Date of Award

Spring 2024

Project Type

Dissertation

Program or Major

English

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

First Advisor

Siobhan Senier

Second Advisor

Robin Hackett

Third Advisor

James Krasner

Abstract

Splintered masculinity is a pattern of behaviors where men engage with the rhetoric of feminism and gender equality for their own benefit rather than as an authentic commitment to advancing women’s rights. This dissertation tracks the emergence of the “splintered man,” or s-man, from 1915 to 1982 in mainstream literary fiction along with science fiction to demonstrate how this identity crosses cultural and socioeconomic barriers to uphold principles related to hegemonic masculinity. Three kinds of s-men emerged within Modernism: the anti-human s-man, the self-aggrandizing s-man, and the confused/conflicted s-man, each with different traits regarding their goals in engaging with feminism. Award ceremonies, such as the Nobel Prize, the Pulitzer, the National Book Award, and later, the Hugo, Nebula, and Otherwise awards, are important cultural sites where splintered masculinity is performed. Beginning with Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland, this dissertation tracks the evolution of the s-man as he appears as a fictional character, as well as in real life figures related to the literary community, such as the early examples of Nicholas Murray Butler, Hamlin Garland, and Hugo Gernsback, and in more modern examples such as Isaac Asimov and Michael Kimmel. Male writers had a variety of reactions to the women’s liberation movement in the 1960s, resulting in various forms of splintering, but some authentically pro-feminist men from this period include Frederik Pohl, Michael Moorcock, and Samuel R. Delany. In 1982, Philip K. Dick’s last novel, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, was published posthumously, and has been interpreted by many scholars and critics as an artistic triumph due to Dick’s sympathetic characterization of a female, first-person protagonist. This dissertation acknowledges these conclusions but also argues that Dick wrote the novel because of splintered masculinity: he was using the draperies of feminism to reclaim a perceived loss of social standing or moral integrity in the public sphere. The novel was written in response to Ursula K. Le Guin and Joanna Russ, and by using archival evidence, I prove how the novel developed from Dick’s correspondence in private letters and in public fanzines due to reactions to his anti-abortion short story, “The Pre-Persons,” as well as the excessive misogyny in his novels Valis and The Divine Invasion. This dissertation examines many examples of splintered masculinity across 20th century fiction, but further areas of study are warranted in other fields such as history, philosophy, sociology, psychology, and law.

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