of the past to join forces. Starting in 1939 and continuing up to the present, this story shows how the legacy of secrets and prejudice continues to disrupt lives even today.

There have been a couple of historic fantasy series that I started including when they felt solidly grounded in actual history, but that have moved more and more into the fantasy side as the series goes on, to the point where I’m not sure I would have included the current installments if I’d encountered them on their own. Vesna Kurilic’s Ranger Paraversum series from Shtriga is one of those. The latest installment, Girls Back Home, continues the adventures of parallel worlds doppelgangers Lina and Karol as they romp through portals and solve crises. But we aren’t really rooted in real-world history any more and while it may be a lovely fantasy series, I don’t think it really falls within the scope of this podcast from this point on.

What Am I Reading?

As for what I’ve been reading this month, I got quite a boost from reading books for the Jane Austen episode. In addition to those mentioned last month I read Kate Christie’s Gay Pride and Prejudice which I confess I found disappointing except in concept, because it relied heavily on simply recycling the original Austen text with minor revisions. I was much more impressed with Molly Greeley’s The Heiress: The Revelations of Anne de Bourgh which was gorgeously written and I felt very realistically depicted a possible explanation for the sad life (but later happiness) of Anne de Bourgh.

I finally fit in the second of Olivia Waite’s “Feminine Pursuits” romance series, The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows which I found quite delightful. And thanks to the recommendation of a friend, I gulped down the bite-sized Complementary by Celia Lake, discussed in the new releases previously.

I’ve been taking advantage of my new Audible audiobook account to check out some books that come with the subscription at no extra cost. Unfortunately that category doesn’t overlap much with my existing to-be-read list, so in those times when I need audio rather than print—like when I’m riding my bicycle—I’ve been going a bit farther afield. I listened to Sherry Thomas’s female Sherlock Holmes interpretation, A Study in Scarlet Women, having heard interesting things about it on the Smart Bitches Trashy Books podcast. I think it’s a book that would have worked better for me in print—not that I’d have ever found the time to fit it in that way—because the constantly shifting timelines, unreliable viewpoints, and non-linear revelations left me rather adrift in the plot. I’m actually rather comfortable with being adrift in a plot, but without the chance to flip back to an earlier chapter once something has been revealed, I never quite got the whole picture.

My latest listen came from browsing through the LGBTQ category hoping that maybe there would be some sapphic historicals available. Alas, no. But I decided to try a K.J. Charles gay male historical. I enjoyed KJ’s one f/f book Proper English and I really like following her social media so I figured I’d give An Unseen Attraction a chance. I really enjoyed the characterization and the plot. I was decidedly meh about the multiple extensive sex scenes, but then I’m pretty meh about sex scenes in lesbian books as well, so it was just a different degree of meh. But the characterization—oh my god. Proper English had not conveyed to me just how amazing a writer KJ is. Now I want her to write more books about lesbians and put some of that same amazingness into her female characters.

The Fiction Series

It’s that time of year when I need to be starting to beat the drums if I’m going to do a fiction series again next year. And I confess, I’m just not sure. Part of it is that I’ve slipped up in my scheduling and while I’ll be producing all the stories I bought for this year, I feel like I’m not being as on top of things as I want to be if I’m going to claim to be a professional market. Part of it is that I don’t feel like the fiction program has taken off the way I hoped it would. Maybe I’m just having one of my down periods about the podcast. I’ve done the fiction series for four years now, and it would be a lovely milestone to complete five. So I’m still thinking about it.

Show Notes

Your monthly roundup of history, news, and the field of sapphic historical fiction.

In this episode we talk about:

• Book discoverability and how covers and blurbs contribute to it.
• Recent and upcoming publications covered on the blog
  • Skidmore, Emily. 2017. True Sex: The Lives of Trans Men at the Turn of the 20th Century. New York University Press, New York. ISBN 978-1-4798-7063-9
  • Boehringer, Sandra (trans. Anna Preger). 2021. Female Homosexuality in Ancient Greece and Rome. Routledge, New York. ISBN 978-0-367-74476-2
• New and forthcoming fiction
  • Big London Dreams by Clare Lydon
  • Missing in Milan by Edale Lane
  • Matrix by Lauren Groff
  • Complementary by Celia Lake
  • Longshadow (Regency Faerie Tales 3) by Olivia Atwater
  • The Perks of Loving a Wallflower (The Wild Wynchesters #2) by Erica Ridley
  • Urchin by Kate Story
  • Sisters of the Great War by Suzanne Feldman
  • The Sweetest Taboo by Ava Freeman
  • Of Trust and Heart by Charlotte Anne Hamilton
  • Warm Pearls and Paper Cranes: A Lesbian Romance by E.V. Bancroft
  • Girls Back Home (Ranger Paraversum 3) by Vesna Kurilic
• What am I reading?
  • Gay Pride and Prejudice by Kate Christie
  • The Heiress: The Revelations of Anne de Bourgh by Molly Greeley
  • The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows by Olivia Waite
  • Complementary by Celia Lake
  • A Study in Scarlet Women by Sherry Thomas
  • An Unseen Attraction by K.J. Charles

Links to the Lesbian Historic Motif Project Online

• Website: http://alpennia.com/lhmp
• Blog: http://alpennia.com/blog
• RSS: http://alpennia.com/blog/feed/
• Twitter: @LesbianMotif
• Discord: Contact Heather for an invitation to the Alpennia/LHMP Discord server
• The Lesbian Historic Motif Project Patreon

Links to Heather Online

• Website: http://alpennia.com
• Email: Heather Rose Jones
• Twitter: @heatherosejones
• Facebook: Heather Rose Jones (author page)

Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 211 - Bonus Fiction: “Margaret” by Eleanor Musgrove - transcript

(Originally aired 2021/09/25 - listen here)

One of the lovely things about not having the podcast all pre-planned in all details is that sometimes there’s the chance for a spontaneity and surprise. When I was preparing last week’s Jane Austen show, I went looking to see if the stories in the out of print anthology A Certain Persuasion had been reprinted. And when author Eleanor Musgrove told me that my very favorite of the collection, her story “Margaret,” was still looking for a new home, I impulsively asked if we could include it in the podcast. I enjoy doing bonus fiction reprints on occasion, separate from the regular series of new fiction, and I was delighted when the answer was yes. Since then, Eleanor has also reissued the story as a stand-alone on various e-book platforms, so if you enjoy it here, consider buying a copy to keep to support the author.

This story was originally published in 2016 in the anthology A Certain Persuasion: Modern LGBTQ+ fiction inspired by Jane Austen’s novels edited by Julie Bozza and published by Manifold Press. The field of queer historical fiction was seriously diminished when Manifold Press shut down. The put out some excellent and unusual work. I’m happy to be able to reissue this one small part.

Eleanor Musgrove is an author from the South of England, and graduated from the University of Kent. Formerly published by Manifold Press, she is now in the process of republishing her out-of-print stories and, of course, always working on something new. At the moment, it's a sci-fi adventure through an unfamiliar universe - one that might be closer than it first appears. She also mentions working on a fictitious travel podcast, which sounds intriguing. You can find links to her blog and facebook in the show notes.

I will be your narrator today.

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.

---

Margaret

by Eleanor Musgrove

Margaret Dashwood had never been as enthusiastic about the prospect of marriage as the rest of her family. Oh, she adored Edward, and she had come to be very fond of Colonel Brandon, but though her mother and sisters had now begun to talk of Margaret's own marriage, she could not bring herself to take any real interest in the prospect.

She found herself in rather a predicament, however, when it came to understanding her feelings on the subject. She longed for a confidante, but for various reasons neither her mother, nor either one of her sisters, could be counted on to give satisfactory advice. After all, she already knew what they would say.

Elinor, of course, would tell her that, unfortunate as it was, a woman's financial security was tied to her marriage. She and Edward did not have much but, carefully managed as it was, they lived quite comfortably.

"Besides," her eldest sister was bound to continue, "marriage to a man one both respects and loves is an exceedingly pleasant union, to say nothing of the joy of children." Margaret was sure that was true, if one loved a gentleman, but she could not even imagine having such feelings for any man. As for children, she loved her nieces and nephews dearly – young Henry Ferrars, and the three little Brandons she so doted on – but she was quite happy to remain an aunt, forgoing motherhood in favour of the relief one felt when, exhausted, one handed a child back to his or her parents.

Marianne's advice would be something else entirely. "Oh, to be in love – truly in love – is wonderful, Margaret! And love, though I did not believe it once, can be learned – but it cannot be forced. You must follow your heart," she would say, "and be cautious of false trails which might tempt you from your destined partner. Forget all practical considerations, and pursue happiness wherever you find it, whether it be in the overtures of an earl or the arms of a stable boy." That was all very well, but her sister had wasted no opportunity to encourage Margaret to marry, and soon. How was she to find an epic love to last the ages when she did not even understand what made a man any more attractive than, for example, a well-arranged vase of flowers or a scenic country view? And, having observed Willoughby's attentions to her sister those six years ago, she could not help but think that a charming and handsome man, just as a scenic view, was best regarded from the top of a tree, or else a still greater distance.

Margaret's mother, of course, saw only calamity in any deviation from the plans she had made for herself and her family. She would share Marianne's romantic sentiments and use Elinor's more practical arguments to full advantage. "You simply must be married, dear child, though it will grieve me to have my youngest fly the nest – marriage is wonderful beyond words, Margaret, and surely you would not deprive me of the comfort, in my advancing years, of seeing you settled with a house and children of your own? Would you be an old maid, never feeling the true passion of being loved so deeply and eternally?" No doubt it would go on forever, if the subject were broached.

It was with a heavy heart, then, that she resolved to ask her family what they thought when next they all dined at Delaford together. Before the women separated from the men after dinner, however, Colonel Brandon surprised her by asking if she might assist him with some advice of her own when the parties rejoined. She agreed, and readily so, but his request so piqued her curiosity that she quite forgot to speak to her sisters about her own dilemma. On the gentlemen's arrival, she had only to wait for Colonel Brandon to exchange a few words with Marianne before he came to join her where she was sitting a little apart from the others.

"I do not think we have spoken of my ward," he began uncomfortably, "though perhaps Marianne has confided in you."

Margaret replied that she had heard only that he had a ward, a young woman – though in truth she also knew that whatever story had led to Colonel Brandon's acquiring said ward had increased Elinor's respect for him tenfold and had led Marianne to declare that he was a true hero, worthy of all accolades but forced by circumstance and his own sense of honour to go unsung. Margaret had to admit that the thought of being included in the secret sent a flurry of butterflies aflutter in her stomach; she had always loved adventure, and now it seemed she might be about to hear of a real one. Colonel Brandon, however, did not elaborate.

"Let me add, then, only that she is a young lady – perhaps two years your senior, at most – unmarried, and that she has a son of five years old. The circumstances of his birth I shall not relate, but as the boy has grown, the family with whom Eliza – for that is her name – has lodged all this time have become unable to continue to accommodate them. They are becoming elderly, and the child – "

"I imagine he wishes to climb trees, and track mud through the house." Margaret smiled knowingly, recalling fond memories of her own rather wild childhood. "And a younger home, or else their own place, might suit them better, if it can be managed. But forgive me – on what subject did you want my advice?"

Colonel Brandon laughed, a short soft sound that seemed to startle him, as if he had not expected to find merriment in the conversation. "You have already touched upon the heart of it. Eliza is of an age to live independently, now, and since she is unlikely to marry I mean to settle her, with her son, in a cottage on my estate. It has stood vacant these two years, and is past due to be put to good use once more." He paused. "I trust Eliza, and she has grown in wisdom since the events which led to her downfall. Still, I would not see her exposed unduly to the temptation which comes with being alone. You are sensible, of course, but much of an age with my ward. Would you be offended if your guardian, having only kind intentions, insisted that you accept a female companion to guide you?"

