MASCULINITY AND FEMININITY

Masculinity and Femininity

Masculinity and Femininity

Beowulf

Beowulf is, as Gillian Overing has observed, "an overwhelmingly masculine poem." The poem's alternation between combative exploits and manly mead-hall camaraderie offers little space for women, and, at first glance, it appears to relegate all things feminine to the relatively forgettable margins. The eponymous hero himself is most memorable in his capacity as the masculine warrior and king. Yet Beowulf also fulfills his society's idealized feminine role: that of peace-weaver or fridusibb folca, the `peace-pledge of nations,' as Wealhtheow is called. Among his own people, Beowulf's sagacity and martial prowess make him an exemplary masculine figure. When he crosses tribal lines to aid Hrothgar's Danes, however--even though his conduct there includes some sweaty brutality--Beowulf becomes distinctly feminized. By cleansing Heorot of the curse of the race of Grendel, Beowulf achieves a trusted friendship-bond between the Geats and the Danes similar to what would have been expected if he had been exchanged between the two nations as the commodified bride. Indeed, Beowulf's deeds create a bond with Hrothgar more durable than most of those in the poem established by intertribal marriage. (Bjork, 25)

The poem never offers a picture of Beowulf bearing a mead-cup from one to another member of his comitatus; the idea of his doing so, indeed, seems rather silly. Among his own tribesmen, his positions as thane and king situate him in the masculine, vertical relationships that bind men to men in his society. In Enright's formulation, a brick cannot easily become mortar. And his deeds as thane and king--at least as reported by the poem--are often violent and always in keeping with expectations of heroic male conduct. But Beowulf's warlike deeds ought not to eclipse the fact that when he crosses tribal lines, his performance at Heorot feminizes him structurally (and, to a lesser extent, physically and psychologically) by placing him in the womanly position of weaving peace between his tribe and Hrothgar's. The Geats who eulogize their fallen leader at the close of the poem apparently feel no need to mention his violence. Perhaps they feel that his masculine accomplishments will be remembered without reiteration. Instead, the Geats hearken back to the qualities that made Beowulf a feminine success--qualities that twentieth-century audiences have also tended to overlook. (Davis, 93)

King Lear

Unlike Marxism, the feminist approach entered the critical scene at the beginning of, and as a major cause of, the revolution I described at the outset. Many of the early feminist critics of Shakespeare adopt the methods of New Critical thematism in which they were trained; thus Marianne Novy sees Lear as a conflict between "patriarchy" and "mutuality" that serves the same function as the old New Critical "central themes" like "reason vs. passion." The play presents an "exploration of some behavior that patriarchy fosters in men and women" and an "implicit criticism" of it by showing that it is responsible for Lear's mistakes and by having him learn, through suffering, the lesson Shakespeare is teaching--not a Marxist lesson on the ...