Historical Intrigue: Women Cross-Dressers

I’ve always found stories with cross-dressing heroines to be quite compelling. To name three works that revolve around this subject: Sarah Waters’ TIPPING THE VELVET(novel), SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE(film) and Shakespeare’s TWELFTH NIGHT(play/film). Then there’s also the endless list of historical romance novels with cross-dressing heroines (click here for the list) among which is Georgette Heyer’s THESE OLD SHADES for those looking for a more witty, Austen-esque quality.

I wonder what it is about cross-dressing heroines that so fascinates us?

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Women (usually single and of a poor background) turned to cross-dressing to escape their economic and social disadvantages.

Margaret Hunt has pointed out “that in the early modern period women attempted to pass as men in far larger numbers than was at once thought, often precisely for the purpose of escaping their families, supporting themselves independently at higher-paying and more interesting jobs than ones women usually were able to maintain, gaining skills they would normally not have access to and escaping the pressure to marry.”

Many women cross-dressers believed that by wearing trousers and performing the ‘masculine role’ they could claim the economic/social advantages that men possessed and also escape their domestic confines and ‘powerlessness’.

Diane Dugaw comments that for cross-dressing women, “disguise seemed to go hand in hand with breaking out of custodial confinement whether of parents or husbands. Dressed as men they could travel at liberty without requiring masculine guardianship.”

Dr. Barry

A famous cross-dressing woman was Dr. James Miranda Barry (1799 – 1865). In the account of Dr. Barry, Bridget Hill writes: “At the age of ten [Barry] enrolled as a medical student at Edinburgh University. In 1813 She joined the army and became Colonial medical officer. She went to Cape Town, where she became physician to the governor… She was a great flirt with women she found attractive.”

There are also cases of women who went to war by cross-dressing as soldiers or sailors. In England there is a relatively small number of women who, for their own mixed motives, became soldiers and sailors:

• Hannah Snell (1723-92) Initially to search for her husband.
• Christian Davies (b. 1667) To search for her husband.
• Mary Anne Talbot (1778-1808)

Cases of cross-dressing isn’t only confined to England. In Holland, for instance, there are more than a hundred documented cases of young women who in male disguise set out for the Dutch East Indies to seek their fortune.

Among the many reasons why women turned to cross-dressing, there was nearly always some elements of ESCAPE.

Bridget Hill, “Ways of Escape,” in Women Alone: Spinsters in England 1660-1850. (London: Yale University Press), 126-142

P.S. My LONNNGGGG-neglected Period Drama Rating page has been updated. I decided to review each film/series within (approximately) 150 letters. I’ll be dedicating an entire entry to a period drama only if I think it’s worth it and only if I have the time.

My Writing Music:

Women’s Fiction: A Book With No Heroes

I recently discovered Amy Sue Nathan, an author of Women’s Fiction, whose debut novel THE GLASS WIVES will be released on May 14th (that’s tomorrow). I’m relatively new to Women’s Fiction, so when I visited the author’s page (Women’s Fiction Writers), her blog’s tagline sparked my curiosity: “NO HEROES.” I was intrigued but also bewildered. And so I got in touch with the author and asked:

 

What’s the significance in the absence of a hero?

 

She sent me a great response. I asked for her permission to share it on my blog, so here it is:

Writing women’s fiction, or book club fiction, to me, means it’s about a strong woman who doesn’t need to be saved by a man, which is traditional in romance novels. In the books I write and like to read, there might be love and a bit of a romantic connection, but it is not central to the story. The protagonist’s goal is to be okay (whatever that means to her) but not to be in a romance. To me, hero=someone who saves a woman. In my books, the main character saves herself! I don’t use the word heroine either, but that’s completely a personal preference. Certainly there are many ways to interpret a hero. There are everyday heroes we see on the news. There are heroes fighting for our freedom overseas. But in terms of fiction, a hero is usually the male character who is the romantic interest of the female main character. It’s very popular, many people read it and write it, it’s just not my forte or interest.

