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The Making of the Self-Made Man:

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© Copyright by
RONALD PRESTON BYARS
1979

THE MAKING OF THE SELF-MADE MAN: THE
DEVELOPMENT OF MASCULINE ROLES AND
IMAGES IN ANTE-BELLUM AMERICA

By

Ronald Preston Byars

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Department of History

1979

 

 

 

A A- l l .
' _. [ I I f " . )
v y 5.]

ABSTRACT
THE MAKING OF THE SELF-MADE MAN: THE

DEVELOPMENT OF MASCULINE ROLES AND
IMAGES IN ANTE-BBLLUM AMERICA

BY

Ronald Preston Byars

This study focuses on middle-class masculine roles
in the United States between 1820 and 1860, examined against
the background of extensive social and economic change for
which these years are noted. Borrowing from the insights of
sociologists who have studied the phenomena of rapid change
and "modernization" in contemporary societies, it seeks to
understand the nature of the impact of such phenomena upon
such institutions as the family and the work place, and the
affect upon masculine roles.

Advice books for young men, marriage manuals,
children's literature, medical commentary, popular novels,
travelers' accounts, pOpular literature and other literary
materials comprised the major primary sources for this
study. Secondary sources were also consulted, particularly
those which offered special insight into the primary
materials, or reflected on aspects of social change in
the nineteenth century. Other secondary sources provided

perspectives on the relationship between men and women in

Ronald Preston Byars

contemporary society, and on problems associated with
current images of masculinity. Some use was made of
relevant psychological material, including studies of
the socialization process.

The results of this investigation indicate that
masculine roles changed perceptibly in contrast to earlier
periods in American history, and that those changes were
closely associated with a polarization of sex roles result-
ing from the impact of economic and social change on the
family and the work place. When work became disassociated
from the family setting, men left home to pursue economic
opportunities. They adopted a time-discipline approach to
work and life which distinguished them from their fathers,
and separated them from their home-bound wives. At the same
time, the family suffered the loss of traditional social
functions as those were increasingly taken over by insti-
tutions such as prisons, mental hospitals, and poorhouses.
The family was redefined as an emotional refuge, with
women as its custodian. The result was that roles of men
and women were more sharply separated than they had been.
Child-rearing increasingly took place in a home setting
from which men were absent or distant. For children
growing up in this period, women were the primary figures

in the formation of the conscience.

Ronald Preston Byars

Under pressure from new economic opportunities, and
reinforced by a subtly altered puritan ethic, men adopted
systematic ambition as a virtue. They learned to use time
with great care, to defer gratification, to exercise self-
control, and to sublimate parts of their personality in
order to channel all available energy into the pursuit of
success. Men carried heavy emotional burdens, and suffered
significant losses as they attempted to live up to the
conventional masculine roles. In return, they achieved
remarkable results in American economic development.

Since the male conscience was shaped by women,
women assumed the role of super-ego figures. The voice
of conscience was a feminine voice. In consequence, men
began to experience ambivalent feelings toward the feminine.
The study explores the apparent hostility of men towards the
opposite sex, and considers evidence that men were involved
in a psychological "flight from woman."

Other aspects of the study examine male sexuality.
It is hypothesized, for example, that masturbation phobia
stemmed in part from an unconscious anxiety about the pos-
sibility of the development of complete autonomy between
the sexes. Men sublimated sexual feelings, to a large
extent, to invest that energy in other areas. Sexual

expression was often identified with threats to order.

Ronald Preston Byars

A final chapter draws comparisons between issues of
the nineteenth century and issues current in our own time.
The suggestion is made that hostility between the sexes is
a continuing problem today, and that there continues to be
a need to reshape both child-rearing practices and role

expectations.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Special thanks is due to Professor Peter Levine for
his guidance throughout this study; to my wife, Susan, and
sons, Stephen and Matthew, for their patience and encourage-
ment; and to the congregation of the United Presbyterian

Church of Okemos for their gift of time and moral support.

*****

iii

INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER
I. REORDERING THE FAMILY: CONSEQUENCES
FOR MALES . . . . . . . .
II. HOW TO BE A MAN
III. MEN AND WOMEN .
IV. MEN AND SEXUALITY .
V. CLASS AND REGIONAL VARIATIONS
VI. THE SITUATION TODAY .
BIBLIOGRAPHY

TABLE OF CONTENTS

iv

Page

24

73
113
152
194
229
260

INTRODUCTION

What was it like to be a man in a time dominated by
what Barbara Welter has called"The Cult of True Womanhood"?1
As more attention is given to the roles available to women
in the middle period of the nineteenth century, it becomes
more urgent to discover what were the roles of middle—class
men, and what were the current images of acceptable
masculine behavior.

In recent years women have charged that Western
society has presumed that male history is the only history.
Certainly history has been written largely by and for men.
And yet, what is meant to be male has typically been taken
so for granted that often the cultural evolution of mascu-
line roles has been overlooked. It is as though masculinity
were an absolute which did not change over time.

This study examines masculine roles and images in
the United States between 1820 and 1860, a period of sig-
nificant social and cultural change. The study will focus
chiefly on white, middle-class American men living for the
most part in the North. These men either lived in urban

areas or were influenced by changes emanating from the

 

1Barbara Welter, "The Cult of True Womanhood, 1820-
1860," American Quarterly 18 (Summer 1966): 151-174.

 

growing cities of the period. They were either born of
middle-class parents, or had taken the middle-class as a
model for their personal aspirations. The men studied were
overwhelmingly Protestant. Some brief attention will be
given to Southern men of the planter class, Northerners of
the upper class, the urban poor and immigrants, but chiefly
as contrasts to the prevailing middle-class masculine ethos.
White, middle-class northern American men will form
the chief focus not only because the abundance of source
materials makes them easier to study, but because they
were culturally dominant. They set the standards which
the more modest classes chose, or were strongly encouraged,
to emulate.
Although I began this project motivated chiefly
by academic curiosity, I discovered along the way that
my interest was in fact rather more personal. Growing up
in a conservative midwestern town, I discovered very early
that certain roles were highly admired in boys and others
barely tolerated. To be interested in books and to be
unskilled or uninterested in athletic competition was a
damning combination of traits. It was, for me, not a
question of being ignorant of what acceptable masculine
roles were. They were made only too clear. It was a
matter of finding myself-—for whatever reasons-~unable

to be comfortable with the roles that were most lavishly

rewarded. When the roles do not fit the individual, they
crowd and pinch and hurt. The individual-~and a child
particularly--is not able to ascribe the pain to roles
perhaps unjustly required of him. He feels that in some
undefined way, he is personally inadequate and therefore
legitimately subject to blame. This is so even though he
is powerless to make changes substantial enough to satisfy
others and free him from negative feedback. Persons handle
this kind of stress in various ways, more or less effective,
more or less healthy. In our own time, when gender roles
are being questioned, and, in some cases, reshaped, a new
openness offers some new hope. Those for whom traditional
roles have worked well and those for whom they have not
worked may have the opportunity to establish at least a
measure of personal distance from the roles commonly taken
for granted in our society. To become aware of roles as
historically and culturally conditioned can reduce their
power to intimidate. For some today this may ease the pain
of a bad fit, and perhaps it may even offer some personal
freedom to participate in redefining sex roles so that they
function more effectively and humanely for everyone.

The primary sources consulted for this project have
not been confined to any single genre, but represent a great
variety of examples of the mind of the period. Children's
literature, books of advice to young men, and popular liter-

ature (mostly books but some magazines) were used most

extensively. Marriage manuals, novels and short stories,
etiquette books, medical commentary, biographies, foreign
travelers' reports, and social commentary were consulted.
There are, of course, problems and difficulties
in historical research which attempts to describe something
as elusive as "roles and images." While certain masculine
roles and images were defined explicitly enough to be easily
apparent in the primary sources, others were considerably
more subtle and ambiguous. In some cases, articulate
observers offer direct and precise statements of what
they perceive a masculine role or image to be. In other
cases, statements about or allusions to masculine roles
seem to be an idealized version of reality. It is even
more treacherous to try to explain how any given roles or
images evolved within our culture. The student is forced
to bring to the sources a subjective judgment informed
not only by historical training, but one which taps the
resources offered by the social sciences as well. The
research of anthropologists, sociologists, and psychologists
have been most useful in helping to understand the period
and to provide insight into some of the social and individ-
ual dynamics involved. Neither historical study, nor the
social sciences are, of course, exact sciences. This means
that such a study requires a certain degree of "reading

between the lines." Sometimes the most eloquent statement

about masculine roles and images is drawn from silences and
omissions rather than from direct statements. Conclusions,
then, are always tentative, and can rarely be considered to
have been absolutely proven.2

Before attempting to describe masculine roles and
images, it seems appropriate to offer some definition of
what is meant by those terms. Role definitions exist by
consensus of a significant portion of any population. They
describe what kinds of behavior are appropriate for men,
women, various social and economic classes, vocational
groups, children, or other identifiable groups within
society. While many of these role expectations may become
formalized and enforced by the legal system, or by the
defined rules and regulations of social institutions, many
others are simply informally understood. However, role
definitions are not merely platonic abstractions. They

have a tangible reality as limits or boundaries. Particular

 

21 am particularly appreciative of a point of View
expressed by John Demos in A Little Commonwealth: Family
Life in Plymouth Colony (New York: Oxford University Press,
I970), p. xiii, Who says, "But the demand for certainty--or
at least 'proof'--while reasonable and laudable as a long-
range goal, need not be rigidly maintained at every stage
of historical inquiry. Proof is relative in any case--and
scholars should never, in my opinion, dismiss an important
problem because of 'insufficient data.‘ . . . We must be
ready to ponder what is likel to have happened--when more
certain knowledge is lacking. We may then hope that future
research into the same general area will turn up materials
that serve to strengthen such interpretations, or to modify
them, or to put them down for good."

 

 

persons must either conform or become conspicuous in their
deviation.

Sex roles, in particular, are carefully, although
often indirectly, defined in most societies. Male and
female roles, from earliest times, have clustered around
the social contexts of reproduction and child-rearing.3
Sex roles are taught during the socialization process
with the use of both positive and negative sanctions.

A "role," then, is a pattern of behavior, or a
constellation of behavior patterns which have become
expected norms for all the individuals within the defined
group. An example of a male role would be that of husband,
protector, provider. Roles are considered to serve some
socially necessary purpose. They are enforced by social
groups more or less rigorously, depending on how crucial
a particular role is perceived to be for the well-being
of society as a whole.

An "image" is a less precise term. I use it to
refer to a subjective point of view which judges whether
any particular behavior is "masculine" by the informal
definitions of the society. A male image would be a
judgment, for instance, about whether a taste for music
could be considered more nearly "masculine" or "feminine"

by the unwritten standards of a particular society.

 

3Jetse Sprey, ”On the Origins of Sex Roles,"
Sociological Focus 5 (Winter 1971-72): 6.

 

No doubt there are people who feel that gender
roles are totally negative and oppressive and should be
abandoned altogether. However, when roles are styled close
to the realities of a given culture, they serve a useful
purpose. It would be socially chaotic and personally dis-
astrous if each individual were forced to invent his/her
personal roles from scratch with no help from society. The
utilitarian value of any kind of socially realistic and
reasonably fair role is that to the degree that it is
learned successfully, it becomes automatic. When persons
are able to make a role part of themselves, a great deal of
psychic energy becomes available for other things. To have
to design one's own roles every day seems attractive, but
the necessity of continually facing options drains energy
which might otherwise be employed more creatively.

Roles serve a positive purpose insofar as they
manage to define realistically the various functions
necessary to make the society work. A society as a whole
does have a right to define what roles are essential to its
health and survival, as long as no group is singled out to
bear more than its share of the social burdens. A healthy
society, furthermore, can tolerate exceptions to its
standard role definitions.

However, role definitions tend to survive past the

point where they fit the current needs of society. When

the standard roles begin to stifle individuality or demand
too much of society's energy to be maintained, they become
dysfunctional (from the standpoint either of the individual
or of society). Or, when roles are more often defied than
followed, they have become socially dysfunctional and demand
to be redefined if the society is to survive in healthy
condition.

"Redefining" roles, however, is not a simple matter.
Social roles--and perhaps especially sex roles--emerge
within a society without being negotiated by some explicit
or democratic process. Where do sex roles come from? By
what authority do they exist? Why do they have so much
power over us?

There are several theoretical approaches to the
question of sex roles. Some students of the subject believe
that sex roles are deeply rooted in the biology of the two
sexes.“ Others hold that sex roles as we know them have

their roots in primitive conditions rather then in biology.5

 

I‘Lionel Tiger in Men in Groups (New York: Random
House, 1969) believes that primitive society required of
each sex specialized functions, which in time left a
physiological imprint which is genetically carried from
one generation to another.

 

5John Gagnon suggests that the differences in
physical strength between men and women created a functional
distinction between sex roles which, in time, became a moral
distinction as well. Such "moral distinctions" are trans-
mitted culturally from generation to generation; see, e.g.,
his article "Physical Strength, Once of Significance," in
Joseph H. Pleck and Jack Sawyer, eds., Men and Masculinity
(Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1974).

Another point of view is that sex roles are somehow
related to our bodies and the images we have of ourselves
physically.6 Still another way of understanding sex roles
is to see them as strictly learned behavior. The latter
point of view attempts to explain the origins of sex roles
chiefly in terms of environmental factors, evolving social
customs, and cultural conditioning. In other words, almost
all sex roles are learned rather than genetically based.
And yet, even those who most strongly emphasize
roles as culturally conditioned make some concessions to
genetics. Janet Saltzman Chafetz, for instance, who is a
teacher and feminist, acknowledges that findings concerning
the functions of hormones and chromosomes demonstrate the
need not to neglect the biological component when studying
the roots of human behavior, including sex roles.7 However,

Chafetz believes that the great majority of behavioral and

 

6Margaret Mead, in Male and Female: A Study of the
Sexes in a Changing World (New’York: William MOrrowrg Co.,
1949), holds that the reproductive process and patterns of
nurturing children are basic to the different ways that men
and women learn to perceive themselves, their relation to
the opposite sex, and their relation to society.

 

 

7For example, there is research to indicate that
males may have a greater inherent tendency towards agres-
sive, even violent behavior--at least those males with extra
X chromosomes or testosterone. Similarly, there are aspects
of maternal behavior--especially shortly after childbirth--
which may be innate to the female endocrine system; see,
e.g., Chafetz's Masculine/Feminine or Human? An Overview
of the Sociology of Sex Roles (Itasca, 111.: F.IL Peacock,
Ific.,T1974).

 

 

10

psychological characteristics considered to be masculine

or feminine in any given culture are not innate to males
and females. She cites in support the enormous amount of
cross-cultural variation reported by Margaret Mead and
others, which would be virtually impossible to explain

were cultural conditioning not far more significant than
heredity. Some few innate differences probably do differ
by gender. It is also quite probable, however, that socio-
cultural factors can be institutionalized in such a way that
they virtually obliterate the effects of any such innately
different tendencies between the sexes. This is because
these traits are, at most, predispositions to behave in
certain ways rather than instinctual. They are, therefore,
modifiable. Chafetz's conclusion is that learned sex roles
are far more crucial than biological gender. Any innate
differences between the sexes are a matter of degree, not
of kind.

Sex roles cannot be understood without examining
the given culture in which they have developed. Chafetz,
following Margaret Mead, traces a significant number of
learned gender roles to "womb envy." She speculates that
in primitive societies, the birth process must have seemed
spectacular, awesome, and even mystical. Males, by way of
compensation, tried to appropriate for themselves everything

else which was mystical, or conferred status, or was

11

culturally defined as creative.8 The result was that
cultural patterns came into being which were actually

rooted in the need of males to find compensation for their
own inability to give birth. Mead gives evidence for this
in her examples of the initiatory rites of various primitive
cultures, all of which are clearly patterned after the birth
process.9

The patriarchal pattern emerged in part as a result
of innate differences in physical strength and bodily func-
tion. It is also rooted in attempts by males to fashion
for themselves roles equally enviable and creative as those
of women. However it may be defined, creativity is a basic
need to be found in all human beings. While women found
psychic fulfillment in child-bearing and nurturing, men
felt a need to seek a similar fulfillment in other ways.

If one could discover the original context in which
particular sex roles were formed, they would probably be
found appropriate and functional to that specific setting.
Jetse Sprey believes that elements of exploitation and
subjugation probably did not characterize the original
family setting.1° Generally speaking, they met the needs
of both sexes in a way that was realistic for that cultural

setting, without doing any great injustice to either.

 

8Ibid., p. 22.
9Mead, Male and Female, pp. 102-104.

 

1°Sprey, "Origins of Sex Roles," p. 6.

12

Sex roles emerge organically rather than by an
overt and explicit negotiation. That is, they grow and
change in response to a great diversity of stimuli and a
variety of cultural needs. For this reason, while they
are nearly always in process of changing, they change
slowly and unevenly. In any time of rapid social change,
sex roles are likely to change rapidly also. Due to the
unevenness of social change, they will be out of phase at
many points with the new social context. This is bound
to cause stress.

It seems safe to say that even when gender roles
are most carefully synchronized with the social context,
they will not work well for everybody. Ruth Hartley sug-
gests that whatever the sex roles may be in any culture,
they all share one difficulty. That is that they have been
defined by cultural forces outside the individual, without
any particular reference to his or her particular personal-
ity, needs, or native endownments. Since roles are defined
by forces external to particular persons, they may or may not
be appropriate for any one individual. The individual is
nevertheless required to fit into the pattern of roles

prescribed by the culture.11

 

11Ruth B. Hartley, ”Sex-Role Pressures and the
Socialization of the Male Child," Psychological Reports
5 (1959): 457-468.

13

Explaining that social systems need to delimit
people's behavior in order to keep the systems functioning,
Sidney M. Jourard says that no social system can use all of
a person's self and still keep the system functioning well.
This is the purpose of roles of all sorts--occupational,
age, and familial roles as well as sex roles. The socially
defined roles help men and women to learn just what they are
expected to do or refrain from doing for the sake of keeping
the social system functioning properly. Jourard adds that
a person should not feel constrained to root out every
aspect of self which is neither useful, moral, nor in
vogue!12

Margaret Mead has also noted the potential dangers
inherent in the limitations of sex roles. She says that in
all civilization there is a tendency to limit an activity
to one sex or the other by making artificial distinctions.
Thus the actual capacities of human beings are suppressed.
The result is that both men and women are limited, and the
activity itself cannot be developed as fully as it might
be.13

The cost to individuals may be quite high. Sex
roles are terribly difficult to deal with. Although they

are defined by forces outside the individual, they have been

 

12Sidney M. Jourard, "Some Lethal Aspects of the Male
Role," in Pleck and Sawyer, eds., Men and Masculinity, p. 28.

 

13Mead, Male and Female, p. 374.

 

l4

programmed into each person's unconscious by the
socialization process. While the socially defined roles
may not be altogether appropriate for particular individ-
uals, the demand to conform will seem to come from within
one's own conscience as much or more than from outside.
The nonconformist is likely to be punished as severely by
his own psyche as by social sanctions. It will be shown
later that socialization into sex roles poses peculiar
difficulties for males, and in some respects is more com-
plicated than for females. Deviation from masculine roles
carries penalties which strike at the roots of a male's
self-image. Sex roles, then, are binding both externally
and from within. Even for those who manage to live with
the socially defined sex roles, there is often a cost to
be paid in terms of shutting off certain segments of one's
personality or forcing one's self to exaggerate other ele-
ments. Nearly everyone will find sex roles uncomfortable
and confining at some point or other, even where they have
been well-tuned to the realities of the culture. Society
itself loses when conformity exerts its priority ruthlessly.
If this is true when gender roles are most carefully meshed
with the needs of society, how much more so when traditional
roles must adapt to a rapidly changing social context!

It will be presumed in this study that sex roles are

largely culturally conditioned. Although there may in fact

15

be certain innate temperamental differences linked to
gender, sex roles themselves are not rigidly defined by
"laws of Nature." Therefore, it is important to understand
the social context in which middle-class white men had to

learn to live between 1820 and 1860.

Historians have described the period between
1820 and 1860 as deeply influenced by geographic mobility,
growing urbanization, the transportation revolution, the
creation of national markets, and the growth of economic
opportunities. It was a period in which traditional pat-
terns of life and work were breaking down, and new ones
were slowly emerging. Douglas Miller has described this

period as The Birth of Modern America.l“ Richard Brown,

 

borrowing the concept of "modernization" from the discipline
of sociology, has tried to apply it to the American histor-

ical experience in his book, Modernization: The Transfor-

 

mation of American Life, 1600-1865.15 While Brown believes

 

 

1"Douglas T. Miller, The Birth of Modern America,
1820-1850 (Indianapolis/New Yofk: The Bobbs-MerriIl"Co.,
Inc., 1970).

