Son of depression, man of anxiety : Frank Wheeler's American patriarchal masculinity in Richard Yates's 'Revolutionary Road'

摘要

With the beginning of the Cold War, the United States experienced a return to traditional gender roles and to the most extreme patriarchal values. As a result, throughout the 1950s, the United States were mainly sexist and misogynist. Likewise, the hegemonic masculinity of the time, which men had to conform to in order to avoid being ostracized, was extremely demanding and it also exacerbated the gender inequalities. This TFM analyzes Richard Yates's debut novel Revolutionary Road (1961) through the lens of Masculinities Studies, arguing that it criticizes both the gender inequalities and the hegemonic, patriarchal masculinity of 1950s America.