Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast Episode 352 – Is Your Sapphic Protagonist Worried About the Wrong Things?

Saturday, September 19, 2026 - 07:00

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Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 352 – Is Your Sapphic Protagonist Worried About the Wrong Things? - transcript

(Originally aired 2026/09/19)

Every historic romance novel needs some roadblocks and potholes on the path to a happy ending. The question is: what type? How do those barriers to love emerge naturally from the setting and the priorities of the characters? Considering contemporary romance for a moment, if one of your protagonists is part of a South-East Asian diaspora, then a conflict between family expectations and personal desires can involve more angst than if she was born into a middle-class white American family. The conflicting priorities of small-town versus big-city backgrounds form an entire romance genre. In the infamous lesbian pulp novels of the ‘50s and ‘60s, it seemed natural that self-doubt rooted in Freudian psychology might get in the way of love. But when we turn to lesbian romance novels set before the 20th century, it sometimes feels like the protagonists are worried about all the wrong things.

I’ve just been reading a really excellent sapphic historical mystery set in the mid 19th century. But at one point, one of the protagonists confesses to the other about her past romantic feelings.

“Once, when I was younger, there was a young woman who wanted, well, me… We wrote to each other for a time, but I couldn’t stand to see myself on the page, there for anyone to stumble over… Fear of rejection, of not being proper, of showing someone my innermost self, only to find they’re not interested at best or horrified at worst. That these are not womanly thoughts. That I am an unnatural woman and an unfit mother for having them.”

Let’s pick this apart. Two women have expressed…let’s call it “romantic” interest in each other (since it doesn’t appear it went further than that). They exchanged letters expressing their attachment. Our protagonist breaks it off because she’s anxious about several things. Other people reading her letters, for one. Well, this is a reasonable concern. In the mid-19th century, letters were often considered communal property, to be shared with family and visitors. (Think about some of the public letter-sharing scenes in Jane Austen’s books.) This was one reason why people sometimes destroyed correspondence or requested that others do so. But on the other hand, in this era there was a wide latitude given for women expressing intensely romantic sentiments to female friends in correspondence. Unless they were writing very explicitly sexual material (along the lines of what Anne Lister included in her encoded correspondence), it’s unlikely that any casual reader would consider the content “not proper” or “not womanly.” Far from indicating that a woman was unnatural and an unfit mother, the ability to feel and express love and affection for a female friend was considered a requirement for being properly womanly.

So the concerns this character sets out don’t really make sense for her context. What would have made sense as a reason to break off the connection? Maybe a realization that family obligations meant they had no hope of sharing their lives together, though this was something of a given. Perhaps a mis-match in the intensity of their feelings led one to jealousy. If they had engaged in anything that they might have classified as sexual activity (which would mean they’d gone beyond kissing, embracing, caressing, and sharing a bed) then one of them might feel religious scruples, but only if they’d gone beyond what society considered normal for intimate friends.

Let’s look at another example. I’m not giving book titles for these examples because the point isn’t to name and shame specific works, but to examine the underlying assumptions. This one is set in early 16th century Italy. Woman #1 (an aristocratic widow) feels attraction to woman #2 (her employee, an unmarried woman of the middle class) but notices that woman #2 is on very friendly terms with a young man. So she asks the young man if they have been lovers.

Pause right there: she’s asking if her unmarried female employee has been sexually active—something that would likely get her instantly fired. But that’s not what we’re here to talk about. The young man laughs it off, saying, “She prefers women and I prefer men.” At which woman #1 instantly thinks to herself, So she does prefer women! I have a chance!

The problem is that Renaissance Italy didn’t think about sexual orientation in this way. People were assumed to be open to sexual relations with either sex, given the right context. The complicating dynamics included things like age and social status. We have more concrete evidence for men’s relations in this era than women’s, to be sure. But romantic and sexual relations between men were commonplace—even expected—despite both legal and religious prohibitions. (A point that the text acknowledges.) It would be extremely rare for a man’s homosexual relationships to be an indication that he had no interest in (or history with) women. So not only is this supposed reassurance meaningless with respect to their hypothetical sexual history, but it’s meaningless with respect to woman #2’s potential openness to a same-sex affair.

