Elite friendship discourse in the Renaissance was shaped by a set of commonplaces inherited from classical antiquity according to which friends were virtuous, male, and few in number, and their relationships egalitarian and non-sexual. Neoplatonic love had the power to disrupt many of these received ideas. Ficino’s account of male friendship in his Lysis commentary emphasized the importance of spiritual desire in initiating relationships and foregrounded a pedagogical dimension more in keeping with a chaste version of Greek pederasty than the non-hierarchical models of friendship inherited from Aristotle and Cicero. In a poem on the Platonic androgyne, Antoine Héroët used the language of friendship to describe heterosexual unions as offering a potential step towards union with God. Bonaventure des Périers warned instead of the dangers of earthly erotic entanglements in a verse commentary to his translation of Plato’s Lysis, thereby concurring with the beliefs of his benefactor Marguerite de Navarre while suggesting that female community might offer the soul some solace before death provided the possibility of joining with God. Finally, Montaigne’s unorthodox account of his relationship with his deceased friend La Boétie engaged with the Neoplatonic tradition while eschewing the possibility it might facilitate spiritual ascent.

Chapter 3 reveals how long-forgotten popular novels become important intertexts for canonical fiction on hermaphrodism. Whether the influence is intentional and acknowledged as Balzac admits of Latouche’s Fragoletta, or perhaps unintentional or repressed as may have been the case with Cuisin’s Clémentine, these popular novels become a “missing link” between medical discourse and fictional representations of androgyny. In both Fragoletta and Clémentine, for example, doctors and medical sex determinations play important roles in plot development, which allows us to reconsider the stakes of Mademoiselle de Maupin’s transing enterprise, described by Gautier as a “medical” project. By examining classic fiction by Balzac, Gautier, and Zola through the lens of forgotten popular novels, we can see how works that have been described by literary critics as rehearsing a timeless version of myth are also interrogating the very same social anxiety one finds in contemporary debates surrounding hermaphrodism in medicine and the law. Just like their medical counterparts, novelists experiment with hermaphrodism using their own literary techniques, harnessing the power of unknown sex as a means to keep the reader reading.

In this chapter, Clara and Robert are shown to have embraced the Androgyne principle in their romantic relationship and marriage. Theorized by Jakob Boehme and adopted by the Jena romantics, the Androgyne ideal promoted the fusion of marital partners as well as gender-fluid behaviours in the name of spirituality. Of particular interest are Clara’s deeds in the period following Robert’s institutionalization in March 1854. Instead of decreasing her commitment to idealized matrimony, she deliberately strengthened it and maintained that outlook, even after Robert’s death in July 1856, until the end of her own life in 1896. This chapter investigates several questions: Why? What informed and motivated Clara’s actions? Were they simply displays of female heroism and/or conjugal fidelity? Whose interests were being served? What did her decisions imply about her perceptions of gender and gendered conduct? And why were her choices accepted, socially and culturally? The Schumanns’ correspondence and diary entries, published statements issued by Clara, and reviews of her playing are analysed in social-historical context. In her role as Robert’s posthumous Androgyne, Clara brought together diverse strands: their bond, certainly, but also philosophical-literary beliefs about perfect love, set within a Lutheran Pietist cultural framework that promoted female strength.