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.
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.
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