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Cross-dressing as a literary motif is well attested in older literature but is becoming increasingly popular in modern literature as well. [1] It is often associated with character nonconformity and sexuality rather than gender identity. [2]
Female characters who cross-dress as men are also frequently portrayed as having done so to attain a higher social or economic position, a phenomenon known as the social progress narrative. [3] Assuming a male identity allows them to travel safely, pursue jobs traditionally only available to men, and find heterosexual romance by breaking away from the all-female social world of the private sphere during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. [3] These characters are generally described as heroic, courageous, and virtuous. [2] Craft-Fairchild (1998) argues that the motif of female-to-male cross-dressing symbolizes women's discontent with their relegation to the domestic sphere of society. However, the discovery of the characters' assigned sex is often met with disapproval, indicating the endurance of traditional expectations of femininity. [2] [3]
Male-to-female cross-dressing is much less common in literature, and it is often used for comedic value or as a form of punishment for a male character. When it does appear, characters are often negatively feminized or portrayed as villains, in contrast to the heroism among female-to-male cross-dressers. The most well known example of this concept is the wolf from Little Red Riding Hood. [4] Male-to-female cross-dressing is also almost always more closely linked to a character's sexuality and that of their partners than in female-to-male cross-dressing. [3]
The following is a partial list of literary works that address the motif of cross-dressing:
In the myth of the Trojan War, Achilles' mother Thetis wanted to keep him from joining the Greek forces (and thus dying in battle as was prophesied), so she dresses him in women's clothes and hides him among a cloister of women. When the Greek envoy arrives to fetch him for battle, Odysseus is suspicious of Achilles' absence and concocts a scheme to reveal the deception: he offers gifts to all the women, including among them a sword and shield. Then he has an alarm sounded, and when Achilles instinctively grabs the weapons to defend himself, the ruse is revealed and he must join the Greek army and fight at Troy.
In Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso , Bradamante, being a knight, wears full-plate armor; similarly, Britomart wears full-plate armor in Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene . Intentionally or not, this disguises them as men, and they are taken as such by other characters. In Orlando Furioso, Fiordespina falls in love with Bradamante; her brother Ricciardetto disguises himself as his sister, dressing as a woman, persuades Fiordespina that he is Bradamante, magically changed into a man to make their love possible, and in his female attire is able to conduct a love affair with her.
Several of William Shakespeare's works include cross-dressing. Shakespeare made substantial use of cross-dressing for female characters who took on masculine clothing to carry out actions difficult for women. Relevant examples include:
Belle-Belle ou Le Chevalier Fortuné (1698), a fairy tale by Madame d'Aulnoy in which the female protagonist, Belle-Belle, disguises herself as a male knight to help the ruler of her kingdom defeat an emperor.
Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene (1590-1596) includes a long section about Britomart, who dons male armor, falls in love with a woman, and has many adventures as a man.
Mademoiselle de Maupin by Theophile Gautier (1834) in which the eponymous heroine dresses as a man to discover what men are like when not in the company of women before she gets married.
In Arcadia (1593), Sir Philip Sidney has one of the heroes, Pyrocles, disguise himself as an Amazon called Zelmane in order to approach his beloved Philoclea.
Lord Byron in his Don Juan (1819–1824), had Don Juan disguised as a woman in a harem.
"The current popularity of cross-dressing as a theme in art and
criticism represents, I think, an undertheorized recognition of the
necessary critique of binary thinking, whether particularized as
male and female, black and white, yes and no, Republican and
Democrat, self and other, or in any other way."
—Marjorie Garber, 1991 [1]
In Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), the titular character Huckleberry Finn disguises himself as a girl at one point in the novel, not very successfully.
In Anthony Powell's From a View to a Death (1933), Major Fosdick's penchant for going to his room and donning a black sequin evening dress and a large picture-hat ultimately leads to his unraveling.
In Terry Pratchett's novel Monstrous Regiment (2003), he has an entire regiment of females (of assorted species) dressing as males to join the army, satirizing the phenomenon of crossdressing during wartime.
In Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (1954-1955), Éowyn disguises herself as man under the name Dernhelm to fight in the Battle of the Pelennor Fields outside the city Minas Tirith, and confronts the Witch-King of Angmar, Lord of the Nazgûl. [5]
In Tamora Pierce's The Song of the Lioness series (1983–1988), the main character, Alanna, disguises herself as a boy for eight years in order to become a knight.
In Giannina Braschi's mock diary, "Intimate Diary of Solitude", the third part in her postmodern poetry collection Empire of Dreams (1988), the heroine Mariquita Samper is a cross-dressing Macy's makeup artist who plots a literary revolution to kill the narrator.
Cross-dressing is the act of wearing clothes traditionally or stereotypically associated with a different gender. From as early as pre-modern history, cross-dressing has been practiced in order to disguise, comfort, entertain, and express oneself.
Mary Read, was an English pirate about whom there is very little factual documentation. She and Anne Bonny were among the few female pirates during the "Golden Age of Piracy".
