Transvestism and Masquerade, but not Feminism

Like Michelle and Jessica, I’ve been learning a lot about masquerade in my British literature course this semester, so I wanted to focus my blog post this week on masquerade and transvestism. I found both of our primary texts very intriguing, but I preferred Mary Andrews Denison’s The Prisoner of La Vintresse. What struck me most about this novel is how much agency the female heroine achieves in comparison to our two U.S.-Mexico War texts. Tellingly, the important female characters die at the end of both Lippard’s and Buntline’s texts, whereas Minerva actually saves the day in Denison’s text, the one sensationalist text we read by a female author. At first, I thought Denison’s text was radically feminist, but after rereading Aleman and Streeby’s introduction, I saw that masquerade and transvestism were used to promote other concerns. In discussing the prevalence of female cross-dressed characters in popular literature, Aleman and Streeby explain,

These cross-dressing texts might be considered critiques of normative gender codes, but they are also reactionary re-entrenchments of female roles and the nation’s borders. That is, while transvestism demonstrates that gender is performative rather than natural (as Judith Butler teaches), transnationalism threatens to undermine the sanctity of the nation’s domestic borders and the woman’s place in the home. (xxv)

Denison clearly uses Minerva’s actions to subvert the patriarchal authority she is originally placed under, but I struggled to find an actual example of masquerade or transvestism in the form of cross-dressing. Minerva does disguise herself in New York to protect herself from Don Carlos’s spies, which involves attempting to hide her Spanish blood and making herself look older, but her disguise is still as a woman and seems to be merely an act of self-preservation.

 

I finally realized that the moment Minerva starts to gain agency does involve transvestism, but through a disguise of her voice rather than her appearance:

‘Bring the priest!’ It was a strange fancy, but nevertheless, it occurred to Minerva to repeat the word ‘confess.’ ‘Ah!’ cried the senor, eagerly, ‘are you here, holy father?’ ‘I am,’ said Minerva, in a low voice. ‘No, no—but stop—I see the crown of your head—yes, yes, the shaven head, and the rosary, and the robe’; and here began a confession… (277)

Right before this moment in the text, Minerva seems to have lost all potential agency because she has just been abducted and is being brought back to Cuba. However, Senor Velasquez’s illness gives Minerva the chance to finally assert herself. She comes up with the “strange fancy” to impersonate a Catholic priest through her words using a “low voice”, and Senor Velasquez completes the transvestism for her when he imagines that he actually sees a priest in front of him. Senor Velasquez’s confession reveals not only the location of her fiancé Herman Goreham, but also reveals the truth about her inheritance. Minerva’s discovery that she is a wealthy heiress is ultimately what gives her agency, and she uses her new knowledge when she gets back to her home in Cuba. No written proof or physical force is needed for her to assert her will, only her own verbal acknowledgement that she is in charge. When she encounters her housekeeper, she goes against Don Carlos’s orders, saying, “I am mistress, now” (280). She repeats this assertion of her authority again when she says to Jose, “I am your mistress, now, and Senor Herman is to be brought from La Vintresse, by my orders” (280). The reversal of gender roles then continues, completely turning the reader’s expectations upside down in a typical carnivalesque masquerade fashion: “Since Minerva leads the expedition to free [Herman], the narrative inverts the rules of sensational melodrama, whereby heroic men save endangered women: here the woman rescues the man” (Aleman and Streeby xxvii).

 

While the reversal of gender roles and the female empowerment in Denison’s text is provocative, I do have to come back to the second point Aleman and Streeby make in the quote about cross-dressing that I brought up earlier—the “reactionary re-entrenchments of female roles and the nation’s borders” (xxv). Minerva uses her new power to bring Goreham back to the U.S. Herman is much weaker due to his mishaps in Cuba, “not at all like the brave, handsome” man who left Saratoga (284); however, he’s restored to his rightful place. Aleman and Streeby argue, “Filibustering and U.S. involvement with Cuba, the novel warns, threaten to enervate white American manhood by subjecting young men to the passions of slaveholders and the cruelties of slavery” (xxvii). In addition to the text’s criticism of slavery and American involvement with Cuba, the text also shows that people of mixed blood can reject ties to Cuba. Minerva, half Spanish and half English, gives up her Spanish heritage to assimilate into her husband’s Anglo-American culture. Denison’s novel only uses masquerade and transvestism to restore order and reassert national boundaries. Even Minerva, who had her heroic moment in Cuba, is put back into her traditional gender role when she moves to the U.S. and marries Goreham. We can even assume she’s become more of a submissive wife because her life with Herman is placed in contrast to Don Carlos’s life back in Cuba, where his “willful little wife” Dora “queens” their mansion (284). Goreham and Minerva are also described as making “home an Eden,” which reminds the reader of the creation story in which Eve was made to be the subservient helpmate of Adam. By contrasting the married couple living in the U.S. with the one living in Cuba, Denison concludes her novel with a critique of the extravagance that comes with slavery in Cuba. Denison’s concerns about slavery and American involvement in Cuba take precedence over any potentially feminist concerns.