ABSTRACT
The women of this era's literature have a more vexed relationship to principles and practices of accounting, as they are, for the most part, prevented from fully entering the new economy that facilitates the material rise of merchants, tradesmen, investors, and entrepreneurs. This chapter explores that it is precisely via sapphic relations that writers can elaborate upon fantasies of personal pleasure and economic gain between women in literature. It concerns could it be that same-sex desire between women in this era is most readily articulated through a refiguring of class-boundaries that propels desire including erotic desire along new trajectories of social aspiration. Donoghue reverses the homosocial triangle that persists between two men and the woman they love and/or vie for, suggesting that in Defoe's configuration, two women sexually enjoy a shared male partner, which in turn enables an illicit sexual desire between the women.
