Graham Greene: A Feminist Reading

From the feminist point of view, it is significant that out of all the twenty-five novels, from The Man Within (1929) to The Captain and the Enemy (1988) written by Graham Greene, none is endowed with a memorable female protagonist. Greeneland assiduously denies women their rightful place in the socio-economic spheres so that they are excluded from the centers of power and authority. Greene, as a man and as a writer, has never fought shy of taking on the established order to uphold the freedom and dignity of the individual. But his concept of the autonomous individual seems to exclude the autonomous female.
Greene’s novels evince little interest in the formation or deformation of female consciousness and are cluttered with conventional images of women. His novels are concerned with various forms of injustice – the injustice inherent in the patriarchal order in which men enjoy a natural precedence and power over women who are seen as mere objects or the body or the “other”. The (deliberate?) distortion of women by associating them with skin-deep beauty, frank sensuality, spiritual sterility, political timidity, bitchy aggressiveness or similar forms of deviance naturally makes for the creation of unreal female characters.
The present book traces the subversive perception of gender roles and the sexual politics in the novels of Graham Greene. Stereotyped images of women as well as social and psychological aspects of gender have been analyzed. Some other issues addressed in the feminist conceptual framework include male power, violence against women and identification of woman with the body and its biological needs and functions. The book will be highly useful to students, teachers and researchers in the field of English literature, particularly those pursuing studies in feminism.