Phryne and gender norms of the 1920's

As I have said in my previous two entries there is a lot to talk about Blood and Circuses. However, I felt like the entry about Phryne's character was so long, that I could not discuss everything in one entry. This entry will therefore more or less be considered "left overs" from the Blood and Circuses TV vs book one.

In both TV episode and book, a transexual person is murdered. On TV, the person is called Miss Christopher and has met up with a doctor who promised to help her become a woman. In the books however, he is called Mr. Christopher and seems to want to be treated like a man even though the magician Robert Sheridan falls in love with him and wants to treat him like a woman (Christine). The book also involves Miss Molly Younger who is engaged to Mr Christopher and is as it turns out also transsexual.

Mr. Christopher and Miss Younger. Man-woman and woman-man. They were made for each other and no one else would fit.

~ Kerry Greenwood, Blood and Circuses (book)

Interestingly enough, transsexuality sort of fits well into the time period. During the first world war one can say that women broke through a gender wall. They proved that they could drive cars and aeroplane, repair them when needed and also replace them in industries and other businesses. This, more than anything, led to women gaining their democratic rights in many countries. But it also created a new ideal for women.

This first wave of emancipation gave women access to a new world and the ideal symbolised their new freedom and confidence. They were no longer only restricted to the home, but could take their place in the public as well. This clashed against the earlier gender segregations of Western society and the gender norms became visible and could therefore be discussed and renegotiated.

In 1922, Victor Margueritte published the book La Garçonne* which became immensely popular among young women. The book moves around in the borderland between the gender norms. It tells the story of Monique Lerbier who handles her fiancé's infidelity by living a free, hedonistic life-style with multiple sexual partners. The book sold in over one million copies and became a cult book for young women who wanted to rebell against the older gender norms and Victorian prissiness which had sort of trapped their mothers and grandmothers. It created a fashion in which women should dress either in clothes traditionally considered male or in figureless dresses and wear cloches. They were also encouraged to cut their hair short (The winter of 1926 had over 50% of the women in Stockholm short hair.). Margueritte's book is not mentioned (as far as I have read) the Phryne Fisher books, or in Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, but it still makes me think about both Phryne and her best friend Elizabeth Macmillan (Mac). I also wonder if it created the so called "lesbian subculture" in Paris that is mentioned in Cocaine Blues (book) when Phryne wonders about Lydia Andrew's sexuality.

Elizabeth "Mac" Macmillan

But not only did the female role change, the male did as well and while the woman became more masculine, the men turned to a more feminine style. One might wonder how this all came about. To make a long story short, I think it has a lot to do with a chaning lifestyle in general due to democratisation, urbanisation and industrialisation, but mostly I think it had a lot to do with the first world war. Both Kerry Greenwood's books and Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries brings up how society to a large extent was thrown into a feeling of despair after the Great War. In a way I find the above quoted (and by me translated) part of Swedish contemporary singer Karl Gerhard's song Jazzgossen (Jazz boy) fitting. It talks exactly of those old, traditional gender values with the knights in shiny armour who fight over the fair maidens. A violent culture that can be seen as having culminated in the war. In this way, the ideals became a rebellion against those who were in place before the war and which was held responsible for it. What we can see during the 1920's is a renegotiations of the gender roles. Women became more masculine and men more feminine. In a way this makes a story bringing up transexuality fitting into this world.

 This is just a short overview and I probably will have reasons to go back to it in future entries to the blog as I progress in my reading of Kerry Greenwood's books. Phryne is, after all, the personification of the new woman of the 1920's.

Sources:
Andersen, Jens 2015. Denna dagen, ett liv. En biografi över Astrid Lindgren, Swedish translation: Urban Andersson.
Hirdman, Yvonne & Lundberg, Urban & Björkman, Jenny 2012. Norstedts Sveriges historia 1920-1965.
The photo of Phryne was borrowed here and the one of Mac here.

*I have not read this book myself. Only a general description in Jens Andersen's Astrid Lingren biography Denna dagen, ett liv. This is what I base my knowledge of it on.