"Female Friendships"
To Craik, friendship is, “A bond, not of nature but of choice, it should exist and be maintained calm, free, and clear, having neither rights nor jealousies; at once the firmest and most independent of all human ties” (Craik 132).
Craik’s version of female community explores the ways in which shared work and shared faith is useful to cultivate support and self-dependence, not only for individual single women but for the collective community of women, including the reader. Craik develops a narrative voice that encourages immediate personal self-development among women but also embraces the communitarian dimension of female Protestant sisterhood. Her paradox between the individualistic and communitarian dimensions rests on to middle-class Protestant beliefs about the saving power of work. As Sally Mitchell writes, Craik “promotes sisterhood through empathy” (Anna Stensen Newnum 313).
Craik compares women’s friendships to love; both nurture unity with another person. However, only friendship fosters a sense of self-identity independent from the other person. Similar to one’s first love, first friendships are “one of the purest, most self-forgetful and self- denying attachments that the human heart can experience” (Craik 130). Both are “sweet” whether “given or returned,” should “last forever,” and value the “sanctity of silence” (Craik 133, 142, 144).
The distinction between them lies in the way friendships encourage liberation. Indeed, according to Craik, they “must have an independent self-existence, capable of gradations and varieties” (Craik 139). Craik depicted the inticate emotional experiences of single women in the mid-nineteenth century in attempt to normalize and support their estranged position in society. Craik's paradoxical vision -- both individualist and communitarian -- embraced both young single women and the female community as a whole.
In Victorian England, single (especially middle class) women were alienated by the upper class. As a fellow single, Anglican, financially independent woman, Craik offers a solution the female struggle by relating to it, and acknowledging, as Elaine Showalter writes, “while women could not depend on men to give them homes to support them, they could rely on each other” (Showalter 14). Newnum describes Craik’s intentions for writing about sisterhoods as providing “single women with opportunities for work and an outlet for their affections, which for her are the most important merits of any female community” (Newnum 309). By inserting herself into the conversation and in relation to the reader, she balances the specific individual dimension with her call for a collective transformation in women’s empowerment.
How does Craik’s upbringing and religious identity influence her writing and reception?
While her father served as preacher in a small nonconformist Primitive Methodist congregation, Craik identified herself as Anglican and highlighted the need for inclusivity within the Church. Stenson describes her attempt to create a “version of female community that would be acceptable outside of High Church circles by appealing to the middle-class, Protestant belief in the saving power of work” (Craik 309).
Although Craik pioneers this "feminist" approach that asks women to empower other women, Craik upholds many patriarchal and heteronormative conceptions in the text regarding love and male friendships. In fact, throughout her life, she defended the essential differences between men and women. In the chapter, she reveals her own misogynistic undertones by admitting men are better at keeping secrets and forming stronger bonds.
Ultimately, Craik's version of the female community delicately balances between an individualistic call for self-improvement and an urgent affirmation of Protestant sisterhood.