Cross-Dressing and the Novel:
Women Warriors and
Domestic Femininity Catherine Craft-Fairchild
D
uring the eighteenth century the phenomenon of female crossdressing captured the public imagination: factual accounts of
women's adventures in men's clothing appeared in newspapers, chapbooks, and memoirs, while ballads, plays, and novels offered fictional
renderings. Those narratives that commemorated real-life transvestism
typically portrayed labouring-class women who cross-dressed in order to
secure some of the economic and social advantages accorded to men.
Ballads singing the praise of female soldiers and sailors also concerned
themselves with the vicissitudes of lower-class life. By contrast, plays
and novels depicted cross-dressing as either a whimsical or a vicious activity of the well-to-do, often undertaken to advance various sexual or
political intrigues. Novelistic renderings of female transvestism differed
from dramatic ones in the degree to which they blamed and punished
the cross-dressed figure. While writers in each of the various genres
united in denouncing the predatory "female husband," only the novelists
condemned more "benign" forms of cross-dressing.
Historians following Ian Watt have argued that realism is one of the
hallmarks of the novel; however, in their portrayal of transvestite women,
eighteenth-century fictions departed markedly from fact. Recent theorists
insist upon the importance of intertextuality, claiming that literary texts
do not exist as organically unified wholes, but only exist in relation to all
other texts; yet the early novelists do not seem to have taken their models of female cross-dressing from theatrical performance. Neither drawn
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION. Volume 10. Number 2, January 1998
172 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION
from the life nor lifted from the drama, eighteenth-century novelistic depictions of cross-dressing must have served purposes other than those of
verisimilitude. My sense, as this essay will bear out, is that the transformation of the cross-dressed woman signals the early novel's commitment
to portraying, and thereby constmcting, a domestic ideal.
The most numerous accounts of female transvestism during this period
are found in what Dianne Dugaw has called "Anglo-American Female
Warrjor ballads"-ballads, in other words, that celebrate the adventures
of women who went to war as soldiers or sailors. Dugaw has catalogued
and discussed 120 of these ballads that, she notes, tend "to be an interrelated and coherent body of songs ... with a prototypical internal
structure."' Typically, the ballads concern themselves with the heroine's
disguised pursuit of a sweetheart in the military, her activities on land or
sea, tests of her bravery during battle, contretemps involving her manly
gallantry with the ladies when on leave, and her eventual reunion with
and maniage to her lover.'
Whether influenced by the ballads, or influencing them, real-life accounts often take on a similar shape. The chapbook rendering of The
Surprising Life and Adventures of MARIA KNOWLES (c. 1810) by William
Fairbank, for example, contains exactly the same plot elements as the
standard warrior woman ballad. Another biographical work, the anonymously written fife and Adventures of Mrs. Christian Davies (1740)
emphasizes that Kit Davies enlisted in the army to search for a husband forcibly taken into service. In one of the most famous factual, or
perhaps semi-factual, narratives, The Female Soldier; Or, The Surprising Life and Adventures of Hannah Snell (1750), the missing husband,
whom the heroine pursues over land and sea, has voluntarily absconded.3
Newspapers of the period also abound with stories of women romantically en cavalier. In "Extraordinary Circumstance," The Emes records
the adventures of a young woman who fell in love with the captain of
a merchant vessel: "The attachment was mutual. The captain was, however, obliged to sail for America, and thither, after having waited in
1 Dianne Dugaw, Warrior Wowcn and Popular Balladry, 1650-1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press. 1989). p. 91.
2 Dugaw, pp. 92-93.
3 See The L f c mdAd,cnrurer of Mrr Chnrem Dotter. Communly Collrd Morhtr Rnrr, ed Sir
John Fonescue (London Peler D a v i e ~1928). and Tht Fcmulc S d d w Or, The Surpnscng Lfc
ond Adhenlures oftlmnah Snrll, ~nlro.Dianne Dugau (Lap Angelcr Wdllam Andreus Clark
Memorial Library. 1989)
CROSS-DRESSING A N D T H E NOVEL 173
vain for his return or intelligence about him, she determined to go. She
then formed the extraordinary resolution of laying in a stock of sailor's
clothes."4 Another woman, the Annual Register reports, "having a husband whom she dearly loved ... [who] inlisted in a marching regiment,
and had been in Germany two years: having not heard from him in all that
time, she was determined to range the world in search of him; and being informed that we were sending more troops over, she came to a
The London Chronicle tells of a
resolution of entering as a ~oldier."~
young woman named Anne Holt, who, having fallen in love with a fellow servant who ran away to enlist in the Duke of Richmond's regiment,
"equipp'd herself in [some clothes he left behind] ...determining to share
his fate, and listed into the same regiment ... where she learned to play
upon the fife and beat a drum, in which capacity she was in all the expeditions to France, [and] was wounded at St. C ~ S . "A~ fourth woman
appeared as a male recruit in order "to be sworn into the service of
the East-India company"; when her sex was discovered, she explained
that she had a husband "whom she dearly loved, at that time in India, [and] that her life was miserable without him, and nothing should
prevent her in her resolution of going there."'
Both biographers and writers for the newspapers were sympathetic to
women who cross-dressed for romantic reasons. The love and pursuit of
a sweetheart or husband marked this form of female cross-dressing as
both heterosexual and temporary; these women, in other words, were not
viewed as adopting their disguises in an effort permanently to usurp male
privileges. Thus, the periodicals invariably refer to them as "poor girls"
and find their histories romant ti^."^ The Times, for example, calls the
"young and delicate" Mary Anne Talbot "a spirited female" for bleeding
~ London Chronicle, reporting on a
"in the cause of her c ~ u n t r y . 'The
Scottish female soldier, comments that "She was extremely alert in the
manual exercise of a soldier, was sober, and attentive to her duty: In
short, till the discovery was made, she was always looked upon as one
of the best men in the corps."1°
4 The Times (London), 9 February 1835, p. 1, col. 4.
5 The Annual Register, or a Vicw of the History, Politick, andlitcroture, offhe Year 1761 (London:
R. and J. Dodsley. 1762). August 1761.4144.
6 London Chronicle; or, Universal Evening Post, 21-23 July 1763, p. 79, col. 1.
7 Annun1 Regisrcr. November 1769. 12:148.
8 The 7 h r , 9 February 1835, p. I , col. 4.
9 The 7imimss. 4 November 1799, p. 3, col. 4.
10 London Chronicle, 7-9 June 1759. p. 448, col. 3.
174 E I G H T E E N T H - C E N T U R Y FICTION
Given this sort of context, the historian, as well as the journalist, felt
safe in praising these martial women. Thus, for her biographer, Christian
Davies is a "brave Soldier, a tender Mother, an affectionate Wife, a true
Lover of her Country, and a Pattern of Patience under a continued Series
of misfortune^."'^ Hannah Snell is universally lauded for transcending
feminine timidity and attempting the manly virtues: "But sure if Heroism,
Fortitude, and a Soul equal to all the glorious Acts of War and Conquest,
are Things so rare, and so much admired among Men; how much rarer,
and consequently how much more are they to be admired among Women?
... Therefore let this our Heroine ... be both admired and e n c ~ u r a g e d . " ~ ~
The absence of lovers or spouses, however, was not the only thing
to lure women into cross-dressing. Equally numerous in periodicals and
memoirs are accounts of women who sought the social and economic
freedoms men enjoyed. An orphan, Mary Anne Arnold, "found that boys
of her age who went to sea earned more money, were better fed, were
'thought more of,' and in every way in a superior condition to hers. Upon
this Mary Anne determined to renounce the petticoat and to become a
~ailor."'~
Deborah Sampson, the American "Female Soldier in the War
of the Revolution," as her life-story is subtitled, was tired of her menial
service with Deacon Thomas's family and desired to travel; thus, she
enlisted as a soldier and " s w e ~ e [ d ]from ... [her] sex's sphere for the
sake of acquiring a little use& acq~isition."~~
In spite of the desire for mobility and money exhibited by these
transvestites, the men who chronicled the women's exploits still sympathized with them. The rimes correspondent noted that Mary Anne Arnold
"has well done her work as a strong active boy in this ship. ... Captain
Scott ... has promised that she shall receive her pay just the same as if
she were to continue to do a young mariner's duty during the whole passage out and home."lS Herman Mann extols Sampson as a woman in
whom are blended "the peerlessness of enterprise, the deportment, ardor and heroism of the veteran, with the milder graces, vigor and bloom
of her secreted, softer sex." He ends by saying, "We have now seen the
distinction of one female. May it stimulate others to shine."lh
11 1. Wilson. The Brirish Hemine: or, on Abridgement of the Luh and Advenrurcs of Mrs. Christian
Dovies, commonly coll'd Mother Ross, intro. I. Peter Obrian (London: T. Cooper. 1742), p, ii.
I2 The Female Soldier, pp. 2. 41.
13 The Times, 28 December 1839, p. 7, col. 5.
14 Herman Mann. Thc Femnle Review: Life of Deborah Sampmn, The Female Soldier in the War
cflrhe Revolurion (1797: New York: Arno Press, 1972). p. 112.
