Constructing and Performing Masculinity in the Novels of Richardson, Radcliffe and Austen
The question of how the construction or performance of masculinity changes throughout the long eighteenth century has been widely debated in field of literary/cultural studies, with scholars such as Laura Doyle arguing that Lovelace’s predatory/rapist brand of masculinity in Clarissa encapsulates the rise of the novel alongside Britain’s entrance into modernity, and scholars such as Julie Park identifying a significant identification between the male novelist and libertine, which shows, Park argues, that male subjectivity insists on objectifying feminine subjectivity. It is important to also acknowledge the relationship between male characters’ and authors’ socially-prescribed constructions or roles and their power to feed into, evolve, or impact the “role” of masculinity and its “construction” over time. This essay addresses male characters with special attention to their perceived masculinity, manhood and impotence through their ability to control their surroundings. Specifically in this essay, I will be looking at masculine constructions and roles in Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa, Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho, and Jane Austen’s Persuasion in order to show how masculinity changes in the novel over time as shown in the male protagonist’s ability to control sexuality, class mobility, and wealth. I will discuss the “hero” characters—tragic (Lovelace), Gothic/romantic (Valancourt), or realist (Wentworth)—and juxtapose them against their foil characters in order to reveal the little recognized connection between masculinity and its ability to control these three aspects of society. I argue that the male characters in novels throughout the long eighteenth century simultaneously occupy and “flesh out” over time, their socially and authorially prescribed roles, feeding into and evolving the role of masculinity and evolving its construction. Over time, the dominant, masculine role previously occupied by the stock character of the rake evolves into a more complex network of masculinity that permeates and pervades the social/narrative structure.
Masculinity and control over sexuality in the eighteenth century is uncovered in the novel, through stock characters including the rake/predator vs. the virtuous/impotent masculine roles. In Clarissa, Richardson’s positive male role models, Sir John Belmont and Mr. Hickman, assist Clarissa to cope but are unable to save her from her ultimate fate, the consequence for that “one false step” into the garden with Lovelace: death. In Udolpho, the roles are just as rigidly (if not more so) constructed as in Richardson’s Clarissa. However, there is no Lovelace-esque character driving the entire plot. In the middle of the book, Montoni drives the plot. However, at the beginning and end of the book, there are more “impotent” men such as Emily’s father St. Aubert and her gambling-debtor, would-be rescuer/suitor Valancourt. The book is permeated throughout by male aggression and “proper” courtship behaviors. In the end, these roles leave us with a less than exciting match in the union of Valancourt and Emily. In Persuasion, the social roles including masculinity and femininity are less rigidly constructed. There is no rake character. There is, though, a “masculine” role that is predatory in that it poses a threat to the “female” protagonist’s, Ann’s, future happiness: the traditional mercenary marriage match, borderline incestuous in that her last name would not even change, Mr. Elliot. The impotent masculine role is not inhabited by the hero–though through his character flaw of stubbornness, self-stated, reveals that he “should” have contacted Ann on his first return yet instead stumbled around with Louisa Musgrove–and contributed to her tragic, literal fall. The impotent masculine role then falls to the man who marries Louisa, Captain Benwick, who Ann is nice to but who seems too romantic to be a good husband; he relishes “saving” women so must choose a weak woman, one who dies who he then mourns followed by one who is “no longer her [spirited] self.”
