The Dehumanization Of Women In Kerouac's On The Road

Having intensively established Kerouac’s degrading of women, Kerouac’s sexual objectification, in association with the vulgar visual depiction of women, doubtlessly highlights the masculine ambience in which the novel is presented. Undeniably, Kerouac incorporates an abundance of female characters in On the Road. However, the female characters are unmistakably eclipsed by the commanding male influence bestowed in the novel. In turn, Kerouac unambiguously portrays women as profoundly excluded from the intellectual spectrum, emphasizing the masculine premise of On the Road. In Male View of Women in the Beat Generation, Olsson states: “Sal and his friends form a masculine “homosocial” group, that is a group based on male friendship, ‘male bonding’,

For instance, Paradise and Moriarty, along with surrounding male characters, engage in intellectual conversations regarding jazz music, philosophy and literature. With that said, female characters are “left outside the intellectual and decision-making sphere of the males” (Olsson 4-5). As a result, Kerouac audaciously depicts women as immensely lacking depth and intellectual ability, ultimately presenting women as tedious creatures capable only of fulfilling sexual desires. In addition, the description of Ed Wall’s wife, an acquaintance of Sal, further reiterates the absolute notion of female inferiority: “his [Ed] young wife prepared a magnificent spread in the big ranch kitchen … she was a well-built blonde but like all women who live in the wide spaces she complained a little of the boredom” (Kerouac 229). Essentially, Sal’s depiction of Ed Wall’s wife epitomizes Kerouac’s perception of women: they are a gender trapped within a male dominated hierarchy, isolated from social conventions and reduced to “unimportant housewives” (Olsson