"Tough" - masculinities, violence and contemporary Australian fiction

Male violence is a continuing serious problem in Australia and has been for many decades, requiring the implementation of ten-year national plans in attempts to try to reduce gendered violence. During this time, several Australian authors have written works that concern male violence and explore boyhood and the construction of masculinities. There is little argument that literary works can both affirm and challenge our cultural ideologies as Masculinities are constructed, performed and judged within a society. In writing my own novel Tough, I have looked at Australian Contemporary literary works dealing with issues of male violence, specifically those that engaged with understanding the origin of violent behaviour, through a cross disciplinary approach with Masculinities theory and Literary Masculinities. An issue of concern is that the role of female characters in these works was found to be either absent, enabling or negligent, a sad indictment on Australian women. In writing my own creative work, I have tried to remedy this by creating several strong female characters. My research has highlighted that masculinity, like a novel is constructed and the process of this construction and literary examples are discussed in the first chapter. In the same way that a novel is read and understood differently by its audience, so too is the performance of masculinity ‘read’ and rated by our society. The second chapter explores gender performativity as espoused by Butler using the works of Peter Temple to examine his versions of performing Australian masculinity. The third chapter looks at what happens when masculinities reach crisis and violence is used by men. The literary works of Garner, Tsiolkas and Ahmad illustrate examples of these situations. Literary works allow the reader to both imagine alternative ways of ‘being’ male or to just immerse themselves in the private worlds in which masculinities are both constructed and performed and perhaps understand how men are shaped by masculinity. They also foster an awareness of differing experiences of masculinity and the impact of trauma and intersectionalities. My aim has been to add to the gap in gender/feminist research relating to Australian Literary Masculinities particularly as they relate to male violence and to develop and inform my own creative work.