To cite this article: Robert Alan Brookey (1998) Keeping a good Wo/man down: Normalizing Deborah Sampson Gannett, Communication Studies, 49:1, 73-85, ...
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Keeping a good Wo/man down: Normalizing Deborah Sampson Gannett Robert Alan Brookey
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Assistant Professor, Department of Communication and Theater Arts , Stonehill College , North Easton, MA, 02357‐7800 Published online: 22 May 2009.
To cite this article: Robert Alan Brookey (1998) Keeping a good Wo/man down: Normalizing Deborah Sampson Gannett, Communication Studies, 49:1, 73-85, DOI: 10.1080/10510979809368519 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10510979809368519
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KEEPING A GOOD WO/MAN DOWN: NORMALIZING DEBORAH SAMPSON GANNETT ROBERT ALAN BROOKEY
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Deborah Sampson Gannett's 1802 lecture tour has been hailed as an important beginning for feminist public address. Previous critics have approached Sampson Gannett's lecture too narrowly, offering a "celebratory" reading that does not fully address the contradictions raised by her anti-feminist statements. My analysis illuminates those contradictions through an alternative reading based in theories of gender performance. I conclude that attention to the performative aspects of Sampson Gannett's discourse allows critics to understand the feminist potential of her ultimate disruption of the rigid confines of True Womanhood.
A s Dr. Barnabas Binney of Philadelphia was attending a wounded American jLjLRevolutionary soldier, he made a surprising discovery. The soldier he had been treating, one Robert Shirtliffe was, in fact, a woman. When General Patterson, Shirtliffe's commanding officer was informed of this discovery, he was noted to have remarked, "This is truly theatrical" (Wright, 1928, p. 102). Deborah Sampson Gannett, the woman who masqueraded as Robert Shirtliffe, succeeded in a hoax that was, indeed, dramatic: she successfully served in the American Revolutionary Army for approximately three years. She was discharged upon the discovery of her sex and retired to the life of a farm wife. But Sampson Gannett's public career did not end at this point. In 1802, she appeared on the stage for a lecture tour in which she related her experiences during the war. Sampson Gannett lectured in many towns in New England, and she would often share the stage with professional theatrical performances. Dressed as a woman, she would deliver an oration in which she explained her motives for assuming a masculine disguise and serving in the military. After her oration, she would change into a military uniform and perform the "Manual of Arms" with a regulation musket (Elmes-Crahall, 1993). Historians have attributed several purposes to Sampson Gannett's lecture, among them her desire to secure a military pension for her service during the war. In this regard, she was successful, for she received pensions from the state of Massachusetts and the federal government (Stickley, 1972). Sampson Gannett has been valorized in history, and her lecture is regarded as an important example of early feminist public address. Friedenberg (1976) identifies "Deborah Sampson Gannett as a pioneer American feminist; the first American woman to utilize public address on behalf of herself and her sex" (p. 1). Elmes-Crahall (1993) claims that "Deborah Sampson Gannett contributed to the history of women: as 'a first woman' to fight in the army; as one whose work adds to the diversity of female voices in the Revolutionary era; and as 'a first woman' to speak in public to articulate an alternative point of view about women and war" (p. 390). Friedenberg and Elmes-Crahall's assessment may be too simplistic, particularly in light of the anti-feminist sentiments that punctuate Sampson Gannett's lecture. For example, Friedenberg points out that Sampson Gannett argues that a woman's place is in the "kitchen and the parlour." Although he acknowledges that this argument would "not sit well with contemporary feminists," he still maintains that Sampson Gannett is Robert Alan Brookey (PhD., University of Minnesota) is Assistant Professor, Department of Communication and Theater Arts, Stonehill College, North Easton, MA 02357- 7800. An earlier version of this essay was presented at the April, 1996 Central States Communication Association Convention, St. Paul, MN. The author would like to thank Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, Bonnie Dow, Susan Huxman, and Kristen Vonnegut for their advice and encouragement. COMMUNICATION STUDIES, Volume 49, Spring 1998
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"the earliest American woman to publicly proclaim female equality" (Friedenberg, 1976, p. 13). Elmes-Crahall (1993) suggests that Sampson Gannett's "praise of Republican Motherhood in the lecture can be understood as a heartfelt expression of her own beliefs," and an argument for the importance "of the woman's role within the family" (pp. 389-390). Perhaps, but Sampson Gannett's praise of "Republican Motherhood" was also an affirmation of the Cult of True Womanhood, a restrictive system of gender roles that imagined women to be psychologically and biologically limited (Welter, 1976). Therefore, her lecture is, at best, a troubling feminist text. Sampson Gannett's lecture should be considered in historical context, and her anti-feminist statements viewed as adaptations to a unique rhetorical situation. If we as feminist scholars consider our work to be of political import, however, is it wise to dismiss anti-feminist statements as mere rhetorical devices, particularly when those statements are contained in discourses we offer as examples of feminist public address? My question is informed by issues that Dow (1995) recently raised in the pages of this journal. She argues that scholars in the field of rhetorical studies have often identified women's public address as feminist discourse, without reconciling their work with feminist thought or theory. She attributes part of the problem to essentialist views that equate the feminine with feminism, but she also suggests that "liberal feminist critics, who often take an uncritically celebratory attitude toward feminists' public discourse," must share the blame (Dow, 1995, p. 112). I see Friedenberg and Elmes-Crahall's criticism of Sampson Gannett's lecture as exemplifying this second complaint. Both approach the text from similar historical assumptions. Elmes-Crahall (1993) considers Sampson Gannett's lecture in relation to the three goals outlined in the beginning of the address: (1) to "enhance the pecuniary interest of her family"; (2) to "open the eyes of the incredulous, and . . . wipe off any aspersions, which the whispers of satire, caprice, or malevolence may have been wantonly thrown upon her"; and (3) to "re-visit some of the principal places, which were the theater of her personating the soldier." (p. 384)
