Major Problems in… Chapters 6-9
“Women, who had little status or power in the larger world of male concerns, possessed status and power in the lives and worlds of other women.”
– Carroll Smith-Rosenberg
It—“it” being the festering of a homosexual nomenclature—began during the late 19th century. The institution of science—psychology, to be precise—became the authority of all things sexual; however, religious influence was residual and still had some say in sexual affairs. Before the 19th century, homosexuality meant, to the laity, that the offender had denounced the Lord; beyond the 19th century, it meant that the offender had denounced the Lord and that he/ she were also crazy—“The relation of insanity to perverted sexuality is one of the most delicate matters that the physician has to treat… (Alice Mitchell as a “Case of Sexual Perversion ).” In the same article, the writer suggests that homosexuality is a product of one’s biological construction–“All this came from an abnormal neuro-psychical development… The insanity of the mother was undoubtedly its prime cause… It was then indeed a case of sexual perversion from hereditary taint…” It seems, on the contrary, that it was obsession, rather than insanity, that drove Mitchell to murder her “best friend.” Julia Deane Freeman mentions the passion of two female lovers in the following lines by Shakespeare: “Pronounce that sentence then on me, my liege, I cannot live out of her company.” In Whitman’s, Walt Whitman’s Poetic Embrace of Comrades and Lovers, 1860, he writes of his admiration for his fellow comrades—for example, “And his arm lay lightly around my breast—And that night I was happy.” Whitman doesn’t sound insane to the modern ear, but may have roused some skepticism on the diligent notepads of psychoanalysts during his life. His use of language sounds completely rational and even justified to some degree.
The above quote introduces the idea that there is a separate sphere—one that is independent of sexual conventions vis-à-vis heterosexuality—that was conceived as a result of neglect and an inequality between the sexes. Rosenberg writes about the union between the oppressed—“…while the biological realities of frequent pregnancies, childbirth, nursing, and menopause, bound women together in physical and emotional intimacy.” Through this union, strong emotional ties were fabricated. This world, separate from “the larger world of male concerns,” was a plateau for emotional connections. According to the essay, it was a world where a woman was most comfortable—“This was, as well, a world in which hostility and criticism of other women were discouraged, and thus a milieu in which women could develop a sense of inner security and self-esteem.” It was almost, I daresay, utopian.
