The male gaze in literature: the case of They’re not your husband (1973) by Raymond Carver In this essay, we will analyse how the male gaze is represented in literature, more specifically, in Raymond Carver's short story They’re not your husband (1973) The male gaze is a theory developed in the 1975 essay entitled "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" by film psychologist Laura Mulvey who states, “In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its phantasy on to the female form which is styled accordingly.” (Mulvey 4) However, in recent years this theory has been applied to visual arts and literature. As regards literature, this theory allows writers to criticise women representations and their treatment in literature and also writing to change its traditional patriarchal perspective in which women are seen as beautiful objects or products for the heterosexual man viewer. It will be analysed in this paper how Raymon Carver (1938-1988), being an author that “has taken the “dirty” reality of day-to-day life and explored it” (Kita 386), deals with the male gaze and its consequences in his short story They´re not your husband (1973), in which psychological violence against a woman is perpetrated because of her appearance. In addition, it will be explored not only how the male gaze affects women, but also what happens to the male protagonist —as the male gaze shapes some aspects of masculinity as well— in order to reveal the consequences of this perspective on both women and men. For the purpose of this analysis, we will consult different authors such as Simone De Beauvoir, Viola Kita and Michael S. Kimmel. Bibliography Carver, Raymond. “Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?” London: Vintage, 2003. De Beauvoir, Simone. “The Second Sex.” Vintage Classic, 2015. Kimmel, Michael S. “Masculinity as Homophobia: Fear, Shame, and Silence in the Construction of Gender Identity.” Feminism and Masculinities. Oxford University Press, 2004. Kita, Viola. “Dirty Realism in Carver's Work.” Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences , vol. 5, no. 22, Sept. 2014. Web. Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen Journal, 1975.