"No Longer a Man": Refuting Binarism and Uncovering a Queer Bond in Casino Royale and Live and Let Die.

The 1950s saw a turn towards conservatism in an effort to curb progressive social changes that had begun during the Second World War and return England to an idealised pre-war state. That this impetus was not uniformly upheld across society is not a new idea, but the suggestion that Fleming’s Bond – a mainstream icon of manhood and heterosexuality thanks to the success of the film franchise – disrupts gender and sexual norms is more unexpected. Through a close reading of the novels Casino Royale (1953) and Live and Let Die (1954), this article argues that the character of Bond is constructed through castration. His crisis of masculinity is productive, rather than reductive, however, as it permits him to challenge hegemonic norms of the post-war era, complicating binarisms implicit in and necessary to imperial and patriarchal ideologies. With its interpretation of Bond as a gender non-conforming antihero as a foundation, the article goes on to uncover a queer sexuality in Fleming’s second novel, which platforms alternative sex acts and legitimises desire outside of procreative and heteronormative bounds.