What might make sense as a stumbling block for the widow’s sexual designs on her employee? Well, possibly that she was an employee, though goodness knows, workplace non-consensual sexual advances were hardly rare at the time. Perhaps more plausibly, despite the commonplace occurrence of same-sex relations, they were still technically immoral. (And possibly illegal, though that was less certain for women than men.) The best protection against consequences was the support of one’s hierarchical patronage network. Woman #2 would be protected from consequences as long as her employer was ok with it. But that employer, woman #1, risks consequences if her hierarchical superiors (that is, her male relatives) find out and disapprove. Disapproval could mean losing custody of her children and being sent off to a convent. So maybe they’d disapprove, maybe they wouldn’t care, but that’s what she should be concerned about.

Possibly the most frequent misplaced concern for historical sapphic protagonists is to overlook the traditions of romantic friendship and the degree of expected affectionate behavior between women. The use of a kiss as a sudden sexual awakening between formerly platonic same-sex friends makes no sense when kissing is an expected part of friendship. In this next example from the Regency era we have two young women who have been inseparable friends for 18 years, but it’s only when they are about to be parted for the marriage mart and one says, “I can’t imagine loving anyone as much as I love you” that they first kiss each other and recognize the act as erotic. The viewpoint character is immediately struck by guilt.

“I knew it was wrong. Aside from the dutiful kisses one bestowed on relatives, any sort of embrace was to be saved for marriage. We had been told so, over and again. The fact that we had been warned only from men meant nothing: love, physical love between two girls was so wrong, so unnatural as not even to be spoken aloud. We had broken a strict taboo. If anyone, ever, found out, we would be parted for life.”

This turns historic reality on its head. Was it true that “physical love between two girls was so wrong, so unnatural as not even to be spoken aloud”? At this time, for two young, sheltered, well-born girls? Quite likely. But if so, they wouldn’t have the concepts or the language to recognize what they were doing as forbidden “physical love.” But passionate kisses and embraces between women were not classified as “physical love” at this time. Rather (as discussed previously), they were part of the expected behavior between close female friends. The two girls could be kissing and embracing in the parlor with other people around and it wouldn’t be considered in any way odd, much less forbidden. The fact that they “had been warned only from men,” far from meaning nothing, was exactly the point. Kisses and embraces were only forbidden behavior in a heterosexual context. If a man wasn’t involved, it wasn’t considered sexual.

In fairness, the story does revolve around the very real roadblocks to the two young women’s romance: the intense social and family pressure to marry and then being subject to a husband’s control with respect to where one lives and whom one sees.

The sapphic historic romance field currently sees a lot of alternative history settings where the reader is signaled not to expect close alignment with the actual past. Given that, it can be hard to sort out when an author is writing implausible roadblocks from ignorance and when it’s a deliberate choice. And I sometimes feel guilty for being less critical of stories that aren’t really aiming for accuracy. Another Regency-era romance begins with the questionable set-up of a 26 year old unmarried woman with no mention of family wealth who attracts the marital interest of all the eligible gentlemen, despite outspokenly having no interest in marriage.

Her social success is a bit contradictory, for she notes, “[She] enjoyed flirting with men though they held no romantic interest for her, and she had a certain reputation among society matrons for being fast—she did like to sit at the gaming tables and laugh too much and drink too many glasses of wine. She suspected it was why she was never invited to the highest of highbrow events, and why many women in society ignored her at the events that she did choose to attend.” Now I’m sorry, attracting the interest of respectable men while being considered “fast” by the arbiters of society is just not how it works. Unless she’s simply an unreliable reporter of what type of interest the men have in her. But let’s move on.

During a ball, while hanging out with a small, mixed-gender group of friends, she ruminates to herself about her best friend, “They had been youthful lovers, kissing during stolen moments at their finishing school, then in a burst of excitement and passion during their first season. Every moment seemed so intense, so overwhelming, so very grown up—and their love had sizzled and burned bright. But after the first year or so, they had turned to being only occasional lovers while maintaining a close friendship.”

OK, so far. This is a quite reasonable background for the time period. Think about Anne Lister’s boarding-school romance with Eliza Raine, which had a similar arc. But then the talk—and remember that this is in a public space, regardless of how low the conversation might be—the talk turns to the protagonist’s current dissatisfaction after being dropped by her most recent female lover. Her best friend suggests, “Isn’t it time…to look to the future? And doesn’t that mean marriage?” A perfectly reasonable suggestion. But then a male participant in the conversation offers, “If you won’t consider marriage, then a dalliance must be what you need, darling. You need a woman in your bed to get over [insert name of her previous lover].” This is quite an indiscreet conversation to have in a public space. Our protagonist reflects to herself that the man and her best friend are the only ones “who knew of her amorous exploits with other women,” (er…other than the women themselves, presumably) but in the next moment she notes that, “The opinions of the sticklers of society never bothered her. London was large enough to find plenty of other women who were happy to pay a great deal of attention to her. Cautious about whom she invited to her bed, she took great care with her secret and was proud that no one in society seemed to guess at her proclivity for a beautiful woman.” But who are these “plenty of other women” if they are not “in society?”

