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En-trenched Manhood

War and Constructions of Masculinity in George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia

York University, Toronto, Ontario, evakarp{at}yorku.ca

Using feminist approaches to life writing and subjectivity elaborated by Sidonie Smith, Leigh Gilmore, and Marlene Kadar, this article examines George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia as an example of complex and conflicting negotiations of masculinity in the extreme situations of war and political trauma. Orwell's constructions of male subjectivity reveal both complicity and resistance to traditional discourses of militarism and are less monolithic than usually assumed in feminist interpretations of his work. Orwell's male subject is viewed as a site of contradictory interpellations of ethnicity, class, and physicality of the body. Finally, it is argued that through his rhetoric, Orwell manipulates hegemonic and nonhegemonic notions of manhood and sacrifices a heroic potential of his war narrative to increase his political credibility in the cause of a socialist revolution.

Key Words: life writing • subjectivity • rhetoric • masculinity • militarism • feminism

This version was published on August 1, 2008

Men and Masculinities, Vol. 10, No. 5, 523-537 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/1097184X06291902


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