Joanne Begiato
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781526128577
- eISBN:
- 9781526152046
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7765/9781526128584
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gender Studies
Manliness in Britain offers a new account of masculinity in the long nineteenth century: more corporeal and material, more emotional, more cross-class, and less heteronormative than other studies. ...
More
Manliness in Britain offers a new account of masculinity in the long nineteenth century: more corporeal and material, more emotional, more cross-class, and less heteronormative than other studies. Using diverse textual, visual, and material culture sources, it shows that masculinities were produced and disseminated through men’s bodies, very often working-class ones, and the emotions and material culture associated with them. It analyses idealised men who stimulated desire and admiration, including virile boxers, soldiers, sailors, and blacksmiths, brave firemen, and noble industrial workers. Also investigated are unmanly men, like drunkards, wife-beaters, and masturbators who elicited disgust and aversion.
The book disrupts the chronology of nineteenth-century masculinities, since it stretches from the ages of feeling, revolution, and reform, to those of militarism, imperialism, representative democracy, and mass media. It also queers these histories, by recognising that male and female desire for idealised male bodies and the gender attributes they embodied was integral to the success of manliness. Imagined working-class men and their materiality was central to broader ideas of manliness and unmanliness. They not only offered didactic lessons for the working classes and made the labouring ranks appear less threatening, they provide insights into the production of middle-class men’s identities.
Overall, it is shown that this melding of bodies, emotions, and material culture created emotionalised bodies and objects, which facilitated the conveying, reproducing, and fixing of manliness in society. As such, the book will be vital for students and academics in the history of bodies, emotions, gender, and material culture. (248 words)Less
Manliness in Britain offers a new account of masculinity in the long nineteenth century: more corporeal and material, more emotional, more cross-class, and less heteronormative than other studies. Using diverse textual, visual, and material culture sources, it shows that masculinities were produced and disseminated through men’s bodies, very often working-class ones, and the emotions and material culture associated with them. It analyses idealised men who stimulated desire and admiration, including virile boxers, soldiers, sailors, and blacksmiths, brave firemen, and noble industrial workers. Also investigated are unmanly men, like drunkards, wife-beaters, and masturbators who elicited disgust and aversion.
The book disrupts the chronology of nineteenth-century masculinities, since it stretches from the ages of feeling, revolution, and reform, to those of militarism, imperialism, representative democracy, and mass media. It also queers these histories, by recognising that male and female desire for idealised male bodies and the gender attributes they embodied was integral to the success of manliness. Imagined working-class men and their materiality was central to broader ideas of manliness and unmanliness. They not only offered didactic lessons for the working classes and made the labouring ranks appear less threatening, they provide insights into the production of middle-class men’s identities.
Overall, it is shown that this melding of bodies, emotions, and material culture created emotionalised bodies and objects, which facilitated the conveying, reproducing, and fixing of manliness in society. As such, the book will be vital for students and academics in the history of bodies, emotions, gender, and material culture. (248 words)
Jane Wood
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198187608
- eISBN:
- 9780191674723
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198187608.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
Nervous dreads are a characteristic feature of a condition known as ‘hypochondriasis’. Among the educated classes, ‘mental exertion and fatigue, or prolonged or overstrained attention and devotion to ...
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Nervous dreads are a characteristic feature of a condition known as ‘hypochondriasis’. Among the educated classes, ‘mental exertion and fatigue, or prolonged or overstrained attention and devotion to a particular subject’, are likely to occasion the disease. It is for this reason that it has often been called ‘the disorder of literary men’. The perception of the male nervous sufferer was one of social, sexual, and psychological anomaly in a culture of robust manliness. This chapter considers portrayals of hypochondriacal males in fiction work, such as Charlotte Brontë's The Professor and George Eliot's ‘The Lifted Veil’, which highlight and challenge the prevailing definitions of manliness that shaped and fostered this perception.Less
Nervous dreads are a characteristic feature of a condition known as ‘hypochondriasis’. Among the educated classes, ‘mental exertion and fatigue, or prolonged or overstrained attention and devotion to a particular subject’, are likely to occasion the disease. It is for this reason that it has often been called ‘the disorder of literary men’. The perception of the male nervous sufferer was one of social, sexual, and psychological anomaly in a culture of robust manliness. This chapter considers portrayals of hypochondriacal males in fiction work, such as Charlotte Brontë's The Professor and George Eliot's ‘The Lifted Veil’, which highlight and challenge the prevailing definitions of manliness that shaped and fostered this perception.
Jane Aaron
- Published in print:
- 1991
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198128908
- eISBN:
- 9780191671739
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198128908.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
This book explores the unique relationship between Charles and Mary Lamb, its implications for gender relations, and its effects upon their writings. The oscillations in the reception of Charles's ...