I plan to pick up a copy of THE GLASS WIVES and some other books within this genre (I’m ALWAYS up for book recommendations!). As a matter of fact, I really don’t remember the last time I read a Women’s Fiction… Anyway, as I explore this genre, I want to get a better grasp of how writers of this genre:

• Portray STRONG WOMEN
• What it means to different writers when a woman doesn’t need to be SAVED by a man. And also, if there are Women’s Fiction writers that do create a woman-saved-by-a-man dynamic, then how the author is able to steer away from perpetuating the damsel-in-distress concept.
• How men are portrayed within this genre and how much/or how little room they take up in these books

On a random note, I don’t think the TRC rewrite will fit into the Women’s Fiction genre… But we’ll see. I need a better grasp of this genre before making any further conclusions.

So, Aspiring-Novelist, You’ve Graduated. Now What?

A few weeks ago I had a VERY NICE conversation with a banker who was very good at MINDING HIS OWN BUSINESS. It went along the lines of:

 

Banker: You’re graduating soon? That’s awesome. What are you majoring in?
Me: English literature and history
Banker: Oh, so you’re going to be a teacher?
Me: Uh….No.
Banker: Then what are you going to do with an English and History degree?
Me: I studied English and History to become a better writer
Banker: That’s not very practical. You’re paying thousands of dollars for post-secondary education. I studied economics (?) because I knew it would get me a job.
Me: WELL…becoming a novelist is my dream…and I’ll do whatever I can to invest into this dream.
Banker: That’s really not practical…What are you going to do financially? I don’t think you’ll make a lot of money through writing.
Me: I KNOW. I’ll figure something out…

And the conversation went on for a while longer until I ran out of patience and began answering in monosyllables.

ANYWAY, I confess that I’m a little stressed over this issue of finance, because while I CAN continue to live off my parents for a while longer, as an adult and as a loving daughter I’d MUCH rather be financially independent. Plus, as a daughter living abroad, I’m a bit costly.

Currently, I’m working part-time at the Public Library and I’ll probably work a second part-time job (until I accumulate enough seniority to land a full-time position at the library). I’m hoping that within this year I’ll be making enough to at least pay off my monthly student loans. URGGHHH…student loans….

But enough about my finance. This is a blog about writing.

Northanger Abbey (2007). My writing inspiration.

SCHOOL was (for me) the BEST SCAPEGOAT for not writing. Because I was in university, I could say, “Oh, I’m a writer, but I didn’t write this week – or last week – or the week before that because I was drowning in assignments,” and everyone sympathised.

After graduating, however, if I don’t write and constantly go on long, long writing breaks, I’ll have nothing else to blame but myself. I must face the reality that IF I DO NOT WRITE, I AM NOT A WRITER, until I pick up the pen again. ‘Tis a harsh reality, but ’tis the truth. Graduating is, therefore, both liberating and terrifying.

But, oh god, it is so much more LIBERATING than terrifying!

After TWENTY years, this will be my first year totally free from the school system. It’ll be a crucial year for me to figure out how to balance my writing and my life. My nightmare is that I’ll spend my time after graduating as if I were on a LONGGGGGG SUMMER BREAK from school. Why would this be a nightmare? Due to the all-consuming nature of school, during summer breaks, I’ve grown into the habit of BINGE WRITING as in, I write as if the END OF MY LIFE were round the corner. I’ll spend (almost) ALL the hours writing, writing, writing, blogging, writing, networking, and writing, knowing that once I go back to school I’ll hardly have time to write again.

BUT now I need to pace myself. My goal for this year is to discipline myself to:

• Take breaks from writing to cook DECENT meals – following cook books and making tasty meals, rather than living by my university-life motto: “Eat anything! I just need to be full.”
• Eat my meals at the correct time of the day – rather than eating breakfast at 1pm, lunch at 5pm and dinner at 12am – or eating lunch late and eating cereal for dinner.
• Take breaks from writing to exercise
• Take the weekends off to socialise
• READ more books (especially as I no longer have school readings to expand my knowledge)
• Go downtown bi-weekly to my campus library so that I can spend a few hours researching and taking notes for my novel.
• Write at least a chapter a week (I do write a lot, but a lot gets deleted)

At the end of this year, I’ll return to this list and see whether I’ve achieved these goals. And hopefully, by the year’s end, I’ll have hammered into my mind that writing is a LIFETIME journey. If I don’t get published this year, there’s always next year, and the year after that. There is no BIOLOGICAL CLOCK to writing. The apocalypse is not coming any time soon.

