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Many of Shakespeare’s plays included transvestism in order to progress the plot. Transvestism, commonly known as cross-dressing, is the practice of wearing the clothes of the opposite sex. During the time Shakespeare wrote these plays, women lived in a very restrictive society. Female actors were banned, so female characters were played by male actors. Regardless, all of Shakespeare’s plays during that time would have had to include cross-dressers. (Bullion 2). Similar to the plays of Shakespeare, transvestism was also a common motif within Miguel de Cervantes’ novel Don Quixote. Characters such as Dorotea and the daughter of Diego de la Llana are both introduced in the novel cross-dressed as men. While transvestites identify both with their assigned gender and the opposite gender, the women depicted in these fictional written works do not (Thanem and Wallenberg 4).
Female characters in these plays and novels were more likely to cross-dress than male characters. However, this wasn’t because the women necessarily identified as nonbinary or a man, but because of the social constraints placed on women during the seventeenth century. Men were independent and not typically held accountable for their actions. Women, on the other hand, did not have these privileges. They could not make choices for themselves, such as who they would marry. Women were either chained to their families or the man their fathers forced them to marry. They were not seen as equal to men, but lesser. Women’s rights were severely restricted during this time, and by cross-dressing, women were able to seize the freedom, power, and privilege that men had in their patriarchal societies. These women had hope of fleeing from their oppression through cross-dressing.
In Shakespeare’s plays, for example, cross-dressed females presented themselves as their male personas, and they could move around and speak more freely because of this. Rosalind from As You Like It dresses as a shepherd named “Ganymede” and falls in love with the gentleman Orlando. Ganymede teaches Orlando the ways of love and how to “woo” Rosalind. Dressed as a male shepherd, Rosalind manages to shape him into the lover she desires. As a man, Rosalind’s advice is accepted more readily than if she were not cross-dressed, and she is able to share her intelligence and teach the other characters how to love. At the end of the play, Rosalind reveals her true identity to Orlando, and they get married during a group wedding. In the plays that Shakespeare includes transvestism, the female character always returns to her “true” gender before the resolution. In As You Like It, however, Rosalind does not fully relinquish her adopted masculinity, and this can be seen when she is addressed both as Rosalind and as the male actor that plays her (Bullion 7).
Miguel de Cervantes also addresses double standards in his novel and forces his readers to confront the treatment and status of women in Spanish society. In the first part of Don Quixote, the priest and the barber stumble upon Dorotea, who is hiding and dressed like a peasant boy. They realize Dorotea is not a peasant boy but a beautiful woman. Taking her by the hand, the priest says, “What your clothes, Senora, deny, your hair reveals: a clear indication that the reasons cannot be inconsequential for disguising your beauty in clothing so unworthy and bringing it to so desolate a place, where it is fortunate we have found you, if not to provide a remedy for your ills, at least to give you counsel.” (Cervantes 229). Dorotea then recounts her misfortunes. Don Fernando, the son of a Duke, promised to give her his hand in marriage. Dorotea was deceived, and he wanted to marry her for his own pleasures rather than her benefit. She flees her town with her servant, with no intention to return until she restores her honor or marries the man who cheated her of her purity, Don Fernando. She says, “Therefore, as I said, I took to the wilds again to find the place where… I could… beg heaven to take pity on my misfortune, and favor me with the ability either to leave that misfortune behind or to lose my life to the wilderness and to let the memory be erased of this unfortunate woman, who, through no fault of her own, has become the subject of talk and gossip in her own and other lands.” (Cervantes 238). She has become the talk of the town because she lost her honor to Don Fernando, who refused to marry her and then married another woman. Her only escape to the criticisms of the town was to hide away in the mountains and change her appearance completely. Dorotea’s position in society becomes dependent on Don Fernando (Breahna 9). Without her honor, her chances of finding another spouse and getting married would be very small. Dorotea believes that the only way to gain this honor back is to marry Don Fernando (Breahna 10). Although she has hopes of regaining her honor through marriage, she finds freedom by changing her appearance.
In the second part of Don Quixote, Governor Sancho Panza patrols his insula, and two constables approach him saying, “Senor Governor, this person who looks like a man isn’t one, she’s a woman, and not an ugly one, and she’s dressed in men’s clothes.” (Cervantes 777). The daughter of Diego de la Llana has been kept secluded her whole life because of her beauty, and her desire to see the world became too strong. “My misfortune and my misery are simply that I asked my brother to let me dress as a man in some of his clothes and to take me out one night to see the village while our father was sleeping.” (Cervantes 780). It was common in this novel for incredibly beautiful women to live a secluded life, but Diego de la Llana’s daughter wished to escape this. She did so by dressing in her brother’s clothes and sneaking out of her house in the middle of the night. This instance of transvestism also shows how society’s expectations of women to preserve their purity controlled their lives. This young woman was not allowed to leave her house because of her beauty, and if people saw her beauty, they would be tempted to act immodestly or take away her honor. Hiding her beauty and dressing like a man was the only way she could fulfill her longing to see the world without the risk of losing her purity and disappointing her father. Sancho comments, “A woman who wants to see also wants to be seen.” (Cervantes 781).
The daughter’s cross-dressing was explained as an escape from the constraints of imposed femininity, but her brother’s transvestism seems motivated by a desire to occupy a “feminine” persona (Fuchs 18). The brother did not explain his reasoning for being cross-dressed in his sister’s clothing, which is unlike any other characters in the novel who are caught cross-dressing. It is unusual for a man to transform into the “undesirable gender” willingly. This instance, in a way, disrupts Sancho’s carefully orchestrated government. Unlike the rest of the diversions happening on the insula, this is not planted by the Duke and Duchess for their own amusement (Fuchs 14).
In written works such as As You Like It and Don Quixote, female characters that participate in transvestism convey how women are defined and shaped by ever-changing culture. Women cross-dressed, not to identify as another gender, but to escape their lives of oppression. This is evident in Don Quixote where Dorotea and Diego de la Llana’s daughter explained their motives behind dressing like a boy. Men and women were held to dramatically different standards in society, and women were punished for not meeting these harsh standards. Transvestism reinforces the theme of gender roles during this time. Women who cross-dressed did not have to worry about fulfilling their expectations as women. They were able to live freely and were not limited to societal standards placed on women. Writers like Shakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes addressed these issues in their works and wrote about women reclaiming their power.
Works Cited:
- Breahna, Ovidiu. “Marriage, Honor, and Religion: Three Social Constraints Challenging Women’s Lives in Miguel de Cervantes’ The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha.” Carroll Collected, 2016, pp. 1-21, https://collected.jcu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1092
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