As I emphasized repeatedly in my podcast about Charlotte Cushman, the community of women discussed in this chapter deserved to have an entire historical mini-series created around them. There are so many personalities, so much drama, you could easily fill several seasons of tv. If you're writing sapphic historical fiction in the Victorian era you need to know about this milieu, if only so you are aware of the range of possible lives for those willing to do the work of slipping through the blind spots of society. I've read entirely too many stories where a female protagonist is isolated in her experiences because of the author's mistaken impression that the public myths of the Victorian era were the universal everyday reality.
There are also too many stories where women place an enormous load of guilt and shame on romantic and sensual interactions between women that--in actual fact--were part of everyday life at the time. You're a nice 19th century girl, you "kissed a girl and you liked it"? Congratulations, you're enjoying an experience that a plurality of your contemporaries consider a normal part of your emotional life. You visit your friend and spend the night cuddling and kissing in the same bed? Of course, you do. That's what best friends do. You fantasize about being able to set up a household and spend the rest of your lives together? Well, naturally. For most it will only be a fantasy, but those who achieve it will be admired and envied. And if you do, you refer to your arrangement as a marriage, and to your partner as your spouse or "other half" and no one blinks an eye. What you don't do is expect or demand legal recognition for that relationship, or rub people's faces in the full range of what you might be doing in your shared bed. And if you're active in male-dominated spaces, you can expect to be the subject of rude jokes or sly innuendo (whether or not your relationship is sexual).
I want to see more historical fiction that is aware of and uses these understandings as the framework for f/f relationships. It not only opens up a lot more possibilities, but it counters the myth that any historical era that wasn't as open and public about same-sex relationships as our present time was necessarily devoid of happy endings.
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