LHMP

Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 180 (previously 51c) – Book Appreciation with Samantha Rajaram

(Originally aired 2020/10/17 - listen here)

Transcript Pending.

Show Notes

In the Book Appreciation segments, our featured authors (or your host) will talk about one or more favorite books with queer female characters in a historic setting.

This isn't part of the Lesbian Historic Motif Project, as such. It's more of a digression into historical methods and sources. I'll link this from the LHMP entry that inspired it, and it I dig futher on the thread, I'll continue to link. For What Came Before, see here.

I confess it, I got a bit grumpy about this book long before I finished blogging it. And I don't think that was just because it felt like a bait-and-switch. I wanted to learn more about the social institution of women's companionate relations in general: how it played out in various situations, what the social and economic dynamics were, how it was instantiated at different class levels. I got a little of that, but a lot more of overly intricate micro-biographies of a fairly narrow slice of literary women, most of whom were connected to each other in some way.

We're finally getting to some examples of positive companionship in different forms. This chapter emphasizes three components that are one way of achiving that goal: a benevolent and good-tempered mistress, a carefully hand-picked companion, and sufficient inequity in their positions that the lines of authority are clear. These are not women who are infantilized by having a hyper-competent housekeeper-companion, or who drive away a good prospect by the sort of bullying that comes from insecurity and narcissism.