Maria Edgeworth’s Angelina, or L’amie Inconnue: Queer Materiality and The Woman Writer’s Grotesque Body

Abstract

Despite its many similarities to her better-known novel Belinda, Maria Edgeworth's Angelina is not usually read as a work about lesbianism—even though it begins with the heroine eloping to live with another woman. This article explores same-sex relationships in Angelina and suggests reasons for the work's comparative neglect by lesbian criticism. It examines the process by which the heroine's “unknown friend,” the novelist Araminta, moves from being “nobody,” a textual construct, to a woman all too thoroughly and grotesquely embodied; and it discusses the role of queer objects, including literary texts, in that process of embodiment.

KEYWORDS:

• romantic friendship
• lesbian narrative
• queer allusion
• embodiment
• grotesque bodies
• juvenile fiction
• epistolary relationship
• lesbian panic
• Maria Edgeworth
• Ladies of Llangollen