Failed Masculinity

Performative Legitimacy and Gendered Exclusion in Hamlet and The Great Gatsby

Bibliographic Data

ID19489286
AuthorsD Chen (0000-0003-1060-1195, Beijing Normal University), Lixin Wang (0000-0002-1769-6935, National Academy of Chinese Theatre Arts)
Year2026
Volume10
Issue1
Publication date2026-01-23
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueOpen Cultural Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2451-3474 • E-ISSN: 2451-3474
PublisherWalter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1515/culture-2025-0104
OpenAlexW7163669472
LanguageEN
References cited21

Masculine authority in literary narratives often appears stable and self-evident, yet moments of its breakdown reveal the conditions under which legitimacy is granted or withheld. This article examines masculine failure in Hamlet and The Great Gatsby by asking how historically distinct regimes of legitimacy shape the intelligibility of masculine performance. Focusing on honor in the Renaissance and capital in modern capitalism, the analysis shows that masculine failure takes different forms across these contexts. In Hamlet, ethical hesitation and temporal delay disrupt an honor-based expectation of decisive action, such that reflective masculinity becomes socially unintelligible. In The Great Gatsby, visible striving and performative excess expose the limits of capital as a source of masculine legitimacy, particularly in the absence of inherited status. Read comparatively, the two texts suggest that masculine failure is not a singular condition, but a historically variable outcome shaped by institutional norms and regimes of recognition. Rather than an achieved identity, masculinity emerges here as a precarious status that depends on social authorization and remains vulnerable to withdrawal

Citizenship · Honor · Human sexuality · Legitimacy · Masculinity · Narrative · Normative · Performative utterance · American and British Literature Analysis · Cinema and Media Studies · Thomas Hardy Literature Studies

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