Pyrrhic Victories

Shakespeare’s As You Like It explores the consequences and goals associated with female crossdressing and societal power dynamics. From a historical perspective, crossdressing has often played a role in pop culture, but hidden crossdressing has also revealed how established power structures react to violations of gender roles and how those reactions speak to the outlooks of transgressive women. DeAnne Blanton’s piece “Women Soldiers of the Civil War” in the National Archives documents women who secretly served in the military during the Civil War by disguising themselves as men. Unlike Rosalind’s guise as the notorious Ganymede, these women appropriated generic male aliases to not raise suspicion.





Rosalind/Ganymede and Orlando's mock marriage in the forest

            Blanton writes, “The reading public, at least, was well aware that these women rejected Victorian social constraints confining them to the domestic sphere” (Blanton). Yet was their primary goal to rebel against these constraints and experience a more independent life outside the household or fight for the victory of their respective allegiances? No one knows, but regardless of their motives, the consequences of such actions appear to be the same in the context of mid-19^th century America and Shakespeare’s play. Even though Rosalind and Celia apparently wish to avoid conflict with their disguises as men, they, like the women who fought in the Civil War, end up seizing a measure of unconventional authority only to circulate more collective powers to men.

As Valerie Traub cites in her essay we read, Louis Adrian Montrose frames Rosalind/Ganymede’s power as a temporary misrule that ultimately transfers “authority, property, and title” to other men (Traub 136). Similarly, the female soldiers would have ended up doing the same, for their actions were ineligible for measurement in terms of merit while other male soldiers became heroes, garnering praise and material rewards. “The press seemed unconcerned about the women’s actual military exploits. Rather, the fascination lay in the simple fact that they had been in the army,” Blanton writes (Blanton).




Frances Clayton serving in the Missouri artillery during the Civil War

            The single instance in Shakespeare’s work where women take an interest in combat comes as Orlando prepares to wrestle Charles. “…are you / crept hither to see the wrestling?” Duke Frederick asks Rosalind and Celia (1.2.127-8). His comments indicate that he is  somewhat amused by their presence and does not think these women could ever have a serious appreciation for violence. In the context of the female soldiers, this hints at a tendency for male-driven social structures to discount the possibility of women serving in the military in the first place. Ironically, this tendency leads to rigid defense mechanisms to maintain systematic pride when evidence of crossdressing women in the military surfaces. In one letter, General F. C. Ainsworth writes, “I have the honor to inform you that no official record has been found in the War Department showing specifically that any woman was ever enlisted in the military service of the United States…at any time during the period of the civil war” to a researcher even though abundant evidence suggests the opposite (Blanton).

            So what does this mean for the outlooks of crossdressing women in the Civil War and Shakespeare’s play? In my opinion, the aforementioned parallels between the female crossdressing in As You Like It and the Civil War along with the reactions of individuals and institutions suggest that any amount of power, agency, and/or opportunity drawn from such actions by women are very limited and rely on others for their fruition. Rosalind/Ganymede demonstrates this after binding other male and female characters into marriage agreements. “I have left you commands,” she says before leaving (5.2.111), demonstrating that instead of her agency backing her commands, the force of the imperatives rests between the promises and enforcement of and by the other characters only. So although crossdressing women have the ability in these contexts to channel authority normally reserved for men, such victories are pyrrhic victories because they ultimately return authority and circulate rewards back to men in relation to their inability and unwillingness to view the actions and intentions of female crossdressers outside of gendered expectations. What do you all think?

Here's the link to that article if you all are interested.

http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1993/spring/women-in-the-civil-war-1.html