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This book explores the unique relationship between Charles and Mary Lamb, its implications for gender relations, and its effects upon their writings. The oscillations in the reception of Charles's work cast an interesting light upon the processes and trends of English literary criticism generally, during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Leavisite school of criticism severely damaged Charles's reputation within the framework of academic studies of English literature. Mothers, madness, and social ostracism feature frequently as subtexts in the Lambs' writings, particularly Mary's. This book also analyses the manner in which Charles's writings encode his resistance to the cult of manliness prevalent during his period. The underlying concern is not solely with the Lambs as individuals, but also with their representative function as emblems of other more hidden lives, equally affected by gender and class discrimination, and by the label of madness.Less
This book explores the unique relationship between Charles and Mary Lamb, its implications for gender relations, and its effects upon their writings. The oscillations in the reception of Charles's work cast an interesting light upon the processes and trends of English literary criticism generally, during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Leavisite school of criticism severely damaged Charles's reputation within the framework of academic studies of English literature. Mothers, madness, and social ostracism feature frequently as subtexts in the Lambs' writings, particularly Mary's. This book also analyses the manner in which Charles's writings encode his resistance to the cult of manliness prevalent during his period. The underlying concern is not solely with the Lambs as individuals, but also with their representative function as emblems of other more hidden lives, equally affected by gender and class discrimination, and by the label of madness.
Peter Messent
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- February 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195391169
- eISBN:
- 9780199866656
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195391169.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature, American, 19th Century Literature
An account is given here of Clemens's financial problems in the 1890s, Rogers's intervention and involvement in his business affairs, and the nature of the friendship that developed. A further ...
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An account is given here of Clemens's financial problems in the 1890s, Rogers's intervention and involvement in his business affairs, and the nature of the friendship that developed. A further account, too, is given of changing gender roles at the time, of home‐work relationships, and of the representation of manhood and manliness and the shifts that occurred here too (and especially within a business arena), and as seen within the context of the supposed “crisis of masculinity” in the period. This discussion takes place in the light of Clemens and Rogers's correspondence and the friendship it reflects, but also of the supposed gap between business and culture associated with the late‐nineteenth‐century American world—and illustrates how eventually the two men's roles were reversed as Clemens gained strength while Rogers suffered physical decline and business difficulties. The chapter ends with an analysis of “Which was the Dream?” read in the terms of the previous discussions.Less
An account is given here of Clemens's financial problems in the 1890s, Rogers's intervention and involvement in his business affairs, and the nature of the friendship that developed. A further account, too, is given of changing gender roles at the time, of home‐work relationships, and of the representation of manhood and manliness and the shifts that occurred here too (and especially within a business arena), and as seen within the context of the supposed “crisis of masculinity” in the period. This discussion takes place in the light of Clemens and Rogers's correspondence and the friendship it reflects, but also of the supposed gap between business and culture associated with the late‐nineteenth‐century American world—and illustrates how eventually the two men's roles were reversed as Clemens gained strength while Rogers suffered physical decline and business difficulties. The chapter ends with an analysis of “Which was the Dream?” read in the terms of the previous discussions.
Louis Moore
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780252041341
- eISBN:
- 9780252099946
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252041341.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Sport and Leisure
At its heart, I Fight for a Living is a book about black men who came of age in the Reconstruction and early Jim Crow era--a time when the remaking of white manhood was at its most intense, placing ...
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At its heart, I Fight for a Living is a book about black men who came of age in the Reconstruction and early Jim Crow era--a time when the remaking of white manhood was at its most intense, placing vigor and physicality at the center of the construction of manliness. The book uses the stories of black fighters’ lives, from 1880 to 1915, to explore how working-class black men used prizefighting and the sporting culture to assert their manhood in a country that denied their equality, and to examine the reactions by the black middle class and white middle class toward these black fighters. Through these stories, the book explores how the assertion of this working-class manliness confronted American ideas of race and manliness. While other works on black fighters have explored black boxers as individuals, this book seeks to study these men as a collective group while providing a localized and racialized response to black working-class manhood. It was a tough bargain to risk one’s body to prove manhood, but black men across the globe took that chance.Less
At its heart, I Fight for a Living is a book about black men who came of age in the Reconstruction and early Jim Crow era--a time when the remaking of white manhood was at its most intense, placing vigor and physicality at the center of the construction of manliness. The book uses the stories of black fighters’ lives, from 1880 to 1915, to explore how working-class black men used prizefighting and the sporting culture to assert their manhood in a country that denied their equality, and to examine the reactions by the black middle class and white middle class toward these black fighters. Through these stories, the book explores how the assertion of this working-class manliness confronted American ideas of race and manliness. While other works on black fighters have explored black boxers as individuals, this book seeks to study these men as a collective group while providing a localized and racialized response to black working-class manhood. It was a tough bargain to risk one’s body to prove manhood, but black men across the globe took that chance.