Domestic fiction reveals class mobility through the female figure, as Armstrong and other scholars after her have shown. Lovelace attempts to control, through his roles as writer, director, and actor of what he thinks is a comedy but spins into a tragedy, what he thinks from his gentry position should be the class mobility–and that does not include the Harlowes’ movement “upward” into parliament. His obsession with Clarissa and the fact that she is born to an “upstart family” like the Harlowes’ distracts him from keeping “son James” and James Harlowe, and the uncles out of parliament and out of the landed gentry. In Udolpho, Emily’s father is a frustrating figure; he fails to adequately plan for the inheritance of his pastoral estate by Emily in placing her under the guardianship of his ill-equipped-for-guardianship sister. As a result, the predator/rake figure of Montoni sweeps in, marries his sister and places Emily under first imprisonment then duress, in her travels to the “lawless” Italy in its immoral Venitian society then further removed to its “barbaric,” riddled-with-banditti castles. In this way, he fails to secure the class stability for his daughter. Furthermore, the other characters embodying the social role of “masculinity” are unable to accommodate the female figure’s need for basic safety, free from the threat of rape and kidnapping. Valancourt is off in the city gambling while she thinks he is trying to rescue her, but it in fact is another male who in a Radcliffean twist fell in love with her from the beginning of the novel. Class mobility is erratic, at best, in this novel, with Montoni as the mercenary character embodying both Lovelace and Clarissa’s father, and the Count as Solmes with whom he attempts to set her up to increase his own wealth. In the end, class mobility is precarious, Emily merely taking Valancourt with her to inhabit her father’s estate, which she should have had in her possession, were it not for her father’s and Valancourt’s social impotence, all along. In Persuasion, the control of class mobility is depicted as non-masculine in the figure of Sir Walter Elliot, who engages in behaviors typically and previously depicted as the domain of the “female,” including an obsession with mirrors (which Admiral Croft takes down) and with gossip and showing off his fashionable connections and appearance, and apartment in Bath. Austen depicts the ultimate masculinity not as Sir Walter or his mercenary, manipulative heir, nor in the figure of landed-gentry/hunter Charles Musgrove but, rather, in the form of Captain Wentworth and his brother-in-law, Admiral Crawford. In concert with Armstrong’s claim that the middle-class is shown through the female figure, the males’ interactions with Ann Elliot determine their status, moral stature and hence value for the readers. Further, it is Captain Wentworth and Ann’s union that defines and exemplifies, for Ann Mellor, British modernity leading into the Romantic Era.
From Clarissa to Udolpho to Romantic-era Persuasion, masculinity becomes equated predominantly to the control of wealth. In Clarissa, Lovelace is lauded for his non-debtor status. While he is prudent with his money, he is not prudent with his sexual spending, and this is the primary reason for which the Harlowes object to his courtship of Clarissa–in endless conversations/letters between the uncles and Clarissa, the aunt and Clarissa, all the family taking on their roles and their positionalities within the dominant structure to enforce their power onto Clarissa. While lack of debt and amassed wealth–and land–are important for the family, mostly for Clarissa’s brother James, one of Lovelace’s virtues besides his charisma and literary/directorial talent is that he is not a gambler. Valancourt is painted less as the ideal masculine counterpart to Emily’s “feminine” role in that Emily is not only more practical and capable than him throughout the travails of the narrative structure, but she also does not fall into debt or gamble in the sinfully depicted city, Paris, as her suitor does. The Gothic genre as a whole, and Radcliffe’s Udolpho in particular, depicts the “female” characters’ positionality as precarious and complicates the previous romantic tropes of the male “savior” and female “damsel.” While masculinity is still constructed in the Gothic as involving financially sound practices, the Gothic genre, as exemplified by the so-called “mistress” of it in her penultimate novel Udolpho, offers even fewer positive male examples than Richardson’s tragedy Clarissa a s well as Austen’s more-realist Persuasion. In Persuasion, the effeminately portrayed Sir Walter’s masculinity is called into question via his inability to manage his estate, which responsibility had fallen to his now-deceased wife. Sensible women such as the deceased Lady Elliot, Lady Russell and Ann Elliot are rendered impotent by his spending; only the wife could exert the necessary effort to keep the landed gentry at Kellynch. Because of this, the union of Admiral and Mrs. Crawford is presented as “worthy” of Kellynch. True masculinity, for Austen, lies in the Admiral’s and his heir’s, Captain Wentworth’s, willingness and ability to willingly unite with and derive wisdom and guidance from their wives’ practical and economical sensibilities. Wentworth’s masculinity is acquired through his accrual of wealth in overseas campaigns in alignment with the British Empire’s goals–which is problematic in its own way, as Mellor points out in Mothers of the Nation. Nonetheless, his wealth has accrued so that Ann’s “persuasion” by Lady Russell not to “invest” in Wentworth up front, shows the psychological damage of the risk not taken. In this way, Wentworth’s brand of masculinity is simultaneously problematic and a better option for Ann than remaining under the guidance of Sir Walter or his namesake/heir.
By analyzing novels by Richardson, Radcliffe, and Austen, this essay has shed light on the evolution of “masculine” characters exerting control over their surroundings, lest they become “impotent” and reduce their “manhood,” from one dominant position, the rake, to dispersal of these qualities throughout the narrative structure of the novel. In moving from constructions of masculinity which demonstrate sexual power, power over others’–especially women’s–social mobility, to power in the form of wealth and financial management, this essay has shown that constructions or performances of masculinity, in literature, while they maintain some of these effects, become “civilized.” Over the course of the long eighteenth century, the masculine construction honors performances, then, which primarily dominate the financial realm while ceding (some) power on the sexual and class-mobility fronts.