15 The Times. 28 December 1839. p. 7, col. 5.
16 Mann. pp. 137-38. 251.
CROSS-DRESSING A N D T H E N O V E L 175
Such mild treatment was not accorded to a third type of male impersonator: the woman who "became" a man in order to live with or
many someone of the same sex. One woman "was convicted at the
Guildhall, Westminster, for going in man's cloaths, and being married
to three different women by a fictitious name, and for defrauding them
of their money and cloaths: She was sentenced to stand in the pillory
at Charing-cross, and to be imprisoned six month^."'^ Another female
transvestite "was committed to Southwark bridewell ... for defrauding a
young woman of money and apparel, by manying her."lS Sarah Paul,
"the female husband ... appeared in her proper dress before ... [the]
Magistrate, who ordered her man's apparel to be burned in his presence, and laid the strictest injunction on her never more to appear in
that character."19 The most infamous male impersonator, Mary Hamilton, whom a homfied yet fascinated Henry Fielding wrote about in The
Female Husband (1746), "was try'd for pretending herself a man, and
manying 14 Wives. ... After a debate of the nature of the crime, and
what to call it, it was agreed that she was an uncommon, notorious
cheat, and sentenc'd to be publickly whipt ... [and] to be imprison'd
for 6 months."21' As Lynne Friedli notes, "That passing women were
prosecuted for fraud suggests that the major issue was deception and
the consequent usurpation of rights and privileges." Similarly, Kristina
Straub argues that Hamilton's "attempt to assume the social and sexual privileges accorded to men ... marks the divide at which pleasurable
ambiguity becomes transgressi~n."~'
Hamilton's transgressions were disturbing to people of her time, one presumes, both because her actions
drew attention to sapphic desires and practice^,'^ and because same-sex
marriages like hers held the potential for permanence. Female husbands
17 Annual RegLrfer, July 1777, 20:191-92.
18 London Chronicle, 22-25 March 1760. p. 291, col. 1.
19 London Chronicle, 5-8 April 1760, p. 338, col. 2.
20 The G c n r l e m ' s M n g a i n e , and Hirlorical Chmniele, November 1746. See also Henry Fielding.
The FcmnIe Husband ond Other Writings, ed. Claude E, Jones (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. 1960). Terry Castle offen a detailed exploration of the implications of Fielding's
ambivalence towards Mary Hamilton: "And those mixed reactions she elicifsrecoil and fascination, fear and attraction, the desire to deny and the desire to commemorate--are a sign of
a larger ideological tension in Fielding: between his wish for 'natural' distinctions between the
sexes-a theology of gender-and his countemding, often enchanted awareness of the theatricality and artifice of human sexual roles." "Matters Not Fit to Be Mentioned: Fielding's The
Female Husband," E L H 49 (1982). 604.
21 Lynne Friedli. "'Passing Women'-A Study of Gender Boundaries in the Eighteenth Century."
Sexual Underworlds of ~ h cE n l i g h r e ~ l p n l ,ed. G.S. Rousseau and Roy Porter (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Ress, 1988). p. 237; Kristina Suaub, Sexual Suqeclr: EighhenlhCenlury Players and Sexual Ideology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992). p. 145.
22 "Sapphists" was, as Randolph Trumbach points out, the eighteenth-century term most analogous.
176 E I O H T E E N T H - C E N T U R Y F I C T I O N
whose partners said nothing were slow to be discovered and were able
to find paid employment within the communities in which they lived.13
Fictional renderings of cross-dressed women, however, rarely portray
"female husband^."^' Far more common and popular during the period
were dramatic or novelistic depictions of masculine disguise undertaken in the interests of heterosexual romance. In the theatre, numerous
"breeches parts" allowed actresses to display their attractive persons,
wooing both an unsuspecting lover on the stage and the members of
the audience in front of it?' Viola in Shakespeare's Twelfh Night, Rosalind in As You Like It, Margery Pinchwife in Wycherley's The Country
though not identi&, to our word "lesbian." He Vaces the changes in attitudes towards female
same-sex desire during the eighteenth century, illustrating that "the development of the sapphist
role began slowly after midcentury." "London's Sapphists: From Three Sexes to Four Genders
in the Making of Modem Culture," Body Guards: The Cultuml Politics of Gender Ambiguiry,
ed. Julia EpsIein and Kristina S w u b (New York: Routledge. 1991), p. 114. 1 am indebfed to
Trumbach's article for the light it sheds on the treatment of the "female husband" and for the
references he makes in his notes to periodical accounts of female transvesfism which led me
to the Annual Regisfer and the London Chronicle. Friedli's noes in "Passing Women" offend
citations to the Genhmnn's Magazine: Julie Wheelwright's notes in Amazons Md Military
Maids: W o m n Who Dressed os Mcn in the Pursuit of Life, tibeny ond Happinem (London:
Pandora Press, 1989) guided me to pertinent issues of T k T i m s of London.
23 The Annual Register, for example, records a case of a woman "who cohabited with another
woman, lately deceased, 36 years, as her husband, and kept a public-housc at Poplar a great pal
of that time. ... She suppomd the character she had assumed with reputation, as a fair dealer,
and had served every office in the parish, except !hat of church-warden, which she was to have
been next year, had not the discovery been made" (June 1766, 9:lL6). The London Chmnicle
recounts two similar cases: the first that of a woman who "five years ago manied a woman
at Bolton Piercy, with whom she has lived very agreeably ever since, acting sometimes as a
farmer's servant, and at other times as a bricklayer's labourey (31 January-2 February 1760.
p. 117, col. 2). m e second woman "went by the name of John Chivy. She dressed always in
man's apparel, and passed for a man; and nmithstanding she had been married upwards of 20
years, her sex [was] never discovered till her death. She followed the employment of husbandry"
(London Chmnicle, 1 6 1 8 February 1764, p. 161, col. 2).
24 The few cases of "female husbands" appearing in novels seem to he pornographic. In The
Gallant Hermaphmdia: An Amorous Novel (London, 1687), the anonymous author transforms
a farcical wedding into a "substantial and authentick'' one by revealing the cross-dressed female
masquerader to hide more under her costume than one might expect: "the Bride was very
much Surpriz'd to find that Nature, liberal to Iphigsnia, had indow'd her with both Sexes:
that our Illustrious Hermaphrodite had obtain'd from the bounty of a laudable Stock, what
the weakness of a tender Age had scarce made her sensible of' (pp. 122-23). In the Ncw
Atalontis (1709), when Mary Delariviere Manley discusses the "new Cabal" of women who.
having "wisely excluded that rapacious Scx ... have all of Happiness in themselves," she mocks
their sapphic activities as an imperfect minoring of heterosexuality, an aery nothingness that
can "only subsist in Imagination." The Novels of Mary Dalarivicn Monlcy, ed. Patricia K&ster
(Gainesville: Scholars' Facsimiles and Reprints. 1971). 1:4344. Similarly, in Fonny Hill, John
Cleland insists. "fwlery from woman to woman" offers ?be shadow [rather] than the substance
of any plewud'. he shoui Fanny turning quickl) fmm the lasc~vtau\,agmg Phoehe to oblun
the more "cubstanlral" joys offered by m n F m n ) HI!!: or. Memom of o W o r n of Plearure.
ed Peter Waencr
- (1748-49. New York Penzum
- Books. 19851. D. 71
25 Pat Rogers argues that "It was central to the effect that the actress's femininity showed through:
indeed, the aim seems to have been to draw special anentian to her charms, either physically
or through some dramatic nudge. ... Most actresses p e n the opportun~tyto talre a prominent
CROSS-DRESSING A N D THE NOVEL 177
Wife, Hellena in Behn's The Rover, or Silvia in Farquhar's The Recruiting Oficer were just a few of the many cross-dressed parts available to
the prettiest and most popular actresses during the course of the century. During the theatrical season of 1750, when Hannah Snell made
money by singing nautical songs and performing her military exercises
to approving crowds at Sadler's Wells, Peg Woffington was still playing her popular breeches roles of Silvia in The Recruiting Oficer and
Sir Harry Wildair in The Constant Couple at Covent Garden, while Mrs
Pritchard acted =ola in Twelfth Night and Mrs Clive the title character
in The Country Wfe at Dmry Lane.26
Admittedly, the support and approval for women in male attire,
whether on the battlefield or on the stage, dwindled as the eighteenth century drew to a close. As Thomas Laqueur explains in Making Sex: Body
and Genderfrom the Greeks to Freud, understanding of gender and sexuality underwent a change during this period: "An anatomy and physiology
of incommensurability replaced a metaphysics of hierarchy in the representation of woman in relation to man." In short, Laqueur writes, "the
female body came to be understood no longer as a lesser version of the
male's (a one-sex model) but as its incommensurable opposite (a two-sex
model)."27 Such an oppositional model of gender depended for its stability upon the maintenance of a clearly visible line of demarcation between
the roles of men and women; cross-dressing, in violating the boundaries
between separate spheres, came increasingly to be perceived as a threat.
If, under a one-sex model, female transvestism could be regarded as a
natural effort to "move up" the chain-of-being, with the advance of a twosex model it became both unnatural and subversive. In Sexual Suspects,
Straub notes: "By the end of the century, discourse about the crossdressed actress is both more condemnatory of the practice ... and more
insistent that female cross-dressing ... was mere travesty, an obvious parody which left gender boundaries unquestioned."zB Jean Marsden agrees:
"by the end of the century" theatrical transvestism "proved to be an
increasingly disturbing spectacle"; "To the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, the specter of androgyny undermined a social system that
breeches role were young. instvltly identifiable by the audience, and familiar in the stock female
repenoire." "The Breeches Pan,"Sexunliry in Eighteenth-Century Britain, ed. Paul-Gabriel Bouce
(Manehester: Manchester University Press, 1982). pp. 255-56.
26 See Dennis Arundell. The SforyofSSodler's Wells. 1683-1964 (London: Hamish Hamilton, 19651,
p. 17; and The London Stage. 16M)-1800. Pan 4: 1747-1776, ed. George Winchester Stone
(Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1962).
27 Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex: Body ond Genderfrom the Greeb to Freud (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press. 1990). pp. 6. viii.
28 Straub, p. 127.
178 E I G H T E E N T H - C E N T U R Y F I C T I O N
featured extreme polarization of the sexes, thus calling into question the
gender differentiation on which that system was based."29 As I have argued elsewhere, late-century biographers, like the critics of the theatre,
endeavoured to re-establish extreme polarization of the sexes by feminizing or domesticating the cross-dressed women whose lives they recorded;
they, too, were becoming uneasy about the female transvestites' sexual
and social ambig~ity.~"
If, by the turn of the century, theatre reviewers and biographers
were somewhat hostile to the practice of cross-dressing both on and off
the stage, novelists anticipated their hostility by several decades. Latecentury chroniclers and theatre-goers barely tolerated female transvestism, but late contemporary novelists showed a marked aversion: in books
published between 1790 and 1835, any character who dares, even fleetingly, to don a male disguise is condemned. Socially ostracized or killed,
these fictional characters met with a harsher fate than the living women
they partially resembled.
The tendency to punish cross-dressing, whether or not it is linked to
other sorts of transgressions, begins early in novels. In Eliza Haywood's
Love in Excess (1719-20), although the chaste Moletta tirelessly and selflessly works to advance the romance of her cousin Camilla and Monsieur
Frankville, when she herself falls in love with the Count D'Elmont and
adopts the disguise of a page to accompany him from Italy to France, her
elopement throws her "distracted father ... into a fever, of which he lingered but a small time."3t Violetta blames herself for her "shameful flight"
and calls herself "the murderer" of her father (p. 295); tormented with
love and with guilt, Violetta sickens and lives only long enough to see
D'Elmont engaged to many another (pp. 294-97).
