RANSVESTIA

and increasingly he came to believe that his other identity was feminine. In his early twenties he wrote to a close friend requesting that he not be despised because "in some things I am more a woman than a man." He had a deep sense of identification with women and their problems, and he once wrote that only rarely did a day pass in which he did not try to imagine himself living the life of a woman, to see through a woman's eyes, and feel and view life from a womanly point of view. So vividly did he imagine this that he reported that he sometimes forgot he was not the woman he was trying to imagine.

Lillian Rea, his secretary during the Macleod period, believed that in Sharp the masculine and feminine elements had merged to become one. Sharp, however, was hesitant to proclaim that a feminine soul dwelled in his male body to the world at large. Instead he confided only to a small group of intimate friends, most notably his wife, Elizabeth, and then sought to understand himself by a wide range of reading. He equated his feminine side with his mystical intuitive self, distinguishing this from his rational, masculine self. His idealized view of women and the feminine kept him aloof from the feminist movement since woman to him was not the agent of social and cultural change, but rather the catalyst of change through her feelings, sympathy, and intuition. In speaking of his feminine self, he said that it gave him a 'sense of oneness with nature, this cosmic ecstasy and elation, this wayfaring along the extreme verges of the common world, all this is so wrought up with the romance of life that I could not bring myself to ex- pression by my other self, insistent and tyrannical as that need is... My truest self, the self who is below all other selves, and my most intimate life and joys and sufferings, thoughts, emotions and dreams, must find expression, yet I cannot. In this hidden way, I am tempted to believe I am half a woman" (i.e., through Fiona Macleod)

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Eventually the growing dualism in Sharp's personality caused a crisis in his life. His wife, in suitably ambiguous language, described the crisis as due to the strain of "giving expression to the two sides of his nature," yet at the same time trying to keep his Macleod identity from becoming public. There is some evidence that he began to dress and express himself more as a woman, but it was also essential for his masculine personality to function. This caused him problems because

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