Open Access
American Research Journal of English and Literature
ISSN (Online): 2378-9026
DOI: 10.46568/arjel
The Sad Man in the Attic: Gendered Grieving in Contemporary American Novels
Abstract
The representation of grieving mothers and fathers in American literature is shaped by gendered perceptions of how
women and men should mourn the loss of their children in different ways. In what could be described as the surveillance
of the modes of mourning maternal characters were granted more space to display emotions publicly while paternal
characters were not. The scrutiny of public display of emotions by men due to perceptions of masculinity was challenged
in two texts published in the 1990s. Although Jacquelyn Mitchard’s The Deep End of the Ocean (1996) and John Irving’s A
Widow for One Year (1998) adhere at times to the representation of traditional norms of gendered grieving, both novels
challenge the association of excessive emotionality to women and rewrite the narrative into what can be described as
the sad man in the attic who shows his emotions in some instances in the narrative. Like the mad woman who lives in
the attic in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847) who sneaks into Jane’s room, the grieving father displays his emotions
publicly in some parts of the novels then hides them in an attic of masculine conventions and expectations. The two texts,
along with an earlier American text, question perceptions of masculine modes of grieving that is shaped by the norms of
gendered grieving. The texts challenge these perceptions by shifting male grieving, making it a public display of emotions
and associating it with hysteria and feminized modes of sentimentality.
