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Cross-dressing in Shakespeare's plays - Coggle Diagram
Cross-dressing in Shakespeare's plays
Two Gentlemen of Verona
Julia
displays audacity of the witty boy servant, Sebastian
typically offers cynical commentaries, ironic perspectives on the main action, parodying masculinity, masters, authority
these moments of free wit that was not permitted before due to her feminine identity
lively interplay between various identities of play-boy, female character, male disguise
on stage commentator
performer oscillates between lovelorn heroine and cheeky page instead of playing those roles in separate scenes
Comedy is achieved at Julia's expense by mocking her
hair, alludes to the presence of 3 layers, and how they were concealed on the stage
releasing her cap, physical evidence of femininity =revelation
concerned with her reputation
any how cross dressing would affect her (not eager to 'usur' male power)
forlorn maid
she swoons, helplessness
blush
ending
wrong ring, wrong letter
Shapiro: accidental. Jimenez: purposeful
Cross-dressing
Long medical Renaissance literature, cross-gender
Montemayor's narrative =cross-dressing
heroines demonstrated fidelity to their lovers
Luccetta and Speed (lylian servants that establishes the page-model for Julia)
Luccetta mocks Julia's suitors
Valentine
male bonding with two heterosexual unions
Proteus
women as exchangeable properties to keep the bonds of men
As you like it
Rosalind
isn't threatening because she constantly reveals herself as a lovesick maid that faints
she retains feminine subjectivity
impersonates a man that is impersonating a woman, and that woman is herself
Interpretations
Rosalind is not released from patriarchy,
but she revels its constructed nature and she shows a woman manipulating those representations in he own interest (Howard)
Celia
Rosalind can be herself with Celia
Orlando
they bond in the homosocial space
relaxed in the male company, he can reveal his emotions
restricted feminine self gets to experience a fuller self though cross dressing
once in the forest, she doesn't look for her father, becomes bolder
Epilogue
Shakespeare brings sex and gender together in order to give a final plea in behalf of androgynous behaviour
"If I were a woman"
double disguise - Ganymede / "Rosalind"
pastoral forest: inversion of order can spur social change, or it can merely reconfirm the existing order
Sometimes cross-dressing intensifies, rather than blurs, sexual difference. Sometimes by calling attention to the woman's failure to perform the masculine role signified by her dress
(Howard)
the play ends with everyone in there proper social positions
the epilogue reminds the audience Rosalind is played by a boy "If I were a woman"
if a boy can succeed at impersonating a woman, and a woman can succeed at impersonating a boy, how secure are those powers and privileges assigned to the hierarchically superior sex?
(Howard)
The Merchant of Venice
Portia
source of secure wealth
; only person in the courtroom capable of successfully playing the man's part and ousting the intruder
cross-dressing gives her 'male power'
although she does hesitate before taking the male identity "must I hold a candle to my shames?"
Nerissa
disguise is a complement to Portia's
mocks male gender behavior
"
Balthasar
" center of legal dispute, able to sway with her rhetoric that
most masculine of all audiences, a court of law
(Belsey)
Portia fights Bassanio legal battles, and wins(Belsey)
when Portia is Balthazar, she conducts herself as a legal scholar, no feminine slip
differs
from Julia, Rosalind, Viola, and Imogen, Portial
does not have soliloquies or aside, revisions of female identity
her wit is an instrument for taking over the male domain of the law
by restoring Antonio's wealth, she removes his role as Martyr (Shapiro)
Jessica
Uncomfortable dressed as a boy
page suit-
escape from her father, does not get the wit of the page
cross dressing as a sequential arrangement
torchbearer or page contrasts with Portia's disguise (the powerful male)
after elopement there is not another mention of cross dressing
Venice: (busy) masculine, Belmont: (calm) feminine
Androgyne becomes a symbol of justice
crossdressing
none of the cross-dressed are the lylian page type
3 women cross dressing
varying motif through repetition
Antonio
Portia's rival for Bassanio
tries to convince Bassanio to give 'Balthasar' Portia's ring
male love, homosexual lover, homoerotic attraction, possessiveness over a friend
Bassanio
his marriage to portia is his way to stop being indebted to Antonio
offers Portia's money very generously
Twelfth Night
Viola
Interpretations
Viola's sexual indeterminac
