Orienting Masculinity, Orienting Nation: W. Somerset Maugham's Exotic FictionAlthough their settings span a wide geographical area, from the South Pacific to India, Maugham's exotic short stories, novels, and travelogues all, ultimately, focus on the creation of a masculine British identity. In this first book to address Maugham's fiction in light of recent developments in postcolonial, gender, and cultural theory, Holden argues that Maugham's work can be understood as an attempt to negotiate between two alternative masculine identities: those of private homosexual and public writer. Holden identifies Maugham's attempts to cultivate a public persona as a writer whose heterosexuality is confirmed through a process of control of language. Furthermore, Holden illuminates the fluidity of language that Maugham, in contrast to his public persona, associated with homosexuality. The basis of this study is the provocative notion that Maugham's texts, despite their exotic locations, ultimately dramatize a struggle over masculine British identity. |
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Page 118
... Erik's reply to Fred's statement is perhaps even more revealing : " I know what you mean . . . . It's always a risk to put things to the test of experience . It's like the locked room in Bluebeard's castle . One's all right as long as ...
... Erik's reply to Fred's statement is perhaps even more revealing : " I know what you mean . . . . It's always a risk to put things to the test of experience . It's like the locked room in Bluebeard's castle . One's all right as long as ...
Page 120
... Erik's death , " but it wasn't me he loved , it was mother ” ( 209 ) . Seeing Louise on her balcony " a sarong round her loins , but the upper part of her body was naked " ( 158 ) Erik responds not with desire but with a meditation upon ...
... Erik's death , " but it wasn't me he loved , it was mother ” ( 209 ) . Seeing Louise on her balcony " a sarong round her loins , but the upper part of her body was naked " ( 158 ) Erik responds not with desire but with a meditation upon ...
Page 124
... Erik's gramophone playing Wagner , Saunders finds in the music " something shoddy , blatant , and a trifle vulgar , a sort of baronial buffet effect , " since he has " grown accustomed in China to complications more exquisite and ...
... Erik's gramophone playing Wagner , Saunders finds in the music " something shoddy , blatant , and a trifle vulgar , a sort of baronial buffet effect , " since he has " grown accustomed in China to complications more exquisite and ...
Contents
The Moon and Sixpence 22 | 27 |
The Trembling of a Leaf | 47 |
On a Chinese Screen | 63 |
Copyright | |
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Orienting Masculinity, Orienting Nation: W. Somerset Maugham's Exotic Fiction Philip Holden No preview available - 1996 |
Common terms and phrases
addiction allochrony analysis Asia Barthes Barthes's binarism British British Malaya characters China Chinese Screen closet colonial discourse confession constructions of masculinity contrast critical culture desire East embedded narrative Empire of Signs Erik femininity feminized flâneur focaliser Foucault frame narrative Fred gaze gender Gerald Haxton Girardian triangle heterosexual homoerotic homoeroticism homosocial India Isabel island Izzart Kitty landscape Larry Larry's literary London Louise Malay Malaya Malayan stories manliness Maugham's fiction Maugham's Malayan Maugham's narrator Maugham's novel Maugham's oriental fiction Maugham's short story Maugham's texts Maugham's writings mediation metaphor modern Moon and Sixpence narrator's Narrow Corner native nature Neilson's nineteenth century opium Painted Veil premodern present protagonist race racial alterity Razor's Edge reader remarks representation represented rhetoric Saunders Saunders's Sedgwick seems semiotic sexuality signifying society Somerset Maugham South Pacific space Strickland Tahiti textual tropes twentieth century West Western woman women Writer's Notebook Yellow Streak