"Frenchman's Creek" and the Female Sailor: Transgendering Daphne du Maurier

Sometimes, the imagination directs towards another person. [...]in "Short Jacket" (Laws N12), the captain of a ship wishes his cabin boy (who is actually a cross-dressed woman) were female, thus imagining an apparent male in female terms. The transgender imagination is expressed by the tex...

Full description

Saved in:

Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Western folklore 2012-12, Vol.71 (1), p.47-67
Main Authors:	Bold, Valentina, Greenhill, Pauline
Format:	Article
Language:	eng
Subjects:	Authors Ballads British & Irish literature Children Cross-Dressing du Maurier, Daphne English Literature Feminism Folklore Frenchman's Creek Gays & lesbians Gender identity Gender roles Gulf languages Identity Masculinity Men Novels Pirates Sociocultural factors Song, Music, Ballad Traditional Culture, Folklore and Folklife Transgender persons Transgenderism Transvestism Twentieth Century Women Women Characters
Online Access:	Get full text
Tags:	Add Tag No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!

Description
Summary:	Sometimes, the imagination directs towards another person. [...]in "Short Jacket" (Laws N12), the captain of a ship wishes his cabin boy (who is actually a cross-dressed woman) were female, thus imagining an apparent male in female terms. The transgender imagination is expressed by the text itself, conceptualizing, describing, and exploring a woman's dressing as a man - or, as in "The Shirt and Apron" (Laws K42) , a man's dressing as a woman. [...]rather than simply being about a woman who escapes the strictures of her conventional husband and family life, preferring the exciting and dangerous world of a group of sociocultural others (as does the female protagonist of Child 200), Frenchman's Creek, like the women warrior ballads so trenchantly discussed by Dianne Dugaw, centers on a woman who seeks adventure and escape specifically in the guise of a male.
ISSN:	0043-373X 2325-811X