Margaret Atwood’s novel Surfacing has received considerable critical attention on the issue of “a positive female identity” in a patriarchal society. However, given Atwood’s own stress on the fact that the novel is about the ways both genders work in relation to each other, this criticism has lacked in scrutiny of the novel’s male characters. With a relational approach to the female and male characters, this thesis argues that while creating a positive identity for its female protagonist, the novel effectively creates a rather negative one for its male characters. In order to examine certain sets of relations and the qualities which represent the most honored way of being a man in the novel, I apply the concept of “hegemonic masculinity,” which can be understood as the pattern of practices that explain male domination over women. It is indeed this hegemonic masculinity that the Surfacer rejects in her quest for emancipation. By looking at the hegemonic masculinity in Surfacing, I argue that the novel depicts very typically patriarchal characters in Joe and David and that the society is typically patriarchal. The thesis is divided into three main sections, each examining the most important sets of relations concerning Atwood’s female emancipation. First, I analyze hegemonic structures in the world of the protagonist, including the issues of power, emancipation, and complicity. Then I look into the sexual division of labor to show that the characters assume their default roles without much reflection. Finally, I scrutinize the characters’ relation to the Symbolic and how it affects their sense of identity. In each section, the analyses show that the male characters are reduced to tropes who only serve one function: to be stereotypically oppressive, patriarchal figures in order to facilitate the protagonist’s positive change and empowerment. I argue that Atwood’s failure to imagine male emancipation somewhat taints the development of female identity because the female emancipation becomes arrested.

Societies are surrounded by unaware attitudes and views about what is masculine and what is feminine and this can contribute to people being raced differently. Boys and girls are shaped to think and act in different ways from an early age because of their gender. According to the curriculum in the Swedish school system, the school has an important task to prevent such perceptions young people have about sex and gender. Reading books are still a central source where students gather information in the Swedish school. Therefore, I find it interesting to examine how gender is produced in three Swedish reading books from three different periods (1950s, 1970s and 2000s) to see what similarities and differences there are between the texts and the study has been based on three questions: How are men/boys and women/girls described in the reading books based on their characteristics, interests and pursuits? How much space in the texts are represented by men/boys and by women/girls? What masculinities and femininities can be found in the texts and which ones are the most desirable? I have used a text analysis in my research to analyse the three reading books and based my theory on that gender is a social construction. My results show that the three reading books produce male and female structures based on the fact that men and women, boys and girls are opposites and are kept apart by qualities, pursuits and interests. Notions of what is masculine and feminine are also reflected in the texts by constructions of hegemonic masculinity and emphasized femininity. Further constructions concerning gender in the reading books are that men and boys have more space than women and girls and also that the personalities of men and boys grow at the expense of women and girls.

Personliga tränare (PT) har en nyckelfunktion på gymmet, i och med sin uppgift att guida klienter till en bättre fysik och hälsa. Många gymutövare har PT som förebild både vad gäller hälsa och kroppsligt utseende. På gymmet finns dock en problematik med förekomst och reproducering av genuskodade kroppsideal, vilket bland annat kan bidra till ohälsosamma kost- och träningsbeteenden. Syftet med studien är att utforska vilka kroppar och kroppsideal i gymkontext som synliggörs i personliga tränares diskussioner. Vidare är syftet att belysa om och i så fall på vilket sätt maskuliniteter och femininiteter framträder i personliga tränares diskussioner om kroppar och kroppsideal. Totalt medverkade 19 PT i sju fokusgruppsintervjuer, som analyserades genom en kvalitativ innehållsanalys med en abduktiv ansats. Connells teoretiska begrepp hegemonisk maskulinitet och betonad femininitet samt Bauman och Mays perspektiv kring kropp användes under analysprocessen. Resultatet visade att PT talar om den perfekta kroppen, den överdrivna fitnesskroppen, den extremt magra kvinnokroppen och den feta kroppen. I PTs diskussioner går att utläsa hur den perfekta kroppen värderades högre än de andra kropparna, genom deras beskrivningar av övriga kroppar i negativa och nedlåtande ordalag. De övriga kropparna ansågs avvikande både vad gäller utseende och hälsa. Den perfekta kroppen kan därför tolkas stå för den hegemoniska maskuliniteten och betonade femininiteten, genom sin överordnade position på gymmet. Konsekvensen av denna kroppshierarki kan bli att klienter som inte har kroppar som anses ideala, kan uppleva sig exkluderade från gymarenan.