How to be a Lesbian in an 18th Century American Novel

Psychoanalyzing the fiction of earlier ages has been a popular, if often misguided sport. In particular, when characters' intimate friendships are analyzed from contemporary angles, while ignoring the context when the work was written, we find out more about the literary critic's mind than the minds of the author or the characters. The "social constructionist" approach needs to cut both ways: if a character cannot properly be labeled "lesbian" because orientation categories hadn't been invented yet, then neither can that character be dismissed as "perverted" if the social constructions of their own day would not frame them as such. These are the debates playing out in analysis of the novel Ormond.