Coming to Terms with Manhood in The Red Badge of Courage
p. 65-71
Résumés
This article focuses on the definition of manhood in The Red Badge of Courage. It addresses issues such as self-definition and self-knowledge, the blurring of gender categories, and the problem of identity in general. The two major emblems of the novel, the wound— “that red badge of courage,” which the protagonist receives halfway through the novel— and the flags—whether it be the regimental flag or the enemy flag, which Henry manages to capture—function for him and the other soldiers as the visible marks of his manhood, and thus enable him to be fully accepted into the community of men. Paradoxically, however, both emblems are related to the domestic sphere, to the feminine world which Henry rejects, despises, or ridicules in the opening chapters of the novel. The conflict between the masculine and the feminine spheres remains unresolved, and Henry’s manhood seems to be unstable and easily threatened.
Henry, le jeune protagoniste de The Red Badge of Courage, voit dans son engagement sur le champ de bataille un moyen de rejeter le monde féminin de sa mère pour parvenir à une meilleure connaissance de lui-même et ainsi à définir son identité. En ce sens, sa blessure et les drapeaux — que ce soit celui de son régiment ou celui de l’ennemi — dont il réussit à s’emparer deviennent les emblèmes visibles de son héroïsme, les marques de sa masculinité et lui permettent d’être accepté comme un homme par ses camarades de régiment. Cependant ces deux emblèmes sont symboliquement liés à des valeurs spécifiquement domestiques et féminines. Cet article se propose donc d’analyser dans quelle mesure le conflit entre les valeurs de la féminité et celles de la masculinité est résolu au terme du roman.
Texte intégral
1In the first chapter of The Red Badge of Courage, on the eve of battle, the young protagonist’s remark, “as far as war was concerned, he knew nothing of himself” (8),1 establishes a direct relation between war and the hero’s concern with identity and self-knowledge. At this early stage, Henry realizes that
Whatever he had learned of himself was here of no avail. He was an unknown quantity. He saw that he would again be obliged to experiment as he had in early youth. He must accumulate information of himself. (8) [italics added]
2Words related to knowledge and learning point to Henry’s vision of the battlefield as a new ground on which to test his manhood and define his identity. In that sense the wound, his “red badge of courage” (41), which he receives half-way through the novel, and the possession of the flag, function for him and for the regiment as the visible marks of his manhood.
3What I want to argue here is that these two emblems, which enable Henry to be fully accepted into the community of men, are both related to the feminine world. As such, they help him to shape his identity, even though his self-affirmation implies the open denigration and violent rejection of the domestic and feminine values linked to or embodied in these two emblems. Some passages in the novel, however, ironically reintegrate the values rejected, despised or ridiculed by the protagonist, thus questioning any fixed and stable definition of manhood. In fact, as Amy Kaplan points out, “Throughout the novel, domestic images resurface only to deflate the martial ethos rather than to validate it” (Kaplan, 86).
1 Opposition Between the Masculine and Feminine Spheres, Rejection of Domestic Value
4Except for the episodic appearance of Henry’s mother in the farewell scene in the first chapter of the novel, there is no fully developed female character in The Red Badge of Courage. The only scene which opposes mother and son, however, openly expresses a conflict between the feminine and masculine worlds, a conflict expressed metaphorically in other episodes. Henry’s departure from home to enlist in the army clearly represents a rejection of domestic values, an attempt at escaping the confining atmosphere of home and his mother’s moral and spiritual authority. For Henry, the rural world of his boyhood, with its dull and familiar activities, stands in sharp contrast with the industrialized and mechanized universe of the battlefield (Kaplan 91), a universe which, he believes, will give him the opportunity to become a man. The opposition between maternal values and the heroic and manly values Henry attributes to the battlefield reflects the tensions between the feminine and the masculine spheres. Obviously Henry sees his mother as a threat. According to him, she had thrown “a yellow light upon the color of his ambitions” (5), by trying to discourage him and by affecting “to look with some contempt upon the quality of his war ardor and patriotism” (5). In fact, as he briefly states, “her words destroyed his plans” (6). But, ironically, in the final chapter, Henry’s comments on his recent experience on the battlefield echo his mother’s speech in the farewell scene. Not only are the biblical references and images Henry uses reminiscent of his mother’s pious and moralizing tone, but he also seems to have come to regard as wisdom some of his mother’s injunctions, for instance his own insignificance and his submission to authority.
5In the farewell scene, Henry stands as the representative of what E. Anthony Rotundo, in his study of the evolution of manhood in nineteenth-century American culture, calls “boy” and “male youth culture.” This culture, which highly valued qualities such as physical prowess, courage and the ability to suppress any display of fear or pain, involved “fighting maternal influence,” since women were “the most effective opponents of such culture2.”
6Other passages in the novel express the same rejection of the feminine sphere, stressing the infantilizing and debilitating influence of mothers on their sons; in the all-male world of the army, the mere mention of mother seems to turn men and heroes back into boys and babies. In chapter XXI, mother/son relationships are evoked derisively. As Henry and some of the other new recruits return to their own lines, for example, they are greeted with sarcastic questions:
“Where th’ hell yeh been?”