 

 

15Richard D. Brown, Modernization: The Transforma-
tion of American Life, 1600-1864 (New York: Hill 8 Wang,
1976). Other works which help to set the background for
this period are Walter W. Rostow, The Stages of Economic
Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto, 2nd ed. (Cambridge:
University Press, 1971); George Rogers Taylor, The Trans-
portation Revolution, 1815-1860 (New York: Holt, Rinehart
8 Winston, 1964); Thomas C. Cochran and William Miller, The
Age of Enterprise: A Social History of Industrial America
(New Yofk: Harper 8 Row, 1942); and Nancy P. Cott, The
Bonds of Womanhood: "Women's Sphere" in New England, 1780-
IB33TTNew Haven/London: *Yale University Press, 1977).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

16

that the process of "modernization” began in America long
before the nineteenth century, he sees the period 1820-1860
as a key time in which many forces coalesced to create
significantly different patterns of life and work.

Brown is particularly interested in the changing
work patterns of the nineteenth century. A symbol for those
changing patterns is the clock, which became omnipresent
after 1820. There began to be a preoccupation with the
careful, measured, use of time in a way that marked this
period as different from previous American experience.
While the new concern for the efficient use of time was
not welcomed enthusiastically by everyone (it was, in fact,
often resisted), it overcame previous patterns. It became
a distinctive feature of the period, and had a remarkable
shaping influence on all values associated with work.

The changes of the first half of the nineteenth
century had great impact at the point of work. Changes
in work patterns were key to the transformation of sex
roles. As improvements in transportation linked formerly
separated regional markets, and merchant capitalists began
to devise methods of meeting the needs of those markets,
the old style of home-based work centered around a master
craftsman, apprentices, and assorted family members dis-
integrated. As markets expanded, the need for efficient
production grew, and had an effect even on the working

patterns of the farmer. The old, leisurely, task-oriented

17

ways no longer served well in an economy increasingly
attuned to growth and the pursuit of new opportunities.

Observers during the first half of the nineteenth
century commented on the restless and energetic ways that
men responded to what seemed, at least, to be unlimited
opportunities to improve their condition in life. Men
proved capable of developing remarkable habits of self-
discipline and perseverance in the pursuit of economic
success. Drawing on the old Puritan values, they turned
the virtues associated with righteousness into formulas
for personal achievement.

While the period was one of great optimism, it was,
paradoxically, also a time of considerable anxiety. An

editorial in the Graham Journal in 1837 worried over the

 

mounting pressures of the times. It offered the Opinion
that "the artificial wants" of society were aggravating the
evils complained of by pulpit, press, and popular opinion.
The editor suggested that everyone could have their needs
met and have energy left over for others, if people would
merely get their priorities in order. Americans should
consider what their basic needs really were, and discipline
themselves to "indulge in nothing but what is requisite for
health and comfort, disregarding the extravagance of civic

life,"16 and all would be well.

 

16David Campbell (ed.), Graham Journal of Health and
Longevity I:9 (1837): 72.

 

 

18

David J. Rothman has discovered that nineteenth-
century medical superintendents of mental asylums looked
nostalgically back to the stability of the eighteenth
century.17 It seemed to these men that in the past, men
had taken their place in an hierarchy, had known their place
in society, and had not engaged in competitive action to
change their stations in life. Children had been content,
the medical directors believed, to follow in the footsteps
of their fathers without entertaining ambitions to rise
above the stations into which they were born.

Historian Marvin Meyers believes that the Jackson-
ians were both anxious over change, and at the same time
among the most volatile agents of change.18 They were
deeply involved in the continuous stimulation of a process
which, on the other hand, caused them considerable anxiety.
Meyers has used the term "adventurous conservative" to
describe one who struggles to advance himself, and then,
when he has achieved some of his goals, reverses his
attitude and becomes conservative of the property and
position which a fluid and mobile society has made it
possible for him to gain. That curious ambivalence,

combination of optimism and anxiety, runs through the

 

17David J. Rothman, The Discovery of the Asylum:
Social Order and Disorder in the New Republic (Boston/
Toronto: Little, Brown 8 Co., 1971).

 

18Marvin Meyers, The Jacksonian Persuasion: Politics
and Belief (Stanford: Stanford DnIVersity Press, 1957).

 

19

writings of the period. People seem to have reveled in
the personal freedom and optimism they experienced while at
the same time feeling a certain intimidation by growth in
the scale of society, with its accompanying impersonality
and remoteness.

The anxiety of persons living in the mid-nineteenth
century was real, and deep. Walter E. Houghton's study
of Victorian England between 1830 and 1870 suggests some
parallels between the two societies. Houghton describes
English society in that period as characterized by serious
unrest and anxiety. This, he remarks, is contrary to popu-
lar notions, which tend to view the Victorian era in England
strictly in terms of excitement and optimism. Houghton
attributes this anxiety to several factors: The "habit
of doubt," which was bred unconsciously in response to the
proposal of one radical program after another, was one.
The result was a continual hubbub of contending theories,
with the consequence that one was left with an uneasy
feeling that his beliefs were no longer quite secure.19
Another factor was the vast increase of scientific and
historical knowledge, often overwhelming in its effect.
It often left the Victorians baffled by the sheer number

and complexity of its implications. Other factors were

 

19Walter E. Houghton, The Victorian Frame of Mind,
1830-1870 (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 1957),
p. 12.

 

 

20

the ever-present possibility of failure and the increasingly
apparent sense of loneliness and alienation.2° Houghton
believes that it was in the nineteenth century that the
feeling of isolation and loneliness, with which we are
so familiar, first appeared. It was the consequence of
the breakup of a long-established order and the resulting
fragmentation of both society and thought. The old bonds
that united people were broken, and they became acutely
conscious of separation. Thus there emerged a loneliness
for a lost companionship (both human and divine); nostalgia
for an earlier, simpler, more peaceful world and a unifying
belief.21

What Houghton says of England was true also for
the United States if one makes allowances for the fact that
Americans had been undergoing the experience of breaking
with traditional society to some extent throughout their

history on the continent. Nevertheless, the acute changes

 

2°"In a period when hectic booms alternated with
financial panics and there was no such thing as limited
liability, the business magnate and the public investor
were haunted by specters of bankruptcy and the debtor's
jail." But fear of failure was moral and spiritual as well
as financial. "Conscientious souls who tried to achieve a
life of absolute purity and self-denial might experience an
almost daily sense of failure, distressing in itself and
frightening in its implications; or at least they were
dismayed to find quite different ideas glaringly apparent
in the world around them." (Houghton, ibid., pp. 61-62.)

21Ibid., p. 77.

21

of the mid-nineteenth century were experienced both as
liberating and as threatening to Americans of the time.
Their commitment to the new was at the same time thoroughly
mixed with attachment to values of long standing which were
then enduring severe challenge.22

Writing in 1850, Maria McIntosh expressed her view
of the times when she noted that in the Northeastern and
Middle states, "the rapid variation of fortune resulting
from commercial enterprise, have a tendency to engender
feverish dreams and wild speculations. Life under such
circumstances, becomes a great game of chance."23

Anxiety about change and what seemed to be threats
both to social order and to traditional values caused many

contemporaries to worry about the American future. This

period saw the birth of a number of movements which proposed

 

22Richard Weiss supports this conclusion. He writes
in The American Myth of Success: From Horatio Alger to
Norman VincentTPeale (New York/London: Basic Books, Inc.,
1969), pp. 29,)35, T'By the 1830's conduct-of—life literature
begins to reflect a certain concern over the threat which
changing patterns of American life posed for traditional
values. . . . In the context of a choice between capitalism
and socialism, self-help literature certainly would support
the former. These, however, were not the alternatives
Americans faced. Instead the choice was between the values
of an old and traditional capitalism, and those of a new
and innovative one. . . . Self-help writers were caught
squarely in the middle of the conflict, and their books
reflected the tension and ambivalence of the world around
them. They attempted to reconcile the values of the old
with the energies of the new at a time when the two were
becoming hopelessly incompatible."

 

23Maria J. McIntosh, Woman in America: Her Work and
Her Reward (New York: D. Appleton 8 Co., 1850), p. 128.

 

22

radical alternatives to the mainstream. Nevertheless, most
middle-class Americans sought other means of preserving
essential values. They turned to women and the institution
of the home as the first lines of defense against the loss
of traditional morality and standards. Between 1820 and
1860, a good many writings appeared giving advice on domes-
tic relations between husbands and wives, child-rearing,
and personal discipline. These represent both an effort

to hold on to the best from the past, and to accommodate

to a changed and changing social situation. Women and the
home were the linchpin holding together old and emerging
values in a new synthesis. In such a situation, what was

happening to men, and to masculine roles?

The study of masculine roles between 1820 and 1860
among Americans of the middle-class will begin with a
review of the affect of social change on families during
this era, with particular attention to masculine sex roles:
"Reordering the Family: Consequences for Males." The
second chapter will be a broad survey of masculine roles
and images, describing "How to Be a Man," as middle-class
people of the nineteenth century saw it. "Men and Women,"
the third chapter, will be concerned with a look at the
relations between two sexes in the Jacksonian era and the

growing tension in that relationship. "Men and Sexuality"

23

will be the major focus of the fourth chapter, and the
fifth, "Class and Regional Variations of Masculine Roles,"
will be a review of masculine roles and images apart from
the Northern, urban-influenced middle-class. The con—
cluding chapter, "The Situation Today," will look at

some of the issues raised by the study and reflect on

their implications for today.

CHAPTER I

REORDERING THE FAMILY: CONSEQUENCES
FOR MALES

During the first half of the nineteenth century,
there were significant changes in the social functions of
the family, and in the relations between husbands and wives,
parents and children. These changes helped to reshape the
basic patterns of masculine and feminine roles, and to alter
the traditional pattern of socialization into sex roles.
They also contributed to new images of masculinity and
femininity, and ultimately heightened the degree of
tension between the two sexes.

Most important, the urban family began to lose
its economic function. This happened gradually, but was
certainly well underway by the 18205. The independent
craftsman had begun to feel pressure from new ways of
organizing production. In earlier times, a shoemaker,
for example, relied on his whole family for help in making
shoes. With the 18205, this pattern of teamwork had begun
to break down. The independent shoemaker was being replaced

by central shop manufacturers who hired journeymen and

24

25

binders on an individual basis.1 The merchant capitalist
bought piece goods from various sources and sold them him-
self. Fewer artisans created their own product from begin-
ning to end, or sold them personally. Products were no
longer made only on order for specific customers. Instead,
large orders were made up on speculation. These were sold
by the merchant capitalist in regional and national markets
as well as local ones. Gradually, the master craftsman lost
control over his markets and his methods. Under the pres—
sure of the new system, the apprentice system also began
to break down.

By the 18205, the household was losing its position
as the primary link between the economy and the society.
In some places (e.g., Lowell) the entire production process
was being moved under one roof. Mass-production manufac-
turing had become a reality, even though on a small scale.
After 1815 there was a sharp decline in household manufac-
tures. Between 1820 and 1840, the number of people engaged
in manufactures increased 127 percent, while those occupied

in agriculture increased only 79 percent.2

 

1Alan Dawley, Class and Community: The Industrial
Revolution ingLynn (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1976), p. 45.

 

 

2Ann Douglas, The Feminization of American Culture
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977), pp. 50-51.

 

26

Changes in manufacturing, in the trades, and in
the methods and extent of marketing had two major effects:
they created a displaced class of persons suffering from
loss of control over their own livelihoods and a corre-
sponding loss of status; and they created new economic
opportunities for ambitious entrepreneurs. In both cases,
economic production was separated from the household and
the family setting. This contrasts, to some degree, with
the pattern of earlier generations. The colonial family
generally functioned as a social and economic unit.
Whether farming, retailing, or artisan, the economy
was based in the household. Everyone in the family
participated in the family's "work" in one way or another.
John Demos' study of Plymouth Colony makes it clear that
in that early period work was a natural extension of family
life. It was intermingled with all the other activities
of the household.3

Since the household was not sharply separated from
society at large, neither were masculine and feminine roles
sharply separated. There was an overlapping of roles in
colonial society significant enough to furnish a contrast
with later developments. The need to establish a foothold
in the New World and guarantee survival required the labor

of women alongside that of men. Nice distinctions between

 

3Demos, Little Commonwealth.

 

27

sex roles became superfluous in the face of such conditions.“
In colonial times women were relatively more free to take
on economic roles which in the nineteenth century became
restricted to men.5

The nineteenth-century family was also in the
process of losing other traditional functions. In the
decades after 1820, penitentiaries began to be erected
for the criminal, asylums were built for the "insane,"
almshouses were constructed to house the poor, orphan
asylums were opened for homeless children, and reformatories
were set up for delinquents. David J. Rothman suggests a
reason for this sudden turn to specific institutions to
replace functions formerly located in the household. The
creation of institutions and asylums in the Jacksonian
period was "first and foremost a vigorous attempt to pro-
mote the stability of the society at a moment when tradi-

tional ideas and practices appeared outmoded, constricted,

 

l‘Writing about Plymouth Colony in particular, John
Demos has said, ”In short, this does not seem to have been
a society characterized by male dominance. There is no
evidence at all of habitual patterns of deference in the
relations between the sexes. John Robinson and many others,
too, may have assumed that woman was the 'weaker vessel' and
that 'subjection' was her natural role. But as so often
happens with respect to such matters, actual behavior was
another story altogether." (Ibid., p. 95.)

5Elizabeth Anthony Dexter, Colonial Women of
Affairs: A Study of Women in Business and the Professions
ih America before l776’(Boston/New York: Houghton Mifflin
Co., 1924).

 

 

28

"5 Family patterns had begun to change.

and ineffective.
and the population had grown larger and more mobile.
Households could no longer serve effectively as social
welfare institutions, as they had in colonial times.
This was so particularly in growing urban areas. Mobility
meant a greater number of displaced persons, not known to
the people of the new community. It also meant an increase
in the number of persons who were judged to be dysfunctional
in one way or another. The family was already vulnerable
because of its own changing roles. It was simply not able
to bear the increased burden of serving as a welfare insti-
tution under the mounting pressures of the times. The
creation of special institutions began as an attempt to
recreate, on an institutional scale, the environment of
a disciplined household.

It was roughly 1820 when the family began to
experience the dismantling of its traditional economic
and social functions. As the workplace was transferred
outside the home, and as other institutions were created
to replace the household as an asylum, the role of the
middle-class family in urban settings began to shift
rather radically. The family as such ceased to be a

unit of production, and became instead a unit of

consumption.

 

6Rothman, Asylum, p. xviii.

29

The shift of traditional social and economic
functions from the home had an important impact on the
ways that men and women perceived the world. Women of
the middle and upper classes remained in the home and,
in fact, became more nearly confined in it. Men moved
out into a bustling, ambitious milieu in which a different
perspective and mind-set from earlier generations was
developing. Up until this time, all work in America,
whether done primarily by men or women, had been what
E. P. Thompson has called "task-oriented."7 That is,
people moved from task to task as each seemed necessary,
indifferent to time or clocks or schedules, except perhaps
nature's own. When men followed their work out of the home,
women continued to work in a task-oriented fashion. Child
care and housekeeping lent themselves to a task-orientation.
On the other hand, men were moving into a world in which
production was becoming systematized and routinized. The
world of work had made a leap of consciousness into what
Thompson has called a "time-discipline orientation."° Men's
habits, their perception of the world, their orientation in
space and time began to be reshaped according to the demands

of schedules. Men and women were beginning to experience a

 

7Edward Palmer Thompson, "Time Work-Discipline, and
Industrial Capitalism," Past and Present 28 (1967): 56-59,
60, 70-79.

 

8Ibid.

30

separateness at a level perhaps not quite conscious, but
close to the springs of behavior.

It is as though the dismantling of the formerly
integrated functions of the household into domestic and
economic divisions, private and public parts, had also
divided the one world once shared by men and women together.
Men, whether consciously or not, could not have helped but
notice that women's orientation was different from what
theirs had become. Nancy Cott speculates that men may have
been drawn to those aspects of women's household work that
were still "premodern." The premodern, task-oriented style
of work was easily understood, because it responded to
immediate needs. It appealed because it represented not
strictly "work," but ”life," a way of being. But at the
same time, the premodern character of most women's work
seemed inefficient, nonurgent, not carefully planned.

Men began to distinguish women's work from their own
and designating it as women's "sphere."9

This curious word "sphere" began to be used widely
at the beginning of the period, and soon became commonplace.
It seems no accident that the word "sphere," in its primary
definition, refers to a globe. This special designation

was used to indicate the separateness of men's and women's

 

9Nancy F. Cott, The Bonds of Womanhood: "Women's
Sphere" in New England, 1780-1835 (New HavenILondon: Yale
UniverSity Press, 1977), pp. 58-59.

 

31

worlds. Men were to have uninhibited domain over their
"sphere," their world; and women over theirs. One was wide
and expansive, one narrow and restricted. One was efficient
and unemotional, the other rich with feeling.
Timothy Shay Arthur, writing in 1850, had developed

a perspective which rationalized the separate spheres of
men and women as genetically predetermined. He wrote, "In
man we find a peculiar development of brain,--the organ by
which the mind acts,--that marks his difference from the
woman; and in woman there is a peculiar development that
marks her difference from the man. . . ."1° Arthur elab-
orated on the physiological differences that supposedly
distinguished the two sexes--differences relating
particularly to the brain.

In man, the intellectual region shows a larger

development, and in woman, that region of the

brain by which the affections of the mind come

into act1V1ty.

The affections of a man are, as a general thing

guided by his reason; and the reason of woman,

as a general thing, is guided by her affections.11
Nineteenth-century sex roles had become, in the minds of

many, fixed by nature. Physiology itself could be cited

to prove that men were destined to function in the world

 

1°Timothy Shay Arthur, Advice to Young Men on Their
Duties and Conduct in Life (Boston: Phillips, Sampson &
Co., 1840), p. 166.

 

11Ibid., p. 167.

32

where impersonal logic and reason were preeminent, while
women were destined to take charge of those areas of life
having to do with feeling and sentiment.

The feminine sphere, to which women and girls were
restricted, embraced principally the home, religion, and
culture. The masculine sphere included everything else,
although males did not thereby relinquish their claim to
authority in the areas reserved for women. It was abso-
lutely clear that the world of politics and business lay
within the masculine sphere. In a series of lectures to
young men given by E. H. Chapin in 1840, the alignments
of the two spheres were described. Chapin wrote,

Both have their appropriate spheres of action,

and in their spheres exercise a deep and power-
ful influence. Man is placed more immediately

in contact with the tide and turmoil of existence;
woman has a more obscure and peaceful lot.

It is for man to struggle and toil in the noontide
and with the multitude--to stand forth in the
perilous battle of life and bear the brunt of

the stormy shock; it is for woman to bind up the
wounded, to breathe a Sabbath rest upon the
troubled spirit--to nerve the weary with strength
and the desponding with fortitude. 2

Men, for their part, observed women's separate
"sphere" with mixed reactions. Men felt drawn to idealize

the home (women's "sphere”), which in its premodern aspects

was so deeply attractive, and at the same time to scorn it.

 

12E. H. Chapin, Duties of Yougg Men, Exhibited in Six
Lectures; with an Anniversary Address (Boston: Abel)
Tompkins 8 B. B. Mussey, 1840), p. 164.

 

33

Throughout the literature of the period there is a strong
sense of ambivalence about what was happening to middle-
class society. If the novelists, writers, and lecturers

of the time could be lined up, there would be, at one
extreme, those who embraced the new entrepreneurial culture
13 £939, and at the other extreme, those who rejected it
altogether. However, these extremes are hard to find.

The majority of persons whose writings are available to

us come from nearer the center of the continuum.

It is often the same persons who reaffirm the
disappearing values of the past on the one hand, and offer
their up-to—date formulae for the pursuit of success on
the other. The same writers--or, at least, writers with
similar backgrounds and commitments--ignore the role of
husband and father when giving advice to young men, and
then turn around and underscore the sanctity of the domestic
relationship. The reason for this seems to be that many
people simultaneously dreaded the passing of cherished old
ways, and were fascinated with the promise of the new ways.
As many of us often are, they were, in fact, of two minds.
It occurred to them that their society might be decaying,
but they were fascinated with the new possibilities
nevertheless.

This should not be considered utterly inconsistent.

Clergy, doctors, schoolteachers and others who had a

34

responsibility for helping people to understand themselves
and their social role were trying to deal constructively
with a given situation. Both when they succumbed to the
temptation to make nostalgic preachments and when they
constructed disciplines for getting ahead, they wanted

to hold together the values of both worlds--the one that
was passing, and the one that was evolving. They were
trying to be consistent in an inconsistent situation, and
were not entirely successful. Caught in a time of tran-
sition, they tried to create a new synthesis, but no new
synthesis emerged. They had underestimated the dimensions
of the changes underway in the middle period of their cen-
tury. Looking back at their writings from the perspective
of the twentieth century, we see inconsistency and ambiv-
alence. From the same circles came both blessing and
condemnations on polarized sex roles and the pursuit of
systematic ambition.