Drag is a performance of exaggerated femininity, masculinity, or other forms of gender expression, usually for entertainment purposes. Drag usually involves cross-dressing. A drag queen is someone who performs femininely and a drag king is someone who performs masculinely. Performances often involve comedy, social satire, and at times political commentary. The term may be used as a noun as in the expression in drag or as an adjective as in drag show.
Twelfth Night, or What You Will is a romantic comedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written around 1601–1602 as a Twelfth Night entertainment for the close of the Christmas season. The play centres on the twins Viola and Sebastian, who are separated in a shipwreck. Viola falls in love with the Duke Orsino, who in turn is in love with Countess Olivia. Upon meeting Viola, Countess Olivia falls in love with her, thinking she is a man.
A gender bender is a person who dresses up and presents themselves in a way that defies societal expectations of their gender, especially as the opposite sex. Bending expected gender roles may also be called a genderfuck.
The Song of the Lioness is a young adult series of fantasy novels published in the 1980s by Tamora Pierce. The series consists of four books: Alanna: The First Adventure (1983), In the Hand of the Goddess (1984), The Woman Who Rides Like a Man (1986) and Lioness Rampant (1988).
Many people have engaged in cross-dressing during wartime under various circumstances and for various motives. This has been especially true of women, whether while serving as a soldier in otherwise all-male armies, while protecting themselves or disguising their identity in dangerous circumstances, or for other purposes.
Cross-dressing and drag in film and television has followed a long history of cross-dressing and drag on the English stage, and made its appearance in the early days of the silent films. Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel brought the tradition from the English music halls when they came to the United States with Fred Karno's comedy troupe in 1910. Both Chaplin and Laurel occasionally dressed as women in their films. Even the beefy American actor Wallace Beery appeared in a series of silent films as a Swedish woman. The Three Stooges, especially Curly, sometimes appeared in drag in their short films. The tradition has continued for many years, usually played for laughs. Only in recent decades have there been dramatic films which included cross-dressing, possibly because of strict censorship of American films until the mid-1960s. One early exception was Alfred Hitchcock's thriller Murder!, where the murderer is a transvestite who wears particularly frilly dresses and petticoats. Cross-gender acting, on the other hand, refers to actors or actresses portraying a character of the opposite gender.
Le Roman de Silence is an octosyllabic verse Old French roman in the Picard dialect, dated to the first half of the 13th century. It is the only work attributed to Heldris de Cornuälle. Due to the text's late discovery and editing in 1927 and 1978, as well as its discussion of nature vs. nurture, transvestitism, sex and gender, and gender roles, the roman has attracted considerable interest both from medievalists and the field of Anglo-American gender studies.
The Black Moth (1921) is a Georgian era romance novel by the British author Georgette Heyer, set around 1751. The Black Moth was Heyer's debut novel, published when Heyer was nineteen. It was a commercial success.
Petticoating or pinaforing is a type of forced feminization that involves dressing a man or boy in girls' clothing as a form of humiliation or punishment, or as a fetish. While the practice has come to be a rare, socially unacceptable form of humiliating punishment, it has risen up as both a subgenre of erotic literature or other expression of sexual fantasy.
Gallathea or Galatea is an Elizabethan era stage play, a comedy by John Lyly. The first record of the play's performance was at Greenwich Palace on New Year's Day, 1588 where it was performed before Queen Elizabeth I and her court by the Children of St Paul's, a troupe of boy actors. At this point in his literary career, Lyly had already achieved success with his prose romance Euphues and was a writer in residence at Blackfriars theatre. The play is set in a village on the Lincolnshire shore of the Humber estuary and in the neighboring woods. It features a host of characters including Greek deities, nymphs, fairies, and some shepherds.
May Day is an early 17th-century stage play, a comedy written by George Chapman that was first published in 1611.
The Nonexistent Knight is an allegorical fantasy novel by Italian writer Italo Calvino, first published in Italian in 1959 and in English translation in 1962.
Cross-gender acting, also called cross-gender casting or cross-casting, refers to actors or actresses portraying a character of the opposite sex. It is distinct from both transgender and cross-dressing character roles.
Viola is the protagonist of the play Twelfth Night, written by William Shakespeare.
This article details the history of cross-dressing, the act of wearing the clothes of the sex or gender one does not identify with.
The Female Marine, or The Adventures of Lucy Brewer, was first published in 1815 as a series of pamphlets sold in Boston. The series is the supposedly autobiographical account of Lucy Brewer, although controversy has surrounded the true authorship of the story as some believe it was in fact written by Nathaniel Hill Wright.
Cross-dressing in music and opera refers to musical performers or opera singers portraying a character of the opposite gender. It is parallel to cross-dressing in film and television and draws on a long history of cross-gender acting.
Reverse X Rebirth is a romantic comedy manga series created by Shinobu Amano and published by Hakusensha in LaLa in 2019–2021. It follows two students at a prestigious all-female school: Hina, an aspiring writer who has a fear of men, and Kaede, a man who disguises himself as a woman to hide from his grandfather, who intends to stop him from becoming an actor.
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