What, exactly, is a drag? Here’s a sentence from Kate Chopin’s edgy (in a Victorian way) 1899 novel, The Awakening. "Alcee Arobin and Mrs. Highcamp called for Mrs. Pontellier one bright afternoon in Arobin’s drag." A drag? Could it be "a large four-horse coach with seats inside and on top." O my gosh! It’s still another nineteenth-century horse-drawn vehicle! Along with a cutter and a kibitka. Memo to self: add to list.
I didn’t know of the existence of The Awakening, a novel which had dropped completely off the map, until sometime in the 1980s, when it re-established itself in courses in AmLit. It was a banned book for a while, not, I would guess, because of the adultery itself, but because Edna Pontellier acknowledges and acts on sexual desire. Alcee Arobin, drag-owner, senses her vulnerability, but I don’t think that in this case the vehicle figures in the seduction. It’s a fine, liberating book, the prose a little on the hothouse-gardenia side, but well worth the re-reading.
Leave a Reply