Friedenberg (1976) also outlines what he sees as three goals of the lecture: "First, she spoke to redefine her image. Second, she spoke to clarify and interpret the truth. Third, she appealed directly for the public to render judgment on her conduct" (p. 6). Both Elmes-Crahall and Friedenberg attempt to prove that Sampson Gannett was successful in achieving these goals. However, the success they describe is contingent on her ability to represent her military service as patriotic, while at the same time dismissing the experience as a misguided and immoral violation of her "true sex." In other words, Sampson Gannett's lecture was successful because she reaffirmed the belief that women should never entertain ambitions outside the home. Subsequently, Elmes-Crahall and Friedenberg may be justified in celebrating Sampson Gannett as a successful example of women's public address, but they do not demonstrate that her lecture is a feminist discourse. Campbell's (1995) criticism of Sampson Gannett's lecture provides a more recent example of celebratory scholarship. In contrast to both Friedenberg and ElmesCrahall, Campbell acknowledges the political tensions inherent in the lecture. In fact, her critique is structured around the "masculine" and "feminine" voices that are woven throughout the lecture. However, the voice that Campbell identifies as "feminine" does not articulate a feminist statement: "As a True Woman, she immediately acknowledged that what she did was 'an error and presumption, because [she had] swerved from the accustomed flowry [.HC] paths of female delicacy to walk upon the heroic precipice of
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feminine perdition!' " (Campbell, 1995, p. 489). Here Sampson Gannett's "feminine" voice claims that she was wrong to violate the gender roles that were appropriate for her sex. Granted, Campbell identifies a masculine voice that justifies this violation as an expression of heroic patriotism, but she concludes that "in the final paragraphs, True Womanhood appeared to triumph . . . the voice of a masculine patriot had been transmuted into that of a feminine moral exemplar whose sinful ways might show other women the right path" (1995, p. 489). In other words, Sampson Gannett conveys a moral message that limits rather than expands women's potential. As a feminist, I hardly see this as an affirming rhetorical move. But these political tensions are at the heart of Campbell's thesis. She argues that early women rhetors confronted a unique set of rhetorical problems that required equivocation. These women were placed in a double bind in which they had to mediate their desire to speak with the social expectations that demanded they remain silent. Campbell maintains that because early women's public address appears to equivocate, it has often been regarded as inferior. She suggests that we consider the quality of this work in relation to these rhetorical problems, and recognize how these women mediated the double bind. For example, she believes that Sampson Gannett's lecture "reveal[s] considerable inventional skill in attempting to transcend these constrains" (1995, p. 491). Although Campbell adopts a celebratory tone, she does not identify Sampson Gannett as a successful rhetor. She claims the lecture is aesthetically limited, but she sees social significance in these limitations: The very fact of violating sexist prescriptions and of making arguments justifying women's speaking contributed to eroding the prescriptions.... The ambiguity in these texts may have been a resource as well. The competing voices and conflicting views may have manifested women's divided consciousness, but in that division, one voice articulated the aspirations that are the first stirrings of what would become a movement for women's rights. (1995, pp. 491-492)
Campbell seems to argue that Sampson Gannett is a feminist rhetor because her message is ambiguous, and she does not mediate the prescribed gender roles. If we extend this argument, it leads to an unusual conclusion: Sampson Gannett is a feminist because she is a rhetorical failure. Campbell appears reluctant to draw this conclusion; I do not share this reluctance. Celebrating women's public address has proven to be a valuable and necessary pursuit. In fact, this form of criticism has been instrumental in introducing and establishing feminist scholarship in the field of rhetorical studies, but if feminist rhetorical scholarship is to progress, new critical and theoretical territory must be explored. I agree with Dow (1995) when she suggests that we engage the political issues and theories that are surfacing in other areas of feminist studies. Like Dow, I believe we need to move beyond the celebratory approach of liberal feminism, and consider women's rhetoric from perspectives that emphasize issues of class, race, gender identity, and sexual orientation. In my essay, I have accepted Dow's challenge. My critique of Sampson Gannett's lecture draws on a body of theory that addresses the gender transgression that is inherent in her experience. Sampson Gannett was more than a female soldier; she was a women who succeeded in assuming a masculine identity, performing as a man in a masculine arena. To put it bluntly, Deborah Sampson Gannett was a transvestite. My purpose is not to remove Sampson Gannett from the canon of feminist discourse, but to recuperate her political potential from a different perspective. I argue that her lecture attempts to rationalize her transgendered experience, and that this rationalization requires rhetorical moves that are anti-feminist. In contrast to previous critiques, I
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argue that Sampson Gannett was not successful in erasing her transvestism; consequently, her performance questions the gender roles she seems to affirm. In other words, I believe Sampson Gannett's feminist potential is realized in her performance, which rebuts the Cult of True Womanhood, the "tyrant bands which held" her sex.
