After reading V.S. Naipaul's novel Miguel Street I noticed that One of the
recurrent themes... is the ideal of manliness. To help put into focus what manliness is, it is
important to establish a definition for masculinity as well as its opposite, femininity.
Masculinity is defined as "Having qualities regarded as characteristic of men and boys, as
strength, vigor, boldness, etc." while femininity is defined as "Having qualities regarded
as characteristic of women and girls, as gentleness, weakness, delicacy, modesty, etc."
(Webster). The characters in Miguel Street have been created with the pre- conceived
notions of the roles that Trinidadian society dictates for men and women. Naipaul not
only uses these notions to show the differences of the sexes, but takes another step in
telling life stories of characters showing their anti- masculine and anti- feminine features.
This will lead to the discovery that the definitions of masculinity and femininity prove
that those characteristics apply to the opposite sex in which the women often act like
men, and the men often act like women. All of this will be discussed through looking at
both male and female characters in the book as well as the boy narrator of the book.
The novel consist of 17 stories in which 12 of them in some way deal with the
theme of manliness. The first example is introduced with a carpenter named Popo. In the
chapter titled "The Thing Without A Name" we are told that "Popo never made any
money. His wife used to go out and work and this was easy , because they had no
children. Popo said ' Women and them like work. Man not made for work" ( Naipaul, P.
17). This attitude immediately makes Popo stand out from the rest of the men of Miguel
Street. Hat, another character in the novel thinks of Popo as a "man- woman. Not a proper
man" (Naipaul, P. 17) because Popo's wife makes all the money. Popo has no children
which questions...