Another Self: Middle-Class American Women and Their Friends in the Twentieth Century

Chapter 2: “The Other’s Facsimile”: Young Women's Friendships 1900-1920

2 “The Other’s Facsimile” Young Women’s Friendships, 1900–1920 As Mary Pratt Sears celebrated her twentieth birthday on August 21, 1884, she reminisced poignantly about a close friend who had died several years earlier. “In forty minutes I shall really be twenty! It will be my fourth number that Fanny never had, but as I grow older, she seems to grow older too,” Mary wrote to her cousin. “I remember her writing to me on my fifteenth birthday about its being the first birthday we had ever had apart, and now there have been four. Do you suppose she has thought about it at all today?”1 These sentimental thoughts suggest that, like their predecessors, adolescents and women in early adulthood at the turn of the century continued to care deeply about their relationships with one another. Mary Pratt Sears, whose own health was delicate, also lost two other young contemporaries, and she remembered each as an important part of her life. She was not atypical in this respect. Although the United States experienced a range of social and cultural changes that affected women’s lives as modern America came of age in the late nineteenth century and the decades preceding 1920, young women’s friendships resembled the characteristic Victorian model. Occasional suggestions of a transition in the nature of friendship are discernible, but adolescents and college students continued to seek and prize close female friends. Moreover, the strong bonds of friendship formed in college remained important to young women and could ease their transition into adult life. 39 The persistence of female friendships characterized by intense affection (sometimes expressed physically), mutual support, and interdependence reflects the endurance of Victorian emotional culture, with its emphasis on love and self-disclosure. Victorian emotionology remained dominant in American society throughout the nineteenth century and in the early decades of the twentieth, although some discussions in the prescriptive literature hinted at changing views. The volume of advice literature devoted to emotional standards declined between 1900 and 1920, which may reflect the continuing relevance of mainstream Victorian views. However, the treatment of some specific emotions suggested revisionism and foreshadowed new themes that would reshape the dominant emotional culture after 1920.2 In the decades prior to the emergence of a new emotionology, popular periodicals addressed both the general topic of friendship and the specific subject of women’s relationships with one another from a variety of perspectives . This literature articulated a blend of traditional and more recent views. Some discussions clearly reflect earlier influences, such as the Western cultural emphasis on the value of friendship, the valorization of male friendship, and the contrasting nineteenth-century image of the unique character of female friendship. Other commentary suggests the impact of structural changes and the development of new attitudes about friendship in the context of early twentieth-century American society. Thus, even though Victorian emotionology remained dominant at the turn of the century and beyond, the ideology of friendship took on a slightly new tone. General discussions of the topic often defined friendship in male terms and incorporated a perception of its decreasing importance in American society. In this vein, one author lamented that “men have innumerable acquaintances , but few friends.” Another decried the death of the “art of friendship” and the rise of mediocre, utilitarian relationships: “We live, alas, in the suburbs of each other’s hearts.” Interestingly, this commentator noted that women as well as men have succumbed to “acquaintanceship as opposed to friendship.” Probably in response to perceptions of this sort, readers were reminded that new friendships could bring vitality, meaning, harmony, and joy to their lives, and they were urged to expand their circles of friends. One writer who mourned the decline of close friendships between men in modern society complained testily that women “have pushed themselves or been pushed into place as [men’s] companions.” In a review of recently published books on the topic, an40 “The Other’s Facsimile” other described friendship as “a necessity to normal souls” and asserted that no one can have too many friends. Although it was acknowledged that impulsive anger could damage or destroy a friendship, readers were assured that relationships can be rebuilt if participants recognize their value, and that friendship can survive absence and even death.3 Literature that centered specifically on women’s relationships often portrayed their capabilities and performance as friends in positive terms, reflecting earlier distinctively...