Masculinity and gender norms

Masculinity and gender norms in the novel operate less as abstract beliefs than as rules made visible in habits, work, appearance, and social punishment. Phil Burbank treats unprotected hands as a sign of masculine competence, while his hostility toward a young waiter’s feminine-coded manner shows how quickly he turns difference into a judgment of character. At school, Peter Gordon is taunted for failing to meet the boys’ expectations of masculinity; the experience teaches him not to accept their terms of judgment.

Work and Bodily Discipline

Ranch work makes the code concrete. Men wear gloves for most tasks, including roping, fencing, branding, pitching hay, riding, running horses, and trailing cattle, to protect their hands from ordinary work hazards. Phil is the exception: he disregards such protection and scorns the men who use it. His hands are described as dry, powerful, and lean, giving his barehandedness a physical counterpart and making his refusal of gloves part of his public image.

The contrast is not simply between practical and impractical equipment. By rejecting a commonplace safeguard, Phil presents endurance as evidence of fitness for ranch life. His judgment turns a personal habit into a standard against which other men can be measured. The code is sustained not by a formal rule but by the expectation that a man should tolerate discomfort rather than appear to need protection.

Imitation and Informal Authority

Phil’s influence is apparent in the younger ranch hands’ response. When he comes in from the snow, stamping it from his feet and standing with his bare hands behind him, he asks whether the men are looking through the old Wish Book. A few young men try, over the years, to imitate his barehandedness, apparently hoping for a smile or nod of approval. Phil does not acknowledge the effort, and they eventually return to wearing gloves.

The episode shows how the code travels: younger men copy a visible gesture associated with authority, but the gesture does not earn them recognition. Phil’s silence leaves them to discover that imitation alone cannot secure his approval. His masculinity therefore functions both as a model and as a gatekeeping standard, reproduced by others even when their attempts meet with indifference.

Peter Gordon at School

At school, Peter is hazed and taunted for being perceived as different from the other boys. The feminine-coded label applied to him follows him through the school environment, but it is not what first makes him turn on his tormentors. He reacts when they insult his father as a drunk. The distinction makes the conflict more specific than a simple clash between Peter and schoolmates: his defense of his family crosses a threshold that their attacks on his own gender expression do not.

Peter begins to lunge at the boys, then stops and studies them. Among them are Fred, who rides to school on a horse with a fifty-dollar saddle; Dick, a bartender’s son whose marks are nearly as good as Peter’s; and Larry, who already weighs close to two hundred pounds. Peter recognizes that he must oppose them on his own terms, rather than follow the pattern they set. His response is not presented as winning their acceptance. Instead, he develops a cold, impersonal hostility toward those he sees as normal, prosperous, envied, and secure, especially when they insult his private image of the Gordon family.

Peter also understands the harassment as recurrent: in other circles, these boys’ fathers and grandfathers had tormented someone marked out as an outsider, and their sons may repeat the pattern. Gender policing thus appears as a learned social practice, passed between generations rather than confined to one schoolyard encounter. Peter’s insight gives him a way to interpret the boys’ behavior, even as it hardens his opposition to them.

Phil Burbank and Gendered Difference

Phil’s reaction to a young waiter at a party of six reveals another form of enforcement. He notices the napkin over the waiter’s arm, his neat appearance, his heel-clicking walk, his lisp, and the way he savors his words. Phil interprets these features as signs of an effeminate manner and imagines that the waiter has borrowed it from a film or magazine. The imagined source matters: Phil treats the manner as an artificial performance, yet his own masculine authority is also communicated through repeated, legible gestures, including his bare hands and stance.

Phil’s response is not detached disapproval. The waiter’s manner makes him uncomfortable, and he feels an impulse to strike him as he passes. No such assault occurs in this episode, but the impulse shows the threat behind Phil’s judgment: difference is something he wants corrected, not merely something he dislikes. His intolerance also extends beyond gender expression to other socially marginalized groups, which the narration presents as part of his broader prejudice.

The Code’s Reach

Taken together, these episodes show that masculinity is enforced through different pressures in different settings. On the ranch, protection can be read as a failure of toughness, and younger men monitor Phil for signs of approval. At school, boys make Peter’s perceived gender nonconformity a reason for exclusion. In Phil’s encounter with the waiter, appearance, speech, and movement become grounds for hostility.

The code is powerful partly because it does not require constant formal instruction: men imitate, judge, and punish one another through ordinary conduct. Yet the examples also expose its instability. The young ranch hands can copy Phil’s habit without gaining his notice, and Peter can recognize the schoolboys’ rules without submitting to them. The novel’s contrast between these responses makes masculinity visible as a social standard repeatedly performed and enforced, rather than a neutral measure of a person’s worth.