The love that dares to speak its name: queer language and female homoeroticism in Oroonoko, Jane Eyre, and Aurora Leigh

While most scholarship acknowledges the homoeroticism between female characters in Oroonoko, Jane Eyre, and Aurora Leigh, this thesis will provide a semantic study of the queer language used to construct and sustain these erotic relationships while illuminating the nonphysical eroticism drawing the heroines of these works together. By exploring each work as a marker on a continuum, this project demonstrates the ways in which each works respective author moves from exploring the dangerous consequences of homosexual panic to searching for a sustainable environment for female homoerotic relationships. Ultimately, this thesis concludes that queer language becomes the medium by which women writers circumvent heteronormative expectations for female heroines.