Top 10sFiction This article is more than 4 years oldTop 10 books about toxic masculinity
This article is more than 4 years oldThe term may be new, but as stories from Homer to Henry James show, the behaviour is anything but
Toxic masculinity has become something of a buzz phrase, employed to describe and explain everything from poor dating etiquette to mass shootings and the abuses highlighted by the #MeToo movement. But, as with any buzzword, it is important to be clear in one’s definition. Toxic masculinity can be said to be the social pressure to conform to traditional ideals of masculinity, which privilege aggression, elevated class status and the suppression of emotions. For many, adherence to these narrow, oppressive expectations about what it means to be a man will logically express itself in the most grotesque ways.
My novel A Good Man is a psychological thriller narrated by Thomas Martin, a devoted family man and successful advertising executive who appears to have an enviable life. However, as his meticulously constructed world unravels, Thomas grapples with his sense of self, and ultimately commits horrifying acts against his loved ones. The novel is a portrait of the expectations of contemporary masculinity and the dangers of prescriptive gender norms, especially concerning marriage and family, and how unrelenting societal pressure on men to be protectors and providers can destroy lives.
While the term has gained prominence in the last decade, the literature of toxic masculinity began many centuries ago, revealing that this phenomenon has many faces and is and capable of inflicting a vast array of harms upon people of all ages and genders. Here are 10 of my favourite books grappling with the subject:
1. The Adversary by Emmanuel Carrère
This work of reportage is a strikingly personal and unflinching exploration of the case of Jean-Claude Romand, a man who for nearly two decades pretended to be a respected doctor before his lies came to light, leading him to murder his wife, children and parents in 1993. Perhaps because he had fabricated everything else about his life, Romand appeared to see his wife and children as adornments to his own invention, and therefore disposable. Carrère wrestles for meaning as he expertly analyses the pitfalls of socially constructed delusions about masculinity.
2. The Wych Elm by Tana French
The banality of male entitlement is exemplified by protagonist Toby Hennessey, a “lucky” young Dubliner who is nearly beaten to death when he interrupts the burglary of his apartment. Toby retreats to his uncle’s rambling manse to recuperate, where a discovery forces him to confront gaps in his memory. What seems on the surface to be a conventional whodunnit told by a likable if somewhat obtuse narrator is actually a meditation on the dark side of privilege, and how it blinds people (men especially) to the harms they commit.
3. McGlue by Ottessa Moshfegh
McGlue, the narrator of this visceral stream-of-consciousness, is a 19th-century sailor who wakes up in his ship’s hold, drunk, covered in blood and very probably guilty of murdering his best friend. Moshfegh’s novella takes the reader on a blackly comic trip through the vagaries of memory to portray a volatile male friendship shot through with aggression, acute alcoholism, and repressed eroticism – a relationship ultimately pushed into calamity by an imbalance of power.
4. The End of Eddy by Edouard Louis
Louis’ memoir is a coming-of-age story about growing up poor and queer in a small, isolated village in France. Alienated from his family and from the peers he refers to with bitter irony as his “buddies”, Louis endures a childhood marked by routine violence and humiliation because of his difference and inability to “be a man”. “Because I couldn’t be one of them, I had to reject that whole world. The smoke was unbreathable because of the beatings; the hunger was unbearable because of my father’s hatred.”
5. The Iliad by Homer
The original epic of toxic masculinity. The entire story is set in motion by the warrior Achilles’ monumental tantrum over being forced to give up a captive woman he considers his property, which results in a pissing contest at the expense of thousands of lives. In the end, the men weep as they reckon with the human cost of war before renewing their campaign of mutual destruction.
6. The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
A young woman’s auspicious future and personal autonomy is destroyed by one of the most poisonous men in fiction. Isabel Archer’s commitment to her independence backfires miserably when she rejects two promising suitors to marry the scheming Gilbert Osmond, who wastes no time in siphoning her fortune and robbing her of all spark and freedom. Toward the novel’s end, she remarks: “If I were afraid of my husband that would be simply my duty. That’s what women are expected to be.”
7. The Vegetarian by Han Kang
Kang’s novel is an account of one woman’s struggle for bodily autonomy and self-determination. Disturbed by gory nightmares, Yeong-he stops eating meat, a decision that enrages her casually misogynist husband and titillates her brother-in-law, both of whom believe she exists to service their needs. The women of the novel are faced with an impossible bind: “It’s your body, you can treat it however you please. The only area where you’re free to do just as you like. And even that doesn’t turn out how you wanted.” The only way to be free is to reject personhood altogether and become something else.
8. The Joys of Motherhood by Buchi Emecheta
Nnu Ego, the heroine of this biting novel, struggles to live up to the expectations of a patriarchal society, and founders when faced with seismic changes. Caught in the trap of first being the dutiful daughter, then the subjugated wife, and then the beleaguered mother of an ever-growing family, Nnu’s life of toil and deprivation at the hands of men unfurls in a devastatingly matter-of-fact style. Worse, she internalises her own oppression, reflecting only when it’s too late, “The men make it look as if we must aspire for children or die… We women subscribe to that law more than anyone. Until we change all this, it is still a man’s world, which women will always help to build.”
9. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Humbert Humbert is the epitome of the unreliable, self-serving narrator, so convincing in telling his tale of star-crossed love with the “nymphet” Lolita that he could almost be mistaken for a tragic hero. The gorgeousness of the language seduces the reader into believing Humbert Humbert is sympathetic in his monstrosity; when the mask slips to reveal the reality of his abuse, the effects are breathtaking. This is, in my opinion, the best 20th-century #MeToo novel — it illuminates how the self-delusions of masculinity are seen as essentially virtuous. Its lessons and hurts are as fresh and relevant as ever.
10. The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
As an elementary school teacher preoccupied with children’s developing understanding of power and gender roles, I had to give a spot on this list to an exceptional work of young adult literature. Cormier’s novel turns a prep school into a pressure cooker, in which freshman Jerry Renault’s impulsive, fateful decision to abstain from a school fundraiser provokes the ire of a powerful secret society. The story is populated by choir boys who sound like Scorsese characters; enabled by their adult custodians, they engage in acts of violence both psychological and physical in service of a brutal conformity.
A Good Man by Ani Katz is published by William Heinemann on 16 January. To order a copy, go to guardianbookshop.com. Free UK p&p on orders over £15.
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