Who were the two Anglo-Irish women who at the end of the 18th century,somewhat shocked the world by their unusual style of living together somewhere in Wales, and whose type of "near-marriage" is sometimes described with a reference to a town in Massachusetts?

ozfei

Lady Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby. Also known as the Ladies of Llangollen. http://www.queertheory.com/histories/b/butler_lady_eleanor.htm Oct 16 09, 2:20 AM

Zbeckabee

Boston marriage, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, was an arrangement in which two women lived together, independent of any man's support. These relationships were not necessarily sexual; the existence of platonic Boston marriages was used to quell fears of lesbianism after the loss of men in World War I. Today, the term sometimes describes two women living together without a sexual relationship. Such a relationship may involve intimacy and commitment without sexuality. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_marriage The term probably came to English as a reference to Henry James' 1886 novel The Bostonians, which focuses on Olive Chancellor, a Boston woman who we would now call a feminist; her conservative Southern cousin Basil Ransom; and the younger woman Verena Tarrant who is staying with Olive and working toward becoming a feminist speaker. http://everything2.com/title/Boston+marriage http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bostonians Oct 16 09, 4:49 AM