Gerald's Game

Early in the novel, Jessie recalls Gerald’s joke with his coworkers about women being life support systems for their genitalia, and that joke becomes a common perception across the primary male characters: Gerald, Tom, and Brandon. Each of these men demean the women in their lives, with Gerald approaching the point of assault and Tom openly assaulting his daughter. The root of this perception is the patriarchal belief that men are superior to women, which leads to two crucial outcomes in Gerald’s Game. The first is that men perceive women’s bodies as objects for their own sexual pleasure, regardless of the autonomy or agency of the woman. The second assumption that results from a patriarchal mindset is the idea that men must simply placate and condescend to women in order to resolve any issues, no matter how serious, that such women might bring to their attention.

In the first case, the obvious examples of men claiming ownership over women’s bodies are the ways in which Gerald, Tom, and Will assault Jessie. When Jessie tells Gerald that she does not want to have sex while she is in the handcuffs, she realizes that “Mr. Happy hadn’t heard about the change of plans” (12). This wording references Gerald’s continued erection as though it is a separate entity from Gerald himself; Jessie’s conception of this dynamic is designed to imply that she believes Gerald to be somehow separate from his intention to potentially assault her. Such wording indicates that Jessie is reluctant to admit that it is Gerald’s conscious choice to continue to restrain her, just as it was her father’s conscious choice to abuse her so many years ago. Unlike Gerald, however, Tom enjoys a nearly unassailable position of authority over the young Jessie on the day of the eclipse, and as the assault occurs, she reminds herself multiple times that he is her father and would never hurt her. However, Tom ultimately uses his young daughter as a sex object, and, although she is not outwardly rejecting him, she is an unwitting participant in the act, which places the incident squarely in the category of sexual abuse. Other men in Jessie’s life, such as Will, take a much tamer route, for although Will’s decision to “goose” Jessie may be intended as a joke, it still suggests that Jessie has no right to establish boundaries over who is allowed to touch her body, and in what way.

The second method used to exhibit patterns of toxic masculinity becomes apparent when the male characters of Gerald’s Game treat women as being less competent or intelligent than men; this dynamic is most aptly demonstrated in Jessie’s descriptions of Gerald and his coworkers, who believe that “fish gotta swim, bird gotta fly, wife gotta nag” (44). This irreverent phrasing implies that women’s complaints are a fleeting element of nature: something that must inevitably be endured but not worthy of any particular concern. The culmination of this masculine behavior is the character of Brandon, Gerald’s coworker who ostensibly helps Jessie during her recovery. Despite his overt show of support for her recent ordeal, she notices that he smiles in the way men might do “when they’re thinking about how silly women are” (428), and it is this same misogynistic assumption of women’s incompetence that leads Gerald to ignore his wife, Tom to manipulate and abuse his family, and Brandon to both disbelieve and cover up the essential details of Jessie’s story. Ironically, Jessie turns the tables on this dynamic when she exploits Brandon’s innate prejudices by crying in order to convince him to accede to her wishes about confronting Joubert. This particular example illustrates the far-reaching and nuanced effects of navigating gendered role expectations for men and women alike. Overall, the novel’s primary focus is on highlighting the negative ways in which toxic elements of masculinity can affect men’s treatment of women in many situations, specifically those centering on sexual assault and the subsequent rationalization of abuse.