CROSS-DRESSING IN CONTEMPORARY BRITISH FEMINIST THEATRE

2022

In Shakespeare's time, clothing served as an object of differentiation between men and women. The wearing of the other gender's clothing by an individual was therefore a transgression of social norms. However, in Shakespeare's theater, particularly in the play As You Like It, there is a disruption of gender norms through the presence of Rosalind, a transvestite figure with a transgressive attitude. This reflection will analyze the different speeches of this character who disturbs the fixity of gender binary by wearing male clothing and adopting attitudes that do not conform to her sex. Judith Butler's concept of performativity and pragmatics by the illocutionary acts classified by John R. Searle (1975) will be used as theoretical tools.

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF EDUCATION & PHILOLOGY, 2022

ABSTRACT In William Shakespeare’s As You Like It (1623/1994), cross-dressing is used not only as a theatrical tool to fill in a gap resulting from female physical absence on the Elizabethan stage; it also serves as a symbolic act that opens new perspectives and raises questions about socio-cultural issues related to gender roles and gender performance. This research follows the development of the cross-dressed Rosalind, a female character played by a man and disguised as a man. The study equally considers the question of female agency and power through the female character’s act of disguise. It attempts to show whether Rosalind manages or fails to acquire a self-sufficient identity through her physical transvestism. The scrutiny of cross-dressing as a metatheatrical device enhances the problematization of the matter of gender performance in the play. Keywords: cross-dressing – identity – femininity – resilience – submissiveness – metatheatre.

This MA thesis explores the ways in which William Shakespeare depicts and characterises the cross-dressing heroines of his comedies, the cultural background and the implications of cross-dressing for the depiction of male and female.

South African Review of Sociology, 2017

Young people in contemporary South Africa inhabit a multiplicity of diverse, often contradictory, economic and socio-cultural contexts. These contexts offer a range of possibilities and opportunities for the affirmation of certain identities and positionalities alongside the disavowal of others. Dress-clothes, accessories and body styling-is one of the key components through which, within specific social conditions, people perform these identities. In making statements about themselves in terms of these multiple and intersecting group (or social) historical identities, the meanings soaked into people's dress simultaneously speak to the present and their aspirations for the future. This article reports on a study that explored how a group of third year students at a South African university use dress to negotiate the multiple and intersecting identities available to them in a context characterised by neoliberal democracy and market ideologies that continue to be mediated by the racialised legacies of apartheid. The study employed a qualitative feminist discourse analysis to consider 53 semi-structured in-depth interviews conducted by third year students with other students on campus as part of an ongoing project exploring gender productions and performance. The discussion focuses on student understandings of ways in which contemporary clothes and dress signal gender. The research suggests that while there are moments in which clothes are acknowledged as expressions that can reinforce or challenge inequalities structured around gender, participants are also strongly invested in neoliberal consumerist understandings of clothes as accessories to an individualised self in ways that reinforce neoliberal market ideologies and reinstate hegemonic performances of gender.

As contemporary cinema intersects with both celebrity (Church Gibson 2011) and convergence culture (Jenkins 2006), it is vital that the academic analysis of screen costuming moves beyond the film text to consider the wider institutional processes and consumption practices connected to fashion and spectators. In examining the role of costume and fashion as a source of meaning and pleasure this article forms part of my wider research project, which includes a forthcoming monograph and adopts both textually centred and interdisciplinary cross-media methodological approaches. This methodological shift is reflected in this article – the examination of Shakespeare in Love (Madden 1998) adopts a predominantly textually centred approach focusing on the cinematic representation of Viola / Thomas (Gwyneth Paltrow) in which I argue that costume functions as both a spectacular intervention and a visual narrative of gender transformation and sexual fluidity. In then shifting to a cross-media approach, I will discuss both Gwyneth Paltrow and Keira Knightley in relation to issues of fashion, femininity and celebrity culture. As contemporary popular cinema shifts from character centred narratives to the formation of transmedia worlds existing over multiple media platforms, the text-spectator relationship is one grounded in a participatory convergence culture (Jenkins 2006). In the final section of this article I argue that the meanings and pleasures of cinematic costume are increasingly characterised by what I term ‘tactile transmediality’. Through moving my analysis beyond the film text to explore gaming, cosplay and fashion in relation to the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise (Verbinski 2003, 2006, 2007, Marshall 2011), I will argue that clothing enables a tactile platform in which the spatial distance between the text and the spectator can be bridged via adornment and touch and thus the processes of identity transformation and performativity can be played out in our everyday lives.

This paper takes a look at Shakespeare's use of the crossdressing heroine over the course of his published works in an attempt to determine his constantly transforming view of gender, in particular, the role of women. Taking into consideration the visual nature of both plays and society during the Renaissance, the limitations of medical science, and the complexities of a crossdressing woman played by a man, Shakespeare's works show a clear evolution from thinking of women as lesser men to seeing the two genders as indistinct from one another without societal regulations.

2022

2022/23 "I am not that I play" (Viola, Twelfth Night). From both a gender dynamics and a performance perspective, discuss the theatrical convention of cross-dressing in Shakespeare's time, keeping in mind both the young male actors playing the female parts as well as the female characters often disguising themselves as men.

This essay analyzes the performative aspect of gender identity in a queer romance, Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters. As the novel is set in Victorian times it serves as a means of contrast with the contemporary state and at the same time represents a feminist and lesbian recreation of the silenced history line. Following the life story of Nancy Astley, Waters connects her search for identity with the theatrical performances through which the protagonist explores her body and polarities between the masculine and the feminine. The essay deals with the challenges and options that arise from the rejection of compulsory heterosexuality and points out the fluid and stage-like character of identity formation.