Margaret considered the question for a few moments. She had spent much of her life without a ready companion of her own age, but even so she could imagine the frustration of being paired with somebody she might not much care for, whose sole purpose was to curtail her few freedoms and pleasures. In fact, she did not need to imagine: back at Norland, she had had a governess. She could think of nothing worse than having a governess well into adulthood.

"I think that it would depend on the woman involved, and perhaps upon the companion, but I cannot pretend I might not feel a little stifled, especially if the arrangement were put to me in just those terms. Perhaps if you suggested that you feared she would be lonely … But surely you could watch over her yourself, if she is to be so close by?"

Colonel Brandon nodded slowly. "Still," he confided, "I would rather she had somebody with her in the house. An unmarried woman alone, especially in Eliza's circumstances … People will not be kind – she is used to that, I'm afraid – and I fear that dishonourable men might presume upon her hospitality. I shall take your advice into consideration, and give the matter further thought. And if I can ever advise you, please do not hesitate to – "

"Do you think I should marry?"

Colonel Brandon raised an eyebrow. "Well, you certainly don't hesitate." She opened her mouth to beg his pardon, but he held up a hand to stop her. "No, don't apologise; I offered advice, and I meant it sincerely." With an anxious glance across the room towards his own wife, he continued. "Forgive me for not being fully apprised of the situation, but who might be your intended?"

It was Margaret's turn to surprise herself by laughing. "Oh, I don't have an intended. It's just that there are several people suggesting that I should endeavour to marry very soon, and to tell you the truth, I don't relish the prospect."

"And why should you, indeed," Colonel Brandon exclaimed, "when you have formed no such attachment? Marriage should not be rushed into out of a sense of obligation. Though I understand that there can be a lot of pressure on a young woman, I myself have no regrets in waiting until I found the perfect woman before I married, and I hope my wife would agree that it was for the best that I did. You have years ahead of you, Margaret, in which to decide whether to marry or not. If you truly want my advice – "

"I do," she assured him.

"Well, then I should advise you not to rush into such things. You deserve only the best."

She smiled at him, then, relieved beyond belief. "Thank you. I fear you have been far more helpful to me than I to you."

"Not at all. Now, I see that your mother has rather decisively won the card game. Perhaps we should rejoin for the next, or else persuade Marianne to play for us." This meeting with her agreement, they rejoined the party and the evening proceeded with much cheer and merriment. Margaret, for one, felt as if a weight had been lifted from her shoulders, and only hoped that she had offered her brother-in-law some measure of the same consolation.

---

The following day, her mother was invited to the Middletons' house for the third time that week. Mrs Jennings, Lady Middleton's mother, was beginning to feel her age and found the company of her fellow widow comforting. Mrs Dashwood seemed to enjoy these visits more than Margaret could ever have expected, and always answered such summons with great alacrity and enthusiasm. Margaret herself liked to take advantage of her mother's absence on these occasions by climbing her favourite tree with a good book and settling down to read, and so from her lofty roost she was able to observe her mother's demeanour long before she neared the gate on her return that afternoon. Margaret had not seen her look so thoughtful in a long time; she hardly even cast a disapproving look at Margaret's scuffed and grubby clothing as she greeted her.

"Is everything all right, Mama?"

Her mother nodded, then sighed. "Yes, but I can't help but feel I'm disappointing a very dear friend."

"Mrs Jennings? You haven't delayed visiting after even one of her notes. How could you possibly disappoint her?"

"It's only that … Well, Lady Middleton is always very busy, and Sir John too, and she can't get out and about as much as she used to – I fear she's quite lonely up there, poor soul. And she did ask if I would like to move in as a companion, but of course I can't do that."

"Do you want to?" Margaret was surprised; she had had no idea they were so close.

Her mother sighed dramatically. "I wasn't sure, the first time she asked. But we do understand one another, and it is good to have somebody who's had similar experiences to talk to. It might be nice."

Margaret nodded. "Then why … Oh. It's just you they've invited."

"And I don't intend to leave you on your own."

Margaret sighed; she could not really argue with that, and trying would be futile. "I'm sorry," she told her, and excused herself for a walk to clear her head.

---

It was during another such walk, two days later, that a brilliant thought occurred to Margaret – a thought so brilliant that she had turned towards the Delaford estate and was halfway there before she realised that she might be acting rashly, without even consulting her mother first. Well, she had come too far to turn around now. By the time she arrived at Marianne's house, she had forgotten her possible impropriety altogether, swept up in the excitement of a new adventure.

"Marianne," she asked when she had been shown through to her sister's drawing room and exchanged the necessary formalities, "is Colonel Brandon at home? I wanted to speak to him about something we discussed the other day." It had not really occurred to her that he might not be there until she had already said it. She was fortunate, however.

"About Eliza? He told me he'd asked your advice. He's in his study, reading to William, but I think he'd be glad of your perspective. He's worried about what's best for her. I'll come with you and get William; his father has been keeping him more than his fair share, of late." Marianne's besotted smile belied her words, but there was no denying that both mother and son seemed very happy to leave Margaret and the colonel together.

"He was getting restless, anyway," Colonel Brandon assured her when she apologised for her intrusion. "I suppose at four years old, it is rather a stretch to hope that Songs of Innocence would hold his attention for long. What can I do for you?"

"Have you raised the idea of a companion with your ward yet, Colonel?"

He sat back a little in his seat, looking almost embarrassed. "No. I mean to do so within the next few days, but I haven't yet worked out how best to broach the subject. I confess, I am rather afraid that if I wound her pride, she won't come at all."

Margaret did not pry into the reasons behind his expression, which spoke of real grief and fear; instead, she set about trying to relieve his anxiety. "Well, I think I know a way you can suggest it without causing any offence. As it happens, I might soon be in need of companionship myself; perhaps you would be so kind as to ask a young lady of your acquaintance if she might oblige, as a very great favour?"

"Well, that could hardly cause offence," the Colonel conceded, "but how could I then explain the substitution of another girl in your place?"

"Well, unless you think me unsuitable, I don't believe you would have to make any such substitution. I have not consulted with my mother yet, but I would be happy to act as companion to your ward if she agrees."

"Truly? You would do that?" He relaxed for a moment, relief clear on his face, before frowning suddenly. "But why would your mother give up her own companion for my ward, a perfect stranger? Surely she has need of you at home."

"I believe that, were she free to do so, she would like to accept Mrs Jennings' request to keep her company up at Barton Park. We may ask, at least. Can your letter to your ward wait a couple of days?"

"Yes. Yes, I should think so. Thank you, Margaret."

"No, thank you. If this works out, it will be to the benefit of us all, I hope."

Margaret was about to stand and return to Marianne when the Colonel spoke again.

"Margaret, I care deeply about Eliza, but I also care a great deal about you. I don't want you to be … ignorant of the situation. Eliza is likely to attract a certain amount of talk, even if she claims to be a widow, which she prefers not to do. If there is one quality Eliza has in abundance, it is honesty. But her experiences in life are very different from your own, especially in recent years. Living alongside her may not be easy. Do you understand?"

"Of course. I'm sure Elinor would have similar words of caution for me if she were here. Or perhaps not – she is a vicar's wife now, and she was never much for gossip."

"A trait I have always admired. But Christian charity can only go so far."

"Well, let us try, if you will. Let me ask my mother how she feels about the scheme, and then write to Miss … ?" She trailed off; she did not know Eliza's surname.

"Miss Williams. Yes, very well. I should be most grateful."

---

"I think you may be able to move up to the big house after all, Mama," Margaret told her mother on her return later that afternoon – Marianne had sent her in the carriage, thank God – and proceeded to explain how it could be achieved.

"The ward of Colonel Brandon? Well, if she wants for a companion, then I suppose nothing could be more simple and convenient. Has she any family of note?"

"None, save her young son. Colonel Brandon is most keen that she should not be alone."

"Her son? A widow, then – I was sure Marianne had told me his ward had never married … "

Margaret braced herself for the moment realisation dawned. She did not have long to wait.

"Do you mean to say that you intend to live alongside some sort of fallen woman? Margaret, you can't. I absolutely forbid it! Who knows what manner of misdeeds she may be involved in!"

"With both a guardian and a respectable companion close by to watch over her, I imagine there will be very few misdeeds. Besides, Colonel Brandon trusts her, and I trust his judgement. Don't you?"

It took a great deal more discussion to convince Mrs Dashwood to agree to the plan, but Margaret triumphed eventually. A note was dispatched to Delaford, and another to Mrs Jennings, and soon everything was settled to the satisfaction of all parties.

"Since she is not such a wild girl as I had supposed," Mrs Dashwood murmured absently to herself one evening, and did not trouble herself to finish the thought.

---

For all Margaret's ardent defence of Miss Williams' character and honour, as the time approached for their meeting, she felt her certainty waning. Indeed, by the time she sat in the parlour of the little cottage, among the possessions she had had brought over earlier that day, she was half convinced that the sound of hooves she awaited would herald the arrival of some sort of wild animal, a changeling child, and a string of disreputable men to heap attention on both women. It was too late to change her mind now; she would rather share a cottage with a rabid dog than disappoint Colonel Brandon at this juncture. No, she would try to make it work, and if it were truly unbearable after a few weeks, she would simply ask him to find a new companion for his ward.

The anticipated hoofbeats, when they came, were accompanied by yapping, and for a fleeting moment Margaret feared that she might actually have to live with a rabid dog. She quickly pulled herself together, however, and made her way out into the dusk. Relief flooded through her as her eyes settled on a little black and white dog, who did not look rabid in the slightest despite the commotion he was causing. Looking up, she found that the creature was on a lead which disappeared behind a smartly-dressed young lady. Her clothing was not fashionable, Margaret suspected, but she did seem to be wearing the proper type and number of garments, at least. The way Mrs Dashwood had spoken, Margaret had half expected the girl to arrive in a state of undress.

Colonel Brandon was the first to notice Margaret's presence. "Ah! Miss Dashwood, my apologies – we had hoped to arrive earlier. May I introduce my ward, Miss Eliza Williams? Eliza, Miss Margaret Dashwood, my sister-in-law." The two women curtseyed formally, though Miss Williams was encumbered by a small person clinging to the back of her skirts and a small dog trying to wind the lead around her legs. Margaret, intrigued by the little boy she could not see, decided to take the initiative.

"I'm very pleased to meet you, Miss Williams. Forgive me, but I was under the impression that you were to be accompanied by another gentleman?" That did not work at all as she had hoped; Miss Williams narrowed her eyes as if unsure whether or not she was being mocked.

Colonel Brandon, however, followed the line of her gaze and let out a short bark of laughter. "Good Lord, you're right! Eliza, we seem to have misplaced Christopher – perhaps he is riding to meet us from the last stop?"

The woman's eyes widened and she turned to look over her shoulder, staring blankly past her son. "Oh … no, we shall have to go back and fetch him – I was sure he was attached to the dog."

That, it seemed, was too much for the dignity of any five-year-old to bear.

"Mama! Shep is attached to me! Look!" He popped out from behind his mother and tugged at her sleeve until she looked at him … then scuttled back to hide behind her as she feigned surprise.

"Oh, thank goodness … Forgive us, Miss Dashwood – Christopher is a little shy around new people. As for the dog, I apologise for surprising you with him – a friend decided to give him to Christopher as a parting gift. Colonel Brandon assures me that he will gladly keep the dog at his house if you would rather not have him here."

At this, a pair of dark eyes appeared over the dog's head and little arms wrapped protectively around the creature.

"Well," Margaret pretended to think about it, "I never had a dog of my own as a child, so I think Shep can stay on the condition that I am allowed to scratch him behind the ears every now and then. What do you think, Master Williams? Do you think Shep will agree to those terms?"

"Oh, yes, he won't mind that at all! Thank you, Miss!" With that, shyness was forgotten, and Colonel Brandon suggested that they move inside, out of the chill of the evening, and let the footmen set about unloading the Williams' possessions.

