Gender can be understood not as a fixed or innate quality, but as a collective social performance driven by the desire to exist within a common social identity. This desire represents itself not only as a central influence on an individual’s actions but also as a punishment or threat of punishment inflicted on social peers. This desire; to achieve an imagined gender ideal, is by design an unachievable goal meant to be endlessly pursued. The pursuit of a fictionalized gender ideal therefore both motivates and constrains human performance of gender, simultaneously becoming its cause and effect. Using the unconventional actions of Moll Cutpurse, Middleton and Dekker’s The Roaring Girl examines the tension caused by the disconnect between the constructed nature of gender and human individuality. Their1 defiance of conventional gender expectations exposes these expectations arbitrary natures. Using Moll’s nonconformity to challenge common assumptions about gender roles, The Roaring Girl highlights how gender exists as both a personal aspiration and a social imposition, and reveals the pressures of an idealized concept of gender identity.
Moll’s repeated refusals to ‘correctly’ identify places strain on the normative society they exist within by asking questions whose answers fall outside of that society’s boundaries. Sir Wengrave categorizes her as a “monstrous” figure; and later once they have gained his respect he attempts to fit them into his worldview, seeing them as someone who might marry. Laxton sees them as a prostitute, and public opinion sees them as thief and woman of loose morals. Moll spurns all of these impressions, saying they have “no humour to marry”(Middleton 2.2), rebuffing Laxton’s advances “Draw, or I’ll serve an execution on thee” (Middleton 3.1), and showing their true character through their actions. Throughout the play Moll repeatedly refuses to become easily defined by others, remaining true to her own identity.
In her essay The Sexual Identities of Moll Cutpurse in Dekker and Middleton’s “The Roaring Girl” and in London, Susan Krantz posits that Moll’s heroic attributes, their physical prowess, morality, etc, work only because they “remove [themself] from questions of sexual2 identity”(8). Though Krantz is correct in her observation that Moll removes themself from the normative gender performance that would otherwise be required of them based on biological sex, they certainly do not escape questions of gender identity. In fact, as Krantz admits earlier in her essay “the play is obsessed with ways to read Moll’s sexual identity”(8). Furthermore, even if Moll could somehow escape this questioning it would only weaken their character.
Moll uses her power as an atypical element to directly question the system the play’s setting depicts. The societal commentary of the play is entirely formed through this questioning. Moll’s identity forms implicit questions that stem from the incapability of a binary system at containing a third possibility. Moll’s very existence pulls at the loose threads and weak points of the societal construct characters and, on a meta level, the play itself exists within. Moll also picks up these loose threads and uses them to form direct questions and commentary. In their ending monologue Moll reflects on the construct of gender through the conceit of a painter, who attempting to create a perfectly beautiful woman takes into account everyone’s opinions on what should be changed. In doing so the painter creates a work “so vile/ So monstrous and so ugly all men did smile”(Middleton, epilogue). The commentary that Moll provides is essentially making a case for their rejection of normative gender roles. Moll’s argument, provided in the form of this conceit, essentially states that the normative pressures of society serve to make humanity “ugly”. In this way Moll makes a case for themself, not as “monstrous” or as any of the other characteristics ascribed to them, but as a person who, through the rejection of normative gender roles has perhaps managed to escape the plight afflicted on the subject of the painter’s work.
Even from a more grounded perspective Moll’s utility in the play comes from their ability to exist as a question. Not from outside the system, but from within it. Their irregular characterization exposes the fragility of the seemingly unquestionable framework the play is built on. For the plot and structure of the play Moll serves two key roles. Firstly, they are the enabler for Sebastian’s scheme, their ‘deviance’ is at the very heart of his plot to marry Mary. As Sebastian’s father sees it Moll is “A creature…nature hath brought forth/ To mock the sex of woman”(Middleton 1.1). The unacceptable possibility that his son might marry someone that he deems “monstrous” is what eventually enables Sebastian to marry Mary. In other words Moll’s identity and the questions it raises are instrumental in the eventual resolution of the play. Secondly, the agency afforded to Moll through her flaunting of normative gender roles is also the catalyst for many of the comedic moments in the play. When Moll defeats the braggadocious Laxton at fencing the comedy of the moment comes from the fact he was defeated by a person he had deemed to be a woman. Whether looked at from an abstract analytical perspective or one more focused on function, Moll’s role is as a part of the whole, not as an outside force.
