Cross-dressing in the Renaissance

   

English Sumptuary Laws 

      As studied throughout a historical and literary lens, cross-dressing challenges multiple facets of strict gender structuralism in Renaissance culture. While both men and women remain subjected to harsh punishment and threats of moral infestation, the female gender receives more slander due to the belief of inferiority between males and females. In my research, I have uncovered the negative connotations of cross-dressing both in and outside of the theatre walls. By looking at cross-dressing through a historical setting, research shows that cross-dressing for both males and females created a false fluidity within a multi-tiered hierarchy of gender, class, and religion. While a woman appearing as a man and subverting gender roles was preposterous, the monstrosity was dualistic in that men dressing as women subverted the masculine into feminine, thus threating a patriarchal hierarchy established on stage as well as in the social class.
      During a time focused on separation of class as well as gender, the notion of cross-dressing challenged every moral and judicial structure built to ensure order. Women’s own removal from their domestic restraints as well as broadening their social status threatened to expose the cracks in the moralist propriety by alluding to the fluidity of one’s gender and the opportunities that arise due to gender as well as class. In his historical review of cross-dressing and the impact it played outside of a literary world, David Cressy examines how mere articles of clothing began to deteriorate the moralist structure of separatism. Due to the fluidity of gender and gender roles, it has been suggested that the Renaissance era was filled with contradictory gender roles which led to the stress of the sex-gender system (439). However, each gender attempted to achieve different outcomes through cross-dressing and ultimately disguising their true nature. While history does show that female prostitutes sporting mannish attire and hanging around playhouses, Cressy argues that women may have more admirable means behind their taking on male attire apart from lewd and lascivious behavior. Women’s pursuit of justice and protection through cross-dressing enabled them to achieve rights withheld to them due to their gender. By putting on a façade in male attire, women were able to regain fortune or inheritance denied due to their gender, to protect themselves from rape and other sexual injustices, and to fight for what may be rightfully theirs. The admiration of these audacious actions by women often became overshadowed by moral contestation.
      By separating cross-dressing women away from the negative connotations, these women showed bravery, boldness, and cunning wit to achieve status as well as to protect themselves from lewd acts they often were prey to. In relation to the theatre, simply witnessing an act may cause a weak natured woman to go from respectable to deplorable which would then lead other respectable men to go astray. Playhouses often carried the reputation as a breeding ground for ill-will and sexual corruption. Moralist feared that the overexposure would corrupt the society as a whole. Women posing as men or the effeminate male were equally as threatening due to the underlying gender. Women posing as men attempted to create an egalitarian society both within patriarchal social order as well as religious freedom. Women cross-dressing as men posed the problem of freedom from moral obligation and involvement in lewd and lascivious behavior often portrayed by men during the period. While men were equally punished for their misdemeanors, women were often portrayed as monstrous due to the fact they often led men astray to partake in these acts. Moralists as well as King James became concerned of the phenomenon of cross-dressing both in and out of the play houses, which led to pamphlet literature such as Hic Mulier and Haec Vir. Hic Mulier depicts the man-woman, a woman shedding her ornate beauty such as her hair and her domestic limitations to take on the garb of a gender she cannot attain. This pamphlet suggests that women who cross-dressing not only shed their domestic responsibilities and rebel against patriarchal society, but they remove their worth entirely as either man or woman. By attempting to undo the monstrous deformity of their gender, women remove their true virtue within their chaste, obedient gender construct.
      The theatre posed unending anguish to moralists throughout the Renaissance. By enabling men to freely dress as women to portray female parts, it encouraged the weak, emotional, lesser man. Moralists believed that the theatre encouraged immoral homoeroticism by allowing the audience to be exposed to a cross-dressed man. The depiction of the theatre as a means for immoral, erotic exploration became popular belief among moralists and threatened the social structure with the constant fluidity of gender roles. While the audience remained aware of the actor’s true identity, the façade of female clothing denotes the severity of the erotic transgression that may be underway in the minds of the audience members. The playhouse cultivated together a breeding ground of immorality and brought together a disreputable crowd both male and female as well as ranging from all social classes (Capp, 159). As suggested earlier, outrage from King James and moralists fueled pamphlet literature to denounce these transgressions and hopefully restore social order and a patriarchal hierarchy.
      Throughout the Renaissance, the focus on female gender as a threat remains steadfast. While Haec Vir argues that women do not in fact disrupt the social order or grand design, they simply choose how to freely present themselves, the vast majority remained in contempt against cross-dressing whether the true gender was male or female. Sara Gorman argues that the confinement of understanding cross-dressing remains in relation to the patriarchy either by upsetting constructed gender roles or redefining patriarchal construction of gender. The fear of disrupting the social order calls into how closely the laws were based off of moral and religious practices. By allowing religious obligation and subjugation to rule supreme, social order then becomes a construct of religion in the same way gender roles become a construct of patriarchal hierarchy.  In the Renaissance, the incomplete feminine posed a threat on stage as portrayed as well as on a street as disguised due to the blatant disregard of unfair treatment based solely on gender.
 

Works Cited

Capp, Bernard. "Playgoers, Players, and Cross-Dressing in Early Modern 

       London: The Bridewell Evidence." Seventeenth Century 18.2 (2003): 159-

       171. Academic Search Complete. Web. 15 Apr. 2015.

Cressy, David. "Gender Trouble and Cross-Dressing in Early Modern England."

       Journal of British Studies 35.4 (1996): 438-465. JSTOR. Web. 15 Apr. 2015.

Gorman, Sara. "The Theatricality of Transformation: Cross-Dressing, Sexual
      Misdemeanous and Gender/Sexuality Spectra on the Elizabethan Stage,
      Bridewell Hospital Court Records, and the Repertories of the Court of the
     Alderman, 1574-1607." Early Modern Literary Studies: A Journal of                               Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century English Literature 13.3 (2008): 1-                        37. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 15 Apr. 2015.