I suppose Fingersmith has a happy ending, but by god it takes them a journey to get there! Given the, uh, I don't want to spoil people so I'll just say the switch midway through involving characters getting taken places they don't want to be, I'm hard pressed to consider it a cheerful book. I love it, but not for happy-place reasons.
I've been wondering about this 'dangerous time' issue myself re. the 1930s era series The House of Eliot and figured that I had to envision a scenario for women to get a pass on conformity - independent wealth, not marriageable, dead husband, political/charity activism etc. I wonder if the trouble with Austen femslash fic may be less that there weren't unmarried women who could have been cohabiting during that era but that she's writing upper class romances where the goal is to pair off her characters. Of course it has yet to be seen if I can, in practice, write this kind of story...
In terms of examples, would The Secret Diaries of Miss Ann Lister be relevant? I also read a great short novel about a lesbian women's domestic education teacher in the Victorian period who had a happy ending with a student, but the name currently escapes me.
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I've been wondering about this 'dangerous time' issue myself re. the 1930s era series The House of Eliot and figured that I had to envision a scenario for women to get a pass on conformity - independent wealth, not marriageable, dead husband, political/charity activism etc. I wonder if the trouble with Austen femslash fic may be less that there weren't unmarried women who could have been cohabiting during that era but that she's writing upper class romances where the goal is to pair off her characters. Of course it has yet to be seen if I can, in practice, write this kind of story...
In terms of examples, would The Secret Diaries of Miss Ann Lister be relevant? I also read a great short novel about a lesbian women's domestic education teacher in the Victorian period who had a happy ending with a student, but the name currently escapes me.