While it would be AWESOME to publish within the next few years, it’s also OK to take time with writing. As my father once told me – with the passing of time, writing, like wine, develops more depth and layers.

~

These days I’ve been obsessed with the THE GREAT GATSBY soundtrack while writing:

 

 

Remembering the Reader in Me

(A brief review of Great Expectations (film/miniseries) can be found below).

While working at the library, shelving books, I found myself bewitched. I stared for the longest minute at a very pretty and elegant book-spine. Flutters filled my chest. I wondered why I felt this way… (because, naturally, I analyze every single emotion I feel)…and realized that my subconscious remembered the way it felt to read for pleasure. Of how excited I’d be to take home a book, curl up in the sofa with a cup of coffee, and be swept away into the world of fiction.

This was the feeling I’d forgotten while studying at university, as all I read were scholarly articles and novels from the syllabus which I would never have picked up otherwise. Reading = academics. This kind of attitude towards books affected my writing as well. I approached my writing as if I were writing a research paper: I laboured to find a thesis, then, after much research, would write to prove that point. So actually ENJOYING what I wrote was besides the point – everything was about strengthening my argument. And finishing the darn assignment.

With this approach: My writing and my characters turned stilted. While I once could write for an entire day, now I could only write for 2-3 hours at most before burning out.

However, as I examined why my heart had fluttered at the sight of the book-spine, I was reminded of why I even began writing in the first place. I began writing because I couldn’t find the book I wanted to read (to be more specific: I got my hands on all the Pride & Prejudice Sequels and when I couldn’t find any more I began writing one myself). After work, I therefore marched home, marched into my room, and began rereading my story – not as the writer OF the story, but as a reader. I read with this mindset: I want to WRITE the book that I, as a reader, will love. And this was the point I’d forgotten while re-writing TRC from scratch.

Writing-because-it’s-fun seems like such an obvious approach to writing and yet so many times I (and perhaps other writers) forget along the way due to pressures to write something ‘meaningful’ or ‘original’ or ‘funny’ or ‘angsty’ or ‘romantic’ or ‘historical’ or ‘political’ or ‘psychological’…etc. Or even just to get the friggin’ draft finished so I might proudly type ‘THE END‘.

So, as I read through my story with this mindset (write what I, the reader, will love), I began wondering – what exactly do I love to read of in books? One would think this to be an easy question, and yet, it was actually a question that took time to answer.

The list I came up with was:

• A world of a grey moral landscape. No one is completely ‘evil’ and no one is completely ‘good’
• An antagonist whose noble goal goes awry
• A love story that opens the door to psychological/social/religious strife
• Rich in history
• A flourish of insight into the workings of a character’s mind
• Moors, rain, fog, ballrooms, greatcoats, cravats, voluminous gowns *wistful sigh*
• An evocative/descriptive writing style
• Epic character development
• Edginess
• An escapist quality

That’s the book of my fantasy.

That’s the book I want to try and write.

Dear Readers,

What kind of books do you enjoy? What are the qualities in a book that leaves a deep impression in you or induces a fit of fan-craziness?

~

ON A TOTALLY DIFFERENT NOTE….

I recently watched the BBC miniseries of Great Expectations (2011). It doesn’t really bring anything new to the table, but, it’s an entertaining watch. Oh, wait, it does bring something new: Pip steps into a bawdy house. ‘Nough said. I enjoyed the darker, edgier quality to this series.

Then, within that week, I discovered that BBC had a FILM adaptation of Great Expectations (2012) and now, because it is a costume drama, I must force myself to watch it… though I already know the beginning, middle and end of the story…

Two adaptations of Great Expectations within the span of a year… How curious…