The Clothes Make the Man
Cross‐Dressing, Gender Performance, and Female Desire in Johann Elias Schlegel's Der Triumph der guten Frauen
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20658490 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Edward T Potter (Mississippi State University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2008 |
| Volume | 81 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 261-282 |
| Publication date | 2008-06-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The German Quarterly (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0016-8831 • E-ISSN: 1756-1183 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1756-1183.2008.00020.x |
| OpenAlex | W1983530886 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 10 |
Schlegel's 1748 comedy takes the potentially liberating historical practice of female cross‐dressing and restructures it by using it to promote a sentimental conception of marriage based on love, mutual compatibility, and free partner choice and by emptying this contemporary cultural phenomenon of any potentially liberating features, thereby defusing non‐normative gender performance. Schlegel's text highlights culturally constructed aspects of gender by placing gender performance at the play's core. By staging a successful performance of male gender, the female character Hilaria reintegrates two wayward husbands into the sentimental marriage. Via Hilaria's disguise, the text explores: how the control of information establishes power relationships; how cross‐dressing is used to reinscribe traditional gender roles; how mutual respect and friendship are promoted as a strong basis for marriage; and finally, how sexual desire is construed as a purely male phenomenon, thereby ironizing the possibility of female desire in general and female same‐sex desire in particular
Aesthetics · Art · Clothing · Comedy · Cultural phenomenon · Epistemology · Friendship · Literature · Normative · Phenomenon · Sociology · Anthropology · Gender Studies · German Literature and Culture Studies · History · Philosophy · Psychoanalysis and Social Critique · Psychology · Psychology, Coaching, and Therapy · Social Psychology
| Highly cited | No |
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