The book was written in For reference, this is a couple decades before the American revolution. Women wear wide gowns and lace. Men wear full-skirted coats and intricately embroidered waistcoats. The book has one of those long-winded titles common at the time. The protagonist and narrator, Alithea de Richelieu, having been conveniently orphaned at an early age--as all good adventurers must be--and having just come of age and into her inheritance, has decided to go adventuring.
And as a practical matter, she decides that she will have better and safer adventures if she does so disguised as a man, the Chevalier de Radpont. In the course of these adventures, she meets and desires closer acquaintance with a reclusive widow, Arabella de Montferan, who has forsworn all company with men. Therefore, to further their friendship, Alithea discloses her true sex and they develop an immediate bond.
Arabella wishes to accompany Alithea on her adventures, but is cautious of her reputation--for she wishes to be able to return to a respectable life afterward. So she concludes the best thing is for her to disguise herself as a man as well. And why is this story relevant to the Lesbian Historic Motif Project? Because the two of them regularly make protestations of deep emotional attachment and love, and regularly flirt with the idea that--if only one of them were truly a man as she pretends--they would marry and live happily ever after.
Although sub-text is much too tame a term for what we get here. The work falls in the category of picaresque novel--a rambling and episodic journey involving not entirely reputable adventures. There is only the barest skeleton of anything resembling a plot in modern terms. There are many digressions.
Randomly encountered characters are prone to spilling their entire life history onto the page. But Alithea longs to travel and at last takes off in a hired coach, accompanied by her maid Lucy who is also in male disguise as a valet.
