Masculinity in Women’s Literature

In Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Mr. Bennett can never match the resourcefulness of his wife in her attempts to settle their five daughters in life; Edgar Linton in Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights is a caricature of manliness; in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Wives and Daughters, an only daughter, Molly Gibson, proves to be a better child to her father than a son, Osborne Hamley, who fails his parents; George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss presents Maggie Tulliver as a far stronger, braver and tougher character than her brother Tom.

This proposed volume aims at exploring how women writers represent the concept of masculinity in their literary works. How do they evaluate, challenge, mock, refute and/or regulate masculinity (or the lack of it)? How do they relate it to femininity? Do they use their representation of masculinity to contest male writers’ depiction of women and womanhood?

Topics for essays may include, but are not limited to:

Þ   What is manhood according to a woman (writer or character)?

Þ   Masculinity vs. effeminacy vs. femininity

Þ   Is feminism a form of masculinity or a challenge to it?

Þ   Race, class and gender in masculinity

Þ   How does imperialism complicate the concept(ion) of masculinity?

Þ   Colonialism, the hyper-masculine colonizer and the effeminate colonized male

Þ   Colonialism and the white women as “emergency men” (masculine females?)

Þ   Postcolonialism, post-war era and (loss of) masculinity

Þ   Femininity and/or feminism under the female gaze

Þ   Evolution of manhood in women’s writing and creative imagination

Þ   Contemporary globalization and masculinity

Þ   How did women’s literary representation of manhood shape/impact the evolution of womanhood to what it is today?

Editor:

Susmita Roye (Associate Professor of English, Department of English and Foreign Languages, Delaware State University, USA; email: sroye_at_desu.edu)

Timeline of this project:

The timeline given below will be followed:

Stages

DEADLINES

• FIRST ROUND OF SELECTION:

700-word abstract along with a short bio due.

June 18, 2017 (Sunday)

Editor notifies the candidates whose abstracts have been selected for the second round.

June 30, 2017 (Friday)

• SECOND ROUND OF SELECTION:

First draft of the full-length article due.

December 31, 2017 (Sunday)

Editor notifies the candidates whose articles have been finally selected for the book.

February 16, 2018 (Friday)

Final draft of the full-length article due.

June 17, 2018 (Sunday)

Editor submits the entire book manuscript to a publisher.

August 15, 2018 (Wednesday)

Please note that there are TWO rounds of selection. An invitation to submit completed essays based on the abstract will not necessarily guarantee inclusion in the collection; all final decisions will be made on the merit of the full-length article.

Word-limit:

Abstracts = 700 words

Full-length articles = 6,000-9,000 words

Please send your abstract to Susmita Roye. Any questions or requests for further information are also to be directed to her at sroye@desu.edu