In Some Books, Female to Male Is Not Beyond the Pale

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Nadia Hashimi

There are several obvious reasons why some of literature’s female characters dress as males.

Males tend to get more respect and “perks” in our sexist, misogynist, patriarchal world. Also, they’re often considered physically stronger, so females might feel safer — from general attack and/or sexual assault — being in male garb. Etc.

Nadia Hashimi’s compelling Afghanistan-set novel The Pearl That Broke Its Shell, which I just finished, gives readers a double dose of cross-dressing. In the 21st century, the girl Rahima becomes known as the boy Rahim. And, in the book’s parallel story unfolding 100 years earlier, her beleaguered great-great-grandmother Shekiba passes as a male, too. Both also appear as the females that they are in parts of the novel, so we get quite a contrast with how differently they’re treated when seen as a person of each gender — especially in a women-oppressing, double-standard-rife country such as Afghanistan with many brutal male leaders. As Shekiba thinks to herself late in the book: “Only a daughter could know what it was to cross that line, to feel the freedom of living as the opposite sex.”

J.R.R. Tolkien’s otherwise superb The Lord of the Rings unfortunately mostly focuses on men, so it’s perhaps no surprise that one of the few women getting some authorial attention is the Eowyn character who eagerly heads off to battle disguised as a man by the name of Dernhelm. But she is a secondary player in Tolkien’s trilogy.

Moving from fantasy fiction to dystopian lit, Lauren Olamina poses as a male to try to be safer in a dangerous post-apocalyptic world. Plus she feels her masculine disguise gives her more gravitas as the leader that she is. All in Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower.

Another brave cross-dressing young woman is Eliza Sommers, who travels from Chile to Gold Rush-era California in Isabel Allende’s Daughter of Fortune.

Set much further back in time, we have the legendary 15th-century teen warrior who dresses as a male in Mark Twain’s historical-fiction novel Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc.

I know there are various other works of fiction that include females passing as males; in this post, I’ve just mentioned the ones I’ve read. Your thoughts about, and examples of, this theme?

My literary-trivia book is described and can be purchased here: Fascinating Facts About Famous Fiction Authors and the Greatest Novels of All Time.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Baristanet.com, which has merged with Montclair Local. The latest piece — about a problematic municipal clerk, the first day of school, a large local jazz festival, and more — is here.

64 thoughts on “In Some Books, Female to Male Is Not Beyond the Pale”

  1. Hi Dave,

    In Anne Rice’s novels, Lestat is turned into a vampire in the 1700s century. He has a close relationship with this mother, though seems to be quite a closed off person. The feeling I get is that she’s incredibly restrained being a woman in the 18th century. After her son turns her into a vampire she cuts off her hair and loses all the feminine clothing. Not really to be a man, just to lose the restrictive label of being a woman.

    Also, Idgie from the Whistle Stop Café 🙂

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    • Thank you, Susan, for those two excellent, interesting examples! Anne Rice definitely does get into a sort of gender fluidity; great description of that by you. And I love Fannie Flagg’s “Friend Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café”! (As well as most other Flagg novels, for that matter.)

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    • Thank you, Susi! Great examples! The fluidity of gender can be fascinating — whether in Jeanette Winterson’s book or novels such as Jeffrey Eugenides “Middlesex” and Abigail Tarttelin’s “Golden Boy” (both of which I mentioned in another comment).

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  5. Hmm…
    Well, Jane Eyre? Rochester as a gypsy woman.
    Huck Finn goes ashore as a woman.
    These are just bits of stories, not an entire story about this topic.

    Not fiction:
    Did you know there was a female pope?
    I believe in the 1200’s.
    She was disguised as a man. One day as she was climbing the steps of the big deal cathedral (pre Vatican), she passed out. Turned out she was pregnant.
    “Our Fathers: The Secret Life of the Catholic Church in an Age of Scandal” is a heavy book. I read the hard cover edition. It weighed a lot. I dropped it, accidentally, on my big toe. The toe broke.
    I’ll spare you the rest!

