Between women: friendship, desire, and marriage in Victorian England

Abstract

object. Marshalling wide swaths of evidence, induding novels in which marriage founders in the absence of female friendship (especially Villette), as well as books that scrupulously follow the model (such as David Copperfield), this chapter effectively transforms the conventional wisdom on the Victorian novel. For anyone obsessed with Victorian stuff, part two, Mobile Objects: Female Desire, is perhaps the most exciting section of Between Women. Marcus looks at fashion plates, doll stories, and pornography to uncover Victorian women's desire-for each other. This desire, she insists, is not necessarily lesbian or sexual. Rather, it is erotic: intense and sensual, but for the most part unconnected to sexual acts. Here too, Marcus powerfully revises more than a century's worth of theory, arguing persuasively wo n poSss te g , a well as t i f11 l of) letr abu cororl puihmn fo gIrl that11

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