In trying to research more about “Richard Bruce” the female cross-dresser that Munby mentions in his writing (Unfortunately, I couldn’t come up with anything) I stumbled upon this pop article about Bruce Jenner, husband of the Kardashian matriarch who has a fetish for cross-dressing. Apparently, his previous marriages resulted in the fact that his wives had a difficult time accepting this fetish.
Perhaps the fascination with Munby and Cullwick is the fact that cross-dressing and the passing between gender, racial and class boundaries continues to be a misunderstood and complicated. I know that I thought it was fantastic to see an example of how fluid sexuality was in the Victorian period regardless of this era being categorized as a time of sexual repression and control. Isn’t this what we learn in history and are excellent starting points for research? That if something, such as Victorian female sexuality, is considered as highly controlled, then it must mean that there were actually many representations of “untamable” and “wild”, “undomesticated” sexuality. The issue with Munby and Cullwick of course is the fact that this was a private archive and relationship. Yet how many examples of these types of fluid or dominant-submissive relationships that struggled with multiple performances of gender, race and class do we have today that are actually public and widely disseminated?