Women on Top: Symbolic Sexual Inversion and Political Disorder in Early Modern Europe

In hierarchical and conflictive societies in early modern Europe, which loved to reflect on the world turned upside down, the topos of the woman on top was one of the most enjoyed. Indeed, sexual inversion--that is, switches in sex roles--was a widespread form of cultural play, in literature, in art, and in festivity. Sometimes the reversal involved dressing and masking as a member of the opposite sex; sometimes the reversal involved simply taking on certain roles or forms of behavior thought to be characteristic of the opposite sex. The uses of these sexual inversions, and more particularly of play with the common image of the "unruly woman" in literature, in popular festivity, and in ordinary life, is the subject of this essay.