Customer Reviews

Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England

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Sharon Marcus's "Between Women" is that rare academic book - utterly readable and absorbing and juicy. It not only re-casts Victorian literature in a new light, by examining the roles that women characters have in securing the marriage plot, but ushers the reader into a new way of understanding women's surprising power in Victorian society. The book argues that women and female friendship wielded considerable influence in Victorain society- in novel plots and in the work of marriage reform thinkers and leaders. Her work on "the plot of female amity" has been called ground-breaking and I can see why. Sharon Marcus's pages on "Great Expectations," for example, are just amazing, bringing the reader along, at every step, as this brilliant, clear mind details the charged interactions of Miss Havisham, Estella, and Pip. "Between Women" uses a fascinating array of source materials - not just novels, but pornographic magazines, fashion magazines, and treatises of social reform movements. She points out that sometimes female friendship meant friendship and sometimes it meant lesbian relationships. John Stuart Mill, for example, modeled his marriage reform ideas on the equitable dynamics at play in contemporary lesbian couples. The book's exploration of how mothers and daughters, and daughters with their dolls, were depicted in illustrations, often with sado-masochistic overtones, is pretty unforgettable and quite persuasive. It was fascinating to read how the language of fashion magazines and the language of pornographic journals were often the same. The writing in "Between Women" is wonderful and the research well-organized, diverse, and accessible. It is true that Sharon is a great friend of mine, but please know that it is also true that I would not write these sentences if I did not believe them. I read and adored this book and I hugely recommend it, to academics and non-academics (which I am), alike.

I read this with my teen daughter who wanted to learn more about Victorian England.

We both found the book absolutely mind-blowing. That women married in Victorian England, and it was accepted and even lauded gave us both a new perspective on current gay marriage debates. And the details of Victorian women's 'discipline' for their sons was also incredibly thought provoking.

I recommend this for moms and daughters interested in discussing sexuality and marriage, relationships and values. Learning how incredibly differently Victorians viewed sexuality opens a window into the variable ways societies construct human relationships. A fabulous read.

For me, the most surprising thing about this book is how easy it is to read. Despite the fact that it is making important and challenging theoretical and historical arguments, it is nonetheless so well written that the arguments are easy to follow. Unlike so many serious books, I found this book a pleasure to read.

This book is important in that it challenges both common and scholarly conceptions of the Victorian era in ways which open some possibilities for rethinking our conceptions not only of that time, but of our own selves, and of the time in which we live.

Anybody who is interested in current debates over gay marriage, what it means to be a woman (or a man), or identity politics in general will likely find this book both interesting and valuable.

Anybody who is a fan of Victorian novels will likely find this book fascinating.

Anybody who is immersed in contemporary Continental philosophy will find this book powerful. However, I am confident that you will find this book to be clear and easy to read even if you have never read any Continental philosophy (or don't even know what that term means).

Finally, please see the other reviews for more details about the arguments of this book.

This book is an absolutely brilliant, lucid, beautifully written, engrossing exploration of the relationships between women in Victorian England. Marcus' arguments are fresh and deeply surprising -- revolutionary, really -- yet somehow manage to feel utterly inevitable after the fact. I love the breadth of sources -- novels, diaries, fashion magazines, pedagogical manuals, pornography -- Marcus draws upon, and the stunningly diverse modes of relatedness she portrays as available to Victorian women. I rarely find myself reading academic books, yet for me "Between Women" was a real page turner. I recommend it very highly.

The Victorians were never the prudes our English teachers made them out to be. I will never look at an 1800s fashion plate the same way again.

--according to the London Review of Books, the London Times, the BBC, and me! Marcus is smart, engaging, thorough-- and makes dazzling use of a vast array of primary sources. She asks (basically), "What if we re-read the Victorians as if women's relationships were important to one another?" Looking through this lens at diaries, letters, conduct manuals, law cases, anthropological writings, fashion plates, doll stories, and pornograpy, Marcus reveals a world that leaps off the page with life and immediacy. Go read it.

Excellent service, as usual. I am thrilled with the service provided by Amazon and it's vendors and will buy books only from these sources.