English
Holger Kiesow
The Representation of Masculinity in
Contemporary British Fiction
Examination Thesis
The Representation of Masculinity
in Contemporary British Fiction
Hausarbeit im Rahmen der Ersten Staatsprüfung
für das Lehramt an Gymnasien
vorgelegt von: Holger Kiesow
Göttingen, im Januar 2006
Table of Contents
1. Introduction................................................................................................................. 1
2. Gender Studies ............................................................................................................ 4
2.1 Gender is a Verb ..................................................................................................... 4
2.2 Theoretical Approaches to Masculinities................................................................ 6
2.2.1 Sociological Concepts of Masculinities........................................................... 6
2.2.2 Men’s Talk ..................................................................................................... 12
2.2.3 The Effects of Social-economical Changes in the UK on Masculinities....... 13
3. Middle-class Masculinities in Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim.................................... 16
3.1 Dixon’s Protest against Institutions ...................................................................... 17
3.2 Dixon and His Opponent Bertrand Welch ............................................................ 20
3.3 Dixon’s Relationship to Women........................................................................... 24
3.4 The Climax of Dixon’s Inner and Outer Struggle ................................................ 27
3.5 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 28
4. Working-class Masculinities in Alan Sillitoe’s Saturday Night and Sunday
Morning.......................................................................................................................... 29
4.1 Working-class Protest ........................................................................................... 30
4.2 Arthur’s Home and Work ..................................................................................... 32
4.3 The Teddy Boy ..................................................................................................... 36
4.4 Arthur’s Relation to Women and their Husbands................................................. 36
4.5 The Reactions of the Betrayed Husbands ............................................................. 40
4.6 The Tamed Rebel.................................................................................................. 42
4.7 Working-class Language ...................................................................................... 45
4.8 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 46
5. Homosexual Masculinities in Alan Hollinghurst’s The Swimming-Pool Library 47
5.1 Will Beckwith’s Shelter........................................................................................ 47
5.2 Will’s Best Friend James ...................................................................................... 48
5.3 Will’s Relationships.............................................................................................. 49
5.4 Will’s Encounters with Other Men ....................................................................... 55
5.5 Lord Nantwich ...................................................................................................... 57
5.6 Homophobia.......................................................................................................... 61
5.7 Charles’s Revenge ................................................................................................ 63
5.8 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 64
6. Masculinity in Crisis in Nick Hornby’s About a Boy ............................................. 65
6.1 The Old Lad .......................................................................................................... 65
6.2 The Old Boy.......................................................................................................... 68
6.3 The Strange Friendship ......................................................................................... 69
6.4 Life is Air.............................................................................................................. 71
6.5 Masculinity in Crisis ............................................................................................. 74
6.6 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 75
7. Comparison ............................................................................................................... 76
8. Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 80
Bibliography .................................................................................................................. 83
II
1. Introduction
From 1950 to 1999, the fiction genre of Ladlit presented British readers with a
romantic, comic, popular male confessional literature. It was comic in the traditional
sense that it had a happy ending and was romantic in the modern sense that it
confronted men’s fear of marriage and adult responsibilities, which they later got over.
In addition, it was regarded as a chance to examine male identity in contemporary
Britain. But by the beginning of the 21st century, the genre was in decline, as one was
seeking for a new story of masculine identity. Although the term ‘lad’ has changed its
meaning in English literature the main characteristics of Ladlit have remained the
same, which are its anti-heroes, who are portrayed as losers, liars, wanderers and
transients. However, they are also described as funny, bright and charming (Showalter
60-61). Additionally, the protagonists are heterosexual men in their late 20s or early
30s who concentrate on women, alcohol as well as football and looking back
nostalgically upon childhood and youth. In contrast to Ladlit, another genre has been
established: Chicklit, which was founded in Helen Fielding’s novel Bridget Jones’s Diary
(1996). Every aspect of such books of the two genres, from the colour and design of
the cover to where and how they are advertised, follows strictly prescribed gender
lines (Gill 51).
In the meantime, there has been a slow focus on masculinity in language and
gender studies, as the exclusive attention had formerly been upon femininity. The
historical tradition of men being constituted in terms of universal, normative values has
led to the phenomenon of ‘invisible masculinity’. But there has always been a discourse
available to men which allows them to represent themselves as people, humanity or
mankind. But this has been challenged in recent years by the fast rise of consumer
markets, which aimed at capitalising the male consumer in the mid-eighties, and by the
scrutiny of feminism (Benwell, Ambiguous Masculinities 154).
This focus has also been spread to the fields of literature and cultural studies,
which examine how literal texts reflect, modify and generate new fictions of
masculinity. As fiction can be regarded as a mirror of social change and society, one
analyses the socio-cultural stereotyped representation of masculinity and its change
(Steffen 273). In addition, popular culture, in all its forms and instantiations, plays a
key role in the constitution of modern identities (Benwell, Introduction 7).
