Female Friendship

The essays in this volume explore female emotional and social relationships in literary, cinematographic, and artistic contexts. These intimate unions offer a reflection on different historical and cultural milieus as well as the universal human need for friendship.

This volume focuses on the literary and artistic exploration of female friendship in various geographical contexts, spanning the centuries from the medieval period until the present. The essays address the intense female bonding in world literature as a universal human need for intimacy, sense of belonging, and purpose. The main focus is on the reevaluation of friendships between women, which have been traditionally less epitomized than those between men. The authors of this volume demonstrate how the emotional unions of women offer compelling insights to various historical and contemporary societies, helping us understand gender relations, traditions, family life, and community values.

Chapter 1: “Apt for Friendship”: the Epistolary Friendships of Mary Ward

Alexandra Verini

Chapter 2: Politics and Pain of Women’s Cross-Racial Friendships

Ivy Schweitzer

Chapter 3: Fyrir innan stokk: Friendship, Kinship, and Gendered Space in Medieval Iceland

Natalie M. Van Deusen

Chapter 4: “Chloe likes Olivia”: Virginia Woolf’s ‘Discourse on Method’

Michael Eskin

Chapter 5: Subversive Seeing and Sisterhood in Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)

Kathleen J. Waites

Chapter 6: Female Relationships in a Traditional Society: Mujeres de sol, mujeres de oro by Natalia Toledo Paz

Ida Day

Chapter 7: In the Shadows of a World Famous Twentieth Century Relationship: The 2020 Resurrection of Simone de Beauvoir’s Foundational Female Friendship

Araceli Hernández-Laroche

Chapter 8: “Perfect Little Ladies”: Female Friendship and New Womanhood in Rochester, New York, 1893-1914

Anya Jabour

Chapter 9: Protofeminist Friendship in Margherita Sarrocchi's Scanderbeide

Adriana Guarro Romero

Chapter 10: Female Friendship in the Medieval English Romance Ywain and Gawain

Joanne Findon

Chapter 11: Dime con quién andas: The Female Social Networks of Postwar Europe in Julia Navarro’s Dime quién soy

Melissa Garr

Chapter 12: A Little Trail through the Silver Age of Russia: Polyxena Solovyova and Natalia Manaseina

Victor Fet

Chapter 13: Echoes of Larger Life: Exploring Victoria Welby’s Correspondence, in particular with Mary Everest-Boole

Susan Petrilli