WOMEN AND CROSS-DRESSING
18001939
HISTORY OF FEMINISM
Series Editor: Ann Heilmann, Hull University, UK
Other titles in this series
THE LATE-VICTORIAN MARRIAGE QUESTION
A COLLECTION OF KEY NEW WOMAN TEXTS
Edited by Ann Heilmann
SEX, SOCIAL PURITY AND SARAH GRAND
Edited by Ann Heilmann
AMERICAN FEMINISM
KEY SOURCE DOCUMENTS, 18481920
Edited by Janet Beer, Anne Trudgill and Katherine Joslin
INTERNATIONAL WOMAN SUFFRAGE
IUS SUFFRAGII 19131920
Edited by Sybil Oldfield
JOSEPHINE BUTLER AND THE PROSTITUTION
CAMPAIGNS: DISEASES OF THE BODY POLITIC
Edited by Ingrid Sharp and Jane Jordan
WOMEN, MADNESS AND SPIRITUALISM
Edited by Helen Nicholson and Bridget Bennett
ANIMAL WELFARE AND ANTI-VIVISECTION 18701910
Edited by Susan Hamilton
FEMINISM AND THE PERIODICAL PRESS 19001918
Edited by Lucy Delap, Maria DiCenzo and Leila Ryan
WOMENS TRAVEL WRITING 17501850
Edited by Caroline Franklin
WOMEN AND CROSS-DRESSING 18001939
Edited by
Heike Bauer
VOLUME III
FICTIONS AND LIVES (PART 2)
First published 2006
by Routledge
2 & 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016, USA
Simultaneously published in Japan
by Edition Synapse
2-8-5 Uchikanda, Chiyoda-Ku, Tokyo 101-0047
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
Editorial material and selection 2006 Heike Bauer
Typeset in Times by TechBooks
Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book has been requested
ISBN 10: 0-415-32302-9 (Set)
ISBN 10: 0-415-32301-0 (Volume III)
ISBN 4-901481-92-4 (Set: Japan)
ISBN 13: 978-0-415-32302-4 (Set)
ISBN 13: 978-0-415-32301-7 (Volume III)
Edition Synapse Series: Historical Sources of Womens Studies
Publishers Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original book may be apparent
WOMEN AND CROSS-DRESSING
18001939
VOLUME I
Theories: Sexology and the Taxonomies of Gender
VOLUME II
Fictions and Lives (Part 1)
VOLUME III
Fictions and Lives (Part 2)
CONTENTS
CHARLES READE
JAMES DOUGLAS
ETHEL MANNIN
E.F. BENSON
ANON
ANON
ANON
ANON
OLGA RACSTER AND JESSICA GROVE
From the Unpublished MSS. of the late Charles Reade
Disguise, I see thou art a counterfeit
In which the pregnant enemy does much!
Twelfth Night.
WOMEN waste all their treasures; bestowing their affections on men, their passions on bonnets, gowns, lace, and artificial flowers.
That barely exceeds the hard line of truth, yet one must not be over-cynical at the expense of a sex superior as regards the quality of passion, and far more lavish of heart to us than we to them. Not all feminine affection leaks towards and dribbles over unworthy objects, while in the records of the species even girls have been celebrated for cherishing ambitions just a little loftier than mere gewgaws. Many women, many minds; many minds, many motives. For example, Madame du Barri may be cited as a cleverish sample of the feminine variety, and according to her the wisest of the sex is a Becky Sharp. Thanks to the education you men-folk give us, she cries, we learn to cheat you whenever we choose; and the greatest fool of us can make you believe that black is white! Is the congenital rle of womanhood to play a false part? I dont admit half as much, nor a half-quarter, pace du Barri, and confessing to my own comparative sciolism; but I do believe that some women have an overpowering itch for simulating. Among actresses, the androgyne, or woman-man, has figured not quite ingloriously in the pages of history. Pope Joan and Joan of Arc, the Chevalier dEon and Lady Hester Stanhope, occur haphazard to the recollection of the shallowest smatterer. Nor was this erratic ambition confined to Triple Crowns, chain armour, breeches, rapiers, slashed coats, three-cornered hats, andpardontrousers; it extended from the vanities of the world to those of the cloister and included even the repulsive cowl of the monk. In the Harleian Miscellany there occurs a sprightly dialogue between a Protestant and Papist, wherein I find quoted the noble de Mesueir, Marino, Euphrosyna, Eugenia, Pelagia, and Margerita, nuns who passed their lives as monks, and remained undiscovered until after death. These ladies are quaintly described as mulieres habitum verilem mentite, the successful players of a practical lie. That same offence, by the by, in merry medival England was made a hanging matterprovided always that the sinner failed to escape detection; it has served also, I remember, as the motif of a pathetic story in an old magazine. Protestantism and civilization show more lenient, our gibbet being only the moral solvuntus tabula risu.
Between the years 185862, i.e., about the date when I first began to collect from real life material for the drama, instances of androgynism occurred, or were brought to light, with unusual frequency, and I devoted a folio of 250 leaves to tabulating them. Of these the vast majority possessed the quality of interest in the feeblest degree. The actresses were naturally masculine, sexual mistakes, physiological freaks. Their manliness, too, was almost virile. One of the ugly lot, a Miss Elizabeth Anne Holman, at 23 (the mother of two, but not in any state so positively feminine as wedlock), avowed that she would wear mens clothes, and do mans work, though she should be transported for it. An allocution pronounced, I think, before the Mayor of Exeter. N.B.Mayor, instead of punishing her, gave her money from the poor-box. Another of the same genre served long as a sailor; her excuse being a sickly husband. Here, however, the sequitur seemed rather hazy, doubts being cast on her willingness to contribute towards the mans support. Yet a third at Liverpool worked as a bricklayer, and for years posed as the lawful husband of another woman. Money lay at the root of that deception. She, par ignobile, made a good thing of it.
Such examples as these would not repay the price of pens and inkfor the purposes of dramatic narration. The androgynism of history may be over-coloured; fiction in tatters; but that of the police-courts palls miserably by reason of vulgar commonplace. Outside the broadest farce, a lady of the roadside clad in homuncular fustian would irritate the pit and empty the gallery. The subject appeared destitute of piquancy or pathos; in real life it refused to develop dramatically, and I had already dropped it in the middle of my folio, when a case was reported tinged with a little more colour, one,
