“He's More a Man Than Any Pair of Rats of You”: Masculinity in Stevenson’s Treasure Island and its Adaptations

Abstract

This project looks at masculinity in novel and film, and answers the questions what image of masculinity Robert Louis Stevenson’s children adventure novel Treasure Island represents and how this image has changed in film, comparing adaptations of Byron Haskin (1950) and Steve Barron (2012). In the past, children were influenced by expected gender models portrayed in literature and this is still happening in media today. Influenced by adaptation theory and gender theory, I will use a comparative approach as while analysing the image of masculinity and of maturity in Stevenson’s novel and in the two film adaptations to see how they changed. Made in a different time and with different audiences in mind, these representations of masculinity have been adjusted showing that they in media are subject to different intentions and perceptions.