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In early novel writing, the tool of deceptive dressing, as appearing in the plot of Fantomina, emerges as a mode of visual rhetoric working to redefine

In the infancy of the British novel genre as a whole, the theme of characters using dress to create deceptive new identities was prominent.

The plot is loosely based around rumors Behn had heard regarding a story of Prince Francisco de Tarquini. Though Behn did insist that the story was true, it is sensationalized. The story follows a woman named Miranda who, slighted by the rejection of a priest, accuses him of rape. After Miranda marries Prince Tarquin, the story observes their series of deceptive acts and multiple murder attempts instigated by the passions of love and desire. The Fair Jilt occupies itself with themes of deceit, infatuation, and impassioned acts of love, common ideas within the amatory fiction genre. Behn herself introduces the story as a study of the destructive power of love.

Charlotte Charke: The writer of this autobiography. Charke recounts her life and various occupations as she navigates 18th century London as a consistent crossdresser. The narrative is written from Charlotte's perspective, and centers around her personal reflections of experiences throughout her life and various relationships. All other figures within the story are referenced through Charlotte's writing.

Colley Cibber: Charlotte's father, with a high public status as an actor during this time. Cibber also wrote an autobiography about his own life. Charlotte frequently recounts her relationship with her father and it's descent into no-contact. Charlotte herself writes through her publication of her autobiography as an attempt to reach out to her father.

Mrs. Brown: a vaguely written, but consistent character throughout Charlotte's writings. It is speculated that Charlotte's (identified as Mr. Brown during her time with Mrs. Brown) relationship to Mrs. Brown was more than just platonic, though it is never explicitly stated.

Richard Charke: Charlotte's first husband through a brief marriage. It was known to Charlotte that Richard was partaking in adulterous affairs throughout their marriage. After he died, Charlotte became a single mother to their daughter, Catherine Charke.

Catherine Charke: Catherine's adolescence involved Charlotte's severe financial strain and inconsistent occupations. She eventually marries, which was a form of tension between her and her mother.

Historical Context:

A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Charlotte Charke, published in 1755, is now critically noted for its commentary on gender roles during 18th century London. Charlotte embodied a queerness against the normative social values during her time period. Her crossdressing in her day-to-day life allowed her to take on occupational roles that were attributed to men. Outside of something like a theatrical performer, women were severely limited in the type of work they were allowed to do. Further, sexuality was in strict accordance to normative gender identity during the time. 18th century gender had shifted into the notion that to understand an individual's sexuality, one could look at the body itself and understand the internal desire. Because of this, Charlotte's crossdressing was in strict contradiction to normative sexuality and gender expressions of the time. There is speculation on the reasoning for Charlotte's limited indulgence in describing her relationship to Mrs. Brown, as well as an unnamed second husband. During the mid-1700's, there was social issue regarding the female husband, where a woman would deceptively crossdress as a man to deceive a woman into marrying her for her money, housing, etc. During this time period, sexual queerness was not socially accepted. Whether or not Charlotte embodies queerness in a sense of sexuality, her crossdressing behavior was radical for the social normatively of the time in all means of gender expression, sexuality, economic purposes, and expectations for her as a maternal figure to her daughter. THEMES

Gender and Theatrical Performance:

Charlotte Charke opposes both the gender and social norms of her time. Gender in the 18th century had shifted from its prior age into one of essentiality and naturalness. Because of this, the impressions of the physical body reflected one's identity. Instead of the body being disguised, the body was the illustration of one's gender and sexuality and in turn, one's social position. Gender during the eighteenth century was rigid, and regarded as a naturalized component to one's body.

The essentiality of gender by the visual interpretation of the body thus impacted the relationship of the actor and theatrical performances. Because of the shift in gender perceptions of the eighteenth century, a theatrical performance by an actor was then closely associated to the true character of the person playing the role ; instead of an actor embodying a role only for the stage, the audience's perception of such character performance became recognized as the identity of the performer themselves. To this point, Charlotte Charke's crossdressing became more than a source of confusion within society, but further a form of ambiguity that was maintained in her stage performances as well as off. Though Charke has never claimed autobiographically that the reasoning behind her crossdressing is for for the sake of expressing sexual or gender identity specifically, Charke's choice to do so in the context of eighteenth century norms does garner a a non-normative mode of social functioning. In Julia Fawcett's book Spectacular Disappearances: Celebrity and Privacy, 1696-1801, her book chapter "The Growth of Celebrity Culture: Colley Cibber, Charlotte, Charke, and the Overexpression of Gender", she claims that Charke's overexpression "presents a gender identity that cannot be described as either masculine or feminine--...instead...it becomes unrecognizable, indescribable-- as the gender of the body that writes it becomes blank" (Fawcett 88). While Charke's gender expression has been speculated by both her audiences and academic critics, her conciliatory tendencies seem to neutralize her body in a way that rejects observation.

