The Pursuit Of Masculinity: Crisis And Reconstruction In The Comfort Of Strangers

Ian Mc Ewan,known as the British national writer,is one of the most protean and influential writers in the British literary circle and enjoys a good reputation in the world.The Comfort of Strangers is one of the early works of Mc Ewan,which expresses horror themes,such as male chauvinism,violence and murder etc.,and deeply reveals the extreme opposition between men and women and Mc Ewan’s criticism of patriarchy and social mechanism.Different from other scholars’ studies on the novel,which mainly concentrate on the perspective of violence,narrative strategy and trauma theory etc.,this thesis intends to analyze masculinities in The Comfort of Strangers under the guidance of Raewyn Connell’s masculinity theory so as to reveal the criticism of the masculinity and the pressure of gender roles imposed on male characters by patriarchal society which is reflected in the novel.By analyzing the crisis of Robert’s and Colin’s masculinities and how they take measures to reconstruct their masculinity in the face of the crisis,this thesis reveals that Robert holds the idea of male hegemony and constructs his hegemonic masculinity through violence and suppression of homosexual identity;Colin who has a feminine appearance is eager to experience the female orgasm and finally obtains the “female” body in the process of murder and constructs his subordinate masculinity.On the one side,this study shows that the masculinity of men is constructed in gender practice and has the attribute of social construction;on the other side,it also remarks that through the description of the construction process of the two male characters Robert’s and Colin’s masculinities,the author Mc Ewan reveals and criticizes that under the social background of the rise of the feminist movement at that time,men who were deeply influenced by patriarchy were under great pressure of gender role driven by human desire,and then calls on the society with an urgent appeal to construct a diversified masculinity,instead of a masculinity model in line with social expectations,in order to achieve the true sense of the harmonious development of gender equality.