Writing a New Script for Boys: Crisis and Recuperation of Masculinity in The Four Feathers

Abstract

This paper argues that A. E. W. Mason’s The Four Feathers displays ways in which Victorian masculinity is reconstructed when its old model can no longer be transmitted from the former generation. In their imperialist undertakings overseas, late Victorians, unlike their predecessors, suffered a series of defeats and subsequent mental anguish. Masculine ideology had been the main prop for the Empire, so it was inevitable for the Victorians and Edwardians to imagine a new masculinist script in ways that would allow them to incorporate and sublimate such experiences. The Four Feathers, suffused with the memory of defeats in the Sudan campaign, portrays the male protagonist Harry Feversham’s regaining his honor after his initial and ignominious retreat from the assigned course for men. As the old scenario of masculinity in the-Name-of-the-Father does not work anymore for the young generation, a new imagination was necessary for male subjects to construct their masculinity. Central to this process, of course, was role of women, as their assigned role of femininity both defines masculinity and inspires men to live up to social expectation of masculinity. Indeed, as a paragon of femininity, Ethne plays a decisive role in Harry’s redemption and Durrance’s reestablishment of masculinity. The Four Feathers, on the whole, is a rewriting of a dominant masculinist script through which the value of masculinity is redeemed and reestablished.