“Say it,Don't Do It”: Male Speech and Male Action in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

Abstract

Alan Sillitoe's 1958 novel Saturday Night and Sunday Morning explores shifting masculine roles for working and middle-class men in England following the Second World War and the Korean War. I propose a reading of Sillitoe's novel that focuses on the abilities and the limits of male speech in the construction of a working-class masculine gender identity, including how those utterances work to establish differences and similarities. Furthermore, I argue that male speech creates and complicates hierarchical relationships between men and women in the novel. Taking into account the relative economic affluence in England following World War II, I also look at how these economic and social issues influenced changing working-class masculine ideals and responsibilities in England at that time.

Keywords

masculinity angry young men British speech performativity Alan Sillitoe

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