ROMANTIC FRIENDSHIP
“I need you more and more…”
HANNAH MACKENZIE INVESTIGATES THE “FEMALE ROMANTIC FRIENDSHIPS” OF YESTERYEAR
PHOTOS CREATIVE COMMONS
“I need you more and more… my heart goes wandering around and calls for Susie… none other than you are in my thoughts, yet when I seek to say to you something not for the world, words fail me.”
So wrote poet Emily Dickinson in the 1850s, to her neighbour and eventual sister-in-law Sue Gilbert, with whom she shared a passionate 36-year correspondence. However, if you’d assume such an unabashed declaration of female-to-female love during this time would have been entirely stigmatised, you’d be wrong. In the 1980s, historian Lillian Faderman, referred to by many as the “mother of lesbian history”, discovered that from the 16th century, what were known as “romantic friendships” between women in the UK, US and parts of Europe, were not only tolerated but often even actively encouraged by wider society.