‘All the same under the skin’: representations of class and gender in Michel Faber’s Under the Skin

Abstract

ABSTRACT The essay, broadly conceived in two sections, examines the relationship between gender and class in Michel Faber’s novel Under the Skin. The first section utilizes Beverley Skeggs’ ethnography on working-class women in Britain to outline Isserley’s social positioning and how it is associated with negative value. We contend that Isserley’s appearance and employment reproduce the dominant and pathologizing cultural representations of working-class women. Further, the essay argues that Isserley disidentifies as a working-class woman through the discourse of improvement since the representations of her positioning constantly devalue her. In the second section, we shift our focus to the intersection of gender and class in the construction of masculine identity. We argue that the representation of men in the novel replicates that of working-class men in the British context. The essay draws on R.W. Connell’s concept of marginalized masculinities to explore how the lives of men become inferior not just in terms of their bodies but also by failing to align with the hegemonic norms of manhood, such as staying employed, married, and being a provider for the family.