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

Abstract

Reading Thomas Mann's “Der Todin Venedig” and Max Frisch's Homo faber as narratives of male aging and ageism, I show 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, these 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. In my reading, I demonstrate that the subversive potential of Mann's and Frisch's narratives lies less in their renditions of sexual deviance (incest, homosexuality), and more in the way these authors illustrate the potentially destructive effects of normative concepts of age and masculinity while tracing paths to subvert these categories.