It's so interesting, because it's so different from what most people seem to approach history expecting, which is homophobia all the way down, evidently. But actually there are LOTS of literary examples of intense girl crushes that the authors think are beneficial and cute - or, if the crush is bad, it's not because the crush object is a girl but because the crush object is unworthy or a bad influence.

It's a literary tradition that hangs on for a long time: you can see it in Enid Blyton's Malory Towers in the 1940s, even in the Baby-sitters Club books in the 1990s.