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QUEER THEORY AND THE THEATER Judith Butler's (1990) critique of gender norms has found a prominent place in the emerging field of queer theory. She posits that gender is performative, meaning that gender is not something that we are, but something that we do. Butler also contends that gender is not just a volitional performance, but one that is policed. The sanctions against deviation from heterosexual gender norms are so intense that the performance of gender must constantly be repeated and reproduced. This repetition creates the illusion of a psychic depth from which gender is assumed to extend. In other words, gender becomes naturalized through repetition; the performance is forgotten, and gender is assumed to be a natural expression of the psyche; or, to put a finer point on it, femininity is thought to naturally extend from a female psyche. Gender becomes a means through which society is able to enforce sexual norms and discipline the individual.1 In spite of the strong enforcement of gender norms, slippages occur. The most obvious example of gender slippage is transvestism, cross-dressing. Judith Butler (1990) has argued mat transvestism calls into question established notions of gender and sexuality. As she argues, transvestism reveals that gender is not a psychological expression of biology, but is actually a product of performance. In fact, the transvestite reminds us that gender is performed, and thereby allows us as critics to engage the political implications of the gender roles that are enforced. Sampson Gannett's transgendered experience is a case in point: she performed as a man, and thereby challenged the gender roles demanded by the Cult of True Womanhood. Butler also suggests that by dissolving the constraints of gender, the transvestite illustrates the potentialities that can be realized by both sexes. Again, Sampson Gannett is an example: she served as a soldier for three years even though she was wounded twice. Butler sees the transgendered figure as a significant threat to social norms, because the transvestite not only questions gender roles, but also sexualizes gender nonconformity. For example, the transgendered female is also a lesbian presence whose assumption of masculine phallic power threatens men's social and sexual roles (Butler, 1993). Again, Sampson Gannett's history embodies these threats. In his book Forgotten Ladies, Wright (1928) notes that Sampson Gannett dressed as a man both before and after her stint in the army. He also indicates that her masculine disguise may have served interests that were not entirely patriotic. Instead of going to Middleborough, where she had spent her dreary childhood, she went to Stoughton, and retired into tedious rusticity. She still wore her uniform and in this male costume found a job on a farm. She adopted the name of Ephraim Sampson. During that winter the usual farm chores engrossed her and for diversion, she flirted with the country girls! (Wright, 1928, p. 103)
Sampson also indulged in this flirtatious behavior while under the care of Dr. Binney. The doctor's young niece developed an attraction for Robert Shirtliffe, an attraction that Sampson Gannett seems to have reciprocated (Ellet, 1969). Her transgendered behavior reflects both the social and sexual threats identified by Butler. In her book Vested Interests, Garber (1993) explores several cultural examples of transgendered experience. Like Butler, Garber sees cross-dressing as a means of
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expanding human potential, but she also notes that because transvestism disrupts social norms, it is an experience that is often negated and contained in cultural representation. She writes of a narrative form she calls "the transvestite's progress" (p. 69), which works to normalize and explain incidents of cross-dressing. As Garber notes:
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Whatever discomfort is felt by the reader or audience... is smoothed over and narrativized by a story that recuperates social and sexual norms, not only reinstating the binary (male/female) but also retaining, and encoding, a progress narrative: s/he did this in order to a) get a job, b) find a place in a man's world, c) realize or fulfill some deep but acceptable need in terms of personal destiny, (p. 69)
The "transvestite's progress" is a narrative that desexualizes the experience by investing it with an acceptable rationale.2 I see this narrative form at work in Sampson Gannett's lecture. In a way, I agree with the previous critics: I, too, believe that Sampson Gannett had to argue for the Cult of True Womanhood in order to be accepted by her audiences; however, her argument had to negate and contain her transgendered experience in order to win this acceptance. By doing so, she forfeited an opportunity to challenge the limitations of women's gender roles. As I have noted, the celebratory critics of Sampson Gannett's lecture have deemed her successful because she forfeits this challenge. I offer an alternative reading in which I argue that Sampson Gannett is ultimately unsuccessful in containing her transgendered experience, and because she fails, she undermines the restrictive gender roles of True Womanhood. To put it simply, in contrast to previous critics, I consider Sampson Gannett an important feminist figure because she is a failure. I treat Sampson Gannett's lecture as a theatrical performance, an approach I find appropriate because Sampson Gannett performed her lecture in conjunction with other theatrical productions and because the lecture is entitled a "Theatrical Address" (Gannett, 1905). I also feel