In This Novel, Sixth-Century Femininity and Masculinity Are Pitted Against Eunuchs

Gender portrayals in Paul Iselin Wellman’s 1953 novel ‘The Female’

The American journalist and screenwriter Paul Iselin Wellman, whose literary career spanned over three decades (beginning with Death on the Prairie in 1934), wrote a historical novel of the life of Theodora, the wife of the sixth-century Byzantine Emperor Justinian. The novel was published in 1953. He called it The Female because his story’s premise was that Theodora embodied what he assumed to be quintessential femininity. Eunuchs (castrated men) play a role in this novel, especially in the way that Theodora’s reactions to them are supposed to provide commentary on her femininity.

Eunuchs in the Novel ‘The Female’

The novel makes frequent reference to a third “neuter” sex that was common in Constantinople. Boys and men who had been castrated, often against their will, could be publicly known as members of another gender.

Here are some of the stereotypes in the novel.

Eunuchs Are Pitiable

First of all, this violation of their dignity and physical integrity was often a profound assault. “Eunuchs were a creation and symbol of an age of thoughtless cruelty,” Wellman explains, “when the sacred rights of the individual meant nothing.”

Wellman claims that these “human steers” bonded with each other in community. In his portrayal, they are “poor creatures” who prove “mild and tractable” servants to matrons. Although eunuchs themselves (in this story) sometimes claim that they and their fellow eunuchs are freed from the tyranny of lust, they do not value this liberty, and they secretly wish to have their virility restored.

Eunuchs Are Jealous of Men

Especially because eunuchs are (supposedly) jealous of the sex lives of men and women, they gossip and scheme to use men and women’s secrets against them.

A sinister, though hardly realized influence were the eunuchs. In the imperial court of Constantinople they operated invisibly as a secret and subtle network of communication and intrigue. Rarely did they…