Jarrod L. Whitaker
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199755707
- eISBN:
- 9780199895274
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199755707.003.0003
- Subject:
- Religion, Hinduism
Chapter 2 examines the use of the terms vïrá and vïryá, which signify a man’s role as a brave warrior and his manly virile powers and qualities. R̥gvedic poet-priests promote various ways that men ...
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Chapter 2 examines the use of the terms vïrá and vïryá, which signify a man’s role as a brave warrior and his manly virile powers and qualities. R̥gvedic poet-priests promote various ways that men can prove their masculinity, but the dominant role is that of man as warrior. Poets expect that men defined by the terms vïrá and vïryá will acquire wealth from violent excursions and distribute the resultant spoils among clansmen. The use of these two terms also highlights the patriarchal nature of early Vedic culture as males are marked at birth with this androcentric martial role, while also being objectified as commodities in their own right. In addition, fathers, lords, and sacrificial patrons should possess and control males, whether young or old, and, through ritual performances, these patriarchal figures affirm their status, virility, and command of sons and able-bodied men.Less
Chapter 2 examines the use of the terms vïrá and vïryá, which signify a man’s role as a brave warrior and his manly virile powers and qualities. R̥gvedic poet-priests promote various ways that men can prove their masculinity, but the dominant role is that of man as warrior. Poets expect that men defined by the terms vïrá and vïryá will acquire wealth from violent excursions and distribute the resultant spoils among clansmen. The use of these two terms also highlights the patriarchal nature of early Vedic culture as males are marked at birth with this androcentric martial role, while also being objectified as commodities in their own right. In addition, fathers, lords, and sacrificial patrons should possess and control males, whether young or old, and, through ritual performances, these patriarchal figures affirm their status, virility, and command of sons and able-bodied men.
Michael Fellman
- Published in print:
- 1990
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195064711
- eISBN:
- 9780199853885
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195064711.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, American History: 19th Century
This chapter talks about guerrilla self-conceptions, Union troops' conceptions of self and others, the blurring of combatants, blood sport, and blood revenge. The implicit meanings of the war did not ...
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This chapter talks about guerrilla self-conceptions, Union troops' conceptions of self and others, the blurring of combatants, blood sport, and blood revenge. The implicit meanings of the war did not come from above but instead from the guerillas and the counterguerrillas, involved in combat. These people played out the internalized values of prewar culture. The first part of this chapter gives an analysis of the values and ideologies of the guerrillas, which includes their assertiveness of manliness and honor, as well as the desire to assume legality in their claims to social leadership. In guerrilla war tactics, the nature of the combatants became vague as they reorganized their values and behavior into something inclined to the guerrilla culture.Less
This chapter talks about guerrilla self-conceptions, Union troops' conceptions of self and others, the blurring of combatants, blood sport, and blood revenge. The implicit meanings of the war did not come from above but instead from the guerillas and the counterguerrillas, involved in combat. These people played out the internalized values of prewar culture. The first part of this chapter gives an analysis of the values and ideologies of the guerrillas, which includes their assertiveness of manliness and honor, as well as the desire to assume legality in their claims to social leadership. In guerrilla war tactics, the nature of the combatants became vague as they reorganized their values and behavior into something inclined to the guerrilla culture.
Jane G.V. McGaughey
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- January 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781789621860
- eISBN:
- 9781800341784
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781789621860.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History
Upper and Lower Canada were parts of the Irish Diaspora that presented strong representations of Irish masculinities and deeply-held beliefs about Irish manliness in the decades prior to the Great ...
