Female Friendship

Slav N. Gratchev is professor of Spanish at Marshall University.Ida Day is associate professor of Spanish at Marshall University.Larry Sheret is professor and librarian for scholarly communication & open educational resources at Marshall University.

After years of critical neglect, the topic of female friendship in art and life is finally receiving the attention it so richly deserves. Female Friendship is a welcome addition to the growing scholarly fascination with this subject. This collection offers a varied and fresh look at what has made women appreciate, need, and support each other over the centuries. Writing across genres and continents, the scholars included in the volume add their voices to the vital and ongoing conversation about not only the remarkable value of female alliances, but also the significant challenges and transformations they must withstand to survive.

• Chapter 1: “Apt for Friendship”: the Epistolary Friendships of Mary WardAlexandra Verini Chapter 2: Politics and Pain of Women’s Cross-Racial FriendshipsIvy SchweitzerChapter 3: Fyrir innan stokk: Friendship, Kinship, and Gendered Space in Medieval IcelandNatalie M. Van DeusenChapter 4: “Chloe likes Olivia”: Virginia Woolf’s ‘Discourse on Method’Michael Eskin Chapter 5: Subversive Seeing and Sisterhood in Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)Kathleen J. Waites Chapter 6: Female Relationships in a Traditional Society: Mujeres de sol, mujeres de oro by Natalia Toledo PazIda DayChapter 7: In the Shadows of a World Famous Twentieth Century Relationship: The 2020 Resurrection of Simone de Beauvoir’s Foundational Female FriendshipAraceli Hernández-Laroche Chapter 8: “Perfect Little Ladies”: Female Friendship and New Womanhood in Rochester, New York, 1893-1914Anya Jabour Chapter 9: Protofeminist Friendship in Margherita Sarrocchi's ScanderbeideAdriana Guarro Romero