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Breeches and Breaches: Cross-Dress Theater and the Culture of Gender Ambiguity in Modern France

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Lenard R. Berlanstein
Lenard R. Berlanstein
Affiliation:
The University of Virginia
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Extract

Cross dressing is about deliberately traversing meaningful boundaries. The cultural critic, Marjorie Garber, argues that Western civilization has long been obsessed with transvestite behavior. Garber's wide-ranging analysis (from Shakespeare to Madonna) stresses the disruptive aspect of the phenomenon, which, she claims, precipitates a “category crisis” by exposing the futility of all binary oppositions, including those of gender. Could cross dressing ever have been a commonplace part of the notoriously cautious bourgeois culture of nineteenth-century France? The very idea seems implausible on the surface, but in fact the mainstream stage presented the opportunity to see an enormous amount of transvestite performance (travesti). It consisted not simply of plays within which characters disguise themselves as the other sex. In hundreds of French plays before and after the Revolution, actresses assumed male roles, and, to a more limited extent, actors took female parts. Playwrights and producers, more concerned with fame and success than with social commentary, turned out a stream of such transvestite spectacles.

Type
Playing Male Roles
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 38 , Issue 2 , April 1996 , pp. 338 - 369
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1996

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81 Illustration, no. 1710 (December4, 1875), 361–2. Another critic, writing a decade earlier, remarked that Dejazet's performances “recaptured the entire eighteenth century”; they were the perfect embodiment of that bygone era of “piquent innuendoes and witty repartee” (Ibid., no.1152 [March 25, 1865], 190).

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90 Except for plays that had pretentions to being high art, critics rarely took the trouble to make insightful comments. Most reviews were plot summaries with brief comments on the acting. On the history of theatrical criticism, see Descotes, Maurice, Histoire de la critique dramatique en France (Paris, 1980)Google Scholar.

91 See, for example, the review of Les Parisiennes (an operetta by Victor Koning) in Le Figaro, no. 92 (April 2, 1874), 3. The reviewer announced that he expected Mademoiselle Prechard to receive flowers and invitations for trysts from the women in the audience because she made them forget her true sex and see her as a “prince charming.”

92 Alexandra Dumas fils put a contemporary courtesan on stage in his huge hit, La Dame aux camélias (1852) and coined the phrase demi-monde in his 1855 play of that title. On the “reign of courtesans, ” see Auraint [pseud. François Bravay], Les Lionnes du Second Empire (Paris, 1935)Google Scholar and Richardson, Joanna, The Courtesans (London, 1967)Google Scholar.

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94 Nye, Masculinity, 60.

95 Edmond Audran, Le Grand Mogol. Opéra bouffe en trois actes de Henri Chivot el Alfred Duru (Paris, n.d ).

96 Illustration, no. 2673 (May 19, 1894), 421.

97 Matlock, Jann, “Masquerading Women, Pathologized Men: Cross-Dressing, Fetishism, and the Theory of Perversion, 1882–1935, ” in Fetishism as Cultural Discourse, Apter, Emily and Pietz, William, eds. (Ithaca, NY, 1993), 51–53Google Scholar.

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100 This discovery has been analyzed as the culmination of vast socioeconomic changes, mainly the fall of fertility and industrialization and also as a reflection of the insecurities and quest for new identity in the fin de siècle. See Neubauer, John, The Fin-de-Siecle Culture of Adolescence (New Haven, 1991Google Scholar); Crubellier, Maurice, L'Enfance et la jeunesse dans la societe francaise, 1800–1950 (Paris, 1979Google Scholar); Gillis, John, Youth and History (New York, 1979Google Scholar); Alaimo, Kathleen, “Adolescence in the Third Republic” (Unpublished Ph.D. disser., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1988Google Scholar).

101 Much of the analysis that follows is based on the excellent and not-well-known study by O'Brien, Justin, The Novel of Adolescence in France (New York, 1937Google Scholar).

