Love between women could take on a new shape in the late nineteenth century because the feminist movement succeeded both in opening new jobs for women, which would allow them independence, and in creating a support group so that they would not feel isolated and outcast when they claimed their independence. … The wistful desire of Clarissa Harlowe’s friend, Miss Howe, “How charmingly might you and I live together,” in the eighteenth century could be realised in the last decades of the nineteenth century. If Clarissa Harlowe had lived about a hundred and fifty years later, she could have gotten a job that would have been appropriate for a woman of her class. With the power given to her by independence and the consciousness of a support group, Clarissa as a New Woman might have turned her back on both her family and Lovelace, and gone to live “charmingly” with Miss Howe. Many women did.
Lillian Faderman, Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love Between Women from the Renaissance to the Present
feminism, women