Marjorie Garbers Vested Interests: Cross-dressing and Cultural Anxiety

Marjorie Garbers Vested Interests Cross-dressing and heathenish AnxietyThe tendency to establish rigid social codes of sexual practice-determined behaviors is apparent everywhere--though specifically present in literary texts. Women are expected to, in essence, be women and act, dress, and behave in a manner that distinguishes them from men. While these constructs are stiffly defined, they are easily and recurrently transcended. In her, Vested Interests Cross-dressing and ethnical Anxiety, Majorie Garber demonstrates the concept of heathenish binarisms, illustrating them to be the social and historical obsession with polarizing individuals, male or female, into both one group or the other. In her essay, she concentrates her discussion on the enormousness of dress in the construction of gender and its power in undermining it. Garber writes that gender boundaries--which she defines as blurred social concepts--can be transcended by the cross-dresser. Additionally, the appearance o f a transvestite character indicates that a category crisis is present, but not special(a) to gender identity. This category crisis, is resultant of the binarisms which have been disturbed. Herman Manns account, The Female Review behavior of Deborah Sampson, the Female Soldier, reinforces Garbers assertions about the cross-dressing figure in literature-- once Sampson puts on mens clothing, her identity is changed. She is, therefore, able to transgress the limited capacities of a woman and access code her desires to see the world. Mann addresses several instances of binarisms--including gender, class, and status--throughout his text. Through his character of Deborah Sampson, he is able to showing a separate, but relevant issue of a socially and politically ... ...and(habit). Also, Mann states about Sampsons desire to become a soldier and in the end, perhaps, she would be instrumental in the CAUSE OF LIBERTY, which had for nearly six years, enveloped the minds of her countrymen (Mann, 233). This statement makes a direct comment on the state of his country and Sampsons impact on its freedom. In this way, he connects her desires of cross-dressing and living as a man to his desires of witnessing American Liberty. Works Cited De Erauso, Catalina. Memoir of a Basque Lieutenant Nun. Beacon Press Boston, 1996.Garber, Marjorie. Vested Interests Cross-dressing and Cultural Anxiety. Routledge New York, 1992. Mann, Herman. The Female Reveiw Life of Deborah Sampson, the Female Soldier. Boston, 1797.Rotundo, Anthony. Community to the Individual The faulting of Manhood. American Manhood, 10-30.