As I read through Rizzo's book, a number of thoughts have been coalescing with respect to plotting out historical f/f romances. Those thoughts aren't necessarily tied directly to the subject of the chapter, but are building as the various threads weave together.
Today I was thinking about how the avoidance or disparagement of marriage is treated in history as contrasted with how it is typically expressed in f/f historicals. The modern approach tends to be: "A distaste for heterosexual marriage is either a consequence of, or a telling symptom of a sexual preference for women. You can tell the heroine is a lesbian because she has always thought of marriage with revulsion."
But when you look at historic attitudes in the 18th century, women had all sorts of reasons for wishing they didn't have to marry. A fear of repeated pregnancy might be enough. Many women--though sometimes only in private correspondence--saw marriage as a form of servitude. Marriage generally meant an end to having the autonomy to pursue one's own interests, especially intellectual interests. A wife was legally at the mercy of her husband's commands and whims, and even a benevolent husband could control her associations, her movements, and her experiences.
Outside of marriage, a woman's reputation was far more at risk from an intimate relationship with a man than his was in the same circumstance. A male lover might not have legal power over a woman's life, but he had the social power to ruin her at no detriment to himself.
All of these are perfectly good reasons for an 18th century woman to find reasons not to marry, without any need for people to assume that she preferred women sexually.
In fact, sexual preference was generally considered irrelevant to the question of marriage, in both men and women. One married for reasons of economics, family connections, and social aspirations. "Enthusiastic consent" to the resulting sexual relationship was not a consideration. And given patterns of socializing, marriage was little hindrence to a woman pursuing a sexual relationship with a female friend, as long as her husband didn't feel rejected as a result.
Of course, the conventions of romance novels lead one to expect the romantic leads to aspire to an exclusive relationship with the object of one's affections. But perhaps we need to expand the paradigms for queer historical romances, rather than confining ourselves to a model invented for heterosexuals.
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