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Androgyny is a fin de siêcle symptom exemplifying the Victorians’ frustration, confusion and resentment towards the strict demarcation of gender roles according to outward 'gendered' features. Androgynous behavior is exhibited in marginalized characters such as the foreign other and females to mirror cultural and sexual anxieties in this period of enormous social turbulence. Some authors combine the biological and social definitions of androgyny in the characterization of their characters. In Gothic literature, to be androgynous is to be neither specifically masculine nor feminine thus creating an amorphous character with an ambiguous sexual orientation.
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In a biological context, being androgynous suggests a combination of male and female sexual organs and characteristics. Definitions of which traits are masculine, feminine, and neither are also constantly in flux, so any modern reader of an earlier text should consider and attempt to discern attitudes contextualizing that particular text.Īndrogyny took on a prominent place in describing the sexuality of characters in fin de siêcle Gothic literature. During the Romantic period of poetry and prose, authors routinely added and subtracted masculine and feminine traits from characters to seek an elusive androgynous ideal but in the end this search went out of vogue when the Victorian notions of strict and stifling gender roles forced those masculine and feminine traits back into their original containers.
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At some points in the history of Gothic literature, sexuality and gender were unspeakable subjects, particularly if there was a mere suggestion of deviation from the hetero-norm. It is very difficult to pinpoint strong cultural referents for androgyny as it is connected to the Gothic mode, because the family of Gothic tales spans many periods of time, classes, and locales, and in all three categories, views on androgyny, masculinity, and femininity have shifted.