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Upper and Lower Canada were parts of the Irish Diaspora that presented strong representations of Irish masculinities and deeply-held beliefs about Irish manliness in the decades prior to the Great Irish Famine. While histories of the famine and of the Irish in Canada in the second half of the nineteenth century continue to garner important attention and scholarship, the aim of this history is to relate and reposition the stories of earlier Irish male migrants to the Canadas so that their gendered, violent, and loyal experiences can take their place within the larger story of gender and migration across the Irish Diaspora. Using various case studies from the period of 1798 until 1841, this book argues that Irishmen living in the Canadas were the subject of a vast array of manly constructions and representations. Their involvement in creating, sustaining, or destroying these images and stereotypes had lasting positive and negative effects depending upon one’s position within colonial society. For those who prospered because of how Irish manliness was seen and understood, the themes of gender, violence, and loyalty were part of how they embedded themselves within the fabric of the Canadian colonies and the wider British Empire. For those who were treated poorly because of presumptions made about their manhood, their capacity for violence, or their Irish ethnicity, the Canadas could be an unfriendly and dismissive space. ‘Irishness’ in this period was experienced and defined very differently by individual Irishmen and by the collective fraternities they embodied.Less
Upper and Lower Canada were parts of the Irish Diaspora that presented strong representations of Irish masculinities and deeply-held beliefs about Irish manliness in the decades prior to the Great Irish Famine. While histories of the famine and of the Irish in Canada in the second half of the nineteenth century continue to garner important attention and scholarship, the aim of this history is to relate and reposition the stories of earlier Irish male migrants to the Canadas so that their gendered, violent, and loyal experiences can take their place within the larger story of gender and migration across the Irish Diaspora. Using various case studies from the period of 1798 until 1841, this book argues that Irishmen living in the Canadas were the subject of a vast array of manly constructions and representations. Their involvement in creating, sustaining, or destroying these images and stereotypes had lasting positive and negative effects depending upon one’s position within colonial society. For those who prospered because of how Irish manliness was seen and understood, the themes of gender, violence, and loyalty were part of how they embedded themselves within the fabric of the Canadian colonies and the wider British Empire. For those who were treated poorly because of presumptions made about their manhood, their capacity for violence, or their Irish ethnicity, the Canadas could be an unfriendly and dismissive space. ‘Irishness’ in this period was experienced and defined very differently by individual Irishmen and by the collective fraternities they embodied.
Michael Brown, Anna Maria Barry, and Joanne Begatio (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781526135629
- eISBN:
- 9781526150349
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7765/9781526135636
- Subject:
- History, Military History
Manliness in Britain offers a new account of masculinity in the long nineteenth century: more corporeal and material, more emotional, more cross-class, and less heteronormative than other studies. ...
More
Manliness in Britain offers a new account of masculinity in the long nineteenth century: more corporeal and material, more emotional, more cross-class, and less heteronormative than other studies. Using diverse textual, visual, and material culture sources, it shows that masculinities were produced and disseminated through men’s bodies, very often working-class ones, and the emotions and material culture associated with them. It analyses idealised men who stimulated desire and admiration, including virile boxers, soldiers, sailors, and blacksmiths, brave firemen, and noble industrial workers. Also investigated are unmanly men, like drunkards, wife-beaters, and masturbators who elicited disgust and aversion.
The book disrupts the chronology of nineteenth-century masculinities, since it stretches from the ages of feeling, revolution, and reform, to those of militarism, imperialism, representative democracy, and mass media. It also queers these histories, by recognising that male and female desire for idealised male bodies and the gender attributes they embodied was integral to the success of manliness. Imagined working-class men and their materiality was central to broader ideas of manliness and unmanliness. They not only offered didactic lessons for the working classes and made the labouring ranks appear less threatening, they provide insights into the production of middle-class men’s identities.
Overall, it is shown that this melding of bodies, emotions, and material culture created emotionalised bodies and objects, which facilitated the conveying, reproducing, and fixing of manliness in society. As such, the book will be vital for students and academics in the history of bodies, emotions, gender, and material culture. (248 words)Less
Manliness in Britain offers a new account of masculinity in the long nineteenth century: more corporeal and material, more emotional, more cross-class, and less heteronormative than other studies. Using diverse textual, visual, and material culture sources, it shows that masculinities were produced and disseminated through men’s bodies, very often working-class ones, and the emotions and material culture associated with them. It analyses idealised men who stimulated desire and admiration, including virile boxers, soldiers, sailors, and blacksmiths, brave firemen, and noble industrial workers. Also investigated are unmanly men, like drunkards, wife-beaters, and masturbators who elicited disgust and aversion.
The book disrupts the chronology of nineteenth-century masculinities, since it stretches from the ages of feeling, revolution, and reform, to those of militarism, imperialism, representative democracy, and mass media. It also queers these histories, by recognising that male and female desire for idealised male bodies and the gender attributes they embodied was integral to the success of manliness. Imagined working-class men and their materiality was central to broader ideas of manliness and unmanliness. They not only offered didactic lessons for the working classes and made the labouring ranks appear less threatening, they provide insights into the production of middle-class men’s identities.
Overall, it is shown that this melding of bodies, emotions, and material culture created emotionalised bodies and objects, which facilitated the conveying, reproducing, and fixing of manliness in society. As such, the book will be vital for students and academics in the history of bodies, emotions, gender, and material culture. (248 words)
Joanne Begiato
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781526128577
- eISBN:
- 9781526152046
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7765/9781526128584.00007
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gender Studies
This chapter reveals how manliness was conveyed through beautiful, virile, male bodies. Such appealing male figures and faces were associated with positive emotions that were coded as both manly and ...
