Masculinity in the Works of Herman Melville

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Herman Melville’s novels, with good reason, can be called masculine. Moby-Dick may, also with good reason, be called a man’s book and that Melville’s seafaring episode suggests a patriarchal, anti-feminine approach that adheres to the nineteenth century separation of genders. Value for masculinity in the nineteenth century America may have come from certain expected roles males were expected to fit in; I argue that its value comes from examining it not alone, but in relation to and in concomitance with femininity. As Richard H. Brodhead put it, Moby-Dick is “so outrageously masculine that we scarcely allow ourselves to do justice to the full scope of masculinism” (Brodhead 9). I concur with Brodhead in that remark, and that Melville’s use of flagrant masculinity serves as a vehicle in which femininity is brought on board The Pequod; femininity is inseparable from masculinity in Melville’s works, as staunchly masculine as they seem superficially.

The marriage of the masculine and the feminine into one, at times, indistinct sphere produces what Gene Laskowski calls a “masculine sentimentality” in his dissertation of the same name; curiously called, he adds, as “sentimentality is commonly associated with the tender landscape of feminine” (Laskowski 4). Laskowski calls for a broader understanding of gender in Melville’s works, which need to be “liberated” from their prescribed gender definitions (Laskowski 4). I hope to extend Laskowski’s argument in adding further evidence of “masculine sentimentality”, particularly in Moby-Dick.

Juniper Ellis’ “Gendering Melville” argues that not enough attention has been paid to masculinity in relation to other major features in nineteenth century America, including femininity, race, and class....

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Laskowski, Gene L. Masculine Sentimentality in the Early Novels of Herman Melville. Diss. University of Michigan, 1993. Ann Arbor: University Microfilms International, 1993. Print.

Robbins, Sarah. "Gendering the History of the Antislavery Narrative: Juxtaposing Uncle Tom's Cabin and Benito Cereno, Beloved and Middle Passage" American Quarterly 49.3 (1997): 531-73. JSTOR. Web. 24 Nov. 2012.

Weigman, Robyn. "Melville's Geography of Gender." American Literary History 1.4 (1989): 735-53. JSTOR. Web. 24 Nov. 2012.

Wilson, Sarah. "Melville and the Architecture of Antebellum Masculinity." American Literature 76.1 (2004): 59-87. Duke University Press. Web. 24 Nov. 2012.

Brodhead, Richard H. "Trying All Things." New Essays on Moby-Dick. Cambridge [Cambridgeshire]: Cambridge UP, 1986. 9. Print.

36 Melville to Evert Duychinck, 13 December 1850, Correspondence, 174.

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