The family, and people's feelings about the family,
were among the first to register the influence of the
changes taking place in society at large. In many sources,
the home was clearly not valued as an arena for men. In
Charles C. B. Seymour's 1858 biographical studies of Self-
Made Men, none of his sketches offered any more than passing

reference to wives, children, or homelife.13 Seymour's

 

13Charles C. B. Seymour, Self-Made Men (New York:
Harper 6 Bros., 1858).

 

35

subjects were celebrated for private, personal virtues and
for public achievement, but not for anything domestic. Here
could be seen the dichotomy between a man's "real" life--the
life of private virtue and public accomplishment-~and that
segment of his life which was shared with women and
children.

The Rev. William G. Eliot, Jr., a Unitarian minister
in St. Louis (and T. S. Eliot's grandfather) wrote as though
his young readers were going to remain single forever.1“
Throughout his book of advice to young men, which purported
to be comprehensive counsel, marriage was scarcely men-
tioned. Fatherhood was ignored. The virtues Eliot
commended to young men were strong ones, admirable, and
socially responsible. They were fair and even-handed.
However, human intimacy seemed beyond the scope of the
author's interest.

The Rev. Joel Hawes, pastor of the First Church
(Congregational) in Hartford, Connecticut, shared a similar
myopia with Eliot and many others. In his essay on the
formation of character, Hawes exhorted his readers to be
responsible to the larger community, to the church, to the
world of business, to one's peers, and to God. The only

significant community to be left out of this catalogue was

 

1"William G. Eliot, Jr., Lectures to Young Men,
7th ed. (Boston: Crosby, Nichols, S Co.;_1858).

36

the family, which he mentioned only once throughout the
course of his lectures--and that in passing. The formation
of character was apparently irrelevant to the roles of
husband, lover, or father.15

Even a relatively sensitive author like T. S. Arthur
described the glories of home without so much as a hint of
father or brothers.16 In many books of advice to young men,
children's stories, magazine stories, and novels, writers
celebrated the home as the cherished domain of mothers and
sisters. There was a persistent sense that home was an
appendage to a man's life. It had sentimental significance,
but was not a major factor in his life. It did not
contribute much to his sense of personal identity.

And yet, this minimizing of the home was balanced
by an almost exaggerated reverence for the home and family.
Some writers expressed the conviction that it was imperative
for men to value home life. Those who idealized the home
and those who ignored it often came from the same stratum
of society. Clergymen and others who wrote advice for young
men could ignore the home in one work and laud it when they
wrote marriage manuals. Those who most consistently neglected

to mention wives and children in any significant way were

 

15Joel Hawes, Lectures to Youn Men on the Formation
of Character, 3rd ed. (Hartfofdi Coo e 8 Co., 1829)}

 

16Arthur, Advice.

37

biographers. The home was most consistently glorified in
stories, novels, and children's literature.

Marriage manuals, usually written by Clergymen,
repeatedly urged men to value the home, and some collections
of advice for young husbands also encouraged males to take
home and family seriously.17 This literature was interested
in love, but not in sex. It was apparently presumed by the
authors that everything their readers wanted to know about
sex would be picked up by word of mouth, or by trial and
error. They offered neither information nor advice in
print. These authors were concerned, rather, with the
structuring of a positive married relationship. According
to the Rev. John Bayley, author of Marriage As It 15 And

As It Should Be, "beauty and delicacy" were the women's

 

contribution to the marriage, "courage and strength" were
the man's. And yet, even though the marriage manuals
accepted the basic notion of separate masculine and
feminine "spheres," they were eager for men to value
their wives and their homes. Husbands were frequently

exhorted to be a real presence in the home, offering

 

17See, for example, William Alexander Alcott, The
Young Husband, or Duties of Man in the Marriage RelatiEfi
(Boston: George W. Light, 1839); Arthur, AdVice;'JBhn
Bayley, Marriage As It 15 And As It Should Be (New York:
M. W. Dodd, 1857); and'George W. Ofiinby, Marriage and the
Duties of the Marriage Relations, in a Series of Six fec-
tures, Addressed to Youth, and the Young_in Married Life
(Cincinnati: J. A. G U. P. James, 1852).

 

 

38

emotional support to their wives and taking a significant
role in child-raising responsibilities. The good husband,
for example, must never do anything to cause his wife to
lose face before the children or domestics. Rather, he
should support her and undergird her influence with them.
And, "the faithful husband looks without severity, and with
much charity, upon any imperfections or defects of character
that he may discover in his wife."18
The Rev. George W. Quinby, writing in 1852, agreed

that while the husband had the ultimate authority in the
marriage, "he must never rule over his wife otherwise than
with the gentle sceptre of affection."19 This author inter-
preted Scripture to say that husband and wife were ygkg_--
that is, they were meant to be joined equally so as to
carry the load. He wrote,

Some husbands think they have a right to lord it

over their wives and treat them like inferiors

and slaves, rather than companions and equals.

But there is nothing either in nature, common

sense or scripture to support such an idea.2°
He conceded no inferiority to the wife in either intellect

or virtue--only in physical strength. He did, however,

perpetuate the conventional view of men as courageous and

 

18Bayley, Marriage, p. 156.
19Quinby, Duties, p. 175.

2°Ibid.

39

strong, and women as beautiful and delicate. This author
insisted that each partner should confide in the other.
A husband would be most unwise to keep from his wife
information about financial matters. He should share
even bad news with his wife. Husband and wife should
treat one another as equals. Troubles and difficulties
should be poured out to the other. And, he said,

If the husband is drawn away from the path of

rectitude by the wiles of temptation: if he

falls into evil company, or is induced by press-

ing circumstances to do a wrong, let him never

withhold a knowledge of it from his wife--never.21
Quinby also described the male role in such a way as to
include domestic responsibilities and child-raising within
the husband's job-description.

William Alcott, a member of the famous Alcott

family and author of The Young Husband, expected a husband

 

to love his wife, and insisted that love needed constant
maintenance. Writing in 1839, Alcott lamented the fact
that some insensitive men treated their wives as virtual
slaves. He asked, "and is not human happiness retarded

by every step which is taken to keep the female sex in
bondage, and promoted by every thing which is done for
their redemption and improvement?"22 Alcott believed that

love between marriage partners could be nurtured by an

 

21 Ibid. , p. 173.

22Alcott, Young Husband, p. 352.

 

40

intimate sharing of personal feelings. He suggested

that each keep a journal which was personally revealing.
Wife and husband should then each read what the other had
written. It was common in this literature for the authors
to urge men to treat their wives with tenderness, and to
cherish them--not just to provide a living and consider
their duty to be done. The husband should even seek his
wife's advice on business matters!

There is no doubt that the authors of the marriage
manuals highly valued home and the man's role in the home.
And yet, indications are that repeated stress on equality
in marriage was an expression of anxiety over the growing
inequality of husband and wife. Although the authors placed
a premium value on the home, they sensed that many in their
society did not. The marriage manuals functioned as rein-
forcements for traditional values in a society where men's
and women's roles had been so distinct that they scarcely
overlapped. Their authors felt that the home was no longer
an equally shared domain. They felt the need to urge men
to stay at home, not to be driven out of the house by noise
or confusion or sickness. Hand-wringing over the wicked
ways of the city, and the celebration of the rural virtues
are an indication of concern over change. Urban areas,
where change was felt first and most intensely, seemed to

threaten the old home-centered values. The remedy many

41

authors proposed to stem the tide of change was merely to
repeat the eighteenth-century formulas, but in a louder
voice.

It is not surprising that change in family
organization engendered widespread anxiety in nineteenth-
century America.23 Many of the great issues involved, in
one way or another, concern with the family and its future.
One obvious example was the proliferation of various Utopian
communities and new movements. For instance, the Oneida
community practiced disciplined sexual relations outside
of marriage and the Shakers, by contrast, were entirely
celibate in practice. These are a mere sample of the
possible approaches to marriage and family relationships
offered by various movements. The Utopian communities
were trying to suggest improvements in the relationship
between the sexes. They were also concerned with making
changes in child-rearing practices. They experimented with
forming new kinds of ties between family and large social

units.2“ The marginal groups and the mainstream of society

 

23Ronald G. Walters, in "The Family and Ante-Bellum
Reform: An Interpretation," Societas (Summer 1973): 225,
has remarked that "it is surpr1sing, but important, that
feminists and anti-feminists, abolitionists and anti-
abolitionists, reformers and anti-reformers all directed
their attention to the same institution. . . . Concern for
the family was bound up with the most serious social and
cultural debates in ante-bellum America."

2“ Ibid., p. 222.

42

were agreed that the family had some kind of "redeeming
value." At the same time, all agreed that this value was
somehow in peril.

The tremendous upsurge of romanticism and senti-
mentality surrounding the idea of home and family was a
clue to the intensity of feeling about these areas of life.
Novels, short stories, and poetry glorified the home in
unrealistic ways. Counsel to both men and women exhorted
in urgent tones to take care to devote themselves to the
establishment of orderly Christian homes. The very inten-
sity of this romanticizing of home seems suspicious. Would
such urgent appeals have been necessary if everyone felt
secure about the family and its roles in society?

Anxiety about home and family seems entirely normal,
even predictable, given the climate of the time. Rapid
change was indeed touching the family in dramatic ways.

The anxiety betrayed a desire to rediscover a usable defi-
nition to secure the future of the family. This was felt
to be necessary particularly because the family was con-
sidered to be an essential bulwark in a sea of change.

What, then, was the meaning of ”family" in a society
in which a household was less and less a functional economic
unit? What was a "family" when so many of its traditional
social functions had been reassigned to schools, factories,

and asylums? How did one define a "family" when the

43

partnership of husband and wife, parents and children had
become obscured? It was during this period--roughly from
1820 to 1860--that the American family began to be redefined
in ways that are still familiar today.

New definitions of the family were already in
process of formation. "Home" and "family" came to stand
for that which was safe, while society represented all that

was dangerous. In How to Be a Man, Harvey Newcomb warned

 

that "young men and boys should cultivate a love of home as

 

a defence against the temptations to frequent bad company

"25

and places of resort dangerous to their morals. Family
life was set apart, given a kind of moral halo, and charged
with a new responsibility: providing warmth and intimacy
in a cold and threatening world. It may be that in men's
minds, family was associated with their own childhood and
with a blessed state of innocence. Or perhaps family rep-
resented the simple, community-oriented agrarian past, a

state of primitive harmony. In his 1840 book called Duties

of Young Men, E. H. Chapin asked whether "home" might not

 

be a kind of retreat into nature. "Is it your inner adytum,
where you hold your sweetest communion, and treasure up

your best affections, and where they cling, fresh and

 

25Harvey Newcomb, How to Be a Man: A Book for Boys
Containing Useful Hints on the Formation of Character
(Boston: Gould 8 Lincoln, 1860 TeriginaI'ed. 1847]),
p. 42.

44

green and unwithering, amid all the blasts and changes

of the outward and variable world?26 The idea of home was
transformed by the light of a pastoral imagination. It
seemed to be a realm of peace and innocence where life was
kind and its duties came naturally. It was a symbol for
that longed-for condition in which life and work were
integrated comfortably. The world, by contrast, could

be symbolized by the city, with its inhuman scale and
overwhelming proportions.

Once integral to society, the family, in its new
definition, was distinguished from it. It was essential
to the new understanding of the family and the home that
they not be integrated with the larger society. Instead,
they must be set apart from it. Home and family had found
a new function as refuge, as haven, as retreat from the
world. Why? The rapid growth of economic opportunities
and economic individualism had created a situation in which
competitiveness and personal ambition were rewarded. Men
followed production out of the home in pursuit of work and
success. They were both exhilarated and appalled by the
world and its ways. They found the search for success both
exciting and frightening. The ways of the world in a time
of growing opportunities seemed threatening and fearful

because those ways seemed often amoral, if not immoral.

 

26Chapin, Duties of Young Men, p. 63.

 

45

In retrospect, at least, the old communities seemed stable,
characterized by cooperation, mutuality, and humaneness.

It was hard for men to feel comfortable in an arena in
which persons were separated from their human contexts

and measured only in individualistic and strictly functional
terms. The chance to improve one's condition was terribly
attractive. Nevertheless, men were often shocked to dis-
cover the callousness of which they were capable when set
in competition with others. In a world where closeness,
community, and personal consideration seemed to be mini-
mized, men felt a need to find some corner of refuge.
There, in that safe place, they might rest and wash off

the taint of a way of life which they had embraced, but
with which they could not be entirely comfortable. That
little corner of refuge was home and family.

The redefinition of family and home served more
than one purpose. As well as a place of refuge, the family
could also function as a kind of plumb line. It served as
a given standard by which to measure what was good and bad,
moral and immoral, in a world in flux. A man might find in
the family a resource for refuge and healing when he was
weary of the world. However, the family served social as
well as individual needs. Family and home served society
by functioning as the one bedrock reality in a changing

world. They found purpose as a stabilizing influence when

46

everything else threatened to fly apart. One reason for
the hostility against the feminist movement, for example,
was that the movement was perceived as threatening to the
family. The movement seemed to eradicate the distinction
between the spheres of men and women.27 The family had
become sacred ground, especially because people felt that
there was no other reliable anchor in a time so marked by
turbulence and change. The ambition and individualistic
opportunity-seeking of the times were considered to be
necessary for progress. At the same time, people felt
in danger of falling into barbarism or total confusion
without the stabilizing influence of the home and family.
Paradoxically, the new definition of the nineteenth-
century urban family would have to be one in which the
father was noticeable by his absence. Certainly it is
true that in children's literature and in magazine stories,
men continued to play strong and commanding roles as com-
mitted husbands and fathers. No doubt there were actually
many such men. Nevertheless, there were signs that for
middle-class men in the cities, family was in danger of
being neglected. Marriage writers were almost strident

in urging men to be good husbands and fathers. Advice

4A

27Aileen S. Kraditor, ed., Up From the Pedestal:
Selected Writings in the History of American Femihism
(Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1968), pp. 12-13.

 

47

writers neglected to mention the home as they directed young
men in planning their lives. Foreign travelers reported
that American men were preoccupied with work and politics.
The Parisian traveler, Henri Herz, described the following
scene, similar to many others in the literature of the
period. He had observed a Philadelphia merchant, who
"dines silently with his family in a quarter of an hour
and spends the evening in a little room reserved for his
own use, or else goes to a club of which he has long been
a member."28

The increasing absence of the father from the
household was one of the most significant changes in the
family in terms of its consequences for male roles. When
the household ceased to be a productive unit, the husband
and father left the homestead to pursue his work. Not only
did husband and wife cease to share labor in the household
economy, but the husband no longer did his unique work
within the family setting. Numerous commentators between
1820 and 1860 remarked about the father's absence from the
home. Even when he was at home, he was likely to be pre-
occupied with thoughts of duties in the world outside.

John Bayley felt it necessary to counsel fathers that

 

28Quoted in Oscar Handlin, This Was America: True
Accounts of People and Places, Manners and Customs as
Recorded by European Travelers to the’Western Shoregin
the Eighteenth, Nineteenfh, and Twentieth Centuries
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1949), p. 194.

 

 

 

 

48

it was their duty to spend time at home in spite of the
children's crying and occasional disruptions of the family
circle. He advised,
Instead of making the boisterous merriment of the
children a pretext for absenting himself from home,
he will rejoice in it as an indication of their
health and happiness. And if the family circle
should be invaded by sickness, or affliction of any
kind, the presence of the father is imperatively
demanded.2
James Fenimore C00per complained about the defects in
American deportment, and most particularly, the insub-
ordination and rudeness of children. Cooper attributed
the faults of the children to the absence of instruction

from their fathers, who were preoccupied with business.3°

As early as 1821, the Saturday Evening Post attacked the

 

prevalence of gambling houses, noting particularly their
affect on the family by keeping the husband and father
away from the family until late at night.31

While many writers lamented the father's prolonged
absences from home, others interpreted them as natural and

to be expected. Writing in 1853, William Thayer described

 

29Bayley, Marriage, pp. 121-124.

30James Fenimore Cooper, The American Democrat
or Hints on the Social and Civic Relations of the United
States dfiAmerica (Cooperstown: H. 6 E. Phinney, 1838),
p. 202.

 

 

31The Saturday Evening Post 1:8 (22 September
1821): 2.

 

49

the husband's domestic duties, but characterized his
business obligations as "still more pressing."32

Harriet Martineau joined other foreign travelers
in commenting on the low visibility of males in the home.
She was negatively impressed by the fact that American
men, whether well-to-do or of the working classes, had
very little time to spend at home. Martineau seriously
questioned the values of a people who put such a high
premium on earning a living that domestic pleasures were
sacrificed.33

The relative distance of the father from the home
is part of a larger pattern. The circumstances of the
American experience had for some time tended toward the
reduction of the authority of the father. The American
environment itself had always exerted a kind of stress
upon the traditional family which threatened paternal
authority. The presence of empty land was one such stress.
While there was land available, sons were no longer abso-
lutely dependent on their father for land of their own.
Certainly there had not been a collapse of the father's

authority all at once under colonial conditions. Still,

 

32William M. Thayer, Hints for the Household; or
Family Counsellor (Boston: John P. Jewett 8 Co./Cleveland:
Jewett, Proctor, G Worthington, 1853), p. 52.

 

 

33Harriet Martineau, Society in America, ed.,
abridged, and with an introductory essay by Seymour Martin
Lipset (Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1968), p. 268.

 

50

the presence of empty land had exerted a constant pressure.
After the Revolution and the termination of British author-
ity, the West had been opened up to settlement. Many young
men left their families to live out their lives hundreds of
thousands of miles from the homes of their fathers. The
really remarkable mobility, however, was in the direction
of the cities. The beginnings of industrialization meant
that in the urban areas there were new jobs, and new
opportunities of an amazing variety.

The presence of the West and the magnetic pull of
growing cities with their opportunities to be explored
significantly altered paternal authority. Dr. Isaac Ray,
writing at the end of the period, lamented that American
men were not content to follow in the footsteps of their
fathers. He remarked, disapprovingly, that for young men,

the domestic circle is entirely too small to bound
their affections, their interests, or their wishes.
The sons quit the shelter of the parental wing
at an early period, and rush to the principal marts
of business, where a happier fortune seems to await
them.3“
Dr. Ray felt that the emergence of a broader division of
labor was creating stress for American men. "Much of the

mental activity that characterizes our people," he noted,

"arises from the abundant opportunities that are offered

 

3“Isaac Ray, M.D., Mental Hygiene (Boston: Ticknor
5 Fields, 1863), pp. 281-232.

 

51

for the pursuit of wealth, and the consequent variety and
novelty of the enterprises undertaken for this purpose."35
William A. Alcott was sensitive to pressures being
exerted on the family by mobility. He was pained by the
breakdown of parental authority, and tried to fashion a
persuasive argument that would keep married children near
the original family nest. He regretted that wives must
leave their own parental home, but conceded that there was
no arguing with custom. However, the new husband owed it
to his wife and children to "remain for a time in his
father's house."36 Alcott expressed his disapproval of
westward migration. His plea was a simple one, but given
the vast changes of the times, unrealistic: "All I wish is,
that grandparents, and children would remain together
till they have assisted to educate the latter."37
Even when sons remained at home after beginning
work, the work and training of young men was seldom under
the supervision of their fathers. Rowland Berthoff points
out that many young men did not want to serve as apprentices

to their fathers even if this was an option. Instead, they

were ambitious to rise above their fathers' occupations and

 

35 Ibid. , p. 245.

36Alcott, Young Husband, p. 52.

 

37Ibid., p. 53.

52

to achieve superior social standing, if possible. Many
fathers could only approve of their sons' aspirations.38

The pressures of mobility tended to break the
functional continuity between the generations of father
and son. In fact, as the pace of change escalated, it
became normal to expect that the future would be consid-
erably different than the present. The father, then, lost
his status as a guide to his sons' futures. Repeating the
anomalous situation of the first settlers, it was almost as
though the children had become guides to the new world. In
many cases, when the sons felt the attraction of mobility--
geographic or social--they left their fathers behind. In
time, American fathers came to expect their sons to leave
them behind. They even learned to celebrate the advancement
of their children.

Mobility-~whether in reality or in myth--encouraged
the development of an ethos of "every man for himself." The
resulting economic individualism tended to erode the fixed
relationships between family members, especially between

parents and their children.39 In The Gentleman's Book of

 

Etiquette, Cecil B. Hartley summed up the new family real-

 

ity: "In this country, where each bird leaves the parent

 

38Rowland Berthoff, An Unsettled People: Social
Order and Disorder in American Hi5tory (New York/Evanston/
London: Harper 8 Row, 1971), p. 211.

 

 

39Ibid., p. 206.

