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To continue: the question that
arises from the argument I began to explore last time might, one supposes,
point as to whether one could see travel in itself as a gendering
experience, in other words to travel gives one the essence of assuming a
particular gender. A number of cultural theorists have explored the issue; for
example, Janet Wolff has argued that ‘the practices and ideologies of
actual travel operated to exclude or pathologise women’ and that there
is ‘something intrinsically masculine about travel’. (1)
As to what extent this is true is, it seems to me, problematical to
ascertain, but it would seem hard to accept that travel is in itself
intrinsically gendered. It would seem too simplistic to say that men naturally
travel simply because they are men; and, in any case, women do travel,
both in life and in art.(2)
It would appear that historically
the ability to travel has as much to do with such issues as wealth and
class as it has to do with gender. However, on the other hand, it would
seem true to say that there is a biological imperative at work here. In a
certain sense women have not been as empowered to travel as men, in so
much as the experience of the vast majority of adult females for a large
part of human history has consisted primarily of pregnancy, childbirth and
child-rearing. Furthermore, it has been suggested that much of the
travelling undertaken by men is stimulated by a reproductive motive. Eric
J. Leed has described this desire to travel as a ‘spermatic journey’,
that travel is ‘stimulated by ... a search for temporal
extensions of self in children, only achievable through the agency of
women’ (3) In
other words, men travel to spread their genes whilst women, because of
practical necessities, do not.
In a similar vein Erik Erikson has
argued that it is: ‘The physical design of the human body; the inner
space of the womb and the vagina, which signifies women’s biological,
psychological and moral commitment to motherhood, and the possession of
the penis predisposes men to be concerned with achievement and
exploration’. (4)
The idea that many girls tended to make enclosed domestic scenes, led
Erikson to claim the importance of ‘inner
space’ for women, something
that was ‘deeply rooted in their
biological construction’. (5)
Thus, the physical design of the body: the inner space of the
vagina and womb, contrasted against the outer projected penis, offers a
predisposal to the gender roles within society. In other words, women stay
at home and men push out into the wilderness, at least this would appear
to be the conclusion of Erikson’s argument.
However, it would seem to me that such a view is overly reductive, I would
argue against such a deterministic point of view. I would suggest, in the
light of these arguments, (particularly of Janet Wolff’s), that travel,
rather than being seen as gendered in some way, could itself be seen as a
gendering experience. In other words, by travelling one actually derives
or performs some sense of masculinity or femininity, and the fact that,
within the discourse of Dylan’s work, there is a consistent reference to
masculine travel raises a number of significant issues. Some of these
issues are played out in an early, unreleased Dylan song,’Rambling,
Gambling Willie’ (1962); a title that, in itself, could be seen as a pun
on movement, freedom and male sexuality. (6) In the song
a likable character called Willie O’Conley spends the entire narrative
rambling and gambling around America, doing those things a man presumably
has’gotta do’.Willie has had ‘twenty-seven children but never had a
wife,’ however, he has supported his children and ‘all their mothers
too’, (7) or at least he has in a material sense, for
he is unwilling or unable to be present with them in person for any length
of time. The reason why Willie cannot be present is unstated in the song,
one assumes that Willie is too busy out in the rambling, gambling world of
men, where, unsurprisingly, he eventually suffers a violent death at the
hands of another man.
Thus the narrative of the song can
be seen as suggesting not only a need to be on the road, but also a need
to escape from a feminine and familial sphere of influence. This is, I
would argue, a significant constituent in reading the performative element
present within the construct of masculinity in Dylan’s work. The men in
Bob Dylan¹s songs have a continual desire to leave women in order to
confront a wilderness of which women are not a part; in one sense at least
this is what it means to be a man.
This idea is readily discernible throughout Dylan’s canon. For example,
in ‘Tangled Up in Blue’ (1975),
the male narrator feels compelled to seek the wilderness, to confront his
inner self in the song’ s ‘great north woods’.
In ‘Up to Me’ (1975) the masculine narrator tells the woman he
is involved with: ‘One of us had to hit the road I guess it must be up
to me’, (8) and one notes, of course, that it is the
man who must do this.
The road is, I would argue, one of the most important symbolic tropes in
Dylan’s work. It becomes a way of life in itself: ‘My life is the road
that I walk’, Dylan told an
interviewer in the early 1960’s. (9)
In the construct of Dylan’s
work the road also turns out to be a way of life. One way of escaping the
dilemma of life is to keep travelling, to keep on moving, to ‘keep on
keeping on’ as Dylan
puts it. The men in Dylan’s songs live on ‘lifes hurried tangled
road’ (10) they are ‘still on the road heading for
another joint’ (11) they are ‘walking the road,
living on the edge’ (12) they are ‘still pushing
themselves along the road’ (13).
‘I’m still very patriotic to
the highway’, Dylan told Playboy magazine in
March, 1966, (14) and, in an interview from the
1960s, Dylan appeared to encompass the whole issue when he said: ‘What
hangs everybody up is the fact that I’m not stopping’. (15)
This is, I would argue, a significant remark; like Dylan himself the men
in his songs are not stopping, and the idea of constantly resisting
containment becomes a template on which to draw a sense of the self,
specifically the sense of the self as a man; a performative way of
constructing a sense of a gendered identity.
To be continued ...
Patrick J. Webster
8 May 2003
1.
Janet Wolff, Resident
Alien: Feminist Cultural Criticism (Cambridge: Polity Press. 1995) pp
115,122
2.
For example, consider the diverse range of women travellers
delineated in The Virago Book of
Women Travellers, ed Mary Morris (London: Virago).
3.
Cited in Wolff, p.123
4.
Cited in Gerda Siann, Gender,
Sex and Sexuality: Contemporary Psychological Perspectives. (London:
Taylor and Francis 1994) p.29
5.
Cited in Peter Schwenger, Phallic
Critiques: Masculinity and Twentieth Century Literature (London
: Routledge, 1984) p.2.
6.
Whether an American writer would be aware of this word play is
questionable. However, this is a reading that could be made of the text.
7.
Lyrics,
p.11
8.
Lyrics, p.371
9.
Transcribed from a tape recording of an interview with Studs
Terkel WFMT FM Radio Chicago 1 May 1963
10.
‘Ballad of Donald White’ Lyrics,
p.31
11.
‘Tangled Up In Blue’ Lyrics,
p.359
12.
‘Goin’ Goin’ Gone’ Lyrics,
p.342
13.
‘I and I’ Lyrics, p.481
14.
Reprinted in Craig McGregor, Bob Dylan: A retrospective (New
York: William Morrow, 1972), pp 124-145 (p.143)
15.
Robert Shelton, No direction Home: The Life and Music of Bob
Dylan (London: New English Library. 1986) p.358
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