Masculinity In Sillitoe's This Sporting Life

In times of war, the masculine epitome was provided the soldier figure. However in a post-war context, this stable image of masculinity became blurred. The struggle to mentally pinpoint and physically embody an ideal form of masculinity befitting the era is epitomised in Storey and Sillitoe’s protagonists. The multiplicity of male social roles and uncertainty in claiming a specifically male physical space results in embattled narratives of tension and flux. In extension of the developments of the modernist novel, conflicts are most explored in interior monologues, where men appear at their most bitter, defiant and solipsistic. Their hastily concealed inner fragility manifests itself outwardly in dysfunctional relationships, revealing the vulnerability of their egos. Homosocial interactions are fiercely competitive but at times tentatively intimate, as the men navigate new social hierarchies in the absence of military rank or protocol. Similarly, a fear of the empowered post-war female means men hold stridently misogynistic views towards the gender, but …show more content…
When a player is hit, ‘his language echoed all over the ground.’ The suggestion that his bloody nose and bulging eyes speak his truth is a profoundly effective image. In theory, rugby should allow safe fulfillment of man’s aggressive tendencies. However, the disturbingly calm and numb quality of description of violence suggests something more sinister. The idea of pain as ‘professional’ detaches violence from its human sphere and its consequences for others. As such, Arthur is so acclimatised to professional violence it affects his relationship with Lynda. Violence and language have become so interchangeable that when she speaks against him ‘the shortest way of stopping it I found was to hit her.’ Perhaps normalisation of violence during war has dangerously pervaded the post-war man’s fragile