Transgender Interpretations within Charke's Autobiography

While there are various perspectives on the morality of applying modern-day terminology to past historical figures, there has been a multitude of gender and sexuality analyses done on Charke's autobiography in modern time, specifically to the effect of her lifetime of crossdressing, as well as the style of her autobiography itself. In Jesse Jack's "Reclaiming a Transgender History: the Intertextual Life of Charlotte Charke", they claim that Charlotte's writing "evokes the actress' poly-vocal identities on and off stage, while the Narrative's very structure, the stitching together of various episodes across time, reflects the author's embodied, intertextual experience" (Jack 49). The structure of Charke's life itself, was extremely rambunctious: trying and dismissing multiple kinds of occupations, her tumultuous relationship to her family, and her presence as a known celebrity during her time. Charke's narrative is commonly queered, speculating not only on the queerness of Charke's gender and sexuality, but her multifaceted identity that cannot be stabilized into a specific eighteenth century categorization. On stage, Charke's consistent choice of breeches roles, similar to the foppish characters her father Colley Cibber would perform, both confused the audience and opened conversation for speculation of both the father and daughter's sexuality. Jack further claims that "Charke's [performance] role served to subvert the spectator's agency to authorize the body while also rendering her own body on stage ambiguous", so that the "nakedness" expected to be seen by eighteenth century audiences was not enabled.

Jack compares Charke's autobiography and expression of hardship throughout her life to the present-day struggles faced by transgender people, asserting that the parallel hardships could be seen through Charke's "financial destitution, severance from familial bonds, and the policing of gendered borderlands, origin narratives, and regimes of truth-making. Charke acknowledges such restraints...by refusing to assume that her readers will readily support her at the beginning of the Narrative" (Jack 55).

Misinterpretations of Charke

As seen in the aforementioned themes, Charke does much to oppose normative gender roles during her lifetime, whether it is through her ambiguity in her theater performances, her presentation to the public, or her non-nuclear family dynamics as a single mother to her daughter. Charlotte was the breadwinner for her family, crossdressing as a means of assuming traditionally male occupations such as a doctor, baker, or business owner. Charlotte's lack of categorization in her lifetime is also reflective within her own autobiography, which is stylistically scrambled, adventurous, and never stagnant. The ambiguity of Charlotte's character and her autobiography have made difficult pains for scholars to attempt to pin her down as any type of specific woman. According to Sue Churchill, in the essay "'I Then Was What I Had Made Myself': Representation and Charlotte Charke" Churchill regards the image done by Samuel Whyte "of Charke as a pathetic figure [that] dominates biographical and scholarly representations of her and her work throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries", as a kind of misinterpretation of her that has come to be one of the only remaining illustrations of her. Like a metaphor to Charlotte herself, her personal ambiguity and the misinterpretation of her body that has persisted since her autobiographical publication remains a huge point of speculation for the text itself. Because of the lack of resources or lacking of research, twentieth century scholars assessment of the criticisms towards Charke during or immediately after her autobiography publications reinvigorates the misinterpretations of Charke throughout the rest of her life, and the portions she documents. Charlotte generally does not align with the expectations of the traditional woman: providing for her daughter as a single mother in poverty, a divorcee, and perhaps most obviously, the embodiment of both the paternal and maternal figure. In this way, the multidimensional qualities of both her lifestyle and her reception play against her in terms of critical reception both of her time and in modern day.

A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Charlotte Charke is a 1755 autobiography by English actress Charlotte Charke. Her autobiography sheds light on the difficulties she faced as a woman in the public eye, providing insight into the gender dynamics of 18th-century England and her own economic struggles. The book sold well and was republished several times.

Charke was the daughter of the famous actor and playwright Colley Cibber and followed in his footsteps, spending much of her life in the theater. However, interspersed between these periods of acting, Charke took on various adventures and other jobs. Most notably, Charke was known to crossdress. While she portrayed many breeches roles throughout her career in the theater, she often chose to cross dress under male identities in her daily life.

Charke’s autobiographical narrative has maintained weight in many forms of modern literary criticism, most of which involve speculation around the consistent usage of crossdressing throughout her life. In the field of literature and gender studies, Mrs. Charlotte Charke's narrative has inspired the work of influential individuals who have furthered our understanding of women's experiences in the 18th century. Patricia Meyer Spacks, Susan Paterson Glover, and Misty G. Anderson are just a few of the scholars who have delved into Mrs. Charke's life and work, shedding light on the complexities of gender, performance, and identity in the 18th century.

The dysfunction of the narrative style and theatrics of Charke’s writing contribute to the kind of flexibility Charke embodied in her own identity. Charke expressed various kinds of characters throughout her life and resisted categorization of normative 18th-century gender roles, which is often mirrored in the prose of her autobiography.

This narrative can be viewed as a foray into current celebrity culture. Charke’s father, Colley Cibber was a famous actor in eighteenth century England and this narrative would be very akin to a modern day tell-all.