Gender, Work & Organization, 2016

To do or not to do (gender)' and changing the sex-typing of British Theatre Concepts of doing, and undoing, gender have become increasingly prevalent within studies of sex-typed work. However these concepts, as currently figured and applied, contain a significant analytical lacuna: they tend not to register changes in the sex-typing of work. In this study we engage this research gap by addressing the changing sex-typing of British Theatre-specifically, the shift from female dominated amateur to male dominated professional theatre work. We draw upon, and develop, concepts of doing and undoing gender to understand changes in the sex typing of work. In so doing, we explain how spatially and temporally differentiated ways of doing 'male' and 'female', become implicated in how people make sense of, and enact, the changing spaces and times of 'amateur/female' 'professional/male' work. Our analysis of theatre work suggests that, despite recent criticisms of their wider significance, concepts of un/doing gender, are useful to understand broader changes in the sex-typing of work. Thus, it also appears possible to (un)change such sextypings by undoing gender. However, our analysis suggests, such subversive acts remain ineffective, unless those involved in such gendered undoings engage with, rather than renounce, the gendered doings that help enact the changing sex-typing of work.

By engaging with Jonathan Dollimore and Alan Sinfield's (1994) consolidation, subversion and containment theory this dissertation explores how Edmund Spenser and William Shakespeare incorporated female crossdressers within their works to present fictional women as threatening to established Elizabethan gender codes. Transgressive female characters in these works demand particular attention given the insecure variant of patriarchy that had emerged out of Elizabeth I's reign, and the insistent iconography of female power and constancy that was encouraged throughout the final decades of her rule. This dissertation argues that Spenser and Shakespeare presented crossdressing women as figures who had the potential to subvert established notions of patriarchy during the final decade of the sixteenth-century. Shakespeare and Spenser chose to present these female protagonists, during the latter portion of Elizabeth I's reign, as threatening in three distinguishable ways. First, crossdressers conceal their female form beneath male attire, proving both fraudulent in nature and capable of usurping male authority by falsifying their female subordinated gender. Secondly, they evidence a disobedience to masculine authority by using marriage vows and rings to gain advantage over prospective romantic partners while disguised. Thirdly, Elizabethans would have regarded the depiction of women who incorporated a combatant temperament, by wearing weaponry or physically fighting with men, as distinctly provocative. This dissertation examines these figures of transgressive femininity within both the poetic and staged genres. In Spenser's epic poem, The Faerie Queene, the warrior maiden Britomart consistently reinforces accepted gender stereotypes, wilfully containing her own transgressions. Contrastingly, Shakespeare's crossdressing women display an array of subversive potential in both their original intentions to defy male authority and their varied abilities to follow through with their intended deceit. Acknowledgements Introduction: Transgressing Borders and Authority 1 1 Duplicity: 'Conceal Myself What I Am' 6 2 Marriage: Exchanging and Keeping Promises 3 The Significance of 'This Ring' 4 Testing her Mettle: Prosthetic Weaponry and Walking the Walk 5 Combatant Encounters: Bodily and Animalistic Metaphors Conclusion Bibliography I would like to express a profound gratitude to my academic supervisors, Prof. Lisa Hopkins and Dr. Colm MacCrossan, for their unwavering guidance this year. Lisa's expertise and unfathomable insight has been invaluable to me throughout both my undergraduate and postgraduate endeavours. Likewise, Colm's critical enthusiasm and steadfast support has been of immense value to me. I must also express my heartfelt gratitude to Dr. Susan McPherson, who unexpectedly suggested that I undertake this degree in the first place. Without her encouragement, I would not be here today. I also wish to express my appreciation for the Document Supply Services team at Sheffield Hallam University, to Kathy Davies, for all the advice she has provided this year, and to Jessica Higgins, for reading through my drafts and cheering me on. Lastly, I owe a special thank you to my fiancé Michael Pye. You have preserved my sanity for a little while longer.

A modern queer reading of Shakespeare's problem play reveals a great many problems that lie beneath the surface. Superficially, it delves into the complexities of gender performativity, and portrays those who exist outside a strict gender binary as powerful figures that demand respect. However, upon closer inspection, the play often undercuts its own messages and consistently stumbles in an effort to explain non-gender normative behaviors to a heteronormative audience.

Cinémas: Revue d'études cinématographiques, 2012

This article explores several articulations between gender and genre in contemporary British and French costume and heritage fiction. Genre is defined here both as a (gendered) discourse of cultural value that shapes the cultural meaning of costume and heritage fiction, and as a symbolic negotiation of shared cultural concerns. Through case studies of Elizabeth (Shekhar Kapur, 1998) and Lady Chatterley et l’homme des bois (Pascale Ferran, 2006), the author examines changing generic accounts of female desire and sexuality, analyzing both textual and discursive framings of gender and other differences. These films exemplify an emergent attention to the body in intensive states of pleasure and suffering as a form of generic renewal in some recent British and French films. The broader theoretical ambition of the article is to explore how the body operates as a highly coded gendered and generic discourse in costume and heritage fiction.

Theatre Research International, 2000

Cross dressing has been a persistent and long-standing historical phenomenon of human behaviour . A cross dresser is someone who officially identifies as one gender, but sometimes presents her or himself in the apparel and demeanour of the "opposite" gender. For a very long time it was thought that almost all cross dressers were males who enjoyed putting on female clothing, makeup, hair styles and so on. These days, however, such a facile assumption is not warranted. There is a great deal of role playing that takes place within the lesbian community involving cross dressing, and much of it has the same compulsive and sexual undertones as male to female [MtF] cross dressing.