y signifies the play's projection onto the
crossdressed woman of the process of male trajectory of identity
(Greenblatt)
"self-fashioning":
refers to the process of constructing one's identity and public persona to reflect a set of cultural standards or social codes (The book of the courtier"
"
blurring of sexual difference
opens the liberating possibility of
undoing all the structures of domination
and exploitation premised on
binary opposition
" (Belsey)
"TN functions as dramatic critique of ideal norm of imperative heterosexuality" (Charles)
The effects of Viola's
cross dressing
point to the
socially constructed
natures of gender
in Shakespeare's play
Shakespeare's drama interrogates the
exclusionary
nature of the
constructed categories of sex
Challenges the symbolic hegemony of heterosexuality by producing
representation of same-sex love
between Viola and Olivia / Antonio and Sebastian
The final act exposes the
failure of heterosexual
"regimes
ever fully to legislate
or contain their own ideals"
The final scene in TN saw just
how interchangeable sex as well as gender
were (Charles)
Heterosexuality can augment its hegemony through the denaturalisation of cross-dressing(Butler)
sees her disguise as devilish, not as an opportunity to 'usurp male power
'
does not have a Celia or other lady to be female with, no one to confide her secret
her success before Orsino and Olivia points to the constructedness and performative character of gender
proves 'male' can be performed 'successfully' no matter sex
Performance of gender
. Viola uses her disguise and her identity with her bother as vehicles to demonstrate that erotic attraction is not an inherently gendered or heterosexual phenomenon
describes herself as a "poor monster", terms for hermaphrodites
displaces mischief of her disguise on the device of transvestism itself
cross-dressing and the androgyny it comes to symbolise thus challenge the regulatory parameter of erotic attraction
Cesario
claims he is not what he plays
adopting identity through imitation
demonstrates a parodic awareness of the 3 contingent dimensions of her corporeality
plays his part really well
ends the play still wearing her male costume, gender is not fully re-stated, Orsino calls her boy
Olivia
actual political threat (rather than the cross dressed Viola)
(Howard)
play applauds a cross-dressed woman who does not aspire to the positions of power assigned to men. It disciplines Olivia, the one who does (Howard)
Olivia, wealthy and without male authority. Openly rejecting male attention
falling for a woman = the self is not an entity within the control of an ego-identity
Relationship between master and servant in which homoerotic connection took place was common
Sex between women was not explicitly prohibited under 1533 sodomy statute enacted by Henry VIII
punished by being made to fall in love with the crossdressed Viola
The
good woman becomes the vehicle for humiliating the unruly woman
(Howard)
threat to the hierarchical gender system
Olivia tells Cesario that she wishes he were the reciprocating lover she would like him to be. Love act as agents in the disruption of normative identity politics
Cross-dressing
for survival, not to protest gender inequities/ destabilise hierarchies
dramatic narrative is to relate Viola from the prison of 'Cesario' and return her to proper and natural position of wife
not a problem if the heart is untouched
homoerotic and cross-gendered disruption demonstrate
how the phenomenon of
love
itself
operates as a mechanism that destabilises gender binaries / hierarchies
(Charles)
producing a male that is identical to the female = gender is interchangeable
Sameness: how essentialism of a 'natural perspective' is not always divided into gendered binaries
Shakespeare's transvestites move without difficulty between genders, emphasizing the performativity of masculinity and femininity (Belsey)
Orsino
is not humiliated like Olivia
Falls in love of Cesario's storytelling (which would be improper for women to talk that much)
The scene challenges patriarchy not by re-idealizing the heterosexual norms of passion-vowing males and passive female
Orsino continues to adress Viola as a boy - presumable until she changes her costume
her gender is dependent upon a factor so easily changeable as clothing
Malvolio
social climber, threat to class divisions
disciplined for challenging hierarchical class system
Homoerotics
same-sex attraction: natural bias of heterosexual marriage act 5
Antonio and Sebastian
TN is centrally concerned with demonstrating the uncategorical temper of sexual attraction
male friendship/ homosocial bonding
Antonio: pirate, lower status than Sebastian, but his protectors.