that approaching Sampson Gannett's lecture as theater exposes some distinctive rhetorical moves and highlights the performativity of gender. Specifically, Sampson Gannett uses the venue of the theater as an arena in which her transgendered experience will be seen as acceptable. Moreover, she appropriates the convention of the theatrical soliloquy to invest the account of her military (masculine) experience with a sense of dramatic "truth." In addition, her lecture follows a dramatic structure that collapses her transgendered experience into the temporal period of her military service. As a group, these dramatic devices attempt to contain and negate the sexually transgressive threat posed by Deborah Sampson Gannett's gender transgression. Therefore, I see these dramatic devices assuming a rhetorical function, serving to rationalize her transvestism. Although I see a transvestite's progress conveyed in the dramatic devices that I discuss, Sampson Gannett's lecture was not solely a public address. At the conclusion of her lecture she would return to stage in full military uniform and perform the "Manual of Arms," a rifle drill. I argue that this performance reintroduces the transgendered specter of Robert Shirtliffe, and calls into question the Cult of True Womanhood.3 It is this final slip, this ultimate failure, that reveals Sampson Gannett's feminist potential: she serves as a reminder that gender is performed and not a natural expression of biology. The critical project that I propose is designed to meet Dow's challenge. A reading that draws on some of the new theoretical work in feminist studies, specifically queer theory, is offered. Other critics have drawn on queer theory in their analysis of discourse (Gringrich-Philbrook, 1994; Slagle, 1995), but their discussion of gender performance never fully engages a transgendered example. Those critics who have analyzed cross-dressing (Brookey, 1996; Schwichtenberg, 1992) have done so only in
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the context of popular culture. I would like to introduce theories of gender performance as a means of criticizing public address in a way that can advance feminist scholarship in the field. A TRANSVESTITE'S PROGRESS
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The Stage
At first the theater seems an odd venue for Sampson Gannett, particularly if her purpose was to demonstrate her virtue. During the early 1800s, acting was considered a questionable profession, especially inappropriate for women. As theater historian Johnson (1981) writes, "most of the expressed disapproval of the theater and actresses could be traced to nineteenth-century sexual mores and the commonly held belief that all or most actresses led immoral lives both on and off stage" (p. 68). The stage was, after all, a public forum, off limits to virtuous women. As Johnson (1981) points out, the clergy especially abhorred the theater for allowing women to participate in dramatic fantasies that they believed to be deceptive. One of the deceptions that must have particularly unnerved the clergy was the practice of women playing masculine roles. Sometimes this gender play occurred within the text of a play: Shakespeare's plays often contained scenes in which women assumed masculine disguise. In addition, women sometimes played masculine parts. For example, when Sampson Gannett lectured in New York, she shared the stage with a production entitled "The Blind Boy"; among the cast was a Mrs. Johnson, who played the title role (O'Dell, 1970). The stage was no place for a virtuous woman, and there is little reason to believe that Sampson Gannett's audiences perceived her to be virtuous. On the contrary, her audiences probably attended out of curiosity; and the historical records seem to indicate that people were, indeed, curious (O'Dell, 1970). The stage provided her with an arena in which the transgendered events of her life would seem, if not exactly normal, then at least more appropriate. This is especially true considering the military drill performance with which she would follow her lecture. At the time, the theater was perhaps the only place such a performance would have been tolerated. Indeed, if a woman had chosen to parade in public in a soldier's uniform at the beginning of the nineteenth century, she would have been, at the very least, tempting fate. For a woman of Sampson Gannett's experience and reputation, the theater was the most logical public platform from which to address and reproduce her transgendered performance. The Soliloquy
The clergy's charge that the nature of the theater was deceptive is, to a certain degree, accurate. Drama presumes a contract between the actors and the audience. The audience knows the performers are acting and that what they are witnessing is not real, but for the duration of the play, the audience suspends its disbelief and accepts the events that occur onstage. Although the events are not real, this does not mean that "truth" does not exist on stage. In fact, tragedy, in the context of drama, often occurs when the truth is discovered. For example, tragedy befalls Oedipus once he discovers the truth of his ancestry. Certain dramatic devices are used to display truth in a drama. One such device is the soliloquy. Bentley and Millett (1935) define the soliloquy as "a dramatic device for the revelation of character . . . logically and practically, it is a speaking aloud of the character's feelings and ideas, an objectification of intimate and personal psychological material" (p. 211). In the soliloquy, the actor holds forth to the audience, expressing the