In Mary Davys's The Accomplished Rake (1727), an unnamed woman
of propelty who comes en cavalier to a masquerade in order "to wrong"
her husband's bed "for his own ease" (in other words, to provide an
29 Jean I. Manden. "Modesty Unshackled: Dorothy Jordan and the Dangers of Cmss-Dressing,"
Studier in Eighteenth-Century Culture 22 (19921, 21. 23.
30 See Catherine Craft-Fairchild, 'The Politics of 'Passing': The Scandalous Memoir and the
Novel," Illicit Sax: Identify Politics in Early Modern Cuhurc, ed. Thomas OiPiem and Pat Gill
(Athens: University of Georgia Press. 1997). pp. 45-67.
31 Eliza Haywood. Love in Eheccsr: or, The Fatal Enquiry. ed. David Oakleaf (Orchard Park. N.Y.:
Broadview Press. 1994). p. 273. References are to this edition. In Charlotte Dacre's The Libertine
(1807; New York: Arno Press, 1974), the cmss-dresser's plot and plight are remarkably similar,
except that in this work the heroine. Gabriella. succumbs to Angelo before fallowing as his
page, and it is her fall from chastity, rather than her elopement, that brings an her father's
mortal illness. At her death, she mumen. "ajust Gad v i s i t b t h e death of my father upon me1-1 ton am dying-of a brohn hcan!" (3:241-42). 1 am indebted to Catherine Decker for
bringing this work to my attention.
CROSS-DRESSING A N D T H E N O V E L 179
heir for his estate) is punished with that husband's subsequent death.32
Although she comes in disguise as a man to a man (the rake hero Galhard) and from a man (her husband) for the purpose of begetting yet
another man (the desired s o n b i n short, although she does little more
than put men into relationship with each other, her cross-dressed adultery is treated with severity. While the woman herself insists that her
infidelity is intended to be a comfort to her beloved spouse for, after eight years of mamage, the absence of a son is to him a "bitter pill
that takes away the sweets of life ... the smarting wound ... [he] always
feels" (p. 288), the results of this brief episode are painful. At her return to her home, she finds her husband "ill of a fever which increased
till it killed him" (p. 310); the child she bears is a daughter rather than
the longed-for son (p. 309); and the rake who has fathered her child refuses her subsequent offer of herself and her estate in matrimony (p.
310).
As in the fiction of Haywood and Davys, cross-dressing in both early
and later novels is one of a few transgressions-the loss of chastity being
another-that refuses recuperation within the marriage plot. Late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century novels, however, tend to be more
self-conscious than earlier works in linking female transvestism, whether
transitory or extended, with the corruptions of morals and behaviour
regarded as inherent in women of independent means and genteel education. Upper-class female education-in subjects such as music, dancing,
and French-would make the young woman "show" well in the marriage
market. Yet, teaching women how to use self-display to attract a highplaced mate had the secondary result of fostering a taste for public display
that, by the turn of the century, jarred with emerging ideas about feminine modesty and decorum. Gradually, a different sort of education for
women found favour-a more practical education that would result in
moral behaviour and the prudent execution of housewifely duties.') Anxieties associated with this shift in values found expression in the novel:
32 Mary Davys, The Accomplished R a h ; or. Modern Fine Gentlemn, Four before Richardron: Selected English Novels. 1720-1727, ed. William H. McBurney (Lincoln: Univenity of Nebraska
Press. 1963). p. 288. References are to this edition. For a more detailed analysis of the homosocial relations in The Accomplished Rake, see Catherine Craft-Fairchild, Marquerode ond
Gender Disguise and FCIM/C/&nti.y in Ei@reenfh-Cmtury Fictiom by W o r n (University
Pack: Pennsylvania State University Press. 1993). pp. 34-50.
33 Such is the education advocated by notable late-century writen. Mary Wollstonecraft deplored
the frivolousness of women's education that allowed them to acquire only "a smattering of
accomplishments; meanwhile sVength of bady and mind are sacrificed to libertine notions of
beauty, to the desire of establishing themselves ... by marriage. And this desire making mere
animals of them, when they many they act as such children may be expected to act:-they dress;
they paint, and nickname God's creatum."Wollstanecdt feared that the inadequacy of genteel
female education would render women unable "to govern a family with judgment, or take care of
180 E I O H T E E N T H - C E N T U R Y FICTION
cross-dressing, one of the most flamboyant forms of attracting attention to oneself, functioned as a potent symbol of women's refusal to
relinquish their prior public status to serve private domestic roles.
In Elizabeth Inchbald's A Simple Story (1791), for example, Miss Milner's masquerade costume of ambiguous gender signals her inability to
accommodate herself fully to domestic life. Although, as Inchbald's biographer James Boaden asserts, the novelist herself had appeared in
breeches parts on stage, "as every other fine woman in the profession
had done," and "probably appeared ... in the male habit" at masquerades, when she came to write about cross-dressing, Inchbald condemned
the practice. Boaden speculates that "Miss Milner may be said to be fashioned out of the indiscretions with which the fair authoress's judgment
reproaches her own inequality of temper, and pertinacious adherence to
her self-will."H Pertinaciously self-willed, indeed, "From her infancy ...
indulged in all her wishes," addicted to "Balls, plays, [and] incessant
company," Miss Milner retains, in spite of her guardian's best efforts to
eradicate the quality, "an immoderate enjoyment of the art of pleasing,
for her own individual happiness and not for the happiness of others."'S
When she dresses for the masquerade in a costume that the servants
cannot distinguish from male dress (the footman repeatedly swears that
"she was in men's cloaths," pp. 15940),% Miss Milner does so with
care "that her dress should exactly fit, and display her fine person to
the best advantage" (p. 154). Her delight in public display and admiration makes her lover, Lord Elmwood, regret his engagement, for a
"horror of domestic wrangles-a family without subordination-a house
without ceconomy-in a word, a wife without discretion, had been perpetually present to his mind" (p. 142). Miss Milner's wilful behaviour
before marriage+xemplified by her cross-dressing-foreshadows her
adultery after marriage, and the latter crime results in her being eradicated from the text by a slow death and replaced by a daughter who is
the poor babes whom they bring into the world"A Vindication of fhe Rights of W o r n , ed. Carol
H. Poston (New York: W.W. Nonon, 1988). p. 10. Similar ideas found expression in the works
of Hannah More and Maria EdgewoRh, a subjed explored by Elizabeth Kowaleski-Wallace in
T k i r Fatkrs' Daughters: Honnoh More. Maria Edgeworth ond Paniorchd Compliciry (New
York: Oxford University Press. 1991). For a detailed discussion of the gradual shift in the form of
women's education promulgated by conduct-books, see Nancy Armstrong, Desire ond Domestic
Fiction: A Politico1 History of the Novel (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987).
34 J a m s Boaden, Memoirs ofMrs. Inehbald, 2 vols (London: Richard Bentley, 1833). 1 : 1 4 M I .
35 Elizabeth Inchbald. A Simple Story, ed. J.M.S. Tompkins (New York: Oxford University Press,
1988). pp. 15, 27. 19. References me to this edition.
36 Terry Castle o&rs a close analysis of the ambiguities of Miss Milner's costume in her chapter
on Inchbald's novel in Morquerode Md Civilization: T k Comivalesquc in Eightccnth-Century
English Culture Md Fiction (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986); see especially pp.
310-13.
CROSS-DRESSING A N D THE N O V E L 181
educated in the "school of prudence-though of adversity" (p. 338) and
whose tastes are all domestic.
Similarly, in Catharine Maria Sedgwick's Hope Leslie; or, Early Times
in the Massachusetts (1827). aristocratic pretensions and love of bodily display personified by a conspicuously cross-dressed woman must
be obliterated from the text before domestic harmony can reign. Labelled a "buttefly," Rosa in her finery offends against the sumptuary
laws of the American colony whose domestic comforts she and the parasitical Sir Philip Gardiner invade." "A fantastical wayward child," Rosa
in her "vanity ... persists in wearing a velvet Spanish hat, with a buckle
and feathers, most audaciously cocked on one side" (p. 200), along
with a "lace ruff, which was ordinarily arranged with a care that betrayed his [Rosa's] consciousness how much it graced his fair delicate
throat" (pp. 243-44). Sedgwick is not content, as Inchbald is, with relegating the man-woman to the hinterlands and to a leisurely demise.
Instead, Sedgwick blows her to bits; Rosa throws her lamp into a barrel of gunpowder, thereby becoming the instrument of her own and Sir
Philip's violent, sudden, and complete annihilation. After the death of
these body-conscious aristocrats, the Puritan couple, Hope Leslie and
Everell Fletcher, overcome the obstacles standing in the way of their
union and marry.
In Harriet and Sophia Lee's "The n o Emilys," from their Canterbury Tales (1832). another body-conscious woman, led to believe that she
will inherit a vast estate, uses cross-dressing to exact her revenge when
she does not obtain the wealth that she expects. Emily Fitzallen, disguising herself as the page Hypolito, appears to be a lovely boy: "His dark
locks broke in redundant curls over the fairest forehead in the world, and
played upon his throat and neck, the heat having obliged him to throw
open his shirt-collar."38 Like the cross-dressed female characters in the
drama, Fitzallen uses the occasion of her costume both to show off the
beauties of her person and to seduce the hero, the Marquis of Lenox. Unlike the transvestite women in Restoration and eighteenth-century plays,
however, Emily Fitzallen's purposes in adopting male dress are sinister: she seduces the Marquis in order to render his subsequent maniage
to the heroine, Emily Arden, bigamous. She then blackmails him, tormenting both the Marquis and his wife and disrupting their domestic
peace. Fitzallen comes near to effecting the death of both her enemies,
37 Cathanne Mana Sedgwxk. Hupt Lashe. or Earl) limes tn rhs Mcwmrhurenr, ed Mary Kelley
(New R r u n w e k Kulgcrs Unnervt) Press. 19871. pp 127-28 References are lo U l ~ sed~uon
38 Haniet and Sophia Lee, "The Young Lady's Tale: The Two Emilys." Canterbury Tales (New
Y o k AMS hess. 1978). l:207. References are to this edition.
