ABSTRACT
How do female authors represent masculinity in texts that deal primarily with female liberation and "coming to consciousness"? Exploring a number of popular women's novels from the 1970s - the era of the feminist breakthrough as well as that of the so-called sexual revolution - will provide some answers to this question. Novels like Erica Jong's Fear of Flying, Lisa Alther's Kinjlicks, Gail Godwin's Glass People, Gael Greene's Blue Skies, No Candy, and Judith Rossner's Looking for Mr Goodbar deal with a female protagonist's quest for personal emotional and sexual liberation. However, since the plot in almost every case presents a woman who leaves her husband in order to have one or several love affairs, these novels also offer a map of contemporary stereotyped masculinities - the macho man, the successful businessman, the cowboy, the rebel, the hippie - in the role of lover. What is the significance of representing lovers as stereotypes in the texts? What is the meaning of female-authored "sexist" representations of masculinity? I suggest that representations of masculinity in women's novels function as sites for (sexual) political and social critique. The ambiguous and multifaceted aspects of the novels' representations of gender and sexuality, as well as their destabilization of ideals of masculinity, deserve critical attention.
