By: Katelyn Tijerina
“You came, and I was mad for you/And you cooled my mind that burned with longing.” This is a line from a poem written by Sappho of Lesbos thousands of years ago about another woman. Lesbians, along with the entire queer community, have been around as long as society has been. The societal perceptions of lesbians have changed with time and place. In just the last couple hundred years America’s view of lesbians has changed dramatically. Around the turn of the century, there was a societal shift in the acceptance of lesbians in American culture. Before this shift, women wrote to each other freely. Men and women’s social lives were often isolated from each other. Men focused on their jobs and sought companionship from their close male friends. Alternately women’s roles were mainly to give birth to children. These women often sought intimacy from other women whose lives to whom they could relate. Before the turn of the century, women’s relationships were often ignored or discounted. Their feelings were seen as inferior to men, and any intimacy they had between each other was seen as inconsequential. After the feminist movement gained traction, women started to be seen as threats to the patriarchy and lesbianism was held to a magnifying glass causing lesbiansism to be stigmatized. The views of lesbianism drastically changed entering and during the 20th century, changing the social norms for women’s friendships.
Before the 19th century, women’s intimate relationships were seen as normal. There are records of women sharing bedrooms, weekends away, and many romantic letters. At the time society did not see woman having a sexuality of their own. Women were simply seen as means to an end for their husbands and not an active partaker or experiencer of sex or sexuality. Geroge Chauncy Jr, LGBTQ historian and Kluge Prize Honoree, articulates this idea well in his article “From Seuxal Inversion to Homosexuality; Medicine and the Changing Of Female Deviance”, “In the context of female passionlessness, there was no place for lesbianism as it is currently understood: if women could not even respond with sexual enthusiasm to the advances of men, how could they possibly stimulate sexual excitement between themselves?” (Chauncey, 118). Additionally, before the turn of the century, lesbianism was not medicalized. The medical profession did not acknowledge the existence of homosexuality in women.
Caroll Smith-Rosenburg, professor of history, American culture, and womens studies, analyzed thirty-five families between the 1760s-1880s in her article The Female World of Love and Ritual: Relations between Women in Nineteenth-Century America. One of the analyzed relationships was between Molly and Helana, where Molly wrote to Helana “Imagine yourself kissed a dozen times my darling. Perhaps it is well we are far apart. You might find my thanks expressed rather overpowering… I love her as wives do their husbands” (Smith-Rosenburg, 7). There is no herterosexual interpretation of this piece. This intimacy was common among women at the time. It was seen as socially acceptable and often times encouraged.
Women’s relationships with each other was viewed quite differently than men. Two women could interact with each other alone, in their beds, or on vacations, but a man and woman who were not married should be accompanied by a chaperone. The Etiquette: An Encyclopedia of Good manners and Social Usage was an etiquette book from the 1920’s. This book was meant to instruct proper gentlewomen and gentlemen as to their social affairs. Author Gabrielle Rosiere writes, “No woman of social standing goes to a bachelor Studio or poses for an artist without a chaperone or maid in a nearby room.” (Rosiere, 146). It is apparent that men and women’s relationships with each other were closely monitored. However, women were encouraged to be together. The same book encourages women to live together before they are married because “one learns to give way into consider the others comfort and happiness” (Rosiere, 147) and that a widow should live with another woman for company. Rosenberg discusses women’s relationships “When husbands traveled, wives routinely moved in with other women, invited women friends to teas and suppers, sat close together sharing and comparing the letters they have received from other close women friends” (Rosenburg, 10). Women were allowed to be physically close.
To further contribute, “Boston Marriages” were common among women. A “Boston Marriage” contained two financially independent women who lived together and were not seeking a husband. A famous example of this is Annie Fields and Sarah Jewett. According to Heather Rockwood an associate and writer for the Massachusetts Historical Society, in her article Annie Adams Fields in Later Life, Including a ‘Boston Marriage,’ after Annie’s husband died in 1881, her “friend” Sarah Jewett moved in with her (as advised in Etiquette by Rosiere). They lived and traveled together until Sarah died in 1909.
As the feminist movement rose to the forefront of the American consciousness, women’s place in society was beginning to shift due to women entering academics, heterosocial activities, and feminism. At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, women started entering universities. This put women in a new position, putting them more equal to men. Additionally, heterosexual leisure was becoming more popular. A Desired Past by Lelia Rupp discusses the change, “Young women and men had more freedom to participate in heterosocial leisure pursuits and to form heterosexual relationships outside of courtship and marriage” (77). Furthermore, feminists like Susan B. Anthony were pushing for suffrage rights. Men’s view of women changed, and they looked for other opportunities to oppress women. This was done through the oppression of women’s sexuality. Women’s actions like their dress and relationships began to be held under a critical light. Graham Robb, an acclaimed historian, provides a powerful view of this change, “the new homosexual was a distinct personality characterized by an internal androgyny, a hermaphrodism of the soul, the sodomite had been a sinner, the homosexual was now a new species” (Robb, 42). After the turn of the century, lesbianism was medicalized and stigmatized.