Once they were all seated in the drawing room, where a warm fire crackled, Margaret had the opportunity to better observe her new acquaintances. Young Christopher, still a little ill at ease, was tucked close against his mother's body where they shared a chaise longue, and kept turning between Colonel Brandon and Shep with only the occasional glance towards Margaret. She was able to discern, however, that he seemed healthy, and that the shade of his hair was a lighter brown than she had previously suspected – the same as his mother's. Miss Williams, when she turned her face towards the fire, was a handsome woman with delicate features, the light reflecting in her eyes to give them a rich amber glow. In sunlight, Margaret was sure that they would be a glorious brown colour, lighter than Christopher's.

"Miss Dashwood, I would like to extend my thanks to you for allowing us to share your new home."

"Oh." Margaret snapped out of her thoughts about the proper way to describe the colour of Miss Williams' hair – like dark honey, perhaps, but that did not quite capture the browner tones that matched her son's – and shook her head. "Oh, no – on the contrary, I should be thanking you. It does not do to live alone. And please, since we are to live together, call me Margaret."

"Very well. Then of course you must call me Eliza, if you wish."

"And Christopher!" piped a little voice as the boy turned away from Colonel Brandon, who took the opportunity to stand.

"Forgive me, ladies, but if you can manage without me from here, I ought to return to my own family."

"Of course, Colonel, we'll be quite all right. Won't we, Christopher?" Eliza smiled encouragingly, and her son hesitated before turning to Colonel Brandon.

"You will come back?"

"Of course, my boy. And I'm sure you'll come to visit me before very long. Good night, ladies. I hope this will be the first of many very comfortable nights here." Then, after embracing Eliza and Christopher, he took his leave with a bow. The footmen followed.

The three remaining occupants of the cottage were then left alone – four, including Shep, who was now sniffing around every nook and cranny, lead trailing behind him – and it was not long before Christopher began to yawn.

"Tired? Well, let's see if we can find you something to eat, and then we'll find your bedroom."

"My mother's housekeeper sent some cold meats and other temptations for travellers at the end of a long day. There should be more than enough for all of us – Shep too."

"Are you quite certain? We would be very grateful, then. Please, lead the way."

When they reached the kitchen, Eliza sent Shep out into their little garden, where Margaret imagined more sniffing would ensue. Only when they had eaten as much as they wanted was Christopher permitted to let him in, and to feed him a meal of leftover meat which the puppy seemed to enjoy thoroughly. Margaret was then left to mind both the dog and the dying fire in the drawing room while Eliza got her son settled into his new bed upstairs.

Shep, as it transpired, was quite happy, after a cursory sniff around the room, to fall asleep at Margaret's feet, one hind leg splayed out awkwardly across the rug. From her new vantage point, slightly above the creature, Margaret could see a copper-brown colour nestled in a long streak along his sides, between the black fur of his back and the white fur of his stomach. It had seemed strange that a predominantly black and white animal should have red markings only on his face and legs; Margaret found, for no reason she could discern, a certain satisfaction in discovering that the splash of brighter colour extended elsewhere. By the time Eliza returned, some half an hour later, Shep had flopped onto his side, head resting on Margaret's feet, and was snoring softly.

"He certainly trusts you," Eliza commented from the doorway. "They say dogs show excellent judgement in these matters."

"I hope to be worthy of it," Margaret replied.

Eliza, though she seemed quite exhausted by the trials of a day on the road, sat down opposite Margaret and regarded her frankly. "I suppose you will wish to hear my story, sooner or later, and I would rather Christopher were not present. I hardly care, any more, what is said or known about me, but my son is an innocent child and I would spare him what I can."

"Your story?" Margaret thought about it for a moment. "By all means, I will listen to you and keep your confidences – but are you not rather tired tonight? There will be time enough to share our histories as we live together."

"Please, I know you will have questions. You will wish to know what manner of woman you have accepted into your house."

"It is your guardian's house, not mine, and I believe that I can learn your character in just the same way as I would learn that of any other person, through familiarity. Already I can tell that you are a devoted mother."

Eliza took a deep breath, then set her shoulders as if braced for battle. "You need not be polite; when I am introduced to new acquaintances, I am quite used to relating the circumstances of my shame."

"Not to me," Margaret told her firmly, "not unless you wish to. Although I do have one rather pressing question."

"Ah." Eliza sighed, as if to say that she had known it all along. "Simply ask it; I will hide nothing."

"Where is the dog to sleep? I think it might be wise for us all to go to bed early."

Eliza stared at her for a moment in stunned silence, and then she laughed, a musical sound. "I expect he can sleep in the kitchen, though he has been accustomed to sleeping at the foot of Christopher's bed while we travelled."

"Can he not do so tonight? It may be comforting to your son if his pet is there when he wakes for the first time in a strange place."

But after a moment's consideration, Eliza shook her head. "No – he will only want it to continue, and I'm sure you don't want a dog roaming the cottage all night. Come, Shep. Kitchen. At least you'll be warm." The dog did not follow immediately, perhaps too young to understand the command, but a gentle tug on the lead soon had him moving, tail wagging. Eliza closed the door behind him, having released him from the lead, and offered a candle to Margaret to light her way to bed.

"Thank you," Margaret said, and then, "I hope that you don't mind taking the room nearest to your son's?"

"Not at all. That's perfect. Thank you."

At the top of the stairs, on the narrow landing, they parted.

"Good night, Eliza."

"Good night, Margaret. I look forward to seeing you in daylight."

As Margaret slipped between the sheets, minutes later, she felt a strange warmth bloom in her chest. She looked forward to it, too.

---

The next day dawned bright and clear, and Margaret woke to a hesitant tap on her door. Wrapping a shawl around her shoulders, she opened it to find Eliza on the other side.

"I'm sorry to wake you," she said, "but I've just got up to make the house ready for the day and there are a couple of servants here that Colonel Brandon has engaged for us. I thought I should warn you, so that you are not startled as I was."

In truth, Margaret had not even considered that there would not be servants at least coming in once or twice a day, but it seemed that Eliza had been expecting to fend for herself. She thanked her for the warning, and Eliza smiled.

"I also wondered if you would like to come and see something very sweet, before the maid reaches the kitchen."

Intrigued, Margaret followed her downstairs and allowed herself to be led into the kitchen.

"Oh … "

The sight that met her eyes was very touching indeed: little Christopher Williams must have crept downstairs in the night and was now slumbering peacefully on the hard stone floor, curled around his beloved dog. Shep looked up at them with soulful eyes and thumped his tail softly in greeting.

"Well, I think the dog had better sleep upstairs, in future," Margaret whispered, to a nod of agreement from Eliza, and they both crept away to dress.

When Margaret returned, the outer door was open and, beyond it, Shep was chasing an early butterfly. Christopher was sitting up on the floor, looking a little confused by the maid now unpacking provisions onto the table.

"Good morning, Christopher," Margaret greeted him politely, and he frowned for a moment, rubbing his eyes, before he seemed to remember where he was.

"Good morning, Miss Margaret." His attention was caught by movement over her shoulder. "Good morning, Mama."

"Good morning, little one."

Margaret interrupted the morning greetings with a sudden exclamation.

"Oh! Eliza, is Shep hurt? His leg – "

Both of her new companions turned to look, then relaxed.

"Oh, no, don't worry," Eliza assured her. "That leg is the reason he's never going to be a sheepdog. He walks well enough, but when he runs … " Margaret nodded. Shep was lurching alarmingly from side to side as he frolicked, but it did not seem to dampen his enjoyment of the chase at all.

"Was there some kind of accident?"

"No, he was just born wrong, like me."

"Christopher! You were not born wrong. You're perfect, just perfect. Come here." Eliza gathered her son protectively against her skirts. "The only people who did anything wrong to make you were your father and I, and I cannot regret the results. There's nothing wrong with you, nothing. Do you understand?" She did not let go until he nodded. "Good boy. Come, let's see what can be found for breakfast."

The maid seemed surprised, but not unhappy, when Eliza told her they would see to their own meals, and declared that she would stop in later that day to see to the evening's tasks. She was gone, heading back to her duties at the main house, before Margaret could protest that she did not know how to cook.

Eliza, however, seemed unperturbed when she told her. "Well, I can handle all that. I could teach you, if you'd like."

That sounded lovely, and Margaret said so. This agreed, Eliza set about making breakfast while Margaret supervised Shep and Christopher's antics in the garden. More accurately, Margaret stood in the doorway and kept half an eye on the pair while most of her attention was focused on watching Eliza bustle around the kitchen, moving fluidly from cupboard to cupboard with surprising grace considering that she did not know where anything was kept. It was not long at all before the three of them were comfortably seated around the table, eating and exchanging trivial stories about their lives, and getting to know one another.

" … And the cook looked away for a few minutes to make the pastry, and by the time either of us turned back to look, this little imp had eaten half a basket of blackberries and was sitting there as innocent as could be, covered in purple juice."

Christopher grinned, unrepentant, but had clearly lost interest in the conversation and soon ran off to chase Shep around their little garden, exploring together.

Eliza turned to Margaret. "How about you? Do you have any wild tales from your childhood to tell?"

Margaret could only oblige with tales of imaginary adventures, battling pirates on the high seas – or rather, the high lawns. "And you? Did you drive any governesses to distraction?"

"I'm afraid I was a terribly well-behaved child, so I have no such stories, until I met Christopher's father."

Margaret hesitated, but Eliza had now raised the difficult subject more than once, and she remembered Colonel Brandon telling her that honesty was Eliza's defining trait.

"Would you like to tell me that story?"

"Some of it, perhaps. But if Christopher returns – "

"Of course. I wouldn't want to pry, anyway."

Eliza frowned. "I believe you. Most people, in my experience, want to know everything before they risk becoming connected to me in any way. My guardian tells me you asked him very little. But you should know some things, at least. The gossips in the village certainly will." She took a deep breath and released it slowly before she began.

"He was charming, you know. He made me feel, for the first time in my life, that I belonged to someone. With someone. I was young, and foolish, and I didn't understand why my guardian had to keep his distance. I was somebody's natural daughter, and everyone knew it – they would have assumed I was his. But I didn't understand, then – I just felt abandoned, left with a family who couldn't quite – I mean to say that – They were very kind. But none of us ever forgot what I was … He came along and he didn't care about that. He treated me like a duchess, even a queen. He told me he loved me. And then, when I found out that Christopher was growing inside me … He left. I don't know if … I think he would have left me even if I hadn't been with child. Abandoned me, like everyone else. But this time, it was my own fault. I was foolish, I believed him when he said … Colonel Brandon tells me that there was someone else, but she never – "

Eliza stopped, turning to stare out at the garden, but her glazed expression suggested that she did not really see anything. Finally, her eyes settled on Christopher, still playing with the dog in blissful ignorance.

"But I have him. Because of what I did … I have him. And I will never let him feel the way I felt. I may be ashamed of my actions, but I will never be ashamed of him."

Margaret did not know what to say to that, so she poured them each another cup of tea, stalling for time. At last, she dared to look Eliza in the eyes. "Did you love him? Christopher's father?"

For a moment, it was as if she did not know how to answer. " … I thought I did."

"Then I don't see that there's anything to be ashamed of. I've never been in love, but my sisters … I've seen how hard it is to fight it."

Just then, Shep bounded in, Christopher in pursuit, and so all Eliza could do was offer a quiet "thank you" before the matter was closed.

---

Over the next few weeks, Margaret dined with Marianne and her family on several occasions, but Eliza had declined every such invitation, citing a lack of suitable attire and the need for somebody to stay at home with Christopher. Margaret had offered to look after him, but despite their growing friendship the two women were still almost strangers and so it was hardly surprising that she preferred to invite her guardian to their house instead. Eventually, however, both women were invited to dinner and asked to bring Christopher and Shep with them. Colonel Brandon warned his ward that short of grave illness, Marianne would brook no further excuse. They duly dressed for the occasion and made sure both boy and dog were presentable before climbing into the carriage that had been sent for them.

"Are you nervous?" Margaret asked her friend as they settled their skirts around them.

Eliza nodded. "A little. Colonel Brandon speaks so highly of your sisters."