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character's inner thoughts. In this manner, audience members come to believe that they are privy to information that is not available to the other actors on the stage. The soliloquy is perceived as an honest revelation in which the audience is taken into the confidence of the character speaking. In other words, the soliloquy is a means of conveying inner truth. The theatrical scene of Sampson Gannett's lecture facilitates her use of the soliloquy. Her lecture is wedged between the acts of a play, so the audience is predisposed to the theatrical conventions that justify her solitary presence on the stage. Drawing upon this convention, Sampson Gannett appears to be relating to the audience her "true" feelings about her experience as a soldier in the war. In fact, she says as much in the introduction of her lecture when she describes her speech as a "tale of truth; which, though it took its rise, and finally terminated in the splendor of public life, I was determined to repeat only as the soliloquy of a hermit, or to the visionary phantoms, which hover through the glooms of solitude" (1905, p. 17). She tells her audience that what they are about to hear was not originally intended for the public, because it is a personal and private recollection of her life. Although she is repeating her "tale" in "public," she originally intended it for the "phantoms" of "solitude" for it was "only as the soliloquy of a hermit." By evoking the qualities of the soliloquy, Sampson Gannett leads her audience to believe that she is speaking her inner thoughts, that they are hearing the "true," intimate story from the original source. She also suggests that her lecture is a recollection of her transgendered experience: I indeed recollect it as a foible, an error and presumption, into which, perhaps, I have too inadvertently and precipitately run; but which I now retrospect with anguish and amazement.... And yet I must frankly confess, I recollect it with a kind of satisfaction, which no one can better conceive and enjoy than him, who recollecting the good intentions of a bad deed, lives to see and to correct any indecorum of his life. (Gannett, 1905, p. 18)
Clearly, Sampson Gannett is already apologizing for her gender transgressions, but she imagines her recollections and confession in very personal terms. "No one can conceive" of the personal satisfaction that she receives from her opportunity to "correct any indecorum." She also recalls her transgression as a personal tragedy: "I ought to recollect it, as a mariner, having regained his native shore of serenity and peace, looks back on the stormy billows which, so long and so constantly had threatened to ingulph [sit] in the bowels of the deep" (1905, p. 19). Again, Sampson Gannett offers an apology, but it is conveyed as a personal recollection, as if she were recovering a memory. Sampson Gannett introduces her lecture as if it were never intended as a public address. Indeed, she claims that its content is the personal recollection of a tragic experience. The rhetorical function of these devices combines with the theatrical scene of the lecture, and allows Sampson Gannett to exploit the conventions of the soliloquy. This sense of intimacy allows Sampson Gannett to overcome the contradictory task of discussing a personal matter, her gender transgression, in a public arena. Furthermore, the assumed disclosure of the soliloquy underscores her sincerity and indicates that she regrets her transgression. Dramatic Structure
Although it has the characteristics of a soliloquy, Sampson Gannett's lecture is, in effect, a one-woman show. She makes no attempt to disguise the transformation of her life story into theater; in fact, she constantly invites the comparison. At the point at
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which she assumes the identity of Robert Shirtliffe, Sampson Gannett remarks, "thus I became an actor in that important drama, with an inflexible resolution to persevere through the last scene" (1905, p. 22). She describes her introduction to the military as "a new scene, and, as it were, a new world now opened to my view" (1905, p. 22). When she begins to discuss the actual incidents of the war, she tells her audience, "the curtain is now up—a scene opens to your view" (1905, p. 23). Through these references, Sampson Gannett asks her audience to view her life as they would a drama. Sampson Gannett uses other literary devices to heighten the drama of her lecture. Her choice of language goes beyond high style into the realm of the grandiose. For example, Sampson Gannett offers this description of the revolutionary war: "The sluices, both of the blood of freemen and of slaves, were first opened here. And those hills and vallies [sit], once the favorite resort, both of the lover and philosopher, have been drunk with their blood" (1905, p. 20). Such style is more concerned with poetic imagery than with realistic depiction. Her emphasis on style might also explain why she unexpectedly resorts to actual verse. The verse is not empty; in fact, it is used to express her patriotism, as well as to call on the audience to identify with her motives. The first stanza clearly illustrates this point: And dost thou ask what fairy hand inspired A Nymph to be with martial glory fired? Or, what from art, or yet from nature's laws, Has join'd a Female to her country's cause? Why on great Mars's theater she drew Her female pourtrait [ttVj,though in soldier's hue? (p. 28)