S3

nest as soon as his wings will bear him safely up, there
are but few who stay among the friends at home."“°

Economic individualism and mobility--both horizontal
and vertical--had reduced the father's role and influence
in the development of his own children. To the extent
that he still served as a model for his sons, he was a
model of a new kind of man. His ties to "home" were
loosened in every way, and he had adopted a new goal:
the aggressive, systematic exercise of personal ambition
in the search for "opportunity."

While paternal authority declined and the father's
role in the household was diminishing, the mother's role
was growing. Certainly the father was still generally
considered by all to be the dg jugg head of the household.
Nevertheless, his wife was the dg fagtg_head. This is quite
understandable, since the family had become almost the
exclusive domain of women. The male role in the home had
been narrowed to the point where it was best described as
"provider" or "breadwinner." While women had always borne
the chief responsibility for childbearing, they had carried
it out at least in the company of the man of the house.
This was so however much or little he may have participated

in it directly. Now, the situation was different to the

 

I”Cecil B. Hartley, The Gentlemen's Book of Eti-
guette, and Manual of Politeness (Boston: G. W. Cottrell,
1860), p. 4.

 

 

54

extent that the husband and father was a less powerful
presence in the household than ever. He was often absent
(physically or emotionally), and his status as the chief
guide to his sons' futures was increasingly insecure.
Daily decision-making in the household had been turned
over to his wife. She became the central figure in the
family.

One student of this period suggests that women had
struck a tacit bargain with men."1 Women would accept a
limited role in society if they could take unlimited control
of the domestic sphere to which they were confined. In
the stories, poetry, novels, and advice literature of the
period there is a strong sentimental emphasis on the roles
of women--wives, sisters, but especially mother. Ethical
counsel was driven home and reinforced by an appeal to be
loyal to mother. Mother became the teacher, nurturer,
disciplinarian, and the priestess of the home. She rep-
resented goodness, purity, heaven, and God. Even after
leaving home, mother's voice was always with the child.
Mother was the force which protected her children even

after they had grown."2 Women themselves, to the extent

 

“'Kathryn Kish Sklar, Catharine Beecher: A Study in
American Domesticity (New Haven/Londdn: Yale University
Press, 1973), p. 113.

 

 

1”See, for example, Catharine Sedgwick, who indicates
the continuing influence of mother in Means and Ends, or
Self-Training, 3rd ed. (Boston: Marsh, Capen, Lyon B Webb,
1839), pp. 270-271. The character of the adult man was

 

 

55

that they had accepted the bargain that confined them to
the home, encouraged other women to think of the child-
rearing role as a position of power and influence.

The implications of the relative absence of father
from the childrearing process, and the increasing dominance
of the mother were far reaching. What this meant was that
children--male as well as female--were experiencing the
socialization process primarily at the hands of women.
Research indicates that both male and female children make
their first and principal identification with the mother.
For the little girl, this is no problem. The little boy,
however, faces the hurdle of shifting his identification
from the mother to the father, or at least to the masculine
role. Twentieth-century studies of this process indicate
that in our society, this necessary shift poses serious
difficulties because of the relative absence of the father
from the home so much of the time. The male child, then,
is forced to learn the masculine role from his mother and

by piecing together information from peers. In both cases,

 

formed at home by his mother. It was her duty "to infuse
the generosity and the self-sacrifice that makes the patriot
warrior; . . . that qualifies men to be judges, to love
justice and truth, and give him a generous sympathy"; and
also, Lydia Sigourney, The Child's Book: Consisting of
Original Articles, in Prose and Poetry (New York: Turner
8 Hayden, 1846), unpaged. A little boy says, "My mother
says that the greatest and best men have always treated
females with respect and kindness; and that God intended
the strong should protect the weak. I believe that her
rule is a good one, and shall obey it now, and when I grow
to be a man."

 

 

56

he must learn what it is to be masculine by a process of
abstraction. Furthermore, for the male child, the teaching
of the appropriate sex roles is usually done by the use of
negative sanctions. The mother, who herself usually is
working from conventional, stereotyped patterns, is able
to signal the little boy what he ought n93 to do or be,
but finds it more difficult to teach the masculine role
positively. The male child learns a masculine role iden-
tification by a process of elimination, stumbling into one
unacceptable behavior after another. In the process, he
is punished without warning. This results in considerable
anxiety in the young male, and often also in a strong
distaste for anything associated with the feminine.”3

What is known about socialization into sex roles
is sufficient to sustain the argument that the relative
closeness or distance of the father in the family is a
significant factor in the development of sexual identity.
It is also important in terms of how males learn to feel

about the feminine. It is logical to presume, then, that

 

“astudies by Ruth Hartley, in "Sex-Role Pressures,"
Margaret Mead, in Male and Female, and David B. Lynn, in
Parental and Sex-Role Ideniification (Berkeley, Calif.:
McCutchan Pub. Corp., 1969) give evidence indicating the
peculiar difficulties for the male child in the formation
of a sexual identity. There is evidence that young boys
markedly surpass girls in psychological disturbances, which
seems to be associated with the difficulties of making an
adequate identification with their own sex. It is also
true that more males than females make an identification
with the Opposite sex from their own.

 

 

57

a major historical development in which fathers were to a
large extent removed from the daily family setting would
have an important effect on the process and content Of
developing male roles.

As woman increasingly became the chief figure at
home, she became predominantly responsible for childrearing.
At the same time, the number of female school teachers
escalated dramatically.““ A foreign traveler in the United
States made note Of the number of women teachers. In 1853,

Fredrika Bremer wrote that "woman's increasing role as a

 

““Thomas Woody, in A History of Women's Education in
the United States, vol. 1 (New York/Lancaster, Pa.: The
Science Press, 1929), pp. 496-499, and Michael B. Katz,
in The Irony of Early School Reform: Educational Innovation
in Mid-Nineteenth Century Massaéhusetts (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1968) provide information on the growth in
the number of women teachers. Traditionally, from the time
when common schools had first been established, women had
been believed capable of handling summer sessions, but not
those in winter when big boys attended. However, with the
onset Of industrialization and the increasing diversifica-
tion of job opportunities, fewer men were available to teach
at the low salaries offered. What began to happen was that
school boards turned to women teachers because they could be
paid less. In 1830, the vast majority of school teachers
were men. The population, expanding at the same time that
male teachers were less available, demanded more teachers.
The creation of a leisured middle class of women, the rise
of the tax-supported common schools, the expansion of popu-
lation in the West, and the glorification of female qual-
ities of nurture worked in favor Of opening teaching
Opportunities to women. By the early 1840's, the ratio
of women teachers to male teachers was increasing rapidly
in women's favor. By 1837, women teachers outnumbered their
male counterparts in Massachusetts three to two, and two to
one by 1842. Growth in the number of women teachers was
particularly rapid in the east and in urban areas, including
the cities of the west. At the same time, the number of
students enrolled in public school was increasing.

 

 

 

58

teacher, and the employment of her as such in public
schools, even in those for boys, is a public fact which
greatly delights me. Seminaries have been established to

"“5 Catherine Beecher and

educate her for this vocation.
Others viewed teaching as an extension of the domestic
role, and saw it as a potential means Of public influence
for women. Perhaps the most important consequence of the
increase in the number of women schoolteachers was that
the male conscience was more and more being formed and
programmed largely by females. They accomplished this
task by drawing upon conventional sexual stereotypes as
their resource. There is the strong suggestion that from
this period in American history, it became most common for
the voice of the male conscience to be a feminine voice.
Some writers reacted with alarm to the increasing
distance of the father from the home. They urged men tO
repossess their traditional role as a preeminent force in
the training of their own children. Perhaps the most
remarkable of these was a book addressed directly to
fathers. Although much childrearing counsel did presuppose
the participation Of fathers, none spoke to fathers so

directly or so exclusively as did Theodore Dwight, Jr.'s

The Father's Book.

 

 

“sFredrika Bremer, The Homes of the New World;
Inpressions of America (New Ybrk: Harper 8 Bros., 1853),
p. 191.

 

 

59

Dwight, writing in 1835, was eager to see that
fathers lived up to their traditional responsibilities as
heads of their households. His book instructed fathers in
great detail about how to govern their homes and shape the

minds and spirits of their offspring. In The Father's Book,

 

the mother of the family was only a shadowy figure, scarcely
visible, while the father played the central role in the
family with magnificent Christian grace.

The Father's Book is a curious species of literature

 

not so much because Of its content, but because Dwight
addressed to fathers the kind of counsel which was usually
addressed to mothers. One cannot read the book without
wondering where a nineteenth-century father would get the
time to spend supervising his children so minutely from the
time they awoke through play time, meal times, and bedtime.
It may be that Dwight's own profession continued to be
largely home-based. He was, in fact, a clergyman. His
study would have been in his home. In contrast with many
other middle-class men of the time, clergy were likely to
spend the bulk of their day at least under the same roof
with their family. Dwight, apparently, found it possible
to function as a direct influence on nearly ever aspect of
the lives of his children.

However, except for other clergy or men with inde-

pendent incomes, Dwight's advice was likely to have been

60

largely useless tO the average nineteenth-century man,
whose days were spent working long hours away from his
family. With great determination, the ordinary man may
have put into effect some of Dwight's advice. For the
most part, however, he could have done little more than
to express his opinions, values, wishes, and preferences
to the person who actually spent the most time with his
children-~his wife.

The Father's Book represented the earnest wish

 

of Theodore Dwight, Jr., and others like him that the
omnipresent clock might be turned backward to another
time--a time when the patriarch Of the family had been
in a position to be its head in fact, and not merely as
an ideal. Dwight himself seems to have known that his
image of family government was more of a nostalgic idea
than an actuality in his time. Expressing a measure of
discouragement, Dwight wrote Of ”the lax discipline, and
lax views of duty, fashionable with many fathers of the
present day. ."“5
However much paternal influence had diminished

as women were left to raise the children alone, in chil-

dren's literature the father tended to function according

 

l““Theodore Dwight, Jr., The Father's Book; or
Suggestions for the Government andCInstruction OfCYoung
Children on PrinEiples Apprgpriate to a Christian Country,
2nd ed. (Sprihgfield: G. 8 C. Merriam, 1835), p. 129.

 

61

to Dwight's ideal. Jacob Abbott, a Connecticut schoolmaster
who wrote a number of children's stories, pictured the
father as the primary socializing force for his sons. In
Abbott's stories, male roles were taught to boys explicitly
and verbally, and by their fathers. Along with a great deal
of advice of all kinds, Rollo's father told his son,

I want you, when you grow up to be a man, to be

bound by your agreements. Men will hold you to

your agreements when you are a man, and I want
you to be accustomed to it while you are a boy."7

 

In the Abbott stories the father, like the ideal father of
Timothy Dwight, Jr., was always at home. It is not clear
why this was so: whether he was a gentleman farmer, or
managing his investments for a living. The ever-present
father of children's fiction, for whatever reason he was

at home, played the role of leader in the family. Partic-
ularly, he was the moral leader and trainer of his children.
It is clear, however, that the literary effort to salvage
the father's leadership role in child-raising did not paint
a true picture. Fathers were in fact becoming more absorbed
with their work and with outside activities. The tradi-
tional patriarchy was honored more in the breach than in
reality. The children, daily discipline, religious train-

ing-~all were becoming absorbed into women's "sphere"--that

 

IL”Jacob Abbott, Rollo At Work (New York: Sheldon 8
Co., 1868 [original ed. l85-]).

 

62

separate world over which she ruled, and in which men
were Often little more than visitors.

Except for those who still held some hope Of
reversing the course of the times and returning to an
idealized pattern from the past, nineteenth-century people
generally conceded the role of the mother to be paramount
in child-rearing. Women like Catharine Beecher, unwilling
to rebel against the conventional Jacksonian sex roles,
attempted to make the best of an uncomfortable bargain
by emphasizing the crucial importance of the mother in
forming future generations. Some contemporary females
began to be hopeful about the improvements that could be
made in the human race at the hands of committed women.
Women who were involved in the moral reform movement made
much Of the possibilities for future improvement by means
of the socialization process. The mother, using religious
education Of a pietistic sort as her main instrument,
should teach her son tO give unquestioning Obedience to
his mother's will. Carroll Smith Rosenberg, commenting
on the views of women involved in moral reform, reports
that mothers were expected to instill in their sons a
love for the quiet of domesticity. Boys were to be taught
to reject the excitements of the theater and the tavern.
They should learn to prefer home and the companionship

of pious women over the varied temptations Of bachelor

63

life.“8 Unfortunately for such women, the father's interest
in the outside world outweighed his wife's admonitions.
Their son soon learned that his own "sphere" of destiny

was the whole world--except for his mother's house.
Nevertheless, the mother's efforts were not completely

in vain. Her voice was programmed deep in his unconscious.
His enjoyment of the male "sphere" would be dampened by

the ever-present inner voice which sounded strangely like
his mother's.

It may very well have been, however, that the voice
of a man's conscience was not always in conflict with his
life in the world. If women programmed the male conscience,
they imprinted on their sons their own mixed feelings about
the life Of the world and about masculinity. Mothers may,
indeed, have trained their sons for virtue. But at the same
time, women often shared with men the same conventional
ideas about success and the pursuit of Opportunities. They
also shared with men the cultural stereotypes about what it
meant to be masculine. Although they were shut out of men's
"sphere," women more often than not wanted their own sons to
live in it and tO make the most Of it.

The Reverend William M. Thayer lamented the fact

that so many parents were raising their children to seek

 

“BCarroll Smith Rosenberg, "Beauty, the Beast and the
Militant Woman: A Case Study in Sex Roles and Social Stress
in Jacksonian America," American Quarterly 23 (October 1971):
574.

 

64

the goals either of becoming wealthy or marrying wealth.
He felt that parents were teaching their children false
values. He wrote,
It is not established principles, strict integrity,
pure aspirations and shining virtues, so much as
tact at accumulation, and energy and enterprise in
worldly business, for which some parents discipline
their children. Shrewdness at striking a bargain,
foresight and sharpness to anticipate fluctuations
and discover fraud, are often lessons to be learned
before honesty and truth."9
Thayer specifically disapproved of the practice of providing
children with banks and teaching them to hoard. It would
make them stingy, unbenevolent, and less than Christian.
The practices and values that Thayer and so many others--
particularly clergy--lamented had a momentum, however, that
was not easily reversed. It may be that the roots of Jack-
sonian ambivalence lay in the conscience formed by parents--
particularly mothers--who felt a loyalty to the Old moral
tradition but, at the same time, a vicarious ambition for
their sons.

Childraising practices themselves were ambivalent.
Consider, for example, the conflict between two values:
Obedience and independence. In the childrearing literature
of the time, and children's stories as well, parents were

advised to form their children's consciences in such a way

that they would respond immediately to a parental command.

 

“9Thayer, Hints, p. 70.

65

There was, in most of this material, a high valuation
on respect for authority. Obedience was to be extended
not to parents only, but also to parental figures such as
teachers. In stories for children, Obedience was always
rewarded, at least in the long run. The disobedient came
to no good end. The authors of children's stories were
seldom subtle in their praise Of the virtues of submission.
One author, writing for children in 1846, wrote that "the
children who live in this log house are happy, because they
are good and obedient. They are loving to each other, and
Obey the words of their kind parents."5°
At the same time, there was a good deal Of evidence
that parents were actually rather permissive with their
children. European travelers commented on disorder in
families and the lack of parental control. British trav-
elers, in particular, considered the American child to be
indulged. They blamed his home environment--particularly
his mother. Travelers usually held the Opinion that
American parents deliberately chose not to discipline
their children, but preferred to let them develop a

measure of independence.51

 

soSigourney, Child's Book, unpaged.

 

51Richard L. Rapson, "The American Child As Seen
By British Travelers, 1845-1935," in The American Family in
Social-Historical Perspective, ed. MiEhael Morgan (New York:
St. Martin's Press, 1973).

 

 

66

Tocqueville, Martineau, and other visitors from
abroad all noted this early training in independence. They
commented particularly on the precocity Of American boys.
It was noted especially that boys early adopted adult
assumptions and aspirations in the area of economic values.
It seemed, frankly, as though ambition was honored more than
complacency. Obedience apparently was far less valued than
the ability to make independent decisions and the taking of
personal responsibility. Parents encouraged their children
to be independent, hoping that their sons would rise on the
social and economic scale. One author, lamenting the lack
of personal discipline, wrote,

The asceticism Of our ancestors was infinitely

less injurious than the license which characterizes
the domestic training of their descendants. How
many of this generation complete their childhood,
scarcely feeling the dominion Of any will but their
own, and obeying no higher law than the caprice of
the moment.

How can this dual emphasis on Obedience, on the one
hand, and childhood independence on the other, be accounted
for? One possible explanation is that these two separate
emphases were the characteristic marks of two distinct
groups within the society. Those who emphasized Obedience
may have represented evangelical circles, in which the tra-

ditional Puritan values were appreciated. Childhood inde-

pendence may have represented the practice of those who had

 

52Ray, Mental Hygiene, p. 260.

 

67

most heartily adapted to the values Of the booming
nineteenth century. To a certain extent, these separate

and contradictory emphases did indicate the existence within
society of at least two groups, each gathered around a very
different constellation Of values. And yet, there was con-
siderable overlapping where persons espoused traditional
values and yet practiced the new ones.

The ardent advocacy of an ethic Of Obedience was
probably, in part, a response to the lack of obedience
observable in children of the period. The obedience ethic
was an expression of anxiety in a society which seemed dis-
orderly almost to the point of disintegration. Because
parents themselves were ambivalent about Obedience, and
inconsistent in enforcing it, some writers felt the need
to emphasize it. What was thought to be the traditional
method of child-raising was resurrected--at least on paper--
in hopes that it might save the day when traditional forms
of order seemed threatened. Certainly, training of male
children to be independent and self-assertive best matched
the emerging patterns Of the culture of that time. Partic-
ularly since the sons were expected to leave their fathers
behind, create a new social status for themselves, and
become, in effect, pioneers and guides to the future,
training in independence served a useful purpose. It

would have been surprising in such a volatile society

68

if traditional values suited to a more stable condition
could actually have formed child-rearing practices con-
sistently on a widespread basis. The key to survival had
become adaptability. At least in the middle-classes, and
among those who aspired to become middle-class, adaptabil-
ity meant learning to be independent, self-confident, and
imaginative. The language of Obedience was, in most cases,
the rhetoric of those made anxious by the instability of
the times.

It is debatable whether Jacksonian society was
as Open and as fluid as people Of the times believed it
was. Nevertheless, for the urban middle-classes, personal
achievement-~for oneself or for one's children--had become
a prime value. Children's readers registered a rise in

achievement imagery throughout the nineteenth century.53

 

53Achievement motivation has been linked with
a child-rearing style that encourages independence.
According to Richard De Charms and Gerald H. Moeller,
in "Values Expressed in American Children's Readers:
1800-1950," Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology
64:2 (1962): 141, "men who take risks and engage in entre-
preneurial activity are those who have high achievement
motivation. Recently economists have noted the importance
of motivation and personality structure in economic growth.
Thus Hagen (1958) discusses the role Of the need for
achievement, for autonomy, for aggression, for dominance,
for affiliation, for dependence in the beginning of economic
growth. These motivational variables interact with economic
and political variables to produce cultural changes. . . .
Briefly, achievement motivation appears to be associated
with early parental stress on independence training and
mastery, coupled with a warm acceptance of the child.

 

H
o

69

For Americans between 1820 and 1860, social position was
important. In contrast to the European situation, social
position was linked with personal achievement rather than
inherited status. Achievement, then, became a kind of
badge of one's intrinsic worth. If one was successful
(defined most Often in economic terms), one could expect
social approval and a satisfying status. In popular and
children's literature, success came only to the virtuous.
For children, achievement and virtue were intermixed. It
takes little imagination to visualize the emotional penal-
ties for those who did not manage to achieve, according to
the standards of the time.

While Obedience rhetoric, laissez-faire child-
rearing practice, and training for achievement were not
always sex-specific, it was nevertheless true that the
affect was considerably different for males than for
females. For the female, obedience rhetoric was dominant
in the long run. Submission (first to parents, then to
one's husband, and always to things as they were) was the
prime virtue. However indiscriminately the female child
may have been exposed to independence training and achieve-
ment motivation, she knew that they were not meant for her.
There was for her an unwritten, but nevertheless perfectly
understood corollary that distinguished those as masculine

values. However much little boys may have been exposed to

70

the rhetoric of Obedience, it was just as Obvious that
something else was expected of them. They understood that
for males, society valued the kind of independence that

led to achievement, and that achievement would be rewarded.
For males, obedience extended no further than accepting the
dominant values of the society. The socialization process
involved sending signals to boys and to girls which guided
them in the process of sorting out which values belonged to
whom. The little girl, Observing the role and function of
her mother, came to understand the nature and limitations
of her "sphere." The little boy, noting the absence of

his father from the domestic sphere, and being taught the
masculine role in principle, began to learn that it was

his role to achieve. Each sex, however comfortably or
uncomfortably, sensed the direction in which it was to

develop.