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This chapter reveals how manliness was conveyed through beautiful, virile, male bodies. Such appealing male figures and faces were associated with positive emotions that were coded as both manly and moral. This chapter explores their changing forms over time, shaped by modernity, sport, anthropometry and physiognomy, but also addresses the role of male beauty in disseminating ideals of manliness. It takes a queer history approach which deliberately makes strange the conjunction between physical beauty and masculine values. It rejects assumptions about normative masculinities and how they were created and circulated and instead adopts the techniques of scholarship that queers sexual constructions. Overall, it proposes that beautiful male forms and appearances were intended to arouse desire for the gender that these bodies bore. This nuances our understanding of the gaze. It shows that the idealised manly body was active, since it was an agent of prized gender values. Yet, it was also passive, as the erotic object of a female and male desirous gaze, and subordinate, for although some of the descriptions of idealised male bodies in this chapter were elite, many manly and unmanly bodies were those of white working-class men. (191 words)Less
This chapter reveals how manliness was conveyed through beautiful, virile, male bodies. Such appealing male figures and faces were associated with positive emotions that were coded as both manly and moral. This chapter explores their changing forms over time, shaped by modernity, sport, anthropometry and physiognomy, but also addresses the role of male beauty in disseminating ideals of manliness. It takes a queer history approach which deliberately makes strange the conjunction between physical beauty and masculine values. It rejects assumptions about normative masculinities and how they were created and circulated and instead adopts the techniques of scholarship that queers sexual constructions. Overall, it proposes that beautiful male forms and appearances were intended to arouse desire for the gender that these bodies bore. This nuances our understanding of the gaze. It shows that the idealised manly body was active, since it was an agent of prized gender values. Yet, it was also passive, as the erotic object of a female and male desirous gaze, and subordinate, for although some of the descriptions of idealised male bodies in this chapter were elite, many manly and unmanly bodies were those of white working-class men. (191 words)
Lorien Foote
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814727904
- eISBN:
- 9780814728581
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814727904.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: early to 18th Century
During the Civil War, the Union army appeared cohesive enough to withstand four years of grueling war against the Confederates and to claim victory in 1865. But fractiousness bubbled below the ...
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During the Civil War, the Union army appeared cohesive enough to withstand four years of grueling war against the Confederates and to claim victory in 1865. But fractiousness bubbled below the surface of the North's presumably united front. Internal fissures were rife within the Union army: class divisions, regional antagonisms, ideological differences, and conflicting personalities all distracted the army from quelling the Southern rebellion. This book reveals that these internal battles were fought against the backdrop of manhood. Clashing ideals of manliness produced myriad conflicts, as when educated, refined, and wealthy officers (“gentlemen”) found themselves commanding a hard-drinking group of fighters (“roughs”)—a dynamic that often resulted in violence and even death. Based on extensive research into heretofore ignored primary sources, the book uncovers holes in our understanding of the men who fought the Civil War and the society that produced them.Less
During the Civil War, the Union army appeared cohesive enough to withstand four years of grueling war against the Confederates and to claim victory in 1865. But fractiousness bubbled below the surface of the North's presumably united front. Internal fissures were rife within the Union army: class divisions, regional antagonisms, ideological differences, and conflicting personalities all distracted the army from quelling the Southern rebellion. This book reveals that these internal battles were fought against the backdrop of manhood. Clashing ideals of manliness produced myriad conflicts, as when educated, refined, and wealthy officers (“gentlemen”) found themselves commanding a hard-drinking group of fighters (“roughs”)—a dynamic that often resulted in violence and even death. Based on extensive research into heretofore ignored primary sources, the book uncovers holes in our understanding of the men who fought the Civil War and the society that produced them.
Joan Tumblety
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199695577
- eISBN:
- 9780191745072
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199695577.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History, Cultural History
The introduction explains the rationale and structure of the book. It introduces some of the key physical culturists of the era, stressing the number of them who were physicians whose work served to ...
