Charles Bukowski was an influential German-American poet, novelist and short storywriter who has received little scholarly attention despite his popularity among readers from all walks of life. One...Show moreCharles Bukowski was an influential German-American poet, novelist and short storywriter who has received little scholarly attention despite his popularity among readers from all walks of life. One of the reasons his work has been overlooked by scholars is that his work has often been described as chauvinist and misogynist for depicting characters that present hegemonic gender roles. This statement is valid to a certain extent as Bukowski’s early works especially presents male characters as macho men and female characters as passive, dependent women. This thesis, however, shows that Charles Bukowski's representation of hegemonic masculinity through the character Henry Chinaski, who is the protagonist of his novels, was less one-dimensionally chauvinistic and sexist, and started to become more flexible at an earlier stage in his writing than previously thought. Scholarly critics have formerly merely focused on Bukowski’s first three novels Post Office (1971), Factotum (1975) and Women (1978) in their discussion of Bukowski’s gender portrayal. This thesis, however, takes on a broader approach by reading additional short stories, poems and another 'Chinaski' novel Hollywood (1989), in order to analyze a diachronic development in the representation of masculinity and whether this development can be traced in general throughout his work, instead of in merely his first three novels. This thesis employs gender theory to firstly read whether the characters in Bukowski’s writings subvert or adhere to hegemonic gender roles, and secondly how their behavior is motivated by their gender identity.Show less