Obedience (in the sense of accepting the dominant
values Of society), independence, personal ambition,
achievement, and the development Of inner controls all
come together at the focal point of conscience: what one

ought and ought not to do. In a society in which people

 

were experiencing a sense of rapid change, a loosening of
ties and controls, and fears of disintegration, it became
a matter of importance to establish inner controls-~a kind

Of built-in personal gyroscope to keep the individual stable

71

and on course. There was a strong emphasis on the building
and shaping of personal character of a kind that could
withstand pressure. The conscience was perhaps the chief
symbol Of that "character." The man of character, led by
his conscience, would be able to find his way even amidst
a bewildering variety of choices and options. By means
of the individual conscience, each man was expected to
internalize the goals and values Of which society approved.
Once inwardly assimilated, these goals and values would be
pursued more vigorously than if they had been considered
as strictly Optional to the individual. The development
Of character and conscience also protected a man from being
destroyed as he faced the perils of a disordered and Often
threatening new situation.

The man Of character, furthermore, would not pose
a threat to the social order. Encouraging the development
of internal controls was another way of responding to the
perceived threat of a democratic ethos. The theater, novels,
alcohol, gambling, and sexual temptations represented a
threat to inner controls and a threat to character. They
endangered both individuals and a society which seemed all
too vulnerable to disruption. Men who could not control
their passions were felt to be dangerous to the social
order. Theodore Dwight, Jr., expressed the feelings Of

many Others of his generation when he insisted that "the

72

child must be his own chief disciplinarian through life,
and the art of self-government must be taught him, as a
regular part of his education, and that both by precept
and example. ."5“
Because conscience played such an important role
in the nineteenth-century ethos, it is not inconsequential
that the male conscience was formed largely by women. It
was the task of women to abstract the principles appropriate
to males in a volatile, disorderly, threatening, promising,
Open, Opportunistic society. It was the task of women to
impress those principles, directly or indirectly, upon
young consciences. It is this process of learning even
one's own identity from women which leads to the development
of a super-ego (to use Freudian terms) which speaks in a
feminine voice. For male children as well as female, duty,
right conduct, morality, religion, culture, and the obliga-
tion to succeed--all alike--became more and more associated
with the feminine. This phenomenon could not help but have
implications for male roles and for the relations between
the sexes. The reordering Of the family, under pressure of

social change, contributed to the reshaping of masculine

roles and images.

 

5"Dwight, Father's Book, p. 124.

 

CHAPTER II

HOW TO BE A MAN

The polarization of sex roles for middle-class
people between 1820 and 1860 guaranteed that masculine
roles and images would be defined, overwhelmingly, by the
fact Of extended opportunity, the hope of improving one's
status, and the systematic values which seemed to Offer the
only means Of realizing ambition. Whether upward mobility
was as certain or even as frequent as it was considered to
be at the time does not alter the fact that masculine roles
became organized around the possibility of change of status.
Without the firm conviction that society was Open and fluid,
and that a man could rise or fall, become wealthy or des-
titute, be honored or degraded as a direct consequence Of
his own efforts, masculine roles of the kind that emerged
in this period would have been wholly out of place. The
conventional male roles, which required the gathering Of
personal determination and the organizing of effort, were
perfectly suited to social conditions as popularly perceived
and frequently experienced.

The title of C. B. Seymour's 1858 book summed up

one of the most consistent themes of the period: Self-Made

 

73

74

1 "Self-made" men were those who were determined, who

Mgn.
set high goals, and who denied themselves for the sake of
those goals. A man became "self-made" by practicing self-
reliance and self-help. He achieved success--usually
defined rather concretely as respectability and prosperity--
by personal effort, without the prior advantages of wealth
or leisure or special preference. The "self-made" philos-
ophy Obviously placed the emphasis on the individual and

his powers and personal vitality. There was little con-
sideration of the social matrix in which individuals

grow.

The idea of the self-made man was of enormous
significance in the nineteenth century. In her study of
nineteenth-century schoolbooks, Ruth Elson came to the
conclusion that this theme was one of the most prominent
in these texts.2 Nineteenth-century children were taught
to admire the self-made man and take him as a model for
their own lives.

Life Offered amazing Opportunities to the Jackson-
ian male who would put aside temptations to pleasure and
idleness and tackle life soberly, systematically, and

earnestly. The Mechanic's Advocate, a magazine for working

 

 

1Seymour, Self-Made Men.

 

2Ruth Miller Elson, Guardians of Tradition:
American Schoolbooks of the Nineteenth Century (Lincoln:
university Of Nebraska Press, 1964).

 

 

75

men, frequently spurred its readers on to great achievement
by the careful use of system. In an 1846 article, young
men were given the following advice:

Wishing, and sighing, and imagining, and dreaming

Of greatness will never make you great. . . . But

cannot a young man command his energies?

You must gird up your loins and go to work with

all the indomitable energy of Hannibal scaling

the Alps. It is your duty to make the most Of

talents, time, and Opportunities.
Then, to bolster the advice, the author cited Franklin,
Frederick the Great, and Napoleon as examples! William A.

Alcott's Young Man's Guide urged its readers to "expect

 

great things and attempt great things.”“ He directed
young men to depend on their own efforts.

Throughout the period 1820-1860, the middle-class
masculine ethos centered around an active, aggressive,
planned approach to life. There was a decided conviction
that life should be directed towards a goal and a purpose.
During this time, economic opportunities were expanding,
the frontier lured many who were eager to meet a challenge,
and it seemed that even the most exaggerated ambitions might
actually be realized. Writing in an 1853 edition of

McGuffey's Reader, the Rev. Joel Hawes described this

 

 

3"A Word to Young Men," Mechanic's Advocate 1:1
(3 December 1846): 28.

 

l'William Alexander Alcott, The Young Man's Guide
(Boston: Lilly, Wait, Colman 6 Holden, 1834 [original ed.
1833]), p. 25.

 

76

as an age Of great mental excitement. Society, as he saw
it, was improving rapidly on a variety of fronts. Hawes
wrote enthusiastically that

the road to wealth, to honor, to usefulness,

and happiness is Open to all, and all who will,

may enter upon it with the almost certain pros—

pect Of success. In this free community, there

are no privileged orders. Every man finds his

level.5

Many of those who wrote for young men instructed
their readers in the techniques of reducing everything to
a methodical system. Along with Offering moral advice,
these authors encouraged men to be ambitious. One of the
theme words was "improvement." They described how a man
might adopt a disciplined, frugal, studied, systematic
approach to everything from shaving to choosing a wife.6
One Of the most important traits Of the systematic,

ambitious man was an aggressive activism. A passive or
fatalistic approach to life was wholly uncharacteristic
of the middle-class male. He did not wait quietly tO see
what might happen; he intervened in the course of events.
In Jacob Abbott's biography Of Benjamin Franklin, written

especially for children, he commends Franklin for his

qualities of "industry, his forethought, his enterprise,

 

5Joel Hawes in McGuffey's Newly Revised Eclectic
Third Reader, Containing Selections in Prose and Poetny,
ed. W1lliam H. MOCuffey (Cincinnati: *Winthrop B. Smith
8 Co., 1853), p. 184.

6See, for example, Alcott, Young Man's Guide.

 

77

his courage, and the steady and determined energy with
which he prosecuted the plans that he formed. . . ."7 .A
man of this period was told by his teachers and advisers
that he could shape his own destiny if he would take the
initiative. Activism was considered a moral duty. The
Rev. John Todd insisted that "the state of the world is
such, and so much depends on action, that everything seems
to say loudly to every man, 'DO something'--'do it!'--
'dO it!'"8
Not unexpectedly, one result of this active,

systematic striving was that some men became trapped by
the pursuit of success and continued to be driven by it
long after their goals had been reached. Henri Herz, a
Frenchman traveling in this country, described one such
man.

Mr. G. now has a fortune of three or four million

. . . but continues his business and has not mod-

ified his mode of life in any respect. At the

height of winter he gets up before sunrise, has

a cup Of tea, and leaves his sumptuous residence

to go to the dingy little rooms in a sort of

immense barracks which he calls his Office. In

this miserable retreat, badly furnished, badly

ventilated, and always littered with cases Of
merchandise, Mr. G. daily carried on his affairs,

 

7Jacob Abbott, Franklin, ThenApprentice Boy
(New York: Harper 8 Bros., 1855), p. 159.

8John Todd, D.D., The Student's Manual; Designed to
Aid in Forming and Strengthening the Intéllectual and Moral
Character and Habits of the Student (Northampton: Bridgman
8 ChiIds, 1868 (original ed. 1854]), p. 392.

 

78

large and petty, with that calm and righteous

spirit characteristic of the Anglo-Saxons.

Neither rain, nor snow, nor ice will keep

him from this task.9

A staple Of the systematically ambitious was
the doctrine Of "self-improvement." Men of the time were
confronted with a value-system which placed extraordinary
emphasis on the future and its potentialities. The present
was comparatively insignificant except as a time of prep-
aration and training to meet the tests which determined
future success. Most of Jacob Abbott's children's books
breathe an atmosphere of upward striving. They focus on
strenuous efforts to master one's environment and oneself.
The systematic, ambitious character used the present
diligently to create his own future.
Self-improvement usually implied private study--

not just reading, but a diligent pursuit Of knowledge.
One should study in every little crevice of time available
during the day or night. Studying geography, history,
arithmetic, chemistry, grammar, composition, travel reports,
and biography was meant to "improve" a man. This implied
not so much improvement in the breadth of one's vision as
improvement of one's capacities to meet the various tests

that stood between a man and success. He who applied him-

self tO a continual effort at self-improvement would soon

 

9Henri Herz, in This Was America, ed. Handlin,

 

p. 194.

79

overcome Obstacles and disadvantages. He would surpass
peers who were not personally disciplined.

T. S. Arthur promised dedicated young men that
"to rise above the great mass, who will not apply them-
selves, is the unfailing result of patient and thorough

self-education."1° The editor of the Mechanic's Advocate,

 

commenting on the Opening of a new State Library, congrat-
ulated young mechanics who were ambitious to improve them-
selves by using the new facility to acquire useful knowl-
edge which could be turned to their personal advantage.11
Young men were encouraged to think Of time as a

precious and constantly dwindling asset. He must help
himself and his prospects by "improving” his time. In
1847, a book for boys exhorted its readers, saying,

Suppose there are five persons at the table,

and you hinder them all by your tardiness three

minutes, you waste fifteen minutes of precious

time. TO those who set a proper value on time,

this is a great evil.12
Men considered the very idea of leisure to be unacceptable.

At an age when time should have seemed endless, and avail-

able in quantities almost too vast, little Alonzo said to

 

1°Arthur, Advice, p. 64.

11"The State Library," Mechanic's Advocate 2:1
(7 January 1847): 45.

 

12Newcomb, How to Be a Man, p. 52.

 

80

his teacher, "I wish to improve my time, and learn as
much as I can, so as to be useful when I am a man."13

It was imperative that the man who aspired to up-
ward mobility learn how to postpone personal gratification
for the sake Of achieving high goals. No man who lived
spontaneously or seized the pleasures of the moment could
hope to become successful. A standard feature Of advice
to young men and of children's stories was that Of deferred
gratification as a positive virtue. Jacob Abbott told a
story about two young friends, John and Jack, who were eager
to go to sea. John, the successful one, had determined to
learn a trade first and get himself well-established in
business. He could then expect to earn enough money to
go wherever he pleased. The other ran away from home,
impatient to begin life at sea. When the two met again,
many years later, Jack was still a menial deckhand on
a ship in which his Old friend John was traveling as a
first-class passenger.1“ In another work by the same
author, Rollo's father instructed his son in the need
to put work and duty before personal enjoyment.

There is a great pleasure in doing work, as

I have told you before, when it is well and
properly done, but it is very different from

 

13Jacob Abbott, The Way to DO Good (New York: Harper
8 Bros., 1874 [original ed. 1852]).

 

l“Jacob Abbott, Jonas' Stories; Related to Rollo and
Lucy (Boston: William D. Ticknor, 1839).

81

the pleasures of play. It comes later, generally
after the work is done. While you are doing your
work, it requires exertion and self-denial, and
sometimes the sameness is tiresome.r5

 

The doctrine of deferred gratification meant
depriving oneself Of pleasures and amusements that might
be taken for granted as part of the richness of life in

most societies. The Child's Newspaper instructed youngsters

 

that "you have to deny yourself the amusements enjoyed by
most young men, if you would prepare yourself for being a

"16 "Respectable" translates into

respectable Old man.
"successful" or, more specifically, "rich."

The masculine virtues most strongly commended in
the literature of the period happened to be also business
virtues. That is, they would contribute to a man's success

in the world of business if they were carefully cultivated.

In The Father's Book, Theodore Dwight, Jr., instructed

 

fathers in how to teach their children habits that, if
mastered, would make them successful men. For example,
children should be made to learn how to keep track of
their money. Writing in 1835, Dwight argued that "the
keeping of an account of expenses and receipts will afford
many Opportunities for questions and suggestions on the

proper use of money, the tendency Of industry, foresight,

 

15Abbott, Rollo at Work, p. 125.

 

16"A Word tO Apprentices," The Child's Newspaper 1:1
(7 January 1834): 4.

 

82

economy, etc., the way to avoid poverty, the real value
Of property, its abuses, and many other subjects. ."17
The qualities of the successful businessman were apparent
in William Alcott's advice to young husbands. He suggested
that they schedule the entire twenty-four hours of the day,
including the profitable use of conversation at mealtimes.18
In some quarters it was even suggested that it was good for
business to cultivate a reputation for good behavior. In
the children's stories of Jacob Abbott, the father, in the
author's idealized image, systematically rewarded and pun-
ished his child to socialize him into the conventional work
patterns. And in one of McGuffey's stories, a young boy,
the son of a poor mother, shoveled snow to earn the money
for a textbook. Readers were told that "he knew no such
word as fnil, but always succeeded in all he attempted."19
If a young man took seriously the stories he read
as a child, and the advice Of those who counseled young men,

he would find himself preoccupied with orderliness, almost

to the point of compulsiveness. In The Way to DO Good,

 

Jacob Abbott offered the following advice:

 

17Dwight, Father's Book, p. 189.

 

18Alcott, Young Husband, p. 131.

 

19William H. McGuffey, McGuffey's New Fourth Eclectic
Reader: Instructive Lessons for theYoung (New York/
Cincinnati: Van Antwerp, Bragg & Co., 1857), p. 32.

83

I say then that the great rule for the securing
of your own personal happiness, is, to reduce
all your worldly business, your affairs, your
property, your domains, your employments, your
pleasures--reduce every thing to order. With-
out it, you can not’have a peaceful mind, and,
of course, you can not be happy.2°

 

Happiness was linked with keeping everything in
order. Order meant reducing the incidence Ofthe unexpected.
NO doubt this uneasiness with the spontaneous reflected an
instinctive wisdom. It would be difficult to marshal the
energy for great accomplishments if a man were distracted
by other things, and the Jacksonians anticipated great
accomplishments and valued achievement above everything
else. However, when order becomes compulsive, it not only
represents the efficient organization of limited energies,
but it also betrays anxiety about disorder. The same soci-
ety which Offered fabulous rewards for achievement was also
a society Of constant change, with all the confusion that
change implies. Change and confusion are disorderly, and
many people were made uneasy lest society itself fall into
chaos. The preoccupation with order may very well have been
a kind of talisman against chaos as well as a disciplined
way of focusing energies. A compulsive need for order
resulted in a carefully rationalized, routinized approach
to life. That Offered a great deal of security, but threat-

ened to cut off entire portions of the human personality.

 

2°Abbott, Way to DO Good, p. 97.

 

84

Apparently, that was a trade-Off which many nineteenth-
century males were willing to make.

In his book, How to Be a Man, Harvey Newcomb urged

 

his young readers to hold back chaos by an exertion Of the
will and by personal self-control. Newcomb extended the
need for self-control to include a strict discipline over
one's own body.

Now, if you early accustom yourself to exercise

a strict mental supervision over the body, so as
never to make any movement whatever, except what
you mean to make, you will find this habit of
great consequence to you; for besides saving you
the mortification Of a thousand ungraceful move-
ments which habit has rendered natural, it will
enable you to control your nerves. . . . Make the
will the ruling part of your'body, so as never to
do anything but what you mean to do, and you will
never get the reputation of being nervous.21

 

 

Newcomb's advice went so far as to encourage young men to
"strive to acquire such self-control, as to keep a calm,
serene expression upon your countenance; and you cannot
tell how much it will add to your appearance."22 This
sounds like a virtual recipe for everything from nervous
tics to a complete breakdown!

Newcomb is not an isolated example. Theodore

Dwight, Jr., in The Father's Book, expressed concern that

 

children be trained in such a way as not to experience

 

21Newcomb, How to Be a Man, pp. 101-102.

 

22 Ibid., p. 108.

85

violent emotions. It was the parents' duty to teach
self-control. He said,

Not a hasty expression, not a step, nor a motion,

nor a look, ought ever to be seen in the parent,

indicative of passion. The constant study of a

model Of self-possession in a father, or a mother,

will do more to control the tem er Of a child,

than any series of punishments. 3
William Alcott described anger as "a species Of disease."2“
In 1860 Cecil B. Hartley advised young men to "learn to
restrain anger."25

Self-discipline was the linchpin which held

together all the virtues of the self-made. Many writers
spelled out practical definitions Of self-discipline. In
a magazine published by the Cincinnati Sunday School Union,
apprentices were advised, "First, he industrious in your
business; never complain that you are obliged to work; go
to it with alacrity and cheerfulness; and it will become
a habit which will make you respected and beloved by your
master or employer. . . ."25

Self-discipline included the expectation that men

should use their inner strength in the suppression of natural

 

23Dwight, Father's Book, p. 20.

 

2"Alcott, Young Man's Guide, p. 84.

 

25Hartley, Etiquette, p. 195.

 

26"A Word to Apprentices," The Child's Newspaper 1:1
(7 January 1834): 4.

 

86

urges. They were to swallow anger, hold back tears, take
strokes of ill fortune and refuse to be crushed by them.

A story in The Child's Newspaper featured a little boy who

 

had to have his leg amputated. He was Offered as a model
for young boys because he had gone through the entire
operation without groaning once.27

Still another dimension Of self-discipline involved
the suppression of impulses and temptations which might
distract from the main task. The Rev. Sylvester Graham
suggested abstinence from certain kinds of food and drink
in order to keep sensual passions subdued.28 The Rev. John
Todd is an example of a man deeply concerned for the control
of sexual appetites.29 Many authors condemned the influence
Of "bad books," which presumably also were subversive of
self-control insofar as they aroused sexual feelings.3°

Temperance literature and children's stories were permeated

 

27"The Patient Boy," The Child's Newspaper 1:5
(4 March 1834).

28Sylvester Graham, A Lecture to Young Men, on
Chastity, Intended Also for the Serious Consideration of
Parents and Guardians (Boston: George W. Light, 1839
[Briginal edfil834]).

 

29Todd, Student's Manual.

 

30See, for example, Henry Ward Beecher, Twelve
Lectures to Young Men, on Various Impprtant Subjects
(NewCYOrk: D. AppIeton 8 Co., 1901 [original ed. 1844]);
Eliot, Lectures; Newcomb, How to Be a Man; and William
Howard Van Doren, Mercantile Morals; Thoughts for Young
Men Enterin Mercantile Cife (New York: Charles Scribner,
or1g1na e

 

87

with advice about suppressing physical temptations.31
Young men were advised to be temperate in eating and
drinking and regular in all their habits. Desires,

appetites, and passions were to be kept under strict

subjection. In the Young Man's Guide, William Alcott

 

encouraged young men to marry early, presumably before
they lost control of their passions.32 T. S. Arthur's

Advice to Young Men, like many similar works, was concerned

 

for young men's purity Of mind and action.33 Referring to
slavery in the South, Harvey Newcomb warned that where white
men grew up without becoming accustomed to working, they
were vulnerable to idleness and vice. "They grow up with
strong and fiery passions, and vicious inclinations unsub-
dued."3“ The same author urged his readers to "abstain
from intoxicating drinks, tobacco, gaming, and profane

H35

language. In his biography of Benjamin Franklin, Jacob

Abbott suggested that as a young man in Philadelphia,

Franklin avoided the idlers in the streets who spent their

6

time smoking and drinking.3 Energy was not limitless, and

 

31See especially the works of Jacob Abbott and the
McGuffey Readers.

 

32Alcott, Young Man's Guide.

 

33Arthur, Advice.

3"Newcomb, How to Be a Man, pp. 117-118.

 

35Ibid., p. 99.

36Abbott, Franklin, p. 78.