182 E I G H T E E N T H - C E N T U R Y FICTION
but ends up dying herself instead, and her demise is particularly grisly:
beaten by her own servants, Fitzallen is left "Almost without power to
move, ghastly and livid, as if already in the grave" (p. 363). A "living spectre" with "hollow eyes" (p. 363). her skin "once so exquisitely
white and delicate, [was] now frightfully discoloured with bruises, and
black with mortification. This, and the bloody bandage on her forehead,
marked too plainly the premature death that had overtaken her" (p. 365).
Emily Fitzallen's death leaves the Marquis and his wife Emily in ideal
domestic accord, largely owing to Emily Arden's abilities to fulfil her
housewifely role to perfection:
Virtue and sweetness, personified in Emily, formed the centre of a wide circletheir mingled beams diffusing a glowing happiness over her own immediate
family-a warm interest towards her friends-and an affecting benevolence
among her dependents; while supplying in her regulated mind, now an example
to her father and husband, and now to her children, she had the rare felicity of
seeing that not one of the many was ever tempted, through the course of her
long life, to diverge from the sphere of so dear an attraction. (p. 379)
The demise of the transgressive woman leaves the domestic woman in
full possession of the field. The textual support for the joys to be found
in the home hinges upon the presentation of two types of femininity-the
one that seeks adulation in public, the other that delights in self-sacrifice
in private--each embodied by one of the two Emilys. The latter version
of femininity prevails at the expense of the former, as Emily Arden's
ascendance begins only when Emily Fitzallen's ends.
The novels under discussion are far more complex than I have room
to illustrate here, but my necessarily cursory treatment indicates a pattern that can be found within the most disparate of texts: the cross-dressed
woman, through her transgressions, marks the boundaries that came to
constitute proper femininity in the nineteenth century. By establishing binary oppositions-setting the wretchedness of the transvestite against the
familial bliss of the domestic woman-novelists hedged round the crossdresser's threat. What journalists and memoirists treated mildly-male
disguise undertaken in the interests of heterosexual romance-novelists
treated severely, allowing what was potentially subversive instead to be
employed to serve the dominant ideology.
In The Female Soldier, after recording numerous deeds of daring and
after detailing Hannah Snell's several war-wounds (she "received a Shot
184 E I G H T E E N T H - C E N T U R Y FICTION
in the Groin, six Shots in one Leg, and five in the other"), the anonymous
author concludes:
She is not to be put in the Lists with the fictitious and fabulous Stories of a
Pamella, kc. ... Here is the real Pamella to be found, who in the midst of
thousands of the Martial Gentry, preserved her Chastity by the most virtuous
Seatagems that could be devised. ... these, together with many more Circumstances, are ... Virtues infinitely surpassing the Adventures and Virtues of our
romantick Pamella. ...This is a real Pamella; the other a counterfeit;this Pamella
is real Flesh and Blood, the other is no more than a ShadowJ9
At first glance, this comparison of the brawny, bold female soldier
with the delicate, timid Richardsonian heroine seems ludicrous-after
all, while Snell "was in hopes of acquiring some Glory as a Soldier"
and therefore "behaved with the greatest Bravery and Intrepidity" in
battle, Pamela cannot even escape from Mr B.'s Lincolnshire estate because she is "terrified by the bull and the [report of] robbers.""' On
closer scrutiny, however, if the two heroines differ markedly, their narratives have one thing in common: sexual conflict replaces and thereby
covers over class conflict.
In Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Novel, Nancy
Amstrong argues that, within Richardson's Pamela,
Competing class interests are ... represented as a struggle between the sexes
that can be completely resolved in terms of the sexual contract. ... Pamela's
successful struggle against the sexual advances of Mr. B transformed the rules
of an earlier model of kinship relations into a sexual contract that suppressed
their difference in station. Rather than that of a master and servant, then, the
relationship between the protagonists of these competing kinds of fiction may
be understood as that of male and female."'
By shifting the ground of the debate, Richardson eluded close examination of the issues surrounding a master's violence towards and imprisonment of his servant-Mr B.'s ability to control the justice system and his
economic power. Instead, Pamela enters into all the minutiae of the advantages of companionate marriages over arranged ones. Through his
narrative sleight-of-hand, Richardson transforms the villainous, tyrannical estate-owner into the heroic and benevolent domestic patriarch; he
39 The Female Soldier, pp. 15, 40-41.
40 The Female Soldier. pp. 14-15. Samuel Richardson, Pamela; or, Vinue Rcwanied, ed. Peter
Sabor (New York: Penguin Books. 1980). p. 193. References are to this edition.
41 Armstrong. pp. 49. 110.
CROSS-DRESSING A N D T H E N O V E L 185
leaves male authority intact even while he changes the location of its
operation.
Similarly, by ending with references to Pamela, the author of The
Female Soldier elides the difficulties surrounding the ambitious and ambiguous figure of Hannah Snell. As a woman who impersonated a man
with some success, Snell opened out her economic possibilities, and,
its ending notwithstanding, her narrative records her insistence on being paid her military wages. Still, by closing as he does, the narrator
shifts attention from the economic or class issues to refocus it on sexual ones: Snell's major accomplishment is not her ability to do the work
of a man. Instead, it is to preserve her chastity when surrounded by
sailors. The narrator's insistence on this point transforms female virtue
from something external and tangible (the ability to put the body forward to labour courageously) to something internal and emotional (the
ability to regulate one's desires and remain chaste).
Armstrong argues that novels as a whole underwent an analogous
process during the latter part of the eighteenth century. Along with
conduct-books, the novel created and defined a domestic woman whose
main attributes were psychological rather than physical. To establish her
presence in the world, the novel needed to work against several other
ideological strains. Armstrong writes:
In the model I am proposing, culture appears as a struggle among various political factions to possess its most valued signs and symbols. The reality that
dominates in any given situation appears to be just that, the reality that dominates. As such, the material composition of a particular text would have more
to do with the forms of representation it overcame-in the case of domestic fiction, with its defiance of an aristocratic tradition of letters and, later on, with its
repudiation of working-class culture-than with the internal composition of the
text per se."
To make a middle-class ethos of domesticity the prevailing norm, Armstrong insists, novels "portrayed aristocratic women along with those
who harbored aristocratic pretensions as the very embodiments of corrupted desire, namely, desire that sought its gratification in economic and
political terms"; aristocratic women, in valuing bodily display and public amusement, resisted enclosure in a physically regulated private sphere.
"The laboring woman," writes Armstrong, is equally "unfit for domestic duties," however, because "she, too, located value in the material
186 E I O H T E E N T H - C E N T U R Y FICTION
body." Thus, the domestic woman needed to be constructed "in opposition to certain practices attributed to women at both extremes of the
social scale."43
Armstrong argues for the emergence of a middle-class consciousness
in novels, using terms somewhat similar to those employed by historians who endeavour to define what separated the middle class from the
upper or aristocratic classes during this pre-industrial period. In Family
Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall identify the different methods of obtaining income
that distinguish upper from middle ranks:
Perhaps the single greatest distinction between the aristocracy and the middle
class was the imperative for members of the latter to actively seek an income
rather than expect to live from rents and the emoluments of office while spending their time in honour-enhancing activities such as politics, hunting or social
appearances. The liquid form of middle-class property which had to be manipulated to ensure its survival, much less growth, encouraged a different ethos,
emphasizing pride in business p r o w e ~ s . ~
Davidoff and Hall, like Armstrong, emphasize that the middle class broke
with aristocratic showiness: "Aristocratic claims for leadership had long
been based on lavish display and consumption while the middle class
stressed domestic moderati~n."~J
The norms of middle-class female propriety and domesticity developed not only in reaction to the lavish display of the aristocracy, but
also in contrast to the public employment of their bodies by wage-earning
. ~ hiswomen in agricultural jobs, trades, and other menial p o ~ i t i o n sThe
tory of female labour during this period is carefully traced in Deborah
43 Armstrong. pp. 60, 76. 75.
44 Leanore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, F m i l y Fonuncs: Men m d Women of the English Middle
C l m , 178&1850 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987). p. 20.
45 Davidoff and Hall. p. 21. They note that it is "notoriously difficult to pinpoint income bands
which will clearly identify a specific group" (p. 23). Since a woman's rank would usually have
been determined by the economic slatus of her father or husband, locating the line dividing upperclass from middle-class women is even more problematic. In chap. 2 of Companions wilhoul
Vowr: Relatiomhips among Eighreenth-Century British W o m n (Athens: University of Georgia
Press. 1994). however. BetN Rizm embarks u w n this tvoe of socio-economic analvsis. afferine
compellmg ewdence that a "dowr) of f10.000 uas the sum that could be regarded. mmmally.
a\ a g o d fonunc
Probably an m o m of f1.000 uas the mtmmal requmment for the
maaenance of a full London e-tabl~rhmcnt"(p 34) W o m n with nncomcc more slender mght
marry to augment their possessions, retin to the country, or become companions to w o m n
wealthier than themselves; the last was an unpaid position that oRen placed the genteel woman
in an uncomforlabk classless l i m b (p. 27).
46 The women who ems-dressed dunng the elghteenth cenlur) were Jmosl universally members
of the llbounng classe, Hannah Snrll', nanatstc begms b) establnrhmg that "the Faher of
our Herome was no more than a Hormr and Dyer" (The Femule Soldrer. p 41, xhde C h n r l m
..
-
CROSS-DRESSING A N D THE N O V E L 187
Valenze's The First Industrial Woman; Valenze writes that "the late eighteenth century provides a critical point of transition in the history of work,
when ideas about productivity and productive processes themselves underwent significant transformations.'"' Like Armstrong, Valenze sees a
gradual ascendancy of middle-class ideology and argues that the result
of pressing "a domestic ideal upon the working classes" was an alteration in attitudes towards women's work: from possessing "a rightful
place" within the workforce and being lauded for their contribution to
the nation's productivity, women workers came to be regarded "as s e e
ondary wage earners and ... aberrant females existing outside their proper
sphere."4s Valenze's conclusions about the way in which "The history of
work ... informed the construction of gender and class" parallel those
of Armstrong, although arrived at through different means and circulating within a different context: "The special calling of middle-class
women was clear: they were to eschew flagrant display, which suggested moral and sexual laxity, and embrace simplicity and the duties of
domestic life. ... Middle-class women were flanked on either side by inappropriate models of their sex: aristocratic women flaunted [sic] moral
proscriptions while plebeian women were completely ignorant of them."49
The theories offered by Armstrong. Davidoff and Hall, and Valenze
provide clues as to the reasons for the alterations made in the crossDavies's biography claim that she was born "of parent3 whose probity acquired them that
respect from their acquaintance, which they had no claim to from their birth." Her father was a
"mahster and brewer" (tifiMd Advensrcs. p. 1). Lbborah Smpsan's forebears were iarmrs,
though her father became a sailor; Sampson herself worked as a servant, as did another female
wanior. Mary Anne TalboI. Charlone Chsrlre, although she claims some prestige as the offspring
of Colley Cibber, is nevertheless frank about her cunent poverty, and jokes about the N I m U r S
that she smacked her father in the face with a flounder when working as a fishwife. Narmrive
of the Life of Mrs. Charlone C h a r k (1755). ed. Leonard R.N. Ashley (Gainesville: Scholars'
Facsimiles and Reprinu, 1969). p. 141.
