It is a reoccurring plot in both Ancient and Modern Literature, and I thrill each time I see it. The heterosexual couple that is allowed to appear, despite the “Everyone is heterosexual, what else is there to be?” theme underlying most fiction, while still allowing for uncomfortable reactions from the polite society of the story.
One example would be the theme of “Boy falls in love with Girl disguised as Boy.” (Or Vise-Versa) as often seen in Shakespearian drama and 80s sex comedy alike. It allows for the existence of the homosexual, albeit it as a poorly defined Other, while still letting the main character flop-sweat as to his/her true orientation. (“What? I can’t stop thinking about Charlie! But, Charlie is a fellow soldier!”) (Come to think of it, it’s also really funny when it is dealing with a soon-to-be-homosexual couple, who doesn’t know the other partner really is of their preference, and not of the opposite sex, despite appearances.) (“How can I be attracted to Jack? He’s not a women like me!”)
Another example would be the relationship in which the female has some qualities usually associated with males. For example,the female partner is stronger and/or taller then the male, is the one to initiate sex, or has a name usually associated with males. (Example: A young man speaking to his father. Both are characters in a play: “Damn it, Dad, I am going to marry Charlie even if you don’t approve!” Dad starts babbling about how he is normally accepting but this is going to far, which baffles the son. This means that several more scenes pass before the son explains that Charlie is short for Charlene, not Charles.)
Now, I was hopping that anyone interested enough to understand all that might be willing to provide examples from any and all forms of fictions, INCUDING Fanfics, thoughts on the same, and/or examples from RL. Also, I would be more then happy to see examples involving non-heterosexual authors fiddling with the concept, as well as what the title would seem to indicate.
Hm. On Cagney and Lacey Lacey was a cop, a woman in a macho profession, and her husband (although he worked construction) was a house husband when he was not working.
In an old Squadron Supreme mini series Power Princess (the Wonder Woman analog) was married to a man who had retired long ago and was quite elderly and enfeebled.
Frank and Irene Lorenzo (Vincent Gardenia [in his third role on the show] and Betty Garrett [best known for Laverne & Shirley or as Mrs. Larry Parks) were neighbors/recurring characters on All in the Family. She worked at a loading dock and was a whiz at around the house fixing, while he was a cook and florist and househusband (I don’t remember if he had a paying job), neither of which met with Archie’s approval.
On one episode of Good Times Florida began earning more money than James, which sent him into major hysterics. (I never understood why she didn’t work on the show- I know James didn’t want her to but “Damn! Damn! Damn!” son, you need the money.)
There was an episode of Family Guy in which Chris becomes attracted to his friend whom he think is a boy, but it turns out she’s a girl. Then they poke a corpse with a stick.
Twelfth Night is the other example I thought of off the top of my head, but that one would be pretty well-known I’d imagine
Oh, and Yentl of course revolves around Avigdor’s growing discomfort at his attraction to his fellow student Amschel, only to be relieved to learn that Amschel is really a girl, but his relief then turning to horror when he learns that the girl is really Barbra Streisand, all the while poor beautiful dim Hadass falling in love first with Avigdor and then, after her marriage to Amschel, with her “husband”. But Tomorrow Night is a cool song either way.
Speaking of musicals about Eastern European Jews in the early 20th century, in many ways some of the couples from Fiddler on the Roof fit. They didn’t radically challenge gender stereotypes by our standards but they did by their own: women having a say in who they are going to marry, guys marrying for love, a woman (Hodel) working to support her husband (Perchik, who’s in prison), etc… And even Tevye and Golde discover “after twenty five years” that their marriage is held together by love as well.
Goddamn, that guy is sinister-looking. How much of a skeev do you have to be to get women to put the moves to you? Is she drawn to his sullen glare?
Running various pop culture snapshots through my mind, it seems to me that inside a couple setting, the female is allowed even less latitude with her gender identity than the male. You see artsy, refined, milquetoast, Niles Crane-like men paired with feminine women; you don’t see any men paired with tomboys or butch gals.
In mythology, there’s Achilles. Disguised as a girl named Pyrrha for his own protection, he falls in love or lust with his host’s daughter, Deidamia, who returns his feelings though she thinks he’s a girl. When their son is born he’s named Pyrros, the masculine of his father’s name as a girl, though Achilles also gives him the name Neoptolemos (and in some versions he weds Helen’s daughter).
