St. Catherine University SOPHIA 2014 Sr. Seraphim Gibbons Undergraduate Sr. Seraphim Gibbons Undergraduate Symposium Research Symposium Deconstructing Socially-Entrenched Ideals of Masculinity in Fight Club, The Sun Also Rises, and Giovanni’s Room Anne M. Floyd Follow this and additional works at:https://sophia.stkate.edu/undergraduate_research_symposium Floyd, Anne M., "Deconstructing Socially-Entrenched Ideals of Masculinity in Fight Club, The Sun Also Rises, and Giovanni’s Room" (2014).Sr. Seraphim Gibbons Undergraduate Symposium. 3. https://sophia.stkate.edu/undergraduate_research_symposium/2014/Humanities/3 This Event is brought to you for free and open access by the Conferences and Events at SOPHIA. It has been accepted for inclusion in Sr. Seraphim Gibbons Undergraduate Symposium by an authorized administrator of SOPHIA. For more information, please [email protected]. DECONSTRUCTING SOCIALLY-ENTRENCHED IDEALS OF MASCULINITY IN FIGHT CLUB, THE SUN ALSO RISES, AND GIOVANNI’S ROOM by Anne Floyd A Senior Project in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements of the Honors Program ST. CATHERINE UNIVERSITY April 1, 2014 Floyd 2 Acknowledgements I am offering my sincerest thanks to Joanne Cavallaro, my committee chair, for her guidance, support, and insightful feedback; I would not have completed this project without her. My committee members Allison Adrian, Cecilia Konchar Farr, and Jim Robinson have also been indispensable. I would like to thank each for contributing something unique: Allison, for her ability to see cross-disciplinary ties in my project and her advice about every step of this process; Jim, for his humor and insights into masculinity; and Cecilia, for her indefatigable enthusiasm about literature and excellent literary critique skills. I would also like to thank all four for standing behind me during this long and arduous process. My mother, Joanne M. Quarfoth of the Psychology Department at St. Catherine University, also deserves to be acknowledged. She has been the fifth (albeit unofficial) member of my committee; her expertise in the field of gender psychology has helped me develop this project. In addition, she has tirelessly edited countless drafts. Lastly, I would like to thank my boyfriend, Jeffrey Tuomi, for being the inspiration for this project. My desire to study masculinity originated from long conversations with him about his experiences in the military and its hypermasculine culture. Floyd 3 Abstract This paper examines the psychological attributes of the masculine gender role, analyzing three literary texts: Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club (1996), Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises (1926), and James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room (1956). Each of these texts portrays the pernicious influence of masculine gender role demands. Fight Club demonstrates the connection between norms of occupational success and violence; the narrator creates fight club in response to career frustrations. The Sun Also Rises illustrates the effect of sexual disability on masculine identity: Jake Barnes’s genital wound causes him to question his worth as a man. Giovanni’s Room portrays the way that internalized homophobia can create a fragmented sense of identity for David, a homosexual man who has internalized the homophobic norms of his society. In these texts, adherence to the masculine gender role leads to a loss of identity, destroying both the self and others in its wake. Floyd 4 Introduction The perceived privilege of men, taken for granted by many feminists, is often illusory. Many men in Western cultures, especially men of low socioeconomic status or men who are members of a racially- or sexually-marginalized group, experience a sense of powerlessness in their lives. This sense of powerlessness has been reflected in American culture through books, television, film, and music, potentially affecting men from every walk of life. These media depict masculinity as a performance of hypersexual machismo that emphasizes sexual virility, occupational success, and heterosexuality. ‘Performance’ is the operative word: Men in American society are socialized to wear a mask, to portray an image of both stoicism and hypersexuality in order not to be seen as weak and effeminate. This performance can be a self-destructive act for men, reducing their capacity to relate to other people and ultimately to understand themselves. It is also an ideal that is impossible to live up to, which can inhibit a man’s ability to create a coherent identity and to develop self-esteem that is based on internal rather than external factors. My aim is to explore the ways in which masculine gender role expectations are portrayed in literature, a portrayal that can help illuminate the pernicious influence these expectations have on the way that men in Western cultures have experienced their own masculinity. To do this, I will analyze three novels: Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk (1996), The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway (1926), and Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin (1956). These texts explore how failure to live up to certain aspects of the masculine gender role can lead to gender role strain, the negative effect of adhering to gender roles that prevents a person from achieving their full potential (Kilmartin 42-3). In particular, Fight Club depicts the emasculating effects of capitalism and the feminization of men, The Sun Also Rises depicts disabled masculine sexuality, Floyd 5 and Giovanni’s Room depicts the way in which internalized homophobia can interact with homosexuality to create a fragmented sense of identity. Studying literature can be an effective way to analyze masculinity because literature reflects the society in which it was written, both constructing and reinforcing its norms and customs. In “The Death of the Author,” French literary theorist Roland Barthes explains: “We know that a text does not consist of a line of words, releasing a single ‘theological’ meaning...but is a space of many dimensions, in which are wedded and contested various kinds of writing, no one of which is original: the text is a tissue of citations, resulting from the thousand sources of culture” (145). By reflecting culture and different types of writing, texts convey the ideology— attitudes, morals, and values—of the society in which they are written. Though in the end the intentions of the author must be separated from the text, the way the text is written reflects the sociocultural milieu that influenced the author. In addition, literature can be used as a site of sociocultural critique: Reading and interpreting it can illuminate or unveil truths about a society that its members would rather not recognize. Issues that are detrimental to our society such as sexism, racism, and heterosexism are rarely topics that are comfortable to discuss. Literature is unique in the way that it can draw readers in and change the way they think about these issues in a more palatable way than simply bombarding them with information. Examining literature as a site of social critique is especially useful because readers become invested in the characters they are reading about, thereby also becoming invested in the issues that the characters care about. This creates an emotional connection to issues about which the reader might otherwise have neither an awareness nor a concern. Floyd 6 It is important to note that we cannot take the personas of men in literary texts and use them as factual examples of masculinity. The men that will be examined in these texts can be analyzed as mirrors of masculinity: They are not real men but rather representations of the culture’s constructions of masculinity. These fictional men can show what it is like to be a man in the novel’s cultural milieu, often reflecting, even unconsciously, the author’s experiences with masculinity. My literary and cultural analysis is grounded in psychological concepts regarding the masculine gender role, particularly those examined in Dr. Christopher T. Kilmartin’s groundbreaking text The Masculine Self. Kilmartin explains that sexuality, occupational identity, and antifemininity are three of the most important facets of the masculine gender identity. These three facets interact in the novels, though each novel primarily emphasizes one of the three facets: Fight Club highlights issues relating to occupational identity, The Sun Also Rises articulates problems regarding sexuality, and Giovanni’s Room discusses the topic of antifemininity and homophobia. In order to ground this analysis, I will first briefly explore these psychological concepts. As Kilmartin explains, norms about the masculine gender role and occupational identity emphasize the way that men define themselves based on their jobs (180). In particular, men desire wealth and high status in their careers, especially because traditional masculinity in white American culture articulates the importance of providing for a nuclear family (Kilmartin 49; 181). Men who do not have occupational success can experience gender role strain, which causes negative consequences such as stress, compromised health, mental health issues, and conflict. All of these issues can lead a man to lash out through violence, which is a way for him to feel powerful and secure in his own masculinity (Kilmartin 228). Floyd 7 Kilmartin explains that the male gender role also has strict rules about sexuality: “Being a ‘real man’ has often included expectations for certain ways of being a sexual man” (203). These ways include proscriptions against emotional intimacy in regards to sex and an emphasis on sexual success. Sexual success is one of the main ways that men prove their masculinity. In this context, sexual success refers to the number of a man’s sexual partners and his ability to develop and maintain an erection to successful completion (Kilmartin 206). Men who cannot perform these aspects of the masculine sexual identity may feel insecure about their sexuality, which can also cause them to feel insecure about other aspects of their identity; this is consistent with gender role strain theory (Kilmartin 