Although the verse normalizes her gender transgression by investing it with a patriotic purpose, her use of poetry would seem incongruent with "a tale of truth." But that is just the point: Sampson Gannett's address is not about the facts, but about theater, and verse was not an uncommon theatrical form at the time. The style and verse of Sampson Gannett's lecture are affixed to a larger frame that follows a definitive dramatic structure. As O'Hara (1938) notes, the structure of a play proceeds along a line of increasing tension. This tension leads to a climax, at which "the resolution of [the] problem becomes a necessity" (p. 130). After the climax, the play enters the stage of resolution in which the tension dissipates. In short, a dramatic structure follows the escalation of a conflict to a climax, after which the conflict abates. The tension in Sampson Gannett's lecture begins at the moment she assumes her masculine disguise when she becomes "as an actor in an important drama" (1905, p. 22). The tension increases as she moves into the events of the war, and the battle at Boston: The conflict of the battle begins as "the howling of a tempest-the electric fluid which darts majesty and terror through the clouds-its explosion and tremendous effects," and is escalated by "the sight of our butchered, expiring relatives and friends; while the conflagration of the town added the last solemnity to the scene" (1905, p. 24). The climax of the war is represented as an exploding volcano: "Your eyes dazzled, your imaginations awfully sublimed, by the fire which belched from its environs, and towered, like that from an eruption of Etna, to the clouds" (1905, p. 25). By placing the events of the war in a dramatic structure, she creates a theatrical spectacle, a swelling storm building to a dramatic eruption, followed by a calming resolution. But the war is not the only conflict in Sampson Gannett's lecture; her masquerade as Robert Shirtliffe also creates a conflict. Sampson Gannett maps her transgendered experience onto the same dramatic structure she uses to describe the war. She claims to have assumed her masculine persona at the beginning of the war, when she "burst the
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tyrant bands, which held my sex in awe, and clandestinely, or by stealth, grasped an opportunity, which custom and the world seemed to deny, as a natural privilege" (1905, p. 26). Sampson Gannett also compares her transgendered experience with the conflict of war when she suggests that "a disclosure of my peculiar situation" would be "worse than" falling victim to "a war not yet fully terminated" (1905, p. 26). Finally, after Sampson Gannett describes the resolution of the war, she begins to justify her transgendered experience, as though the resolution of the war demands the resolution of her transgression. After she recites a verse on the return to "liberty," she states: "But the question again returns-What particular inducement could she have thus to elope from the soft sphere of her own sex, to perform a deed of valor by way of sacrilege on unhallowed ground?" (1905, p. 27). From here she goes on to argue that her "error and presumption" were motivated by her patriotism, and that her "repentance is a sweet solace to conscience" (1905, p. 29). Sampson Gannett's narrative of the war parallels her transgendered experience. The war begins with her transgression, her anxiety escalates with the war, and her repentance coincides with the return of peaceful order. By relating the two events in this manner, Sampson Gannett invites a comparison between the conflict of war and the conflict posed by her transvestism. The chaos of the battle becomes a metaphor for the sexual chaos of gender transgression. As order is restored, and "liberty" established in the American nation, so, too, is Sampson Gannett's true sex released from its masculine disguise. The conflicts of war and gender are resolved simultaneously, and in both cases, the right side wins. Mission Accomplished
Earlier I argued that Sampson Gannett's rhetorical motive could be identified as a transvestite's progress, an attempt to contain and desexualize her transvestism. It is apparent from the lecture that this motive is present. Although she did not exactly join the army to find employment, she claims that her transgression fulfilled a sense of patriotic duty. This patriotic call required that she enter a masculine arena, and her entry required a masculine facade. Or, in her words, "I only seemed to want the license to become one of the severest avengers of the wrong" (1905, p. 21). Yet it is Sampson Gannett's apologetic tone that ultimately normalizes her experience. Early in the lecture she intimates that her story is one that recollects "the good intentions of a bad deed" (1905, p. 18). Toward the end of her address she suggests that the events of her life should be a warning to others: "And yet, happy, those, who at the same time receive a monitor which fixes a resolve, never to embark on such a sea of perdition; where we see shipwreck of all that is ennobling to the dignity of man—all that is lovely and amiable in the character of woman" (1905, p. 31). Although Sampson Gannett offers patriotic reasons for her gender transgression, she concludes that such an experience should not be repeated. An even greater normalizing effect comes from Sampson Gannett's use of dramatic devices and structure. The stage provides her with an arena in which women have often performed as men, and therefore allows her a public opportunity to discuss her experience. The convention of the soliloquy also helps Sampson Gannett by allowing her to offer the "truth" of her story. She avers that her purpose for cross-dressing was purely patriotic and, consequently, only offers incidents from her experience in the war. She never mentions any details of her life before or after the war, or any of the women with whom she flirted while in the guise of a soldier. Such incidents would surely call into question the purity of her patriotic motive. The intimate quality of the
