If I were a boy, I could romp in the fields all day, and history wouldn't care. If I were a boy, my choice of subject matter and genre and my style of painting might not mean as much as it does. If I were a boy, I might be considered just another animaliere. If I were a boy, I could not be uncovered as a proto-lesbian. If I were a boy, I might not be as special.
James M. Saslow
"Disagreeably Hidden" Construction and Constriction of the Lesbian Body in Rosa Bonheaur's Horse Fair
"For she, as for many of her contemporaries, animals figured simultaneously as symbols of freedom in their own right; as surrogates for the desire for an equivalent social freedom on the part of women in general; and as surrogate for a parallel desire on the part of gender-deviant women (and men) in particular for release from the constricting norms of masculinity and femininity."
"The Horse Fair represents a male space, from which Bonheur was excluded by law and custom, and to which she gained admission by subterfuge."
"Bonheur not only had to disguise herself, but she then had to relegate her image of that disguised self to the background of the image- leaving its subversive message to be read only, perhaps, by a few friends who were in on the joke."
