Gender identity issues in “The Wasp Factory” by I. Banks

Abstract

   The issue of gender identity violation is relevant today, however poorly studied. Lately, an increasing number of authors, including British writers, have begun to address this topic. In “The Wasp Factory” (1984), the Scottish writer I. Banks (1954–2013) shows the fate of Frank Cauldhame, who, due to his own father’s lies and the hormone replacement therapy used in relation to him, lives in nescience of his own gender all his life. It should be noted that transgenderism is one of the ways to go beyond human nature: this is the topic that I. Banks addresses in his novel. The problem of Frank’s gender identity is perceived as a trauma and as a result of a violent distortion of human nature. Besides the monstrous traits of the protagonist, he has another important characteristic: the created monster, Frank, is an object in the narrative. The main conflict of the novel is built between Frank and his father, who is a kind of his “creator”. In “The Wasp Factory”, I. Banks focuses not on the peculiarities of life after the transition, but on the inhumanity of such modifications and the malignancy of the deformation of human nature.