47 Deborah Valenze. The Firsr lndusrrial Woman (New York: Oxford University Press. 1995). p. 6.
48 Valenze, pp. 4. 182. 11.
49 Valenzc, pp. 6. 1 M 5 . In "Female Sailors Bold: Transvestite Hemines and the Markers of
Gender and Class," Dianne Dugaw traces Ihe effect3 of the uickling downward of middle-class
ideals of femininity on the composition and reception of narmtives a b u t warrior-women: "An
increasingly commanding concept of female delicacy pulled against and ultimately put an end
to the conventions and convictions that made possible the celebwed sailing and soldiering of ...
cross-dressing women." "Female Sailors Bold,"lmn Men. Wwden Women: GederrmdSeajwing
in the Arlanric WorU 1700-1920, ed. Margaret S. Creighton and Lisa Norling (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1996). p. 53. For a questioning of the "domestic thesis," one that
argues in favour of a "gap between theory and practice" that aJlowed real eighteenth-century
women certain f o m of "publicity," see Lawrence E. Klein's "Gender and the PublidPrivate
Distinction in the Eighteenth CenNry: Some Questions a b u t Evidence and Analytic Rocedure."
Eigighrccnrh-CenturySrudies 29 (1995), 97-109: "high theory and prescripfive literature represent
only one layer of a society's knowledge. ... even when theory was against them, women in the
eighteenth century had public dimensions to their lives" (pp. 101-2).
188 E I G H T E E N T H - C E N T U R Y F I C T I O N
dresser's story as it filtered into the eighteenth-century novel: if novelistic portrayals of female transvestism differ from those in biographies,
newspaper stories, and theatrical works in their condemnation of the
cross-dressed figure, the novels were simply the genre that began first to
exhibit a commitment to middle-class domestic ideology.
Because of its association with both aristocratic and lower-class life-the
former in the drama, the latter in ballads, biographies, and periodicalsthe image of the manly woman could be used to lash the outer limits
of the social spectrum and drive them towards a middle-class norm. By
endowing the cross-dressed woman with money and status enough to allow her economic and social viability, novelists enabled the transvestite
to approach the heroine as an equal. But by strongly rejecting the crossdresser's example of vain, robust, and independent activity, writers cordoned off some of the more powerful threats to bourgeois domestic
life.
Such, for example, is the case in Richardson's Pamela. As every reader
recognizes, Mrs Jewkes's criminality is figured forth by her masculine
attributes. Pamela says of her, "She is a broad, squat, pursy, fat thing,
quite ugly. ... She has a huge hand, and an arm as thick-I never saw such
a thick arm in my life. ... I dare say she drinks. She has a hoarse manlike voice, and is as thick as she's long; and yet looks so deadly strong.
... surely she cannot have the nature of a woman!" (pp. 152, 176). What
is more, Mrs Jewkes is proud of her physical strength: she boasts to
Pamela that "I'll manage such a little provoking thing as you, I warrant
ye!" (p. 163). In Pamela's eyes, Mrs Jewkes's masculine appropriations
are unnatural and border on evil.
That Mrs Jewkes's masculinity is undesirable is obvious; what is less
obvious in Richardson's novel is that, in their headstrong love of their
own wills, their own persons, and their own amusements, aristocratic
and upper-class women also embody masculine attributes that render
them unfit for domestic life. Mrs Arthur is "a little too masculine" (p.
83). as is Miss Tomlins, whom Mr B. would not many "by reason of
his objections to the masculine airs of the lady" (p. 488). Lady Davers,
as she unleashes her violent rage against her brother's marriage through
physical assaults on Pamela, might also be considered a subtle instance of
improper masculinity in a woman. When Lady Davers pushes Pamela,
slaps her, and holds her gown, her behaviour resembles that of Mrs
Jewkes, and Pamela responds with similar fearfulness: she was "very
CROSS-DRESSING A N D ' T H E N O V E L 189
much afraid of her, (for I have a strange notion of the fuly of a woman
of quality when provoked)" (p. 421). Mr B., in describing his sister's
efforts to dominate him and the household when they were children,
draws attention to Lady Davers's disruptive masculine boldness: "for
she, being ... older ... was always for domineering over me. ... I used, on
her frequently quarrelling with the maids, and being always at a word
and a blow with them, to call her Captain Bab ... and I used to tell her,
she would certainly beat her husband" (p. 431).
Concern with and control over bodies is, in Pamela, a masculine
province. Only Mr B. himself, all laced and glittering in his birthday
suit, is allowed vain display (p. 100); Pamela's dress, by contrast, will
be plain because "gentlemen of taste are more pleased with intrinsic neatness, than with outward ornament" (p. 301)-in women, that is, if not in
themselves. While Pamela enumerates the many duties of housekeeping
that she will perform (p. 299), Mr B. discusses hunting and other strenuous amusements. The outdoor realm is his; the indoor realm, hers. Pamela
explicitly maps out these distinct masculine and feminine spheres, and
uses the figure of the manly woman to define what it means to overstep
the bounds.
Pamela depicts masculine women at both extremes of the social scale,
but allows them to retain their feminine dress. Later works that portray
women who endeavour to "pass" attain a greater economy of representation, since the cross-dressed figure can stand in for both transgressive
bodies of women, the wealthy and the working-class. In Frances Burney's The Wanderer; or, Female Dificulties (1814) or Charles Brockden
Brown's Ormond; o r The Secret Witness (1799). the cross-dresser is
a well-to-do woman enamoured of the maxims circulated within Revolutionary France. When the mad Elinor Joddrel or the bloodthirsty
Martinette de Beauvais discourse on the "Rights of Woman," their eccentricities condemn both upper-class women who would demand to be
heard in the public arena and lower-class women who would dare fight
for their rights in France.
Elinor Joddrel's suicidal spectacle in The Wanderer is a monstrous
display in drag that causes her to be labelled a lunatic and placed under
a physician's care until she is "reformed" along proper feminine lines.
In order to stage a dramatic p ~ b l i cscene in which she plans to kill
herself, Elinor dresses as a "deaf and dumb" foreign man "wrapt in a
large scarlet coat ... open at the breast. to display a brilliant waistcoat of
coloured and spangled embroidery ... and a cravat of enormous bulk."'0
50 Frances Bumey. The Wanderer; or. Fcmnlc Difiulties, ed. Margarel Anne Doody, Robe* L.
190 E I G H T E E N T H - C E N T U R Y FICTION
Everything in the scene points to Elinor's relentless exhibitionism and,
as one character words it, "dangerous singularity" (p. 165). This rhetoric,
used to quarantine the cross-dresser, highlights the dilemma she poses:
if Elinor's choices were indeed so singular-were hers and hers alonewhy would such vast quantities of ink need be spilled to contradict her
irreligious impulses, condemn her actions, and insist she is unworthy of
imitation?
In addition to its association with culpable personal display and distastefully violent actions, Elinor's cross-dressing is linked to the "evils"
of French Revolutionary thought. Harleigh, the novel's hero, cries, "Unhappy Elinor! ... into what a chaos of errour and of crime have these fatal
new systems bewildered thee!" (p. 184). Her physician calls her "a lady
so expert in foreign politics, as to make an experiment, in her own proper
person, of the new atheistical and suicidical doctrines, that those ingenious gentlemen, on t'other side the water, are now so busily preaching,
for their fellow-countrymen's destruction" (p. 371). In his description of
the way in which Elinor literally embodies-that is, displays through violence to her own body-the doctrines of the French Revolution, Mr Naird
forgets the fact that several of those doctrines came from women, particularly from lower-class women. Indeed, in her speeches on the "Rights of
Woman," Elinor echoes the Dechration of the Rights of Woman,a document composed in 1791 by Olympe de Gouges, the daughter of a butcher
from Montauban.J1 De Gouges writes:
Man, are you capable of being just? ...Tell me, what gives you sovereign empire
to oppress my sex? Your strength? Your talents?...
Woman, wake up ... discover your rights. ... Oh, women, women! When will
you cease to be blind? What advantage have you received from the Revolution?
A more pronounced scorn, a more marked disdain. ... courageously oppose the
force of reason to the empty pretentions of superiority ... deploy all the energy of
your character, and you will soon see these haughty men ... proud to share with
you the treasures of the Supreme Being. Regardless of what barriers confront
you, it is in your power to free yourselves; you have only to want to.JZ
The sentiments of the Declaration are not far in spirit or content from
Elinor's speech to Harleigh:
Mack, and Peter Sabor (New York: Oxford University Press. 1991). p. 357. References an to
this edition.
51 Womn in Revolurionnry Paris, 17894795; SelcctedDocurncntsTranslared wirh Nores and Commnrary. Mns. Darline Gay Levy. Harriet Branson Applewhite, and Mary Durham Johnson
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press. 1979). pp. 64-65.
52 Levy, Applewhite. and Johnson. pp. 89, 92-93.
CROSS-DRESSING A N D T H E N O V E L 191
Listen ... to a subject which you [Harleigh] have long since, in common with
every man that breathes, wished exploded, the Rights of woman: Rights, however, which all your sex, with all its arbitrary assumption of superiority, can
never disprove, for they are the Rights of human nature. (p. 175)
To Juliet, Elinor enjoins, "Debility and folly! Put aside your prejudices,
and forget that you are a dawdling woman, to remember that you are
an active human being. ... Oh woman! poor, subdued woman! thou art
as dependant, mentally, upon the arbitrary customs of man, as man is,
corporally, upon the established laws of his country!" (pp. 397, 399).
