On describing heroes

Ran into some difficulties yesterday when talking about the physical form of heroes. There are not typically many heroes with medical conditions or disabilities (this is a general rule rather than something that's specific to classical and medieval literature) and I was discussing why this was the case. I think you could fairly say that part of this is due to bias against the "imperfect" form - certainly medieval literature indicates that the outside mirrors what's inside.

However, I think that there was a practical reason as well, namely that one would assume that the ideal hero would be strong, tall, and in possession of all his arms and legs; sickliness would be tantamount to weakness and a weak warrior is a warrior who gets beaten by a strong warrior. As such, authors made their heroes strong in order to make them unbeatable. Logical, surely?

The problem is that this isn't necessarily the case. Even as I was creating this argument I felt uncertain about the facts; whatever I do, my knowledge and experience of heroes will always primarily be informed by their presentations in contemporary culture. I wrote: "There is a practical impulse behind the consistently able-bodied hero." This made me feel uncomfortable, as though I were skirting offensiveness. Then my boyfriend drew my attention to Balwin IV, the leprous warrior king. (Apologies for the non-academic link, but it gets my point across.)

I've tried to pacify myself by reminding myself that my study is of literature and literature does not necessarily reflect real life. I eventually altered my sentence so that it read: "There is an unproven practical impulse behind the consistently able-bodied hero." This is a fairer summary of the facts, I think.

Miss Rose in the character of Tom Thumb by
Edward Fisher (engraver) and J. Berridge (artist)

This is an issue that I feel is going to reoccur throughout my thesis. Eighteenth-century parody frequently depended on physical appearance being at odds with character. Fielding's Tom Thumb plays are an obvious example of this, as Tom Thumb was presented as a superlative hero who struck terror into the hearts of giants and made all the ladies at court fall in love with him - but he was frequently cast as a female dwarf. This is just one example; eighteenth-century drama exploited physical appearance as often as it could and a lengthy discussion of this will be unavoidable. As it is, I'm going to need to tread carefully, and watch my wording.

Changing male traits

Right now, I'm trying to identify some "typically male" traits in western literature prior to 1600. It's proving challenging. Xenophon, in the 6th century BC, tried to do something similar; he came up with a few (I've identified four in this passage) male characteristics which I think are surprisingly lasting:

He prepared man's body and mind to be more capable of enduring cold and heat and travelling and military campaigns, and so he assigned outdoor work to him…And knowing that the person responsible for the outdoor work would have to serve as defender against any wrong doer, he measured out to him a greater share of courage. (Oeconomicus, 7. 23-5)

It's a very rigid definition of masculinity, one that doesn't allow room for disability or cowardice or any trait that might influence for the worse the male role of defender. Let's call this the "ideal male" - hero, if you will, because surely the man who exhibits all these traits to the utmost is the superlative male. (I think it's also interesting how much of this is recognisable in our own ideas of superlative males today, even though the average western man does not have to endure cold and heat, have to attend military campaigns, have to perform outdoor work, or have to act against wrong doers.)

These traits are fairly standard across western culture. But what else, beyond these, defines a hero? Surely a hero is more than a stock character who acts to defend his village from a monster without having emotions such as love, hatred, fear, faith, or cunning; if heroes were typically void of other characteristics than those set out by Xenophon, they'd be very cold creatures indeed and I can't believe that they would have successfully captured imaginations for thousands of years, as they have done. Heroes need to be humanised or else there's no interest.

The problem is this: out of the many, many character traits possible, are there any (other than Xenophon's) that typically characterise heroes? I'd say no. Look at a contemporary example. Cordelia Fine, in her Delusions of Gender, loosely divides human characteristics up into those that are communal (such as empathy and nurture) and those that are agentic (such as aggression and independence). These are roughly how we define our vision of each gender. Of course, we all know tough, individualistic women and sensitive, gentle men - people aren't set moulds. But look at it this way: you probably didn't have to wonder for very long which set of characteristics - communal or agentic - was generally attributed to which gender. But, although relevant, this is a modern perspective: could one consider the classical heroes as acting for themselves rather than their community?

