ABSTRACT
Sally Robinson is Associate Professor of English at Texas A&M University. Her most recent book is Marked Men: White Masculinity in Crisis (2000). She has also written articles on feminist theory, the teaching of masculinity studies, contemporary American fiction and film and is currently working on a book about masculinity and anti-consumerism in post-Second World War American culture. Like Leerom Medovoi and Alan Nadel, whose work is discussed in the Critical history (pp. 63-5), Robinson is particularly interested in the culture of 1950s America, especially in relation to masculinity studies. This area of gender studies challenges the idea that masculinity is ‘natural’ and tied to biological sex, focusing instead on the ways in which masculinity is ‘socially constructed’. This means that masculinity is not inherent in a person born male, nor a fixed and definable characteristic, but is achieved through the performance of a complex act that imitates whatever is considered to be the masculine ideal in the society of a given place and time. A significant part of the power associated with masculinity derives from the assumption of its naturalness and unchanging qualities but, in fact, what is deemed to be masculine differs across history, geography and culture. Further, any individual’s gender performance (whether masculine or feminine) can never be said to be fixed or stable: developed from and in response to a range of shifting social factors, gender is never simply possessed by an individual but is always in a state of construction and reconstruction. Robinson is interested in how masculinity was defined in post-war America: what social factors shaped its definition, what pressures were felt by those who were (unconsciously) engaged in the performance of masculinity at this time, and what was at stake for anyone who rejected conventional masculinity. In this essay, Robinson discusses the social studies that were popular in the 1950s (see Texts and contexts, pp. 14-16) and their contention that changes in American society had a negative impact on traditional masculinity, which was associated with individualism, freethinking and taking an active role. The boom in consumerism and the rise of corporate business meant that a successful man might now be one who relinquished his individuality and power, submitted himself to the rule of the group and accepted
anonymity and conformity, all of which are antithetical to the traditions of American masculinity which were previously associated with America’s success as a nation. Holden Caulfield poses a challenge to this model because he disparages conformity as ‘phony’ and demands the right to be himself, even if that means rejecting his own society.