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  6. I recently read a story based on fact about a young woman who disguises herself as a man to join in the civil war. She goes through some terrible ordeals but remains true to her deceit- at least until she falls in love with her commanding officer.
    The story is called A Girl Called Samson by Amy Harmon.

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  7. Hi Dave, an interesting topic and I’m sure many women have played the role of men in the past for various reasons, but I am struggling to think of an example. Mrs Doubtfire, the movie, featured a man dressed as a woman.

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    • The moment I pressed send I remembered George (or Georgina) from Enid Blyton’s Famous Five series. George dressed as a boy because boys clothes were more practical and boys had more freedom from rules and restrictions.

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      • Thank you, Robbie! Yes, “Mrs. Doubtfire” — and “Tootsie,” too. There are fewer cases of men trying to pass as women than vice versa, but they exist… 🙂

        And thanks for the Enid Blyton mention! “George dressed as a boy because boys clothes were more practical and boys had more freedom from rules and restrictions” — that says a LOT!

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    • Thank you, Esther! “The Return of the Native” character? Great mention from a Thomas Hardy novel!

      Reminds me that the title character in Hardy’s “The Hand of Ethelberta” novel, while not dressing as a male, often acts like society’s view of a male with her take-charge attitude, her coolness under pressure, her business sense, etc. Of course, plenty of woman had and have those qualities but one didn’t often see that depicted in 19th-century literature.

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  9. A book called The Doctor by Patricia Duncker is a historical novel about Dr. James Barry who was a military surgeon in the 19th century. After his death he was found to be female. It’s not known whether he was transgender or intersex. Duncker’s book provides fictional answers to questions about Dr. Barry’s life, which was in any case quite an adventurous one.
    I read this book many years ago and had to do some trolling through Wikipedia to find the particulars, which I had forgotten. I do remember that the book made an impression on me.

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    • Thank you, Audrey! Such an interesting mention, and well described! (Wikipedia can be a great place to jog one’s memories about books read long ago; I frequently do that myself. 🙂 )

      “The Doctor” reminds me a bit of two excellent novels starring characters with some blurring of genders — Jeffrey Eugenides’ “Middlesex” and Abigail Tarttelin’s “Golden Boy.”

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      • Very true, Robbie! Reminds me of the “Outlander” series’ time-traveling Claire character — a nurse and then a doctor in the 20th century — getting a LOT of skepticism and pushback when trying to practice medicine in the 18th century.

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  11. I think that’s one of my favourite tropes in historical fiction – a woman or girl dressing as a male. It always hints at great adventure. In my own Western, my MC dresses in men’s clothes even though no one’s fooled by the disguise. For practical reasons, she wore pants and loose clothes for riding, hunting, camping outside, etc. Great post! 🙂

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  12. Dave, Nadia Hashimi’s novel sounds like an interesting read. Cross-dressing female to male characters would open new possibilities for addressing male dominance through storytelling.

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  13. OOOH. I wrote one. The heroine in quite distressing debt cos she can’t stop spending, and witha great talent for chess, decides to enter the male chess comp where the prize money is thousands, as oppsed to the ladiies one where it is hudnreds. It was at a time where chess was a huge thing that way. Within an hour or so of entering she’s managed to find herself challenged to a duel which was also a huge thing that way too. Talking women who lived as men there’s the novelist George Sand who dressed as a man so she could get into cheap seats at the theatre where women were forbidded. And the reason she couldn’t afford the women’s ones was that she had left her husband and he had cut her allowance.

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  15. Hi Dave! Thanks for recommending “The Pearl that Broke the Shell.” I’m sure countless women have dressed to pass as men seeking safety or adventure (and for other reasons) over thousands of years. The books that come into mind are I. B. Singer’s “Yentl” and Woolf’s “Orlando.” And just think of all those Shakespeare plays!!!

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