Fine made me think about the fact that I've grown up in a world where the gendered division of emotional expression has been especially polarised. Typically (and my basis for this is based on experience rather than scientific data, but I'd be surprised if there were much disagreement), women hug, kiss, and cry in response to their emotions; men punch and fuck. This is a generalisation, but a culturally accepted one. (Tellingly, when I began writing this paragraph, it had more of a "Why don't men express their emotions normally?" feel to it. That probably says a lot about my own biases.) It's why I can hold hands with my best friend in public and no one thinks much of it - but when my boyfriend tried the same thing with his best friend, there was an underlying awareness that what they were doing was "gay". (In the interests of full disclosure, I should probably note that they were also buying condoms at the time.)

Of course, the idea that what's acceptable in one gender is condemned in another is hardly novel; there's the old feminist complaint that male bosses are praised for being assertive and authoratative while female bosses are reviled for being pushy and manipulative. There's no exact male equivalent that captures the meaningfulness of the word "bitch". We feel uncomfortable when someone acts in a way that seems to undermine their socially prescibed role. I don't think anyone benefits from it, as it places traditionally female activities and jobs as frivilous or less important than their male counterparts while having a freeze-effect on activities and jobs that men feel comfortable doing.

Again, I don't have any statistics on this, but I'd hazard a guess that there are more women who covet a position in traditionally-male industries (law, finance, academia, medicine) than men whose ambitions lie in traditionally-female realms: nursing, primary education, childcare, househusbandry. While the female boss is scrutinised, the male nurse or nanny is met with ridicule or hostility. I'm not saying that there can be no shifts in gendered jobs - if there weren't, we wouldn't have female doctors, lawyers, or even secretaries - but rather that in order for these shifts to occur, time is taken and in the mean time we don't look too kindly on those who behave in ways contrary to their gender role.

This is all a very round-about way of saying that things haven't always been this way - at least, not in our fiction. My favourite example from Fine's book is that of computer programming: currently something we associate more with men, but in its early days it was actually promoted as an ideal job for a woman as it required patience and attention to detail, both typically female traits. Then there's crying. It's less socially acceptable for men to cry these days - perhaps it's associated with emotional weakness - but in Homer and Malory, men cry with a startling regularity over everything from dead friends to homesickness. Not just younger men, either, but mature men who have established themselves as heroes and have fought bravely in battles: Odysseus, Arthur, Lancelot.

Interestingly, emotional unavailability seems to be more of a feminine trait by the early eighteenth century, as comically demonstrated by Arabella in The Female Quixote. While men have to be passionate and demonstrative in their love, women must be the reverse.

Similarly, friendship has become more female-focused than it once was; I think of friendship and I think of emotional bonding, sharing, "sistahs!" But classically it has always been very male-orientated: the vast majority of celebrated friendships in fiction, particularly pre-1600, are male. Perhaps this was in part because men were necessarily more social than the women who spent their time at home. (Is this a very middle- or upper-class view of womanhood, though? Wealthier women stay at home but what about their servants? I suppose, though, that wealthy women feature more in stories.) I'm trying to think of some obvious examples of female friendship in literature pre-1600 and I'm not doing very well: Rosalind and Celia in As You Like It; Desdemona and Emilia in Othello, although that's slightly later and tainted with some dishonesty.

This is about as far as I am. I'm going to consider the importance of religion and the role of the physical body (particularly as defined by Aristotle) next, although I'm far less clear on what I want to say. My other points need to be fine-tuned, but actually I'm fairly happy about where I am.

First chapter worries

My first chapter has, so far, been complicated to get my head around. I began by writing what my supervisor described as a "potted history of duelling" and it has developed into a smoother study of the development of popular perceptions of masculinity in poetry and drama. I'm still a little uncertain about this as a subject matter for the first chapter as it alone seems a suitable subject for an entire thesis, but I'll see how it goes. Currently, I'm considering what traits contribute to overall perceptions of masculinity and heroism and how they have developed over time. I am then (in the second half of my chapter) going to broadly discuss how masculinity was realised on stage at the end of the seventeenth century. I'm also going to include some thoughts on contemporary public perceptions of actors to throw that into relief.

