The Synonymy Of Madness And Sexism In Fincher’s Fight Club And Browning’s “Porphyria’s Lover”
The presence of gender roles is undeniable in the 1999 movie Fight Club and the Victorian poem “Porphyria’s Lover” by Robert Browning. Both works have an unnamed narrator on a quest for masculinity through power and violence. While the behavior of the narrators in Fight club and “Porphyria’s Lover” appears to be proof of their madness, it is actually used to demonstrate the skewed view of masculinity in their respective societies and the insanity of these stereotypes. Both Fight Club and “Porphyria’s Lover” present the narrators’ views, as well as that of society around them, before exposing the madness that drives these characters.
The unnamed narrator of Fight Club expresses a stereotypical view of masculinity, which defines a real man as aggressive, gritty and tough. Throughout Fight Club, the narrator becomes increasingly fixated on what he believes to be the definition of a real man. This is a stereotypical view, which he adopts through listening to his alter ego Tyler’s theories and rants about masculinity. Tyler speaks of men as …show more content…
The case of mental illness in Fight Club is in the narrator’s multiple personality disorder. He needs to disconnect himself from his actions in order to justify them, which is where Tyler comes in as a grittier, manlier version of himself. The narrator in “Porphyria’s Lover” shares this ambivalence, as he seems disconnected from the gravity of the murder even as he commits it. He insists that Porphyria felt no pain as he strangled her and that when he lifted her eyelids “Laugh’d the blue eyes without a stain” (Browning 46). These are both highly improbable, revealing that the narrator has become somewhat delusional because of how badly he did not want to hurt his lover. Despite his fear of losing power to her, he did care for
The presence of gender roles is undeniable in the 1999 movie Fight Club and the Victorian poem “Porphyria’s Lover” by Robert Browning. Both works have an unnamed narrator on a quest for masculinity through power and violence. While the behavior of the narrators in Fight club and “Porphyria’s Lover” appears to be proof of their madness, it is actually used to demonstrate the skewed view of masculinity in their respective societies and the insanity of these stereotypes. Both Fight Club and “Porphyria’s Lover” present the narrators’ views, as well as that of society around them, before exposing the madness that drives these characters.
The unnamed narrator of Fight Club expresses a stereotypical view of masculinity, which defines a real man as aggressive, gritty and tough. Throughout Fight Club, the narrator becomes increasingly fixated on what he believes to be the definition of a real man. This is a stereotypical view, which he adopts through listening to his alter ego Tyler’s theories and rants about masculinity. Tyler speaks of men as …show more content…
The case of mental illness in Fight Club is in the narrator’s multiple personality disorder. He needs to disconnect himself from his actions in order to justify them, which is where Tyler comes in as a grittier, manlier version of himself. The narrator in “Porphyria’s Lover” shares this ambivalence, as he seems disconnected from the gravity of the murder even as he commits it. He insists that Porphyria felt no pain as he strangled her and that when he lifted her eyelids “Laugh’d the blue eyes without a stain” (Browning 46). These are both highly improbable, revealing that the narrator has become somewhat delusional because of how badly he did not want to hurt his lover. Despite his fear of losing power to her, he did care for