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Chapter 1: “The Sister of My Heart”: Female Friends before 1900
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1 “The Sister of My Heart” Female Friends before 1900 In 1790, the popular English novel Euphemia characterized female friendship as a multifaceted, influential force in women’s lives. A friend, the work’s author asserted, is “a witness of the conscience, a physician of secret griefs, a moderator of prosperity, and a guide in adversity.”1 This definition would have had a familiar resonance for late eighteenth-century women on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as for their foremothers and their nineteenth-century descendants. Nearly a hundred years before the publication of Euphemia, the early English feminist Mary Astell compared the friendship styles of men and women and concluded that the latter manifested a special quality: As we [women] are less concern’d in the affairs of the World, so we have less temptation from Interest to be false to our Friends. Neither are we so likely to be false thro’ Fear; because our Sex are seldom engag’d in matters of any Danger. For these Reasons it is, our Sex are generally more hearty and sincere in the ordinary Friendships they make than Men, among whom they are usually clogg’d with so many Considerations of Interest, and Punctilio’s of Honour.2 Nineteenth-century author Dinah Mulock Craik may have had similar ideas in mind when she characterized friendship as “the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words.”3 As these comments suggest, antecedents of late twentieth-century images of the exceptionality of female friendship can be discerned in the 15 observations of women in the past who placed a high value on their relationships with one another. Despite cultural denigration of the links between women, strong, emotionally expressive female friendships have existed in various historical periods, in Western society and in other cultures as well. Although some women managed to build friendships with men in spite of the inherent complexity of cross-sex relationships of this sort, over the centuries many more relied on one another for affective support and sustenance, and often for more tangible assistance as well. Frequently they expressed their feelings about individual female friends and about the relationship generally in strongly emotional terms. A complete analysis of the origins of this pattern of interaction remains beyond the scope of the present discussion, but it is evident that women’s subordinate status and economic dependency, and their concomitant disempowerment, fostered the development of intense same-sex attachments and an emotional friendship style. And it is clear that devoted, mutually sustaining friendships provided crucial support for countless eighteenth- and nineteenth -century American women.4 The first English settlers in the New World brought with them a patriarchal ideology that assigned a subordinate place to women in society. The lives of colonial women centered on the household. They were excluded from positions of power and authority and were outnumbered by men in most of the colonies throughout the seventeenth century. With the exception of church membership, they had no formal affiliations outside the home. However, religious participation mitigated the effects of their subordinate status in important ways. It offered equal access to God, if not to power in the secular world, and thus it could provide comfort in the face of difficulties. Furthermore, it brought women together as peers who shared common spiritual beliefs, and those beliefs could serve as a foundation for the development of personal friendships. For example, within the egalitarian structure of the Quaker faith, circular letters linked female members of different meetings. While other denominations did not allow women to exercise the sort of autonomy permitted by the Society of Friends, church attendance itself offered a respite from domestic life, along with a regular opportunity for social interaction with female acquaintances. Although little evidence exists to document seventeenthcentury female friendship experiences, early colonial women, like their English counterparts, probably turned to one another for support as they coped with the exigencies of daily existence and the rituals of life and death. 16 “The Sister of My Heart” [184.72.135.210] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 21:23 GMT) Religious affiliation continued to play a major role in women’s lives and to promote their interaction with each other in the eighteenth century . In some congregations, female members comprised the majority. The religious revival of the 1740s, known as the Great Awakening, expanded women’s religious involvement and eventually provided them with some access to public influence, as...