It's Not Easy Being Green: Gender and Friendship in Eliza Haywood's Political Periodicals

British writer Eliza Haywood's two periodicals, 'The Female Spectator' (1744-46) and 'The Parrot' (1746), protested against the gendered split between political and domestic literary genres, showing that British novels and periodicals written by or addressed to women did engage in political discourse. Through her periodicals, Haywood presented a model for female-female friendship that portrayed women engaging in rational and polite political debate. Furthermore, she argued that this same debate could occur between a woman and a man apart from an apolitical, romantic relationship. Finally, she gave opportunity for friendship to be expressed between those who had been excluded from the public sphere through their support of marginalized political factions. Thus, Haywood's periodicals reflected frustration with a public sphere that excluded texts based on genre, gender, and political partisanship.