A Study Of Jonah’s Gourd Vine With The Theory Of Masculinity

Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) was a greatest woman writer during the HarlemRenaissance, the progenitor of the black female voice. She was one of the first blackauthors who radically broke with the racist convention of reacting towhite-supremacist hierarchy. Her fictions, mostly set in the Deep South of Alabamaand Florida, transmit a voice of her own, largely independent of the set patterns ofboth white prejudice and Black Nationalism. In the light of the masculinity theory, thethesis examines Hurston’s long neglected novel Jonah’s Gourd Vine, in which theconditions of post-bellum African American society and the conflicts betweendifferent groups of men are explored.Studies on men and masculinities first began in the area of psychology.Afterwards, scholars claim that gender is constructed over time and is grounded incertain situations and social contexts. Raewyn Connell, a leading theorist in this field,developed the concept of “hegemonic masculinity” in her groundbreaking bookMasculinities (1995). She holds that hegemonic masculinity always oppresses othermasculinities to sustain its dominance. Black male theorists hold that AfricanAmericans are denied the privileges of manhood and the opportunity to be real menas a group, causing their identity anxiety and crisis. Therefore, sociologist John Bultersuggests black males follow examples of successful leaders and individuals to upliftAfrican Americans. Additionally, Bell Hooks proposes that black males develop arelatively new definition of black masculinity.In Jonah, Imperialist white-supremacist masculinity is dominant inpost-Reconstruction plantations, which keeps a large number of black men trapped bytheir identification with being victims politically, economically and socially. And thehegemonic masculinity in the all-black town is also patriarchal, resulting in theprotagonist’s anxiety on his way to healthy manhood. Through various responses tothe oppression of hegemonic masculinities, some black males fail to constructprogressive masculinity as a consequence of their submission to the hegemonicmasculinity, or rejecting it through violence and escaping; few black males have made progress in identity construction through hard working, self-assertion, beingpositive, respecting women, healthy fatherhood as well as restoring African values.Therefore, Hurston, as a keen observer of her time, holds a positive attitude towardthe future of her folks, and more importantly puts forward some insightful strategiesfor the identity construction of African American males.