Margaret Anne Doody argues that "Burney wishes Elinor's questions
to ring in the mind, and her statements to arouse some sympathy in the
reader";J3 if so, it is curious that Burney gives these speeches to a character marked off as suicidal and mad rather than to the exemplary Juliet.
Elinor's ambiguous position as the man-woman within the text calls into
question all of her assertions and, by implication, those of historical persons such as de Gouges. Like cross-dressing itself, French Revolutionary
Republican demands came largely from the labouring classes; within The
Wanderer, these class issues are displaced onto sexual ones so as to be
more easily dismissed: desirous of exploring "a new road for life" since
she finds "the old one ... worn out" (p. 156), Elinor instead finds "that
she has strayed from the beaten road, only to discover that all others
are pathless!" (p. 873). Within this recurring metaphor, ideological positions that depart from "the long-beaten track of female timidity" (p. 343)
are rejected as impossibilities. Elinor's espousal of revolutionary theory
is never answered rationally within the text, but is instead made to seem
a violation of "an innate feeling of what was due to the sex that she was
braving, and the customs that she was scorning" (p. 154).In short, in the
world c o n s t ~ c t e dwithin The Wanderer,Elinor embarks on what is "unnatural" to her sex; only under the care of physician and friends is she
brought back to her "natural" self. By coding Elinor's behaviour in this
way, Burney's novel hides the ideological apparatus that actually constructs what it seems to describe; notions of which forms of behaviour
are natural and which unnatural for a woman are made to seem the stuff
of common sense.
If Elinor's insistence on freedom of sexual choice for women is unnatural, equally peculiar is the blood lust of Brockden Brown's Martinette
de Beauvais in Ormond. A person of "large experience, vigorous fac53 Margaret Anne Dwdy. Frances Burney: The Life in the Worlrr (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. 1988), p. 337.
192 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION
ulties, and masculine attainments,"" Martinette initially is attractive to
the heroine of the novel, Constantia Dudley. As she recounts her experiences as a woman warrior in both the American Revolutionary War
and the French Revolution, Martinette's "wild spirit of adventure" (p.
167) seems at first heroic largesse. Not only does she cross-dress, but
Martinette also crosses class barriers, as she reflects:
My character was known to many officers, returned from America, whose report,
joined with the influence of my conversation, rendered me an object to be gazed
at by thousands. Strange vicissitude! Now immersed in the infection of a military
hospital, the sport of a wayward fortune, struggling with cold and hunger, with
negligence and contumely. A month after, passing into scenes of gayety and
luxury, exhibited at operas and masquerades, made the theme of inquiry and
encomium at every place of resort, and caressed by the most illustrious among
the votaries of science and the advocates of the American cause. (p. 168)
Finally, however, what characterizes Martinette, and makes Constantia
regard her with antipathy, is her love of carnage: "she communicated
the tidings of the fall of the sanguinary tyranny of Robespierre. Her
eyes sparkled, and every feature was pregnant with delight, while she
unfolded, with her accustomed energy, the particulars of this tremendous
revolution. The blood which it occasioned to flow was mentioned without
any symptoms of disgust or horror" (p. 170). When Constantia recoils at
the bloodshed, Martinette answers, "Danger, my girl? It is my element.
... Have I not been three years in a camp? What are bleeding wounds
and mangled corpses, when accustomed to the daily sight of them for
years? Am I not a lover of liberty? and must I not exult in the fall of
tyrants, and regret only that my hand had no share in their destruction?"
(pp. 170-71). When Constantia again insists, "But a woman-how can
the heart of women be inured to the shedding of blood?," Martinette
exults, "My hand never falteredwhen liberty demanded the victim. ...
[I killed] thirteen officers at Jemappe." Finally, Martinette admits that
she would have assassinated a Prussian general, then "died by her own
hand ... attest[ing] her magnanimity by slaughtering herself," had not
the Germans retreated (p. 171). Like Juliet regarding the suicidal Elinor,
Constantia "shuddered and drew back" from her guest (p. 172).
I quote from this scene at length to show its resemblance to the treatment of the female "furies" who fought during the French Revolutionary
Wars. One male Girondin, A.J. Gorsas, wrote scathingly of these women
whom he saw as
54 Charles Bmkden Brown. Ommond; or The Secret Wme.vs. ed. Ernest Marchand (New York:
Hafner Publishing. 1937). p. 157. References are to this edition.
CROSS-DRESSING A N D T H E N O V E L 193
undoubtedly excited by the furies; they are armed with pistols and daggers; they
make declarations and rush to all the public places in the city, bearing before
them the standard of license. ... These drunken bacchanalians have been received
in the midst of the General Council. ... And what do they want, what do they
demand? They want to ... make heads roll, and to get themselves drunk with
blood.5"
Another speaker testifies that such women are "monsters," "blooddrinkers," "furies to be guillotined, vomited up from Hell to destroy the
French human race." Yet another insists that they are "furies, who wanted
to butcher us alive."56 Even more forcefully than the metaphors used to
paint Elinor's portrait in The Wanderer, the images conjured up by these
descriptions, and their analogous passages in Ormond, serve to deflect attention away from the demands made by the French "Amazons"--calls
for better education and improved employment opportunities for women,
for example-towards the "unnaturalness" and perversities of their physical exertions. It comes as no shock that the aftermath of Revolutionary
violence in France resulted in few significant gains for women, nor that
in England the condition of women worsened during this period.s1
In Brockden Brown's O m n d , Constantia's impoverished gentility
forces her to occupy a precarious position in which she must choose between competing models of femininity; both her social and her economic
status are dependent upon her choice. Constantia is poised between the
aristocratic decadence of the "denatured" Martinette de Beauvais, who
exerts a temporary sway over her mind, and the bourgeois respectability
of Sophia Westwyn, who in the end removes the heroine to her own unexceptionable family in England. Sophia herself has redefined her social
55 Levy. Applewhite. and Johnson, pp. 15-55.
56 Levy. Applewhite, and Johnson, pp. 292.296.
57 In Iheir intmductory notes to Ihe Revolutionary texts Ihey m s l a l e from Ihe French. Levy.
Applewhite, and Johnson write: "Revolutionary Government came to an abrupt end in July,
1794. The ineamine Themidorims disbanded or transformed the institutional bases of women's
political power and limjted theu influence as citizens. The dnve for refom, of the legal and
soclill condlrlon of women I d ended There were no f u h r petitions and speeches ask~ngfor
educational mnovations, d ~ v o m or
. n w l equality. Women's leaden from emher periods w e n In
eclipse. ... Once again women suffered hunger and want. ...A generation of nvolulianaries was
silenced" (pp. 271-73). In England. as Regina Mary Janes writes. "the course of Ihe revolution
~n France' bmught about a "npudnaron of the \oubulary of revolutmn " 'On the Recrpt~onof
Mary Wollswnecraft's A Mndtcotron of r k Rlghrr uf Wumon "Journal oflhe Hsrrory ufldrar 39
(19781.297 The outcry agslnst figurer such as Mary Wollstonccraft and Mary Hays s exarmncd
by lanes and by 0anyi J&s in "Frekes. Monsters &d the Ladies: Attitudes fo ema ale Sexuality
in the 1790s." Literature MdHisfory, 3rd series. 4 (1995). 1-24. Margaret Anne Doody sums up
the situation well when she writes that Ihe turn of the century "was a good time for right-wing
triumph and a bad time ... for p l e a for more social justice" (Frances Burncy, p. 332).
~
~
~
~~~
~~
~
-
~
~~
194 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION
position; the daughter of an infamous mother (Sophia leaves unspecified what actions constitute her mother's "enormity" of "pollutions"
that result in "public shame," but hints at prostitution, a "loathsome and
detestable trade," p. 186). Sophia's restraint, composure, and dutiful behaviour have nevertheless allowed her to form a respectable matrimonial
alliance. As is the case with Pamela, Sophia's beautiful body becomes
conflated with her qualities of mind, so that when she is painted, she is
depicted as the Madonna: "Hence, among those whose religion permitted their devotion to a picture of a female, the symbols of their chosen
deity were added to features and shape that resembled mine" (p. 201).
While Sophia dominates the latter portion of the text, Martinette disappears from it. Revealed as the sister of the villain, Ormond, she is
dismissed from Brown's novel (p. 241).
Dismissed, that is, at least overtly. One of the curiosities of the woman
warrior within the novel is the way that she occasionally manages to
become part of the fabric of the heroine's life. In Ormond, for example,
it seems that Constantia has internalized some of Martinette's attributes,
for while her initial response to the threat of rape is a Clarissa-like
powerlessness-she threatens to kill herself8-finally, Constantia turns
the lcnife against her tormentor and becomes Ormond's "executioner" (p.
240). Perhaps it is this brief resemblance to the man-woman that prevents
Constantia from becoming a married woman by the end of the novel.
In both The Wanderer and Ormond, cross-dressing is a trope that marks
off the types of desire, behaviour, and excess that need to be sacrificed for
a woman to take up her place within the household. While the ideological
pressures of these novels attempt to portray domestic life as "natural"
to a womm-in other words, as the mode of life dictated by feminine
nature-the episodes of transvestism work against this representation to
suggest how much force is required to position a woman within this
private sphere.
Maria Edgeworth's Belinda (1801) serves as the best test case, for it
combines all the elements found scattered throughout other contemporary novels. As Elizabeth Kowaleski-Wallace observes in Their Fathers'
Daughters: Hannah More, Maria Edgeworth, andPatriarcha1 Complicity,
in Belinda, the
taste for domestic pleasures-although ~tural-must be taught to those who
fail to recognize them. ... The ascendency of the ideal new-style patriarchal
58 " O m d ! Beware! Know that my unalterable resolution is to die uninjured. I have the means in
my power. Stop where you are; one step more. and I plunge this knife into my hem" (p. 234).
C R O S S - D R E S S I N G A N D T H E N O V E L 195
family depends, in other words, on the important negation or absence of all
other competing modes of social life. ...
In Belinda the "not spoken of'--or, rather, what the novel takes pains not to
articulate-is the way in which human desires, female desires in particular, do
not always accommodate themselves to the exigencies of domestic life."