88

self-discipline was necessary to prevent loss of energy
which might be detrimental to men who dreamed of great
achievement. John Todd insisted that sports drained time
and energy, and could not be considered equivalent to
useful exercise.37

The need for self-control became particularly
urgent in the face of temptations to various forms of vice
and self-indulgence. It was at this point that many people
of the period became most anxious. Included on the list of
dangers to be avoided were card playing and gaming (they
were a waste of time). Other dangers were profanity and
vulgarity, Sabbath-breaking, and drinking. T. S. Arthur,
whose advice was usually rather moderately pitched, warned
against sensual pleasures. "Let a young man, then, keep
his desires, his appetites, and his passions, under proper
subjection, and he will be in no danger Of running into
those excesses which sow in his physical system the seeds

"38 One of the more curious items on

of all destruction.
the list of the forbidden was "late suppers!" Whenever

the author Of a story or novel wanted to warn the reader

 

37Todd, Student's Manual. Todd does not say how he
distinguishes between "sports" and "exercise," but the
impression is given that exercise would be something under-
taken purposefully, in a disciplined way, and not for
amusement. In other words, if one is having a good time,
he is probably draining time and energy!

 

38Arthur, Advice, p. 152.

89

of impending moral disaster, the hero was described
as accepting an invitation to a "late supper." These
suppers usually took place somewhere where alcohol was
also served--an association which Obviously made them so
dreadful. Staying out at night or going to the theater
were also signs that a young man was straying beyond his
depth and courting serious danger. Since their "budding
passions" were difficult to keep under control, young men
were particularly vulnerable to vice and sensuality. Read-
ing between the lines, it is clear that the stiff and con-
trolled masculine image projected in the literature did
not describe male behavior as it was--at least not uni-
versally. In some circles, at least, the behavior Of
young men was not terribly different than in some circles
today. The frequent warnings of their elders made that
clear. T. S. Arthur reminded his readers in 1850 of times
they had been in the company of other young men whose vir-
tue was questionable. "You can remember the ribald jest,
the Obscene allusion, the sneer at virtue, the unblushing,
acknowledgement of licentiousness."39
Many writings of the period saw evil as so power-
fully alluring that men could scarcely resist it. The
almost hysterical fear of sensuality and vice made evil

seem bigger than life. It appeared to be so overpowering

 

39Ibid., p. 108.

90

that its male victims were hardly able to muster any
resistance. In Henry Ward Beecher's lectures to young

men, the author hinted that the evils which lay in wait

for young men were almost magnetic."0 Perhaps this is why
Beecher attacked them in such a heated and exaggerated way.
Not only Beecher, but other lecturers--including other
clergy--seemed utterly convinced that "good" and "virtue"
were strictly on the defensive among males. The defenders
of the ascendant social values gave every indication of
feeling doubtful and uneasy about the power of religion

and conventional morality to support men successfully in

the contest against temptation. Their feeling that the
prevailing social values were in a precarious position was
an indicator Of the level of their anxiety. They feared
that society might fall into chaos, with all the traditional
values becoming jettisoned in favor of the indulgence of
unbridled impulse. T. S. Arthur told a story about two
young men, one domesticated and "good," according to all
the standards of the time; the other wild and undisciplined.
The result of their friendship was that the "good" young man
was easily and almost without resistance corrupted by the
"bad" one. This illustrates men's basic vulnerability to
evil, Arthur believed, and exposes their essential moral

weakness. Arthur Offered a philosophical explanation for

 

l”Beecher, Twelve Lectures.

 

91

this phenomenon when he wrote that "temptations to evil
are far more powerful than allurements to good, because
the former appeal to inherent evil tendencies.“1

When self-discipline failed, men's moral vul-
nerability and fragility were exposed. Succumbing to
temptation or failing to carry a burden, men collapsed
completely, demonstrating a fundamental moral weakness.
For example, men were more likely to be wayward than women
(although nothing could equal the wickedness and the moral
monstrousness Of a wayward woman). Since their passions
were so difficult to govern, men were vulnerable to
corruption and sensuality, and easily misled.

Those who counseled young men offered specific
devices and disciplines for helping in the struggle to
maintain control. They suggested manual labor, physical
exercise, and dietary regimens. Sylvester Graham's program
of diet, instructions about what items of clothing to wear
close to the skin, ways of bathing and scheduling the day
was, perhaps, one of the most methodical attempts to deal
with anxiety aroused by the strangely unmanageable demands
of the body."2 By controlling what went into the body, one
might control the feelings that emerged from it. Physical

means were invoked to subdue the physical self and bring it

 

“lArthur, Advice, p. 93.

1”See the Graham Journal, passim; and Graham,
A Lecture.

 

 

92

under control. Along with psychological and social
constraints, Graham and others added their own ingenious
programs as further buttresses against the breakdown of
control, with all of its terrifying consequences for
society as well as for individuals.

Home and women were an institutionalized means
of assisting men in the terrible burden--both social and
personal--of control. Although men were stronger in most
ways, morally they were not as strong as women. Men
depended on women to protect them from themselves. Women
served to keep men on the straight and narrow so that they
could achieve success. It was a woman's duty to bring a
man back on course if he felt himself becoming too aggres-
sive and too fiercely competitive, or, on the other hand,
if he began to retreat from the battle into vice and sen-
suality, or just plain laziness. In Maria McIntosh's

novel, Two Lives, she wrote,

 

The letter which Mr. Falconer had desired to read,
was from his mother; and he had spoken to Isabel
of her . . . Of his regret that nature had denied
him the sweet companionship of a sister, Of his
conviction Of the necessity of woman's influence
to the formation Of true and complete excellence
in man."3

In one of Catharine Sedgwick's novels, Harry Aiken sent a

love letter to Susan May, in which he wrote,

 

l”Maria J. McIntosh, Two Lives: Or, To Seem and
To Be (New York: D. Appleton & CO./Philadelphia: Geo.
S. Appleton, 1846), p. 9.

 

93

I am sure my affection for you has made me diligent

in business, frugal, earnest in my pursuits, and

patient in my disappointments. If I had felt

(which, thank God, I never did) any inclination

to forbidden pleasures, to dangerous company, to

dissipation of any sort, the thought of you would

have been a shield to me. Knowing you and Charlotte

so well, and the memory of my excellent mother, have

given me a reverence for female virtue--a belief in

the power and beauty of goodness in a woman--and to

this, Susan, love naturally follows.

Still, as much as men may have needed to rely on
the feminine influence, self-discipline was at bottom a
matter of exerting the power of the will. By will-power
a man could overcome everything within himself that might
threaten to subvert the achievement Of his goals. The
repeated message was: avoid the pitfalls of vice and
sensuality; work hard and do whatever your employer asks
without complaining. Sacrifice, live austerely, exercise
your determination to be successful and you shall be. Even
sloth could be overcome by an exertion of the will, and it
must be. Idleness was an enemy perhaps even more formidable
than vice. The lazy man virtually forfeited his claim to
humanity.
While there was, on the one hand, an emphasis on

being tough, determined, aggressive, and iron-willed, there

was at the same time a concern that men be able to function

 

I”'Catharine M. Sedgwick, The Poor Rich Man and The
Rich Poor Man (New York: Harper 8 Bros., 1836), p. 70.

 

 

94

acceptably in society and in the family."5 The latter
function required sensitivity to others and the ability

to restrain aggressive impulses. The ambivalence resulted
in an interior conflict which threatened to tear a man apart
unless he could hold himself together by a sheer effort of
the will. It was necessary, then, for a man to steer a
middle course. Somehow he must hold in tension his need

to compete and the equally urgent need for self-control.
Society demanded both, and unless a man could manage both,
he was doomed to failure or disgrace.

The tense balance between competition and self-
control was a major struggle throughout the entire period.
It represented the difficulty of holding together the
interests of the individual and those Of society. The
burden of holding together this potentially explosive
combination fell chiefly on men. They felt it primarily

as the need to triumph over self.

 

“5John William Ward, in Andrew Jackson: Symbol for
an Age (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956) says that
enem1es of Jackson suggested that as a man of 'iron will,‘
he might prove a threat to the liberties of his country"
(p. 191). Ward also wrote that "the age admired the self-
reliant man. . . . What was needed was not a denial of the
self-reliant man, but assurance that the self-reliant man
was on the side of society and not against society" (p. 200).

 

95

For middle-class men, masculinity was defined
not only in terms of expected roles, but also in terms of
cultural images of what was masculine. For example, the
literature Of the period projects an image of males as
basically rational. This contrasts with an image of women
as controlled by emotion. "Man" was associated with the
intellect, the head, the conscious, while "woman" was
identified with feeling, instinct, the heart, and the
unconscious. Writing in 1850, Timothy Shay Arthur
summarized this view when he declared that "in the
graver things Of life, a man's judgment is more to be
relied upon than a woman's because here a regular course
of reasoning from premises laid down is required, and this
a man is much more able to do than a woman. . . ."“6 Such
distinctions were not inevitable, but the exceptions were
regarded with contempt."7 It would not be true to say that
emotion was associated exclusively with females. However,
for men, emotion was decidedly secondary to logic and
rationality. Reason was cold and Objective, and could
serve as a reliable guide in the "real" world, the world
of action and progress. Emotion was soft and subjective,

and confined to the sentimental sphere of life--the sphere

 

“GArthur, Advice, p. 112.

“71bid., p. 167. "Of course, there are exceptions,
as in masculine women, so called, and effeminate men; but
these are looked upon as social monsters. . . ."

96

given over to women. If permitted to exert influence in
the "real" world, emotion would surely misguide and subvert.
Men were to live rationally, then, guided by principle.
Paradoxically, men were considered to have far more
urgent passions. Dr. Edward Jarvis held that

men have stronger passions and more powerful

appetites and propensities. Their inclina-

tions and propensities, or whatever nature,

intellectual, moral, or physical, are more

powerful and uncontrollable.

In addition to images of men as basically rational
and, at the same time, more passionate, a commonly held
image Of men was that they were less capable of bearing
suffering than were women. Men might easily break down
under it, but women were great sufferers! In their coura-
geous suffering, women took a redemptive role--a Christlike
role which men relied on and accepted on their own behalf.
Sometimes men accepted women's suffering with guilty con-
sciences, but Often merely as something to be taken for
granted.

The self-image Of American men was Of persons who
were practical and down to earth, drawing upon the resources
of ordinary experience rather than formal education. Thomas

Hamilton, a Scottish visitor to the United States, confirmed

this self-image in his 1833 statement,

 

l“‘Edward Jarvis, M. D. "On the Comparative Liability
of Males and Females to Insanity, and Their Comparative
Curability and Mortality When Insane," The American Journal
Of Insanity 7 (1850): 150.

 

 

97

In that knowledge . . . which the individual
acquires for himself by actual observation,
which bears an immediate marketable value,
and is directly available in the ordinary
avocations of life, I do not imagine the
Americans are excelled by any people in

the world.”9

An example of the American preference for the practical
over book-learning can be seen in Emily (Chubbuck) Judson's

story, Allen Lucas.50 The hero in Judson‘s story gave up

 

plans for higher education so as to spare his family the
sacrifice. He studied on his own. The anti-hero, Robert
May, drained his family's resources so that he could have
a college education. He was a selfish character whose life
ended up a shambles, while the hero, Allen Lucas, prospered
and flourished. The clear implication was that practical,
self-disciplined learning was superior to formal education.
Formal education, it was implied, appealed to the selfish
and the elitist. It tarnished one's masculine image.

In popular image, the Jacksonian male was moral
and religious--but not to the point of fastidiousness.
Allen Lucas' essential goodness was shown as he made
personal sacrifices but refused to accept them from Others.
He was cheerful, uncomplaining, but above all, nnnnl. His

morality was a quality which the author wanted to be sure

 

l"'“Thomas Hamilton, Men and Manners in America
(Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1833), p. 130.

s°Emily (Chubbuck) Judson, Allen Lucas; the Self Made
Man (Utica: Bennett, Backus 8 Hawley, 1844).

98

the reader would not miss. In the closing scene of the
book, one incidental to the story, Lucas gives a coin to
a blind beggar. It was Allen's essential righteousness
that the reader must finally remember. It had to be made
clear that morality and goodness would be rewarded. TO
demonstrate the point, Allen was blessed with prosperity
and success.

Stories by women, in particular, depicted men as
religious, humane, charitable, and unimpressed by wealth
or ostentation. Perhaps these qualities appealed to
those women who felt drawn to men who were "safe" and
nonthreatening. The men in such stories lived by basic
principles. They were unmoved by the proud or the showy.
Their basic integrity and their firm, consistent gentleness
posed no threat to the family. In fact, these qualities
offered protection for the home and the sphere Of women.
Neither home nor women were safe from the sorts of men
who gave such a high priority to personal ambitions that
all else gave way. The heroes of popular literature were
inflexibly moral, and apparently sexless. Women were in
no danger from any intense or demanding passions from
such men.

Women's literary heroes were devoted to the fairer
sex, but only in the most chaste way. They might fall in

love, but if they had any physical passions at all, they

99

were carefully hidden beneath a perfect self-control.

On the surface only devotion and loyalty showed.51
Anti-heroes, on the other hand, were inclined to keep
sordid company and try to introduce the innocent to corrupt

ways. For example, a story in The Columbian Lady's and

 

Gentleman's Magazine in 1844 reported the attempts of a

 

group of such men to draw a decent fellow named Henry
Armour into their circle. They met once a week to eat,
drink, smoke, and "corrupt each other by ridiculing those
salutary moral restraints which, once laid aside, leave the

"52 Such men

thoughtless youth in imminent danger of ruin.

were dangerous to all the values prized by women, partic-

ularly because they might break down the resistance of

those men on whom women counted for protection and support.
The only evidence that a man of moral principles

had any sexual dimension at all, according to many stories

in the popular literature, was that he occasionally appeared

in the role of a father! This was Often, although not

always, true also of the more enduring literature Of the

period. Natty Bumppo, for example, was as moral and as

sexless as the heroes of the sentimental novelists.

 

51See, for example, McIntosh, Two Lives.

 

52Timothy Shay Arthur, "The Brother's Temptation,"
The Columbian Lady's and Gentleman's Magazine 1:3 (March
1844).

 

100

A recurring characteristic of those real-life men
who were the heroes of popular biographies was that they
were all said to be religious. However, the reader is
struck by the fact that the biographers are so often eager
to qualify their assertions of the subject's piety. They
rush to insist that he was not "sectarian," but sympathetic
to all religious groups. For example, in Freeman Hunt's

Lives of American Merchants, the men whose lives he treats

 

were uninterested in dogma or the fine points of doctrine.53

For these "heroes,” or at least for their biographers,
religious commitment did not mean loyalty to a belief,

a community, or a style Of worship as much as to a mildly
generous ethical commitment. That ethical commitment was
more or less vague in content, but it seemed to imply some
kind Of loyalty to moral principles of the sort that were
universally honored. These same heroes were scrupulously
honest, according to their biographers, and made generous--
but not rash--contributions to worthy causes.

Honesty was an important part of the masculine
image. Male heroes in children's and popular literature
were required to be scrupulously honest. Most advice books
addressed to young men also emphasized this trait. Even
though it must Often have seemed a doubtful premise, these

authors firmly and dogmatically insisted that the dishonest

 

53Freeman Hunt, Lives of American Merchants, vol. 1
(New York: Derby 6 Jackson, 1858).

 

101

flourished only in the short run. A New York clergyman,
writing for would-be businessmen in 1852, insisted that
"honesty--strict, undeviating, inflexible honesty--alone
can secure peace of mind."5“ Nineteenth-century values
extolled the man who persevered in goodness even when
opposed or criticized. A man must discipline himself

for honesty under every kind of stress.

It is impossible to understand the intensity and
earnestness behind masculine roles and images between 1820
and 1860 without being aware of their roots in Puritanism.
What has come to be called the "Protestant ethic" was in
its original context a serious commitment to be faithful
to God. That faithfulness included taking seriously one's
calling in life. The devout Protestant Of Calvinist stripe
considered the whole of life an arena in which to bear wit-
ness to the glory of God. By being careful and responsible
in his daily work, he demonstrated the seriousness with
which he took God's calling to serve others. Faithfulness
in life and work then became a testimony that the individual
did not belong to himself, but to his God. One's personal
salvation was "worked out"--i.e., manifested publicly--in
the faithful discharge of one's work. As a result, those

who lived out of the Protestant faith Often found themselves

 

5“Van Doren, Mercantile Morals, p. 143.

 

102

becoming prosperous. While wealth had not been their
primary goal, wealth frequently was the unexpected by-
product of their systematic "faithfulness." Their careful
style of organizing work and "tending to business" readily
commended itself to others who were uninterested in the
faith that supported it but envied the results.55
Jacksonian America was an age of revivalism.
Nevertheless, for most people, the theological under-
pinnings Of the "Protestant ethic" became disconnected
from daily experience. What had been part of a lifestyle,
carefully integrated into a whole, had become simply a set
of impersonal techniques. And yet, this transformed Prot-
estant ethic continued to carry the aura of the holy. Men
who adopted systematic ambition as a way of life did so
with the same earnestness as an act of religious dedication.
No doubt many believed that it was God who required this
sustained and strenuous effort from them and blessed them
when they persevered. But it was not the same.
Originally, Puritan values had been deeply rooted

in a community. The feeling and flavor of those values

 

55According to W. Fred Graham, in The Constructive
Revolutionary: John Calvin and His SocioiEconomic Impact
(Richmond, va.: John Knox Press, 1971), pp. 193ff., the
Protestant ethic was not the only (or the earliest) source
Of systematic, rational styles Of life and work. According
to Graham, a similar rational approach had developed in
Florence and other commercial cities before the Reformation.
However, the Protestant ethic was certainly the most vital
shaping influence in the experience of most Americans.

 

 

103

reflected that rootedness. The Puritan ethic was an ethic
for life in community. It took most seriously the mutual
obligations people owed one another, as well as the obli-
gations owed to God. The Puritan ethic matured within an
ethos which valued the corporate whole more than it did
the individual. The individual was expected to make
sacrifices for the larger group.

By the 18205, most of that original context had
disappeared. The Jacksonian man required an ethic for the
individual. The notion of a covenanted community was no
longer relevant to the pluralistic, urbanizing, secular
United States. Nor was it relevant to the man who became
converted in a revival meeting. The great value Of the
nineteenth century was competition-~the individual com-
peting in a great race to improve his condition. Mutual
Obligation had been muted, as had the sense of individual
sacrifice for the welfare Of the whole. This individualism
was not challenged by revivalism, but was rather reinforced
by a religious ethos that focused on one's private salvation.
The Puritan ethic became pulled loose from the milieu in
which it had been shaped, and was applied to isolated
individuals. The force and direction Of that ethic were
redirected. What had served rather well in a communally-
oriented setting became distorted and Often ugly when used
to measure the lives and worth of competing individuals in

a society Of increasing scale and complexity.

104

The inherited religious values were redrawn to
accommodate to new circumstances. The Puritan ethic became
a valuable resource which could be used by the Jacksonians
to assist in the adjustment to changing conditions. The
availability of the traditional ethic, blessed by asso-
ciation with the colonial forefathers, made it easier to
adapt to the values Of a modernizing society. Nineteenth-
century men could embrace the new, work-related virtues
without feeling a sharp sense of discontinuity with their
own past. And yet, as much as it may have seemed that the
traditional ethic was still Operative, that ethic was in
fact being redefined, and transformed in the process.

The transformation of the Puritan ethic, in many
cases, into a caricature of itself is terribly significant
for the understanding of masculine roles in this period.
Men had adjusted their lives to the disciplines required
to become "self-made." In the process, they felt the full
impact of the transformed Puritan values impinging on their
lives. Women, however, had become crucial transmitters of

the altered ethic to subsequent generations.56 From

 

56Women were particularly hard hit as the chief
victims of the sentimentalization of the Old ethic. Very
probably their suffering was greater than that of men, who
not only felt the pressures but were Often able tO enjoy
the rewards of the new virtues. My point is not to argue
that men suffered more than women, but that they suffered--
and that we, their heirs, also suffer--from those dimensions
of the human personality which were in that period sup-
pressed Or distorted.

105

childhood, men were pressured to live a systematized,
routinized life. They were taught to sublimate all aspects
Of the personality which did not serve some "practical"
(i.e., economic- or status-giving) purpose. If they did
not succumb to these pressures, they were forced to pay

the cost of their rebellion by being subjected to a

public judgment that they had been "effeminated."

Even worse than the judgment of the community
was the self-accusation from which they could not escape.
The judgment of a man's own conscience against him could
be devastating. His conscience had been shaped by his
mother, who passed on the conventional values of society.
But as a virtual saint, his mother could certainly never
be questioned. The sanctions Of the male conscience had
been reinforced by subsequent experience of the community's
judgments made against others. Most troublesome of all,
the "oughts” and "ought nots" still carried the weight Of
religious sanctions, even though they had Often been
secularized.

