Jennifer Daly Trinity College Dublin [email protected]

Remembering Who You Are: Memory and Deception in Revolutionary Road

This paper is part of a wider project which seeks to challenge the accepted narrative of a crisis in American masculine identity through the prism of fiction since the 1950s. The increased influence of psychoanalysis and a general move toward a therapeutic culture began in the 1950s. Since then the dominant theory has been to position the men of the United States in a state of crisis borne out of increased freedom for women, the modernisation of society, technological advancements, and the promotion of a consumer driven culture. As a result, the crisis narrative has assumed a position as an accepted memory for masculinity studies.

This paper will question the validity of the “masculinity in crisis” theory through an analysis of the Richard Yates novel Revolutionary Road. Yates regularly allows his characters to indulge in fantasies of how a particular situation will play out, but reality rarely matches what they imagine. They consistently dream about better, more exciting lives for themselves, spurred on by the pressures of a society that celebrates the individual while at the same time demanding that individual conform to the national stereotype of the American dream. Frank Wheeler, the protagonist, is particularly guilty of this to the point that his memories of events are subject to the same fantastic qualities until tragedy strikes and he is forced to embrace the reality of his situation. This paper will thus seek to interrogate the collective memory that has grown up around the theory of a crisis in masculinity in the United States.