NOT REALLY MODERN MEN AND STUCK MACHINES

HETEROSEXUALITY AS TRAUMA IN WAUGH’S, LAWRENCE’S AND MAUGHAM’S NARRATIVES

Abstract

Using three canonical modernist novels from the English tradition, this work analyses the construction of heterosexuality as a trauma by questioning the intersections among masculinity, gender and sexuality. The novels of Evelyn Waugh, W. Somerset Maugham and D. H. Lawrence reveal different sides of how men express themselves affectively, making room for further inquiry. In order to think of heterosexuality as a trauma, this paper uses three main ideas – Eve Sedgwick’s (2016) homosociality, Sara Ahmed’s (2006) reorientation towards objects, and Raewyn Connell’s (2016) constructions of masculinities. After paving the way with these three perspectives, heterosexuality is read as an organizational, ideological and institutional regulation in Stevi Jackson’s (2006) view as well as a traumatic expression which Laura Brown (1995) will deem “insidious trauma”. The production of this trauma is inextricably intertwined with the way in which Waugh’s, Maugham’s and Lawrence’s characters perform their masculinities, here understood as one way in which the heterosexual machine “gets stuck”. In other words, it is by means of these experiences of failure that heterosexuality can also become visible and visibilised. It is concluded that heterosexuality in the selected novels reveals problematic expressions of subjects who refuse stabilisations of identities, a common task of LGBTQIA+ critique in contemporary times.