WGS 255 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Gender Bender
8 May 2019
School
Department
Course
Professor
Female Marine Lecture
Themes
• Adventure – female warrior
• Respectability
• Gender and Class
• Self Reliance
• Gender Roles vs. Gender Identity
o Gender Bending
• Urban Vice
o Color
o Whiteness
• Romance?
o The story of scorned love had to be shared to make her story
justifiable
o Romatification of an idea about a woman on her own who is
heartbroken (willing to protect her family and sacrifice herself)
• Fallen Female’s Redemption
Stages of Lucy’s Adventure
1 Falls in love – gets pregnant – he promises to marry her – no wedding
(themes: romance, respectability, gender)
2 Inn Keeper’s wife’s place
a. Gives her a warning
b. Good behavior will be rewarded
c. Represents what you should be; ideal woman
3 Negro Hill (themes: urban vice)
a. Where people go to get alcohol, gambling, prostitutes
b. Where men act dishonorably
c. Women here are bad because they’re enticing men to leave their
families
d. THE BABY LIVED
i. When she came back and saw the 10-12 year old girl; didn’t
recognize it was her child
4 Marine (themes: female warrior, respectability, gender bending, self reliance,
fallen females redemption)
a. Way to make up for years of filth; occupy the space of the most
respectable person she could become
b. No longer the victim, proud of what she is doing
c. Negro Hill – all women; she was better than all of them because she
was white
d. Her ship mates – all white men; relates with them better
5 Returns Home
a. Can’t take urban vice (prostitution, cross dressing) home with her;
that’s why she returns as a woman