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soliloquy allows her to make these delicate omissions, while still maintaining the impression that she is revealing the truth about these incidents of her life. In other words, the soliloquy gives the impression that Sampson Gannett is revealing an inner truth, when in fact, the truth she reveals is very public and purposefully selective. The dramatic structure of the speech also contains Sampson Gannett's masculine identity within the temporal limits of the war. As I mentioned earlier, the lecture equates her transgendered experience with the chaotic nature of battle. She also maps the resolution of the war onto the discovery of her actual sex. In this manner, Sampson Gannett acknowledges that her gender transgression was in conflict with social norms and that returning to her feminine identity was also a return to order. The dramatic structure allows her to portray her transgendered experience as a personal struggle to establish order in her own life, and to issue a warning so that other women will not make similar mistakes. This use of dramatic structure normalizes her gender transgression, edits out those incidents that would sexualize her experience, and reaffirms the Cult of True Womanhood. The Transvestite Specter
In the final analysis, Sampson Gannett's "transvestite's progress" is a narrative that attempts to prove that she did nothing wrong, while paradoxically suggesting that what she did was not right. This strategy works for her to the extent that she convinces her audience that her cross-dressing was the only way to fulfill her patriotic desire, but as Butler has explained, slippages occur in the performance of gender, and Sampson Gannett's lecture is no exception. In fact, the specter of Robert Shirtliffe is one such slippage that is not so easily contained. After she delivers a lecture in which she maintains that she only cross-dressed in order to fight in the war, and that such action was wrong, Sampson Gannett dons her military uniform and performs the "Manual of Arms," a military drill she performed with a gun. As other critics have argued, this part of the performance was intended to eliminate any doubt as to whether or not she was able to perform as a soldier. But her performance also undermines her efforts to normalize her experience, and rebuts her advocacy of established gender roles. The Cult of True Womanhood was a system of gender roles that not only dictated what women should do, but also what they could do. The system was supported by biological, sociological, and theological rationales that established the limits for feminine gender, and invested these limits with a religious fundamentalism. The Cult of True Womanhood did not allow for exceptions; a woman who deviated from its tenets was considered unsexed (Welter, 1976). In other words, the system of gender roles to which Sampson Gannett appealed was unequivocal. Unfortunately, the return of Robert Shirtliffe renders Sampson Gannett's lecture inherently equivocal. This part of her performance operates as a rhetorical contradiction. For example, she claims that her transgendered experience was a "bad deed," but she is willing to repeat the "deed" for her audience. She claims that her experience is a personal tragedy she is reluctant to share, but she is willing to dress and perform as a man in public. She claims that she only assumed a masculine disguise because of a patriotic motive, but she assumes the disguise again for personal gain. But Sampson Gannett's ultimate motive is not as important as the rhetorical potential of her actions. Once she has argued for the integrity of the Cult of True Womanhood and expressed her own regret for her transgression, she performs actions that contradict her own statements. Previous critics argued that this woman who donned a uniform and performed military drills successfully fulfilled the expectations of her gender; I dis-
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agree. Sampson Gannett's final performance of cross-dressing calls into question her own statements about what a woman should and should not do. She may speak of the limits of her sex, but her performance enacts a rebuttal. Sampson Gannett's performance expands women's capabilities beyond the constraints of True Womanhood. For example, she was "forty-two and in poor health at the time" (Elmes-Crahall, 1993, p. 385), but she retained the strength and agility to perform the Manual of Arms. In other words, Sampson Gannett demonstrated that a woman could assume an important masculine role. As Butler has argued, the threat of women's cross-dressing resides in the female usurpation of phallic power-the possibility that a woman can replace a man both socially and sexually. In Sampson Gannett's case, the usurpation of phallic power is represented in the Manual of Arms, in which she dons a military uniform and performs an exercise with one of the most obvious phallic symbols imaginable: a gun. When she whips hers out and handles it just like a man, Sampson Gannett is not reaffirming the Cult of True Womanhood. On the contrary, she demonstrates exactly what a woman can do: she can perform like a man. The same theatrical devices that facilitated Sampson Gannett's transvestite's progress also work to frame her contradiction. The dramatic structure of her speech, which worked to resolve the conflict of her transgendered experience, is disrupted by Robert Shirtliffe. The return of this cross-dressed military figure suggests