“What yeh comin’ back fer?”
“Why didn’t yeh stay there?”
“Was it warm out there, sonny?”
“Goin’ home now, boys?”
One shouted in taunting mimicry:
“Oh, mother, come quick an’ look at th’sojers!” (85)
7In the same chapter, Wilson’s writing home about his heroic deeds is made fun of: “There Wilson, m’boy, put that in a letter an’ send it hum t’yer mother, hay?” (88).
8The mention of “mother” is not only the sort of put down typical of youth culture, but suggests a regression to boyhoood.
2 Marked Bodies and Feminine Flags
9The same ambivalence towards feminine and domestic values is expressed in the significance Henry attaches to the two emblems which will allow his integration into the world of men. The episode in which the protagonist is wounded, when he receives, to use his own words, “his red badge of courage,” marks a turning point in the novel, since from then on Henry regards himself and is regarded by the men in his regiment as a hero. Surprisingly, the wound, the visible sign of his manhood, which threatens his bodily integrity, involves the recognition of feminine values as positive ones. Thus the tensions between “the clashing values and demands of the feminine and the masculine spheres” (Rotundo 56), disappear as a kind of blurring of gender lines occurs. Specifically feminine qualities or virtues such as gentleness, tenderness, solicitude and abnegation become the attributes of the male figures who help Henry’s integration into the male community. Such is the case with the “brotherly” (40) tattered man who comforts Henry and keeps him company in the procession of the wounded, only to be ruthlessly abandoned, and whose “voice is as gentle as a girl’s voice” (39). Such is also the case with the soldier who leads Henry back to his regiment after he has been wounded. The fact that he is referred to at first merely as a “cheery voice” or “the owner of a cheery voice” (55) tends to blur gender categories. He is even deprived of corporeality since Henry never sees his face. But Wilson represents the most striking example of this transfer of feminine values to the masculine world. In the opening chapters Wilson is endowed with the characteristic traits of male youth culture: loudness, self-assertiveness, toughness and aggressiveness to the point of vindictiveness. However, in chapter XIII when Henry comes backs to the regiment with a wound, Wilson looks after him with the tender gestures of a mother. But, unlike a mother’s often smothering and infantalizing love, Wilson’s “tenderness and care” (61) allow Henry to become a man, as the text clearly indicates at this point; repeatedly called “ol’ boy” (56, 57, 59) before he goes to sleep in the blanket generously offered by Wilson, Henry wakes up the next morning to be addressed by Wilson as “ol’ man” (61). It is as if “the warm comfort of Wilson’s blanket” (61) had acted in the “darkness” of the ensuing night as a substitute for the maternal womb, allowing the protagonist’s rebirth and his subsequent integration into the masculine world. This transfer or even incorporation of feminine qualities into his masculine self affects Wilson more permanently. The protagonist notices “a remarkable change in his comrade” (61) and later refers to him as “his altered comrade” (64):
He seemed no more to be continually regarding the proportions of his personal prowess. He was not furious at small words that pricked his conceits. He was no more a loud young soldier. (61)
10As a matter of fact, from that point on, Wilson is no longer referred to as the “loud soldier” or the “young loud soldier” but either as Wilson or as “his,” or “the,” “friend” and “his comrade,” which emphasizes both his individual identity and his close relation to Henry and also suggests that a significant change has taken place. But this is not the case for Henry, whatever he may assert; in the final chapter, the author refers to him as “the youth,” exactly like in the opening chapter, which raises the question of the protagonist’s development and undercuts his self-confidence: “He felt a quiet manhood, nonassertive but of sturdy and strong blood.... He was a man” (98). In fact, unlike Wilson, who manages somehow to integrate feminine values into his masculine self, Henry essentially manifests ambivalent feelings towards them.
11The taking of the flag, whether it be the regiment flag in chapter XIX and XX or the enemy flag in chapter XXIII, is emblematic of such ambivalence. Each instance involves issues of life and death as well as gender issues, thus reenacting the episode of the wound. The flag plays a role similar to that of the wound, since its possession allows Henry and Wilson to be hailed as heroes. But unlike the wound, linked to the body and to mortality, to the physical and even animal realm, the flag has to do primarily with the “mind” (80) and with the “soul” (93). “A creation of beauty and invulnerability” (80), it becomes the emblem of immortality which Henry and Wilson,3 in the middle of raging battle, have to wrench from the hands of a dead man and from the clutch of a dying man: “Because no harm could come to it he [Henry] endowed it with power. He kept near, as if it could be a saver of lives, and an imploring cry went from his mind” (80) [italics added].
