Permalink : http://hdl.handle.net/2115/84386

JaLCDOI : 10.14943/jfhhs.17.23

The gender-biased heteronormative social anxiety within the Renaissance culture requires an other, a queer other. The external misrepresentation and crossdressing of the character Moll Cutpurse, who is featured within Thomas Dekker and Thomas Middletonʼs play The Roaring Girl, engages with this anxiety. The ambiguities and queer implications surrounding her sexuality and gender bias-resistant identity call for an anachronistic queer reading. In order to bridge the gap between the historicist and unhistoricist approaches, it is ideal to borrow the term “lipstick lesbian,” a homosexual female who is similar to the archetype femme lesbian since they both support a normative feminine appearance. However, lipstick lesbian may use her feminine apparel to conceal her sexual identity. Mollʼs lipstick lesbian status is amplified because of multi-layer discrepancies between internal and external self, thus both the term and her queer self throughout the play becomes inverted. As the play progresses, Mollʼs queer identity and her acts of crossdressing and masculine display evolve from being cases of misrepresentation and misidentification into apparatuses which she utilizes to gain her own foothold within the gender-biased social dynamics. Queerness within the play operates on various interchangeable layers and leads the way to her acceptance, as long as she accepts her role as the queer female who is not part of the predetermined heteronormative gender-biased social categories. Her queerness is amplified because of multi-layer discrepancies between internal and external self; thus, both the term and her queer self throughout the play becomes inverted. The resolution only comes when Moll is fully integrated both internally and externally into the society, as an honest woman in both male and female clothing.