Source: The Conversation – Canada
While the alternative history Netflix show Bridgerton gives us a sparkling version of the British Regency era, what’s missing is queer and trans culture.
There are a few queer characters, and the upcoming fifth season of Bridgerton (slated for 2027) promises a central romance between two women — the grieving widow Francesca Bridgerton (played by Hannah Dodd) and John Stirling’s cousin, Michaela Stirling (Masali Baduza).
But the richer history remains offscreen.
At first glance, the Regency era — the period that inspired both Jane Austen’s novels and Bridgerton — seems focused on manners and parties, but there’s more going on under the surface, including women’s alliances during a time when marriage controlled their fate.
This period in history, roughly 1790 to 1820, had underground gay bars, police raids met with violent resistance and riots, and a visible trans community. So how did queer and trans people actually live and connect during the Regency era?
Before Stonewall, the molly houses If we rewind to the 18th century, starting around 1700, we have evidence of queer and trans spaces called molly houses. First described by historian Alan Bray, these underground bars operated like the Stonewall Inn of the 1960s, through a mixture of concealment, bribery and co-operation with marginal communities.
They were more than just hook-up spaces, though. Bray describes them as “a place to take off the mask,” where patrons could enjoy singing, dancing and performances that anticipated modern-day drag. Even the word “drag” comes from this era — it probably referred to the “drag” of a dress hem or a long stole against cobblestones.
Molly houses were frequently raided, and as Bray notes, the patrons fought back: “When a molly house in Covent Garden was broken up in 1725, the crowded household, many of them in drag, met the raid with determined and violent resistance.” People often think of the Stonewall riots as the birth of queer liberation, but as the 1725 raid shows, queer communities have been fighting violent suppression for centuries.
And molly houses didn’t die out at the end of the 18th century, either. Historian Rictor Norton discusses the 1810 raid of the White Swan, a molly house on Vere St. in London, precisely around the time that Bridgerton is set.
Twenty-seven patrons were captured, and five were sentenced to the pillory, which was dangerous enough that it could result in permanent injury and death. In fact, enough people showed up to pelt the men with objects — including rocks and dead cats — that the crowd had to be restrained by city marshals.
Trans lives beyond safe spaces Bridgerton occasionally brushes up against this world without naming it. In the fifth episode of Season 1, Benedict Bridgerton (Luke Thompson) attends a bohemian party, where he spots his artistic mentor hooking up with another man.
We see artists drawing male nudes, dancing that would make Lady Whistledown blush, and even women smoking. This easily could have been the White Swan on a weekend. Most of the scholarly writing on “the mollies” — a subculture of queer men — has focused on them as only gay men, but we know that trans women were part of this community.
The criminal records of the Old Bailey include a 1732 report on a trans woman known as Princess Seraphina who sued a man for robbery. Well-liked and known by her neighbours as “the princess,” Seraphina chose to confront Thomas Gordon for robbery and assault.
Her witnesses described her as “[commonly] in Women’s Clothes … you would not have known her from a Woman.” Some of the mollies lived the majority of their lives in female attire, beyond the confines of a safe space.
Julia Ftacek, an 18th-century studies scholar, notes that historians have often ignored how “transgender identity could be found among individuals in the molly subculture.” But many trans people were visible during the Regency period. Walter Sholto Douglas, a close friend of science fiction and horror novelist Mary Shelley, lived openly enough that his trans gender was known to those around him.
Gender was just as diverse then as it is now. Additionally, queer life in the Regency period wasn’t confined to underground bars and working-class neighbourhoods. Jane Austen’s queer undercurrent What about Regency-era novelist Jane Austen?
Did she write about queer and trans characters? Perhaps not in an obvious way, but literary scholars have mentioned the potential queerness of characters like Emma Woodhouse, protagonist of Emma, since the 1940s.
Vowing to never marry, Emma describes her close friendship with her mentor, Miss Taylor, as “one that had never cooled … [in] every pleasure, every scheme of hers … [she was] one to whom she could speak every thought as it arose.” Emma’s avoidance of love can also indicate an asexual perspective.
While searching for acceptance and representation, queer women of this time looked to public figures like the sculptor Anne Damer, who spent 30 years partnered to writer Mary Berry, or to the Ladies of Llangollen: Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby, two upper-class women who famously eloped together.
The Regency era gives us more than balls and heterosexual marriage plots. It gives us queer and trans lives, in defiance of violent, repressive governments.
Like Bridgerton, it gives us diamonds.
Jes Battis does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/03/the-regency-period-was-queer-and-trans-bridgerton-barely-scratches-the-surface/