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Cross-dressing in literature

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Mr. Rochester disguised as a Gypsy woman sitting at the fireplace. Illustration by F. H. Townsend in the second edition of Charlotte Brontë's 1847 novel Jane Eyre.

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]

Analysis and function of the motif

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:

Ancient and medieval literature

Early modern literature

Modern literature

"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[5]


As a theme

As a minor plot element

See also

References

  1. ^ "from Vested Interests: Cross-dressing & Cultural Anxiety (1991)", Marjorie Garber, 1991. Retrieved 21 September 2011.
  2. ^ a b c Craft-Fairchild, Catherine (1998-01-01). "Cross-Dressing and the Novel: Women Warriors and Domestic Femininity". Eighteenth-Century Fiction. 10 (2): 171–202. doi:10.1353/ecf.1998.0007. ISSN 1911-0243.
  3. ^ a b c d Boag, Peter (2011). Re-dressing America's Frontier Past. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. ISBN 0520270622.
  4. ^ Jones, Christine A. (2016). "Cross-Dressing." In Haase, Donald and Anne E. Duggan. Folktales and Fairy Tales: Traditions and Texts from around the World. Greenwood Publishing. pp. 241-243. ISBN 978-1610692533.
  5. ^ "from Vested Interests: Cross-dressing & Cultural Anxiety (1991)", Marjorie Garber, 1991. Retrieved 21 September 2011.
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