Crossdressing, The Theatre, and Gender Struggle in Early Modern England

Howard, Jean E.

doi:10.2307/2870706

Cited by 172 publications

(18 citation statements)

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“…In particular, commercial contact brought home the threat of miscegenation and infiltration which would harm English economic interests at home (Hall, 2006;see Bovilsky, 2008). Religious, racial, and national difference was becoming further destabilized by Moors, Negroes, Romany, and others who were claiming charity on England's shores, not to mention the tensions in gender and class roles shown by crossdressing (Howard, 1988;Bullough & Bullough, 1993;Cressy, 1996) and passing (Mounsey, 2001), fake or disguised identities (a deception reflected in the wording of the 1597-98 vagrant laws) (Eliav-Feldon, 2012). The clandestine presence in England of Spanish and Portuguese converses is only one example of false identities and "counterfeit professions" in an atmosphere of intrigue, espionage, and suspicion.…”

Section: Early Modern Conversions: Fidelity and Inconstancymentioning

confidence: 99%

Teaching Jessica: race, religion, and gender inThe Merchant of Venice

Sicher

2016

Journal of Language and Cultural Education

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The Jew's "fair daughter" in Shakespeare's play The Merchant of Venice converts and marries a Christian, Lorenzo. Recent attention, however, to changing ideas of race and identity in the early modern period has brought into question the divisions of Christian/Jew/Moor. Can Jessica convert and no longer be considered the Jew's daughter? As "gentle" and "fair" is she to be considered gentile and in no way dark (spiritually or racially)? Jessica's conversion has apparently little religious meaning, but rather she is saved from the Jew her father by marriage to Lorenzo, who becomes Shylock's heir. Is Jessica's conversion to be considered a matter of convenience that might, as Launcelot quips, raise the price of hogs, or is it also to be counted as an ideological and racial conversion that reveals underlying anxieties about gender, sexuality, and religious identity? This essay attempts to argue against the grain of the performance history of The Merchant History, which often downplays the role of Jessica or revises the text of the play, and returns to the text in order to contextualize the conversion of Jessica in contemporary discourses of gender, race, and religion in England's expansionist colonialism and proto-capitalist commerce. The conversion of Jessica can be seen in that context as an exchange of monetary and ethical value, in which women's sexuality also had a price-tag. These questions have implications for the teaching of the play and for the understanding of its concerns with unstable sexual, religious, and national identities.

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Section: Early Modern Conversions: Fidelity and Inconstancymentioning

confidence: 99%

Teaching Jessica: race, religion, and gender inThe Merchant of Venice

Sicher

2016

Journal of Language and Cultural Education

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“…Especially, cross-dressing in Elizabethan and Jacobean periods was the issue of it. Howard (1988) informs that "around 1620-James I ordered the preachers of London to inveigh from the pulpit against the practice of women dressing mannishly in the streets of London. at year also saw the publication of SEXUAL TRANSGRESSION FOR POWER AND .…”

Section: Sexual Advancement or Ambiguity?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Viola adopts male dress that is as Howard (1988) indicates "as a practical means of survival in an alien environment" (p. 431). However, this disguise is not the permanent one.…”

Section: Cross-dressing and The Power Exercisementioning

confidence: 99%

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Sexual Transgression for Power and Identity: A Glimpse on Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night

Sharma¹

2015

Crossing the Border: Int. J. Interdiscip. Stud.

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Crossing social restrictions for identity and status is o en the act of dissatisfying group in every society. Shakespearean society which was basically patriarchal and male-dominate set strict restrictions to impose on women's sphere. However, the suppressed women's voice sometimes denied the social restrictions in di erent ways as cross-dressing going beyond the boundary of women's sexuality. Cross-dressing as sexual transgression was o en committed in the actual life of English Renaissance and also in the literary world for independent identity, power and authority. In this regard, this article tries to explore on the sexual transgression committed by the main female character, Viola in the play Twel h Night to get identity and ful ll her inner desire challenging the socially prescribed norms of gender and sexuality. KEYWORDS: Sexual transgression, power and identity, male domination, crossdressing INTRODUCTIONEvery society has certain norms on sexual orientation to control and order the bodily pleasures and behaviors of its people. Sexual transgression then is the process of moving away from the ordered and rational social state to the disordered and irrational one, o en punishable by society or law. Transgression is o en committed by dissatisfying groups or persons who try to cross the restrictions set by the social power structure with the desire to attain freedom and power regarding sexuality or any other aspects of life. Cross-dressing by a woman, for instance, as a socially deviant way makes her easier to enjoy the activities restricted to females.Shakespeare's plays o er a wide range of perspectives on critical reading for generations. Re ecting, basically, on Renaissance socio-political context, many of his plays focus on the issues of gender and sexuality including its deviations. As Rampone (2011) indicates, sexuality plays a highly signi cant role in Shakespeare's plays and problems, because it structures gender and power relations among characters.ough, it is o en controversial that whether Shakespeare, as a representative writer of Elizabethan time, gave voice for the women suppressed within the dominant patriarchy presenting their various deviations in positive light for the betterment of their own life, or just projected the gender stereotype of men-women relationship. However, there is no doubt that he has given a wide range of women characters, many of them more intelligent, consistent and rebellious than male characters. Many of his female characters break the strictly imposed patriarchal social

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“…These two incidents, grouped in Jean Howard's discussion as examples of "actual" lower-class cross-dressing, in fact represent very different engagements with masculine clothing; the prostitute cross-dressed to entice her clientele, indeed to accentuate her available femininity; the soldier's wife wore male costume in an unsuccessful operational disguise; the first was a sexual provocation, the second a practical device or ruse. 44 A cluster of incidents from the ecclesiastical courts of Elizabethan Essex involved women who dressed like men. Susan Bastwick of Stondon in 1578, "whilst she was in service with her father about Allhallowtide last in a merriment came on horseback in a cloak disguised and demanded of him if he had any good ale."…”

Section: Cressymentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender Trouble and Cross-Dressing in Early Modern England

Cressy¹

1996

J. Br. Stud.

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A celebrated article in Shakespeare Quarterly opens with the question, "how many people cross-dressed in Renaissance England?" Jean Howard, who posed this intriguing question, suggests that disruption of the semiotics of dress, gender, and identity during the late Elizabethan and Jacobean periods points to "a sex-gender system under pressure" and a patriarchal culture disturbed by profound anxieties and contradictions. Even if the answer to her question turns out to be "very few," the discourse surrounding the practice reveals an area of critical and problematic unease. Female transvestism on the streets of London, male transvestism on the stage, and vituperative attacks on cross-dressing by Protestant reformers are among the symptoms that indicate that "the subversive or transgressive potential of this practice could be and was recuperated in a number of ways." Dressing boy actors for female roles, for example, was not simply "an unremarkable convention within Renaissance dramatic practice," as some scholars have suggested, but rather a scandalous "source of homoerotic attraction" arousing "deep-seated fears" of an "unstable and monstrous" and feminized self.

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Crossdressing, The Theatre, and Gender Struggle in Early Modern England

Cited by 172 publications

References 0 publications

Teaching Jessica: race, religion, and gender inThe Merchant of Venice

Teaching Jessica: race, religion, and gender inThe Merchant of Venice

Sexual Transgression for Power and Identity: A Glimpse on Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night

Gender Trouble and Cross-Dressing in Early Modern England

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