Literature
Further information: Lesbian literature

In addition to Sappho’s accomplishments,[note 11] literary historian Jeannette Howard Foster includes the Book of Ruth,[146] and ancient mythological tradition as examples of lesbianism in classical literature. Greek stories of the heavens often included a female figure whose virtue and virginity were unspoiled, who pursued more masculine interests, and who was followed by a dedicated group of maidens. Foster cites Camilla and Diana, Artemis and Callisto, and Iphis and Ianthe as examples of female mythological figures who showed remarkable devotion to each other, or defied gender expectations.[147] The Greeks are also given credit with spreading the story of a mythological race of women warriors named Amazons.

For ten centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire, lesbianism disappeared from literature.[148] Foster points to the particularly strict view that Eve—representative of all women—caused the downfall of mankind; original sin among women was a particular concern, especially because women were perceived as creating life.[149] During this time, women were largely illiterate and not encouraged to engage in intellectual pursuit, so men were responsible for shaping ideas about sexuality.[150] In 16th century French and English depictions of relationships between women (Lives of Gallant Ladies by Brantôme in 1665, John Cleland’s 1749 erotica Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, L’Espion Anglais by various authors in 1778), writers’ attitudes spanned from amused tolerance to arousal, whereupon a male character would participate to complete the act. Physical relationships between women were often encouraged; men felt no threat as they viewed sexual acts between women to be accepted when men were not available, and not comparable to fulfillment that could be achieved by sexual acts between men and women.[151] At worst, if a woman became enamored of another woman, she became a tragic figure. Physical and therefore emotional satisfaction was considered impossible without a natural phallus. Male intervention into relationships between women was necessary only when women acted as men and demanded the same social privileges.[152]
“In Bed” (1893) by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, a Parisian who employed the association between lesbianism and prostitution [153]

Lesbianism became almost exclusive to French literature in the 19th century, based on male fantasy and the desire to shock bourgeois moral values.[154] Honoré de Balzac, in The Girl with the Golden Eyes (1835), employed lesbianism in his story about three people living amongst the moral degeneration of Paris, and again in Cousin Bette and Séraphîta. His work influenced novelist Théophile Gautier’s Mademoiselle de Maupin, which provided the first description of a physical type that became associated with lesbians: tall, wide-shouldered, slim-hipped, and athletically inclined.[155] Charles Baudelaire repeatedly used lesbianism as a theme in his poems “Lesbos”, “Femmes damnées 1″ (”Damned Women”), and “Femmes damnées 2″.[156] Reflecting French society, as well as employing stock character associations, many of the lesbian characters in 19th century French literature were prostitutes or courtesans: personifications of vice who died early, violent deaths in moral endings.[153] Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s 1816 poem “Christabel” and the novella Carmilla (1872) by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu both present lesbianism associated with vampirism.[157] Portrayals of female homosexuality not only formed European consciousness about lesbianism, but Krafft-Ebbing cited the characters in Gustave Flaubert’s Salammbo (1862) and Ernest Feydeau’s Le Comte de Chalis (1867) as examples of lesbians because both novels feature female protagonists who do not adhere to social norms and express “contrary sexual feeling”, although neither participated in same-sex desire or sexual behavior.[158] Havelock Ellis used literary examples from Balzac and several French poets and writers to develop his framework to identify sexual inversion in women.[159]