Body Fluid Desire: My Secret Life

Abstract

Argues that, while feminist theory and applied criticism have isolated certain qualities of Victorian and post-Victorian masculinity captured in the term “phallic,” other manifestations of male behavior and belief have gone generally unnoticed. Demonstrates this thesis by examining the erotic autobiography My Secret Life, which expresses dissatisfaction with rigid gender roles and forms of sexual expression, and reveals a continuing fixation on fluidity that opens up the possibility of more viscous, metamorphic, and unstable masculinities. Notes that as the narrator strains toward fluid forms of sexual expression, the text reveals the discursive barriers inhibiting such exploration.