The Fiction of Amatonormativity: Reactions to Queer Platonic Relationships in Eighteenth-Century Literature

Abstract

Eighteenth-century literature is rife with intense female friendships, relationships that often challenge or supplant heteronormative bonds in women’s lives. These connections can be productively identified as “queer platonic relationships” (QPRs) for the ways they resist heteropatriarchal norms. In this article, I trace the conflict between QPRs and amatonormativity—the social and political primacy of romantic relationships—across four texts from the period. These depictions constitute part of a rich, understudied archive for scholars of asexuality and aromanticism, allowing us to trace the ongoing social enforcement of amatonormative ideology and the evolving political stakes of QPRs as sites of feminist resistance to heteropatriarchy.