Masculine Anxiety and Fetishism in Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises
Date Issued
2006
Date
2006
Author(s)
Wu, Yu
DOI
en-US
Abstract
This thesis aims to investigate how masculine anxiety, the anxiety over the rise of racial and sexual others, is reflected in The Sun Also Rises and to analyze what strategies are used to rebuild white male supremacy. The first chapter draws socio-historical evidence to examine the factors that result in masculine anxiety in the 1920s, including mass immigration, the visibility of gay subculture, and the rise of New Woman. Critical attention is devoted to the representation of the Jewish character Robert Cohn, for he challenges the white men's prerogatives in both social and sexual realms. Chapter Two discusses the representation of Brett Ashley and her relationships with the male characters by means of Freud's theory of fetishism, Laura Mulvey's concept of the male spectator as fetishist and the female spectacle as fetish, and Luce Irigaray's observation of "the exchange of woman." Brett is relegated to a "phallic-mother fetish" and an object with exchange value that men can "have" in order to enhance their masculinities. The third chapter focuses on how Jake Barnes struggles to reconstruct his sense of control through working, spending, drinking, fishing, and bullfighting; even so, his endeavor can never lead him back to the state of masculine wholeness. It is hoped that by showing how white male supremacy is sustained through denigrating the non-white, non-heterosexual and fetishizing the woman, this thesis will reveal the "fragility" of white masculinity, pointing out that patriarchy is susceptible to subversions and must depend on the "marginal" to prove its validity.
Subjects
旭日又升
海明威
男性焦慮
白人男性至上
種族與性別他者
戀物癖
The Sun Also Rises
Hemingway
masculine anxiety
white male supremacy
racial and sexual others
fetishism
SDGs
Type
thesis
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