SOURCE: "Kindred Spirits," in Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love Between Women from the Renaissance to the Present, William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1981, pp. 157-77.

Faderman's Surpassing the Love of Men constituted a landmark in the progress of feminist and lesbian studies on its publication in 1981. The book's scope ranges from the sixteenth century to the present, examining the nature and images of both sexual and platonic female relationships. The chapter on the nineteenth century, excerpted below, puts forth Faderman's argument that the "romantic friendships" of the era were an integral part of mainstream culture. Such attachments were in fact valorized as a testament to feminine virtue, since popular belief saw women as passionless or asexual.

Throughout much of the nineteenth century, women moved still farther from men as both continued to develop their own even more distinct sets of values. Men tried to claim...