42). Antifemininity is the third main aspect of the masculine gender role and is defined as the avoidance of feminine attitudes, behaviors, and emotions. Kilmartin explains that antifemininity is strongly linked to homophobia, because “few things are socially defined as more feminine than loving or being sexually attracted to a man” (7). Males who act in a stereotypically feminine fashion are therefore assumed to be homosexual. As a result, antifemininity enforces traditional masculine behavior because of homophobia: Men fear being thought of as homosexual and react by avoiding feminine behavior. The following analyses will explore the way in which masculine gender role expectations affect male experience in the texts. The pressure to conform to masculine gender role expectations is so deep that it permeates our literature and culture; analyzing Fight Club, The Sun Also Rises, and Giovanni’s Room can thus shed light on the cultural phenomenon of masculinity. Each analysis reflects the sense of powerlessness that men can feel in response to these unrealistic norms. Fight Club: Gender Role Strain Leads to Anarchical Revolt Floyd 8 Fight Club is a cult classic that has been associated with masculinity in pop culture. Surprisingly, it is equally compelling to literary theorists: Its themes of failed masculinity and of the excesses of capitalism have sparked debate in academic circles. Fight Club begins by introducing an unnamed, anonymous narrator struggling with chronic insomnia. He works in a mid-level business career with a boss whom he hates; he has no friends or personal life to speak of. He complains that “ever since college, I make friends. They get married. I lose friends” (62). The only time he leaves the house for socialization is to attend an endless number of support groups for people with incurable diseases, on advice from his doctor to understand ‘true’ suffering. The support groups fill a void in the narrator’s life and cure him from his interminable loneliness. More importantly, they give him the attention he craves, the attention that is absent from his isolated life. Pathetically, the narrator states: “This is why I loved the support groups so much, if people thought you were dying, they gave you their full attention” (107). Eventually, the support groups do not give the narrator the same high that they once did; he needs to find another way to escape his life, a way of bonding with other people that does not include support groups. At this point, Tyler Durden comes into being, an alter-ego of the narrator who is depicted as another character until the end of the book. Tyler Durden, who appears while the narrator is asleep, starts fight clubs in bars for everyday men who feel that their lives are empty and meaningless. Marla Singer, a mentally-unstable seductress, interacts with both Tyler Durden and the narrator and furthers their rage. Eventually, the fight clubs escalate into a full-fledged anarchical movement against capitalism in America called Project Mayhem; it is meant to destroy modern society and start a new age. Floyd 9 After the narrator’s friend Bob is killed participating in Project Mayhem and Tyler plans to bomb a national museum, the narrator realizes that things have gone too far and he must stop Tyler. This conflict ends in a fight between the narrator and Tyler, in which the two have a gunfight with Tyler holding a gun to the narrator’s head on a roof. Marla arrives at the roof with all of the people the narrator has met in his support groups, at which point the persona of Tyler disintegrates as “my hallucination, not hers” (204). When the bomb that he has made as Tyler fails to explode, the narrator decides what he must do. “With the police helicopters thundering toward us, and Marla and all the support group people who couldn’t save themselves, with all of them trying to save me, I had to pull the trigger” (206). After shooting himself in the head, he is transported to the psychiatric ward of a hospital. At the end of the novel, the narrator sits in his hospital bed not wanting to return to real life because of the temptation of violence it brings. Every so often, he is approached by a member of fight club who tells him that they look forward to getting him back, but he does not want to hurt people anymore. Fight Club’s dramatic plot shines light on an invisible problem for Twentieth- and Twenty-first-century American men: How to create an identity as an average man when cultural indicators of masculinity emphasize occupational success and wealth. Tellingly, consumerism and capitalism interact in Fight Club to become an emasculating entity. Consumerism refers to the idea that spending money on products and services is good for the economy, while capitalism is a system of economic organization emphasizing the private ownership of goods and free market competition. Consumerism is only possible in a capitalistic society and emphasizes the unequal distribution of wealth that capitalism entails. In "To Live Like Fighting Cocks: Fight Club and the Ethics of Masculinity," Andrew Slade articulates: “Men have been domesticated