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The aim of this paper is to explore the double as a figure of failed masculinity in David Ely's Gothic novel Seconds (1963). The American post-war period provides a particularly salient example of the modern crisis of gender identity among men. During the Cold War, the double re-emerges as a figure of failed masculinity softened not by the lures of eighteenth century effeminacy but by its twentieth century corollary: totalitarianism. However, any discussion of the double in relation to the crisis of masculinity cannot occur separate from the political and sociological discourses of the era. I will argue that Ely's novel explores the inherent tensions and contradictions between individualism and conformity in the post-war period, and rather than enforcing a closure, the double tests the sustainability of masculine identity in an increasingly polarized political world. I will further argue that the text is politically ambiguous. On the one hand, Seconds can be read as a liberal cautionary tale against the feminine lure of totalitarianism. However, the text's bleak dystopian vision also suggests an unveiling of the strategies of repression used to police masculine identity. The text does not offer any closure on the issue but merely confirms man's essential alienation in a polarized political world. The individual and the group, the text suggests, are irrevocably at odds. The inability to resolve the tensions between feminine totalitarianism and muscular freedom imply that the difficulty for modern man is that these concepts are not unified narratives but a compendium of fictions generated by a culture of suspicion and rigid gender proscriptions. |
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