More
The introduction explains the rationale and structure of the book. It introduces some of the key physical culturists of the era, stressing the number of them who were physicians whose work served to popularize eugenicist approaches to physical exercise as well as to reinforce the importance of muscle to manliness. It also unpacks what it was that physical culturists meant when they spoke of the importance of ‘rational’ exercise. It offers some suggestions as to why a crisis in virility was so widely heralded in these years, and carves out the main case of the book — that the interwar period was marked by widespread fears of national decline seen through the medicalized frame of the degeneration of the ‘race’, all mediated through the imagined failure of French manhood. The chapter also stresses the transnational nature of this set of interlocking hygienist concernsLess
The introduction explains the rationale and structure of the book. It introduces some of the key physical culturists of the era, stressing the number of them who were physicians whose work served to popularize eugenicist approaches to physical exercise as well as to reinforce the importance of muscle to manliness. It also unpacks what it was that physical culturists meant when they spoke of the importance of ‘rational’ exercise. It offers some suggestions as to why a crisis in virility was so widely heralded in these years, and carves out the main case of the book — that the interwar period was marked by widespread fears of national decline seen through the medicalized frame of the degeneration of the ‘race’, all mediated through the imagined failure of French manhood. The chapter also stresses the transnational nature of this set of interlocking hygienist concerns
Debra A. Shattuck
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252040375
- eISBN:
- 9780252098796
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252040375.003.0007
- Subject:
- Sociology, Sport and Leisure
Baseball did not become gendered as a man’s sport overnight nor did any single group dominate the cultural metanarrative of baseball as it matured from infancy to adolescence during the nineteenth ...
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Baseball did not become gendered as a man’s sport overnight nor did any single group dominate the cultural metanarrative of baseball as it matured from infancy to adolescence during the nineteenth century. Baseball has been used to symbolize “Americanism,” middle-class, Judeo-Christian values, and “manliness.” Though many vied to control the narrative of America’s national pastime, not every group had equal influence on the ultimate character and culture of baseball. By the end of the nineteenth century, men held almost exclusive control of the narrative of “official” baseball, while women controlled a parallel narrative for the baseball-surrogate called “women’s baseball.” This game became the precursor of softball which emerged in its official form during the 1930s.Less
Baseball did not become gendered as a man’s sport overnight nor did any single group dominate the cultural metanarrative of baseball as it matured from infancy to adolescence during the nineteenth century. Baseball has been used to symbolize “Americanism,” middle-class, Judeo-Christian values, and “manliness.” Though many vied to control the narrative of America’s national pastime, not every group had equal influence on the ultimate character and culture of baseball. By the end of the nineteenth century, men held almost exclusive control of the narrative of “official” baseball, while women controlled a parallel narrative for the baseball-surrogate called “women’s baseball.” This game became the precursor of softball which emerged in its official form during the 1930s.
Rebecca Yearling
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474414098
- eISBN:
- 9781474449502
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474414098.003.0016
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This chapter examines the relationship between grief, revenge and masculinity in John Marston’s Antonio’s Revenge. Unlike other contemporary revenge dramas, the play ends with Antonio alive and ...
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This chapter examines the relationship between grief, revenge and masculinity in John Marston’s Antonio’s Revenge. Unlike other contemporary revenge dramas, the play ends with Antonio alive and unpunished, which critics have tended to interpret either as evidence of Marston’s lack of artistic skill or as a uniquely positive depiction of revenge as necessary and just. This chapter rejects both interpretations, arguing instead that the jarring ending is characteristic of Marston, who frequently pitches genre conventions against perplexing ethical questions in order to unsettle the spectator’s aesthetic expectations and moral judgements. The play also questions the characters’ fantasy of extreme manliness, and its equation of masculinity with violence and death. Although Antonio moves from ‘tears to blood’, coming to embody a vengeful hyper-masculinity, Antonio’s new version of manliness is monstrous and not far from psychosis.Less
This chapter examines the relationship between grief, revenge and masculinity in John Marston’s Antonio’s Revenge. Unlike other contemporary revenge dramas, the play ends with Antonio alive and unpunished, which critics have tended to interpret either as evidence of Marston’s lack of artistic skill or as a uniquely positive depiction of revenge as necessary and just. This chapter rejects both interpretations, arguing instead that the jarring ending is characteristic of Marston, who frequently pitches genre conventions against perplexing ethical questions in order to unsettle the spectator’s aesthetic expectations and moral judgements. The play also questions the characters’ fantasy of extreme manliness, and its equation of masculinity with violence and death. Although Antonio moves from ‘tears to blood’, coming to embody a vengeful hyper-masculinity, Antonio’s new version of manliness is monstrous and not far from psychosis.
Laura Eastlake
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780198833031
- eISBN:
- 9780191871351
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198833031.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval, British and Irish History: BCE to 500CE
Ancient Rome and Victorian Masculinity examines Victorian receptions of ancient Rome from the French Revolution to the First World War, with a specific focus on how those receptions were deployed to ...
