Depiction of Masculinity in Colm Toibins Brooklyn - Book Report/Review Example

Brooklyn How Is Masculinity Constructed In Brooklyn? To What Extent Is The Novel A Challenge To Or A Celebration Of Traditional Ideas About Masculinity? Colm Toibin’s construction of masculinity has the male seen as the stronger sex although after lengthy strives, women can also come close or equal to this stereotype to acquire equal status with the males. In Brooklyn, Toibin has Eilis Lacey as the main protagonist to deliver the masculine construction, instruments showing status and power. Eilis struggles with her homesickness which here revealed the features of typical Irish Immigrants’ experience in America. Eilis was ready to resettle into a relationship but the bonds with home but she had to accept the reality of living in two different places emotionally and physically. Ambiguously, her home represented an environment of uncertain and divided loyalties. Even prior to the decision of her fate by Father Flood a priest, who emigrated to the U.S, her mother and her sister Rose, she was aware that all was not in order in her town. Father Flood had no blood ties to Eilis yet he had a stake in this decision. She is in fear of this lack and Enniscorthy separating him from achieving her goals. She paints a picture that women face lengthy challenges before setting a decision that will define their future. Eilis’s road to America leads her to unexplored territories where in Brooklyn she was plagued with nostalgia and homesickness that made her to never feel solid. This place turned to an environment that provided her with an opportunity to self-renewal and carve Eilis’s future despite the heavy shadows cast on her from her family. She is a lady depicted to be undergoing struggles to shade her life despite the odds. Eilis’s mother constantly continues to symbolize the tug and linger on the absence of her Irish roots. Eilis eventually forges a relationship that feels like home with Tony and the surrogate family that acted a substitute. She found solace in the presence of Tony where the writer would probably be portraying that ladies need men to make them whole (Lee, 31). The home captures reflects Eilis’s road to dilemmas. What she had not fully accepted is that her new home was within her grasp given the plethora of arising opportunities although it also turns to be elusive from the reason of constant invasion of memories and her past associated with the environment. ‘Home’ was therefore an area of prospective security and happiness and also a place of disappointment and loss. Toibin plunges her protagonist to a land of turmoil, emotional anxiety, exacerbated by Eilis’s disconnection with her family. Eilis’s immigrant’s experience Brooklyn was characterized by a sense of nostalgia and sense whilst constantly looking at her past. Eilis despised the struggles to adaptation besides the house. Toiban used setting to emphasize the strong entity of lack, a makeshift and un-homely room, a place making Eilis to feel ghostly to it serving as a reminder to the warmth and security of a real home which could probably never be recovered; it mapped her to an insubstantial presence. Eilis felt a lack in familiar connections as nothing in her new environment was an entry of her. As for the work premises, the author portrays the actual picture that was affecting the Irish population in terms of work plights. The initial workplace at Bartoccis is formidable and specifically the sales that had taken place three weeks prior to start of the new job. Toibin frequently reflected on Eilis letter writing and reading as a metaphorical representation regarding the absence that tagged her heart. Nothing personal was entwined in the letter from Eilis’ family as it this was meant to protect from her loss; she had to dissemble just as Jack did. Eilis let other make her decisions, she leaves all the ill happening to her as she cannot acquaint he mother of the terrible occurrences in the new land. There was an instance earlier at home where Jack’s letters were circulated around in silence that reminded the family of the separation. Eilis found out that her challenges in the new land were not only foreign to her but also challenged her masculine counterpart Jack who admitted an omission to inform his family that he would have done whatever would take a chance to return home. Eilis imagination of home, say picturing her mother, was the only bond that tenuous linked her with home where thought of home were in plenty every time she received or wrote letters for home. Although Eilis saw her new environment as a land for the brave and free, it turned to be an environment where she had to define her path without the control wielded emotionally by Rose and Mrs Lacey. Toibin continues to celebrate the traditional ideas concerning masculinity by delving deep into the troubles encountered by his female characters and hinting less of the same for his probable male culprits. The terrible weight and loss extent must have fueled her determination to seek a substitution level to her financial security and emotional entities. Toiban somehow wanted to show that women can beat the odds if only they worked for the course harder. For instance, as the brothers shifted from Enniscorthy purposed to develop individual independence and acquire a title of responsible adults, the letters from jack must have been meant to foreshadow Eilis’s personal development. Eilis’s visit to Jack’s place in Liverpool on her way to New York offered her a metaphorical forecast of what to expect in Brooklyn, at this moment, Jack does not envision a return home. Jack had met a girl, had a decent job and at the same time cherished his independence. This instance for the first enlightened Eilis becomes aware of the issue of not being entirely reprimanded by her mother or Rose (Sullivan, 13). Eilis learns that no one should control her future where the author symbolizes her sister’s death as a sorrowful moment for Eilis yet a positive emergence from the shadows cast by Rose. As the audience, we see Eilis’s confidence at the dance, the moment she greeted Diana an evidence of her growth outside of the traditional influences although they pretended not to have seen her when she moves to their group with a confident smile on