As usual, the chapter opens with an illustrative example: a real-life case that reflects the literary themes to be discussed. An aristocratic family line pins their hopes on a child who is first classified as female, then reclassified at adolescence when masculine characteristics emerge (both anatomical and behavioral). But the heir had undescended testicles and was understood to be incapable of reproduction. A marriage was arranged, a false pregnancy was created, and a baby was obtained to continue at the family line. The deception ended unhappily.
intersex
LHMP entry
The second half of this book looks at the use of hermaphroditism (in its various interpretations) in 19th century French fiction, and how that interacted with real-life dynamics. The subjects of those novels were not necessarily depicted as intersex, but might challenge the integrated sex/gender/sexuality binary in other ways. Given the treatment of grammatical gender in French and the lack of any obvious way to express non-binary identity, the problems represented by a gender-transgressive character are always foregrounded.
The chapter opens with an 1881 French annulment petition involving a wealthy 22 year-old woman and a younger non-wealthy aristocrat. The case—which involved “doubtful sex” was covered in detail in the French press and even made it to the New York Times under the headline “Queer French Lawsuit.” [See side-note below.] (Note that both parties were Spanish, though the court case was in France.) The arrangement was planned as a double wedding, Mercedes de Campo to the young (less than 18-year-old) Count San Antonio, and San Antonio’s sister to Mercedes’ brother.
[Note: The author assumes a detailed knowledge of the central topic of the chapter, Herculine Barbin. To contextualize the material, here is some background, based largely on Wikipedia. Barbin was classified as female at birth and was educated at a convent school. There she fell in love with a fellow female student, then later with a fellow female teacher. Severe abdominal pain led her to a series of medical examinations, which identified anomalies in her anatomy.]
The introduction opens, as is often the case, with a case history illustrating the main theme of the book. A patient was referred to a doctor for “suffering in the genital parts” and on examination the doctor could make no solid conclusion about what sex the person was. Not only did the person have ambiguous genitals, but they performed socially alternately as a woman (at home) and a man (outside the home).
This chapter explores the use of hermaphroditic symbolism (mostly in the mythic “half-and-half” version) in alchemy and in religious symbolism around the figures of Christ and of Adam and Eve. The texts under consideration belong primarily to the 14th and 15th centuries. I’m going to skim this material a bit as it stands aside from the treatment of actual persons.
The legal and social imperative for clear binary sex categories led medieval surgeons (starting around the 13th through 14th century) to propose “correcting” anomalous bodies. This chapter traces several different surgical traditions, in a context where manuals of surgery were attempting to create a more professional approach to the surgical field in general.
These surgical traditions addressed several types of non-normative bodies, including “hermaphrodites,” impotent men, eunuchs, and women with what were considered enlarged genitals.
This chapter looks at depictions in bestiaries of supposedly non-binary animals like the hyena, and how their symbolism was used to bolster anti-Jewish sentiment in the 12th and 13th centuries. As this is tangential to the themes I’m interested in, I won’t summarize it in detail, but there is a motif of comparing men who become “womanized” to the sexually ambiguous hyena, invoking concepts of “uncleanness.”
This chapter connects an interest in non-binary people with a wider interest in “monstrosity,” especially as attributed to foreign (i.e., non-Christian) lands. These images depicted the “hermaphrodites” in the half-and-half version, alongside other imagined beings, such as people with their faces on their chests. By connecting these non-binary figures to other types of “monstrous races,” they were dehumanized—not a natural variation of humanity, but something else entirely.
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