‘All the same under the skin’: representations of class and gender in Michel Faber’s Under the Skin

ABSTRACT

The essay, broadly conceived in two sections, examines the relationship between gender and class in Michel Faber’s novel Under the Skin. The first section utilizes Beverley Skeggs’ ethnography on working-class women in Britain to outline Isserley’s social positioning and how it is associated with negative value. We contend that Isserley’s appearance and employment reproduce the dominant and pathologizing cultural representations of working-class women. Further, the essay argues that Isserley disidentifies as a working-class woman through the discourse of improvement since the representations of her positioning constantly devalue her. In the second section, we shift our focus to the intersection of gender and class in the construction of masculine identity. We argue that the representation of men in the novel replicates that of working-class men in the British context. The essay draws on R.W. Connell’s concept of marginalized masculinities to explore how the lives of men become inferior not just in terms of their bodies but also by failing to align with the hegemonic norms of manhood, such as staying employed, married, and being a provider for the family.

KEYWORDS:

• Women
• gender
• marginalization
• working-class
• masculinity

Acknowledgments

Dedicated to Dr. Louis. The great kings of the past look down on us from those stars.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. In her reading, Dunn states that physical separation obscures the objectified animal from the consumer, while linguistic separation conceals the subjectivity of an animal through a discourse that commodifies them.

2. However, Faber also maintains that his novel was not about ‘the evils of meat eating but about the evils of evading moral responsibility’ (Faber, 2020).

3. For critiques on other aspects of the novel, such as on the tenuous construction of reality, the problematics of empathy, the links of sexual predation, hunting, and disability, and the connection of disability and work see respectively: Caracciolo (2017); Kark and Vanderbeke (2020); Hortle and Stark (2019); Murray (2017).

4. McCullough has noted that the Highlands and Islands of Scotland were historically considered by outsiders as problem areas where poverty was a consequence of cultural inferiority (2018). The sustained structural economic support provided by the European Union since the 1980s has helped develop the area and alleviate poverty. Since the early 2000s, the Highlands and the Islands have seemingly left behind their problem status and can be recognized as developing peripheral regions (McCullough, 2018).

5. In his work on hitchhiking, Laviolette argues that in the British context, the hitchhiker is a ‘travel beggar’ whose taking to the roads is a ‘declaration of necessity’ (2020, p. 8).

6. We concur with Hortle and Stark, and Dunn’s interpretation that Isserley is a hunter. However, if Isserley’s process of tranquilizing men is to be regarded as a hunt, an overarching definition is required such as the one provided by Robinson and Bennett: ‘the capture by humans of wild mammals, birds, and reptiles, whether dead or alive, irrespective of the techniques used to capture them’ (2000, p.2). This eliminates concerns that a hunt must end with the killing of an animal. Isserley’s hunt is neither for subsistence nor utility, and it becomes a strange combination of two forms of hunting: sport and commercial. Employed by Vess incorporated, she is bound to deliver the muscular men she captures for processing at Ablach farms, but she is also overwhelmed by the thrill of the hunt. At various instances in the novel, we find correlations with sport hunting made clear by the ‘quickening’ of her breathing upon approaching a male hitcher (17), her ‘excitement’ (29), her ‘adrenaline’ rush (17, 30–31) and her ‘appetite for the game’ (49).

7. ‘Five foot one, maybe, standing up’, surmises the first hitchhiker (9).

8. Femininity is the ‘process through which women are gendered and become specific sorts of women’ (Skeggs, 2001, p. 297). Working class women make investments into femininity to demonstrate their respectability, and avoid or deflect associations of sexuality, vulgarity, and pathology (Skeggs, 1997).

9. Rebecca Gowland has noted how health is a matter of social justice, where those with shorter life expectancies and higher level of chronic disease come from the poorest backgrounds. She writes, ‘the less equal a society, the greater the health disparities between the rich and the poor (Gowland, 2018, p. 147).

10. This predatory discourse stereotypical of the working class is challenged in McDowell’s work, where she details other versions of working-class masculinity premised on family values, work ethic or domestic respectability (McDowell, 2003). However, rather than contesting the predatory discourse, the novel complies to it, representing the men of this class as a threat to Isserley.

11. For a more sustained discussion of women’s labour force participation, see (Crompton, 2006; Damaske, 2011); and (Lewis, 2001).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mayank Jha

Mayank Jha is a Ph.D. candidate in Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology - Ropar, India. His research interests include Cultural Studies, Gender Studies, and Human-Animal Studies. His ongoing research focuses on representations of animality in film and fiction.

Ansu Louis

Ansu Louis was an Assistant Professor of English at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Ropar, Rupnagar, India. Areas of his research interest included Philosophy and Literature, Film Studies, and Psychoanalysis and Popular Culture. He was the author of a number of essays in journals including Symplokē and American Imago.