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THE CRISIS OF MASCULINE SPACE: THE END OF THE GENTLEMEN’S CLUB IN BRITISH MODERN FICTION A Dissertation by LESLIE GAUTREAUX EDWARDS Submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies of Texas A&M University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY December 2009 Major Subject: English THE CRISIS OF MASCULINE SPACE: THE END OF THE GENTLEMEN’S CLUB IN BRITISH MODERN FICTION A Dissertation by LESLIE GAUTREAUX EDWARDS Submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies of Texas A&M University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Approved by: Chair of Committee, Victoria P. Rosner Committee Members, Marian Eide Claudia Nelson Mardelle Shepley Head of Department, M. Jimmie Killingsworth December 2009 Major Subject: English iii ABSTRACT The Crisis of Masculine Space: The End of the Gentlemen’s Club in British Modern Fiction. (December 2009) Leslie Gautreaux Edwards, B.A.; M.A., University of Louisiana Chair of Advisory Committee: Dr. Victoria Rosner At the beginning of the twentieth century, men occupied a contested and transitional space in British society. The effects of the women’s movement, the Great War, and industrialization changed their life at home, at work, and at their places of recreation. This dissertation examines how the British male writers E.M. Forster, D.H. Lawrence, and George Orwell depict this “crisis of masculinity” and its effect on the male population. I argue that one of the ways the writers convey their understanding of the changing gender codes and the ways in which men were attempting to manage the adjustments to their daily lives is through the description and purpose that they attach to masculine spaces. These three threshold writers occupy an important place in the canon of British modern literature. They all are a part of a masculine literary tradition that privileges male bonding and additionally rituals that seek to reinforce and carry on the patriarchal narrative of men to distinguish between homosocial male bonding and patriarchal privilege (which is heterosexually based). While Forster demonstrates the gender tension between men and women in the exclusive masculine spaces of the text, Lawrence iv characterizes masculine private space as a site for healing and revitalization for men after the war, and Orwell describes underground male spaces as sites where men can prove their masculinity by enduring intense suffering from pain that is inflicted by the work that they perform. In each chapter, I demonstrate that understanding masculine spaces provides a more complete understanding of each writer’s masculine paradigm in literature and to some extent gives us a new way of thinking about the author and his own gender insecurities. Whether it is the swimming hole or the automobile, the smoking room or the dining room, the battlefield war trench or the coal mine, the domestic and public spaces of male life are under siege in the modern era, according to Forster, Lawrence, and Orwell. In order to preserve and sustain the rites and traditions that are upheld in those settings, the writers remind readers about the genealogy of men that reinforces the necessity of male space in hopes of preserving it for future generations. v DEDICATION This work is dedicated to the memory of my father William A. Gautreaux. Oftentimes surrounded by women, he was the first to show me the significance of male space. vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am truly grateful to Dr. Victoria Rosner for her advice and encouragement, which has sustained me through my time at Texas A&M University. I would also like to thank my committee members, Dr. Marian Eide, Dr. Claudia Nelson, and Dr. Mardelle Shepley, for their guidance and valuable criticism over the course of my research. Thanks also to my friends, colleagues, students, and the English department faculty and staff for making my time at the university a very rewarding experience. I also want to extend my gratitude to the Melbern G. Glasscock Center for Humanities Research and the Women and Gender Studies Department, who supported my research with awards and fellowships that allowed me to travel to conferences and special collection libraries. Finally, thanks to Alice and Lori Gautreaux and Bill and Johnel Edwards for their dedication to my efforts and unfaltering support. To Jason and Fallon Edwards, I love you both and could not have finished without your patience and love. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT .............................................................................................................. iii DEDICATION .......................................................................................................... v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...................................................................................... vi TABLE OF CONTENTS .......................................................................................... vii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION ................................................................................ 1 Argument: The Renovation of Male Space ......................................... 7 Structure: Three Case Studies, The Architects of Masculinity ............ 34 II INVADED SPACE: GENDER TENSION AND MASCULINE SANCTUARIES IN E.M. FORSTER’S A ROOM WITH A VIEW AND HOWARDS END ........................................................................ 48 Dining Rooms both at Home and Abroad ............................................ 52 The Civilization of Luggage vs. the Feminine Household ................... 67 Defending the Fortresses of Sport and Business .................................. 77 III D.H. LAWRENCE’S POST-WAR SPACE: AN APPEAL FOR MASCULINE HEALING AND A NEW ORDER .............................. 98 The London Bachelor Flat as Infirmary for Masculinity ..................... 110 The Miner’s Estate, A Seat of Masculine Uncertainty ........................ 135 IV ORWELLIAN MASCULINITY: THE SUFFERING MALE BODY AND THE PHYSICAL TRAUMA OF MASCULINE SPACE ......... 156 The Den of Maniacs ............................................................................. 169 viii Page Hell on Earth: The Coal Mines in Wigan Pier ..................................... 178 Trench Life: The Glory of War in Homage to Catalonia ..................... 190 V CONCLUSION .................................................................................... 204 WORKS CITED ........................................................................................................ 205 VITA .............................................................................................................. 216 1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION …to evoke the great spirit of the past upon the lower reaches of the Thames. The tidal current runs to and fro in its unceasing service, crowded with memories of men and ships it had borne to the rest of home or to the battles of the sea. It had known and served all the men of whom the nation is proud, from Sir Thomas Drake to Sir John Franklin, knights all, titled and untitled – the great knights – errant of the sea. (Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness 5) At the conclusion of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1902), the Director tells the group of men assembled on the Nellie, “‘We have lost the first of the ebb,’ and the narrator continues, “I raised my head. The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed somber under an overcast sky – seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness” (132). Conrad, signaling a change in the weather and also a change in the atmosphere of the world of men, concludes his story, leaving the reader with many questions unanswered. One way we might think about the canonical text is to consider what it is arguing through its depiction of masculine space. Anchored and waiting for the turn of the tide, the men – a lawyer, an accountant, This dissertation follows the style of the MLA Handbook. 2 and the director – aboard the cruising yawl listen to the storyteller, Marlow, who narrates the tale of his harrowing quest to rescue Mr. Kurtz, deep in the jungles of Africa. The Nellie and the steamboats that Marlow travels on are masculine spaces where men in community with one another live and work for days, months and even years at a time. They are homosocial sites where men test and prove their masculinity and where they, forming lasting friendships and intimate ties, unite with one another in a brotherhood of sailors. Conrad provides his readers with a glimpse into the naval world that is multi- layered with descriptions that attempt to reinforce and bolster a cult of masculinity, a movement that, along with the British Empire, was beginning to see signs of decline at the turn of the century. He uses the “bond of the sea” to explain the long tradition and “great spirit of the past” through Marlow (4, 5). Similar to the smoking room or the library in the Victorian country estate, the Nellie serves as a masculine space that reinforces the social codes that constitute gender performativity. There, Marlow uses the space to prove his own masculinity by recounting his death defying excursion to locate Kurtz, a symbol of British imperial manhood, by celebrating Kurtz’s life, by retelling his story and acting as protector of Kurtz’s memory, and by describing how he has protected Kurtz’s Intended from knowing the truth about her fiancé’s life and death. The ship provides him with an masculine space that encourages and makes it possible for the men to talk, share stories,

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