SOURCE: "The Unaccountable Wife and Other Tales of Female Desire in Jane Barker's A Patch-Work Screen for the Ladies" in The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, Vol. 35, No. 2, Summer, 1994, pp. 155–72.

In the following essay, King discusses female-female relationships depicted in A Patch-Work Screen for the Ladies. She notes that what may have been intended by Barker as a warning to women who experience same-sex desires can instead be interpreted as criticism of a patriarchal society.

—and she said, We all join'd with her Husband to make her miserable, by removing from her, the only Friend she had in the World; and passionately swore by Him that made her, that if we combin'd to send the Woman away, she would go with her.

A Patch-work Screen for the Ladies, 101

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The episode of female homoerotic desire which is the subject of this essay is a valuable text for study of...