LHMP #477 Klein 2021b Busty Buccaneers and Sapphic Swashbucklers

This article is something of a cross-genre, cross-temporal look at the representation of Anne Bonny and Mary Read as “sapphic pirates” and what part their stories have played within the constructed image of 18th century piracy and colonialism. (The introduction makes reference to their appearance in the video game Assassin’s Creed IV as well as the tv series Black Sails, and these depictions are also referenced later in the article.) It should be emphasized that pretty much everything we know about them has come through dubious sources created as both entertainment and as cultural propaganda, so while there is no doubt of the historic existence of the two women, the specific details that we “know” about them are of questionable historicity.

The women’s stories combined a number of established tropes prevalent in 18th century literature and media: the cross-dressing warrior, criminal biographies, and sexual narratives. These motifs are trans-national and typically work to “other” the women involved in order to comment on (and police) ideas about the role and proper place of women. As pirates, they participate in a culture defined by movement, independence from law and nationality, adventure, and danger. Standing outside social norms along several axes, their transgressive gender and sexuality in the stories are available to be viewed as entertainment, rather than a challenge to those norms. At the same time, certain elements of the stories strengthen and emphasize those norms and work to integrate the two women into a racialized image of white femininity even as they perform masculinity. In this, they illustrate the assimilation of pirate culture into a fictionalized world of (predominantly) white adventure and freedom.

The article gives the background of what it refers to as the “transatlantic” world and its relationship to, and contrast with, national structures and cultures. It also gives a brief background to the publication General History of the…Pyrates in its several editions by Charles Johnson, which is almost the sole source for information about Bonny and Read. The work was first published in 1724 and then republished across the 18th century with increasing modifications to the content. The initial edition appeared very soon after B&R’s convictions for piracy in 1720 and was based on the official trial report, as well as contemporary reporting. But even this earliest version, which can be suspected to be the closest to reality, includes details not present in these sources, including “origin stories” (a motif not included for any of the other pirates discussed in the publication) that parallel stock passing woman biographies, in which they are said to have cross-dressed as girls for somewhat implausible reasons. Due to the questionable veracity of the biographical material, the present article focuses solely on the narratives present in the General History. In particular, the article examines how the narrative emphasizes and supports their status as women and thus—despite the hints at homoerotic possibilities—situations them within a solidly heterosexual framework.

This work flourishes during a transition period in fictions of female adventure, between the adventurous heroines of Defoe and Aubin and the less transgressive ones of the later 18th century. They are allowed to represent themes of “female autonomy…[and] ambiguous virtue.” They are agents in their own stories, in contrast to the status of most women, constrained whether by class or propriety. Their stories can be compared to military passing women such as Hannah Snell, with B&R status as vicious outlaws contrasted with Snell’s image as a heroic and patriotic soldier. These differences stem, in large part, from their participation in pirate culture, even when the shape of the narratives parallel stories not involving outlaw status.

Both women were said to have begun cross-dressing at a young age, at the guidance of their mothers, and for deceptive purposes. Both were stymied in their ambitions by both gender and class and leveraged gender disguise to seize opportunities: Read volunteering as a sailor, in which context she was then briefly married to a fellow soldier, and Bonny to leave a problematic marriage and join Jack Rackam’s pirate crew in male disguise (with his knowledge). Both are framed as brave, fearless, and comfortable with violence. Although the initial version of the text indicated that Rackam purchased Bonny from her husband, later versions suggest that she was the one who arranged the move, reinforcing the image of agency.

The stories about the two women created a probably-invented contrast, with Read being the “virtuous” one, not entirely enthusiastic about pirate life but constrained by necessity, and Bonny being volatile and vicious, embracing piracy eagerly, and constantly contemptuous of men who she considered less able and bold than her. Neither woman is depicted as being subjected to an ultimate punishment for her deeds, with Read dying of illness in prison before sentencing and Bonny—after a temporary reprieve due to claiming pregnancy—was not executed but simply disappears from the historic record.

Despite Bonny and Read’s stories being firmly rooted in heterosexual partnerships with men, they are presented narratively as a pair and their interactions with each other are told more vividly than those with their male partners. The anecdote of particular interest to the Project occurs when Read first joins Rackam’s crew, when both women are presenting as men, and only Rackam knows Bonny’s underlying sex (and not Read’s). Although, textually, the interaction does not proceed to an erotic encounter, the reader not only is offered that as a possibility, but is relied on to consider it as legible and possible. This legibility is bolstered by the standard tropes of cross-dressing narratives (both those purporting to be biographical and those in outright fiction, especially in theater) in which the existence of a cross-dressed woman (much like Checkov’s gun) heralds an evitable incident of mistaken desires.

Bonny, supposedly believing Read to be a man, desires her and makes an advance. The truth of her motivations is made somewhat ambiguous by the phrase “for some reasons best known to herself” rather than describing the purpose as directly sexual. Read, supposedly believing this to be a (male) homosexual advance, deflects it. Bonny then reveals her sex to Read. At which Read reveals her own sex and the momentary erotic potential is converted into humor. The text notes that Read’s motivation to this deflection of the sexual advance is due to “being very sensible of her own incapacity in that way,” that is, knowing that she couldn’t “play the man” for Bonny, but with no overt indication that the idea itself was objectionable. Thus, on both sides there is an implied possibility of sapphic desire, carefully obscured by the ambiguities of disguise. After this mutual revelation, evidently their behavior toward each other changed sufficiently to arouse Rackam’s jealousy, forcing them to let him in on Read’s secret.

[Note: I’m going to summarize a little out of order in the following.] Both women have established heterosexual bona fides before this encounter: Read with a Flemish soldier, to whom she covertly revealed her gender, and Bonny via her initial abandoned marriage and then her relationship with Rackam. Both women are described as having other covert erotic encounters with men while still maintaining their gender disguise, but always with a gender reveal as preliminary. In these other encounters, the women reveal their gender by exposing their breasts “which were very white.”

Klein follows up in detail on one aspect of how this breast-revealing described: the whiteness of the breasts involved. This, Klein argues, is a key signifier that allows the audience to identify with the two women as characters worthy of freedom and agency, within the multi-ethnic (and racially stratified) transatlantic world. Their possession of white breasts establishes them firmly as women, and as acceptable sexual agents within the otherwise all-male pirate milieu. And the emphasis is not simply on having breasts (which one might think was sufficient to establish female identity) but on having breasts which signaled a specific ethnic and even class status.

This identity then provides the titillating contrast between B&R’s courageous and violent behavior (coded masculine) even as they are able to use their feminine status strategically (including after capture when they were able to invoke the possibility of pregnancy to defer judgment). But this strategy—as well as their acceptability as romanticized protagonists—rested strongly on whiteness and in turn served as part of the process of establishing the pop culture version of the golden age of piracy as a white domain, in contradiction to historic reality.

The article concludes with a discussion of the treatment of Bonny and Read in various modern media depictions, including leaning in to the sapphic potential.

[Note: Blogging this article has inspired me to track down the original source materials for what we “know” about Bonny and Read and I’ll put together an entry about that in the near future.]