Free 800 Years of Women's Letters by Olga Kenyon

women’s groups.
    What I really want to write about is seeing Jane. You know I was going to pop in for a chat after leaving you. Well, I did. And ended up staying the night. Have just rushed back down the motorway, collected Simon, paid some bills and sat down here, before even sorting out the washing. I’m behaving like some giddy young girl who is nothing but a web of impulse and irresponsibility. I’m supposed to be a sober mother and reliable friend, sorting out details about the house and Jan and Simon, but what’s really happening is a set of fantasies about joining Jane’s household! There – I’ve said it.
    It is all mostly just fantasy, and due in part to my lapping up the human company after feeling so alone since Jan left, rattling round in this house. There’s Simon, of course, but it’s not the same as having adult company to share things with. Jane’s household positively hums by comparison – they’re all so busy getting a protest organized about the lack of proper sex education in schools. As well as all that, there’s the normal money-earning and housework, but it seems so much easier when there are more to share it. I began to think we should all be living like they do – if women really are to become liberated from the full-time work of caring for house and children (usually in that order), the only way to do it seems to be to share it out. Anyway, I know I can’t be serious about it because they would never agree to having Simon, and I don’t want to give him up, even though I know Jan would take him like a shot. We discussed it, but both felt he should stay with me – at least for the moment.
    Jane is such a strange mixture – a creature of moods and impulses on the one hand, and a determined hard-liner on the other. I told her that her indulgence in extreme mood changes was exactly the kind of characteristic people describe as ‘feminine’. Doctors and the so-called helping professions are always describing women as hysterical and neurotic, and I told Jane (though she didn’t want to hear it) that carrying on as she does simply adds fuel to the prejudice. She was pretty quiet for a while after that conversation and I think some of it may have sunk in.
    Nevertheless, I find her so attractive and even think I may be half in love with her. It’s fairly obvious that something similar has happened to her, though how she would describe it I can’t imagine, since she vehemently denies that there is any such thing as ‘falling in love’ – says it’s a load of bourgeois crap and invented by the patriarchy to keep women enslaved to ideals and dreams instead of encouraging them to live more actively. I suppose it’s some variation on the Marxist argument about religion, and she may be right.
    But I think no one can totally escape the process of cultural conditioning, so whether being in love is mere conditioning or whether it is some truthful human experience is a merely academic question, since there is no one enough outside the culture to answer it. What I think privately is that she may never have been in love at all, not seriously – and if that is the case, I feel sorry for her, because it will hit her hard.
    I’m just speculating about all this. What is not speculation is the degree to which she fascinates me. I suppose you won’t approve, but I can’t help it. It’s such an age since I felt passionate about Jan that I’m ready – I must be – for that sort of experience to happen again.
    It was super to see you and chat. Look after yourself and don’t work too hard. Whether you have six hours’ sleep or eight is not likely to change anything.
    Love,
    Meg
    GILLIAN HANSCOMBE, BETWEEN FRIENDS (1983)

Two
Friendship
    The importance of friendship in women’s lives, and their ability to sustain lifelong relationships has only recently been recognized. There is