Representing the Male: Masculinity, Genre and Social Context in Six South Wales Novels

A study of masculinity in six Welsh novels, linking the critique of structural patriarchy to that of industrial capitalism.

The book undertakes a gendered analysis of the male characters in six South Wales novels written between 1936 and 2014, uncovering a critique of the form of masculine hegemony propagated by structural patriarchy and industrial capitalism. The novels depict characters confined to a limited repertoire of culturally endorsed behavioral norms that prohibit the expression and cultivation of the self. Ideologically subservient and feminized in the context of work, the working-class characters are ideologically dominant and masculinized at home. As the characters negotiate, resist, or strive to reconcile the irreconcilable demands of such gendered practices, Jenkins shows how recurring patterns of exclusion, inadequacy, and mental instability become evident in their representation.