Title: Patriarch Ally and Incestuously Defined Gender Roles in Ian Mcewan's the Cement Garden
Abstract: As an author who has continuously analyzed within his novels issues of masculinity and femininity, by means of fictionally experiencing sexuality, Ian McEwan has initially become famous as writer obsessed with violence, crimes and sexual perversion. His early literature of shock (as critic Ryan Kieman labels it2) and focus on troubling and grotesque topics (such as disruption of social norms, codes and taboos, exploration of incest, sadomasochism, rape, pornography and murder) question social norms and conventions; thus, McEwan's early fiction exploits and even contests so called normal limitations and rules of behavior imposed by identity dimensions such as sex and class, by politics, culture and gender, in world which constantly influences individuals and their relationships, transforming different aspects of their identities.Issues such as identity, identities and part that dimension of gender roles plays in this context are sensitive both in actual human experience and in various ways in which they are engaged within fiction as well. Both individuals and their fictional counterparts derive their identities from roles they play in society, groups they belong to and their personal characteristics. Both gender and sexuality are strongly connected to understanding of identity, as they represent connecting point between body, self-identity and social norms. Moreover, strong interconnection between gender identity and society is also revealed by fact that changes in social structures may contribute to shifts in attitudes, and to construction of new masculine and feminine identities.3The distinction made between sex and gender, to which French feminist Simone de Beauvoir consistently contributes in her work, The Second Sex, played, and still plays, an important role in understanding construction of gender identities and norms against social background: One is not bom, but rather becomes woman. No biological, psychological, or economic fate determines figure that human female presents in society: it is civilization as whole that produces this creature, intermediate between male and eunuch, which is described as feminine.4Thus, understood as gender with which person identifies, or is identified, gender, as key dimension of identity, makes reference to social roles, norms, standards, traits, behaviors, appearances and identities that are shaped by and develop through cultural and social interpretations of biological sex. Gender categories and roles are, therefore, associated with stereotypical feminine and masculine traits (i.e. masculinities and feminities). Nevertheless, masculine and feminine identities are not fixed because identities are flexible and multidimensional.Although sometimes inconsistent, gender issues permeate Ian McEwan's fiction. The author's views vary from developing a romantic notion that if spirit of women was liberated, world would be healed and from transforming his female characters in the repository of all goodness that men fell short off'5 in Mother Tongue, to rejecting label of for women's affairs:Having escaped label of being chronicler of adolescence -1 was then suddenly male feminist, which really made me shrink (...). I didn't want to be used as spokesman for women's affairs. I didn't want to be man appropriating women's voices.6However, even from very beginning of his career as novelist, author has emphasized connection between authoritarian political systems and patriarchy, revealing their influence on personality and intimate relationships of his fictional characters. In his early novels, McEwan illustrates traditional male and female gender roles and unequal relationships and, by presenting extreme male attitudes of control, domination and exploitation toward women, intermingled with shocking themes of sexual deviation, he criticizes patriarchal ideologies which are created and encouraged by contemporary society. …
Publication Year: 2014
Publication Date: 2014-07-01
Language: en
Type: article
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