title: Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England
author:  Sharon Marcus 
description: <b>"Winner of the 2008 Barbara Perkins and George Perkins Prize"</b><br /><br /><b>"Winner of the 2008 Alan Bray Memorial Award"</b><br /><br /><b>"Winner of the 2008 Albion Book Prize"</b><br /><br /><b>"Winner of the 2007 Lambda Literary Award for best book in LGBT Studies"</b><br /><br /><b>"Finalist for the Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction, Publishing Triangle"</b><br /><br />"Sharon Marcus adduces a variety of evidence to make a compelling case that such relationships were omnipresent and, far from being framed in terms of envy and rivalry between women, or as dangerously and transgressively competing with women's relationships with men, they were conceived of as benign and desirable and contributing helpfully to the network of connections supporting heterosexual unions. . . . [T]his is an outstanding study of a neglected phenomenon."<b>---Lesley Hall, <i>Times Higher Education Supplement</i></b><br /><br />"The study's packed scholarly discourse will doubtless create new dialogue about these gender descriptions and their implications for the modern day. Abundant chapter notes and primary and secondary bibliographic entries make this a good research source."<b>---S.A. Parker, <i>Choice</i></b><br /><br />"<i>Between Women</i> is one of those books that instantly, radically, and convincingly alters your understanding of terrain you thought you couldn't know any better...Marcus powerfully revises more than a century's worth of theory, arguing persuasively that women are capable of objectifying women, that women possess the gaze, as well as the capacity for domination, and that women's homoerotic desire was fully compatible with heterosexuality and femininity.... <i>Between Women</i> has important things to say, not just to Victorianists, literary critics, feminists, and queer theorists, but to all of us."<b>---Rebecca Steinitz, <i>Women's Review of Books</i></b><br /><br />"Every once in a while a book comes along that, in offering readers an in-depth and provocative assessment of an archive, promises to change--irreversibly--a field or two. <i>Between Women</i> is such a study."<b>---Carla Freccero, <i>Gay and Lesbian Quarterly</i></b><br /><br />"This is a provocative exploration of the relationships between Victorian women, which should make historians rethink the paradigms within which they address both female friendship and gender and sexuality. . . . In displacing the 'lesbian' from its field of view, this book is a powerful shining example of what 'becomes thinkable' if contemporary identity categories--even identity itself--are set aside. In effect, Marcus kicks out the conceptual foundations on which 'lesbian and gay studies' rests."<b>---Matt Houlbrook, <i>American Historical Review</i></b>
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  > CAN THEY BE “JUST FRIENDS”?
  
  
   Firmly Upon the Shelf
  
  
  
   Miss Olivia Redfield labors under no misapprehension that anything other than
  spinsterhood lies in her future. Not for lack of dowry, or breeding, or
  education, but because of one tiny flaw.... one might even call it... a curse.
  
  
  
   Too Much Time on his Hands
  
  
  
   Gabriel Fellowes, Earl of Kingsley is doing a favor for a friend by
  overseeing the dangerous–– but promising––mine on the border of Viscount
  Hallowell’s property. With time to spare, he finds himself irresistibly
  intrigued by the viscount’s daughter, Miss Olivia Redfield. In no position to
  promise more than a dalliance, but unable to stay away, Gabriel takes the
  unprecedented step of befriending a woman.
  
  
  
   Is Friendship Even possible?
  
  
  
   Their flirtatious attachment threatens to erupt in passion, but duty and
  honor forbid anything more. Will love be defeated when tragedy strikes, or can
  Olivia and Gabriel overcome Society’s dictates and put the