Some of the early romances of King Arthur broke stereotype as well. Morgan le Fay (usually a villain) is a queen in her own right and a powerful woman who manipulates the men around her, while Guinevere flatly breaks the stereotype of the devoted wife. Some of the histories of Charlemagne have his daughters as rather randy and “predatory” as well, producing numerous bastards from their trysts. (None of his daughters married [at his request- he was afraid of a powerful son-in-law stealing the throne his family had recently stolen from the Merovingians] but several had children and they were not shamed or denounced for it.)
Athena broke stereotype a bit as well, smarter than the wisest god (her father) and a skilled warrior besides.
Ah, and from Genesis- Lot’s daughters initiate sex with their father (you said hetero, didn’t say it couldn’t be incestuous) and later Potiphar’s wife “sexually harasses” and attempts to “date rape” Joseph. (Of course we only have Joseph’s side, really.) In the medieval accounts of Lilith (I’m not sure how old legends of her marriage to Adam are, but I know they existed by the middle ages) she and Adam split up because she wanted to be equal with him and have “woman on top” sex.
Other Biblical non gender-norms:
Ruth seduces Boaz with the complicity of her dead first-husband’s mother.
Bathsheba seduces David (think it was just coincidence she was on a roof naked when she knew a horny king was watching?). Jezebel shares power with her husband (even though she’s far from the only woman in his harem) and Esther uses her role as concubine for political gain for the Jews and to get revenge against their enemy, Haman. Joseph willingly marries a girl who is pregnant with a child that is not his, and we won’t even go into the Mary Magdalene thing.
In real life, sort of, there’s Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore. While I don’t have a lot of love for either of these celebs as individuals, they are reversing the old theme of older man with hot young dumb wife.
Not really. Remember: in Shakespeare’s time, all female roles were played by men. So to have a male actor dressed as a woman only meant he was portraying a woman. Any romance between the male-woman-male and the male would be seen as heterosexual
If people thought about it at all. Long after Shakespeare, men dressed up in women’s clothes for no other reason than to get a laugh. No one watching Chaplin’s “A Woman,” for instance, would be thinking about any sexual content in the modern meaning of the term. It was merely funny that a man would dress that way – not a sign of anything particularly sexual. People just didn’t see sex in everything in those days.
Woman in the mid-19th century decides to disguise herself and live as a man to avoid the unsavory consequences of being a woman in the wild west. Then “he” meets and starts living with a man who escaped indentured servitude (I can’t recall what country he was from, China or Japan maybe?) who eventually discovers her secret, and they fall in love.
There’s the story of Callisto from Greek Mythology.
Callisto was a nymph who was a follower of Artemis. These nymphs were all sworn virgins who would romp around the countryside with Artemis, hunting stags, smiting mortals, and engaging in tickle-fights while stripped down to bras and panties.
Of course, Zeus sitting up on Mt. Olympus spies Callisto while she’s bathing in a mountain pool, and decides he’s gotta get himself some of that. So he changes his shape so he looks just like Artemis and slips down to Earth. Zeus says to Callisto, “Come to me, my sister!”. Cue the lutes and sitars.
A couple of months later, Artemis takes Callisto and the rest of the nymphs out hunting, and after a sweaty day chasing stags they spy a mountain pool, and of course every strips down and jumps in for some frolicking. Except Callisto, she says she doesn’t want to. Artemis gets suspicious. The nymphs jump out and rip Callisto’s clothes off…revealing her obvious pregnancy. The nymphs are outraged that Calisto would violate her oath of virginity and Callisto is torn to pieces by the mob.
Gender stereotypes are often bent, broken, and twisted like pretzels for laughs in Japanese pop culture. (Rumiko Takahashi is especially famous for this in her comedic works.)
Just pick up any “harem” anime (lots of girls compete for the affections of one kinda loserish guy) and you can easily spot the major archetypes.
The title characters of Mr. and Mrs. Smith did a pretty good job of it, I think, with Mr. Smith more invested in their relationship than his work, and Mrs. Smith more emotionally closed-off than he.
In an episode of The Adventures of Brisco Country, Jr. some bad men break into a homesteaders place and while the husband cowers in the corner the wife, complete with dress and bonnet, proceeds to kick their asses cowboy style along side Briscoe. It was surreal and unexpected because I don’t think they had anything to do with the plot.
In the cartoon Recess the tall and fat kid Mikey has a mother who is towers over her husband and is twice his size.