Exploring the Relationality of Fatherhood: John Irving's The Cider House Rules
John Irving's best selling novel The Cider House Rules (1985) offers one voice in a debate that has been ongoing in the USA, as well as in Europe, at least since the second wave of the women's movement, about men's role as fathers and the links between fatherhood and masculinity. Addressing literary representations of men as fathers since parenting is gendered practice entails grappling with fictional representations of "masculinity." The Cider House Rules raises questions about fatherhood, masculinity, and power and about how these concepts gain meaning within specific familial settings. The chapter investigates how the novel constructs the two male protagonists/father figures Homer Wells and Wilbur Larch in relation to other fathers and in relation to "others," especially women/femininity/motherhood. Using Irving's fictional narrative as a basis, the chapter argues two main points: First, that fictional representations here, of fathers are useful for investigating and problematizing the idea of "gender relationality." Second, that while the relationality of masculinity functions as a given in gender studies from a constructionist standpoint, it also, once concretized, sets up certain boundaries around what can be explored, addressed, or exposed in the research.