Abstract
This article contributes to the emergent study of the representation of masculinity by focusing on the construction of masculinity in a corpus of f ive male-authored Dutch novels from the late nineteenth century. The analysis is guided by the assumption that masculinity, including the domestic, sexual and societal dispositions of men, is increasingly questioned towards the end of the nineteenth century. In the Netherlands the 1890s are a period of intense social debate, which sees the rise of the feminist and the socialist movement, among others. This article hypothesizes that the women’s movement in particular incited a foregrounding of masculinity in male-authored novels in both the canonical genre of the naturalist novel and in novels with a more direct political purpose (tendency writing). An interaction between genre and gender is observed: the former (by Emants and Couperus), while not explicitly engaging with feminist issues, explore hierarchies between various types of masculinity and serve to debunk to notion of masculine sovereignty in their protagonists; the latter (by Heijermans and Ortt), by engaging with contemporary social debates, present male protagonists who are more willing to follow the feminist movement in its questioning of patriarchal notions of masculinity.
Original language | Dutch |
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Pages (from-to) | 144-179 |
Number of pages | 36 |
Journal | Nederlandse Letterkunde |
Volume | 29 |
Issue number | 2 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 1 Dec 2024 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© Sven Vitse.
Keywords
- Dutch fiction
- Feminism
- Fin-de-siècle
- Masculinity
- social movements