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

Women in Victorian England wore jewelry made from each other's hair and
wrote poems celebrating decades of friendship. They pored over magazines
that described the dangerous pleasures of corporal punishment. A few
had sexual relationships with each other, exchanged rings and vows,
willed each other property, and lived together in long-term partnerships
described as marriages. But, as Sharon Marcus shows, these women
were not seen as gender outlaws. Their desires were fanned by consumer
culture and their friendships and unions were accepted and even
encouraged by family, society, and church. Far from being sexless angels
defined only by male desires, Victorian women openly enjoyed looking at
and even dominating other women. Their friendships helped realize the
ideal of companionate love between men and women celebrated by novels,
and their unions influenced politicians and social thinkers to reform
marriage law.--From publisher description.