they subvert homoerotics parameters of the renaissance
mature lover as guide and mentor of a younger beloved
devotion of Sebastian's image' mistaken interpretation of objective reality
lesbian overtones of the erotic scenes between Olivia and Viola
multiple erotic investments
the representation of homoerotic attraction in TN functions rather as a means of dramatizing the socially constructed basis of a sexuality that is determined by gender identity
(Charles)
Butler
TN uses the varieties of erotic attraction to disrupt paradigms of sexuality
cultural meanings that are attached to a sexed body= gender= are theoretically applicable to either sex
questions the idea that these is an essential attached to biology
"production of sex as the prediscursive ought to be understood as the effect of the apparatus of cultural construction designated by gender"
Metaphysics of gender substance
the unproblematic claim that a subject can choose a gender identity; that the self can "be a woman" or a man
Construction of gender through an interpretation of "sex" to an inquiry into the way regulatory norms "materialise" the sexed body =
making it relevant
process of materialization
creates boundaries, surfaces, and contours by which sex is established as heterosexually normative
it exposes the exclusion and "gaps" that are the constitutive instabilities inherent in these norms
Performativity
process were the categories of sex are both established and disrupted
means by which the norms of sex are naturalised and substantiated by being pronounced foundation and ideal
repetition
repetitions creates erasures that are cites of deconstructive possibilities
challenging strategy of symbolic hegemony of sexuality: interrogation of those exclusions
Performance of cross-dressing can be disruptive
to the extent if reflects the mundane impersonations by which heterosexual ideal genders are performed
exposes the failures of heterosexual regimes
ever fully to legislate or contain their own ideals
the
limitation
of the consequences of theatrical cross-dressing to the
evocation of male homoeroticism
ignores the
ambiguities that transvestism
creates and reinstates the restriction of
gender binaries into the discussion of homoerotics
. (Traub)
TN ending "only ambivalent invested in the 'natural; heterosexuality it imposes"(Traub)
Antecedents
Jorge de Montemayor's "La Diana" 1598
decides against creating a Sebastian clone to meet the romance convention of reconciliation
precedent for the representation of erotic relations between women
TN departures from patterns that would subsume homoeroticism under entrenched gender stereotypes
Antonio and Olivia's transformation of their loves indicates a larger pattern
in TN that employs the process of love as an
agency in the disruption of gender binaries and social hierarchy
The triumph of heterosexual marriage
does not erase
the homoerotic feelings.
Desire is not erased by the successful disruption of gender boundaries
; it continues to haunt the subject
Macbeth
androgyny
neoplatonism: the soul is ideally androgynous
definitions
one that contains the two= the male (andro) and the female (gyne) Androgyny is a
archetype
inherent in the human psyche .
sense of a completed self- better.
"seeks to liberate the individual from the confines of the appropriate" (Heilbrun)
capacity of a single person of either sex to embody the
full range of human character traits,
despite cultural attempts to render some exclusive feminine or masculine
effective determinants of gender differentiation between female and male are social, psychological, and cultural.
life is experienced as fragmented, androgyny, of necessity, looks beyond duality back to a time when personhood experienced innate wholeness and unity
Humanistic doctrine: emphasis on the individual as expressed in the Reformation. Elizabeth on the throne by the 16th century in England
to accept woman as a composite of all her historical and social "roles"
theatre allows us to play our own androgynous potential rather than do the rules of everyday life
Lady Macbeth
appears "usexed"
Cymbeline
Imogen
Fidele
disguise that allows her to escape and protect her
not a cheeky page
makes no significant reference to her new sex
reverses the polarity by having an assertive female character become a shy and vulnerable boy
is deceived by her husband's garments
tragicomedy: complexity of plot over complexity of characters
means to express the human creative process and the genesis of the play
The Merry Wives of Windsor
Falstat
taking female clothes, humiliating for men
underestimates women's intelligence and cunning abilities
Play, themes and concerns
highlights the male anxieties around being cheated, loosing their power, wealth, legacy, etc
Mistress Page and Mistress Ford
allusion to homoerotics,
lesbian marriage "(Ford) I think if your husbands were dead you two would marry"
wealthy, demonstrate the wit of married, matured women, not maids
Cross dressing in the theatre (context)
sympathetic view: heroines use it to follow/join men they are loyal to (showing devotion, fidelity, chastity)
theatre played a contradictory role
wishing social formation enabled opposition to certain forms of patriarchal domination
struggle, resistance, and subversive masquerade
Greenblatt
"The globe operated as a world itself"
but
"people checked their literal mindedness at the door" = willing suspension of disbelief
(Kimbrough)
we make Shakespeare a disservice to not accept his women as women (Kimbrough)
were women who cross-dressed, successfully challenging patriarchal domination, or were they serving its ends?
