Examples Of Masculinity In Ian Fleming

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James Bond, Sex and Masculinity Is Ian Fleming’s James Bond really a sexist, misogynistic Bastard? Ian Fleming’s various depictions of women in his James Bond novels can become increasingly difficult to accept while reading them today. Especially in Casino Royale, what is even more difficult to accept is that people still read them today and don’t even pick up absurd levels of derogatory comments towards the female sex used throughout the whole novel to depict women as staying at home to ‘mind their pots and pans and stick to their frocks and Gossip and leave men’s work to men.’ Questions arise to this day of how it placed itself in the top 100 novels of all time. The amount of gender inequality that this novel contains is revolting. If it weren’t published in 1953 but in the new 21st century, this book would cause enormous deals of criticism from feminists and women’s rights activists all over the world.…show more content…
The disparate treatment of gender relations in Casino Royale is at most twisted and heinous. “The sweet tang of rape” is utterly an oxymoron expression and Fleming presents a distorted viewpoint of sexual violence that is meant to supposedly be an exhilarating aspect of masculine desire. For example, Bond admits that he “saw luck as a woman, to be softly wooed or brutally ravaged, never pandered or pursued”. He clearly shows here that only a male can assume an active role in the art of seduction, and if she cannot be charmed then she ought to be broken. In One passage Fleming writes that Bond wants to have Vespers “cold and arrogant body” and that he wanted “to see tears in her remote blue eyes.” This calls on the misogynistic fallacy that women who are being raped will enjoy it as the ‘tears’ would likely be a manifestation of a violation because rape has more to do with reasserting power than sexual gratification, the notion of Vespers helplessness establishes Bonds Masculine
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