https://padlet.com/gretarhuberg2019/scrambler2 Made with charisma en-us 2022-03-22 20:24:48 UTC 2026-01-10 01:16:15 UTC hello@padlet.com https://padlet.net/icons/png/2604.png gretarhuberg2019 https://padlet.com/gretarhuberg2019/scrambler2/wish/2120112375 In nineteenth-century England, misogyny was embedded into the very fabric of society. It penetrated each page of popular literature and tainted the words out of the mouths of every Tom, Dick, and Harry in the street, leaving every person to be affected in ways that would shape the rest of their lives. Some of these individuals found solace in the comforts of a sapphic lifestyle, while others chose to follow a path that was more traditional to keep up the appearances required for a good reputation. ]]> 2022-03-29 19:55:23 UTC https://padlet.com/gretarhuberg2019/scrambler2/wish/2120112375 gretarhuberg2019 https://padlet.com/gretarhuberg2019/scrambler2/wish/2120113247 For those women who found themselves in a position where pursuing a relationship with a man was solely obligational or in some other way undesirable, a new path had to be forged. There were no agreed-upon ways to defy society’s rules for women of the period, so England’s sapphics were left to toy with the trial-and-error of finding a place in society that was both safe and reasonably fulfilling. The question then became how those of a sapphic alignment could push past their relationship to the patriarchal history of England, and furthermore, how they could find social and romantic fulfillment that was not directly tied to men. While sapphism was generally frowned upon, and often entirely ignored, in nineteenth-century England, I will demonstrate how many women still found solace in their relationships by pushing the boundaries of the traditional ideas of marriage and why their choices were significant. ]]> 2022-03-29 19:56:02 UTC https://padlet.com/gretarhuberg2019/scrambler2/wish/2120113247 gretarhuberg2019 https://padlet.com/gretarhuberg2019/scrambler2/wish/2120114964 This piece will largely cover a few case studies of sapphic individuals rather than the concept as a whole, including both fictional representations of sapphic women and historical figures. Among the sources discussed will be the 1872 gothic horror novel Carmilla, Anne Lister and her wife Ann Walker’s personal diaries, the published letters of Charlotte Brontë, and an assortment of sources discussing femininity and the othering that occurs when one is perceived as queer. Carmilla depicts a sapphic relationship through the titular Carmilla, a vampire whose victims of choice are young, innocent, wealthy women, and Laura, her prey, exploring themes of attraction, innocence, and one’s sense of duty. Anne Lister was a member of the landed gentry who was a prolific diarist, known for her thorough accounts of day to day life. She wrote about every aspect of her life from her breakfast, to her business ventures, to her illicit intimate escapades with women, including her wife, Ann Walker, a diarist and heiress. Because Lister’s works were preserved nearly in full by her estate, she remains at the forefront of sapphic research of the era. Charlotte Brontë, though more well known for her works of fiction, penned letters often interpreted as sapphic, allowing for a different angle on the discussion of traditional marriages.

]]> 2022-03-29 19:57:22 UTC https://padlet.com/gretarhuberg2019/scrambler2/wish/2120114964 gretarhuberg2019 https://padlet.com/gretarhuberg2019/scrambler2/wish/2120115864 Because women’s history is a relatively new area of study, and sapphic even newer, the scholarly literature on the topic is limited to a narrow timeframe starting in the end of the twentieth century as the discussion of queer culture and rights came into the forefront. As tends to happen in new fields of research, terms, definitions, and understandings of topics change and expand rapidly as historians are able to work with sources more thoroughly. With this in mind, it is understandable that the scholarly literature often uses outdated understandings of concepts such as lesbianism. In the article “Not All Fangs Are Phallic: Female Film Vampires,” written largely about adaptations of Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla, Holte’s take on the female vampire and sapphic attraction leaves much to be desired through a modern lens. As someone who is not sapphic, the depiction of this entanglement loses some of its intended personal touch. Where Holte’s piece excels, however, is in its thematic exploration of vampirism and societal fears surrounding femininity. 

]]> 2022-03-29 19:58:05 UTC https://padlet.com/gretarhuberg2019/scrambler2/wish/2120115864 gretarhuberg2019 https://padlet.com/gretarhuberg2019/scrambler2/wish/2120116639 One subject of this piece, Anne Lister, has had significantly more scholarly work done on her behalf as compared to the others. Initially published in the 1980s, Helena Whitbread was the premier historian studying Anne Lister’s diaries, which require a significant amount of cryptography. Whitbread authored two revolutionary books in the field of sapphic history that are still the first to be referenced today when speaking on Anne Lister, delving into the cultural context of a woman’s yearning and how she reckoned with it. With the first published in 1988 and the second in 1992, her contributions to queer history were placed directly in the center of the AIDS epidemic, which proved to be a prosperous time in the history of queer historians. Other works, such as Jill Liddington’s “Anne Lister of Shibden Hall, Halifax (1791-1840): Her Diaries and the Historians,”  serve as a historiographical look into the birth of that scholarly field. Liddington’s piece attaches the view of each person who attempted to tackle Anne Lister’s history, from her own father to Whitbread, as their own Anne Lister, finally providing her own at the end. With this piece, I will attempt to do the same. Following the conception of these pieces, new information has entered the playing field. Sources that suspect some influence of Anne Lister and sapphic culture as a whole on Charlotte Brontë’s work have come into the literature more recently, as well. 

]]> 2022-03-29 19:58:40 UTC https://padlet.com/gretarhuberg2019/scrambler2/wish/2120116639 gretarhuberg2019 https://padlet.com/gretarhuberg2019/scrambler2/wish/2120117298 The speculative nature of these sources, while not as concrete as the historiographical survey of direct letters or diaries, cannot be discredited when discussing artists. Because of the field’s novelty, much of the scholarly literature is lacking in recently discovered material as more of the context surrounding this time period is unearthed. To remedy this, I will make the following disclaimers. The terms that I use, namely “woman,” “sapphic,” “lesbian,” among others, are to be understood in the context that they are being written in currently, rather than in the social context that the original articles or source material were written, as the language surrounding gender and sexuality are rapidly evolving. To place my own research into its proper context, I am authoring this as a white, American, cisgender sapphic individual. As with the historians discussed above, care has been taken to discuss and understand the subjects in their own cultures rather than placing them strictly within modern identities and norms.]]> 2022-03-29 19:59:08 UTC https://padlet.com/gretarhuberg2019/scrambler2/wish/2120117298