"He speaks just as highly of you," Margaret assured her, but this did not seem to calm her at all.

"Then he is too kind – how can I ever hope to match up to his praise?"

Margaret reached out and took her hand, squeezing it gently. "Believe me, you match up."

Eliza blushed – and then they were off. When they arrived, Christopher leapt from the carriage and helped the ladies down like a proper little gentleman. Eliza had to let go of Margaret's hand in order to take her son's, and Margaret realised with a start that she had found their contact reassuring, too.

Distracted by Shep, whose lead she had somehow ended up holding, Margaret paid little attention to the introductions taking place until she heard her sister gasp. She looked up to see Marianne staring, chalk-white, into Christopher's eyes.

"Willoughby – " she breathed, and then abruptly shook her head. "Er – I mean, that is, er – "

Fortunately, the Colonel was on hand and cut in smoothly with, "I think what Mrs Brandon means, Christopher, is that Will – our son, William, he's just a little younger than you – will be waiting to meet you in the nursery. But first, perhaps Miss Dashwood would like to assist me in introducing you and Shep to the rest of the family? Mrs Dashwood has brought her friend, Mrs Jennings, and Mr and Mrs Ferrars are here."

Marianne was now speaking to Eliza in a low, urgent voice, standing very close to her, and Margaret agreed with Colonel Brandon that Christopher would be better off distracted. It was with great pleasure that she introduced the little boy to her family and friends, and when she glanced back at Eliza and Marianne she was just in time to see the two women share a slightly tearful embrace. Edward, bless his soul, managed to hold Christopher's attention while handkerchiefs were produced and put to use, and then it was Eliza's turn to meet everybody.

Margaret was relieved to see that her mother and Mrs Jennings seemed to be behaving themselves, though no doubt they would be full of gossip and speculation later. Elinor had made the effort to keep Eliza talking while the Colonel and his wife entertained the older women, and all seemed to be going well. Margaret was all but lost in her thoughts, watching the candlelight playing on Eliza's hair and face, when her attention was caught once more by Christopher.

"You're a vicar, aren't you, Mr Ferrars? Does that mean God listens to you?"

Edward seemed rather taken aback, but he smiled as he answered. "Well, I think the thing to remember is that He listens to everyone."

But Christopher would not be so easily satisfied. "Would you ask Him to please love Mama and me again?"

A stunned sort of silence rippled outward from Christopher, his question falling like a rock dropping in a pool and causing just as much disturbance.

Edward, unusually, was the first to recover. "I don't need to do that. God loves everybody, especially children."

"But the people at church said He couldn't love us. They said we were bad. I don't want to be bad."

"Ah," Edward asked him, with a knowing glint in his eye, "but were those people vicars?"

"One of them was."

"Oh." Edward looked mildly affronted, frowning thoughtfully. "Well, I'm afraid you must not have had a very good vicar. The most important thing you need to know about God, Christopher, is that He loves you. He loves everyone, even if they're bad. And I don't think you look like somebody who's bad. I can still pray for you, though, if you'd like. And for your mother."

Christopher nodded firmly. "Thank you, Mr Ferrars." He turned to Colonel Brandon. "Can I meet your son now?"

"Of course. My daughters and Henry Ferrars, too. Let's take your mother with us, shall we? I'm sure they'll all want to meet her. And Shep, of course."

With Eliza and Christopher gone, there was nothing to stop Margaret joining her sisters and trying to find out what had just happened.

"Marianne? Why did you – I mean, what's wrong?"

Elinor placed a hand on Marianne's arm, a caution. "I think it's up to Eliza to explain that, Margaret, if she chooses to."

"But you know."

"I do. I found out before we knew Eliza. You know her, and it should be her choice whether or not she explains this to you."

"But it's Marianne who – "

"Margaret, please. Let it go, for now."

Marianne nodded her agreement, and then called out for Eliza to sit with them as she returned to the room. Mrs Dashwood soon insisted that she and Colonel Brandon make up the numbers at cards, and it was not until they were all in the carriage on the way home that Margaret had a chance to speak to Eliza again. With Christopher sitting there, however, it did not seem right to broach the subject. Whatever had spooked Marianne, it seemed to be something to do with him – and Eliza was fiercely protective of him.

Later, when Christopher was safely tucked up in bed, Margaret ventured the question. "Are you all right?"

"I am. It was a nice evening." But Eliza seemed withdrawn, pensive somehow.

"Marianne didn't upset you, I hope?"

"No. No, I rather think I upset her, but she was very kind."

"May I ask what happened? She said Willoughby."

"I had no idea, I promise you, Margaret. I didn't know she was the other lady he pursued."

"You mean … Willoughby is – ?"

"Mr John Willoughby is Christopher's father, yes. Christopher doesn't know, and I'd rather you didn't tell him."

"Of course not. Good Lord, the two have nothing in common."

"No, thank God. Except his eyes. That's what startled your sister."

"I'm sorry."

"There's no need. If you don't mind, I'm very tired. I think I shall retire."

Margaret let her go, but not before she patted her arm and apologised again for prying.

"That's quite all right." Eliza smiled wearily at her. "You're a good friend; I don't mind you knowing my secrets. I know I can trust you. Good night, Margaret."

---

As the summer days grew longer, so Eliza and Margaret grew closer. They spent as much time as they could out of doors together, walking and taking the air, utterly untroubled by those who pointed out that their skin would turn darker than was fashionable. Christopher and Shep had become accustomed to having the run of the estate, and seemed to have made firm friends with the manual workers of the countryside.

"That's how he came to have Shep," Eliza confided, when Margaret mentioned it. "He used to spend a lot of time with one of the shepherds, watching the sheep and so forth. Old Zeke took him under his wing, rather, and then when Shep was born with a twisted leg … He didn't want anyone else to have him but Christopher."

"Well, Shep was clearly the best present a boy could ask for."

While boy and dog rushed ahead, the ladies would follow at their own pace – Christopher knew better than to stray too far – and they would talk of nothing and everything. Sometimes, they walked arm in arm. When one of them was upset, they walked hand in hand, close together. And gradually, as time wore on, they began to realise that no topic was out of bounds between them.

"May I ask you something rather improper?" It was Eliza who started the conversation; usually she was the more proper of the two, having rather more at stake. Today was different, it seemed.

"Of course, but I shan't promise to answer until I have heard it."

"Have you ever felt the slightest inclination towards loving any man?" That could have been a rather impertinent question, but coming from Eliza it did not feel like that at all.

"I can't say that I have. Perhaps one day I will, but until now … " She had not felt the faintest stirrings of romantic interest in a man. Honestly, Margaret fancied that she was closer to Eliza than she could ever be to anybody she might one day marry. How could a gentleman ever know or understand her as well as her dearest friend? "What's it like?"

"Exciting, I suppose. It carries you away, at first. But then … it all went wrong, for me. And there are some things I don't think I'd like to do again."

"What sort of – ? Oh." Margaret blushed as she caught up with her friend's thoughts.

"I'm sorry. I was just thinking aloud … people don't usually ask me about romance."

"Is … the … er, union … not pleasant?"

"Perhaps it is because it was a sin. I think it was enjoyable for John, but … perhaps it is because men aren't as soft. When you and I share a friendly embrace, there are no hard angles, no pain. A man who feels for you is … different. I think I prefer the softer touch of a woman." Eliza stopped short, flustered. "I mean, not in the same way, obviously."

"Of course," Margaret assured her. "I can imagine that a more gentle embrace would be preferable." Then, after a few moments, "Do you think the blackberry harvest will be good this year?"

"I hope so," Eliza replied with some relief, "for Christopher and I love to pick them as we walk, and this year you might join us."

"I should think you would have some difficulty if you tried to stop me," Margaret told her solemnly, and they continued to walk.

---

Margaret was taking tea with her mother and Mrs Jennings when the conversation abruptly turned to her companion.

"There's no denying that the boy is very sweet," Mrs Jennings acknowledged, "and it is very gentlemanly of him to bring flowers from your garden whenever he visits the main house at Delaford."

"Perhaps too gentlemanly," Mrs Dashwood interjected. "I do hope he isn't following in the footsteps of his father."

"He's a little young to be chasing Marianne, don't you think? No, the boy is a fine lad, no doubt due to the influence of Colonel Brandon and the family he entrusted his wards to. It's his mother who makes me uneasy."

"His mother?" Margaret protested. "Why on earth would you say that?"

"Well, besides her dubious moral character – though what can one expect, when by all accounts her mother was just as foolish – there is the way she carries herself so guardedly, as if all the world was out to attack her. I simply cannot trust a person who trusts nobody." Mrs Jennings nodded decisively, and Margaret had just long enough to think that she could not imagine why Eliza was guarded, given the current conversation, before her mother joined in.

"She doesn't guard her tongue, though. Elinor told me – in the strictest confidence, of course – that she had no compunction whatsoever about telling her story to anybody who showed an interest."

"If she told you in confidence," Margaret countered, "you ought not to mention it at all. I, for one, appreciate Eliza's honesty. It is a great comfort to know that there are still some people who will give their truthful opinion when one asks them, rather than saying what they think one wants to hear to one's face and saying something quite different behind one's back."

If either of the older women took her meaning, they gave no sign of it. It was not until a good half hour later that the real reason for Mrs Jennings' disapprobation became clear.

"The girl looks positively faded, as if she should have been a fine, respectable brunette, but the colour has worn out of her with too much use."

"Too much use is exactly the problem," Mrs Dashwood told her, "and I shouldn't be surprised if one's appearance alters to reflect one's soul. It seems only fair that respectable people should have some way of being forewarned."

"Well, I think she's beautiful," Margaret declared, rising without ceremony, "and since I cannot convince you of her virtues I intend to return home and appreciate them for myself. Goodbye, Mother. Mrs Jennings."

Then she turned and walked out of the house without a single thought for propriety or respect for one's elders. If Eliza did not mind what people thought of her, why should Margaret? It seemed much more freeing to speak as one felt, where it did no harm.

At least, Margaret had thought that Eliza did not mind what people thought. When she returned home, however, she found Christopher and Shep playing alone in the kitchen, getting under the maid's feet in a way that Eliza would never usually permit.

"Christopher, Susan is trying to stock our cupboards for us. Perhaps you and Shep could play in the drawing room instead?"

"Oh! Sorry, Miss Susan. Come on, Shep."

Margaret exchanged a fondly exasperated look with the maid before following the boy into the drawing room, where Susan had already stoked a fire and set the guard in front of the grate. "Where is your mother, Christopher?"

"She's in bed. She didn't feel well."

"Oh, well, that's no good, is it? Will you be very good and stay away from the fire while I see if I can fetch her anything?"

"I'll be good. I'll make sure Shep's good, too." Christopher leant in conspiratorially, which meant he ended up addressing her waist. "He's a bit scared of the fire, but he likes to sit near it and keep warm."

"Well, just you mind you don't get any closer than that rug there, and I'll be back as quickly as I can." Nonetheless, she asked Susan to listen out for trouble before she hurried upstairs in search of her friend.

A knock at the door raised no response, and Margaret felt she had better push the door open to make sure that Eliza was just sleeping peacefully and not altogether more unwell than expected. When she did, however, she found Eliza lying fully clothed atop the covers, face buried in the pillow, sobbing her heart out.

Afraid that Christopher would hear his mother's weeping, Margaret stepped inside and closed the door swiftly behind her. "Eliza? Whatever has happened?"

"Margaret!" Eliza sat up, brushing her hands across her eyes in an attempt to stem the flow of tears. "I – I didn't expect you back until later."

"Well, here I am. And it's just as well, isn't it? Please, tell me what's wrong."

"It's nothing, I'm just being silly – "

"Nonsense." Margaret crossed the room and took her hands, perching on the edge of the bed with her. "You're not silly, and I want to help. What's happened?"

"Nothing – I just, at church yesterday … "

Margaret stiffened; she had hoped that Eliza had not heard the gossips starting up again. There was little chance of that, however – they had taken no pains to keep their voices down, and it now seemed that if ever a so-called gentleman returned to his wife smelling of an unfamiliar perfume, Eliza was to be blamed.

