Masculinity and Capitalism in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman: The Struggle of the American Middle Class
It was America’s darkest moments in history. The Wall Street Crash of 1929 which consequently leading to the Great Depression caused extraordinary unemployment in America’s total workforce population. With the heavy industry such as mining and manufacturing hit hard, in addition of the newly-elect President Franklin Roosevelt’s policy to cut farm’s production, America for sure had drastically changed its economic mode even post World War II. Death of a Salesman, written by playwright Arthur Miller in Post Great Depression cum World War II 1949, revolves around the lives of the Lomans in this period of economic transition. This evolution of the economy through time altered class relations, precipitating a crisis of masculinity of American middle class workers (Rough). As a result, the men of Lomans representing the American middle class, in doubt of their identities in the modern capitalist world, struggle to search for their lost senses of masculinity.
Using his play Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller depicts capitalism as a the culprit who is stripping the sense of masculinity off the American middle class workers represented by Willy, Biff and Happy Loman. These men face a crisis of identity, self-doubting due to their inability to utilize their masculinity in the modern, feminine capitalist society. These claims are not made merely based on surmises, but the emergence of every character and objects, and the symbols and significances they bear weave together to tell the audience that these men fails to achieve their dreams at that period of history.
The transition of the two very different modes of economy is presented in Death of a Salesman as the chronological background of the play. The era of Willy’s brother, Ben and their father represents a masculine, manufacture-based economy requiring hard labor work. On the other hand, Willy’s selling career which he deems to require oneself to possess personal attractiveness “because the man who creates personal in the business world, the man who creates personal interest, is the man who gets ahead” (33), seems to be the embodiment of femininity. As elucidated in an article written by Stephan Desrochers entitled “What Types of Men Are Most Attractive and Most Repulsive to Women?”, women in contemporary American society prefer men who portrays feminine personalities and traits. When Willy asked if he is picked, the woman confirms him by saying that Willy is “so sweet. And such a kidder” (39). Therefore, he utilizes this perception and “feminizes” himself in order to with “a buyer” who “buys for J. H. Simmons” (120).
As we can see from the play, Willy’s incapability to cope with the switch of economic orientation over the years causes his failure as a salesman. The service-based occupation of a salesman eats away his confidence day by day when he no longer can gain profits and bring money into his household. To make things worse, he even resort to asking help from Charley, his neighbor financially whenever he is in need of money. Furthermore, the representation of masculinity and femininity by the economic evolution exhibited through the juxtaposition of the occupations of Willy and his father, further portrays Willy’s struggle in the capitalist world.
Willy’s father, very like Willy is a travelling salesman. However, his father does more than just selling. He manufactures his goods. Ben once explains to Willy that
“Father was a very great and a very wild-hearted man. We would start in Boston, and he’d toss the whole family into the wagon, and then he’d drive the team right across the country; through Ohio, and Indiana, Michigan, Illlinois, and all the Western states. And we’d stop in the towns and sell the flutes that he’d made on the way. Great inventor, Father. With one gadget he made more in a week than a man like you could make in a lifetime” (Death of a Salesman, 49).
In response to Ben’s satire, Willy confesses that he raised Biff and Happy to be rugged just like their father. In this case, Willy’s identity crisis further expands and confuses him when he admires his “masculine flute-manufacturing” father but at the same time being a “feminine service-providing” salesman himself.
Frankly we can see from the play that Willy actually yearns towards a masculine self like his father and brother. He desires to be successful by manly means, in this case, to explore Alaska and to mine diamonds in Africa. Disgruntled by his life, Willy always expresses his regrets for not following his brother’s footsteps mining diamonds in Africa. His value towards his own construction work also shows that Willy actually thirsts for a sense of masculinity.
“Maybe we could buy a ranch. Raise cattle, use our muscles. Men built like we are should be working out in the open” (23).
These are the words Biff utters to Happy up in their bedroom. From the conversation, we can obviously know that Biff true potential lies in the far West where he can work on farms, with his bare hands, out in the open. The American West provides Biff with an opportunity to earn a living with hard labor work, and to pursue his masculine American Dream. In “Rough Work and Rugged Man: The Social Construction of Masculinity in Working-Class History”, Steven Maynard again believes that “masculinity is bound up with the labor process, the notion of skill, and the experience of work.” When Biff says that he is going to see Bill Oliver for an opportunity to get into business, Willy suggests to him that he can go into sporting goods because he knows about it very well. The fact that Biff once works as a labor in the West and his knowledge about sporting goods and not other things else, tells us that Biff embodies the traits of masculinity, as resonated both in Messner’s and Maynard’s work. Besides the Wild West and sporting goods, the name “Biff” further implies who Biff really is. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word Biff means a blow using the knuckle. Again, the definition of Biff’s name is not mere confidence but rather is the playwright’s intention to show Biff’s innate masculine nature.