12But this conquest whose object is “possession” (80, 81, 93) and which involves sheer physical violence clearly has gender and even sexual overtones since, for Henry, the flag represents a mythologized femininity:
Within him, as he hurled himself forward, was born a love, a despairing fondness for this flag which was near him.... It was a goddess, radiant, that bended its form with an imperious gesture to him. It was a woman, red and white, hating and loving, that called him with the voice of his hopes. (80) [italics added]
13This goddess, as Joseph Urbas writes, “unites the extremes of passion, (hate and love, despair and hope)... but, unlike Henry’s mother, she appears to command unconditional obedience” (256). The taking of the flag can thus be interpreted as the conquest of femininity by male force. In both episodes, the presence of phallic images is striking; for instance, Henry is described as “keeping the flag erect” (82) or else as “seated gloomily on the ground with his flag between his knees” (84). Eloquent too in this respect is the closing paragraph of the first episode which starts as follows: “Events were trying to prove that they [the men in blue] were impotent” to end on the phrase: “And they were men” (84). The second episode, in which Wilson takes possession of the enemy flag, ends with the two friends sitting side by side and congratulating each other. The two flags seem to support and strengthen the bond between the two youths.
❃
14It becomes clear, then, that in spite of Henry’s final assertion, his manhood is unstable, continually threatened, linked as it is to circumstances, to his shifting moods and ambivalent feelings.4 For instance, if at first Henry desperately wants to belong, to be part of the regiment, to be recognized as a full member of this family-like group, at the end to the novel, he stands back and apart, “in spectator fashion” (96), in chosen isolation. In fact, Henry remains a youth, trapped in that painful time between boyhood and manhood. The final paragraphs of the novel seem to express the transitional nature of this time of life during which, to use Rotundo’s phrase, a “youth [is] caught between the pull of the past and the lure of the future” (58). It is as if at that point, Henry wanted to forget or to leave behind, as something of the past, the memory of his wound. Because it reminds him of his corporeality, of his mortality and also because of its ambivalent significance— outwardly a sign of courage but inwardly a badge of shame—the wound has to be discarded. In fact, it has now become purposeless, even though at one stage Henry used it as a “protecting tale” (55), hence the meaning of the enigmatic phrase, “scars faded as flowers” (98).
Bibliographie
Des DOI sont automatiquement ajoutés aux références bibliographiques par Bilbo, l’outil d’annotation bibliographique d’OpenEdition. Ces références bibliographiques peuvent être téléchargées dans les formats APA, Chicago et MLA.
Format
- APA
- Chicago
- MLA
Works cited
10.5040/9798400663789 :Crane, Stephen. The Red Badge of Courage. Ed. Donald Pizer (3rd ed.). Norton Critical Edition. New York: Norton, 1994.
Horsford, Howard C. “He Was a Man,” in New Essays on The Red Badge of Courage, ed. Lee Clark Mitchell. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1986. 109-28.
Kaplan, Amy. “The Spectacle of War in Crane’s Revision of History,” in New Essays on The Red Badge of Courage, ed. Lee Clark Mitchell. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1986. 77-109.
Rotundo, Anthony. American Manhood: Transformations in Masculinity from the Revolution to the Modern Era. New York: Basic Books, 1993.
Urbas, Joseph. “The Emblematics of Invulnerability in The Red Badge of Courage”, in QWERTY, 4 (1994): 255-63.
Notes de bas de page
1 All references to the text are to The Red Badge of Courage. Ed. Donald Pizer. 3rd ed. New York: Norton, 1994.
2 See Rotundo, American Manhood: Transformations in Masculinity from the Revolution to the Modern Era. New York, Basic Books, 1993, chapters 2 and 3, 31-74.
3 Kaplan notes that in the absence of a narrative or political context, the meaning of emblems must be improvised in the momentary drama (96). In “The Emblematics of Invulnerability in The Red Badge of Courage,” Qwerty 4 (1994): 255-263, Joseph Urbas also points out “the radical convertibility of signifiers in general and the shift in Henry’s view of himself” (262).
4 Howard C. Horsford in “He Was A Man” in New Essays on The Red Badge of Courage,” 109-128, sees “constant alteration as the structural principle of the novel” (115) and notes that the book is characterized by an “insistently pervasive pattern of change” (110).
Auteur
-
Dominique Marçais
Université d’Orléans
Le texte seul est utilisable sous licence Licence OpenEdition Books. Les autres éléments (illustrations, fichiers annexes importés) sont « Tous droits réservés », sauf mention contraire.
À la rencontre de la différence
Traces diasporiques et espaces de créolisation
Robin Cohen et Olivia Sheringham Elise Trogrlic (trad.)
2020
L’androgyne dans la littérature britannique contemporaine
Métamorphose d’une figure
Justine Gonneaud
2020
Borders and Ecotones in the Indian Ocean
Cultural and Literary Perspectives
Markus Arnold, Corinne Duboin et Judith Misrahi-Barak (dir.)
2020
Diasporas, Cultures of Mobilities, ‘Race’ 1
Diasporas and Cultures of Migrations
Judith Misrahi-Barak et Claudine Raynaud (dir.)
2014
Diasporas, Cultures of Mobilities, ‘Race’ 2
Diaspora, Memory and Intimacy
Sarah Barbour, David Howard, Thomas Lacroix et al. (dir.)
2015
Diasporas, Cultures of Mobilities, ‘Race’ 3
African Americans and the Black Diaspora
Corinne Duboin et Claudine Raynaud (dir.)
2016
Ethics of Alterity, Confrontation and Responsibility in 19th- to 21st-Century British literature
Jean-Michel Ganteau et Christine Reynier (dir.)
2013