If the ethic of the "work-related" virtues had
developed in the United States d3 nnyn between 1820 and
1860 simply as an efficient response to modernization with
all its pressures and promises, that ethic could not have
carried nearly the emotional charge that it did carry under

the circumstances. But because the work—related virtues

106

were, in fact, a transformed version of an already existing
ethic--an ethic that was believed to stem from Scripture
and ultimately from God Himself--they had overtones of
righteousness and guilt. A nineteenth-century man could
scarcely have been expected to sort out those ”virtues"
objectively or impersonally. It was not the transformed
Puritan ethic that faced judgment, but he.

The importance, then, of this historical trans-
formation is that all the sanctions Of religious faith
were transferred to an ethic that resembled, but was in
fact a distortion, of Puritan faith. What had been a
"Protestant ethic" had been stripped from its original
context and become simply a "work ethic." Men were driven
forward with promises of future rewards, or threats Of
failure, but there was no grace and no mercy. The "work
ethic" was a doctrine of salvation by work(s).

Under pressure of historical conditions, an ethic
which began as a life-enhancing invitation to faithfulness
had become something quite different. It had, in a differ-
ent time-period, become guilt-inducing. Guilt was one of
the burdens that men carried among many others in an age
when men were supposed to be "self-made." There were
substantial costs to being masculine in such a time.

To be a man implied the ability to carry the burden

of survival. T. S. Arthur described something of the nature

107

of this burden when he urged young men to pay a debt of
affection and respect to their fathers in return for having
supported their families. Speaking of the average young
man, Arthur said,

Not until his own life-trials come on will he
fully understand how much he owes his father.

It is no light task which a man takes upon him-
self--that of sustaining, by his single efforts,
a whole family, and sustaining them in comfort,
and perhaps in luxury. You have an education
that enables you to take a respectable position
in society; you have a groundwork Of gOOd prin-
ciples; habits Of industry; in fact, all that a
young man need ask for in order that he may rise
in the world; and for these you are indebted to
your father. To give you such advantages has
cost him labor, self-denial, and much anxious
thought. Many times, during the struggle to
sustain his family, has he been pressed down
with worldly difficulties, and almost ready

to despair.57

Arthur went on to speak of a father perhaps broken in
health, disappointed in his worldly prospects, and nearly
despairing of the outcome of it all. And yet, he is largely
unappreciated by his children.

The necessary cost of demonstrating one's manhood
was the ability to persevere even under the burden of such
heavy role requirements. Somehow, finding success in the
marketplace was the equivalent of personal fulfillment.

Men sacrificed parts of their own selves and certain vital

 

57Arthur, Advice, p. 103.

108

ties with other human beings to live out their commitments
to becoming successful providers.$8 Dr. Isaac Ray reported
that "many a man immersed in the active pursuits of civic
life, finds his faculties strained to a degree of tension
apparently inevitable, while the idea of relaxation seems
to be equivalent to that of dissolution."59 All the male
virtues of the period presupposed that it was a man's duty
to work hard, to apply himself, to be industrious. It was
more than duty. It was, in fact, crucial to one's mascu-
line identity. "We may safely conclude, then," said Harvey
Newcomb in 1847, "that, whoever despises labor is a fool;
for he despises the only thing that can make him a MAN."6°
Hard work and some kind Of economic "success" were a nec-
essary minimum in proving one's masculinity--masculinity
which otherwise could not be taken for granted.

Dr. Edward Jarvis insisted that men were more sub-
ject to nervous disorders than women. He attributed this
to poverty, destitution, or the fear of it, anxiety about
business, and hopes and disappointments relating to
property.

But they affect the sexes unequally, for the

reason that men are more bent on the acquisition
of wealth. . . . They are more engaged in those

 

58Dawley, Class and Community, p. 39.

 

59Ray, Mental Health, p. 117.

 

6°Newcomb, How to Be a Man, p. 115.

 

109

pursuits which have an uncertain issue; they

have more plans to fail, and hence they are

more exposed to disappointments, and misfor-

tunes connected with business, speculation,

and money.61
The fear of failure weighed heavily on men. They lived
constantly under its threat. And in failure, men lost
not only their hopes and aspirations, they lost their

very manhood. In The Young Man's Way, Anthony Atwood

 

made the stakes clear: "You may make yourself effeminate
and idolent, or brave and persevering."62 Warnings against
effeminacy are frequent in the literature, and to be judged
"effeminate" was a damning judgment. One writer, after
denouncing "diversion, pleasure, and amusement," said,

A life thus spent is a life lost. It is utterly

inconsistent with all manliness Of thought and

action; and while it forms a character of effem-

inacy and feebleness, it is sure to bring on its

possessor, the contempt of all worthy and good

men.63

Effeminacy did not mean merely having delicate

habits or demeanor. It was a description Of personal char-
acter, and a judgment that the man so described had failed

to live up to the expectations of masculine roles and had

slipped over into the feminine sphere. The contempt in

 

61Jarvis, "Comparative Liability," p. 156.

62Anthony Atwood, The Young Man's Wny to Intelligence,
Respectability, Honor, and Usefulness (Philadelphia; J. W.
Moor, 1857 [original ed. 1850]), p. 122.

 

 

63Hawes, Lectures, p. 69.

110

such a judgment was especially clear in a statement by
one of the characters in Emily Judson's novel, Allen Lucas.
"You needn't shake your head at me, Allen, everybody knows
that old Mr. May is working himself to death, for the sake
of sending his lady-son away to school."6“ Robert May
was careless of Others, absorbed his family's sacrifices
without gratitude, was cynical about others' potential for
success, and sought special favors. He was not "physical,"
did not work with his hands, was not rugged or athletic.
He was formally educated in a college. He married money
calculatedly and cold-bloodedly. He was described as
frail, pale, and "effeminate." By deviating from the
contemporary standards of manhood, a male effectively
became a woman.65
Angelina Grimké, familiar with suffering and no

stranger to the punishments meted out to those who differed
from society's norms, was gifted with insight into some of
the painful side-effects experienced by those who tried
to live up to the images of masculinity. She wrote,

The fallacious doctrine of male and female virtues

has well nigh ruined all that is morally great and
lovely in his character: he has been quite as deep

 

t5"Judson, Allen Lucas, p. 110.

 

65Ben Barker—Benfield, "The Spermatic Economy:
A Nineteenth-Century View of Sexuality," in The American
Family in Social-Historical Perspective, ed. Michael Gordon
(New York: St. Martin's Press, 1973), p. 360.

 

 

111

a sufferer by it as woman, though mostly in
different respects and by other processes.66

The spectre Of failure was omnipresent in children's
literature and in lectures tO young men. Those who failed
to study, to work hard, and to "improve their time" would
ruin all their prospects, and fail utterly. To look for
shortcuts was a sure sign of failure ahead. Life must
be tackled carefully and systematically, or a man might
become ”worthless."

There were palpable risks and penalties for being
male in the period 1820-1860. The enormous burdens carried
by females in this same time are already well-documented.
None of the conclusions about the difficulties Of being
male are intended to minimize them. Whatever the diffi-
culties for females, and whoever may have suffered more
deeply, the fact remains that masculinity was also a burden
to be carried. For some, it was a burden easily lifted;
for others, it was crushing. Masculinity was not something
settled from birth, as maleness was. Masculinity had to be
earned; and it was precarious. For those men who failed to
exert a sufficient effort, or who failed to win the coveted
respectability and success, sexual identity itself was

thrown into question. Subsequent anxiety and insecurity

 

66Angelina Grimké, quoted in Up From the Pedestal,
ed. Kraditor, p. 66.

 

112

had negative repercussions for men's lives. They also
negatively affected men's relations with the opposite sex.

It is a fact that home, and the women who dwelled
there, also contributed to the tension men had to bear.

The severe dichotomy between the values of the market place
and the social values represented by women and domesticity
added to the pressures requiring the gigantic effort of
self-control. Women could only lose in such a situation:
because they bore the awful burden of propping up men under
pressure, and being blamed when they failed.

Idealized woman, given the task of socializing sons
into the virtues which shaped a masculine self-image, became
an accomplice in requiring conformity to roles which carried
an emotional super-charge. Only a monstrous son could rebel
against sentimentalized and idealized woman. Even the
impulse to rebel, though quietly hidden, must have had
its emotional penalties. Thus masculine roles, as they
evolved between 1820 and 1860, carried a peculiar intensity.
They were advocated with a singular earnestness, in large
part because they were a transformed version Of a primarily
religious ethic. Furthermore, they were transmitted by

women, who had become symbols Of the conscience.

CHAPTER III

MEN AND WOMEN

The mid-nineteenth century witnessed a growing
alienation of "masculine" and "feminine" at many points.
This alienation had both personal and cultural dimensions.
The polarization of sex roles created a situation in which
women were forced to become symbols for the conscience.
Males responded with covert, but real, ambivalence toward
women and the feminine. One component Of this ambivalence
was hostility--a hostility which women returned. On an
unconscious level, men turned away from women and the values
they represented. Fleeing from the feminine, men preferred,
both in reality and in fantasy, to seek escape and the
companionship Of their fellows.

In order to understand what was happening to males,
it is necessary to consider the roles that women played in
this period. At the heart Of the problematic relation
between men and women was that venerable institution,
motherhood. Motherhood had never been insignificant.
However, between 1820 and 1860, the role of mother had
become exaggerated out of proportion to other roles. No
doubt the diminishing role Of the father had created this

out-of-balance emphasis on motherhood.

113

114

Between 1820 and 1860, mothers more and more
frequently passed on to their sons their own ambivalence.
They communicated a simultaneous fascination with and
revulsion from the hard-driving American society Of the
period. The mothers featured in the literature did not
reject the prevailing values. Mothers demanded that their
sons try hard, be ambitious, and use will power to master
themselves and the environment. In short, they expected
their sons to become successful in a man's world. Success
promised satisfaction to young men and a vicarious fulfill-
ment for their mothers. Furthermore, the sons' achievements
would Offer proof of the mother's accomplishment in her spe-
cial child-rearing role. (If she were allowed to compete
in nothing else, she could compete in mothering.) At the
same time, she implanted in her sons 3 sense Of the need
to be moral, sensitive to Others, and virtuous.

These dual expectations--of success, on the one
hand, and virtue, on the other--were taught both directly
and indirectly. While transmitting the conventional activ-
ist values of masculine culture, mother herself served as
a symbol of self-effacement and moral carefulness. In

Jacob Abbott's story, Hoaryhead and M'Donner, this ambiv-

 

alence comes through with particular clarity since there
was no father on the scene at all. The widowed mother was

concerned that her son, Gilbert, learn the work-related

115

virtues of regularity, dependability, self-discipline,
and the careful use of time. At the same time, she was
just as concerned that Gilbert learn to be gentle, fair,
and religious.1

These two needs--for success and for virtue--Often
came in conflict. When that happened, the male conscience
faced a moral dilemma. Being a bad boy, one's conscience
said, meant hurting mother. Didn't the children's litera-
ture and McGuffey stories frequently warn against wounding
mother by one's ”bad" behavior? But how did one hurt mother
most? By breaking her rules of morality, or by failing to
become a success?

Twentieth-century studies indicate that boys raised
primarily by women Often have difficulty learning their
sex roles and frequently experience hostility toward the
feminine. David Lynn, a student Of sex roles, believes
that males tend to feel hostility toward females in greater
degree than women will feel hostile to males.2 With the
increasing absence of men from the home, women became
identified with heavy, Often conflicting demands, and

with censoriousness. The more women were set apart and

 

1Jacob Abbott, Hoaryhead and M'Donner (New York:
Harper 8 Bros., 1855).

 

2Lynn, Parental and Sex-Role Identification, p. 63.

 

116

idealized, the more they seemed to men to play the role
of judge.3
With child-raising left almost entirely to the
mother, the mothering role became exaggerated. Nineteenth-
century males heard mother's own accents in the voice of
the conscience. In his account of boy life before the
Civil War, William Dean Howells remarked that
the mother represented the family sovereignty;
the father was seldom seen, and he counted for
little or nothing among the outside boys. It
was the mother who could say whether a boy might
go fishing or swimming, and she was held a good
mother or not according as she habitually said
yes or no.“
In popular literature and in advice books, women rep-
resented the super-ego. This little verse by Lydia
Signourney captures the feeling associated with "mother."
What then will you do for the mother
Who hath done so much for you?

Who hath never forgotten you for a moment
Who loveth you night and day?5

 

3In Male and Female, Margaret Mead remarks that

"because it is the mother's and not the father's voice that
gives the early approval and disapproval, the nagging voice
of conscience is feminine in both sexes--that voice which
says, 'You are not being the success you ought to be.‘
The man who feels he is failing is a man who is angry with
women, and angry with those values for which women stand.

. And it is not only the man who is failing who finds
himself angry with women, but also the man who is paying
too high a price for his success. . . ."

 

I‘William Dean Howells, A Boy's Town (New York/
London: Harper 8 Bros., 1890), p. 75.

 

5Sigourney, Child's Book, unpaged.

 

117

It is little wonder that nineteenth-century men
had a difficult time coming to terms with women. TO some
extent the idealization of womanhood served to justify her
confinement in the home, where she could remain untainted
from the world as she presided over the cult of domesticity.
However, this process of canonizing womanhood, and install-
ing a halo around her head, meant that she became bigger
than life at those points where her influence was still
strong. Her very sanctity ruled out the possibility of
questioning her authority over the conscience. Since it
was not permissible to challenge such authority, feelings
of resentment and hostility found no satisfactory outlet.
Such feelings were very likely repressed only to find
expression in indirect ways. Hostility toward women sought
and found means Of expression sufficiently disguised that
they could be slipped by the ever-watchful and punishing
conscience. It is unlikely that many men ever consciously
thought of themselves as bearers of hostility toward the
idealized opposite sex. And yet, this appears to be the
reality of the situation.

There was, after all, a certain ambiguity in
attributing to women the kind Of moral strength which
made her a moral barometer and watchdog over males. On
the one hand, her moral monitoring was celebrated and
complimented. Writing in 1847, Harvey Newcomb urged

young men to

118

accustom yourselves to make confidants of your

sisters. Let them understand your feelings and

know your designs; and pay suitable regard to

their advice. By this means, you may be, saved

from many a snare, and you will secure their

affection and sympathy. Never form any design

or engage in any enterprise, which you are

ashamed to divulge to them. If you do you

may be sure it will not end well.6
William G. Eliot also lifted up the society of women as
a purifying influence, which would elevate the male char-
acter. The company of virtuous and well-educated women
would teach men to find virtue attractive and sin hateful.
Young men needed to associate with good women quite as much
as they needed to read good books, and the neglect Of either
was equally dangerous. "Everyone knows that it is a good
trait in a young man, to be fond Of ladies' society
he who can enjoy the refined pleasure which comes from
female society is not likely tO enjoy himself in the
haunts of dissipation."7

But, if good and virtuous women could exercise

such an extraordinarily positive influence, could they
not also exercise a negative, even perverse, influence?
If it was really true that men were ultimately dependent

on women to keep them on the straight and narrow, what

judgment should be made of women who failed in that task?

 

6Newcomb, How to Be a Man, p. 39.

 

7Eliot, Lectures, p. 124.

119

Here lay the hidden catch in ascribing to women such
unusual powers of influence, and such disproportionate
responsibility for male morality. If she were a great
power for good, she could also be the cause of a man's
downfall. Men (and many women) were convinced Of that.
Eliot wrote,

But in proportion as she exerts a good and puri-

fying influence when well educated and virtuous,

her influence becomes pernicious if her charac-

ter is perverted. . . . When wicked, she is the

most successful minister of ruin. The best

things perverted, become the worst. . . . Take

from woman's character her love and practice Of

virtue, and her presence becomes death to the

soul.”
In the exaggeration of women as moral beings and as the
keepers of morality, there was a hidden accusation: women
might build men up, but they might also tear them down. To
assign to the female gender suChcomprehensive responsibility
for male morality was surely a veiled expression of anger.

Another covert expression of such hostility was the

inability to forgive the female who fell from grace. Such

an instance can be found in a popular novel written in 1847,

Arthur Martin; or, The Mother's Trials.9 The main character

 

in the novel was Arthur Martin, who became the man of the

house after his father's accidental death. Although

 

”Ibid.

9Charles Burdett (Esq.), Arthur Martin; org The
Mother's Trials (New York: Harper 8 Bros., 1847).

 

120

well meaning, Arthur began to go astray in the absence of
parental control. He never thought Of his mother's welfare;
he spent his badly needed salary on foolish trifles; he
learned to play pool, gamble, drink, and stay out for "late
suppers.” He began covering for himself by lying to his
mother. Perhaps worst of all, Arthur arranged "accidental"
meetings between Jenks, a co-worker who should have given
him cause for suspicion, and his younger sister, Annie.
Annie had also wandered from the paths of virtue, bewitched
by her own love Of "Saturday walks," and her desire to have
a new shawl and hat! Both Arthur and Annie neglected their
mother and lived "carefree" lives. While Arthur began
stealing from his employer to pay his debts, Annie was
"married" to the rotten Jenks in such secrecy that no record
Of the marriage was ever found. Jenks refused to support
his wife. Annie very quickly came crawling back to her
mother, while her brother skipped town to avoid arrest.
After some passage of time, Arthur Martin returned to his
mother and sister, Older, wiser, and thoroughly penitent.
He reported that he had served on board a whaler, and saved
up enough money to repay his wronged employer. The result
was that Arthur was restored to grace. He established a
regular advisory relationship with Mr. Hammond, his bene-
factor and his father's friend, and he was restored to his

former position. Arthur's mother took him back and he

121

became prosperous, eventually earning a partnership in
Mr. Gamble's firm.

The striking element in this story was that
Arthur's sister Annie did not ever experience the kind of
restoration that he did. In the end, there was redemption
for Arthur, with no apparent permanent penalty. To the
contrary, he became a successful man. Annie, however,
remained at home with her mother, paying the cost of her
rebellion in a perpetual dependency, a permanent state of
childhood. Her sin was so great that the most she could
ever hOpe for was inner peace. Why was this so? No doubt
it was partly due tO the fact that her sin was sexual. The
more serious reason for this failure of grace seemed to be
that, as a woman, Annie was more responsible for herself
than Arthur was. In fact, she was morally responsible for
him as well!

T. S. Arthur's story What Can Woman DO? also

 

dramatizes the decisive roles that females played for

good or for evil.1° The novel contrasts two families,

the Penroses and the Eldridges. In each case, the men

of the family are morally weak or faint of heart. The
little boys in the story are so marginal as to be of little
interest. The women Of the two families clearly are com-

pletely responsible for providing moral strength in their

 

1”Timothy Shay Arthur, What Can Woman DO?
(Philadelphia: G. G. Evans, 1859 [original ed. 1856]).

 

122

respective households. Even the little girls play similar
roles, becoming deeply responsible for the development of
their Older brothers, and significantly influencing their
fathers. In one of the families, Mrs. Penrose plays an
angelic, even Christlike figure Of moral worth and sin-
lessness. In the other, Mrs. Eldridge represents the
opposite-~a degraded character. T. S. Arthur, writing
for a female audience, was mainly interested in the weak-
ness and dependency of the men. The negative character,
Mrs. Eldridge, is nevertheless symbolic of the intensity
with which women are blamed for male weakness. William

Alcott summed up women's power when he wrote in The Young

 

Man's Guide,

 

If we examine the character and conduct of woman

as it now is, and as history shows it to have

been in other periods of the world, we shall see

that much of the good and evil which has fallen

upon mankind has been through the mediation of

female influence.11

Men also felt a degree Of hostility toward women

as consumers. It was true that the confinement Of women
to the domestic "sphere" served as a symbol Of the male's
ability to provide. When personal prosperity could no
longer be displayed in the form of fields and woodlands,

barns and granaries, flocks and herds, urban men looked

for other symbols to demonstrate their success. The chief

 

11Alcott, Young Man's Guide, p. 215.

 

123

such symbol became the housewife, who stayed at home and
did not participate in the process Of production.12 Her
husband, however, had to go out and meet the world each

and every day. The Rev. James Bean, whose counsel for
married couples was published in 1832, admonished wives

not to expect too much in the way of attention from weary
husbands. If her husband seemed preoccupied and failed to
show affection, a woman should find reassurance in the fact
that it was normal for men to become fatigued in the strug-
gle to earn a living. Women, by implication, had an easier
lot. "It is a serene region in which a woman moves; not so
that into which the head of a family is often driven for the
support of those who depend on him. . . .1” The author of

Marriage As It Is and As It Should Be commented that "many

 

gentlemen are afraid to marry, because as they affirm it,

it costs so much to support a wife."1“ He lamented the

fact that so many women, loaded with "trinkets and gewgaws,”
failed to serve as suitable companions for good men, and

fell short of their calling as "ministering angels."

 

12Janet Saltzman Chafetz, writing in Masculine/
Feminine or Human? p. 116, indicates that the growing
economy of the period required high levels Of consumption
to maintain growth and prosperity. As production of goods
became less labor intensive, women could serve the larger
social purpose by staying home and becoming consumers.

