ABSTRACT
Despite the risks of stigmatization, societal disapproval, discrimination, censorship, and obstruction of career advancement, which were real risks for women writers, who already had to defend their position in the literary market, sexuality, its manifestations, expressions of women’s passion, ideas concerning sexualized identity, suggestions for challenging heteronormativity, and proposals of subtle models of same-gender desire appear as topics in women’s fiction. Often, however, they require an intense process of decoding as such transgression of propriety hardly ever was rendered explicit in nineteenth-century women’s writings. In her reading of Madeline Yale Wynne’s short story “The Little Room” H.J.E. Champion demonstrates one such intense process of decoding the signs that tell a story of lesbian love in the nineteenth century.
