Days Without End

Over the course of the novel, Thomas engages in various forms of gender expression and identity that coincide with his understanding of his relationship with John Cole and their adoption of Winona as something that makes them a family. Thomas’s gender exploration begins when he and John are hired to dress up as ladies and dance with the miners at Noone’s saloon. When he first wears women’s clothing, he thinks, “All miseries and worries fled away. I was a new man now, a new girl. I was freed, like those slaves were freed in the coming war” (22). For Thomas, wearing women’s clothing is an emancipation, a remaking. Even though he is obliged by external concerns to wear men’s clothes the vast majority of the time, Thomas experiences a queering of gender (a looser framework than the modern notion of “transitioning” that more fits Thomas’s movement though various ways of identifying with womanhood and, at times, a liminal third gender as he sees expressed by Native Americans) as a joy.

Though Thomas’s vision of himself vis-a-vis gender is not directly linked to his relationship with John, it is likewise not entirely separate from it, particularly when it comes to building their family together. Thomas’s relationship with John is a constant in his life, he does not see his love for John as something that necessarily informs his gender or sense of self. Part of this can be attributed to historical attitudes towards gay relationships: In the mid-19th century, sexual and romantic affairs between men were framed more as action (something one did) than identity (something one was). The term “homosexuality” (now considered outdated) was first introduced in 1869 by Austro-Hungarian journalist Karoly Maria Kertbeny to describe men who have sex with men (in the same letter, he coined the term “bisexuality”) (Blakemore, Erin. “From LGBT to LGBTQIA+: The Evolving Recognition of Identity.” National Geographic, 2023). For Thomas, then, the fact that the person he loves is a man may not have contributed to his sense of self in the same way as did his perception of his own gender.

Once Winona is added to their family, Thomas finds someone beyond his husband (John and Thomas legally marry by visiting a visually impaired preacher and using the name ‘Thomasina’ for Thomas) who can wholly accept him, regardless of his gender expression. Winona, he thinks, sees him as he truly is, even though he himself struggles to recognize who that may be: “Winona never does say nothing about it. Never seems to see me only as what I am in my face. Whatever that be. I don’t know then and I don’t know now. But I am easier in the dress, that’s all I can say” (110). Winona’s acceptance seems to awaken in Thomas a desire for wider acceptance. Though he consistently avows his pleasure and joy with his family as it is, to be seen and accepted by others is an addition to this happiness. When Thomas travels towards Tennessee with Winona and John, wearing dresses that allow him to pass as a cis woman (though this term is anachronistic to the novel), he is delighted when a man tips his hat to him on the road: “Guess we’re just another family heading somewhere. It’s a kinda happiness” (163). Though Barry’s novel is clearsighted on the difficulties of building a queer family under the emphatically heteronormative constraints of 19th century American culture, he also presents an optimistic horizon for his characters, one in which the beauty and possibility of queer family-making does not go unappreciated.