her face, what would have been noted from Rose. Eilis has a chance to forge an approximate home when it dawns to her that she could not recover the home she left behind. Tony used the relationship with Tony whom she met at a Parish Church dance as a pivot to transform her life a way that the author conjured to show that women might to some extent need men to shape their lives. Eilis’s loneliness is eliminated once after her sexual relationship that offered her a strange form of gratitude and comfort born of Eilis’s incredible lack of a close partner (Toibin 13). With time, Eilis acquired a stronger connection with home that she had ever imagined. The author therefore suggests that sensitive feelings and subtle personal relationships are the definers of differences to carve a new home characterized by passion, devotion and commitment. Time allowed Eilis to accept the American culture wher at some time he accompanied Tonny and his siblings to a Brooklyn Dodgers game at Ebbets Field that could be taken as a representative of her rising involvement and exposure to the American culture what would otherwise not be an easy way through the traditional (Sullivan, 44). Eilis is influence by Tony in decision making where she acquired a sense of comfort. Here they had a chance to make plans for improved lives developed from the ground upwards. The Long Island’s block of land that consisted of bare land, scrubland and waste ground was used to symbolize an opportunity to unveil new lives that could ‘plan themselves’. Under the cover of Tony, Eilis is secure and a home for the future awaiting them. All the plans they made gave her hope for a marriage proposal which she could not resist. Eilis realizes that she is the owner of her future, this is realized from the reinforcements and positive feedback she got from Bartocci’s that contrasted the way in which she was belittled by Ms Kelly and gave her a hope for the near future. Eilis confidence grew as she learned on hoe to be decisive and brave with the clients while the book keeping course presented her with confidence and poise to get close to one of her lecturers, Rosenblum (Sullivan, 52). She questioned Rosenblum about the involved books. Late night study made Eilis as any other day since she left her initial home. Eilis had to undergo a book keeping course so that she could be eligible for an office position something that was left for the men in the setting of when the book was written in around the 1950s when white color jobs were only for the males, Eilis defied this boundary. We learn that Eilis has acquired a sense of aura of sensuality previously less pronounced before the incident where Ms Fortini helped her select a bathing suit for the Coney Island outing. There were stages in Eilis growth that were represented in the letters home from where she sought to negotiate her individual independence and personal growth. Eilis’ letter writing turned to be a deliberate act to selection where she only included the details that would not give an impression of inferiority of looking after herself or details that would worry them she had learned to detach herself from her former family something that Jack had already achieved with simplicity (Toibin 56). Eilis had started to learn to live with a masculine aspect in her life as she had learnt to make personal choices and grown independence all derived from the details she could now conceal from others. Eilis knew that her sister would have preferred that she married someone with an office job yet she stands by Tony who is a plumber of whom she mentions about in only a paragraph. Tibin has a contradicting suggestion that implies that the closer an ideal future seems within Eilis’ grasp, the more distant it becomes (Sullivan, 22). The masculine aspect in Tony is painted as potentially inferior were it not for the relationship with Eilis who instilled commitment and desire in him. Eilis past proceeded to interweave her present life with gossips from Ms Kelly leaving her wondering how much information had been transmitted. The author of the novel, Brooklyn, has the solution to the question on how one can win if she is female. Can it just be done? Interestingly, one has to act feminine where femininity by description is not imposing, not large and not competitive, all characters that were depicted by Eilis who proved that she could survive despite the various drawbacks imposed on her path to fulfilling her dreams (Jeppesen, 31). Eilis picked aspects such as not being ruthless, not victorious and not aggressive prior to the realization that she could mould her future. She had her way in winning the male approval. Toibin focused on casting female roles in her novel for the sole reason of stamping the stereotype placed on women that they are known not to survive when presented with harsh or non conducive working and living environment. He presents male characters as products of the support of the support from their female counterparts or rather the success achieved by the males could probably not have been the same if it were not for the support from their spouse such as Tony’s case. The audience realizes that females who find paths to perceive beyond such societal pressures but learn to integrate to their desired level of security and independence in their developing lives within their chosen ways may have an ability to conjure effective solution methods during times of financial insecurity surrounding the traditional masculinity. Women do not necessarily need men to survive their hardships although some instances may call for the combined efforts to solve these bottlenecks. However, life seems from a feminine perspective is that it is as you define it, if you allow influence from the societal stereotypes, definitely the future will be at stake (Jeppesen, 31). Work Cited Jeppesen, Nina. Breaking Frame: Culture Shock and Reverse Culture Shock in Outsourced, Notes from a Big Country and Brooklyn. 2013. Print. Lee, Virginia, and Colm N. Colm Toibins Brooklyn. St. Kilda VIC, Australia: Insight Publications, 2013. Print. Toibin, C. Brooklyn: A Novel. New York: Scribner, 2009. Print. Sullivan, Kathleen. Mother/country Politics of the Personal in the Fiction of Colm Tóibín. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2012. Print. Read More