"Everybody seems to think that I am having an affair with Mr Rowley, and last month I was supposedly receiving frequent visits from Mr Sedgewick." Eliza sighed. "Frankly, I wonder that they think I have the time, with Christopher to look after – to say nothing of the inclination."

"Would you like me to put them right? I spend all my time with you, and I have seen no such gentlemen around."

"No, no – that's quite all right. They would think you were simply lying to defend me, or else that those gentlemen callers had been here to see you as well. I won't have your honour questioned, especially since it would do no good to mine anyway."

They sat quietly for a few moments, until it seemed that Eliza could be silent no more.

"I'm tired of people talking about me," she burst out. "Nobody sees past what I did."

"The people who love you do. Colonel Brandon does. Marianne and Elinor, Edward … I do."

"I'm afraid that Christopher will realise what they say about me. That he will despise me, when he learns what I am."

"What you are?" Margaret squeezed Eliza's hands gently in reassurance. "Let me tell you what you are, Eliza."

"I'm a silly girl who threw her virtue away."

"No. Listen. You are the bravest woman I know. You're kind, and a good mother, and you keep going no matter what people say about you. You make me brave. And on top of all that, you happen to be absolutely beautiful. You're my best friend. And nothing in your past changes any of those things."

Eliza stared at her for a moment. "You think I'm beautiful?"

"Well, yes." Margaret blushed, feeling suddenly awkward. "I have eyes. And brave, and kind. And Christopher would be lost without you."

Eliza let go of her hands with a smile that seemed to warm the room. "He would be. Oh, goodness, he's probably driving Susan to distraction. Thank you for saying those kind things, Margaret. Now let's go and see if we can get my son out of trouble."

Margaret was not entirely convinced that her words had been believed, but she let it go. Christopher was, after all, likely to be driving the maid to distraction.

---

Margaret found, a few weeks after that fateful day she had found Eliza crying, that she had rather an awful headache.

"I'm quite well within myself," she told her friend, "but I think it best that I stay indoors for today and rest. You and Christopher must go on your walk without me, I'm afraid."

"Are you quite certain that you're all right?"

"It's only a minor headache. It will soon pass, and we cannot keep Christopher cooped up all day."

"No," Eliza conceded, "he is in rather a frolicsome mood. Better that you have some peace to aid your recovery. Come along, Christopher."

"Make sure you tell me all about your adventures when you come back!"

Christopher shouted back from the door that he would, and then they were gone, Shep bounding along in front.

Margaret settled with a cup of tea by her bedroom window and closed her eyes, trying to rest as well as she could without moving away from the pleasant breeze drifting in. She must have fallen asleep, because when she opened her eyes again the last dregs of her tea were cold, the shadows falling in the room were longer than they had been and pointing in a different direction, and Christopher's voice could be heard in the hallway.

"Shh, remember that Margaret has a headache. Quietly. Go into the garden and see if you can get all of that grass out of Shep's fur while I see if she's all right." The noise died down into 'shhh' sounds and footsteps, and then there was a tap at the door. "May I come in, Margaret?"

"Of course, Eliza."

Her friend came in as quietly as a mouse, and closed the door silently behind her before holding out a bunch of purple flowers.

"Violets. I thought you might like them."

"I do, thank you. They're lovely."

Eliza beamed. "I'm glad." She pushed aside some of the larger leaves to reveal more purple blooms underneath. "We added some lavender from the garden, to help relax you a little. I always find the scent so soothing, especially when my head aches."

"That's very thoughtful of you." Margaret took the flowers and set them down on her dresser, intending to find a vase for them later. "Thank you. Please, sit with me awhile."

The bedchamber was small, and so the only reasonable place for them both to alight together was on Margaret's bed. They sat, side by side on the edge, and Margaret could not help but notice how close they were sitting to one another. Where her arm almost touched Eliza's, there seemed to be a sort of heat, far more than the usual warmth of a body, and it spread through her own body as they stayed close.

"Eliza?" She took a deep breath. "I've only ever really lived with my mother. So I don't know much about the world. But … you know more, don't you?"

Eliza hummed softly to herself, as if in thought. "Of some things, perhaps."

"If I ask you something, will you promise not to judge me?" She took Eliza's answering hum as agreement and stumbled on before she could change her mind. "Are there any … are there women who prefer … other women, the way most women prefer men?"

"I … I think so."

"Are you one of them?"

Eliza began stuttering a denial, but Margaret cut her off.

"Because – I think I might be. And, well, you mean a lot to me. More than you should. I look at you, and I understand what Marianne has been talking about all these years."

Eliza stared at her blankly for a few long, painful moments, and Margaret felt as though she was watching their friendship disintegrate.

"So … you find me a temptation? Or a bad influence? You'd like Christopher and me to leave?"

"No! No. You must stay, of course. I wouldn't have you anywhere else. But … well, I understand. It's not right, and I didn't expect you to – "

Eliza reached out and covered Margaret's hand with her own. "I am. One of those women. But nobody … even Christopher … nobody can ever know."

Margaret smiled sadly. "What is there to know? Surely just having feelings can't get us into too much trouble."

"Perhaps. Perhaps not." Eliza sighed. "But this might." Then she leant in, very slowly, and pressed their lips together in Margaret Dashwood's very first kiss.

---

Show Notes

This special bonus fiction episode presents “Margaret” by Eleanor Musgrove, narrated by Heather Rose Jones.

The story is also available at the linked sites.

Links to the Lesbian Historic Motif Project Online

• Website: http://alpennia.com/lhmp
• Blog: http://alpennia.com/blog
• RSS: http://alpennia.com/blog/feed/
• Twitter: @LesbianMotif
• Discord: Contact Heather for an invitation to the Alpennia/LHMP Discord server
• The Lesbian Historic Motif Project Patreon

Links to Heather Online

• Website: http://alpennia.com
• Email: Heather Rose Jones
• Twitter: @heatherosejones
• Facebook: Heather Rose Jones (author page)

Links to Eleanor Musgrove Online

• Website: The Writings of E.A> Musgrove
• Facebook: E.A. Musgrove

Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 210 – Sapphists in Austenland - transcript

(Originally aired 2021/09/18 - listen here)

It’s not that I planned to take a tour through iconic figures of English literature, but sometimes one idea leads to another. Last month’s Shakespeare episode inspired me to tackle a much more promising author when it comes to sapphic possibilities: Jane Austen. What? I hear you exclaim, That ultimate author of heterosexual romances? Setting aside the alternate literary theory that marriage is not the prize in Austen’s works, it’s the side-plot to socio-economic horror stories, we aren’t talking about the canonical texts today, but about the structures and relationships embedded in the books that offer a branching point. A place the story could diverge and become a same-sex love story seamlessly and naturally. In point of fact, there are same-sex love stories threaded throughout the books. It’s only that they step aside for the relentless imperative of heterosexual marriage.

There’s something about Jane Austen’s work that has inspired endless retellings, re-settings, and re-imaginings. Whether it’s a matter of telling the existing story from a different point of view, or extrapolating the experiences of the characters after the final page, or mapping the personalities and situations onto the modern day, there’s an entire industry dedicated to giving us more Austen. Given that, it’s somewhat surprising that we don’t see more lesbian interpretations. Interspersed with this discussion of the novels and their sapphic possibilities, I’ll talk about some of the original historical fiction that I’ve found that takes off with those possibilities. But let’s start with the ingredients we have to work with. I’m not only looking at the central characters of the stories, but at the whole range of characters and relationships that might serve as inspirations, as well as how the social structures of Austen’s period either enable or hinder women’s same-sex bonds.

Themes

The key questions here are: what types of bonds and connections exist between women outside the immediate family? Are they the intimate friendships of people of equal station and similar interests? Do they involve the dependency of an unpaid companion, marked by a difference in finances, social station, and perhaps age? Is it a mentor relationship, where a more experienced woman teaches and guides another woman into flowering?

Which of those connections are fertile ground for romantic potential? Here a certain amount will depend on what type of story is being written. Austen’s heterosexual characters do not always constrain themselves to pursuing the unattached. Historically, the social divide between male and female spheres has meant that women often formed passionate same-sex bonds in parallel with marriages with men. But while a man might easily distract attention from his same-sex interests with a marriage of convenience, women faced the problem that marriage put control of their money and property into their husband’s hands and had almost no recourse if a “husband of convenience” decided to rewrite the terms of the arrangement.

How are social bonds between women made? Women of the gentry and aristocracy weren’t supposed to form connections with random strangers. You didn’t even dance with someone unless you’d been properly introduced by a mutual friend. And the cases where this rule is broken—like when Marianne Dashwood encounters Willoughby over a twisted ankle—show the hazards of falling for someone whose background has not been properly examined. The first circle of connections is that of the extended family, including not only cousins but in-laws. And don’t get too squeamish about “kissing cousins”. In Mansfield Park, Fanny Price and Edmund Bertram are first cousins. In Pride and Prejudice, we aren’t told the exact relationship between Mr. Bennett and Mr. Collins, but Collins is a close enough cousin that he’s the nearest male-line relative and will inherit the estate. In Emma, two sisters marry two brothers. So consider that your heroine’s entire extended family is fair game for romantic potential.

The next circle of potential is the existing friends and acquaintances of your relatives: business associates, long-time neighbors, people that they were introduced to by existing connections, school friends. And let us not exempt your heroine’s schoolfellows as a means of putting her in contact with new faces. Many of Austen’s heroines have been homeschooled, as was common for women of that era. (While their brothers would more commonly be sent away for formal schooling.) But in Persuasion Anne Elliott and her sisters went to boarding school, and that’s where she made a crucial friendship with Mrs. Smith.

Another means of making new connections, somewhat related to the previous, is the sponsorship of a related party who takes the heroine under her wing and moves her from her immediate family to a new household context. This might be social visiting among relatives, as when the Gardiners host Jane Bennett in London and take Elizabeth Bennett on a holiday tour with them. It might be a companionship arrangement, as when Fanny Price is taken into the Bertram household in Mansfield Park. Or it might be the sponsorship of a hostess to introduce a young woman into society, as Mrs. Jennings does in Sense and Sensibility, or Mrs. Allen in Northanger Abbey. The key element in all these avenues to meeting your future romantic partner is that they are mediated through people you already know.

And finally, what are the economic relationships and dependencies among the people in the story? And how do those change when you’re considering female couples as the end goal? Every Austen novel is, at heart, a horror story of women facing economic desperation and trying to navigate the least unpleasant way of avoiding it. Elizabeth Bennett is told that if she rejects the unpleasant Mr. Collins she may never get another offer of marriage and she only semi-jokingly faces the prospect of living in her sister’s household as an unpaid companion and governess. Emma Woodhouse is in the extremely unusual position of not needing to marry to have financial security, but every other woman in her social circle faced those choices. The Dashwood sisters are haunted by the effects their comparative poverty have on their future plans. Two women together only magnify the gender inequities. So in visualizing possible same-sex relationships within Austenian worldbuilding, we can’t avoid the question of how our heroines will live. Will they have family money that is under their own control? Will they be permanent guests in someone else’s household? Do they have the possibility of employment and how would that employment affect their domestic arrangements? A great many of the occupational options for middle-class daughters involved living in someone else’s household, and unless their romantic prospects can be realized there, they’ll have to choose between their heart and their job. (This is a point of consideration where the historical realities were very different between female and male couples, though male couples faced more serious legal issues.)

So let’s take a look at the canonical relationships between women in Austen’s novels and the romantic possibilities they suggest, whether in terms of romance that could co-exist with the official story, or romance that could develop if the story takes a turn at key points.

I include only the briefest of plot summaries and I will rely on my listeners’ familiarity with the plots. If you need more details to orient yourself, there are links in the transcript to the Wikipedia entry for each book.