People often use terms like ‘masculinity’ or ‘manliness’ in everyday language,
whereas scholars often tend to talk about masculinities. Thus, it is important to define
these terms before applying them to the chosen texts.
1
In the nineteenth century, manliness was the most articulated indicator of
men’s gender. It meant that there was a single standard of manhood, which was
expressed in certain physical characteristics and moral dispositions dependent on class
and religion. Furthermore, it referred to those attributes men were happy to own, they
had usually achieved by great effort and they often boasted about. In addition, it
focused on those aspects which were expected of men and which were clearly
articulated in institutions as churches, chapels and schools and measured with
reference to male institutions as sports and youth organizations. Its attributes, such as
assertiveness, courage, independence, straightforwardness (Tosh 2-5), public duty,
honour, moral obligation and emotional restraint (Rutherford 1), were commonly used
to judge other men, treated as a social attainment in the gift of one’s peers and not
mainly to maintain control over women (Tosh 5). But even in the 1950s, the idea of
manhood was still used to appeal to teenage boys in order to motivate them, as it
referred to courage and duty. Although it has become a rather critical term today, it is
still used in the context of initiation rites, especially among boys in schools. It is
something one has to achieve by demonstrations of physical strength, sporting ability,
sexual prowess, etc.
But as we now live in a culture that is more open to gender diversity, the
concept of manliness becomes more and more unpopular in favour of masculinities, a
concept which refers back to the 1970s (Tosh 13-14). This expression of personal
authenticity is often used in the plural as it should describe and express individual
choices in connection to class, ethnicity, sexuality and even consumer choice (Tosh 24). It was developed out of women’s revolt against patriarchy, as an oppositional,
critical and deconstructive term. Masculinity is used to describe, define and discuss
performances, representations and discourses of ways of doing and being a man
(Rutherford 1). Hence, it is both a psychic and a social identity: “. . . psychic, because
it is integral to the subjectivity of every male as this takes shape in infancy and
childhood; social, because masculinity is inseparable from peer recognition . . .” (51).
So it is a relational character and examined in relation to the centrality of social power
– of men over women, and heterosexual men over homosexual men. Thus, masculinity
fits with the post-modernist era, with its proliferation of identities and its contradictory
discourses (Tosh 2-5). People are less and less surprised, when individuals redefine
their masculinity and gender identity is constantly shifting in meaning (Tosh 14). In
addition, Tosh claims that the changes in masculine identities are determined by the
balance between three key cultural components: the home and maintenance of family
2
life, work as a premier expression of men’s individuality and associations that provide
men with privileged access to the public sphere (Osgerby, The Consuming Male 60).
I have chosen the term masculinity in my title, as it is still used in everyday
language and will probably attract more readers. However, in my paper I will stick to
the term ‘masculinities’, as it soon becomes clear that there is a great variety of male
identities presented in the novels.
In addition, I would like to examine how the representation of masculinity has
changed in the recent fifty years in the Ladlit genre. But before examining my chosen
novels, I will discuss different theories concerning gender studies and masculinities to
create a concept, with which I will approach the novels. First of all, I will give a short
introduction to gender studies in general, which will be followed by theoretical
approaches to concepts of masculinities. I will mainly focus on a survey by the
Australian sociologist Robert Connell, whose concept is often quoted in masculinities/
men’s studies. Additionally, I will discuss different linguistic approaches on features of
men’s talk. Finally, I will have a close look on the effects of socio-economical changes
and their influence on masculine identities in the UK.
I have chosen four different novels on account of various reasons: Lucky Jim
(1954) by Kingsley Amis is regarded as the first novel of Ladlit. In addition, it
contributes information on middle-class representation of masculinities. This novel will
be contrasted with Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1958) by Alan Sillitoe, which
offers a view on working-class masculinities. As both novels contribute rather
traditional perspectives on gender, I am going to compare them with novels, which are
set in the late 20th century and which offer alternatives to a life that is ruled and
restricted by the norms of a heterosexual society. First of all, I will focus on The
Swimming-Pool Library (1988) by Alan Hollinghurst, which does not belong to the
Ladlit but to the gay genre. However, it contributes important facts of another form of
masculinity and its acceptance by heterosexual males. In addition, it seems to have
influenced the last novel: About a Boy (1998) by Nick Hornby, which is also regarded
to mark as the end of Ladlit.
In addition, I will compare the four different novels with each other and with
the theoretical concept and will conclude that fiction in the fifties presented a rather
traditional way of masculinity, whereas the novels of the late 20th century provide a
great number of male identities that are not restricted to heterosexual norms.