Sport, especially football also bears a significant symbolism in Death of a Salesman. As a football player which allows “the social construction of masculinity” as termed by Michael A. Messner in “Power at Play: Sports and the Problem of Masculinity”, insert a masculine image into during his high school years. Furthermore, being the captain of his football team and victor of the Ebbets Field championship game, the teenage Biff becomes the pride and the only source of comfort and compensation for Willy Loman’s emasculative job as a salesman.
Charley, who is the neighbor of the Lomans happens to be a salesman too. However, Charley achieves great success in business and in family life unlike Willy who fails simultaneously at both aspects. In the play, Willy regards Charley as “not a man” because he simply cannot handle tools to construct a ceiling (44). When comparing Charley with Will whom he thinks of himself as a great builder, the truth that Charley is actually at the shorter end does not disaffirm his prevail over Willy in the capitalist world. Another person who sails through the capitalist world unhindered is Charley’s son, Bernard. In the scene where Bernard comes in and reminds Biff to study for the Regents, Willy calls him a “pest” and an “anemic” (33). He also states that Bernard can never be as successful as his two boys in the business world with his good grades in school. These deteriorative remarks about Bernard sum up Willy’s perception of Bernard being only an unmanly bookworm. Similar to his father, Bernard still proves to be a successful lawyer even though he is not masculine enough by Willy’s standard. In a nutshell, the portrayal of Charley and Bernard as more effeminate men and yet gained success shows the playwright’s attempts to make a crucial point to the audience that capitalism is a feminine system.
To some extent, we can hold that the reason capitalism strips the sense of masculinity off the characters, is due to the oppression of their superiors. Regardless of the context of this matter, either the narrative or in reality, the domination of the superiors over their employees is inevitable and as a matter of fact, it is one of the distinguishing features of capitalism. Subsequently we can draw assumption that these oppressed men counteract against the superiors in order to redeem their senses of masculinity. Death of a Salesman exhibits this phenomenon and explains itself through the roles of Willy and Happy. Aware of his predicament, Willy’s boss, Howard fires Willy without giving him a second chance. Willy’s attempted compromises by willingly to receive less pay, and even resort to continue as a travelling salesman fail to court Howard’s sympathy and changing his mind. Willy be shamed into anger, in turn yells back at Howard. As another instance, Happy complains to Biff, “…and I have to take orders from those common, petty sons-of-bitches till I can’t stand it anymore” (24). His father’s reaction towards Howard made insignificant in comparison to Happy’s behaviors. Happy says that “sometimes I want to just rip my clothes off in the middle of the store and outbox that goddam merchandise manager” (24). We can see that he attempts to release his oppressed masculinity represented by his desire to rip off his shirt, and pay back at the capitalism by outbox his manager. Moreover, Happy seemingly sleeps with his superiors’ women. He confesses that,
“I don’t know what gets into me, maybe I just have an overdeveloped sense of competition or something, but I went and ruined her, and furthermore I can’t get rid of her. And he’s the third executive I’ve done that to” (25).
Willy and Happy’s “revenges” signify a form of redemption of their so-called pride and masculinity long lost to their superiors in the capitalist system.
Coming back to the central question: Is it necessarily true that man’s success and his sense of masculinity be mutually exclusive of each other? Or should the query be that the pursuit of wealth is not the sole thing in a man’s life? “No man only needs a little salary”, Death of a Salesman summarizes itself with the quote, and undoubtedly intends to present the flaw of this economic model named capitalism in play in reality (137). However, giving it a second thought, we can still see that men like Donald Trump can be successful and wealthy in life, and yet be masculine to fire celebrities in the boardroom. Therefore, the capitalist system may not be posing any burdens to these American middle class men after all. In fact, the fact that they subconsciously position themselves as the “emasculated capitalist workers” can be resolved, given that these men fully realize that the question of masculinity and femininity all lies within perceptions towards life. The identity crises in American middle class men as shown in Death of a Salesman in a way is self-imposition as a result of their lack of adapting to the capitalist world. Hence, if Donald Trump can be masculine and wealthy at the same time, why can’t a salesman?
Reference
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Messner, Michael A. Power at Play: Sports and the Problem of Masculinity. Boston: Boston : Beacon,
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Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman. Penguin Group, 1949. Print.
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