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The Crisis of Masculinity
I think it is important to read the novella against the backdrop of homosexuality in this period and man's own life. It's a real grappling both with it and I guess with what we would call the closet but also with what is clearly sexual desire or frustration. There was such a flowering of works about this theme in this era and what was called a crisis of masculinity. And in many ways Thomas Mann's answer is an incredibly conservative one but it is one that's very pained and is very, you know because Ashmbach, he doesn't act on it.