思春期小説The Man Without a Faceにおける「男」らしさの探求

When Isabelle Holland's third novel for young adults, The Man Without a Face, was published in 1972, its controversial subject of homosexuality drew much public attention and enjoyed favorable book reviews. After almost two decades, this novel was made into a film with the same title. It is a story about a fatherless adolescent boy (Charles Nostad) who encounters a father figure (Justin McLeod) nicknamed "The Man Without a Face" because of his facial disfigurement. The plot is based on the archetypal "journey" in the "Arthurian Legend." In this mythological story Percival who is a fatherless youth encounters the wounded Fisher King. As interpreted by Jungian psychologists, this is a quest story in which the adolescent boy seeks his male identity/masculinity through an encounter with the father figure. In The Man Without a Face, Justin stands proxy for Charles's absent father and eventually helps him gain his male identity/masculinity for which Charles has been searching. In this sense, "The Man Without a Face" means two things: Justin McLeod, whose face is disfigured, and Charles's biological father whose face he barely remembers.

The author refers to the special time/space which Justin and Charles share as a "golden cocoon." The space functions as the psychological framework of the novel, and works as a place for communication and psychological healing: a kind of therapy room. It is, in other words, a place of intimacy between the boy and the man where each can heal their wounds. It is also a place where the author can reveal a unique image of the "nurturing father" who is also homosexual.

In the novel several episodes hint somewhat exaggeratedly at the growing phnomenon of "absent fathers" in America. Thus, by reading the novel in social and cultural context, we will have a different perspective of the specific "masculinity" portrayed in the book. The novel was published a little past the peak of the second wave feminist movement in America and the anti-Vietnam War movement. During this period not only was "manly toughness" severely condemned, but also fathers who believed in the myth of "family togetherness" were criticized. From one psychological point of view, men suffered tremendous phychic trauma because they lost a vital connection to the "Earth Mother" and were separated from their children. In other words, fathers lost their confidence in their "masculinities," and adolescent sons were deprived of good role models. Both Betty Friedan and Herb Goldberg maintain in their books that both femininity and masculinity went through radical change during this period. Thus, in the context of such traumatic psychic dislocation for men, the author provides a radically new image of psychological healing and male idendity/masculinity through the image of the nurturing homosexual father.