ABSTRACT
This chapter explains that theorists of lesbianism in particular have made clear that the matter of sexual sequence, the chronological relation constructed between modes of sexuality and the ideological implications of that construction is never a simple one. Judith Butler's work on Imitation and Gender Insubordination' engages the question of precedence, deconstructing the notion of heterosexuality as an origin from which homosexuality derives. The chapter explains the conceptual centrality of female-female intimacy to a normative construct of heterosexuality in these narratives of reformed coquettes. It extends Susan Lanser's insight that the emphasis on choice in eighteenth-century discourses that urge women to marry points to the increasing legibility of sexual alternatives to heteroconjugality. The chapter considers two novels that feature plots that turn on coquettish heroines' same-gender affiliations, novels that present marriage as one choice among an array of possibilities that centrally include intimacies with other women.
