Early Modern England Encyclopedia: Resistance to Gender Conventions in Early Modern England

Resistance to Gender Conventions in Early Modern England

Para1In early modern London, women dressed as men and men dressed as women; early modern England was rife with individuals and institutions that attempted to normalize the subversion of certain gender roles despite prohibitions or discrimination against them. These acts of resistance were not limited to the common folk; queens resisted these conventions as did literary characters and the very theatre itself. But these attempts at resistance were not without controversy.

Elizabeth I

Para2Perhaps the first and most notable example of resistance to gender conventions centers around Queen Elizabeth I. During her rule, frequent dissent occurred due to the assumed disorder a woman in power presented. Although praised for her man-like qualities, acceptance of a woman in power was reserved only for Elizabeth I herself and was not easily won, even by her. It was viewed as unnatural for a woman to rule over men and so rule by a woman was […] contrary to God’s law. Godly men could tolerate such rule if […] such a woman was suitably constrained […] (McLaren 98).

Para3By this logic, a woman on the throne was permissible when a man was present to reign her in, often through marriage. Soon after becoming queen in 1558, Elizabeth I proclaimed that she was already bound unto a husband which is the Kingdom of England. Had Elizabeth I married a suitable prince or other nobleman, it would have not only resulted in the relinquishment of some of her power but also removal of the veil of purity that came with her being unmarried. Being celebrated as the Virgin Queen afforded her political power and privilege marriage would have negated. It is perhaps for this reason that she spurned the numerous eligible suitors for her hand, including her two most serious ones, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester and Francis, Duke of Anjou. In spite of gender conventions of the time, Elizabeth I ruled as an unmarried woman for a generally well-received 45 years, and only upon her death was the throne passed on to a male heir, James VI of Scotland, who became James I of England.

Resisting Conventions Onstage

Para4Despite women not being permitted to act on the public stage in early modern England, several instances of female actors as well as crossdressing women and gender non-conforming persons do appear in the historical record. The most well documented is likely Mary Frith, the inspiration behind Thomas Dekker and Thomas Middleton’s character of Moll Cutpurse in the 1611 playThe Roaring Girl. Although doubt exists whether Frith was a real person, she allegedly performed on the English stage to a raucous audience in that same year. While today it is common in many nations for equality in dress among the genders, in the early modern period, as seen below in this except from The Roaring Girl, it caused shock:

Alexander:
A creature (saith he) nature hath brought forth To mock the sex of woman. — It is a thing

One knows not how to name, her birth began

Ere she was all made. ’Tis woman more than man, Man more than woman, and (which to none can hap) The Sun gives her two shadows to one shape,

Nay more, let this strange thing, walk, stand or sit, No blazing star draws more eyes after it.
Sir Dapper:
A Monster, ’tis some Monster.
(1.2.127–34)

Para5By resisting the expectations placed upon her by the patriarchal society of early modern England and actively subverting gender conventions, Moll Cutpurse is degraded to subhuman; less than both man and woman to become a monstrous amalgam of masculine and feminine. This demoralizing insult against a gender non-conforming woman emphasizes the risks of resisting the gender conventions of the period.

Pamphlets About Gender: Hic Mulier

Para6The notable Protestant pamphlet Hic Mulier (The Mannish Woman) and its counter- pamphlet Haec Vir (The Womanish Man) offer excellent examples of some views around gender non-conformity and resistance during the period. A scathing review of so-called mannish women, this passage from Hic Mulier exemplifies the growing anxiety surrounding these women:

For since the daies of Adam women were never so Masculine; Masculine in their genders and whole generations from the Mother, to the younger daughter; Masculine in Number, from one to multitudes; Masculine in Case, from the head to the foot; Masculine in Moode, from bold speech, to impudent action and Masculine in Tense : for (without redresse) they were, are, and will be still most Masculine, most mankind, and most monstrous.(13)

The author makes it clear that they view women who acted against gender conventions as impudent and even monstrous.

Pamphlets About Gender: Haec Vir

Para7Soon after Hic Mulier went public, the parody Haec Vir was published. A rebuke against the former pamphlet starring the mannish woman described in Hic Mulier and the effeminate man Haec Vir, the pamphlet has the two characters debate the efficacy of the claims against gender non-conformity. Notably, Hic Mulier states that custome is an idiot when refuting Haec Vir’s claim customs need to be respected (Haec Vir 28). The existence of this retaliatory pamphlet is a clear example of a period where gender conventions were not clear cut or straightforward.

Key Print Sources

Brown, Pamela Allen. Introduction: Sauce for the Gander. Better a Shrew than a Sheep: Women, Drama, and the Culture of Jest in Early Modern England. Cornell University Press, 2003, pp. 1–32.

Charlton, Kenneth. Attitudes on Women, and The Media. Women, Religion and Education in Early Modern England. Routledge, 1999.

Key Online Sources

Cook, Carol. “The Sign and Semblance of Her Honor”: Reading Gender Difference in Much Ado about Nothing. PMLA, vol. 101, no. 2, 1986, pp. 186–202. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/462403. Accessed 31 Jan. 2024.

Hic Mulier: Or, The Man-Woman And Haec-Vir: Or, The Womanish-Man. Internet Archive, 1620, https://archive.org/details/hicmulierormanwo00exetuoft/page/n7/mode/2up. Accessed 31 Jan. 2021.