Gender as a function of collective social performance is the foundation that the social world of The Roaring Girl is built on, demonstrating how deeply constructed norms shape individual behavior. The gender identities of many of the characters in the play operate as social niches that must, at the risk of being ousted, be continuously defended through performance. Moll’s aberrant actions, and the other character’s reactions to them, illustrate how deviations from expected behaviors are met with suspicion, ridicule and punishment, revealing how society polices the boundaries of acceptable identity. Under this policing gender becomes a “performative accomplishment compelled by social sanction and taboo” (Butler, Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory 520). This policing emphasizes how gender coheres only under constant social enforcement, people seek to act “properly” because a failure to do so invites the possibility of social exile. Thus Moll’s character represents the constructed nature of gender, revealing how “the possibilities of gender transformation are to be found in the arbitrary reaction between such acts, in the possibility of a different sort of repeating, in the breaking or subversive repetition of that style” (Butler, Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory 520). Moll’s otherness is a result of them breaking the repetition, refusing to perform the rituals associated with their sex. The other characters’ reactions to this pattern breaking also reflect this concept. Their bewilderment at Moll’s refusal to fall into a neat category forces them to react. Even in their contempt for Moll, even in their dismissal of Moll as “monstrous”, they are forced to honor Moll’s otherness. In their creation of a new category, those who seek to dismiss Moll’s identity are in fact honoring it as valid.
In her book Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex Judith Butler considers how forces that shape us operate as “symbolic limits in their intractability and contestability” (115). In other words Butler considers how the deep, foundational forces that shape us operate as symbolic limits, limits that feel fixed and difficult to change but can still be questioned or challenged. The Roaring Girl and more specifically the character of Moll considers a similar question. In the inclusion of Moll, a character who seems to get as close as possible to shirking these limits, the play reflects on the possibility of an existence outside of them. For all their comedic value, Moll is ultimately an attempt to characterize a person who has rejected the normalizing force of society, at least in the context of gender.
PS.
Recently I have been working my way through Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex and it’s been a difficult text for me to understand. Despite this, it’s been very interesting and a lot of the material has stuck with me. As such this essay is kind of an attempt to place The Roaring Girl in the framework of gender that Judith Butler creates in that book and their other work. I’m not sure how familiar you are with that book or Butler’s other work but if this essay feels a bit derivative of that work that’s because it probably is. After writing this I kinda realized that it was really just me attempting to wrap my head around some of the concepts and ideas in their work.
Work Cited
Butler, Judith. “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in
Phenomenology and Feminist Theory.” Theatre Journal, vol. 40, no. 4, 1988, pp. 519–31. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/3207893. Accessed 2 Dec. 2025.—. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex. Taylor & Francis, 2011.
Krantz, Susan E “The Sexual Identities of Moll Cutpurse in Dekker and Middleton’s ‘TheRoaring Girl’ and in London.” Renaissance and Reformation /Renaissance et Réforme, vol. 19, no. 1, 1995, pp. 5–20. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43445031. Accessed 2 Dec. 2025.
Middleton, Thomas. The Roaring Girl. Edited by Elizabeth Cook, A. & C. Black, 2006.
- I will refer to Moll as using they/them going forward, using binary pronouns felt antithetical to the arguments in this essay. Though I do recognize that it makes the writing slightly incoherent in some cases. ↩︎
- Krantz’s essay forgoes any distinction between sex/sexuality and gender. Depending on the context sex/sexuality are used to denote Moll’s physical traits and their identity as it exists outside of these traits. ↩︎
Sprockets and Springes 