Men Beyond Desire: Manhood, Sex, and Violation in American Literature

301 Pages·2005·1.186 MB·English

by  David Greven (auth.)

Men Beyond Desire
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Men Beyond Desire
Manhood, Sex, and Violation
in American Literature
DAVID GREVEN
MENBEYONDDESIRE
© David Greven,2005.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2005 978-1-4039-6911-8
The author gratefully acknowledges permission to publish portions of the
manuscript (in some cases now revised) that have appeared in the
following journals as these articles:
“Troubling Our Heads About Ichabod:‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,’
Classic American Literature,and the Sexual Politics of Homosocial
Brotherhood,”American Quarterly,March 2004.
“Flesh in the Word:Billy Budd,Sailor,Compulsory Homosociality,and the
Uses of Queer Desire,”Genders,Issue 37,Spring 2003.
“Fear of Fanshawe:Intransigence,Desire,and Scholarship in Hawthorne’s
First Published Novel,”Nathaniel Hawthorne Review,Volume 29 (Fall 2003).
All rights reserved.No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any
manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief
quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
First published in 2005 by
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ISBN 978-1-349-53107-3 ISBN 978-1-4039-7711-3 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781403977113
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And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make
him an help meet for him.
And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every
fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them:
and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.
And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast
of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.
And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam and he slept: and he
took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;
And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and
brought her unto the man.
And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall
be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.
Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his
wife: and they shall be one flesh.
And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.
—Genesis 2:18–25
Each of us when separated, having one side only, like a flat fish, is but the inden-
ture of a man, and he is always looking for his other half....And when one of
them meets with his other half, the actual half of himself, whether he be a lover of
youth or a lover of another sort, the pair are lost in an amazement of love and
friendship and intimacy, and would not be out of the other’s sight, as I may say,
even for a moment: these are the people who pass their whole lives together; yet
they could not explain what they desire of one another. For the intense yearning
which each of them has towards the other does not appear to be the desire of
lover’s intercourse, but of something else which the soul of either evidently desires
and cannot tell, and of which she has only a dark and doubtful presentiment.
—From Plato’s Symposium,
translated by Benjamin Jowett
[M]ost of us would rather love than be loved. Almost everyone wants to be the
lover. And the curt truth is that, in a deep, secret way, the state of being beloved is
intolerable to many. The beloved fears and hates the lover, and with the best of rea-
sons. For the lover is forever trying to strip bare his beloved. The lover craves any
possible relation with the beloved, even if this experience can only cause him pain.
—Carson McCullers, The Ballad of the Sad Café
“Desire is irrelevant. I am a machine!”
—Spoken by Arnold Schwarzenegger playing the titular role
in the film Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
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Contents
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction: Republican Machines 1
1. Troubling Our Heads about Ichabod: “The Legend of Sleepy
Hollow,” Classic American Literature, and the Sexual
Politics of Homosocial Brotherhood 39
2. Fear of Fanshawe:Intransigence, Desire, and Scholarship
in Hawthorne’s First Published Novel 61
3. Disturbing the Sleep of Bachelors: Natty Bumppo’s Brushes
with Desire 87
4. “Madman!”: Part One: Madness and Manhood in Hawthorne’s
The Scarlet LetterandThe Blithedale Romance 117
5. “Madman!”: Part Two: Madness and Manhood in
Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” 143
6. “Bound in Black Morocco”: Manhood and Enchantment
inUncle Tom’s Cabin 153
7. The Afterlife of Uncle Tom’s Cabin 179
8. The Angel Must Hang: Billy Budd, Sailor, Compulsory
Homosociality, and the Handsome Sailor 193
9. Coda: Billy’s Fist 219
Notes 227
Bibliography 277
Index 287