Quote:
Originally Posted by Clodfobble
I have to say, the whole storytelling convention of a woman dressing up as a man, either to go to war or to hide from the Lannisters or to do whatever else the character needs to do, has always struck me as more than a bit untenable. There are just basic bone structures and other bodily shapes that I feel sure would give away all but the most naturally androgenous women.
Well, turns out it wasn't just Mulan, there are at least 250 documented cases of women--straight women, who had successfully lived up to their culture's standards of femininity their whole lives--dressing up as men to fight in the Civil War. And many of them did it not because they wanted to fight, but because it gave them an easy opportunity to attain the same societal rights as men.
Some weren't even discovered until decades later when they were dying in old soldier homes, the predecessor to VA hospitals. The article's pretty interesting. |
It's a fascinating subject. There was one woman in the eighteenth century who masqueraded as a man and joined the army in an attempt to find her husband. She ended up being awarded a medal (there were no rules to say a woman couldn't at that point). Her gender was only discovered when she took a bullet to her thigh (iirc) and her trews had to be removed to treat her.
What's even more fascinating (to me ;p) is the way stories of women warriors changed across the late 18th early 19th century.
During the 17th and much of the 18th, tales of women dressing as men and going off to fight, either for adventure, or looking for their lost love were popular, both in print and on the stage. But the tenor of them altered around the 1790s. You can see it in particular in the work of Hannah More. In the late 1780s she produced a play and wrote a prologue about a woman warrior signing up to the army in search of her husband. (called Percy's Prologue). At that point the depiction of the female warrior was a positive one. Ther was humour and bravery and she successfully played the role of man and fought bravely etc etc.
It was reproduced many times across the 1790s and early 1800s, but by the early 1800s the tenor had altered: instead of humour and a successful masquerade, now the female warrior deplored the need for trickery, hated the feel of the male clothes (referred to herself as being 'unsexed' by the trousers, the boots too big and clumpy) was overawed and distressed by the loud noises of battle and bawdy humour of the men and, most importantly, was not as successful in her masquerade. Instead of tricking everyone, now the only thing that saves her from discovery is that everyone assumes her to be French (and that explained away any inadvertant effeminacy).
Instead of a rollicking adventure in which a woman temporarily and successfully lives as a male, now we have a distressed damsel, fighting back tears at the horror of clumpy male boots and 'unsexed' by a nearly unsuccessful masquerade.
Similarly one of the most popular female warrior narratives, which was a memoir written by a real life female soldier was republished many times across the second half of the eighteenth century and early nineteenth, but in the later editions there have been alterations. Bits have been removed, some parts have been emphasised or de-emphasised within the text to better conform to new assumptions about gender.
In their earlier iterations, the narratives of female soldiers showed women able to take on those roles and 'exceed the limitations of their sex'. In the later versions, women are unable to comfortably or successfully take on those roles, and they are shown to be physically uncomfortable and psychologically distressed by a male role and male clothing: gender distinctions as inherent, biological and immutable fact.