Quote:
Originally Posted by orlok
Now I am catching up with everyone's reviews, you have reminded me of a point I had meant to raise but forgot about. I was constantly puzzled by Stella's mother's assumption and encouragements regarding Stella marrying a man. Surely she could not have expected this to happen in reality - if Stella was a man then he would never have been able to marry another man. Which does raise the question about why his mother would think otherwise? Maybe there is some mileage in the hermaphrodite theory?
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I can't cite any particular instance, but I know I've read of cases where a same-sex couple married--and those I've read about are the ones where they were found out! But it seems to me that if one person was dedicated to passing as a member of the opposite sex, there's no compelling reason why they would be discovered. This is far earlier than the state would have required documentation in terms of a birth or baptismal certificate before a marriage was performed. I'd imagine there were couples who quietly lived out their lives as married with no one the wiser. "Quietly," of course, would have been the issue for the exhibitionist Stella.