Masculinity in Crisis: Aging Men in Thomas Mann's “Der Tod in Venedig” and Max Frisch's Homo faber

What is it about?

Reading Thomas Mann’s “Der Tod in Venedig” and Max Frisch’s Homo faber as narratives of male aging and ageism, this article shows that the protagonists’ “midlife crises” are crises in representation located at the intersection of the body and socially constructed male images. As the main characters struggle with their declining bodies and the loss of status associated with aging, the close interconnection of age and gender norms and their significance for male identity formation emerge. Anticipating current scholarship in aging studies, the works reveal the performative nature of age and gender, and explore the tensions that arise where subjective, physiological, and social age meet and interfere with gender performance. This reading reveals that the subversive potential of Mann and Frisch’s works lies less in their renditions of so-called sexual “deviance” (incest, homosexuality), and more in their highlighting the potentially destructive effects of normative concepts of age and masculinity while tracing paths to subvert these categories.

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Photo by Thomas Kinto on Unsplash

Photo by Thomas Kinto on Unsplash