Sense and Sensibility

Sense and Sensibility follows the Dashwood sisters who have just fallen from a life of comfortable luxury into penny-pinching rustication due to the death of their father and the injustice of inheritance practices. Eleanor, the eldest, is the sensible “I’ll just keep all my feelings bottled up privately” one who falls in love with her brother in law but daren’t tell anyone because he hasn’t officially declared his intentions…which is because he’s already secretly engaged to someone even less suitable. Marianne is the flighty, emo, “I wear my heart on my sleeve” one who disdains the romantic interest of the stable, brooding, propertied neighbor for the fun of being courted by a spendthrift rake who will throw her over for an heiress.

The most relevant theme in Sense and Sensibility is the opportunities for mixing in society that the sponsorship of a hostess provides. The Dashwood sisters are given a chance to spend time in London due to the hospitality of Mrs. Jennings, a relative by marriage, who loves to make matches and provide social opportunities for young people. The Dashwood sisters fall only marginally into the role of companions to her—they are expected to provide company and an excuse for socializing, but their hostess doesn’t emphasize their dependence on her. If Mrs. Jennings were closer to the sisters in age, we might look for romantic potential within this arrangement.

In a parallel, but contrasting position, the Steele sisters, Lucy and Anne, have also been invited to be guests of Mrs. Jennings, but soon accept a different invitation that places them in a more classical companion situation in the home of John Dashwood, the half-brother of the Dashwood sisters, where they are expected to attend on Mrs. Dashwood, entertain her young son, and to flatter and toady to her.

The third strand of unattached female characters comes in the largely off-screen person of Eliza Williams, who is caught in a mother-daughter tradition of illicit love affairs and unwed motherhood. This places her in a very precarious position, but also removes her from the default expectations regarding marriage.

The strongest bonds between women in this book are between pairs of sisters, which is an unfruitful angle for same-sex romance. This is a story full of unusually solitary women without connections to non-familial equals. To create some romantic tension we could turn to an enemies-to-lovers scenario. Eleanor Dashwood and Lucy Steele are tied to the same man—a man who had no business attaching either of their affections at the time that he meets them: Lucy, because he was too young and dependent to make such a commitment, Eleanor, because he was already engaged to Lucy when they met. In the book, Lucy’s greed leads her to ditch her fiancé, thus allowing the passively patient Eleanor to step in. But what if there was a little more heat underlying their conflict? What if they came to a point of comparing notes and realized that wishy-washy indecisive Edward wasn’t worth their time and they made alliance together instead? Given that they both had familial ties to the wealthy Mrs. Jennings, whose own daughters were safely married off, the lack of financial stability that marriage might have brought could find a substitute by Eleanor and Lucy taking up a joint position of protégé-companions to Mrs. Jennings. There would be enough contrast of personalities between the three to provide useful conflicts in the plot.

Marianne is a bit more tricky—she’s so self-involved for so much of the story that there aren’t really alternate possible connections to build on. But there’s always the youngest Dashwood sister, Margaret, who shows at least a few signs of independent thinking and adventurous spirit that might suggest a non-normative life path. And then there’s the new single mother, Eliza Williams, who is highly unlikely to achieve a respectable marriage, given her situation, regardless of the wealth and standing of her patron Colonel Brandon. Eliza is a solid candidate for being granted a financial allowance that would enable her to establish a quiet household with a female companion.

In the story “Margaret” by Eleanor Musgrove in the anthology A Certain Persuasion, we find just that arrangement. Margaret Dashwood longs for the joy of a female confidante and friend with whom she can share her doubts and uncertainties about the prospect of marriage. She finds that friend when she is solicited to lend respectability as a lady companion to the household of Colonel Brandon’s ward, Eliza (and her young son who bears a noticeable relationship to their neighbor Willoughby). And Margaret discovers that companionship can lead to love. I found this story to be a realistic study of the fine lines between respectable and scandalous for unmarried women of Austen’s era. I particularly appreciated that it presents a realistic picture of how women might broach the subject of turning companionship into something more passionate, without forcing modern attitudes and understandings onto the women.

And then, there is always the option of gender-flipping the canonical male love interest. But could it be done while remaining true to the social structures of the time? Edward Ferrars is the eldest son and thus his family sees his marriage as a dynastic matter, not to be left to individual choice. But the position he finds himself in, with a prospective spouse selected for him based on wealth and social standing, is in many ways more typical as a female experience. And the financial position he’s put in when disinherited is the expected reality for many daughters. What if it were Edith Ferrars, instead, who stubbornly resists her mother’s instructions to marry because of a pre-existing attachment of the heart? Before raising the objection that a same-sex commitment would be historically implausible to offer as a bar to marriage, this is very much the situation that Sarah Ponsonby was in when she eloped with Eleanor Butler. One could even retain the conflict between that foolish promise to Lucy Steele and a more passionate attraction to her sister-in-law Eleanor Dashwood. In an age when familial ties, however tenuous, were one of the most certain ways of meeting eligible prospects, the sister of a brother’s wife would be a natural candidate for a potential relationship.

Exactly this sort of gender-flipped retelling appears in “Elinor and Ada” by Julie Bozza, also included in the anthology A Certain Persuasion. There has been a certain reorganization of family relationships: instead of Ada being the brother to John Dashwood’s wife Fanny and to Robert Ferrars, she is a cousin of theirs and something of a family poor relation. She has been serving as governess to the Steele sisters (rather than being tutored by their uncle) and had formed an indiscreet connection with Lucy Steele, who now holds certain letters over her as earnest for a promise to have Mrs. Ferrars set them up with an independent household. With those alterations (and the eventual substitution of a position as village schoolmistress at Delaford rather than the ecclesiastical living that Edward was granted) the story otherwise follows the plot of Sense and Sensibility very closely. Rather too closely, perhaps, as it traces out the entire plot of the novel in the space of a short story, which makes for a great deal of summarizing and plot-outlining, as well as recycling significant chunks of text from the original story. (One feature of Austen retellings that I’m not always fond of, alas, is when authors re-use the existing text with only minor revisions.)

Pride and Prejudice

Pride and Prejudice is, of course, the queen of the Austen novels, in terms of the number of times it has been adapted, reworked, reimagined, or spun off from. The clock is ticking for the five Bennett daughters, whose only hope of comfortable futures is snagging suitable husbands with only a pittance of a dowry to attract them, as their father’s estate will be passed to a male cousin. You have the pretty, modest, sweet-tempered one who falls in love with the jolly, easily manipulated man. You have the light-hearted, warm, judgmental one who clashes with the brooding, stiff, snobbish man. You have embarrassing relatives and tangled webs. Very tangled.

Relationships among the sisters give a taste of their potential for forming close bonds with women outside the family, and we see a lot of female friendships in this book. Two of the sisters (Mary and Kitty) are more or less ciphers but the rest have potential.

Elizabeth Bennett has a particular friendship with Charlotte Lucas—close enough to share their opinions of marriage and men, but fragile when the hard realities of those topics come between them. Charlotte concludes that independence from her family is far more important than loving—or even respecting—one’s husband. She sets about strategizing how to make what is for her a business arrangement function as well as possible. And that includes a lot of playacting and hiding her true feelings.

This is, of course, fertile ground for Charlotte to strategize other forms of emotional support that wouldn’t endanger the security of her marriage. This is exactly the situation explored in the novel Lucas by Elna Holst. Rather than redirecting the plot of Pride and Prejudice into an alternate timeline, it takes Charlotte Lucas, now Collins, past the end of the book and gives her a very passionate romance with a non-canonical character, all described in letters to her friend Elizabeth that she never dares send. And it was her earlier crush on Elizabeth Bennett that helped her recognize what she now feels. Lucas isn’t so much a classical romance—the two women have more of an insta-lust thing going on. But a great deal of the plot explores both the practicalities and social difficulties in how to turn stolen moments into something permanent. The financial questions are solved by making Charlotte’s new love an heiress. But how can Charlotte extricate herself from a stifling marriage and run away, without her choices having catastrophic effects on her family’s status and reputation?

Another author might find equal potential in exploring that alternate timeline in which Elizabeth convinces her not to throw away her hope of love for the security of Mr. Collins; in which Elizabeth never has the change of heart for Mr. Darcy; in which the two of them find some future together. It would be a difficult future indeed with no source of independent income on either side, and that problem would provide some excellent plot conflicts. They might find themselves eternally guests in the homes of relatives, either making a constant round of sequential visits, or settling in somewhere and trying to make themselves useful enough to be welcome. It would be a challenge to do so together. But it might be an interesting story.

The youngest Bennett sister, Lydia, for all her heedless self-centeredness, also seems to make friends easily. Her bond with the colonel’s young wife snags her a chance to spend time in Brighton and enjoy the freedom of separation from her family where she could form new connections. While it’s hard to imagine the canonical Lydia falling sincerely in love with anyone but her own self-image, I could easily imagine a spicy adventure in the militia camp at Brighton with Lydia having a sexual awakening with her female friend that spurs her decision to make a bold move to try to snare Mr. Wickham.

It's hard to imagine the canonical Jane Bennett straying from her fixation on Bingley, but let’s see if we can come up with some scenarios. A theme that comes up in a number of real-life 19th century passionate friendships is marrying your friend’s brother in order to establish a formal bond with the woman you love. What if Caroline Bingley’s interest in befriending Jane was more personal? Caroline might be seriously conflicted about furthering Jane’s relationship with her brother if she had a personal emotional stake in the matter. And the canonical Caroline’s interest in pursuing Darcy herself need not be removed from the equation. Caroline has family money that isn’t tied to property, and though one might guess that it wouldn’t be enough to maintain the high life she’s currently enjoying as her brother’s hostess, it would certainly be enough for a more modest independent establishment, if she were willing to make that sacrifice.

The established personality of Caroline Bingley offers a number of possibilities. Kate Christie’s Gay Pride and Prejudice builds on some of the parallels between Caroline and Darcy’s personalities and asks, “What if it was the prickly, sparring relationship between Lizzie and Caroline, rather than the one between Lizzie and Darcy, that developed into love? The author does a thing I’ve seen in a number of Pride and Prejudice pastiches, where she retains a vast amount of the original novel’s language and simply tweaks it here and there to make the building blocks tell a different story. I confess that it’s a technique I’m not fond of, and it made it hard for me to enjoy the story. I would love to have seen the romantic premise tackled in an original story rather than in this name-swapping fashion.

I said that the middle sisters, Mary and Kitty, are ciphers but that doesn’t mean we can’t see possibilities for them. What if Mary’s priggish disdain for the expected preoccupations of a young woman is cover for a deep discomfort with normative expectations? Without the conventional beauty and vivacity of her older and younger sisters—and given the family’s financial constraints—her marriage prospects must look dire. But what if that were a relief to her? And what if, after resigning herself to staying at home as her mother’s support and companion, she meets someone who encourages her to believe happiness is possible? There are the usual financial concerns. If she falls in love with a woman who has little more than pin money, the only realistic option may be for her beloved to move into the Bennett household. But if we look ahead to the day when Mr. Bennett dies and the remaining Bennett women must make other arrangements, perhaps a frugal establishment in Bath would serve. Frugal enough that Mary and her “friend” must share quarters, naturally. My imagination is already spinning away with that one. I’ve always felt that Mary deserved more sympathy than she gets in the original story.

Another unpaired woman whose circumstances offer her wider possibilities is Georgiana Darcy. As an heiress, she has many more options than the Bennett sisters have. And as an heiress, naturally she would be much sought after by male suitors. But her brother and guardian has already fended off one fortune-hunter in Wickham, and seems likely to take an over-protective stance toward Georgiana’s future. That could mitigate the social expectations for marriage long enough for her to find some nice girl to fall in love with. Maybe someone who could help improve her self-confidence and bring her out of her shell a little?

Anne de Bourgh is in a similar situation to Georgiana: an heiress in an overprotective household. But where Georgiana benefits from the loving protection of an elder brother and might be given space to discover her own desires, Anne is stifled and erased by an overbearing and autocratic mother—who, to be fair, takes the same attitude toward everyone in her orbit. Anne has never been given space to have her own desires in the least thing. And you can be certain that when Lady Catherine de Bourgh decides that her daughter will marry, Anne’s wishes will count for nothing. So setting Anne up in a potential same-sex romance has a lot of challenges that could make for a satisfying plot.