102 On the interaction between medical experts and writers, see Robert Nye, “The Medical Origins of Sexual Fetishism, ” in Fetishism as Cultural Discourse, 13–15. The leading psychological studies included Compayre, Gabriel, L'Adolescence. Etude de psychologie et de pédagogie (Paris, 1909Google Scholar); Lemaitre, Auguste, La Vie mentale de I'adolescent et ses anomalies (Paris, 1910Google Scholar); and Mendousse, Pierre, L'Ame d'adolescent (Paris, 1909Google Scholar).

103 Margueritte, Paul, Tous quatre (Paris, 1885), 256–7Google Scholar; Bourget, Paul, Un Crime d'amour (Paris, 1886Google Scholar), 38. Cited in O'Brien, Novel of Adolescence, 127.

104 O'Brien, Novel of Adolescence, 125–35. Young bourgeois females did not acquire a sexual identity until after World War I. See Roberts, Civilization Without Sexes, 174.

105 Laqueur, Making Sex, 54.

106 Wohl, Robert, The Generation of 1914 (Cambridge, MA, 1979Google Scholar), ch. 1; O'Brien, Novel of Adolescence, ch. 2. On the relatively undistinguished status of French sexology, see Nye, Masculinity, 103.

107 Weber, Eugen, My France (Cambridge, MA, 1991Google Scholar), ch. 10.

108 O'Brien, Novel of Adolescence, 33, cites five major newspaper surveys, including the much-discussed one by “Agathon” (Henri Massis and Alfred de Tarde).

109 Ibid., 129–33; Neuberger, Fin-de-Siècle Culture, 156–7.

110 See, for example, Charles, Docteur Féré, L'Instinct sexuel. Evolution et dissolution (Paris, 1899), 322Google Scholar–3.

111 Weber, Eugen, The Nationalist Revival in France, 1905–1914 (Berkeley, 1968), 13Google Scholar, 145; Nord, Philip, Paris Shopkeepers and Politics of Resentment (Princeton, 1986), 335Google Scholar–46, 436–50, 462–3.

112 A good example of a figure who connected le gratin, boulevard society, nationalist intellectuals, and the theater world was Arthur Meyer, the director of Le Gaulois, a leading society newspaper. See his Forty Years of Parisian Society (London, 1912Google Scholar).

113 Bernhardt, Art of Theatre, 141–2.

114 Zanetto is “a butterfly, ” a “child of the woods.” Sylvia, the courtesan, loves him because there is “no artifice in your heart” (François Coppee, Le Passant, Frederick Schwar, trans. [New York, 1880], 7, 11).

115 Taranow, Sarah Bernhardt, 222.

116 Rostand, L'Aiglon, 26, 31, 44.

117 Davis, “Women on Top, ” 150.

118 Bordeaux, Henri, “Lorenzaccio, ” Vie au Théâtre, 5 vols. (Paris, 1910–1921), III:259Google Scholar–61; Anatole France, “Lorenzaccio, ” Revue de Paris (12 15, 1896), 900Google ScholarPubMed–6.

119 The role of Hamlet also became the favorite of Suzanne Desprès. She interpreted it as Bernhardt did when she performed it just before World War I. See Dubeux, Albert, Suzanne Desprès (Paris, 1922), 23Google Scholar, 28.

120 Roberts, “Samson and Delilah”; Roberts, Civilization Without Sexes, chs. 1–3.

121 Coe, “Sarah and Coq, ” 79.

122 See Figaro, no. 164 (June 16, 1874). 3, on Mademoiselles Théo and Judic.

123 Although it may seem that the category, transvestism, has some use in the analysis that follows, I will not attempt to apply it. The psychological literature dismisses transvestism in women as extremely rare and almost always associated with transexualism (see Stoller, Robert, “Transvestism in Women, ” Archives of Sexual Behavior, 11 (1982), 99–115CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.) However, the more scholars learn about the ways psychological categories have been constructed and gendered, the more unilluminating they seem.

