Women Loving Women in Paris

How were non-normative female intimacies lived, performed, and experienced in the past? Drawing on previously unexplored archival sources, Cynthia Sadler uncovers the lives of women in Paris who challenged the binary and heteronormative orders of their time. Moving between aristocratic milieus and the socially diverse world of the performing arts, she demonstrates that non-normative female intimacies were not the preserve of a libertine elite but formed an integral part of urban Parisian society. Female same-sex intimacies appeared in different figurations, both as alterity and as historical identity. Through the innovative concept of historical identity, this book offers a nuanced framework for understanding intimate lives beyond anachronistic and rigid categories.