I was going to limit myself to writing about masculinity in poetry and drama for the century or two preceding my research area, but I felt as though I couldn't write about lots of drama (particularly drama which utilises prior characterisations of mythic and historic figures - King Arthur, for example, or Achilles) without discussing their presentations in Greek and medieval texts. Essentially, I want to find out how heroes came to be perceived the way they were by the end of the seventeenth century.

I think the problem here is that I don't feel familiar enough with many of the pre-seventeenth-century texts to be really confident in a lot of my writing. Of course, reading constitutes the bulk of my research and there's nothing stopping me getting hold of the books and settling down with them for a few hours - but there's a constant worry that I'm not moving along fast enough. As much as anything else, I don't think that I've read enough secondary material.

There's also the problem of worrying that I'm becoming too tangential in some of my arguments. For example, part of my discussion concerns the masculine/feminine labour divide and its impact on how we view the ideal masculine. However, I want to show that masculine roles aren't universal and I was reminded of a fantastic book I read a few months ago, American Colonies by Alan Taylor. Part of the book discussed the masculine/feminine labour divide in American Indians and the horror of the European settlers who discovered that Indian women didn't just stay indoors all day and cook, have children, and mend things: a clear demonstration of my argument. In the wider context of the thesis I think quoting Taylor makes sense; it's just that a sudden quotation from a history of America seems startling when it's surrounded by quotations about gender in classical and medieval Europe.

Similarly, I wrote a (frankly awful) paragraph comparing the changing portrayals of action stars in movies from the 1960s through to the 2000s: sort of James Bond vs. Rocky. I think it tallies with my argument but it seems very frivolous and out of place when I look at that paragraph next to my discussion of The Odyssey and Le Morte D'Arthur. Then again, am I being too much of a culture snob?

I suppose that about summarises my position right now: I'm confident about my overall argument (which I'll go into more at a later date) but it's the execution that is weighing me down.

Introductory post

This is a PhD blog. As with other blogs of a similar nature, I will be discussing the issues I encounter throughout the course of my research, including: new sources I come across, ideas I am considering, difficulties and setbacks, ethical and practical concerns, and any other notable developments. I will endeavour to be open and honest about as much of my research as I am able. I will also link to articles and images I find online which relate to the subject of my research. I'm currently in the middle of the first year of my PhD and am therefore perhaps a little late in beginning this blog, but I hope to chronicle the remainder of my work over the next few years as well as I can. I intend for this to be a resource to enable me to meditate and review the development of my work; however, if my records are of interest to anyone else, then so much the better.

My research covers representations of heroic masculinity in seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century comic drama, with a special focus on stage fighting and duelling, as well as choices in costuming and casting. I am drawing on a number of sources, especially the plays of Aphra Behn, John Vanbrugh, Henry Fielding, and Henry Carey. However, I am considering some perspectives from other sources of the period, including paintings and some novels, in order to achieve a more rounded vision of contemporary perceptions and prejudices about masculine heroic behaviour. I've found Charlotte Lennox's The Female Quixote to be a particularly fresh source of inspiration.

In terms of theoretical bias, I'm approaching this thesis partly (but not exclusively) from a feminist mindset. Although the discussion of women in theatre will play some part (particularly regarding female drag roles), my focus is on men and their performances on and off the stage. However, I hope that my thesis will contribute to our knowledge of gender studies - and certainly many of my questions pertain to feminist theory. This is new ground for me in some ways (my undergraduate and Master's degree dissertations were on Bakhtinian thought - and I actually began this research with a mind to applying Bakhtinian theory to the subject), and I'm very excited about it.

As this is an introductory post, I'll describe myself a little beyond the bounds of my research. My name is Máire and I'm twenty-four. I spend a lot of my time reading. Outside of my research topic, my areas of interest are American literature and history (particularly of Appalachia and of the interwar period), children's literature 1900-1930 and 1960-1990, fairy tales and folklore, and true crime. My favourite books are Vanity Fair and Tender is the Night. My favourite plays (which is a dangerous question to answer!) are Othello and The Dragon of Wantley. I've yet to see the latter performed but would love to.

Other than reading I'm interested in architecture, watching films, visiting museums, boxing, listening to jazz/blues/country music, old comic strips and cartoons, and travelling. I support myself by working as a children's bookseller in London. I'd like to live in Paris one day.

That's all from me for now. I'll post my next update within the next few days.