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Cunningham's masculine characters all react to a level of masculinity that nobody will ever achieve. Hegemonic masculinity "was not assumed to be normal in the statistical sense," according to Connell & Messerschmidt (2005, p. 832; emphasis added). Only a small percentage of men might exhibit it. But that was unquestionably typical. As a result, it signified the most admired aspect of being a man and forced men to place themselves in relation to it. Hegemonic masculinity, however, is never entirely held or gained and restricts men's freedom to behave however they like at the risk of being perceived as feminine or unmasculine. Therefore, as Cunningham examines in his writings, men can only aim to imitate or reject this motivating drive. In a fairy-tale tradition, males are represented by swans, an animal that is both attractive and extremely violent (Attebery, 2018). In Andersen's The Wild Swans, the number of brothers is doubled, and a lot of attention is placed on the beauty of their wings. In Grimm's The Six Swans, six brothers have been turned into birds by their evil stepmother, and their sister must remove the enchantment. Swans were Andersen's obsession because he saw them as the ideal representation of manly strength and beauty (Wullschlager, 2000). For instance, the protagonist of The Ugly Duckling experiences ecstasy upon witnessing a swan fight since he has never witnessed something so impressive yet so lovely. Finally, the duckling does not feel less masculine because of his beauty when he grows up to be a swan. Instead, he feels enlightened and elevated by it. Swans were a component of Hans Christian Andersen's inner mythology, appearing frequently in his letters as symbols of mystery and majesty even before he started writing fairy tales, according to Jackie Wullschlager (2000, p. 189).

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