Resisting the urge

I think we can all agree that if Clark Kent really wanted Lois Lane, he could have her in a heartbeat. By "adopting an attitude of cowardliness", however, he refuses to embrace the suave charisma of his super alter-ego as a means of wooing his crush. It is through this refusal that Clark Kent establishes a barrier between his life as a human being and the reality of his alien being. It is understandable that he does not want to compromise the purity of being a superhero by confounding his duties as Superman with the simplicity of his personal life. But couldn't he at least tap into his courageous and heroic personality - just a smidgeon - enough to capture the admiration of the woman he loves? There must be some alternative and compelling reason that he deliberately accepts the hatred of his dream woman than just for the sake of preserving the purity of split personalities.

Kent Worcester associates the qualities of Superman in the original publications to its contemporary political context - the New Deal - in "Superman, Philip Wylie, & the New Deal". He claims that the nature of Roosevelt's New Deal is emulated in the depiction of Superman through his tendency to bring social juctice through a beneficient, yet "meddlesome", sense of leadership. As a social reform that centralized policy and limited free market, the New Deal sparked concern across the nation as Americans witnessed the power of government strive to achieve social justice through interfering with the all-powerful ideology of Capitalism. The reactions of society at this time were captured over and over through a swarm of literary media and genres that sculpted an understanding of the emotions and opinions felt by citizens as a result of the New Deal.

One thing was certain about the way this movement shifted the minds of the population: people were aware that their leaders were trying to create a better society. The notion of a "better society" allowed for the concept of eugenics and the false idea of accelerated evolution to enhance the abilities of the general population for future generations. The rapid expansion of technological, scientific, and industrial discovery created an atmosphere of endless possibilities in the minds of Americans in the 1920s and 30s. The concept of a "better society" along with the scientific discoveries of human biology rendered an ideological output of engineering a superior human; one that could potentially solve social problems that were being addressed by the New Deal. Philip Wylie's "Gladiator" theorized the implications of this possibility, in which an engineered superior being ends in a chaotic race to achieve godliness and destroy mankind as a result of disrupting nature. It is therefore dangerous for mankind to even conceive of enhancing the human body past the natural limitations of its existence.

Back to our original question: for what profound reason would Clark Kent keep the strength and confidence of Superman hidden from the irresistible Lois Lane? The Superman Chronicles were published after Wylie's "Gladiator" had suggested that the implications of enhanced physical ability in humans would end mankind. Perhaps the writers of Superman characterized their hero in a way that carefully accounted for such a danger to society. By keeping Superman as a hero completely separate from Clark Kent as a social vessel, the superior abilities of Superman never become a part of society. Through repeatedly denying his superhero personality, even though he knows that Lois would love him otherwise, Clark realizes that embracing his superhero persona in his life as a reporter would completely go against everything that Superman stands for.