Sentimental Follies' or 'Instruments of Tremendous Uplift'? reconsidering women's same-sex relationships in interwar Britain

In 1985 Sheila Jeffreys alleged that the rise of sexological discourse concerning female inversion in the early twentieth century obliged women of the interwar period in the UK to reject female affection for fear of being labelled lesbian. Several historians have demonstrated that sexological ideas gained very little general currency before Radclyffe Hall's novel The Well of Loneliness (1928). Research on specific women suggests that such fears were less prevalent than surmised. An influential discourse invoking tropes of emotional femininity, rather than inversion, was embodied in Clemence Dane's Regiment of Women (1917), presenting female same-sex relationships as mired in morbid emotions and parasitic manipulation. It had significant cultural resonance for well over a decade. A counter-discourse argued that emotionally healthy, reciprocal female friendship might form a sustaining element for women unable to marry. Stress, however, was laid on the need for self-knowledge and psychological understanding

Affection · Femininity · Friendship · Human sexuality · Interwar period · Loneliness · Sexology · Social science · Sociology · World War II · Gender Studies · Historical Gender and Feminism Studies · Historical Psychiatry and Medical Practices · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · History · Psychology · Social Psychology