McLaren, Anne. Elizabeth I as Deborah: Biblical Typology, Prophecy and Political Power. Gender, Power and Privilege in Early Modern Europe: 1500–1700. Ed. Penny Richard and Jessica Munns. Routledge, 2014. pp. 98–99. Taylor & Francis Group, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315837987. Accessed 31 Jan. 2024.

Morrill, John S., and Stephen J. Greenblatt. Elizabeth I | Biography, Facts, Mother, & Death. Encyclopedia Britannica, 2020, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Elizabeth-I. Accessed 15 Feb. 2021.

Prosopography

Kate McPherson

Kate McPherson is Professor of English and Honors Program Director at Utah Valley University (Orem, UT, USA). In 2015, she began working to redevelop Shakespeare’s Life and Times, created by Michael Best, into the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Her other publications include commentary on Pericles and The Comedy of Errors for the New Oxford Shakespeare (2016); the co-edited volumes Stages of Engagement: Drama and Religion in Post-Reformation England with James Mardock (Duquesne University Press, 2014) and Shakespeare Expressed: Page, Stage, and Classroom in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries, with Kathryn M. Moncrief and Sarah Enloe (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2013). With Kathryn M. Moncrief, Kate has also two edited collections, Performing Pedagogy in Early Modern England: Gender, Instruction, and Performance (Ashgate, 2011) and Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate 2008). She has also published numerous articles on early modern maternity in scholarly journals. Kate participated in the 2008 National Endowment for the Humanities Institute, Shakespeare’s Blackfriars: The Study, the Stage, the Classroom, at the American Shakespeare Center. She also served as Play Seminar Director, a public humanities position, for the Utah Shakespeare Festival in 2017 and 2018.

Leah Hamby

Leah Hamby is the primary encoder for the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Aside from encoding, she also works as an editor for the project and contributed several articles of her own. She has been working on the EMEE since February 2023. As of February 2026, she is soon to graduate with honours from Utah Valley University with a major in history and a minor in creative writing. Her other work with the LEMDO program includes remediating William Kemp’s Kemp’s Nine Day’s Wonder for the Digital Renaissance Editions.

Melissa Walter

Melissa Walter is Associate Professor of English at the University of the Fraser Valley. Her research focuses on early modern English drama and English and European prose fiction. She is the author of The Italian Novella and Shakespeare’s Comic Heroines (U of Toronto, 2019), and co-editor, with Dennis Britton, of Rethinking Shakespeare Source Study: Authors, Audiences, Digital Technologies (Routledge, 2018). Her work on English theatre and the European novella has appeared in several edited collections, including Transnational Exchange in Early Modern Theater (Ashgate, 2008), and Transnational Mobility in Early Modern Theater (Ashgate, 2012). She has also written about Translation and Identity in the Dialogues in English and Malaiane Languages (Indographies, ed. Jonathan Gil Harris. Palgrave 2012). At the University of the Fraser Valley, she is a lead coordinator of UFV’s Shakespeare and Reconciliation Garden.

Michael Best

Michael Best is Professor Emeritus at the University of Victoria, BC. He founded the Internet Shakespeare Editions in 1996, and was Coordinating Editor until 2017, contributing two editions to the ISE: King John and King Lear (the latter also available in print from Broadview Press). In print, he has published editions of works of Elizabethan magic and huswifery, a collection of letters from the Australian goldfields, and Shakespeare on the Art of Love (2008). He contributed regular columns for the Shakespeare Newsletter on Electronic Shakespeares, and has written many articles and chapters for both print and online books and journals, principally on questions raised by the new medium in the editing and publication of texts. He has delivered papers and plenary lectures on electronic media and the Internet Shakespeare Editions at conferences in Canada, the USA, the UK, Spain, Australia, and Japan.

Navarra Houldin

Training and Documentation Lead 2025–present. LEMDO project manager 2022–2025. Textual remediator 2021–present. Navarra Houldin (they/them) completed their BA with a major in history and minor in Spanish at the University of Victoria in 2022. Their primary research was on gender and sexuality in early modern Europe and Latin America. They are continuing their education through an MA program in Gender and Social Justice Studies at the University of Alberta where they will specialize in Digital Humanities.

Sien Barnett

Sien Barnett was a student at the University of Fraser Valley.

Orgography

LEMDO Team (LEMD1)

The LEMDO Team is based at the University of Victoria and normally comprises the project director, the lead developer, project manager, junior developers(s), remediators, encoders, and remediating editors.

University of Victoria (UVIC1)

https://www.uvic.ca/

Metadata

Authority title	Resistance to Gender Conventions in Early Modern England
Type of text	Critical
Publisher	University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform
Series	Early Modern England Encyclopedia
Source	By Sien Barnett, inspired by Michael Best’s Shakespeare’s Life and Times, Internet Shakespeare Editions
Editorial declaration	This document uses Canadian English spelling
Edition	Released with Early Modern England Encyclopedia 1.0a
Sponsor(s)	Early Modern England Encyclopedia Anthology Leads: Kate McPherson and Kate Moncrief.
Encoding description	Encoded in TEI P5 according to the LEMDO Customization and Encoding Guidelines
Document status	published, peer-reviewed
Funder(s)	Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Mitacs Globablink Research Internship
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