Billy Bedlow; or, the Girl-Boy
The story of Billy Bedlow offers an analogous tale of a boy who embraced all-things girl, was met with judgment and mockery, and also managed to change his ways. In short, Billy was a “pretty boy” with golden curly hair who perfumed himself “continually” and slept with gloves on so as to “make his hands white and delicate.” Billy retained his whiteness throughout the tale – there was no threat of him becoming black or Native American – since being a girl was social debasement enough. Like Lucy, he rejected the activities of his sex: kites, hoops, marbles, and tops and “delighted” in socializing with girls, playing with dolls, eating mint-stick and sugar-almonds and “all such babyish” things. Femininity was infantilizing. Billly “often wished in his heart to be a girl, that he might wear a large bonnet and carry a parasol. People called him a girl-boy.” While Lucy had father and mother to contend with her gender, Billy only had a mother who Miss Leslie suggests was responsible for over-indulging her young son. The greatest difference between the two tales was that Billy was never badgered, disciplined, or harassed by his own family. His schooling was done at the hands of a Sea Captain’s son. Billy’s story of public humiliation takes place on a ship where a party for children was being thrown and he aspired to look as thin, small, and feminine as possible, borrowing his sister’s corsets that he put under his designer frock coat before heading to the party with his three sisters. Billy was uncomfortable and not able to enjoy himself – much like Lucy was unable to enjoy the dinner party. Billy was undone when the captain’s youngest son Frank Wilson noticed the tales from the corset dangling out from under the coat. Frank pulled on the cords, undoing the corset while girls looked on and laughed. Frank teased Billy, pointing out that the girls noticed the cords first and he was only doing what they were unable or unwilling to do in making his transgression visible.
Billy’s case was more sexually charged than Lucy’s. While Lucy was undone and regulated by her family, Billy’s gender was exposed in a mixed-sex social tea party aboard the ship. Billy’s gender transgression was both a challenge to his presumed heterosexuality – the girls noticed his corset and laughed at him – as well as his introduction to the highly charged homosociality of the ship. Frank offered him a more manly appropriate “round jacket” that Billy rejected initially but then later “thankfully” accepted. Billy received his final lesson not from his mother, which may have undermined this entire man-making project, but from another boy, his peer. Frank Wilson, whose masculinity was unquestionable because he was going to sea with his father the captain, counseled Billy. Frank advised “him so judiciously to endeavor to conquer his effeminate habits, that Billy determined seriously to profit by the lesson.” First things first – he had his hair cut, stopped perfuming himself, and left his hands exposed to the air. And so at the very least, to be a man meant to have short hair, unadorned body odor, and rough hands. Billy was never punished outright for his transgression. His own mishap, an inability to really be a woman in that he did not know how to properly adjust and wear a corset, or perhaps his inability to suffer in silence, is what led to his change. It was not the transgression itself but the consequence of it – he was cumbersome and uncomfortable. Being a woman would leave him feeling on edge, left out, unable to dance and enjoy a feast.
Miss Leslie’s stories point to the danger, shame, and isolation of crossing genders. If acceptance of one’s peers, approval from adults (especially parents and family friends), and ease of social life are one’s goals, the accounts clearly discourage the child reader from pursuing that path. But they serve multiple other functions as well. For the child reader/subject themself who is tortured by gender appropriate play, desirous of joining the activities enjoyed by those assigned the other sex at birth, or even for one already living out the dream, the stories would provide companionship and affirmation that they were not alone. The stories could serve as a looking glass for young transgender readers who could become less naïve and more prepared for when their own teachers, parents, or peers take to public shaming them. This, they have learned, is what happens to children like them. But what a relief to know they are not the only one?
Children who are social outliers for a range of reasons not limited to gender are notoriously resilient and imaginative; the endings of these tales could always be rewritten or reimagined in their minds. While the Miss Leslie tales appear to encourage the repression of gender inappropriate play, behavior, and desires, they might inspire other feelings in their readers. No doubt some of us reading the accounts sense the cruelty of parents, neighbors, and peers and would – if we could – step in and protect our young protagonists and scold their harassers. While Miss Leslie herself, in the simplest of readings, may have aspired to promote alignment between gender and sex as well as uniformity of gender roles within each group, she also exposed the social construction of both of these things. For children would be naturally drawn to expressions, identifications, activities, rituals, ways of being and talking and feeling that were sometimes at odds with what family, society, and culture demanded.