The time that Thompson has spent delineating women's and men's work - and within that, the work of hired men and men of standing - reminds me of the social hierarchy Mrs. Turpin lulls herself to sleep with, drawing absurdly fine lines between similar tasks. "Killing hogs was a job for the boss, but scraping them and cutting them up was for the hired man again; and again woman's proper work was dressing meat, smoking, pickling, and making lard and sausage." (233) "[T]here were only a few kinds of work manly enough for Mr. Thompson" (233-34), but does that make Helton less of a man, who, "judging by his conduct. . .had never heard of the difference between man's and woman's work on a farm" (235)?
I don't really want to go either way on Helton's status as a man, at least not right now. (Okay, maybe a little: he's bestialized, compared, among other things, to a "mad dog" (259)) But Thompson's pissing contest with Hatch - and his victory in that contest - really calls into question the nature of masculinity, which Thompson thought he had all figured out.
Thompson's sense of masculinity is robbed of him. We are privy to his thoughts: "it would sound mighty strange to say, Well him and me fell out over a plug of tobacco." (250) The falling out that eventually occurs between Thompson and Hatch - that is, the one killing the other - is explained by Thompson as a defense of Helton. "'But Mr. Hatch, as I told you,'" Thompson tells his lawyer, '"made a pass at Mr. Helton with his bowie knife. That's why I took a hand.'" (260) So Thompson was doing as a good neighbor would, with a sense of fraternity and, as a boss, treating his worker well. Thompson considers himself, after all, "a prompt payer of taxes, yearly subscriber to the preacher's salary, land owner and father of a famiy, employer, a hearty good fellow among men." (234) Thompson is a man's man (and not an Irishman, to boot, 244).
But for this good turn, what does Thompson get? In his dissertation on man's work/woman's work, Thompson lets on that "[i]t was his dignity and his reputation that he cared about" (233). These things make him a man. And so when his neighbor's turn on him (the fairweather friends, the Allbrights, 262-63; that unhappy housewarming with the McClellans, 263-64), and his sons betray him ("'You touch her again and I'll blow your heart out!'" (267), what is left of the land owner and father, the hearty good fellow among men? And how has he lost all this standing that he thought he had?
In the defense of a loonatic? Why not just over a plug of tobacco?
Usurped by his sons and shunned by his fellows, the story ends with Thompson toeing the trigger to his shotgun, because "That way he could work it." (268)
Still, the moment doesn't seem like a castration. Thompson's loss of masculinity is a fall from grace, becoming not feminine but just some sexless creature. He has no family. (He scratches out the words "My wife" in his letter. (268)) This seems to be the last straw in measuring his worth, not his standing or his land or his material success - he feels abandoned by his family and can't go on.
Is that a portrait of a real man?
(Edit: I woke up this morning and realized he didn't put the gun in his mouth, he leaned "his head against the gun mouth" (268); this actually helps my point that Mr. Thompson undergoes an implosion of masculinity, rather than an emasculation)
2 comments:
I really like this reading! I think the "masculinity kick" you've got here is pretty interesting. Another point that I think supports your argument: when Mr. Thompson sets out to deliver his rehearsed speech to the neighbors, Porter emphasizes the fact that the lynchpin of truth is always his wife. She is forced to be the infalliable, spoken truth: "If you don't believe me, ask her, she won't lie!" (262). His word is no longer good, and he has to rely on his female spouse to deliver his justification (which he feels she does half-heartedly anyway).
Also, in one of their most humiliating moments, they are actually turned away by a neighbor who doesn't want them to come in and upset his children/family/guests. I don't think it is a coincidence that this neighbor happens to be "an old beau of Ellie's" (262). I think being turned away by a former rival contributes to your notion of an "implosion of masculinity."
Now this is certainly a scholastically unorthodox (not to mention totally unfounded) statement, but my general impression of Katherine Anne Porter was that she was something of a femme fatale. Given that general impression, I've actually been quite surprised by her negative protrayals of men. I guess I just imagined she'd be the type of woman who was confident enough in the inherent strengths of her femininity not to begrudge men the strenghts of their masculinity (or feel threatened by it). As the saying goes, strong women choose strong men--and as woman with so many interesting affairs and marriages, I just assumed she would be a woman who had a degree of admiration and respect for masculinity. Obviously, I can't read any conjecture about Katherine Anne Porter's romantic/sexual nature into her stories, but it's an impression (and, in my mind, a contradiction) that's really been bothering me. (It might well be that my thought patterns and assumptions about this are some kind of interesting evidence in themselves about the ways in which we read gendered literature).
This is a very Freudian reading in a non-typical Freudian sense. I also really like your reading of this text. To take a somewhat different view of this story, I want to isolate characters and look at them as being genderless. (Just for a second) to look at the idea of the individual. Rather than falling into masculine of feminine values/anti-values, I feel that Mr. Thompson is the same stock "empty" character that is prevalent throughout Porter's works. How does/would this reading help/hinder the interpretation of Mr.Thompson's masculinity within the story. Is it even worth looking at? I'm not sure...
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