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Ancient Rome and Victorian Masculinity examines Victorian receptions of ancient Rome from the French Revolution to the First World War, with a specific focus on how those receptions were deployed to create useable models of masculinity. Romans in Victorian literature were at once pagan persecutors, pious statesmen, pleasure-seeking decadents, and heroes of empire. The Roman parallel was used to capture the martial virtue of Wellington just as it was used to condemn the deviance and degeneracy of Oscar Wilde. Using approaches from literary and cultural studies, reception studies, and gender studies, this book is the first comprehensive examination of the importance of ancient Rome for Victorian ideas about masculinity. With chapters on education, politics, empire, and late Victorian decadence, it makes sense of the manifold and often contradictory representations of Rome—as distinct from Greece—in authors like Wilkie Collins, Anthony Trollope, H. Rider Haggard, Rudyard Kipling, and others.Less
Ancient Rome and Victorian Masculinity examines Victorian receptions of ancient Rome from the French Revolution to the First World War, with a specific focus on how those receptions were deployed to create useable models of masculinity. Romans in Victorian literature were at once pagan persecutors, pious statesmen, pleasure-seeking decadents, and heroes of empire. The Roman parallel was used to capture the martial virtue of Wellington just as it was used to condemn the deviance and degeneracy of Oscar Wilde. Using approaches from literary and cultural studies, reception studies, and gender studies, this book is the first comprehensive examination of the importance of ancient Rome for Victorian ideas about masculinity. With chapters on education, politics, empire, and late Victorian decadence, it makes sense of the manifold and often contradictory representations of Rome—as distinct from Greece—in authors like Wilkie Collins, Anthony Trollope, H. Rider Haggard, Rudyard Kipling, and others.
John Laband
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780300180312
- eISBN:
- 9780300206197
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300180312.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Imperialism and Colonialism
Toward the end of the nineteenth century, the British embarked on a concerted series of campaigns in South Africa. Within three years they waged five wars against African states with the intent of ...
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Toward the end of the nineteenth century, the British embarked on a concerted series of campaigns in South Africa. Within three years they waged five wars against African states with the intent of destroying their military might and political independence, and unifying southern Africa under imperial control. This work tells the story of this cluster of conflicts as a single whole and to narrate the experiences of the militarily outmatched African societies. Fusing the widely differing European and African perspectives on events, it details the fateful decisions of individual leaders and generals, and explores why many Africans chose to join the British and colonial forces. The Xhosa, Zulu, and other African military cultures are brought to vivid life, showing how varying notions of warrior honor and manliness influenced the outcomes for African fighting men and their societies.Less
Toward the end of the nineteenth century, the British embarked on a concerted series of campaigns in South Africa. Within three years they waged five wars against African states with the intent of destroying their military might and political independence, and unifying southern Africa under imperial control. This work tells the story of this cluster of conflicts as a single whole and to narrate the experiences of the militarily outmatched African societies. Fusing the widely differing European and African perspectives on events, it details the fateful decisions of individual leaders and generals, and explores why many Africans chose to join the British and colonial forces. The Xhosa, Zulu, and other African military cultures are brought to vivid life, showing how varying notions of warrior honor and manliness influenced the outcomes for African fighting men and their societies.
Tom Gill
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520267374
- eISBN:
- 9780520950320
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520267374.003.0009
- Subject:
- Sociology, Gender and Sexuality
This chapter focuses on the homeless men of Japan. In particular, it seeks to answer the questions: Why are there any homeless people here in Japan? Why are they nearly all men? In Japan, the ...
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This chapter focuses on the homeless men of Japan. In particular, it seeks to answer the questions: Why are there any homeless people here in Japan? Why are they nearly all men? In Japan, the imbalance between the number of homeless men and homeless women is quite striking. This phenomenon of homeless men in Japan resulted from a gendered conception of personal autonomy that found expression in two ways: first, in a deeply sexist welfare ideology that penalizes men for failing to maintain economic self-reliance, while at the same time keeping women and children off the streets because they are not expected to be self-reliant in the first place; and second, in a concern with self-reliance on the part of homeless men grounded in conceptions of manliness (otokorashisa). In this chapter, five homeless men are studied. Each of them were dealing with the challenge of conceptualizing self-reliance while living on the margins of Japanese society.Less
This chapter focuses on the homeless men of Japan. In particular, it seeks to answer the questions: Why are there any homeless people here in Japan? Why are they nearly all men? In Japan, the imbalance between the number of homeless men and homeless women is quite striking. This phenomenon of homeless men in Japan resulted from a gendered conception of personal autonomy that found expression in two ways: first, in a deeply sexist welfare ideology that penalizes men for failing to maintain economic self-reliance, while at the same time keeping women and children off the streets because they are not expected to be self-reliant in the first place; and second, in a concern with self-reliance on the part of homeless men grounded in conceptions of manliness (otokorashisa). In this chapter, five homeless men are studied. Each of them were dealing with the challenge of conceptualizing self-reliance while living on the margins of Japanese society.
