Men and Masculinity. The Presentation of Men and Male Relationships in Three Contemporary British Novels

Thesis (M.A.) from the year 1999 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 2,7 (B-), Free University of Berlin (English Philology), language: English, abstract: The 1990s has witnessed a groundswell of interest in men and masculinity. The book market saw countless publications, the media took up the topic and discussions about the 'nineties man' became and still are very much en vogue (even though we are on the brink of the next millennium). Parallel to public interest there was also an increase in academic writing. Numerous sociological and psychological studies endeavoured to explore the roots of masculinity and examined the mechanisms of its functions in cultures depending of various kinds of gender division. They concluded that masculinity has no fixed concept, that masculinity is not just what a group of men happen to do. Rather it has to be understood in relation to the gender role as a social practice negotiated by men and understood in relation to the gender order. So one should instead speak of 'masculinities' if one wants to grasp the different representations of maleness in society. Feminists and multiculturalists have repeatedly criticised the dominant gender position of men in society and questioned the legitimacy for patriarchy. They asked for a 'new man', a new social understanding of male values and attitudes and asked for change. Since the mid-1970s men responded to the call for change, explored aspects of men's lives and started to question whether the traditional concept (a concept that is still very much practised by men throughout the Western world) of male domination is still irreproachable. This, however, also sparked off a crisis, indeed a dilemma because many men felt that, without a fixed basis to define themselves they lost their bearings. Bearing this in mind it is an interesting question to ask in what way men represent men so the task of my thesis is to find out what kind of men are presented in Alan HOLLINGHURST's The Swimming Pool Library, Irvine WELSH's Trainspotting and Nick HORNBY's High Fidelity and what relationships to other men and women the authors form. I chose this combination of novels and authors for a number of reasons. The novels are all contemporary works of fiction, in a publicational time span from 1988-1995, making them fictional works written at the peak of masculinity research and the social questioning of masculine concepts. Male characters and their authors come from different social backgrounds and thus promise interesting aspects, which take power, class and sexual orientation into consideration. [...]