LE3 .A278 2014

2014

Wyile, Herb

Acadia University

Bachelor of Arts

Honours

English

English & Theatre Studies

This thesis examines the Maritime fiction of Alistair MacLeod through a constructivist approach to gender and argues that determinant and dynamic external forces threaten to constrict his male characters to gender roles that limit the trajectories of their lives and their potential for self-actualization. Rather than presenting the Maritimes as an idealized pastoral space, MacLeod destabilizes this romantic vision and represents the definite complexities and hardships of working-class life. Primarily focused on manual labour and the Gaelic clan system, the argument addresses the lives of MacLeod’s male characters who are socialized into masculinity and are expected to provide for their immediate family and their clan despite the dangers of their labour. The constrictive nature of these expectations tend to cause feelings of ambivalence within many of MacLeod’s characters toward their labour, their families and their masculine identities. Intensifying this ambivalence are the effects of globalization on Maritime life and the ways in which this socioeconomic shift undermines traditional bases of masculinity, further amplifying MacLeod’s characters’ internal conflicts. Exploring his characters’ understandings of masculinity and the internal dissonance they experience sheds significant light on the social tensions that complicate their lives and, more broadly, the ramifications of external forces for men and masculinity1

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https://scholar.acadiau.ca/islandora/object/theses:1170