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804757775
- eISBN:
- 9780804779623
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804757775.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
This chapter examines the models of family and their relationship to the nation in the Japanese melodrama Hototogisu by Tokutomi Roka. It examines how this novel negotiates extra-literary discourses ...
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This chapter examines the models of family and their relationship to the nation in the Japanese melodrama Hototogisu by Tokutomi Roka. It examines how this novel negotiates extra-literary discourses involving representations of family, gender and status and analyzes it representation of temporality. This chapter also argues that the ideological contradiction of this melodrama traces a trajectory toward an exclusively male fictive family serving the interconnected needs of manliness and nationalism.Less
This chapter examines the models of family and their relationship to the nation in the Japanese melodrama Hototogisu by Tokutomi Roka. It examines how this novel negotiates extra-literary discourses involving representations of family, gender and status and analyzes it representation of temporality. This chapter also argues that the ideological contradiction of this melodrama traces a trajectory toward an exclusively male fictive family serving the interconnected needs of manliness and nationalism.
Helen McCarthy
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719086168
- eISBN:
- 9781781702659
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719086168.003.0008
- Subject:
- History, Political History
This chapter investigates the extent and nature of women's League-related activism in interwar Britain. The League of Nations Union (LNU)'s recruiting efforts were profoundly gendered. Its propaganda ...
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This chapter investigates the extent and nature of women's League-related activism in interwar Britain. The League of Nations Union (LNU)'s recruiting efforts were profoundly gendered. Its propaganda reinforced the broader trend away from the ideals of ‘manliness’ prevalent before 1914. It also followed the example of the political parties by tending to conceptualise women in homogenising terms. Gender relations preserved tokenism and male power whilst simultaneously offering opportunities for female leadership and self-assertion. The chapter then turns to the major event of the movement's history—the Peace Ballot—treating it as a case study in which the operation of gender can be viewed in particularly sharp relief. Gender relations within the LNU exhibited strong continuities with those prevalent in the mixed political movements of the pre-Suffrage era. Sexual difference was so commonplace a feature of public life that the contradictions made little dent in the League's appeal.Less
This chapter investigates the extent and nature of women's League-related activism in interwar Britain. The League of Nations Union (LNU)'s recruiting efforts were profoundly gendered. Its propaganda reinforced the broader trend away from the ideals of ‘manliness’ prevalent before 1914. It also followed the example of the political parties by tending to conceptualise women in homogenising terms. Gender relations preserved tokenism and male power whilst simultaneously offering opportunities for female leadership and self-assertion. The chapter then turns to the major event of the movement's history—the Peace Ballot—treating it as a case study in which the operation of gender can be viewed in particularly sharp relief. Gender relations within the LNU exhibited strong continuities with those prevalent in the mixed political movements of the pre-Suffrage era. Sexual difference was so commonplace a feature of public life that the contradictions made little dent in the League's appeal.
Lorien Foote
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814727904
- eISBN:
- 9780814728581
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814727904.003.0008
- Subject:
- History, American History: early to 18th Century
This chapter argues that the end of the Civil War did not signal end the North's war for manhood. Different ideals of manhood were still in contention. The war energized honor, boisterous manhood, ...
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This chapter argues that the end of the Civil War did not signal end the North's war for manhood. Different ideals of manhood were still in contention. The war energized honor, boisterous manhood, and physical prowess while simultaneously reinforcing the importance of domestic morality and gentility for those who embraced those attributes. The clear loser in the battle were the undesirable roughs, the men of the North's underclass who had seemed to pose a danger to the army and to the home front through their wild fights and uncontrolled behavior. Many of them were conscripts, and although the army's coercive mechanisms ensured that at least some of them fought in battle, other men rarely acknowledged them as comrades. The remainder of the chapter deals with the how the historical memory of the Civil War has evolved in the decades after the conflict.Less
This chapter argues that the end of the Civil War did not signal end the North's war for manhood. Different ideals of manhood were still in contention. The war energized honor, boisterous manhood, and physical prowess while simultaneously reinforcing the importance of domestic morality and gentility for those who embraced those attributes. The clear loser in the battle were the undesirable roughs, the men of the North's underclass who had seemed to pose a danger to the army and to the home front through their wild fights and uncontrolled behavior. Many of them were conscripts, and although the army's coercive mechanisms ensured that at least some of them fought in battle, other men rarely acknowledged them as comrades. The remainder of the chapter deals with the how the historical memory of the Civil War has evolved in the decades after the conflict.
