Male-to-Female Crossdressing in Early Modern English Literature

This book examines male-to-female (MTF) crossdressing in early modern drama, prose, and poetry. Chess argues that MTF crossdressing episodes are rich sources for socially-oriented readings of queer gender—that crossdressers’ genders are constructed and represented in relation to romantic partners, communities, and broader social structures like marriage, economy, and sexuality. These relational representations show that the crossdresser often benefits financially, socially, and erotically from his/her queer gender presentation. The book makes a larger space for queer, genderqueer, male-bodied, and queer-feminine representations in conversations about early modern gender and sexuality.