Gender Issues

Gender

Gender plays a major role in many novels. Novels often portray men and women in their traditional roles. There are some things that we as a part of modern-day American society associate specifically with males or specifically with females. For example, baby girls are bought pink outfits, and boys are expected to prefer playing with cars over Barbies. Gender roles are the normal behaviors that are associated with either being male or being female. They are the standards that society uses in order to determine how men and women behave. Gender roles do not just appear in literature, but they also play a major role in psychology. We can use the psychological standpoint and observe, critique, and figure out the characters that we read about in novels.

In the novel The Comfort of Strangers by Ian McEwan, there are many gender issues that appear. A major focus seems to be around the character of Robert. Over the course of the novel, he tells many stories of his childhood. Robert tells of his father and the strict rules he enforced on him and his sisters while growing up. Robert’s father was very old fashioned. He would not let his daughters wear make-up or go sockless for a long time. He also favored Robert, and taught him that it was important to grow up to become a very masculine—macho—man. Robert faced many traumatizing moments when he was a child. One example is when girls mocked him because he slept in the same bed as his mother when he was ten years old. This is an example of castration anxiety. Robert does not want to appear weak or emasculated because of any such incident. Castration anxiety is part of Freud’s psychoanalysis theory, the “Oedipus complex”. This explains that a child longs for the parent of the opposite sex and feels a sense of competition with the parent of the same sex. Robert sleeping in the same bed as his mother and questioning his father is a case of this Freudian theory.

The concept of “Old World” versus “New World” ideologies also ties into the gender discussion. The “Old World” views society as patriarchal. The man or father is the one who does manual labor, makes money, and takes care of the decision making for the family. The woman or wife is expected to cook, clean, and take care of the family at home. Age separates the two different belief systems. The concept of the “New World” has the man and woman on almost even footing, with the woman is portrayed as having a job, or making bi decisions, or even dominating the relationship. The Comfort of Strangers is a novel which contains all of these thoughts on gender and assumptions, and it makes understanding some of the characters a bit simpler by breaking them down to a psychological standpoint.