Fin-de-Siècle Theatrics

Although the European fin-de-siècle lesbian is a well-known figure for anyone who researches the history of medicine or the history of sexuality, she has remained peripheral to the study of feminism, peace, and war. A few literary critics have noted the presence of the perverse single woman in World War I novels, but she remains strangely absent from discussion of “borderline” figures. ¹ In the understandable efforts to recover lost women who were involved in the many institutions of peace and war, we have neglected European women whose sexual preferences complicate categories of class, occupation, or political beliefs. Indeed, those who publicly insisted upon their homosexuality worked to create a new defining category, that of sexual identity. The years 1880–1920 are especially important in any recuperation of the modern lesbian identity because they mark an important shift from conceptualizing homosexual practices in terms of deviant gender roles (mannish women or effeminate men capable of deviant sex acts) to deviant sexual roles (a deviant lifestyle characterized by same-sex object choice). ² Not surprisingly, the two definitions overlapped at the time and still do; indeed, for many, gender deviance signified (and still signifies) sexual deviance. To look or behave mannish is to be a lesbian. This definition, seemingly so straightforward in its implications, has a complicated history that has yet to be fully unraveled. My project here is narrower: I examine the theatricalization of women's sexual and political identities at the beginning of the twentieth century. I explore the decision of individual upper-class women to wear mannish clothing, in public or among friends, in order to call into question longstanding female behavior. I explore how and why male impersonation became the means to assert a specifically female desire, whether sexual or political.