The two people in Edgeworth's text whose desires most conspicuously
depart from those that can be contained within the home are Lady Delacour and Harriet Freke. The latter is a "downright ugly" woman who has
nothing "feminine about her."M Lady Delacour describes her friend by
saying that, "though she had laid aside the modesty' of her own sex, [she]
had not acquired the decency of the other" (pp. 47-48). Harriet Freke
cross-dresses out of a love for power, desire to shock, and deep fondness for exhibitionist display. She is "always at ease; and never more so
than in male attire, which she had been told became her particularly" (p.
47). Mrs Freke identifies herself as a female soldier-she "went through
the manual exercise at the word of command from her officer" (p. 2 5 0 t
but she does not take up arms as Hannah Snell and Deborah Sampson
did, for the defence of their countries. Instead, Mrs Freke performs "for
the diversion of the spectators" (p. 250) a parody of these earlier heroic
women.
In addition, like Elinor Joddrel, Mrs Freke is activated by French
Revolutionary zeal, and endeavours to engage Mr Percival in an argument
about the "Rights of Women" (p. 229). Unlike Elinor, however, Harriet
Freke makes little sense on the subject; her maxims and slogans are an
incoherent pastiche of the writings of several intellectual^.^^ Mrs Freke's
ranting, which ends in her splitting her dress, is like her wielding of
weapons: it makes both her and the labouring women on the barricades
who also shouted "Vive la liberfi!" (p. 229) appear ridiculous.
In whatever she does, Mrs Freke is "delighted to be stared at," or to
be, as Lady Delacour phrases it, the spectacular "staree" (p. 43). Lady
Delacour admits that she functions as "starer" (p. 43) when compared
with Mrs Freke; nevertheless, she, too, is enamoured of physical display.
Because she loves admiration "extravagantly" (p. 125) and is "ambitious
of pleasing universally" (p. 41), Lady Delacour can be talked into crossdressing through appeals to her vanity: Mrs Freke assures her that she
59 Kowaleski-Wallace, pp. 122-23.
60 Maria Edgeworth. Belinda, ed. Kathryn J. Kirkpatnck (New York: Oxford University PRSS,
1994), pp. 43, 47. References are to this edition.
61 Colin and Jo Atkinson untangle the skeins of thought contained in Mrs Freke's speeches and mce
them back to their sources; see "Maria Edgewonh. Bclida, and Women's Rights," are-Ireland
19 (1984). 94-118.
196 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION
"should charm all beholders in male attire" (p. 54). The end result of
Mrs Freke's persuasion is, of course, the notorious female duel.
Edgeworth's scene of transvestite trial-by-combat serves to pillory both
the upper-class women who seize male physical prerogative and the mob
of labourers who, while condemning this form of bodily display, would
substitute another for it. Lady Delacour describes the episode:
I had scarcely discharged my pistol, when we heard a loud shout on the other
side of the barn, and a crowd of town's people, country people, and hay makers,
came pouring down the lane towards us with rakes and pitch forks in their hands.
An English mob is really a formidable thing. ... the untutored sense of propriety
amongst these rusticks was so shocked at the idea of a duel fought by women
in men's clothes, that I verily believe they would have thrown us into the river
with all their hearts. Stupid blockheads! I am convinced that they would not
have been half so much scandalized if we had boxed in petticoats. (p. 58)
The "untutored sense of propriety" in this case is as bad as the wrongly
educated fashionable one-if Mrs Freke and Lady Delacour go beyond
the bounds of female delicacy in one way by duelling in drag, the crowd
of town and country people would sink beneath the standard in another
way by allowing fisticuffs in female dress. As in several of the other
novels, the treatment of the cross-dresser in Belinda serves to censure
both ends of the social scale, moving each towards the middle."
Lady Delacour explicitly connects her distaste for private life to her
fondness for Haniet Freke and public frolic. She tells Belinda, "You see
I had nothing at home, either in the shape of husband or children, to
engage my affections. I believe it was this 'aching void' in my heart
which made me, after looking abroad some time for a bosom friend,
take such a prodigious fancy to Mrs Freke" (p. 43). In marked contrast to
these two vain women who "look abroad" for amusement and adulation
stands the fully domestic Lady Anne Percival, a woman content to look
within. Always depicted in the bosom of her family, "in the midst of
her children" (p. 98). Lady Anne seems not to possess a body at all. As
Edgeworth describes her-through the eyes of the novel's hero, Clarence
Hervey-Lady Anne appears a creature of pure sentiment:
Clarence Hervey was so much struck with the expression of happiness in lady
Anne's countenance, that he absolutely forgot to compare her beauty with lady
Delacour's. Whether her eyes were large or small, blue or hazle, he could not
62 It is a fining imny that a "real" male soldier--Clarence Hervey "clad in splendid regimentals" (p.
58)-rescues
these male-impenonaton from their ducking. An oficer driving pigs. the passage
implies, is less absurd than female duellists.
CROSS-DRESSING A N D THE NOVEL 197
tell; nay, he might have been puzzled if he had been asked the colour of her
hair. Whether she were handsome by the rules of art, he knew not; but he felt
that she had the essential charm of beauty, the power of prepossessing the heart
immediately in her favour. The effect of her manners, like that of her beauty,
was rather to be felt than described. (p. 98)
Nancy Armstrong characterizes Pamela as a creature "not ... of flesh and
blood ... but a proliferation of female words and feeling^,"^' a description
that seems more apt for Lady Anne, who is everything that the woman
of fashion is not. When those surrounding Lady Anne describe Lady
Delacour as an unfeeling wife and mother, Lady Anne insists that she
"cannot believe such a being to exist in the w o r l d (p. 103). She asserts,
in short, that domestic and maternal feelings are part of woman's nature.
By contrast, Lady Delacour insists that the hallmark of a "woman of
fashion" is to have "no feeling" at all (p. 29). The logic of Belinda
continually counterpoises Lady Delacour, the woman of fashion, against
Lady Anne, the domestic woman, supporting the latter at the expense of
the former.
Belinda is caught in the middle. A "girl who has nothing" (p. 182)-"She had, at her own disposal, only flOO per annum, the interest of
her fortune" (p. 70)-Belinda, like Brockden Brown's Constantia, must
decide which of the competing models of female life she will select as her
own. Belinda's place in society, socially and economically indeterminate
at the beginning of the novel, hinges upon her choice. Like Pamela,
Belinda has been "educated chiefly in the country" and "had early been
inspired with a taste for domestic pleasures" (p. 7). Unlike Haniet Freke,
who boasts "I never read now. Books only spoil the originality of genius"
(p. 227). Belinda is "fond of reading,"" though she is also, Edgeworth
insists early on, "fond of amusement" (p. 9) and in danger of losing
her domestic attachments in the society of Lady Delacour: Belinda's
"taste for literature declined in proportion to her intercourse with the
63 Armstrong, p. 116.
64 1 this text, as in most eighteenth-century works, reading of romances and early novels is
condemned. The overly sentimental Virginia St Pierre has had her head turned by such reading:
"Virginia devoured ... romances with the p t e s t eagerness" (p. 380). Her being "better read
in romances than" anyone else paves the way for her obsession with Captain Sunderland's
portrait (p. 475). Similarly, Virginia's mother "had been spoiled by early novel-reading" (p.
408). Belinda's choice of reading material is far more prudent than this, however; she takes up
the Moral Tales (which, of course, would become Edgeworth's term for her own fiction) of Jean
Prancais Marmontel. Adam Smith's The Tkcnrv, of, Mom1 Sentimenrs. John Moore's TravcLr.
and Jean dr La Bruyhe's The Chororrcrr or rhr Monnm of the Age (Bdmdu. pp 174. 228
and accornpanymg endnotes) By 1801 ed~fymgworks such as hu. b a h condun-booksand
n m t n e c . ucrr allauable for lmratc uomn
198 E I O H T E E N T H - C E N T U R Y FICTION
fashionable world, as she did not in this society, perceive the least use
in the knowledge that she had acquired" (p. 10).
The duelling scene of the text does more than satirize luxuriants and
labourers-it helps to determine Belinda's choice. After listening to Lady
Delacour's recital of her exploits and witnessing the pain the fashionable
woman suffers after her gun recoils and damages her breast, Belinda concludes that "the want of domestic happiness could never be supplied by
... public admiration" (pp. 69-70). Belinda later tells Dr X-: "I am convinced that the life of a fine lady would never make me happy" (p. 126).
When she removes to the society of Lady Anne, Belinda feels that her
mind has returned to its "natural course" and affirms once again that "domestic life was that which could alone make her really and permanently
happy" (p. 217). Learning from Lady Delacour's misadventures, Belinda
acquires "the good sense and good taste to avoid a display" of herself
(p. 111). From this point on in the novel, Belinda becomes celebrated
for her " p ~ d e n c e . " ~ ~
After she is betrayed by and breaks with Mrs Freke, Lady Delacour
learns lessons similar to those conned by Belinda. The cross-dresser
serves as a scapegoat, for Lady Delacour's "worst characteristics" are
"transferred" to Harriet Freke and then expelled from the novel along
with that objectionable character. In Edgeworth's "Original Sketch of
Belinda," Lady Delacour "had originally been intended to die of breast
cancer."66Literally a scapegoat, Harriet Freke must take on all the "sins"
of. her social circle and be driven from the text; only thus can Lady
Delacour repent and be saved. As Darryl Jones puts it, "Mrs Freke is
what the novel's notions of goodness must define themselves againstmorally, sexually and with regard to gender."67
A similar argument can be made about Elinor Joddrel in The Wanderer and Martinette de Beauvais in Ormond. Elinor's attempted suicide
at the concert where Juliet was to have performed, for example, prevents the latter from "deviating, alone and unsupported ... from the longbeaten track of female timidity" (p. 343). Elinor's sudden appearance and
gadding about in a post chaise preserves Juliet from the scandal of being suspected of making a tryst with the unprincipled Sir Lyell Sycamore
(p. 471). Largely because of timely interventions like these on the part
Towards the end of the novel, Mrs Margaret Delacour comments, "miss Belinda Portman's
character for prudence and propriety stands so high, and is fixed so firmly, that she may venture
to let us cling to it" (p. 459). Indeed, the words "prudence" and "Belinda" are nearly inseparable
in the text.
66 Atkinsons. p. 94; see also the appendix to the Oxford edition, which gives the relevant passages.
67 Jones. p. 18.
CROSS-DRESSING A N D THE NOVEL 199
of Elinor, Juliet remains fit to many the scrupulous Harleigh; one could
say that Juliet's domestic comfort is gained at Elinor's expense.