124 Illustration, no. 1645 (September 5, 1874), 147; Sardou, Papiers. 214–6; Lecomte, Comédienne, 443.

125 Déjazet's letter books are conserved in the Bibliothèque de 1'Arsenal. I shall cite from the large selection printed in Lecomte, Comédienne, 150–455. Fechter is best remembered for creating the male lead in the original production of La Dame aux camélias.

126 Ibid., 385.

127 Lavallière, “Mes Travestis, ” 219–20.

128 Lenoir, Jacqueline, Eve Lavallière (Paris, 1966). Citation on pp. 90–91Google Scholar; Murphy, Edward, Mademoiselle Lavallière (New York, 1948Google Scholar). Another biography, by Willette, Henriette, Lavallière. Actress and Saint, Sands, Mary, trans. (London, 1934Google Scholar), leaves out most of the grit.

129 Lavallière, Eve, Ma Conversion (Paris, 1930), 171Google Scholar.

130 Bernhardt, Sarah, Memories of My Life (New York, 1908), 334Google Scholar; Gold, Arthur and Fizdale, Robert, The Divine Sarah. The Life of Sarah Bernhardt (New York, 1991), 134Google Scholar. It would be easy to situate Bernhardt in a circle of homosexual writers and boulevard-types, including her friends Robert de Montesquieu and Pierre Loti. The practices of this circle were an open secret. See Jullian, Philippe, Robert de Montesquieu. A Fin-de-Siècle Prince (London, 1965Google Scholar). For insight into the sexual underworld of late-nineteenth-century Paris, see the illuminating article by Michael Wilson, “Gender and Transgression in Bohemian Montmartre, ” in Body Guards, 195–222.

131 Bernhardt, “Men's Roles, ” 2114.

132 Bernhardt, Art of Theatre, 139–42.

133 Lecomte, Comédienne, 314, 316, 336, 378, 424. Bemhardt used her husband's name on personal documents, even though her marriage ceased to be anything more than formal and the press referred to him as Monsieur Sarah Bemhardt.

134 On the feminism of these two celebrated cross dressers, see Vermeylen, Pierre, Les Idées politiques et sociales de George Sand (Brussels, 1984Google Scholar), ch. 4; Boime, Arthur, “The Case of Rosa Bonheur: Why Should a Woman Want to be More Like a Man?” Art History, 4 (December 1981), 384–409CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

135 Kates, “D'Eon Returns, ” 186.

136 This was equally true of ballet. Garafola, “Travesty Dancer, ”37, notes that ballet directors sought the image of “idealized adolescents” for their travesti dancers.

137 Nye, Masculinity, 227.

138 On Britain, see Baker, Drag, 137–43; on the American stage, see Dutten, Faye, Women in American Theater (New Haven, 1994Google Scholar), ch. 4. George Chauncey argues for an acceptance of homosexual lifestyles by non-gay spectators in New York from the Belle Epoque to the late 1920s. See his Gay New York. Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of a Gay Male World (New York, 1994Google Scholar).

139 The thoughts in this paragraph have been inspired by Greenblatt's, Stephen discussion of Renaissance stage inversion in Shakespearean Negotiations (Oxford, 1988), 87–94Google Scholar. I am aware that this analysis opens up all sorts of psychoanalytic questions, but I have neither the inclination nor capacity to explore them. On men projecting fears of castration on to women, see Silverman, Kaja, The Acoustic Mirror. The Female Voice in Psychoanalysis and Cinema (Bloomington, IN, 1988Google Scholar).

140 Maugue, L'ldentité masculine, 86, 144; Roberts, Civilization Without Sexes, 27, 139–49.

141 Garber, Vested Interest, 387–9.

142 Laqueur, Making Sex, 193.

143 Ariès, “History of Sexuality, é 68–72.

144 On the politics of identity, see Weeks, Jeffrey, “Questions of Identity, ” in The Cultural Construction of Sexuality, Caplan, Pat, ed. (London, 1987), 31–51Google Scholar.