masculinity

women’s role in 19th century (text) - DRACULA

• Of Queens’ Gardens (Ruskin 1865) - ‘separate spheres’ of gender in supporting one another, women’s role as moral guardians in domestic

New Woman - DRACULA

• New Woman (Sarah Grand coins 1894) - does female strength undermine male strength?

• male equivalent (re gender anxieties) was the Dandy

masculine heroism - DRACULA

• On Heroes and Hero-Worship (Carlyle 1841) - importance of masculine heroism which JH undermines

19th century view on emotions - DRACULA

• The Descent of Man (Darwin 1871) - emotional control key differentiator between human and animals, key to evolution

intersection of masculinity and christianity - DRACULA

• Tom Brown’s Schooldays (1857) - popularised Victorian ‘muscular Christianity’ linking Christian manhood to physical + moral vigour

• The White Man’s Burden (1899) - post Dracula but speaks to belief of white Western man as God’s instrument, (Transylvanian Drac is threat to be overcome)

• fin de sèicle gender anxieties - religion still a corner stone of society

husband’s role - DRACULA

• late 19th century men still legal providers for women

gender exploration in gothic - DRACULA

• Castle of Otranto (Walpole 1764)

• Carmilla (Le Fanu 1872)

masculinity as biologically inherited - DRACULA

• Social Darwinism + Galton’s ‘eugenics’ (coined 1883) - masculine virtue was heritable/biological

• Criminal Man (Lombroso 1876) - physiognomy

new American masculinity - DRACULA

• Frontier Thesis (Jackson Turner 1893) - argued rugged American frontier had forged new, masculine national character - a foil to the feminized Genteel Eastern creature

violent sexuality asserting masculinity - DRACULA

• The Monk (lEwis 1796) - sees attempt to enforce patriarchal attitudes onto women through sexual acts

violent masculinity curing women - DRACULA

• violence as a cure - Lucy’s vampirism is a disease (treated with blood transfusion - 1st successful 1818), violent masculinity cures it (and her sexuality which Mausley suggested was a hysteria)

erotic masculinity for entertainment - DRACULA

• critics’ understanding - Kiss Me with Those Red Lips (Craft 1984) explores this

19th century/gothic homosexual anxieties - DRACULA

• late Victorian homosexual panic - Oscar Wilde’s trials 2 yrs pre Drac

• gothic exploration of homosexuality - Carmilla (Le Fanu) on lesbian vampires

sexual desire in masculinity - DRACULA

• The Functions and Disorders of the Reproductive Organs (Acton 1857) - respectable masculine men don’t experience ucnontrolled sexual desire

femme fatale role in sexual masculinity - DRACULA

• power of the femme fatale emasculates - staples in Romantic + Victorian literature (La Belle Dame Sans Merci - Keats 1819), vampiric feminism subverts masculinity

enslaved men’s status - BELOVED

• Dred Scott case (1857) - enslaved men property rather than persons, Sethe restores manhood

(white) violence on black men - BELOVED

• Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845) - whippings, rape, violence as destruction of black

• Twelve Years a Slave (Solomon Northup 1853) - describes the use of the bit on other slaves

• The Wretched of the Earth (1961) highlighted colonial violence’s destructiveness on perp + victim

• ‘Masculinities’ (Connell) - “hegemonic masculinity among whites sustains the institutional oppression and physical terror that have framed the making of masculinities in black communities”

patriarchy/patriarchal beliefs within slavery - BELOVED

• maintains ideas of provider and masculinity to overcome the subjugation enforced by slavery

• but also Toni Cade Bambara Black feminist work (1970s/80s) - explored the displacement of Black men’s trauma onto black women

‘hiring-out’ system - BELOVED

• black slaves could work on Sundays for credit (often to buy freedom over many years)

• working on Sabbath was technically a sin

• slave Samuel Johnson worked 10 years to buy freedom

power/significance of black workforce - BELOVED

• enslaved men provided huge amounts to whites (worked 80% of cotton-farming south as sharecroppers, with $50mil in CW)

emasculation of not being able to take freedom - BELOVED

• ‘freedom is not something that anybody can be given, freedom is something people take and people are as free as they want to be’ - Baldwin

• Patterson’s Slavery and Social Death (1982) arguing that slavery is not just a legal but ‘social death’ - black men reduced by slavery to non-people

tree as images of vitality/brotherhood - BELOVED

• men gather round ‘Brother’ tree, a place of their masculinity now destroyed

• biblical importance of trees?

• ‘broken twig’ quote

white violence against supposed black rape - BELOVED

• white masculinity enforced through lynching of black men accused of rape (eg Sam Hose 1899) although no evidence of cases

• black men cannot do same to white

intersectionality of feminism and black experience - BELOVED

• Morrison wrote in feminist movement - intersection of Black Rights Movement and Women’s Rights Movement 1970s

chain gangs - BELOVED

• Black Codes of 1870s - increased use of them

• mentioned in The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

• mentioned in WPA Narratives

tenderness in black masculinity - BELOVED

• Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature (Baker 1984) - emerging idea that AA masculinity historically expressed through communal nurture and in the vernacular (not dominance - not possible)

reclaiming narrative about black violence - BELOVED

• 000s lynchings late 19th century, blamed black men for violence (untrue)

• Paul D’s ‘wrecking’ is for good intensions of care for Sethe, reclaims manhood - Paul D is a protector

sexual masculinity by white to oppress black - BELOVED

• black men seen as different creatures - homosexuality cemented that

• race>gender in importance - Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Baby (Spiller also 1987) argued slavery ‘ungendered’ black people

lack of black male sexual control inverts white gothic male tradition - BELOVED

• The Monk (Miller 1796) sees priest trying to rape sleeping girl - here ‘sleeping’ girl rapes man