Martin uses the writings of early 20th c Australian poet Mary Fullerton, and in particular numerous poems related to her long-term relationship with Mabel Singleton, to explore the debate among historians around the question of romantic friendship and lesbian sexuality. [Note: Fullerton was born in 1868 and much of the discussion concerns solidly 19th century topics, so I consider the article in-scope for the Project.]

Much of the article reviews and discusses the evolving scholarship around the intersection of female friendship and lesbian history, which she refers to as the “romantic friendship versus lesbianism debate.” This debate has played out in works such as:

• Smith-Rosenberg 1975
• Rich 1908
• Faderman 1981
• Moore 1992
• Newton 1984
• Stanley, L. 1992. “Romantic Friendship? Some Issues in Researching Lesbian History and Biography” in Women’s History Review, 1, 2: 193-216. (Not blogged yet)

Much of the tension has derived from the competing programs of valorizing women’s social (but non-sexual) bonds in the face of patriarchal framings that view relationships between women of any type as being inherently less relevant than the relationships to men, and the work of historians of lesbian history who view the active “unsexualization” of romantic friendships as queer erasure deriving from a discomfort with the idea that sex might sully the “purity” of those friendships. Even concepts such as Adrienne Rich’s “lesbian continuum” can be seen as downplaying an essential difference between sexual and non-sexual relationships in a way that undermines the meaningfulness of the category “lesbian.”

On the one side, we have positions such as Faderman and Smith-Rosenberg who argue that romantic friendships must have been inherently non-sexual because women were socialized to consider themselves non-sexual beings, and besides which romantic friendships couldn’t have been social acceptable (as they were) if there were anything sexual about them, plus nobody was a lesbian until the sexologists invented the concept. On the other side, we have positions such as Stanley 1992 and Moore 1992 who document the policing of 18-19th century female friendships that were felt to stray into “dangerous” sexual territory, indicating that people of the time certainly acknowledged the possibility that female friendship could have a sexual component. Both poles have contributed to failures of the historical imagination: either ignoring sexual potential or over-emphasizing it.

At this point, Martin returns to her Australian poet and women with similar lives, discussing how their lives have been treated by biographers through one or the other framing, either overlooking potential support for a lesbian interpretation (or viewing incontrovertible evidence as a “problem” to be explained), or assuming sexual relations against a background of ambiguity. Martin asks the question “Why is the lesbian such a problem to theorizing friendship?” She attempts to answer that question in terms of the gendering of mind-body duality and how the “woman as body” is pushed toward an interpretation focused on motherhood and nurturing, as well as a phallocentric definition of sex that denies lesbians the ability to participate in it. Thus there is no space within these frameworks for an embodied sexuality between women that is not an imitation of some other dynamic.

Even within the field of lesbian history, there is a conflict between envisioning a “utopian” image of an era when f/f relationships could be free of the suspicion of sexuality, and a desire to define lesbianism as defined by sexual desire.

[Note: The article spends a lot of time on theorizing, which I have condensed greatly.]

Returning once more to Mary Fullerton’s life, the article looks at hear own words and finds various potential interpretations. Fullerton was a feminist and socialist activist, was proud of her unmarried state, and asserted that she lacked the “sex instinct,” while engaging in a close friendship with a woman with whom she co-habited for almost four decades. Such a self-description in such a context would seem to support interpretation of her life as a classic non-sexual romantic friendship (if somewhat behind the historic curve, as the relationship started in 1909). However further examination of her love poems complicates the question. Her expressions of passion are spiritual but also bodily. Physical interaction is the means for spiritual unity. Further, we find that her definition of “sex instinct” was tied up in procreation. For her the “sex instinct” was the animal urge that drove reproduction—a drive that was not as strong in more “evolved” individuals. [Note: We shall overlook potentially problematic interpretations of this position for the moment.] This leaves room for seeing her poetry as representing an erotic same-sex desire that she viewed as entirely separate from the “sex instinct” she denied having.