Furthermore, society and literature is influenced by gay life and thus the characters are
presented as more satisfied and fulfilled human beings encouraged by individuality and
freedom.
3
2. Gender Studies
2.1 Gender is a Verb
A very influential theory on femininity and masculinity was developed on the basis of
psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud and his French follower Jacques Lacan. Although it is
partly derived from the 19th century, this approach still influences gender studies. It
deals with disputing gender binaries and the equation of masculinity with human
rationality. Freud and Lacan claimed that all humans were governed by irrational
unconscious desires. Men but not women had a privileged relationship to social power,
symbolised in the male anatomical part that men feared losing and women envied, i.e.
the phallus is a symbol of power. But masculinity is always in danger of unconscious
castration fears (Gardiner 38-39).
However, the most important theory of late 20th-century feminism is the
concept of gender as a social construction, since: “ . . . masculinity and femininity are
loosely defined, historically variable, and interrelated social ascriptions to persons with
certain kinds of bodies – not the natural, necessary, or ideal characteristics of people
with similar genitals” (Gardiner 35).
One of the recent influential gender theorists, Judith Butler, has revolutionised
language and gender studies by her claim that:
. . . gender is not a stable, pre-discursive entity, inherent in individuals, but that
is something constituted, mobilized and negotiated through the enactment of
discourse. Gender, she argues, is something, not that we are but what we do
or ‘perform’. Butler’s project is broadly deconstructionist in the sense that one
of her main objectives is to expose the constructedness of gender and the
processes by which a gender order and its attendant heterosexuality comes to
seem ‘natural’ and stable. (Benwell, Ambiguous Masculinities 152)
The term ‘performativity’ is based on Pragmatics, which was founded by the
philosophers Austin (1975), Searle (1969) and Grice (1975), who claim that utterances
are not merely encoders of meaning, but acts which impact upon the world (Benwell,
Ambiguous Masculinities 152). In addition, Butler refers to the tradition of
psychoanalytic-inspired French poststructuralist feminism, which assumes that the
gendered subject is endlessly produced through discourse and thus lacking in
existential coherence and stability (Benwell, Introduction 8). Butler’s assumptions
extend the traditional feminist accounts, famously expressed by Simone de Beauvoir,
who claims that one is not born, but rather becomes a woman and is therefore socially
constructed (Cameron 444). However, these positions are opposed by John MacInnes
(1998), who claims that gender does not exist, at all. It is an ideology people use in
4
modern societies to identify the existence of differences between men and women on
the basis of their sex although there are none (Gill 38).
In the discoursive account of gender, there are two main approaches, which
deal with the condition of masculinity: masculinity as power project and masculinity as
identity project. Power, whether bodily or imagined, has always been included in
definitions of masculinity. Defined as a relational category, masculinity is only
understood in contemplementary or oppositional relationship to femininity. Most
scholars have the opinion that such a relationship is defined hierarchically with
masculinity as the superordinate category. Although there are commentators, who
want to deconstruct masculinity and sometimes are in favour of a total deconstruction
of gender, Butler opposes that it is not possible for a subjectivity to stand outside of
gendered discourses. This claim is supported by Gardiner (2002), who argues that
gender is so deeply structured into society, individual psychology, identity and sexuality
that it would be hardly possible to eradicate it. In contrast, the identity project is based
on describing and shoring up accounts of men’s subjectivity and to reclaim masculine
values. But not all representatives of this approach are anti-feminist. Judith Halberstam
claims in her text Female Masculinity (1998) that women are adopting masculine
identities and that masculinity therefore loses power. She does not only separate
gender from power but also from biology (Benwell, Introduction 8-10). This approach
is supported by the psychologist Eleanor Maccoby (1998), who is in favour of
encouraging individuality and freedom for both sexes. She claims that there are greater
differences within each gender than between the two. Beyond, she describes
contradictory components of both masculinity and femininity, and emphasises that: “. .
. sex linked behavior turns out to be a pervasive function of the social context . . .”
(Gill 38) more than of individuality. Other feminist theorists, such as Ehrenreich (1983)
and Gardiner (2002), seek to diminish gender dualism by viewing gender as
developmental across the life course, i.e. masculinity could be defined as boy’s
development from childishness to maturity rather than as an opposition to an inferior
femininity (Gardiner 38). Another contribution to the identity project is done by
sociological theories of individualisation and movements of counter-modernity
represented in the works of Giddens (1991), Beck (1992) and others. They argue that
reinforcing gender is a psychic response to the fragmentation of traditional institutions,
e.g. family and marriage (Benwell, Introduction 10-11).
Although these approaches are partly totally different and contrary, they have
had an important impact on various levels of science and society. As a result, one has
5