윌라 캐더의 남성인물 남성 동 일시와 동성애

Abstract

Willa Cather's Male Characters:Male Identification and HomosexualitySoyoung JungThe well-known male bonds in Willa Cather's 1920s novels are not easily incorporated into a "homosexual" identity. It is in part related to the fact that the important aspect of homosocial/homosexual relationships in Cather's texts is a male identification and the appropriation of masculinity. Paul, the hero of her short story "Paul's Case," represents homosexuals as a product of the social and cultural changes as well as one of urban subcultures whose features Cather regards as feminization and enervation. But the heterosexual family life is also rejected as a narrow, oppressive and materialistic institution as is clearly shown in The Professor's House.In this novel spiritual homosexual male bonds are in stark opposition to the oppressive heterosexual family life. Moreover, they don't belong to the urban subcultures but create the imaginary space beyond the existing hetero/homosexual relationships. But as Godfrey's regressive reconstruction of the past relationship with Tom is leading to a total renouncement of all social and familial relations, its idealization and sentimentalization is also intensifying. It reveals Cather's awareness of her ideal's self-betrayal, that is, how the male-male relation as both a criticism on civilization and an alternative value is getting fixated and idealized while losing its contact with living experiences.