Recently I fielded a question from one of my students and I thought the topic would make a good post here ( Yes, Virginia there is latent sexuality in Victorian Literature).

The question asked was "Why are the relationships between men and women and women with women described in so vastly a different light". Loaded question even when you are teaching adults as opposed to teens.

The easiest way to answer the question for my student was to show the differences between the emotional interaction as well as the physical interaction. Most often the writers are male, and what men observe and envy in a female to female relationship is the sensuality.

Women interact with one another with a sensuality that men seem to lack. Be it a gentle caress or the simple act of touching of hair. Women are in essence "sisters". No man knows what a woman feels and thinks when something happens to her, they can assume, or guess, but only another woman knows. There is a kinship that women share as the nurturers and the caregivers.

Because of that women are frequently demonstrative with affection and comforts that men seem to lack. Women frequently hold one another, touch one another, comfort one another, even if it is just for empathy and companionship. There is a gentleness between women that is frequently lacking in men, and because of that fact men find it fascinating. What women think nothing of day to day, men frequently fantasize about and exagerate in literature.

Likewise, men are raised to be competative, to be the alpha male. The most prime of the species is the one who gets the mates. Because they are raised that way in their interaction with one another, it is hard wired into their psyche and carried over into how they interact with women.

Men exude a raw sexuality that is made to attract a mate ad repell any interloper who may be a threat to their conquest. Ane women respond to this chest beating and bravado. The biggest and the best gets the females of choice.

Men are not raised to be nurturing and soft. They frequently scorn that as a woman's role and look for thatin a woman. Their job is to provide and protect. The sexuality between a man and a woman is at times rough and primal, therefore more exciting and once again another conquest.

But just as the sensuality between women is greatly exagerated in literature so frequently is the sexuality between men and women. Both are looked at from a different perspective, but both are equally embraced by all.