Psychologists and psychotherapists began publishing literature on homosexuals in the 1910’s. There were many debates over the cause of homosexuality. Many theories were around the idea that homosexuality was expressed through some sort of physical deformity. Some theorized that homosexuality was a result of hermaphroditism. Others argued that lesbians had an enlarged clitoris and gay men had small penises. Stereotypes were used to ‘diagnose’ women with lesbianism. Graham Robb in his historical novel Strangers explained stereotypes such as “[Lesbians] smoked -in severe cases- cigars, had deep voices, and big muscles, liked sport and were able to spit, whistle, curse, and throw” (Robb, 48). There were other theories about the formation of homosexuality like too much masturbation (Robb, 48). Women who wore men’s clothes or behaved outside the social norm were often pegged for lesbians regardless of their sexuality. Freud believed homosexuality was because of an unbalanced childhood. There were also different cures like physically castrating lesbian women by removing their clitoris and ovaries (Robb, 78). There were different terms for women who had relations with women. Common ones were sexual; inversion, perversion or deviant.
After the medicalization of lesbianism, women were less inclined to display their intimacy. These ideas of perversion caused women to shy away from each other. Rupp adds “the relentless ‘heterosexualisation’ of society limited opportunities for same-sex interaction and raised the specter of sexuality in every interaction between individuals of the same sex” (Rupp, 77).
The societal shift caused women’s relationships to become more analyzed as any woman was subject to speculation. Lesbians themselves restricted their behaviors due to the stereotypes. Lesbianism in the 1920s and 1930s by Vern and Bonnie Bullough discusses the lesbian interviews from this time. The idea that masturbation resulted in lesbianism and in part because of the taboo of the time, the woman interviewed all denied any sort of masturbation and more than one demonstrated a verbal disgust. They were cautious of the outside world but were freer in bigger cities. The women consistently denied the notion that there was something wrong with them for having sexual attraction to women. These women presented as traditional. They all had good education and good jobs. Bullough mentions that because of their place in society, they may have faced less alienation than women in lower classes.
The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith is a lesbian novel published in the 50s. This novel gives a snapshot into what life was like as a lesbian. Many women suppressed their sexuality and those that accepted it remained quiet about it. The main character of the novel grapples with the fact that she is not in love with her husband and in love with a woman. In the novel, the main character, Therese, discusses her feelings about this woman. She talks about how she wishes they could be together but can’t. Sometimes she hopes they die so that they can be together, and overall, discusses her fight for her love. On page 194 she proclaims “She had seen just now what she had only sensed before, that the whole world was ready to be their enemy, and suddenly what she and Carol had together seemed no longer love or anything happy but a monster between them, with each of them caught in a fist.”
Loving a woman as a woman became more challenging through the end of the 19th century and entering the 20th century. For most of the 1800’s lesbianism was generally accepted behind closed doors. Women could spend large amounts of time together and be physically affectionate and no one would blink an eye. When women started to rise to positions of power lesbianism became medicalized. There were social repercussions to being labeled a lesbian. This discouraged women from seeking out homosexual relationships. Occasionally ideas will drift around that the general populous is queerer than previous generations. This is inaccurate as the queer community has been around forever. Previous to the 21st century though, queerness often landed one in social trouble if not legal. Our society has demonstrated progress in the last one hundred years. Despite the negative repercussions of the medicalization of queerness, this did allow queer individuals to enter the public eye. There are records of queer individuals that may have been erased otherwise. The challenge of queer acceptance continues. While progress has been made, most evidently in liberal areas, there are still heavy repercussions for being queer in parts of America. Moreover, queer individuals still face safety concerns while traveling abroad and queer people are still facing violence. In a world so full of hate and violence the last thing that is needed is restrictions on love.
Works Cited
Bullough, Vern, and Bonnie Bullough. “Lesbianism in the 1920s and 1930s: A Newfound Study.” Signs, vol. 2, no. 4, 1977, pp. 895–904, www.jstor.org/stable/3173219.
CHAUNCEY, GEORGE. “From Sexual Inversion to Homosexuality: Medicine and the Changing Conceptualization of Female Deviance.” Salmagundi, vol. 58, no. 58/59, 1982, pp. 114–46, www.jstor.org/stable/40547567.
Morgan, Claire, et al. The Price of Salt. Macfadden-Bartell Corp, 1969.
Robb, Graham. Strangers Homosexual Love in the Nineteenth Century. New York London W.W. Norton & Company, 2005.
Rockwood, Heather. “Annie Adams Fields in Later Life, Including a ‘Boston Marriage’ | Beehive.” Masshist.org, 7 Apr. 2023, www.masshist.org/beehiveblog/2023/04/annie-adams-fields-in-later-life-including-a-boston-marriage/. Accessed 1 Mar. 2024.
Rosiere, Gabrielle. The Etiquette: An Encyclopedia of Good Manners and Social Usage. Edward J. Clode, 1923.
Rupp, Leila J. A Desired Past : A Short History of Same-Sex Love in America. University Of Chicago Press, 1999.
Sappho. “Sappho (630 BC–570 BC) – Poems and Fragments.” Poetryintranslation.com, 2019, www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Greek/Sappho.php.
Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll. “The Female World of Love and Ritual: Relations between Women in Nineteenth-Century America.” Signs, vol. 1, no. 1, 1975, pp. 1–29, www.jstor.org/stable/3172964.