reading, writing, and the theatre exposed women to rewrite their inscriptions within patriarchy
cross-dressing motifs are using a staple of comic tradition with a long dramatic lineage
female cross-dressing on stage is not a strong site of resistance to the period's patriarchal sex-gender system
(Howard)
denaturalisation
of gender difference is built into the structure of Elizabethan stage convention (Butler)
social and political British context
policing of sexual behaviour became more
intense
in the
mid 16th century
prostitutes had to wear distinctive clothes: 1351 "forbade them to wear clothing of honest noble women"
link between male clothes and prostitution is assumed
After the Reformation
prosecution of prostitution
courts would use puritanical diction for sexual infractions
lower class women -accused of cross dressing = accused of illicit sexual acts
Cross-dressing = sexual misdemeanour
no distinction between prostitution, adultery, extramarital sex
real purpose of male attire
serve their country
engage in criminal activity
temporary concealment of identity
be with men they loved
adventure/travel
escape poverty/find work
alternative to prostitution
women passed as men and men as women for political and social reasons not necessarily attributable to what we now call homo- or heterosexuality
Majority of London's prostitutes did not cross-dress
But cross dressing on its own was a sexual transgression
Cross-dressing threatened a normative social order based upon strict principles of hierarchy and subordination
opened the gap between the supposed reality of one's station
dress was to keep people in the social places to which they were born
dress: indicator of status, highly regulated semiotic system
to transgress the codes governing dress was to disrupt an official view of the social order
James I
Women began to wear some male clothing
The purpose was not to pass as boys
The purpose was the over confrontation of symbolic transgression
controversy 1610-1620
resistance to the movement indicates it was a challenging of traditional roles
discipline by ecclesiastical, civil courts, communal rites to...
women who talked to much and went out too much
women were accused of using male attire to usurp male prerogatives
Hic Mulier
(1620)
Pamphlet condemning cross-dressing
Style with male and female attributes (androgyny)
confusion of gender
associated with sexual wantonness
Warns female readers on fictional cross-dressing...
not to be confused with heroines in epic and romance who respect gender hierarchy even as they cross-dressed
heroines did not intended to usurp male privileges and positions, and the often end in hegemonic roles
involved all classes
wearing more adorned clothing coached the privileges of the aristocracy
wearing male clothes got the privileges of the advantaged sex.
Hac-Vir
reply to Hic Mulier
defended who did not fir their respected gender role
ordered the preachers of London to condemn women dressing mannishly
economic and cultural changes were creating tensions between a social order based on hierarchy and deference
rise of early capitalism and social mobility
when rules of apparel are violated, class distinction breaks down
Protestant Marriage Theory
if the home is the center of patriarchal control but also the woman's place, then she is the ruler of the domestic sphere =subverts the man's importance
Renaissance's conception of masculinity and femininity were less essentialized than today's fixed categories of woman and man
16th and 17th century mask a decided anxiety about what is feared to be the actual fluidity of gender
Queen Elizabeth - queens who were kings James I - kings who were queens
Readings on Cross-dressing in the Renaissance
Greenblatt
women were imperfect incomplete men
transvestite theatre was a natural outcome from such cultural notions of sex
male privilege as the natural fact
male genitalia was present in both sex, but women were lacking (scientific/medical opinions). Inverted male penis and testicles
"the possibility of women becoming men and to a lesser extent men becoming women was a real one for the physiologic consciousness of the Elizabethean
Stubbes
transvestite theatre was read as unnatural, direct transgression of a divinely sanctioned social order
the bible "male and female created He them"
Renaissance needed the idea of 2 genders
(Howard)
one subordinate to the other, to provide a key element in its hierarchical view of the social order
if women are different by their lack of masculine perfection, then their subordination is justified
gender relations, however eroticised, were relations of power
(Howard)
Male cross-dressing
wearing woman's dress undermined the authority inherently belonging to the superiors = shame
The merry Wives of Windsor
: Falstaff assumes female attire and is beaten/shamed
Female cross-dressing
less about sexual perversion than of sexual incontinence of being a whore
creature of strong sexual appetites needing regulation
sexual desire as a mark of inferiority and justification for her control
when women took men's clothes, they symbolically left their subordinate positions
sexual perversion
Howard
female crossdressing often strengthens notions of difference by stressing what the disguised woman cannot
going to the theatre was to be positioned at the crossroads of cultural change and contradiction
Gosson
1579 accuses the theatre of being effeminate and effemining
1642
theaters were closed
Weyer
although women are feminine in actuality, I would call them masculine in potentiality
Belsey
cross-dressed figures move in and out of gender-identifications
young women are liberated psychologically, as well as physically, from the confines of conventional femininity when they adopt male costume
theatre as utopian fiction, it shows what people want, as opposed to what they have