Our protagonist is worried about finding true love with another woman but seems insufficiently concerned about how her behavior is likely destroying her reputation—whether in terms of her partying and gambling or in terms of her pursuit of female lovers. Maybe she genuinely is oblivious to how likely it is that she’s the subject of gossip on the latter point, but it should definitely be affecting the willingness of women who are otherwise interested in her but have too much discretion to act on it. Again, we can use Anne Lister as a reference point. In some ways, she was far more discreet than this protagonist in her public behavior, yet the whisper network definitely provided roadblocks to her romantic pursuits. She overcame them, but not through being oblivious. For another example, 18th century sculptor Anne Damer was so solidly rumored to have female lovers that saying a woman “visited Mrs Damer” was as much as an accusation. People talk, and talk has consequences.

So what should our rakish Regency protagonist be genuinely concerned about? She should be encountering a falling off of invitations, a shrinking pool of women willing to be seen in her company regardless of how they feel about her, and just maybe some more concrete consequences from loose talk in a ballroom.

Let’s finish up with a couple more Regency heroines—there are so many to choose from, after all! A restlessly married woman has gone visiting at a friend’s country home unaccompanied by her husband. She experiences mutual attraction to the unmarried friend she is visiting and they make arrangements for a secret tryst in one of their bedrooms, saying, “I want you in my room. Not tonight. Tonight is too crowded with eyes. Tomorrow. After the last light has been checked.” They sneak around, being careful not to let anyone suspect they spent the night together. Once again, this falters on the point of ordinary social behavior between female friends. It would be an ordinary thing for them to share a bedroom openly when visiting. We have examples from the 19th century of women writing to their married friends saying, “I’m coming to visit and we’re going to kick your husband out of bed so we can spend the time together chatting and cuddling.” It’s furtive behavior that will attract suspicion, not the maid coming in to stoke up the fire in the morning and finding them in bed together.

Here's a different scenario with a mixture of reasonable and unreasonable concerns. Two women have met socially and organized an excuse to spend more time together, but one is having second thoughts. “It had been a long time since she had felt so attracted to a woman, and she knew, too well, the consequences of that attraction. … She desperately needed to stay away from M. M. made her wish for things she already knew that she could not have. … Was it possible that M also felt that tug of physical attraction?” And then from the other point of view, “She liked G. A lot. In a way she shouldn’t. … She’d [previously] fallen in love with a woman who had chosen to ignore all the promises that she had made and marr[ied] a man.”

What are the plausible parts of this? First off, being attracted to another woman and being disappointed by promises to be together that were broken in favor of marriage. That’s solidly historical. One of the consistent through-lines for romantic friendships is disappointment that marriage disrupts the relationship. In the words of 17th century poet Katherine Philips, “marriage is the death of friendship.” Given that, we can also consider that “wishing for things she knew she could not have” is a reasonable anxiety. It’s an anxiety that shows up in love poems between women throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. Until women began (re)gaining opportunities for economic independence in the later 19th century, the hope to live with a female romantic partner was difficult to realize.

Yet this reality was rarely considered sufficient reason to stay away from the object of affection. If having little hope for a life together was fatal to romantic friendships, the concept would never have gained any foothold. Is the protagonist reasonable to worry about whether the other woman returns her love? Maybe, but only in the ordinary way of things, not specifically because they are both women. Is it reasonable for the protagonist to think that she “shouldn’t” like the other woman “a lot?” No, this isn’t reasonable within the historic setting. This again sets history on its head. Her society would expect her to be attracted to at least one female friend. A lot. This should not be the focus of her anxiety or a reason to avoid the friendship.

In these examples I’ve focused a lot on misunderstanding the historic relationship between sexual desire and romantic love. Before the 20th century, there was no automatic assumption of a connection between the two concepts for female couples. That’s a different matter than saying that there was no connection. The plot requires that a sapphic protagonist who hopes for, or enjoys, a sexual relationship with another woman needs to have roadblocks to her happy ending, but those roadblocks shouldn’t include worrying that her society will jump to the wrong conclusion if they kiss or share a bed.

A delightful part of historical romance is seeing how relationship dynamics operate differently in the past—seeing how different rules and consequences for behavior shape the course of a relationship. We lose that delight when the dynamics and consequences reflect our modern society rather than the realities of the setting.