The 18th century English performer Charlotte Charke manipulated gender performance both on stage and off. Charke's performances--whether dramatic, economic, or literary--represented a challenge to gender boundaries of the time and have continued to stand as a challenge to historians engaging with Charke's person and performances. Was Charke's off-stage performance as "Mr. Brown" simple economic necessity? Was it a reflection of transgender identity? Was it a strategem to engage in homoerotic encounters with women? Are we to read Charke's three marriages to men as evidence of an underlying heterosexuality? Or do we filter our understanding through Charke's recorded negative opinions of them and view the marriages as social and economic necessity? How much of Charke's autobiography was sincere and true and how much was deliberately sensationalized to sell more copies--at a time when literary success was crucial to Charke's economic stability? Depending on which evidence is emphasized, a solid case can be made for a variety of interpretations, but in the end those interpretations will usually tell us more about the interests and assumptions of the interpreter. I am not immune to this. Given my own interests and the context of the Project, I will tend to default to framing Charke as a bisexual woman who played with gender presentation to create contexts for engaging in same-sex desire, as well as to benefit from male economic privilege. But other framings are equally supported by the contradictory evidence and I encourage people to look further into the life of this fascinating person.
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