There are a lot of directions that such a story could go, and Molly Greeley’s The Heiress: The Revelations of Anne de Bourgh tosses some additional challenges into the mix, such as a laudanum addiction, begun to quiet a colicky infant but continuing into young adulthood, leaving Anne sickly and sleep-walking through life. Once Anne decides to break free both of laudanum and her mother’s control, the first true friend she makes in London evolves into romance, though I would consider this more a literary novel than a romance novel by genre. The relationships and their difficulties are very realistically depicted (as is both the addiction and the process of escaping it). Greeley’s prose is gorgeous and well-suited to the story she tells. This one gets a high recommendation from me.

The most popular way to adapt Pride and Prejudice as a contemporary lesbian romance is a simple gender-flip on the Darcy character. But gender-flipping can be a lot trickier in a historic setting, if key aspects of the character are rooted in gendered social and legal structures of the time. A female Darcy in the early 19th century would be unlikely to be fabulously wealthy with an inherited estate such as Pemberley. The “entailments” that functionally disinherit the daughters of the Bennett and Dashwood families had the specific purpose of keeping real estate within the male inheritance line (however convoluted the connection), and keeping other wealth tied to the real estate for its maintenance. An Emma Woodhouse – as we’ll discuss in a bit – was definitely something of a unicorn. It would be easier to imagine Bingley flipped to a female character. His family made their money in trade and have no inherited estate—a significant plot point. Furthermore, Darcy’s solicitous concern for Bingley’s welfare might make more sense with a female Bingley, although one would need a different context for the friendship between the two. There are clear possibilities in that direction.

While it isn’t a direct mapping of Pride and Prejudice, Barbara Davies’ Frederica and the Viscountess borrows some recognizable motifs from the books with a gender-flipped Darcy equivalent. Davies has made it work by not aiming for a direct parallel of the canonical plot. While the protagonist Frederica, who fills the Lizzie role, is contemplating the unlikelihood of another proposal if she turns down her tedious suitor (who is clearly modelled on Mr. Collins), and while Frederica must beg the assistance of her love interest in rescuing her younger sister from the clutches of a seductive scoundrel (with elements borrowed both from Wickham and from Willoughby of Sense and Sensibility), that love interest—Vicountess Norland—rather than being a direct Darcy parallel, uses a trope belonging solely to sapphic historicals: scandalous, cross-dressing, devil-may-care, aristocratically-privileged, and just the person to entice our heroine to reach for her dreams. By not trying to create a female Darcy, the author has the freedom to provide a backstory that works for the times. The viscountess is married, but is believed to have deserted her husband, thereby making her both independent and outside the concerns of ordinary propriety. She is rich and aristocratic, thereby making it entirely believable that she might take on Frederica as a “companion” without any other need to justify the arrangement.

If gender flipping is tricky within the context of the Pride and Prejudice canon, gender disguise—that trope so beloved of sapphic historicals—is even more complicated. When you look at the circumstances of persons assigned female who transed gender before the 20th century, a strong theme is that of disconnection from the birth family and community of origin. It isn’t an absolute theme—there were rare exceptions where family and community were tacitly aware of the change, and either supportive or at least indifferent. But a major aspect of the tangled plotlines of Pride and Prejudice is the way in which everyone is connected to each other and has been so all their lives. Even a character such as George Wickham who trades on escaping from his past misdeeds by constant movement cannot avoid encountering people who know and recognize him and are willing to bring his past into the light.

This is why I was skeptical of the gender-crossing plot of “Father Doesn’t Dance” by Eleanor Musgrove in the anthology A Certain Persuasion. (The author indicates that it is intended as a transgender plot rather than a gender disguise one.) The premise is that the two Darcy sisters, with the support and assistance of their cousin, the future Colonel Fitzwilliam, decide to derail the entailment of Pemberley to a distant cousin by having the elder sister become her non-existent long-estranged brother Fitzwilliam. (Note that the Darcy siblings are related to Colonel Fitzwilliam through their mother, so he couldn’t be a beneficiary of the entailment.) From there, the story is projected to proceed much as the original, but with an additional reason for Mr. Darcy to be highly ambivalent about a romantic connection. But while an intriguing premise, I found the logistics to be implausible. There are entirely too many people who would know whether there was an actual older brother in existence. (The whole Lady Catherine de Bourgh plot rather falls apart.) There are ways to make gender-crossing plots more plausible. I point to the case of Mary Diana Dodds discussed previously on the blog and podcast. But they typically require a central figure who whose entire life history wouldn’t have been tracked by their family and community.

Mansfield Park

In Mansfield Park, poor relation Fanny Price is taken on as a charity case by her more fortunate relatives and never allowed to forget it. Saintly, long-suffering Fanny is exploited and taken for granted by everyone but her cousin Edward, on whom of course she develops a crush. In the end, everyone sees the error of their ways and comes to value Fanny’s virtues.

To my mind, the canonical characters and relationships of Mansfield Park highlight only one potential female couple. In Austen’s novel, Mary Crawford befriends and cozies up to protagonist Fanny Price with the dual goal of trying to disrupt any developing bond between Fanny and her cousin Edward (who is the target of Mary’s affections), and to manipulate Fanny into accepting the advances of her brother, Henry Crawford. But it would take very little adjustment to see the four characters much more entangled if Mary were also motivated by her own romantic attraction to Fanny. The self-involved and morally flexible Miss Crawford might well embark on a courtship of Fanny’s affections as a lark or a stratagem only to find herself genuinely attached. Success would, of course, require a Fanny who is a bit more willing to go against convention and stand up for herself. The canonical Fanny does this when refusing Henry Crawford’s marriage proposal—to the astonishment of all her relations. So it’s not impossible to imagine that she might do so out of attachment to Mary rather than to Edward.

The other available female characters are more or less limited to Edward’s sisters, who treat Fanny with condescension and disdain, so it would take a great deal of editing to develop an attraction there. A gender-flipped Edward offers possibilities (with an adjustment in which Crawford sibling is vying for whose affections). But there would be a challenge in finding an equivalent independent career to the clerical living that the male Edward anticipates. When looking across the entirety of Austen’s works, you’ll notice a strong pattern that the male romantic leads who do not have inherited wealth expect to make their living in the church. There’s no time to go into the whole socio-economic infrastructure of the Church of England in the early 19th century, but there was a significant amount of nepotism and patronage that could be manipulated to ensure that an unpropertied son could have a comfortable life and support a family. While women’s options for inherited wealth were much more limited, at least they existed. There was no equivalent of a clerical living that might be offered to a daughter to provide her with an independence.

Authors who have taken up the challenge of adapting Mansfield Park for a sapphic story seem to have settled on Mary Crawford as the character with the most potential, which makes a certain amount of sense given the canonical character’s daring and morally-flexible personality. Tilda Templeton’s erotic short story “Mary’s Secret Desire” comforts the post-rejection Mary Crawford with sexual escapades among a secret lesbian sex club masquerading as a Catholic order of nuns. I can’t really consider this an Austen spin-off, given that nothing much is borrowed other than the character’s name and a brief reference to her back-story. And the status of Catholicism in Regency-era England seriously undermines the premise that the pretense of a Catholic convent could provide cover to a sex club. The trope is, however, much in keeping with anti-Catholic English pornography of the 17th through 19th centuries, which considered convents to be a likely hotbed of lesbian activity.

There’s much more plausibility and more direct fabric taken from Mansfield Park in J.L. Merrow’s short story “Her Particular Friend,” once more from the anthology A Certain Persuasion. In this story, Fanny’s younger sister Susan, who has taken Fanny’s place as companion to her aunt Lady Bertram, encounters the now widowed Mary Crawford during a visit to Bath. Despite the family scandal that stands between them, they are drawn together. Mary is still playfully indiscreet, but Susan is not Fanny and is more receptive to her advances. Here we see a manipulation of the social dynamics that makes a romance possible. By turning Mary into a widow, the story gives her social independence and the right to have her own household. And Susan is given the opportunity to travel and encounter potential romantic partners by virtue of being companion to an older, wealthier, established matron. They’ll have a challenge in detaching Susan from Lady Bertram without repercussions, but it’s within plausibility.

Northanger Abbey

I’ve been going through Austen’s novels in their publication order, but at this point I’m going to save Emma for the finale, and move on to Northanger Abbey.

Northanger is Austen’s tribute to the gothic novel and the young women who love them. And like many of her works, it’s a tribute to the process of looking beyond superficial appearances to find happiness and security with a well-suited partner. Catherine Morland, like many of Austen’s heroines, comes from a family of comfortable but modest means and is given entrée into a wider world courtesy of a more wealthy neighbor couple who take her under their wing for a season in Bath. Once again, she fills a companion role, but more of a protegee, like the Dashwood sisters, rather than a dependent almost-servant, like Fanny Price. In Bath, she meets two sets of siblings who form the majority of the context for the story: Isabella and John, the children of her patroness’s friend; and the wealthy Tilney siblings, children of a cold and distant widowed father: kind, loyal Eleanor, handsome, clever Henry the love interest, and rakish Frederick the disruptive force.

Catherine forms close friendships with both Isabella and Eleanor, though Eleanor’s friendship is the more loyal and enduring. There’s some great story potential in a love triangle involving the three of them, where Catherine learns which of her friends truly returns her love. A happy ending in which Catherine becomes a long-term companion to Eleanor (rather than marrying her brother Henry as she does in the original) is structurally plausible, though it requires some management of Catherine’s past conflicts with Eleanor’s father if they are to gain a solid financial standing from that direction. Or maybe Catherine will become a successful author of gothic novels herself and the two can live comfortably in a modest establishment in Bath, as many such female couples did.

It's harder for me to come up with other sapphic scenarios from Northanger Abbey, perhaps because it’s the Austen novel I’m least familiar with. Isabella has some possibilities, I suppose. The canonical character is driven primarily by a desire of securing herself a wealthy husband, first pursuing Catherine’s brother James when she mistakenly believes that family to be wealthy, then succumbing to the seductions of Frederick Tilney who actually does have expectations of inheritance but, alas, no morals or intention of marrying her. Whether one follows the original story to its end, with Isabella’s reputation ruined, and then finds a different direction for her life, or perhaps branches the story off earlier and gives her a female rake to run off with instead, she does seem the sort to defy convention, given sufficient incentive.

Persuasion

Persuasion has a plethora of female characters to work with: the three Elliot sisters Elizabeth, Anne, and Mary; Elizabeth’s very special friend and companion Penelope—and there’s an obvious pair to rewrite as romantic; the Musgrove sisters (Mary’s in-laws) Louisa and Henrietta; and Anne’s now-widowed school friend Mrs. Smith with whom she clearly has a strong emotional bond. Of these, two pairings are the most obvious to adapt as romantic couples.

Elizabeth and Penelope are canonically framed as antagonists the to the central character, Anne, with a complex rivalry around strategizing for relationships that bring both personal security and access to the status of the Elliott title, which will go to a distant male cousin. (If a theme around inheritance is obvious in these summaries, it isn’t Austen’s theme but the rigid structures of English law. Primogeniture is a bitch and a glaringly obvious reminder of patriarchy in its most literal sense.) In canon, Penelope plays the role of companion to Elizabeth—the embodiment of the toad-eating dependent. She is also suspected of having her sights set on enticing the elder Sir William Elliott into marriage while settling for a less formal offer from the younger Elliott. The younger Mr. Elliott, in the meanwhile, is pursued by Elizabeth as a means of retaining her social status through marriage, as well as the usual goal of simple security, but he in turn has set his sights on Anne, a more congenial partner, with the aim of gaining leverage to foil Penelope’s ambitions, though presumably Elizabeth would have done just as well for that purpose. But what if, in the midst of all these plots, there were also a genuine romantic attraction between Elizabeth and Penelope? One that is greatly complicated by the practical considerations of their conflicting goals? If they were willing to settle for the status quo—at least for as long as Sir William survives—they’re well set up to do so. But either of them reaching for more conventional life goals would disrupt that balance and Sir William won’t live forever.

