"Mix-Ups, Messes, Confinements, and Double-Dealings": Transgendered Performances in Three Novels by Louise Erdrich

Louise Erdrich's early poem "The Strange People" portrays a dynamic understanding of gender echoed in many of her later fictive works.¹ Narrated by a speaker who is half antelope, half woman, the poem details the relationship between a masculine hunter and his feminine prey. The antelope-woman is not wounded by her hunter's weapons, as his bullets merely "enter and dissolve" (8). The only thing that can hurt her, touch her heart, is honest dialogue and exchange, representing a commingling of self and another, hunter and hunted, human and animal, man and woman. The poem suggests that gender is experienced as a wound, a site of conflict and discord, a transformation, a negotiation between men and women, masculine and feminine—an exchange that redefines and transcends both. Erdrich's blurring of animal and human subjectivities echoes Judith Butler's assertion that issues of identity fundamentally question who or what is defined as human and to what extent. Butler writes, "The terms by which we are recognized as human are socially articulated and changeable. . . . The human is understood differently depending on its race . . . its sex . . . its ethnicity. . . . Certain humans are recognized as less than human. . . . Certain humans are not recognized as human at all" (Undoing Gender 2). In questioning not only who or what counts as human but also, by extension, the connectivity existing between a variety of subject positions, Erdrich places an examination of issues of identity—namely those of gender, race, and sexuality—at the forefront of her project as a writer.

Like the antelope-woman of "The Strange People," throughout her series of interconnected novels Erdrich frequently includes characters that combine, perform, and transcend masculine and feminine gender identities. In "Blurs, Blends, Berdaches: Gender Mixing in the Novels of Louise Erdrich," Julie Barak analyzes this idea of gender exchange, observing:

The plethora of mixed-gendered tricksters in Erdrich is her literary response to the present and constant perception of opposition in her life and in the lives of her characters. The fact that so many of her characters are mixed-gendered tricksters leads to the conclusion that one of the most threatening aspects of contemporary life in America is its insistence on strictly bifurcated gendered behavior.

(58)

Barak argues that many of Erdrich's characters blur masculine and feminine gender roles and are of a mixed-gender status. Mixed-gender characters are defined as those who "are described either as exhibiting or in some ways acting out opposite sex role mannerisms or behaviors" (51).

In attempting to establish a framework for understanding the gender mixing of Erdrich's characters, Barak suggests that such practices be read in light of the Native American figure of the "berdache"—a role that existed historically in many Native American cultures and that represented a third category of gender identity, existing outside traditional Western understandings of male and female, men and women. Cultural anthropologist Serena Nanda conceptualizes the role of the "berdache" in the following manner:

The berdache in the anthropological literature refers to people who partly or completely take on aspects of the culturally defined role of the other sex and who are classified as neither women nor men, but as genders of their own. It is important to note here that berdache thus refers to gender variant roles, rather than a complete crossing over to an opposite gender role. . . . American Indian cultures included three or four genders: men, women, male variants, and female variants.

(12–13)

Barak also notes that the ability of "berdaches" to perform both masculine and feminine genders led many communities to imagine them as significant.² Based on these definitions, Barak then suggests not only that the figure of the "berdache" provides a useful framework for understanding Erdrich's characters, but also that many of these characters can be read as "berdaches."

While Barak's notion of gender mixing is certainly one of the most illuminating contributions to the body of Erdrich scholarship focusing on issues of gender, many of her arguments are both problematic and dated. In particular...