that the "war" is far from over, and the gender conflicts have not been stabilized. Sampson Gannett appeared to tell the "truth" about a personal and private experience, an experience for which she claims to have been repentant, but her actions suggest otherwise. In fact, her cross-dressing is a rebuke of her intimate confession. Finally, the stage provided Sampson Gannett with the forum to assume her masculine identity once again. Ultimately, this forum allowed her the opportunity to defy the Cult of True Womanhood in a public arena. The reappearance of Robert Shirtliffe illustrates that Sampson Gannett's transgendered experience cannot be explained away. As Garber (1993) claims, "the figure of the transvestite in fact opens up the whole question of the relationship of the aesthetic to the existential. This, indeed, is part of its considerable power to disturb, its transgressive force" (p. 71). Sampson Gannett's case raises issues other than those related to her personal motive to cross-dress. She demonstrates that a woman can assume even the most rigorous and demanding responsibilities usually associated with the masculine gender. Furthermore, she illustrates that the tenets of True Womanhood constructed performances that ultimately are unstable, and this instability undermines the orthodoxy of gender roles. Therefore, Sampson Gannett is not successful in reaffirming gender expectations, but it is her failure that reveals her feminist potential. Her failure serves as a reminder that the Cult of True Womanhood is not a biological expression, but merely a repetitive performance. Ultimately, Sampson Gannett calls into question the stability and validity of the gender roles that subjugated women. Although she argued against her transgendered experience, her return as Robert Shirtliffe rebutted her arguments and illustrated that a woman could perform outside the limitations imposed by the Cult of True Womanhood. CONCLUSION My purpose in this essay was to answer a challenge that Dow (1995) recently issued in the pages of this journal. She suggested that feminist rhetorical scholars must make greater efforts to reconcile their scholarship with feminist theory, and embrace some of the new theories that are emerging from feminist studies. In this essay, I have tried to
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meet Dow's challenge. I have revealed a feminist potential in Sampson Gannett's lecture that has not been fully realized by the celebratory critics, and shown how queer theory can offer critical insight into a unique example of women's public address. Although Sampson Gannett's cross-dressing is a pivotal point of my analysis, this is not to suggest that all forms of transvestism have feminist potential. For example, Marlene Dietrich donned a tuxedo to kiss a woman in the film Morocco, but her gender transgression only served to manipulate masculine desire (Russo, 1987). In fact, Butler (1993) has cautioned against the assumption that cross-dressing is a critical panacea. I find Sampson Gannett's transvestism to be a useful point of critical departure for my project, but projects that attempt to identify feminist potential in cross-dressing should proceed with care. Otherwise, a critical orthodoxy could emerge that would identify a women in drag as a feminist simply because she is in drag. Such an orthodoxy would hardly be an improvement on the celebratory assumption that a woman is a feminist simply because she has spoken. Dow is not alone in her call for the expansion in feminist rhetorical studies (Biesecker, 1992; Bruner, 1996), and I have not been alone in my efforts to incorporate queer theory into the discipline (Schwichtenberg, 1992; Slagle, 1995). I have shown how queer theory can be used to expand the field, and address a specific, yet significant, theoretical concern in the study of feminist rhetoric. When we begin to think of gender as performance, then we as feminist scholars can expand the scope of what we imagine to be rhetorical. For example, many feminist rhetoricians have challenged how gender roles have been used to limit women's participation in discourse. However, masculine gender roles are vulnerable to the same scrutiny, and there is a feminist advantage to be gained in challenging men's natural access to public discourse. Recently, a special issue of Communication Theory was devoted to the study of masculinity (Spitzack, 1998). Although many fields of communication study were represented in the forum, rhetorical studies was noticeably absent. This absence should serve as a wake-up call to those of us who wish to see feminist rhetorical studies advance. Obviously, much more work must be done before we can begin to meet the challenge that Dow has offered. NOTES 1
Butler's theory draws heavily on Foucault (1978) who has argued that sexuality has been produced by society in order to contain and direct sexual pleasure. 2 Garber gives several cinematic examples of "the transvestite's progress" including Some Like it Hot, Tootsie, and Yentl. A more contemporary example would be Mrs. Doubtfire, in which a father assumes a drag disguise in order to be close to his children. 3 I would like to acknowledge that the text of the lecture raises questions about authorship. The lecture is written in an extremely high style that would seem to be beyond Sampson Gannett's ability considering her limited education. In any event, I will consider the address as a performance in which Sampson Gannett has a great deal of agency. She represents the lecture as reflecting the story of her life, so regardless of authorship, the address carries her endorsement.
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