To drive home her thesis, Vanita focuses on two paradigms of human relationships which she terms “Marian” and “Sapphic”. The former concerns itself with mother-daughter relationship that is the cause of creative energy and the latter, a more generalised form of close relationship among women that leads to intensity in poetic creation. She indulges in a close examination of Romantic, Aesthetic and Bloomsbury artists to drive home her point of view. In the process, she contests the view that the desire of women for women, in particular, and, homoerotic experience in general, had been suppressed in western cultures. Intellectual, emotional and spiritual fulfilments are quite possible in the bonding of women with women. In such cases, immortality is sought after not through children and grandchildren but through artistic expression or outburst. As against the Bloomian anxiety of influence, women writers think in terms of reclaiming the past. It is only after the Renaissance and the Reformation that western society developed and valorised the “heterosexual marriage-centred” worldview.

Protestantism in England barred (even banned) the feminine from ideas concerning divinity. Vanita argues that, strangely enough, Mary and Mariology form a site of signification in most of the writings in England. Using Mary as a dominant, imitable role model, she explains Mariology in Christian theological terms such as “annunciation”, “immaculate conception” in the context of inspired creation and divine energy rather than material reproduction. She rereads English literary history to illustrate how Sappho, the 7th century B.C. Greek lesbian poet whom Plato called the 10th muse was a predominant influence on the Romantics. The ancestry of the romantic lyric that conveys intense passion and unrequited love could be traced to the Sapphic ode. Which is why the young Romantic poets are still admired by women readers! Vanita interprets “Kubla Khan” as Coleridge’s “wish for a lesbian utopia. It (the poem) envisions a female erotic power.” Hedonist philosophers like Walter Pater advanced the theory of aestheticism which relies on the belief “Art for art’s sake.” She proves that Pater and his followers, notable of whom was Oscar Wilde, felt that love between women was the right model for love in general, since it is not based on biological ties.

Examining some 19th century women writers, Vanita maintains, “They offered images of same-sex love as a space of resistance to marriage and parenthood and for experimentation, education and self-realization.” Discussing Meredith and Forster as specimens of late Victorian and early 20th century writers, she shows how the world can be sustained by such loving relationships as among the powerless beings such as women, children and nonhuman beings, birds and animals and plants. “All love relationships should evolve beyond seeking sex for its own sake.” Humanity should evolve towards such loving relationship that can exist between women, for its own sake, not with any axe to grind.

The last chapter takes into account the portrayal of nonhuman creatures in homoerotic texts where respect for nonhuman life is integrated with respect for human life. Vanita examines how animal tropes operate in Vikram Seth’s collection of narrative poems, Beastly Tales from Here and There. The Ancient Mariner’s conviction “He prayeth well, who loveth well/Both man and bird and beast,” and Lawrence’s moral piety “And I have something to expiate; /A pettiness” stand as eternal reminders of deference for those poor and lowly creatures.

This is a trend-setting book in many ways. It makes a revisionary rereading of English fiction and poetry of 300 years. There is a brilliant fusion of an extraordinary range of ideas and facts quoted in defence of the thesis that love between women has been the major source of lasting inspiration in literary works. This is in clear contrast to the controlling imperialist phallocentric thought that man is woman’s best companion.

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