"MY HUSBAND? A WOMAN, A WOMAN, A WOMAN": CROSS-DRESSING AS SOCIOECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

Craig, Callie

"MY HUSBAND? A WOMAN, A WOMAN, A WOMAN": CROSS-DRESSING AS SOCIOECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

dc.contributor.advisor	Garofalo, Daniela
dc.contributor.author	Craig, Callie
dc.contributor.committeeMember	Cottom, Daniel
dc.contributor.committeeMember	Schleifer, Ronald
dc.date.accessioned	2018-05-11T17:38:32Z
dc.date.available	2018-05-11T17:38:32Z
dc.date.issued	2018-05-11
dc.date.manuscript	2018-04
dc.description.abstract	During the evolutionary period that is the eighteenth century, constructing and differentiating between genders was contentious, as was establishing tenants of masculinity and femininity. Because of the era’s interlocking social and cultural components, eighteenth-century women viewed gender and sexuality as inextricable from their socioeconomic status. Eighteenth-century scholarship tends to overlook the intersectional motivations driving cross-dressed women. This thesis acknowledges cross-dressed women as enacting and performing the self, masculinity, gender, and sexuality; however, by analyzing Mary Hamilton as depicted in Henry Fielding’s The Female Husband and Charlotte Charke as depicted in her A Narrative of The Life of Mrs. Charlotte Charke, I maintain the aforementioned types of performance are fringe benefits of cross-dressed women’s primary motivation: socioeconomic mobility. By cross-dressing, Hamilton and Charke challenge established eighteenth-century gender binaries by reconfiguring sexuality, masculinity, and femininity in order to improve their socioeconomic standing.	en_US
dc.identifier.uri	https://hdl.handle.net/11244/299904
dc.language	en_US	en_US
dc.subject	18th-century literature	en_US
dc.subject	cross-dressing women	en_US
dc.subject	Charlotte Charke	en_US
dc.subject	Mary Hamilton	en_US
dc.thesis.degree	Master of Arts	en_US
dc.title	"MY HUSBAND? A WOMAN, A WOMAN, A WOMAN": CROSS-DRESSING AS SOCIOECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY	en_US
ou.group	College of Arts and Sciences::Department of English	en_US