Alcoholic Masculinity; Analyzing the Relationship between Gender Identity and Intoxication in Charles Dickens

MLA "What makes a man, more precisely, what makes a gentleman, are by no means the innate and interior qualities (such as honesty, integrity, and moral strength) ... What matters are external and acquired status symbols, commodified forms of social respectability, which also function as symbols of a successfully acquired gender position" (Rainer Emig 71).Two major social components dominate the life of the Victorian man: wealth and marriage.In the chapter called "Low on Assurance: The Troubled Masculinity of Victorian Comedy," in Performing Masculinity, Rainer Emig argues that in the Victorian Era "men and the masculinity that is supposed to shape them are also subjected to the great ideologies that rule the nineteenth century: class and wealth.Men have price-tags on the marriage market, [and] rise or fall according to their changing market value" (60).In other words, men achieve successful social status primarily if they are wealthy and secondarily if they are married.In a sense, wealth and marriage go hand in hand -a man's chances of marrying in the Victorian Age are multiplied if he is worth enough money.Furthermore, Emig argues that Victorian men occupy a dynamic which is described as a "triangular relationship that connects competing masculinities through a desired third element.This is frequently a woman, but can also be status, wealth, and so on" (73).This means that Victorian men were often in competition with one another in the race for such things as women and wealth; items that added to their social status and their perceived success within their own gender roles.In Charles Dickens' "The Lawyer and the Ghost," "The Ghosts of the Mail," and "Baron Koeldwethout's Apparition," the ghost figure represents a source of competition for each protagonist.This competitive ghostly interaction suggests to the reader that the cause of the competition is deeply rooted in the anxiety each protagonist feels in relation to gender expectations.Interestingly, it is each protagonist's drunkenness that on one hand helps to repress his social anxiety and is on the other hand the catalyst for enabling each man's ghostly vision, which allows them, in one way or another, to come to terms with their distress.Thus, alcohol has a dual function; it represses gender anxiety to the protagonists and it expresses gender anxiety to the protagonists.The supernatural encounter, brought on by

Récupéré en direct depuis OpenAlex et désinversé. Les résumés ne sont pas conservés dans cette base de données : les index inversés représentent 8,6 Go des 9,3 Go de texte de la base, et le serveur dispose de 13 Go libres.