... having been breathed out

Perhaps the history of the errors of mankind, all things considered, is more valuable and interesting than that of their discoveries. Truth is uniform and narrow; it constantly exists, and does not seem to require so much an active energy, as a passive aptitude of soul in order to encounter it. But error is endlessly diversified; it has no reality, but is the pure and simple creation of the mind that invents it. In this field the soul has room enough to expand herself, to display all her boundless faculties, and all her beautiful and interesting extravagancies and absurdities.

Although social sanction [around romantic friendships between unmarried women] made it easy for her to enter into intense friendships with the women she met while teaching, something about Charity troubled onlookers as those intimacies developed. Within months of her arrival in each town where she taught, Charity became the subject of vicious gossip.

The rumors about Charity likely concerned her sexual propriety. [… They] appear to have been tied to Charity’s masculine demeanor and her relationships with other women Far from a coquette, Charity dressed with a notable lack of adornment and avoided superficial chatter. Her appearance struck some who knew her as mannish. She did not wear her hair short or have her garments tailored like a man’s, as the independently wealthy Anne Lister did. Charity strove to preserve the feminine respectability that secured her teaching positions, but she still managed to convey a certain masculinity. [Her friend] Lydia commented more than once on Charity’s resemblance to her brother Peter both in “countenance” and “motions.”

Eighteenth-century culture regarded masculine women with deep suspicion. Social critics often attacked outspoken women as mannish in order to silence them. English satirists depicted American “daughters of liberty” during the Revolutionary era as mannish-looking. […] Underlying this hostility was the strong association between female masculinity and lesbianism, although eighteenth-century writers would not have used this term. Instead they might refer to sex between women as “tribadism,” another classically derived term, directed against mannish women, who supposedly used their oversized clitorises to rub against, or even penetrate other women. A woman who cultivated her masculine charms could be seen as hoping to attract a female lover. […]

Charity’s emerging identity as a single woman tipped the scales against her. Like mannish women, spinsters were objects of derision in eighteenth-century America, especially in family-oriented New England. As Charity advanced through her early twenties without entering into courtships with men, her single status became more notable. Again, she stood at the vanguard of a tremendous shift in American culture. During the colonial period, no more than 2 or 3 percent of women remained unmarried for life, but after the Revolution an increasing number of women, like Charity, began to choose singlehood in order to preserve their autonomy. As rates of female singlehood surpassed 10 percent in the antebellum era, new suspicions about spinsters emerged, including a recognition of their affinity to lesbians.

• Lady/lady romantic love and “carnal encounters” were, contrary to a lot of received modern notions, an acknowledged possibility at this time—one which ministers and other authority figures warned against, and which became a source of anxiety and vicious gossip when it was suspected (and which was also used as a weapon against non-conforming women of all descriptions).



• While the obsession with romantic friendships within the culture of sensibility did provide a context for the expression of same-sex attraction, romantic friendships were only viewed as socially acceptable as long as they were seen as instrumental to, rather than interfering with, marriage prospects (see the increasing suspicion directed at Charity the older she got while remaining unmarried and unreceptive to courting).



• Perceived “mannishness,” even in the absence of obvious outward signifiers, could cast a suspicious light on behavior that might, on its own, be viewed as socially acceptable.



• Those statistics on the shift in numbers of women choosing to remain unmarried after the American Revolution are fascinating!

Although women’s sexual behavior was carefully scrutinized in the honor culture [of late 18th- and early 19th-century New England], being the subject of sexual gossip did not necessarily leave a permanent disability. Women could regain their social standing with proper application. The records of the church Charity [Bryant] attended as a young woman are filled with evidence of premarital pregnancies. When parents who had conceived a child before marriage wanted their child to be baptized they first had to make a formal apology for fornication. This might appear to be evidence of a harsh social stigma, but it is really the opposite. The pattern of confession-baptism was so routine the the church records used the same stylized language to record the process each time. It is just what people did. They courted, had sex, got pregnant, got married, had children, confessed, and had their children baptized, in that order. […]

There was more trouble when girl became pregnant and the father did not marry her. But, again, there were routines for dealing with this common situation. The county courts routinely handled ‘prosecutions’ for fornication that were really glorified legal proceedings to secure child support. An unmarried mother would appear before the court, confess herself guilty of fornication, name the father, and the court would assign financial obligations to him. Sometimes the mothers were fined small amounts, but the proceedings were less about punishment than arranging matters to prevent an infant from becoming financially dependent on the town.