Narrative, Masculinity and Homosexuality: Gender Ideology in Elsa Morante
Abstract
In this paper I analyze the character of Manuele, the protagonist of Elsa Morante’s last novel, Aracoeli (1982), by focusing on his homosexuality and on the specifically narrative and epistemological meaning that it carries with it. Manuele’s homosexuality is presented as the index of his failed masculinity and of his inability to identify with traditional gender roles, i.e. with a strong, authoritative masculinity. Such a position, though, needs to be understood in its ideological connotations rather than as a ‘naturalization’ of homosexuality: more than the focus of an ethical or moral reflection, the protagonist’s homosexuality becomes in Aracoeli a narrative and ideological statement as well as a critique of patriarchal epistemological structures.