The canonical Anne Elliott is solidly fixated on what she believes to be her lost chance with Captain Wentworth, which is a bit hard to work around, even if we go into an alternate timeline where Wentworth carries through with what he believes to be his obligation to marry Louisa Musgrove. Would Anne, in that case, have a chance to find that her feelings for Mrs. Smith were more than friendship and the remains of hero-worship? Anne finds meaning in being needed, and Mrs. Smith is definitely in need. Their financial circumstances would be dire unless Smith’s property interests are sorted out and are substantial enough to support both. (There’s also an ethical issue for a modern author in that the location of Mrs. Smith’s property in the Indies strongly implies that any income would derive from enslaved labor. But that’s part of the landscape of Austen’s world.)

There are no clear candidates for same-sex romances for the Musgrove sisters, alas. But if we want to dig into back-story, one might also speculate on the obviously close bond between the late Lady Elliott and Lady Russell. An “intimate friend” the text says who “had been brought, by strong attachment” to move to live near the Elliotts, though it’s unclear whether this happened after she was widowed or before. Lady Russell’s attachment to her friend was of a nature that she considered herself a second mother to her daughters, yet also of such a nature that marrying Sir William was never on the table. Yes, one could definitely build a sapphic romance on those bones, if one were comfortable with it existing in the context of the women’s marriages.

If one chose, instead, to continue focusing on the Anne-Wentworth romance, by playing with gender, there are clear possibilities. A gender-flipped Wentworth would need an entirely different career than the navy. A situation where Anne wanted to set up housekeeping with a beloved female friend but was persuaded not to do so on the basis of the friend’s precarious finances and lower social status would work perfectly. How would they meet? In the same way as the original text: the enticing Miss Wentworth would be staying in the neighborhood visiting her brother the curate. The options for allowing Miss Wentworth to rise in the world, both in terms of status and fortune are more limited than they would be for a man. A strategic marriage and convenient death for the spouse would be the most plausible, but a legacy from a relative that was improved by clever investment is also possible, and more in parallel with the idea of someone who rose in the world by their own merits and effort.

A gender disguise plot brings up intriguing possibilities. The Regency was the tail end of the era when people assigned female were successfully enlisting in the British military while being read as male. Some were quite successful on a long-term basis, such as Dr. James Barry. Motivations were various: economic opportunity, gender identity, or as a means to enter into marriage with a woman. In military contexts it was common for such persons to engage in flirtations and even marriages with women, whether as a bolster to their male presentation or from personal desire. Such an adaptation of the plot of Persuasion would require either a disruption of the canonical Wentworth family structure or the knowledge and acquiescence of Wentworth’s relatives. (Would Admiral Croft know? Or would Mrs. Croft silently rely on the aura of her husband’s rank to deflect suspicion from her sister’s identity?) A gender disguise scenario would provide Anne Elliott with additional motivation to unwillingly disengage from their relationship if she thought her family’s hostility to Wentworth might put her secret in danger. And it would heighten the stakes when Wentworth’s flirtation with the Musgrove girls created the impression of a commitment. There could also be a belief on Wentworth’s part that Anne’s original susceptibility to persuasion was specifically because of the gender identity angle, rather than from protective concern. Yes, I definitely think something could be done here.

Emma

I’ve saved Emma for last, because it is both the most inherently queer of Austen’s novels as well as having substantial potential for queer adaptations. The Woodhouses are the most prominent family in their rural neighborhood, with the neighboring Knightley family a close second. The two families are joined by the marriage of the elder Woodhouse daughter to the younger Knightley son. The older generation of both families is now represented only by Mr. Woodhouse, an eccentric character who is overprotective of everyone he has influence over, including an assortment of secondary characters that includes the younger daughter, Emma’s, former governess and her new husband and adult step-son, and the impoverished Bates household, which includes the beautiful, talented, and destitute Jane Fairfax.

A major through-line of the story is Emma Woodhouse’s quest for intimate friendships with women. Those relationships are often framed as couples and Emma’s disinterest in marriage is emphasized for much of the book, only reversing itself somewhat unexpectedly at the last minute. First in her affections was her governess, Miss Taylor, who is described as follows: “less…a governess than a friend…. Between them it was more the intimacy of sisters…they had been living together as friend and friend very mutually attached….” Emma recognizes the advantages to Miss Taylor of marrying but is rather devastated by losing “a friend and companion such as few possessed: intelligent, well-informed, useful, gentle, knowing all the ways of the family, interested in all its concerns, and peculiarly interested in herself, in every pleasure, every scheme of hers; one to whom she could speak every thought as it arose, and who had such an affection for her as could never find fault.”

Rewriting the story with a more solidly realized relationship between the two needs to deal with the implications of a connection that began when Emma was a child, even if romance isn’t depicted as developing until she comes of age. (Although for a real-life parallel of a similar relationship one might look to Katharine Bradley and her niece Edith Cooper, who wrote together as Michael Field and enjoyed a marriage-like relationship.) I’ve found reference to one story that takes this angle: Kissing Emma by Gemma Harborne, but unfortunately the work appears to be out of print so I know nothing more than the basic premise.

Suffering from the loss of Miss Taylor, Emma casts about for another woman to become her companion and settles on Harriet Smith, a young woman of admittedly illegitimate birth—though evidently from a well-off family, who sent her to boarding school near the Woodhouses. Emma, though rather a bit of a class snob, convinces herself that Harriet must be of a good lineage and “had long felt an interest in [her], on account of her beauty. … She was a very pretty girl, and her beauty happened to be of a sort which Emma particularly admired.” Harriet isn’t particularly clever or well-informed, but she has one very endearing trait: she worships Emma and is willing to be guided and advised by her. The canonical relationship between the two would be very reasonably described as romantic if it weren’t for the fact that Emma’s idea of patronage includes doing her best to set Harriet up in a suitable marriage—a task at which she fails spectacularly.

The most natural sapphic pairing, based on canon, would be Emma and Harriet. One can’t help but wish that Harriet might find a bit more independence of spirit and that Emma might lose some of her class prejudice, but in terms of expectations for a happy-ever-after, there are few structural barriers. Emma has no need to marry for the sake of financial security. She points this out to Harriet. “I have none of the usual inducements of women to marry. … Fortune I do not want; employment I do not want; consequence I do not want: I believe few married women are half as much mistress of their husband’s house as I am of Hartfield.”  Here is where one of Mr. Woodhouse’s flaws becomes Emma’s advantage: her father is very much set against her leaving the household and dreads the thought of her marrying. But for her to continue on as she is with an intimate companion for company? She would have his whole-hearted support on that point!

One of the stories in A Certain Persuasion takes this angle. “One Half of the World” by Adam Fitzroy depicts a delicate negotiation between Emma Woodhouse and Harriet Smith regarding turning their friendship into a lifelong companionship like that of the Ladies of Llangollen (whom Harriet specifically references). I had some issues with it as a story—it was too talky and the romantic chemistry never seemed to gel. But it worked in terms of the social dynamics of the day.

The third natural pairing—and one might argue the one best suited for success—is between Emma and Jane Fairfax. Emma and Jane, by rights, ought to have been fast friends—as various of their acquaintance take pains to point out. They are both by nature intelligent and personable. Despite the difference in their economic status, they are from the same class, though at different financial ends of it. But Jane is Emma’s mirror-twin: poor where Emma is rich, dedicated to her accomplishments where Emma is a dilletante, secretive and self-controlled where Emma is open and spontaneous, expected to work for a living where Emma is a lady of leisure and provider of charity. And it’s clear that Emma resents Jane’s very existence as a rebuke of her own shortcomings. What better set-up for a rivals-to-lovers plot? In canon, Jane is secretly engaged to Frank Churchill, who in turn flirts openly with Emma to distract any suspicion from Jane. This nearly leads to a permanent break between Jane and Frank, until the convenient death of Frank’s aunt leaves him free to seek permission for the marriage. In the mean time, Emma has had some hard lessons about her behavior and is trying very belatedly to become closer and more supportive to Jane.

There is a potential crux available, where the break-up with Frank is never repaired, where Emma gains Jane’s confidence and trust, and this develops into love—a love more suitable than the rather awkward near-parental relationship that Emma gets from Mr. Knightley. A chance for Jane to escape the dire fate of being a governess by becoming Emma’s bosom friend and companion. I could swear that I’ve seen someone write that take on the story, but I can’t find it in my database. (It’s possible it was something I ran across on Archive of Our Own—I haven’t included fan fiction in my examples here, but goodness knows there are all sorts of pairings explored there, and this entire podcast is about fan fiction, by any meaningful definition.) I’d love to see someone take Emma down this alternative road. It would take so little divergence from the original.

If one goes into minor characters or gender-flipping possibilities, there are other ways to queer Emma, but since the canonical female relationships are so rich, let’s leave it at that. I hope I’ve demonstrated how sapphic romances can easily be constructed on the bones of the social and historical dynamics of the past, and how some of our favorite classic authors wrote stories that are already much closer to being sapphic romance than you may have thought.

This episode inspired me to do a special bonus fiction show. When I contacted author Eleanor Musgrove to find out whether her story “Margaret” had been republished after the anthology A Certain Persuasion went out of print, I impulsively asked if we could republish it in this podcast. That episode will be appearing next week. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

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Show Notes

In this episode we talk about:

• The social structures in Jane Austen’s novels in which same-sex relationships could develop
• A tour through the sapphic potential in each of Austen’s works
• A survey of Austen-inspired sapphic historical fiction, demonstrating some of that potential
• Austen-based fiction mentioned in the episode
  • ”Margaret” by Eleanor Musgrove in A Certain Persuasion (The LHMP will be reprinting this in audio next week. After this podcast was recorded, the author has also made the story available as an ebook stand-alone.)
  • ”Eleanor and Ada” by Julie Bozza in A Certain Persuasion (Not currently in print? The link is to the author’s website.)
  • Lucas by Elna Holst
  • Gay Pride and Prejudice by Kate Christie
  • The Heiress: The Revelations of Anne de Bourgh by Molly Greeley
  • ”Father Doesn’t Dance” by Eleanor Musgrove in A Certain Persuasion (Not currently in print.)
  • Frederica and the Viscountess by Barbara Davies
  • Her Particular Friend by J.L. Merrow in A Certain Persuasion (Link is to a stand-alone reprint of the story.)
  • Kissing Emma by Gemma Harborne (out of print)
  • “One Half of the World” by Adam Fitzroy in A Certain Persuasion (Not currently in print?)
  • A Certain Persuasion: Modern LGBTQ+ fiction inspired by Jane Austen’s novels edited by Julie Bozza. Manifold Press, 2016. (Unfortunately Manifold Press has gone out of business. Used hard copies may be available at this link. Stories that have been made available in other venues have links in the individual listings.

Links to the Lesbian Historic Motif Project Online

• Website: http://alpennia.com/lhmp
• Blog: http://alpennia.com/blog
• RSS: http://alpennia.com/blog/feed/
• Twitter: @LesbianMotif
• Discord: Contact Heather for an invitation to the Alpennia/LHMP Discord server
• The Lesbian Historic Motif Project Patreon

Links to Heather Online

• Website: http://alpennia.com
• Email: Heather Rose Jones
• Twitter: @heatherosejones
• Facebook: Heather Rose Jones (author page)

I continue to see parallels between Jen Manion's book and Emily Skidmore's, especially in how they both use a small set of individual biographies to focus attention on the larger topic. The slight temporal overlap between the two studies means it's unsurprising that Skidmore starts off with a look at two cases that Manion also covered in detail -- just in case you're having a sense of deja vu. (Manion's book came out three years after Skidmore's, but given publishing timelines it's unlikely she had access to the latter while writing, unless they ran in the same academic circles.)