Alternative Constructions of Masculinity in American
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ALTERNATIVE CONSTRUCTIONS OF MASCULINITY IN AMERICAN LITERARY NATURALISM A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN ENGLISH BY RYAN D. STRYFFELER DISSERTATION ADVISOR: DR. KECIA MCBRIDE BALL STATE UNIVERSITY MUNCIE, INDIANA DECEMBER 2010 2 Dedication I would like to dedicate this finished project to this man’s best friends, Montana and Jackson, for two reasons. First, because neither of them will ever read it, and so will never indulge in the impulse to let the deficiencies of its content reflect back upon the author’s person. Secondly, the time I spent in completing this project was time taken away from them, away from the woods and trails we call both home and sanctuary. Thank you, boys, for your companionship and patience with me over the years. Your loyalty means more to me than you will ever know. 3 ABSTRACT DISSERTATION/THESIS/RESEARCH PAPER/CREATIVE PROJECT: Alternative Constructions of Masculinity in American Literary Naturalism. STUDENT: Ryan D. Stryffeler DEGREE: Doctor of Philosophy in English COLLEGE: Sciences and Humanities DATE: December, 2010 PAGES: 291 This project asserts that male Naturalist authors were not “hypermasculine” acolytes of strident manhood, but instead offer alternative constructions which they portray as less traumatic and more cohesive than prevailing social notions of normative male behavior. I maintain that the rise of the concept of manhood advocated by Theodore Roosevelt in the early decades of the twentieth century contributed to this misconception, for it generated a discourse of “manly” individualism which became equated with socially acceptable performances of masculinity for many Americans. My first chapter illustrates the gradual evolution of an individualistic, violent, and strident concept of manhood, which I label “strenuous masculinity,” through the rhetoric of Theodore Roosevelt. The second chapter explores the ways in which Stephen Crane’s fiction illuminates the trauma and confusion inherent in strenuous concepts of manhood. Many of Crane’s stories, like “Five White Mice,” demonstrate the failure of individualism, 4 while others, like “The Open Boat,” document a more positive construction of what I call “homosocial manhood.” In my third and final chapter, I attempt to prove that Richard Wright’s early texts showcase a range of possible outcomes of black male attempts to stand up to racial oppression. I document that Uncle Tom’s Children and Native Son both depict a continuum of confrontation, with individual violence on one end of the spectrum and non-violent group protest on the other. Furthermore, because individual resistance is consistently equated with the suffering and death of the protagonists, my project implies that strenuous manhood also fails to provide a site for effectual and sustainable opposition to the negating forces of racial oppression. 5 Table of Contents ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................ 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................................ 6 INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................. 8 CHAPTER ONE: THEODORE ROOSEVELT AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF AMERICAN MASCULINITY ......................................................................................... 39 CHAPTER TWO: “THE YOUTH LEANED HEAVILY ON HIS FRIEND”: ALTERNATIVE CONSTRUCTIONS OF MASCULINITY IN STEPHEN CRANE’S FICTION ......................................................................................................................... 105 CHAPTER THREE: RICHARD WRIGHT’S EARLY FICTION AS A REJECTION OF THE RACIAL OPPRESSION OF STRENUOUS MANHOOD ................................... 179 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................... 266 WORKS CITED ............................................................................................................. 279 6 Acknowledgements Like so many things in life, this project would not have been possible without a few trials and challenges, and I would first like to thank those people who supported me when completion of this project was the furthest thing from my mind. Andrew, Lyndsay, and Brad, thank you for providing me with unwavering friendship and a place to relax and forget about things for an evening. Mom and Dad, thank you for your quiet, tacit support in everything. I cherish both the space and understanding with which you have provided me over the years. Finally, I would like to express my appreciation towards Reed Fraase for being more excited about my overall project and future success than myself. Reed, you have been a great source of counsel and inspiration during this process. Your excitement was contagious and I feel like we collaborated on this project together over the years. This dissertation would not have been successful without the individuals who were willing to read drafts and supply commentary. Shane Thompson and Aaron Housholder, thank you both so much for reading the initial drafts of this project and providing me with honest feedback and encouragement. You are true examples of selflessness and your quiet natures were a necessary contrast to the turmoil inherent in an exercise such as this. My ultimate success would have been impossible without the counsel and guidance of Dr. Kecia McBride. Thank you so much for all the time you gave me to just talk out my ideas and to brainstorm with me. I greatly appreciate your 7 encouragement. I never doubted my ability to complete the project after leaving your office. Dr. Patrick Collier, thank you for your multiple, careful readings of this project. You always challenged me to be a better writer, without discouraging me or questioning my capacity and you always seemed to know just what to say to goad me into productive revision of my viewpoint and this text. Dr. Robert Nowatzki, thank you for your flexibility and willingness to participate and guide a project in which you had no direct stake, at an institution with which you were no long affiliated. Your selfless participation represents the very best spirit of academic inquiry. Dr. Scott Stephan, thank you for broadening the parameters of this project through the further readings you often suggested. I am humbled and amazed at your capacity to point a student towards information that directly addresses a proposed line of reasoning. It is a rare and precious gift. Finally, I would like to thank my colleagues at both Ivy Tech Community College and Western Nevada College for their unwavering support and encouragement. 8 Introduction Mark Twain once said, “It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so” (“Mark Twain” 1). Like many of his anecdotes, Twain’s observation reminds us of the necessity of revisiting commonly-held beliefs. This study originates from a similar conviction; specifically, that the dominant scholarly assumptions regarding the portrayal of masculinity by male authors writing in the tradition of American Literary Naturalism are misguided. For decades, much of the literary criticism surrounding Naturalist texts has attacked a particular version of male behavior in the “adventure” stories that make up a large segment of the work by authors such as Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, Jack London, Ernest Hemingway, and Richard Wright, as “hypermasculine”. These prevalent approaches (outlined further in this Introduction and discussed individually in future chapters) operate under the assumption that texts by the aforementioned writers promote a rugged, violent individualism, a masculine swagger of sorts which is to be performed and maintained in the face of an indifferent universe and extreme physical duress. Moreover, this belief in the hypermasculinity of Naturalistic texts has become so widespread that it infects and colors the perception of the entire tradition, including stories by Dreiser, Steinbeck, and other writers not immediately associated with the fantastical adventure settings or overt confrontations with the natural world. 9 And yet, even though I disagree with this line of reasoning, it is an attractive intellectual supposition. Consider both the settings and protagonists of some of the more famous and recognizable texts of the “classic phase” of Naturalism (many of which were published within a decade or two of one another, between 1895-1910) 1: McTeague brutally beats his wife to death, only to die handcuffed to the corpse of his best friend in the middle of Death Valley; the struggles for survival in London’s Klondike or Wolf Larsen’s primal fury on the decks of the Sea-Wolf as it sails the Pacific Ocean; the blood and death that permeate the war fiction of Crane and, later, Hemingway. These tales take place at the margins of civilization, in the midst of the alienation and horror engendered by the recognition of Nature’s indifference to the fate of humanity. Their protagonists, usually male, often revert to a primal, survivalist mentality which relies on individual action and, frequently, violence in their attempts to carve out some semblance of order and agency from the chaos which surrounds them. Faced with a preponderance of these rugged settings and atavistic male heroes, it should be no surprise that many critics have adopted the assumption that these