The American feminist movement has come a long way since its origins in the 1800s, but many works written in the 2000s still rely on clichéd gender stereotypes. Paul Auster’s Sunset Park is no different. Though the four characters who reside in the house in Sunset Park are quirky and face many struggles throughout the novel, the types of conflict they face and the resolution to those conflicts at the end of the book are heavily influenced by gender. Miles and Bing, the male residents, fight inner demons stemming from guilt, family hardships, aggression, and societal rebellion. Ellen and Alice, the female residents, deal with issues surrounding pregnancy, boyfriends, body image, and dependence on men. While the conflicts in the novel are legitimate and relatable issues, the fact that they are so closely associated with either side of the gender binary makes Auster’s work seem cliché and sexist.
Miles Heller is the novel’s central character, as he is the common thread between a few storylines, and it is his story that begins the book. Readers learn quickly that Miles’ main struggle is dealing with his role in the death of his stepbrother. Not only does he feel guilty for partially causing the death, but also the fact that his father and stepmother don’t know he had any part in it. When he overhears his parents discussing how cold and distant he has been since the day of the accident, he runs away and remains on the run for a number of years. This conflict, though not inherently gendered, becomes so when Miles’ reaction to the situation is to further distance himself from his family. Instead of showing emotion or weakness, which are typically associated with femininity, he opts for the “manly” route of fierce, defensive independence. He only resolves the issues with his family when he feels he has no other option, and even then he is reluctant to show much remorse for his “coldness” and remains fairly emotionally independent from the rest of his family. His stereotypically masculine features eventually lead to his downfall, as he punches a police officer trying to protect a woman. His clearly sees it as his manly duty to be a protector, and therefore needs to act aggressively, which wouldn’t have been the case if the character hadn’t been male.
Miles’ other significant struggle, which leads him to live illegally with three other people in a house in New York, revolves around his less-than-legal relationship with his girlfriend Pilar, who is only 17 years old. Miles, who is 28, is attracted to Pilar at first sight and quickly falls in love with her. Though the book’s narrator claims the relationship is healthy, Miles clearly brings his detachment issues and emotional avoidance into their life together as he hides the fact that he even has a family, and never mentions any of the struggles he’s truly experiencing. His love and lust toward a legally unattainable underage girl is a gendered conflict in that men are stereotypically seen as more driven by their sexual urges than women.
Though Miles’ conflicts and resolutions are highly gendered, he is still not written as the most “manly” of the Sunset Park residents. Bing Nathan, the character who first suggests squatting in a house in Sunset Park, is introduced by Auster to be very rebellious, a “champion of discontent.” He is described as a “bear of a man,” who dresses sloppily and has very few manners, which weighs him heavily on the side of being masculine. His main personal conflict – leading the squatters through their time in the Sunset Park house—is reflective of this assigned masculinity, in that he establishes himself as the leader of the group instinctively. Though Auster doesn’t state it outright, he seems to write Bing’s role as the primary protector of the women, Alice and Ellen, despite the fact that these women were fully capable of taking care of themselves before he came into their lives. When his success in this role is threatened, his reaction is to be aggressive towards whoever or whatever is threatening, which is also a very gendered reaction. It’s assumed by Auster that the “manly” character must take on qualities associated closely with masculinity. His conflict is resolved when the police eventually take back the house, and he attempts to physically defend the property. It’s presumed that he was so out of control that his masculine rage got the best of him, which ultimately led to his destruction (or in this case, jail time).
The first female Sunset Park resident readers are introduced to is Alice Bergstrom, a Wisconsinite woman working towards her doctorate degree in literature. Alice’s central conflict is her difficult relationship with her body and, to some degree, her boyfriend Jake. The couple has been dating over two years, but she feels that because she has put on weight, he is less attracted to her. Body image issues, though truly universal, are generally associated with women, and Auster doesn’t break out of this box. Auster writes, regarding the failure of their relationship “…She blames herself for what has happened, she can’t help believing that the fault rests entirely on her shoulders.” Auster writes this without ever hinting that a woman who is working toward her doctorate and is strong and independent might have other things to worry about than 13 pounds and the fact that her boyfriend is a subpar partner. He also writes that she “hopes to put her womb to the test” in the “not-too-distant future,” before he ever mentions that she is working on her dissertation, as if reproducing has to be more important in her life than being well educated. Alice, throughout the novel, does mention minor struggles she faces in finishing her dissertation, but the bulk of her time in conflict is spent wondering what went wrong with her own relationship, which is a conflict typically associated with feminine emotional overload.
