Sexual Metaphor and Social Criticism in Anderson's The Man Who Became a Woman

SEXUAL METAPHOR AND SOCIAL CRITICISM IN ANDERSON'S THE MAN WHO BECAME A WOMAN Lonna M. Malmsheimer* Given a common interest in developing a scholarship more broadly based than that of the recent past, it may seem reactionary to center an essay almost exclusively on a single novella. Yet this particular narrative , Sherwood Anderson's The Man Who Became a Woman, has perplexed a number of commentators for some time precisely because efforts to move beyond strictly literary or Freudian psychological analysis have failed; and they have failed because of resistance to recognizing the social and cultural ground of personal, especially sexual , identity. Anderson's story, along with the varied comment it has elicited, offers occasion to illustrate an approach which would provide a different interpretive access to a significant range of American social criticism, some fictional and some non-fictional. In 1965 Howard S. Babb noted that Sherwood Anderson's The Man Who Became a Woman had not provoked the critical attention that a story of such quality deserved. A bit more than a decade later that remains true. Prior to Babb's own discussion, only Irving Howe and James Schevill had devoted more than cursory attention to the story. Howe had offered what was essentially a psychoanalytic interpretation of the story while Schevill had made some attempt to link its themes to its social background. Babb took Howe's as the standard reading, dismissed Schevill's as an "ethereal" version of the standard, and tried to shift the focus of criticism to the "conditions under which the narrator matures."1 His attempt to emphasize the social aspects of the story was important, but he lost sight of his own mark and primarily discussed, though in other and revealing terms, the story's important maturation themes. Yet an approach which lends more weight to the cultural background of the story and to its implicit social comment permits an integration of the valuable insights of both Howe and Schevill and, in supporting Babb's generalization about the complexity of the story, lends some credence to his extravagant claim that the story is good enough to be favorably compared with Conrad's Heart of Darkness. 'Lonna M. Malmsheimer is an Associate Professor at Dickinson CoUege and Director of the American Studies Program. A previous article, "Daughters of Zion: Some New England Roots of American Feminism," appeared in the New England Quarterly. 18Lonna M. Malmsheimer The basic outlines of the story are relatively clear. Herman Dudley, a mature and "happily married" man, reports an experience in youth which still haunts him. The first half of the narrative is a rambling, but pointed, discussion of Herman's past as it pertains to the events of a single night of terror and mental disorder which colors the rest of his life. On that night, Herman "becomes a woman" and is threatened with rape by two drunken black men. He eventually escapes the rape, and, the following morning, leaves the world of horse racing presumably for a better life. The peculiar power of the story derives not from the plot but from the interplay of social and psychological factors which dictate the climactic events and from the narrator's obvious stress as he attempts to report and understand those factors. Some psychoanalytical observations are certainly in order. Irving Howe suggests that Herman Dudley suffers from hysteria produced by accumulated anxieties about his sex role. In the context of Howe's discussion it is difficult to judge whether he means to use the term "hysteria" in its popular sense, to designate a kind of excited mental state, or in its clinical sense, to designate a psychoneurotic state recognizable as a medical problem. Whatever the case, there is an abundance of evidence that the clinical use of the word is appropriate. Herman exhibits the syndrome of true hysteria: preceding the climactic night Herman's sleep is frequently disturbed and he exhibits excessive concern about his physical health. He has "no pep," and his total condition affects his work so that his friend Burt must cover for him.2 A dependent person, Herman has just lost a mentor and authority figure (Tom Means), a loss common in hysterical...