![]() ![]() With this in mind, it contextualises these stories’ representations of masculinity in their respective era of the 1980s. ![]() This dissertation’s departure point is the 1980s feminist and poststructuralist contention that gender is a historically-contingent construction. Rather than helping male characters adjust to the 1980s changes, Reaganite masculinity emerges as a limited construct that leads them astray, rendering them as lost white men. It contends that these rape narratives engage with the various tenets of Reaganite masculinity, from the patriarchal household model in the domestic space, the homosocial contender of the all-male public space, to the self-determining cowboy of the wilderness frontier, to reveal these gender constructs as flawed myths. ![]() It suggests that these stories constitute rape narratives, and argues that they critique their era’s dominant model of American masculinity that President Ronald Reagan embodied. Abstract This dissertation explores the connections between the literary representations of rape, blue-collar white men, and masculinity, in the 1980s works of Raymond Carver, Andre Dubus, and Denis Johnson. ![]()
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