Mutilated Masculinity: Intersections of Disability, Gender, and Mental Health in Modernist Fiction

This thesis investigates the impact of the intersection of physical disabilities and mental health conditions on the masculine identities presented in modernist texts. Here, I analyze a collection of works by Ernest Hemingway, D.H. Lawrence, Claude McKay, and Wilfred Owen. Utilizing a combination of theoretical approaches: trauma theory, gender and sexuality studies, narratology, disability studies, and insights from the medical humanities, I revisit well-known novels like The Sun Also Rises and Lady Chatterley\u27s Lover and illuminate lesser-studied works like A Natural History of the Dead and the recently published Romance in Marseille. I recognize here the psychosocial struggles faced by wounded and shell-shocked veterans after WWI, the alterity experienced by transnationally migratory men of color in the interwar period, and reflect on the authors\u27 mediation of their own experiences through writing. By integrating historical and biographical accounts, medical texts, and literary criticism in this thesis, I hope to present fresh perspectives on masculinist Modern fiction