The resolutions to Alice’s conflicts are as heavily gendered as the conflicts themselves. In reference to her relationship, after she and Jake finally break up, she worries not that she wasted so much time thinking about their issues instead of her academic career or helping writers at the organization she works for, but that she won’t find another man soon and that she will have a “childless future.” Her issues with her body end not in self-acceptance, but with her being pleased she has lost weight temporarily and not thinking about it now that she doesn’t have a man in her life (thus proving that societal expectations of femininity were really her central conflict, though Auster fails to acknowledge this). Her story ends with her housemate Ellen saying, “It won’t be long before Alice finds herself another man,” as if that is the end-all-be-all of womanly success in Auster’s eyes.
Ellen Brice, the fourth housemate, also finds herself facing conflicts based on her gender. Readers are almost immediately introduced to the struggle Ellen faces after months of not receiving any attention from men. She, driven completely by these emotions, breaks people down to only their physical attributes, and imagines being intimate with every “man, woman, and child.” Auster writes that, “The wild thoughts enter her head as if they were planted there by someone else, and even though she battles to suppress them, it is a battle she never wins.” Not only is she portrayed as overly emotional and irrational, but also weak and vulnerable, emitting an “aura of victimhood and skittish uncertainty” —all traits most often associated with women. Auster also paints Ellen as a temptress who seduces the 16-year-old boy she is tutoring over the summer, despite the fact that he makes the first move and kisses her without her consent. Ellen discovers she is pregnant shortly after the summer ends, but hides it and aborts the child. Auster writes, in reference to not disclosing this information to the father, “…why punish him with this news when there was nothing he could do to help her, when she was the one to blame for the whole sordid business?” This struggle is uniquely female, and the fact that Auster presents the father as being blameless is completely gendered. A few years after the abortion, Ellen becomes absolutely obsessed with recreating the idea of “life” in her paintings of nude bodies, thus showing that this gendered conflict still weighs heavy on her mind.
Ellen’s story also ends in a cliché, gendered way. Instead of a true, deep recovery from the depression and anxiety she suffers, as a man (most notably Miles) would get, Ellen’s story finds resolution through a shallow makeover and a new boyfriend. First, she and Bing reach an agreement wherein he will pose nude for her as long as she gives him sexual favors, and because of this her art is somehow revived from mediocrity. She unquestionably used her “womanly wiles” to resolve this conflict, making it seem as if that was her only useful tool. Ellen’s “true” change, though, comes from a makeover in which she cuts her hair, wears more makeup, and wears more form-fitting clothing. Auster writes that this makeover is a reflection of a new relationship she has with her “innermost self,” but later goes on to say that this revelation in her appearance was a direct result of a run-in Ellen has with Ben, the boy who impregnated and abandoned her years ago. Despite the fact that his career plans include working at the T-Mobile store, her reunion and resulting relationship with Ben are written so that her future now seems more stable with a man by her side (regardless of his lack of responsibility shown thusfar). And so Ellen’s story is resolved with a little lipstick and a man-- both unquestionably gender specific conclusions.
Though the conflicts that occur throughout Sunset Park are very realistic, often relatable issues, Auster seems to be highly dependant on societal gender roles and assumptions. After a close reading, it seems that the male characters in the novel experience a more diverse set of issues, presumably due to the fact that Auster is male and has a broader understanding of the range of conflicts he, himself, has been through. The women of Sunset Park fare far worse, though, due to societal assumptions regarding women and the problems they encounter. These characters seem to struggle constantly with stereotypically feminine problems such as body image, pregnancy, and relationship woes. This division of conflict type based on gender is overused and, in the end, contributes to further solidification of established gender roles. This not only hurts modern society, but also contributes to the novel a distinct air of unoriginality and bias.
