"An Incomprehensible Existence": The Chevalière d'Eon and Trans Gender Narratives in the Early Atlantic World

Caitlin Hartweave

Advisor: Randolph Scully, PhD, Department of History and Art History

Committee Members: Rosemarie Zagarri, Christy Pichichero

Horizon Hall, 3223
June 29, 2026, 03:00 PM to 05:00 PM

Abstract:

This dissertation examines the recurring language and narrative tropes gender-non-conforming individuals in the eighteenth century British and French empires used to define themselves and their genders. Using the Chevalière d’Eon as a focal point alongside comparative cases, this project argues that these narrative commonalities were not merely coincidental but rather came together to form a cultural vocabulary of gender-non-conformity. A French soldier, spy and diplomat, the Chevalière d’Eon (1728-1810) lived as a man until 1777 when her gender transition made headlines across the Atlantic world. In order to gain acceptance as a woman, d’Eon rewrote her life story. In doing so, she mobilized the pre-existing story forms of patriotic duty, feminine virtue, and the Classics. After her death, an autopsy revealed that d’Eon had been assigned male at birth. In seeking to understand her life under these new circumstances, society sought out other story forms, including hypermasculinity and folly. In both cases, d’Eon and her commentators made d’Eon’s gender legible and comprehensible using a cultural vocabulary available to them. In reexamining d’Eon’s papers with a queer lens and comparing them to the stories of Hannah Snell, Deborah Sampson, Charles Hamilton, Rosette Dumoret, the Abbé de Choisy, Philippe I of Orléans and Lord Cornbury, among others, this dissertation unearths that vocabulary in order to reveal the diverse reality of gender in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world.