Gender Role Schemas: Emasculation as Men’s Nightmare in Barcley’s Dance on His Grave

Abstract

The paper examines gender role schemas and the plight of men as socially constructed by the socio-cultural environment that makes him a real man. Man is a product of his social milieu because the society where he grows up to become a man has carved out for him roles he is expected to perform even before he is conceived in his mother’s womb. In the schemas are social conventions and orientation that dictates to him the expectations of his society of him in order to fit into the social construction that guarantees for him a place in the social strata of his society as a real man. With Psychoanalysis and Bem’s Gender Role schemas as a frameworks, the study employs a literary text analysis of Barcley’s Dance on His Grave to reveal the plight of heterosexual men who become effeminate as a result of their inabilities to enact the roles constructed for them as men. It was therefore discovered that male characters become frustrated and feel less of men because of their failure to enact the roles of providers and caring fathers in their homes. Again, the study discovered that men who occupied honourable positions became effeminate when challenged by strong women who were determined to alter the status quo ante in a society supposedly dominated by men.  Finding also revealed the indispensability of women in the scheme of things as dependable stakeholders in growth and developmental effort of the society. It was therefore suggested that social construction for men where traditional roles are spelt out should be deemphasized. Rather, profeminist orientation should be encouraged in parenting such that the line of divide between the boy and the girl child is deliberately blurred to relieve the boy child of the pressure to measure up to his traditional sex role.