Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love Between Women from the Renaissance to the Present

Introduction 15
PART 1: THE SIXTEENTH THROUGH
EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES 21
A. Lesbianism in a Phallocentric Universe 21
Chapter 1. Lesbianism and the Libertines 23
Chapter 2. What Do Women Do? 31
Chapter 3. Eighteenth-Century Fantasy and the
Lesbian Image 38
Chapter 4. Transvestism: Persecution and Impunity 47
B. The Enshrinement of Romantic Friendship 63
Chapter 1. The Revival of Same-Sex Love: Sixteenth
and Seventeenth Centuries 65
Chapter 2. The \"Fashion\" of Romantic Friendship in
the Eighteenth Century 74
Chapter 3. The Battle of the Sexes 85
Chapter 4. Romantic Friendship in Eighteenth-
Century Literature 103
Chapter 5. Romantic Friendship in Eighteenth-
Century Life 119
PART II: THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 145
A. Loving Friends 145
Chapter 1. The Asexual Woman 147
Chapter 2. Kindred Spirits 157
Chapter 3. New Women 178
Chapter 4. Boston Marriage 190
Chapter 5. Love and \"Women Who Live by Their
Brains\" 204
B. The Reaction 231
Chapter 1. The Rise of Antifeminism 233
Chapter 2. The Contributions of the Sexologists 239
Chapter 3. Lesbian Exoticism 254
Chapter 4. Lesbian Evil 277
PART III: THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 295
A. Sophistication 295
Chapter L The Last Breath of Innocence 297
Chapter 2. The Spread of Medical \"Knowledge\" 314
Chapter 3. Keeping Women Down 332
Chapter 4. Fiction as a Weapon 341
Chapter 5. Internalization and Rebellion 357
B. When It Changed 375
Chapter 1. The Rise of Lesbian-Feminism 377
Chapter 2. Writing Lesbian 392
Chapter 3. Romantic Friendship and Lesbian Love 411
Notes 417