Using the language of psychoanalysis, Robert Levine writes about
Martinette's function: "Brown generates the more complex psychlogical
themes of the text by obliquely suggesting that submerged in the psyche
of ... [his] idealized heroine is a repressed other self that is potentially
murderous. The other self is exemplified by the seemingly peripheral
Martinette. ... though Constantia in effect expels Martinette, she cannot
rid her world or herself of a violent p~tentiality."~~
Phrasing this another
way, one could say that Martinette is simply a less effective scapegoat
than Harriet or Elinor because some of her qualities inhere within her
look-alike, Constantia.
In Belinda, Mrs Freke is punished for her transvestite transgressions
by being caught in a mantrap; Edgeworth's twists of irony in this scene
ensure that the punishment fits the crime: "Mrs Freke's leg was much cut
and bruised ... and she grew quite outrageous when it was hinted, that
the beauty of her legs would be spoiled, and that she would never more
be able to appear to advantage in man's apparel" (p. 312). Through her
own experience of the injured breast, and through watching Mrs Freke's
finale, Lady Delacour learns that physical violations of feminine codes
of delicacy can result in physical torments; Belinda exerts a "technology
of power over the body," a "threat of the physical enforcement of ...
ideology."" The only way to escape those physical enforcements, Lady
Delacour finds, is to deny the body and concentrate on the mind.
The ideological work of Edgeworth's novel is to turn things physical into things mental or emotional. This, the text seems to assert, is the
domain of women. Like the breast cancer that is transformed from aphysical disease to a mental manifestation," Lady Delacour's cross-dressing
becomes a thing of the mind rather than the body.
Lady Delacour "cherishe[s] and internalize[s] the image of female
68 Robert S. Levine. Conspiracy ond Ronurnce: Studies in Bmckden Bmwn, Coopcr, Hawrhorne.
and Melville (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1989), pp. 50. 52.
69 Charlotte Sussman, "'I Wonder Whether Pwr Miss Sally Godfrey Be Living or Dead': The
Married Woman and the Rise of the Novel," Diocrirics 20 (1990). 100. Sussman is here speaking
of Pornla.
70 Edgewonh never satisfactorily explains how the "hideous spectacle" (p. 32) of the cancernus
breast, whose gruesome appearance strikes hormr into all who view it, becomes a "complaint"
that arises "memly from the bruise" that Lady Delacour received months earlier (pp. 313-14).
The passages about the quack doctor's knowing how to "make a wound hideous and painful"
that Edgeworth inserted as an aftenhought (see Belindo, p. 314 and accompanying endnote)
makes the revelation only slightly more believable.
ZW E I G H T E E N T H - C E N T U R Y FICTION
soldiery" that Harriet Freke presented." Mrs Freke's Amazonian appropriations, for example, become a metaphor for fortitude as Lady Delacour
faces breast surgery. Three times Lady Delacour invokes this talisman: at
first, when telling her story to Belinda, she begins by noting "there certainly were such people as Amazons" (p. 34). Later, she refers to the
ordeal she has decided to undergo as an "amazonian operation" @. 194),
alluding to the fact that these mythical warrior women "removed their
right breasts to facilitate the use of their bows" (n. 34). Finally, when she
considers the squibs launched by public opinion against her disappearance both during and after the surgery, Lady Delacour envisions titles
such as "The Domestic TCte-d-TCte,or The Reformed Amazon" @. 293).
If Lady Delacour's attempts at bodily domination turned the world
upside-down-both Mrs Freke's husband and Clarence H e ~ e yare found
in drag at the beginning of the text (pp. 67, 74ff.). and Lord Delacour
subacquires a horror of being "governed by a wife" (pp. 38, 155)-her
mission to being "a reformed rake" (p. 176) sets her domestic realm
to ideological rights. Finally, despite all the metaphors of "generalship"
that Lady Delacour employs, her victory, like Belinda's, is a mental
"victory over myself' (p. 332). Lady Delacour becomes a successful
domestic woman who learns to regulate her own desires and pursue
her amusements at home. Indeed, after Lady Delacour arises from a
bout of illness, Lord Delacour insists, "I am glad to hear music and
people again in the house ... there is no reasonable indulgence that I
would not willingly allow a wife" (p. 155). Lady Delacour's characteristic pursuits-plays, balls, masquerades, musical performances-become
reasonable when confined to her own drawing rooms and parlours rather
than enjoyed abroad.72
Edgeworth's narrative follows a binary logic in setting up the female
domestic realm. If the unreformed Lady Delacour is contrasted to her
71 Cheryl Gunness astutely comments upon the ways in which Lady Delacour internalizes all her
transvestite experiences: "Although Haniet Freke is ... dismissed from the novel, she is not
dismissed fmm Lady Delacour's mind. ... Thal Lady Delacour has cherished and internalized
the image of female soldiery that Haniet Fnke inspired is even more evident as Lady Delacour
confmnts the possibility of a mastectomy. Rather than envisioning herself, after this operation.
as a deformed. 'hideous spectacle' ... Lady Delacour thinks of it in moE positive, powerful, and
'There ceRainly wwc such people as A m m . ' ... Much later in the novel
soldier-like t-:
... Lady Delacour's metaphors make it clear that she still thinks of herself as a female soldier.''
Unpublished MA thesis. "Womanhood at Home and Abroad: Heroines in the Novels of Maria
Edgewonh and Catharine Maria Sedgwick" (University of St Thomas, May 1995). p. 5.
72 That the ideal household is not Io be configured as the seclusion and solitude Clarence HeNey
forces upon Virginia is signalled by an occurrence of a familiar description: "he hlmed out of
the beaten road, and struck into a fnsh Vack" in order to discover her (p. 363). In its context, the
phrase is meant literally; given the frequency of its use in eighteenth-century litemure, however.
the metaphoric meaning is probably implied.
CROSS-DRESSING A N D THE NOVEL 201
disadvantage with Lady Anne's angel-in-the-house, after her transformation, Lady Delacour is favourably juxtaposed against Haniet Freke.
Lady Delacour's fine mental attainments, those abilities of penetration
into and understanding of the human heart that allow her to perceive that
Mr Hewey is a better matrimonial choice than Mr !Iincent, show up Harriet Freke's petty scheming. Lady Delacour's qualities shine particularly
sterling against Mrs Freke's quirks during the episode of the "horrible letter" intended to damage Belinda's prospects; here, Lady Delacour detects
the fraud and exposes it at her own expense: "instantly, the whole energy of her mind, and fire of her eloquence, burst forth in an eulogium
upon her friend. Careless of all that concerned herself, she explained,
without a moment's hesitation, every thing that could exalt Belinda" (p.
335). Truly, Belinda endorses female delicacy, and does so by vilifying
the woman warrior; as Mr Percival insists, "Delicacy ... is a charming word, and a still more charming thing, and Mrs Freke has probably
increased our affection for it" (p. 255). The transgressions of the female transvestite, far from erasing the lines, serve instead to mark the
boundaries set for properly feminine women.
Maria Edgeworth's Belinda comes to rest on a final binary opposition
of female characters that once again underscores the split between body
and mind necessary for the creation of the fully domestic woman. Virginia
St Pierre, who, like the female soldier, is an amalgamation of elements
of both the upper and lower class (she is at once a penniless rustic and
an heiress of a West Indian planter), comes to represent mere physicality.
Her beauty, which captures and captivates the eye of Clarence Hewey
(pp. 367, 372, 374). is something that he must finally eschew for the
more rational pleasures offered by Belinda:
In comparison with Belinda, Virginia appeared to him but an insipid, though
innocent child; the one he found was his equal, the other his inferiour; the
one he saw could be a companion, a friend to him for life; the other would
merely be his pupil, or his plaything. Belinda had cultivated tastes, an active
understanding, a knowledge of literature, the power and the habit of conducting
herself. Virginia was ignorant and indolent, she had few ideas, and no wish to
extend her knowledge. (pp. 378-79).
Virginia is a woman who responds instinctively rather than rationally,
from the impulses of the body rather than the understanding of the mind.
When she admits to falling in love with "a picture" and then "a dream"
based on that portrait, she says, "I only love his figure, I believe" (p. 468).
She loves, that is, the exterior of the man whose image she has seen. This
stranger-who turns out to be Captain Sunderland--does the same by
202 E I G H T E E N T H - C E N T U R Y FICTION
her: obtaining "a distinct view of Virginia" through his spyglass, the sailor
then concealed himself near her garden "and contemplated at leisure the
budding charms of the fair woodnymph," finally becoming "enamoured"
of what he viewed (pp. 474-75). Lady Delacour says witheringly, "For
ought I know, he is the first knight or squire upon record, who ever
fell in love with his mistress through a telescope" (p. 475). This type
of love, one based on the female body, is negated in the text as surely
as is household management based on female physical force (like that
at Harriet Freke's Rantipole, which estate name, Lady Delacour says,
"gives a just idea of the manners and way of life of the place, for every
thing at Rantipole is rantipole," p. 280). Belinda's and Hervey's union,
which ends the text, is based on mutual esteem and shared tastes; as
Clarence Hervey says of his bride, "I like her a thousand times the better
for not having trusted merely to appearances" (p. 472). Lady Delacour
draws an apt comparison when she follows this remark by saying, "we
have all of us seen Pamela married-let us now see Belinda in love"
(p. 472). As in Richardson's novel, Belinda's act of constructing the
domestic woman deconstructs the female body; this enterprise, here and
in the other late eighteenth-century novels, necessarily does away with
the female soldier.
As elements of the real-life narratives make their way into the
eighteenth-century novel, they become part of the dynamics of competing
ideologies that structure the later fictions. The woman-warrior biographies, like Hannah Snell's, had already begun to align themselves with
the novel and started the process of reconfiguring class issues as sexual
ones, displacing questions of the female soldier's wage-earning capacities onto questions about her chastity. Nevertheless, the early accounts of
cross-dressed women, in their many contradictions and fractures, ended
up finally highlighting the irreconcilability of class differences; not so
the novel, which, like Belinda, controlled competing economies by submerging them in domesticity. The preoccupations with the body of both
the leisured and labouring classes are converted by these fictions into
middle-class sentiment. This fact may explain why the novels remained
long after the biographies had vanished-they successfully established
as common sense the domestic ideology still with us today.
University of St Thomas