Fathers and Sons: Men and Masculinities in the Contemporary British Novel

Abstract

This dissertation aims to explore diverse representations of fathers and sons in three contemporary British novels: Amongst Women (1990) by John McGahern, About A Boy (1998) by Nick Hornby, The White Family (2002) by Maggie Gee from the perspective of critical studies on men and masculinities. Relationships between mothers and daughters and mothers and sons in literary studies have already been widely discussed in feminist scholarship, most particularly in Adrienne Rich’s Of Women Born and Elaine Showalter’s A Literature of Their Own while affinities between fathers and sons have often been overshadowed. Men as sons and fathers have remained out of critical interrogations; thereby, men’s ongoing privilege in their relations with authority and power has been hidden in plain sight. Nevertheless, with the emergence of critical theories on men and masculinities in varied interdisciplinary fields, men have become the object of interrogation. Even so, scrutinising men and fatherhood as an institutionalised form of masculinities has yet to catch enough attention within literary studies. This thesis addresses this particular gap by analysing peculiar representations of fathers and sons in the contemporary British novel. Throughout this study, it is observed that there is an ongoing conflict between fathers and sons whereby they are both the perpetrators and victims of different forms of violence and neglect. These men’s ‘inability’ to form longer and healthier relationships with other men, women, and children ends in disillusionment. A growing sense of disenchantment among men in the novels reverberates specific attributes of the ‘masculinity crisis’ in the sociopolitical and socioeconomic context of post-Thatcherite Britain. It is further argued that the conflicts between fathers and sons reflect a broader struggle between traditional and modern notions of men and masculinities and the battle for regaining their (lost) power in the last few decades of the previous century. While the traditional family structure and enduring ideals of hegemonic masculinity are not sufficient to prevent family conflicts, it is argued that contemporary notions of family, (new) fathers, and (new) men, as defined in the current period when neoliberalism has become the dominant ideology, seek to construct new forms of domination rather than a progressive stance in men’s relations with other men, women, and children.