Artikel
Paranoid masculinity in a woman's mansion : Henry James' "The Aspern Papers"
Verfasst von:
Bauer, Gero
info
in:
Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik
Berlin ; Wien [u.a.]:
2017
,
19-34 S.
Weitere Informationen
| Einrichtung: | Ariadne | Wien |
|---|---|
| Verfasst von: | Bauer, Gero info |
| In: | Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik |
| Jahr: | 2017 |
| Sprache: | Deutsch |
| Beschreibung: | |
| Over the last decades, literary scholarship has increasingly recognised the importance of Henry James’ fiction for an understanding of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century dynamics of genders and sexualities. In his writing, James repeatedly demonstrates how modern patriarchal masculinities fail to establish themselves as stable identities. On a textual level, he employs a ‘queer rhetoric’ that allows for readings beyond the normative axes masculine-feminine/homosexual-heterosexual. In this paper, I discuss how James, in his tale “The Aspern Papers” (1888), turns traditionally gendered power relations upside-down: while the patriarchal home is the domestic centre of the narrative, it is two women who are in control of its secrets. The male protagonist, a nameless editor, has to rely on the women’s willingness to let him in on their secret, allow him access to the letters of the dead poet Jeffrey Aspern, which he assumes to be in their possession, and, hence, let him face his own unspeakable secret in a ‘closet’ that is not his own. | |
| Anmerkung: | |
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Works cited: Seiten 33-34 Literaturverz. |
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