Across Letters and Screens: Feminist Friendship from Radical Hope to Postfeminist Uncertainty in Gillian E. Hanscombe's between Friends and sally Rooney's Conversations with Friends

Feminist friendship has long functioned as both a personal bond and a political strategy, shaping how women imagine solidarity, resistance, and emotional survival across historical moments. This paper offers a comparative reading of Gillian E. Hanscombe’s Between Friends (1982) [1] and Sally Rooney’s Conversations with Friends (2017) [2] to trace the transformation of feminist sensibilities from second-wave radical optimism to postfeminist and fourth-wave ambivalence. Hanscombe’s epistolary novel reflects a period marked by collective activism, ideological debate, and faith in structural change, where friendship operates as a deliberate feminist practice grounded in dialogue and consciousness-raising. Rooney’s contemporary narrative, by contrast, presents friendship within a neoliberal and digitally mediated context, characterized by emotional restraint, economic precarity, and fragmented communication. Through close textual analysis, the paper explores how differing modes of communication—letters versus digital messages—shape political imagination and intimacy. While the novels differ in tone and historical outlook, both insist on the enduring importance of friendship as a site where the personal and political intersect. Ultimately, the study argues that feminist hope has not vanished but has shifted in form, moving from utopian collective visions to quieter, fragile negotiations of care and connection in an uncertain world.