Nicholas Urfe’s Masculine Trap or the Construction of Manhood, its Ambivalences and Limitations in John Fowles’s The Magus
Journal Title: Anglica. An International Journal of English Studies - Year 2017, Vol 26, Issue 1
Abstract
Western society and its fi ction faces the overwhelming problem of masculinity and its modeling. The era of war, capitalism, the challenges of feminism aff ect the ideology within which men are constructed both as individuals and as a social group. John Fowles’s fi ction tackles the crucial issue of male power and control as masculinity is put to test and trial in his 1965 novel The Magus. The defi nition of manhood, male virility and social respectability of the period shape the 20th century male characters in Fowles’s fi ction. This paper aims to explore how John Fowles investigates the role of masculinity and power myths on the personal level of relationship and a wider scale of war and capitalism in The Magus. Notions of masculinity off er the protagonist, Nicholas Urfe, a sense of a superiority and power over women in the course of the novel. Among the goals of the project is to examine the mythical journey of Nicholas, which becomes a testing ground of his masculinity and maturity, as well his trial and ‘disintoxication,’ which is intended to help him to reevaluate his life and his relationships with women. One of the issues posed is whether Nicholas Urfe is reborn as a new man at the end of his search for redemption or if he remains the same egotistic, ‘lone wolf’ as he appears in the beginning of the novel.
Authors and Affiliations
Irina Strout
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP249555
- DOI -
- Views 9
- Downloads 0
Lying and the Relevance-Theoretic Explicit/Implicit Distinction
The focus of the paper is on lying in verbal communication. The main aim of the paper is to examine the act of lying with reference to the explicit/implicit distinction in the cognitive, relevance-theoretic, model of utt...
Interference Patterns of the Verb Say in the Narration of English-Polish Literary Translations: A Corpus-Based Study
In this paper I present a corpus-based study of the interference of the verb say from English source texts into their Polish translations. I compare a sizeable corpus of native Polish fiction with corpora of English-Poli...
Rage and Rebellion in Louisa May Alcott’s “A Whisper in the Dark”
This article discusses the feminist implications of Louisa May Alcott’s 1863 Gothic story “A Whisper in the Dark,” which not only expresses the anxieties that the author experienced in response to her upbringing and her...
Object Length and Other Factors in Prepositional Variation: The Case of Speak, Talk and Write
The existence of prepositional variation in constructions such as speak about/of something can be motivated semantically in that about and of invite different construals of the topic they introduce. This article reports...
Emotional Communities in Ælfric’s Maccabees
The present article studies Ælfric of Eynsham’s homily based on the biblical books of Maccabees. It uses Barbara H. Rosenwein’s concept of an “emotional community” to elucidate Ælfric’s treatment of anger and violence in...