Complicated historic stories tend to send me either to drawing up genealogies or timelines. When I finished doing my LHMP summary of Bennett's book on Mary Diana Dods, I needed to sort it all out in my head by coming up with a chronology of her identities and movements. One startling aspect is how short the time was between the first inklings of creating Walter Sholto Douglas as a husband for Isabella Robinson, and Douglas's probably fatal end in a French debtor's prison.
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You ever imagine one of those so-crazy-no-editor-would-ever-buy-it romance plots? F/f regency romance with Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley as a significant supporting character. Bastard daughter of a Scottish earl. Beautiful socialite whose baby-daddy fled to America. Marriage of convenience. Secret baby. Gender disguise. Beauty and the beast. Making a living by publishing under multiple pen names. Foreign travel. Brittle witty people engaging in flirtation and back-biting gossip in Parisian salons. Over-the-top Gothic poetry about dead loves. Mysterious chronic illness.
This article makes a nice palate-clenser to last week's piece by Ungerer. It primarily focuses on the dramatic character of Moll Cutpurse within The Roaring Girl, but also notes how Mary Frith (by way of her post-show performance) acted to underming the play's attempt to rehabilitate her character, and to re-claim her identity as a disruption to existing gender identities.
Sometimes this blog is a dispassionate and intellectual summary of academic research. Sometimes it's a total squee-fest about a great source or a fascinating piece of historical evidence. And sometimes it's the equivalent of rage-tweeting. This one has turned into the last. Ungerer's article is a valuable single source for most of the documentary evidence of Mary Frith's life.
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 72 (previously 26d) - Moll Cutpurse - transcript
(Originally aired 2018/09/22 - listen here)
In conjunction with this month's podcast essay, I'm covering a couple of publications, both scholarly articles and primary sources, about Mary Frith, aka Moll Cutpurse. Moll is a great example of what I'm talking about regarding the details of actual history being far more fascinating than the tropes they often evolve into in popular culture.
No thoughtful introduction. Posting on my phone from the middle of a big key ride. Needless to say the main entry was set up in advance!
ETA: You can tell I was posting from my phone because "big key ride" was supposed to be "bike ride".
If the last 30 years have seen a blossoming in academic research on homosexuality in history, they have seen an even more drastic shift in the academic approach to transgender topics in history. It's one thing to take a hard, dispassionate look at attitudes towards transgender topics within the historic context itself. It's a bit more painful to read the work of "modern" academics and recognize how their work is tainted by the application of frameworks that themselves are products of a specific historic and social context.
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 71 (previously 26c) - Book Appreciation with K. Aten - transcript
(Originally aired 2018/09/15 - listen here)
Heather Rose: This week, we welcome back author Kelly Aten to talk about some historically-based stories with queer women that she’s particularly enjoyed. Glad to have you back, Kelly.
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 70 (previously 26b) - Interview with K. Aten - transcript
(Originally aired 2018/09/08 - listen here)
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