Surpassing The Love Of Men: Romantic Friendship And Love Between Women From The Renaissance To The Present

Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love Between Women from the Renaissance to the Present

Amazon.com ReviewFirst published in 1981, this feminist classic began modestly as an academic essay on Emily Dickinson's love poems and letters to her future sister-in-law, Sue Gilbert. In her original introduction, Faderman recalled her surprise at finding these records of an erotic attachment between women that showed no evidence of guilt, anxiety, or the need for secrecy. Yet 60 or 70 years after they were written, the original letters had been bowdlerized by a niece of Dickinson's, who clearly found them too shocking for publication. Why, Faderman wondered, was passionate love between women, once almost universally applauded in the Western world, now almost universally condemned? She learned that the love between Dickinson and Gilbert had many precedents, and that it was only in the late 19th century that medical literature and antifeminism combined to rank women who loved women "somewhere," as she puts it bluntly, "between necrophiliacs and those who had sex with chickens." For this new edition, Faderman explains that she has resisted the urge to update her text, hoping that her exploration of romantic friendship, from French libertine literature through the dawn of feminism through the lesbian panic of the 1920s will still serve as "solace and ammunition" for those hoping to find "a usable past." --Regina MarlerDraws a variety of sources from the writings of Henry James to the Ladies Home Journal to explore 500 years of friendship and love between women and to cast light on shifting female sexuality theories. Winner of the Lambda Literary Award. Reissue.Review"Well-documented, fascinating, and controversial.""One of the most significant contributions yet made to feminist literature.""Reverberates with the powerful voices of people speaking for themselves...a moving narrative.""Compelling.... Poignant and moving, full of facts and wonderful details that readersmay not have encountered, things that are a pleasure to learn and seemimportant to know." -- Francine Prose"A remarkable social history." -- Susan Brownmiller"Instructive and humane...a powerful summons to conscience." -- Carolyn Heilbrun"Remarkable for its rediscovering of text and also for its study of feelings thatwe no longer find in our societies." -- Michel FoucaultAbout the AuthorLillian Faderman is a professor of English at California State University, Fresno, author of several books, and the winner of the 1992 Lambda Literary Editor's Choice Award and the Lambda Literary Award for Best Lesbian/Gay Anthology. She lives in Fresno, California.