I think that this is perhaps where "femslash" would be too anachronistic a category for those two
Yes, definitely! It could be a relationship with a strong erotic charge, but I think very, very unlikely that it would be in the sense of a sexual partnership or that they would see themselves as a "couple" or even as having an "affair" in the commonly-understood sense of the term. (That is, I'm not sure I could see Violet/Isobel as having this sort of erotically-charged friendship, but I think either could have one with someone else.)
Your bourgeois feminist sounds similar to things I've read by 19th and early 20th century American women, too -- they recognize a whole world of intense emotional and erotic possibilities (often very consciously politically-defined) that doesn't depend on either genital contact or on "couplehood." Not that the writers state this view as explicitly and directly as I did here -- they would usually put it in mainstream het terms, using "marriage" both as itself and as a sort of shorthand/euphemism for sex in general. But in some ways, they had a wider (or at least different) understanding of "sex" and of the erotic than many people do in the 21stC, who so often see things in genital terms with orgasm as the goal/purpose.
You know that's why so many historical women that the 21st-century wants to call (in hindsight) "lesbian" -- women in Boston marriages, for instance -- quite honestly (and sometimes indignantly) repudiated that category when it was offered to them. They really didn't see themselves as woman-loving in that sense. I've seen current writers just dismiss these responses as either flat-out lies or as sad and pitiable self-hatred or denial, but while this assessment may be true for some, it ignores the possibility that women of the past were really working with a different paradigm than the one we're trying to impose on them.
I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but I can so easily see the Downton women (Isobel especially, and maybe Mrs Hughes) fitting so well into the pre-sexologist way of looking.
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regna
(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-22 05:11 pm (UTC)Yes, definitely! It could be a relationship with a strong erotic charge, but I think very, very unlikely that it would be in the sense of a sexual partnership or that they would see themselves as a "couple" or even as having an "affair" in the commonly-understood sense of the term. (That is, I'm not sure I could see Violet/Isobel as having this sort of erotically-charged friendship, but I think either could have one with someone else.)
Your bourgeois feminist sounds similar to things I've read by 19th and early 20th century American women, too -- they recognize a whole world of intense emotional and erotic possibilities (often very consciously politically-defined) that doesn't depend on either genital contact or on "couplehood." Not that the writers state this view as explicitly and directly as I did here -- they would usually put it in mainstream het terms, using "marriage" both as itself and as a sort of shorthand/euphemism for sex in general. But in some ways, they had a wider (or at least different) understanding of "sex" and of the erotic than many people do in the 21stC, who so often see things in genital terms with orgasm as the goal/purpose.
You know that's why so many historical women that the 21st-century wants to call (in hindsight) "lesbian" -- women in Boston marriages, for instance -- quite honestly (and sometimes indignantly) repudiated that category when it was offered to them. They really didn't see themselves as woman-loving in that sense. I've seen current writers just dismiss these responses as either flat-out lies or as sad and pitiable self-hatred or denial, but while this assessment may be true for some, it ignores the possibility that women of the past were really working with a different paradigm than the one we're trying to impose on them.
I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but I can so easily see the Downton women (Isobel especially, and maybe Mrs Hughes) fitting so well into the pre-sexologist way of looking.