troisoiseaux

Having - though in the distant past - read other Thackerays, I think he didn't think women could ever be friends with other women but were always in a condition of rivalry - most toxically in the case of Rachel and Beatrix, mother and daughter, in Henry Esmond. Or at least, there was the Victorian elite male notion that only men could have proper, manly, friendship: it was a relationship of which women were not even capable.