 

 

13James Bean, The Christian Minister's Affectionate
Advice to a Married Couple (New York: American Tract
Society, 1832), p. 12.

 

 

ll‘Beyley, Marriage, p. 142.

124

It seems that while men needed women at home to
serve as symbols of their success, husbands not infrequently
felt resentment toward the sheltered, consumer-oriented
women who waited for them there. The pressures Of life
and work in a success-oriented age created anger in men.
This anger was occasionally displaced and projected onto
women, for whom, supposedly, all these pressures were
endured. Some men, at least, saw women as inordinately
fond of luxuries. Such women constantly added to the pres-
sure On men who would Otherwise be content with their lot.
James Fenimore Cooper, writing Of the classes of people
who had not yet made it into the middle-class wrote,

The men, who are nowhere so apt at imiation as
the other sex, are commonly content with garments
that shall denote the comfort and ease of their
several conditions in life, but the females are
remarkable for a more aspiring ambition.15

Not only did men resent women as excessive con-
sumers, but they also criticized women for so Often being
"sickly." Particularly in the 18505, men grumbled that

sickly females were unpleasant companions and were Often

emotional burdens to their husbands. Women, some suggested,

 

15James Fenimore Cooper, Notions Of the Americans
Picked Up By a Traveling Bachelor, vol. 1 (New York:
Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1963 [original ed. 1828]),
p. 189. Not only men, but also women, were sometimes dis-
turbed by women as consumers. Maria McIntosh, in Women in
America, passim, deplores the pretentiousness of those who
1m1tated European style and lavishness. She urged women
to lead the way back to an appreciation Of republican
simplicity and unpretentious virtues.

 

 

125

were responsible for their unhealthy condition. Bayley
wrote in a derogatory fashion about the woman who was a
"whining, sickly sentimentalist," and added that

the lady of enlightened piety will feel it a

sacred duty to give the weight of her influence

and example against that enervating and sinful

course--that soft and needless self-indulgence,

which if persisted in will make this a "nation

of hospitals."16

A physician, Dr. Augustus K. Gardner, was even more

devastatingly critical of women. In an 1860 article for

The Knickerbocker magazine, Gardner declared that it was

 

not his intention to eulogize women, but to reveal why she
was "a haggard creature, dull-eyed and sallow, pinched in
form, an unfit mother, not a help-meet, but a drag on the
energy, spirits and resolution of her partner in life."17
Dr. Gardner charged that women were personally accountable
for their own physical decline. Part Of the reason for it
could be attributed tO fashions that crimped and restricted
proper physical activity. He described women as having
become "dolls," to be "decked and draped and carried out,"
instead Of active, working, help-meets to men. Gardner

then revealed his hidden agenda. He was Opposed to the

movement for women's rights. He denied that he doubted

 

16Bayley, Marriage, p. 145.

17Augustus Gardner, M.D., ”Physical Decline of
American Women," The Knickerbocker or New-York Monthly

Magazine 55 (1860)? 52.

 

 

126

the native capacity of females. Instead, he attributed
his Opposition to women's lack of personal strength and
independence. He condemned "her own slavery to form, and
customs, and Observances, from being tied down by fashion
and folly. . . ."1”

The hostility many men felt toward women was Often

indirectly expressed. The author of A Christian Minister's

 

Affectionate Advice gently urged young wives, in effect, to

 

keep out Of their husbands' business. The Rev. James Bean
said,

The disposal of his time, or his property, his

journeys, his connections, etc. are things to be

regulated by the circumstances Of his calling; a

subject which probably he best understands. I

cannot but advise her, therefore, for her own sake

as well as his, to leave those things entirely to

his management; and to remember, that it is her

province to soften, to cheer, and to refresh that

mind on which the weightiest cares of a family

press.19

There was among middle-class men a fear Of the

clinging woman, and anxiety lest one be virtually possessed
by her, as a vampire possesses its victim. What should one
conclude about some man's attitudes toward women when it
seemed necessary for William Alcott to warn them not to
avoid "female society"? Alcott felt that there were grounds

for him to admonish young men not to join in "wit orsarcasm"

 

‘”Ibid., p. 52.

19Bean, Affectionate Advice, p. 15.

 

127

against the female character. Are not some male attitudes
toward the Opposite sex exposed when Alcott must say, "Let
us be careful that we do not degrade the sex, in the same
manner3'by disrespectful language, or actions or thoughts?"2°

If men harbored a measure Of hostility against
women, women fully returned the feeling. Viewing men as
simultaneously inclined to sensuality and dependent on
women, females use these images against men in subtly
hostile ways. Just as slaves had created their own
camouflaged culture of resistance, so did nineteenth-
century women. As women returned the hostility of males,
there developed something of a covert "war between the
sexes."

One of the most important arenas for this battle
was the popular novel. Helen Papashvily has made an
impressive study of such novels written by and for women
in the nineteenth century.21 She concludes that in fiction,
women endlessly embarrassed, exposed, and humiliated men.
Leslie Fiedler, another student of American literature,
agrees. He argues that the seduction fable, for example,

typically ended with the defeat of the seducer. This was

 

2°Alcott, Young Man's Guide, p. 216.

 

21Helen Waite Papashvily, All the Happy Endings:
A Study of the Domestic Novel in America, The Women Who
Wrote It, The Women Who Read It, in the Nineteenth Century
(New York: Harper & Bros., 1956).

 

 

128

a symbol of women's desire to emasculate American men.22
Whether or not the seducer prevailed in the beginning, he
was conquered in the end. Helen Papashvily adds that in
the popular domestic novels, heroine and reader were united
in the memory Of how men boasted and swaggered and threat-
ened and commanded. They also recalled how frequently men
failed when all was said and done. Papashvily concludes
that the domestic novels were handbooks of a hidden, but
nonetheless real, feminine revolt against the male estab-
lishment. "These pretty tales reflected and encouraged a
pattern of feminine behavior so quietly ruthless, so subtly
vicious, that by comparison the ladies at Seneca appear
angels of innocence."23
One of the few male novelists of the period who had
any idea that there was a serious sex struggle going on was
T. S. Arthur. Arthur sympathized with the role of women.
He castigated husbands for their almost total absorption
in work and business, to the detriment of their respon-
sibilities to their families. He scolded men for their
insensitivity, and urged them to be better husbands. He

encouraged them to give more time and energy to their wives

and children, to try to be helpful and understanding with

 

22Leslie A. Fiedler, Love and Death in the American
Novel (New York: Criterion Books, 1960), p. 62.

 

23Papashvily, Happy Endings, p. xvii.

 

129

their spouses. Arthur wanted men to share their interests
and recreation with their wives. He wanted them to learn
to express their appreciation and affection more Often
and more directly.

Some of Arthur's writing attempted to speak to
women's sense of being badly used by men. He tried to
appeal to women's own quiet conviction Of superiority.

In What Can Woman DO? Arthur had Mrs. Eldridge express

 

her conviction that the female sex was tougher and more
determined than the male.2“ Women were stronger willed

and more experienced in perseverance. They could hold

out longer in any contest. Men gave up, exhausted, after
awhile, but a woman would never give up. In the same novel,
the two main male characters, Dr. Penrose and Mr. Eldridge,
were portrayed as weak and utterly dependent on their
wives. Mrs. Penrose saved their home from being sold

by the mortgage-holder when her husband showed himself

so spineless that he could not face up to the situation.
When Mrs. Eldridge neglected her duty, her husband fell
into ruin almost immediately. Their crippled little
daughter, Katy, transformed into a saint by her quiet
suffering, managed to redeem her otherwise helpless father.
It is as though Arthur were appealing to women's conviction

(or need tO believe) that it was the male sex which was

 

2"Arthur, What Can Woman DO?

 

130

really weak and dependent (effeminate). Morally, it was
women who were strong and "masculine." The novel speaks
to women's secretly cherished opinion that they had an
indirect power to manipulate men for good or for ill.

At bottom, it was women who ran things!

If women ran things at home, some at least dreamed
of the possibility of influence in other areas. Catharine
Sedgwick revealed her negative, if not hostile, bias toward
the world of men when she wrote, "And may we not hope there
will be less folly and corruption in those places where men
most do congregate, when women are so educated, that men
may hold more communion on their great social duties with
their mothers, wives, and sisters?"25

One consequence of the "war between the sexes" was
that men sought means Of escape from women, either in fact
or in fantasy. Along with the appeal Of home and family
life, some men experienced a fear of or revulsion against
marriage. "Ik Marvel" (a pseudonym for Donald Grant
Mitchell) was a popular writer of the period. He wrote

a little book called Reveries of a Bachelor, in which

 

the main character entertained a series of daydreams

about the possibility Of marrying.26 While he had

 

25Sedgwick, Means and Ends, p. 271.

 

26Donald Grant Mitchell [Ik Marvel], Reveries of
a Bachelor or A Book of the Heart (New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons, 1863 [original ed. circa 1851]).

 

 

131

positive and appealing fantasies about a loving wife who
would be a devoted companion and comfort in trouble and
sorrow, he also imagined some horrible possibilities. He
might marry someone who would grow ugly with the passage

of time; or a rich woman who would hold him in subjection
by her wealth; or a penniless woman who might pester him
for money. He might find himself married to a poor cook;
or yoked to a woman who did not love him, but had married
him for convenience's sake. He might be married to a woman
who preferred books to housekeeping. Marvel projected all
the saddest prospects Of marriage. Each fantasied marriage
was called Off at the final moment or blighted by the death
Of the bride. Marvel revealed his fear of female domination
and the loss of his personal freedom. Even though these
"reveries" were bittersweet, the bachelor breathed a sigh
of relief at the end, content to go on being as he was:
free, rough, uncoralled by wife or children.

A similar story of male flight is Melville's "The
Paradise Of Bachelors." The short story described a dinner
attended by nine bachelors in an apartment at The Temple in
London. There they enjoyed plenty Of food, good conversa-
tion, and apparently much to drink.

It was the very perfection of quiet absorption
of good living, good drinking, good feeling,
and good talk. We were a band of brothers.

Comfort--fraternal, household comfort, was the
grand trait Of the affair. Also, you could

132

plainly see that these easy-hearted men had no

wives or children to give an anxious thought.

Almost all of them were travelers, too: for

bachelors alone can travel freely, and with-

out any twinges Of their consciences touching

desertion Of the fireside.27

Between the lines of the bachelor's self-

congratulations, or in the married man's fantasies of
bachelorhood, one can read male hostility toward women.
Often, a negative view Of women was expressed even more
directly. One author wrote, "The prosperous man has an eco-

nomical and industrious wife; while the wife of the unfor-

 

tunate one is an extravagant and faithless woman. ."2”

 

 

The same man offered the Opinion that "a scold for a com-
panion is the bane Of domestic bliss, and worst of all if
it be the WIFE."2”

One of the most astonishingly Open expressions Of
hostility toward the female sex was quoted in John Bayley's
1857 handbook on marriage. According to Bayley, the quote

appeared originally in the New York Times. The article was

 

copied with Bayley's apparent approval. It reads,

Talk Of the moralities of false issues of stocks,
and the host of other fraudulent transactions!
Talk of railroad manias, etc. . . . The evil is
not with them. It is not in Wall-street. It is

 

27Herman Melville, "The Paradise Of Bachelors,"
Selected Writings of Herman Melville (New York: The Modern
Library, 1952), p. 193.

 

2”Thayer, Hints, p. 36.
29Ibid., p. 43.

133

not in banks and bankers. Look to your splendid
avenues--your fine palaces, named hotels--your
five thousand-dollar parties--your silks and
wines--your whole system Of modern American show.
There you have the root of this consuming cancer--
there and there only, the flesh and blood that
feed its spreading poison. What is the use of
wasting words on our system Of business--on
excessive credit--on fictitious negotiations,

so long as vain and silly wives are urging on
their vainer and sillier husbands to this all-
endeavouring ruin! The cure is needed at home;
and, until our domestic vices are reformed, we
are whistling down the wind in every effort made
to rectify the monstrous error. A great part Of
this tremendous evil is due to our women. It is
hard to think it--harder to write it--but, never-
theless, it is plain, honest truth. They are the
money-maelstroms--they, and their silks, wines,
carpets, hangings, and equipages--and in them

are swallowed up the millions that are reported
in our financial disasters. Psalms for their
souls--liturgies of sorrow--requiems of death--
any thing in the way of thunder and lightning
would be, just now, the next thing to a gospel,
if it would arouse our women to arrest the
enormous draughts they are making on the
exchequer Of the world.”°

This was a remarkable statement. It blamed women for
financial pressures on their husbands, an accusation already
familiar enough. But then it blamed them for financial
disasters and scandals which were disrupting the entire
economy of the nation! The possession Of women as symbols
Of one's prowess as a provider had backfired. This lovely,
Christlike creature had become "all-devouring." The sexual
symbolism in the statement is striking. Women were a

"maelstrom," swallowing up everything; they were draining

 

30Bayley, Marriage, p. 141.

134

men dry with "the enormous draughts they are making on

the exchequer of the world." Evidently the writer felt
inadequate to supply the needs of this insatiable creature.
Woman, when she had lost her virtue, had become completely
perverse. The hostility in the article was carried so far
as to wish that some violent intervention would threaten or
actually destroy this creature whom no man could satisfy.
That would put an end once and for all to her perverse and
extravagant appetite.

In varying degrees, authors disclosed similar
hostility toward women, and indicated a pattern for men's
flight from females. Washington Irving illustrates some-
thing Of the nature Of this hostility in his story of Rip
Van Winkle. This story, which first appeared as early as
1819, was the account Of Rip's escape from his wife. Irving
wrote, "A termagant wife may therefore, in some respects be
considered a tolerable blessing; and, if so, Rip Van Winkle
was thrice blessed."31 In the eyes of Rip and Of Washington
Irving, woman was at her worst in the role of shrew. She
was the mouthpiece Of a bothersome conscience, the spokes-
woman for duty, virtue, cleanliness, and respectability at
their worst. Men, in the person of Rip, played the role Of
the absentee, and the irresponsible fugitive, who failed in

all of his domestic duties. "But as to doing family duty,

 

31Washington Irving, The Works of Washington Irving,
vol. 1 (Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard: 1840), p. 198.

 

135

and keeping his farm in order, he found it impossible."32

Rip made his escape from conscience and its female embodi-
ment by falling asleep for twenty years! When he awakened
and learned what had happened, and that his wife was dead,
Rip

had got his neck out of the yoke of matrimony, and

could go in and out whenever he pleased, without

dreading the tyranny of Dame Van Winkle. Whenever

her name was mentioned, however, he shook his head,

shrugged his shoulders, and cast up his eyes; which

might pass either for an expression of resignation

to his fate, or joy at his deliverance.33

James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales also

represented a subtle hostility to women and a longing to
escape their ever-vigilant scrutiny. These stories cele-
brated male characters who experienced adventure and iso-
lation, and often an escape to a remote place--an island,
a forest, or some mountain retreat where mothers, wives,
and civilization did not intrude. It is unlikely that
Cooper, the proud father of daughters, was ever consciously
aware of his revolt against the feminine, but it was a
covert and recurring theme in his novels. The female
characters in his books were the flawless, idealized
creatures whose fragile delicacy was celebrated with

such extravagance in American rhetoric. Cooper has por-

trayed all upper-class, white, Anglo-Saxon women as sinless.

 

32Ibid., p. 198.
33 Ibid., p. 205.

136

These wooden characters were, in a sense, his revenge
against their sex. Only the supposed Indian, the symbolic
voice of the unconscious, was allowed to put the male's
repressed hostility into words.”” One such character

said of Faith, the character in The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish,

 

"'Tis a woman of the Pale-faces, and, I warrant me, one
that will never be satisfied till she hath all the furs
of the Americas on her back, and all the venison of the

”35 Netty Bumppo, in his perennial

woods in her kitchen.
bachelorhood, was another symbol Of Cooper's hidden protest
against femininity. Since women in the nineteenth-century
United States had become symbols of civilization, decency,
and order, and Natty represented the primitive and free,

it would have been unthinkable for him to marry. Natty's
masculinity was not specifically sexual. It consisted,
rather, in his strength and heroism. This kind of mascu-
linity could never have survived in the bonds of marriage.

Men's resentment and hostility toward women was

real, though usually below the level of consciousness.

 

3"In Leslie Fiedler's Opinion, in Love and Death
in the American Novel, p. 190, "the Indian represents to
Cooper Whatever in the American psyche has been starved,
whatever genteel Anglo-Saxondom has most ferociously
repressed, whatever he himself had stifled to be worthy
of his wife and daughters."

 

 

35James Fenimore Cooper, The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish
(New York: Hurd a Houghton, 1868 [Original ed. 1847]),
p. 292.

 

137

It was never utterable in public except so indirectly as
to be ambiguous. But how was male hostility and flight
reconcilable with the rhetoric of female perfection? How
was it compatible with the idolization Of the mother and
an ethic of male protectiveness and duty to shelter the
female? Certainly, according to all witnesses, women did
enjoy a status that was remarkable. After traveling in a
stage coach for some distance and observing the treatment
Of women, Harriet Martineau said,

The degree of consideration shown to women is,

in my opinion, greater than is rational, or good

for either party. . . . I do not think it rational

or fair that every gentleman, whether Old or young,

sick or well, weary or untired, should, as a matter

of course, yield up the best places in the stage to

any lady passenger.36

Martineau's Observation Of the deferential treatment

offered to women was supported by many other witnesses.
How does this square with a theory of covert male hostility?
Bearing in mind that hostility was only one element in the
total attitude Of males toward women (there was also appre-
ciation, love, a need for the feminine), it may nevertheless

be useful to consider an explanation suggested by Freudian

psychology.

 

“ Martineau, Society, p. 284.

138

The phenomenon called "reaction-formation" is a
mechanism Of over-compensation. For example, if one feels
an emotion, impulse, or attitude so unacceptable to the
conscience that it is consciously inadmissible, one may
censor that feeling and unconsciously over-compensate for
it by manifesting a diametrically Opposite emotion, impulse,
or attitude. Should a man feel anger toward a person for
whom anger is an unacceptable feeling, that man might adopt
the pattern of reaction-formation: he may become exces-
sively sweet and solicitous toward the object of his anger.
To a nineteenth-century male, conditioned as he was to
believe that woman represented all that was pure and whole-
some, mother would certainly be an example of an unaccept-
able Object of anger. Wives, sisters, and other females
would share in that immunity. Nevertheless, every human
being, no matter how important to us, arouses our anger
at some point during a prolonged relationship. It is when
such anger is inadmissible that it must be swallowed--
turned inward toward oneself--Or disguised. The pattern
Of extreme deference to women--mother-representatives--is
quite likely an example Of reaction-formation: anger in
disguise. No one has entirely unmixed feelings toward
others, particularly toward others who are super-ego
figures. The deferential behavior itself suggests its

opposite. Beneath the laudatory rhetoric, and mixed in

139

with genuine appreciation Of the feminine, there was quite
widespread and general resentment, hostility, and a desire
to escape from women.

What should be done about men's hostility and
flight? Some nineteenth-century writers tried to remedy
this awful situation in what was probably precisely the
wrong way: by putting pressure on the male conscience.

In a December 1846 magazine short story, Mary Leman Gillies
wrote a tear-jerking tale about a 22-year old wife with a
small child. They lived in drab rooms on an upper floor

in a large city. The young husband cared for his wife

and child only in the sense that he provided the mere
necessities of life, and short personal appearances.

The young woman was aware that she was dying from lone-
liness and inattention, but she bravely swallowed her
feelings, saying nothing to disturb her husband. After

she dies, the husband finds the diary recording her pitiful
wasting away and, Of course, he reproaches himself bitterly.
"He had grown up to regard women as the mere mechanics of
domestic life," commented the author, "with neither nec-

u37 one

essity nor capability for higher things.
cannot help but see the wife's "brave" refusal to speak

to her husband Of her discontent and her ultimate punishing

 

37Mary Leman Gillies, "The Mechanic's Wife,"
Mechanic's Advocate 1 (17 December 1846): 17-18.

 

140

demise as her own perverse way of evening the score--
indeed of doing the absentee husband one better. The
female author, portraying the neglectful husband as a
callous son-of—a-bitch, returned anger for anger. The
essential prerequisite for such a story was the husband
for whom wife and home were to be escaped.

Fair or not, men wanted to establish some distance
from females. They sought refuge in the companionship Of
other men. For instance, the novels of Cooper introduce,
in most cases, another male in addition to the main char-
acter. Often the additional male is a companion who rep-
resents the spirit Of the wilderness place. Leslie Fiedler
describes the relationship between the white man, in flight
from society, and the primitive man, as a kind of "pure
marriage of males--sex1ess and holy, a kind Of counter-

"3” This pure relationship was a substitute

matrimony.
for the castration Of men in heterosexual marriage. Sym-
bolically, it restored the man to wholeness--a wholeness
which had been destroyed and had become impossible in
American society, where raged the battle of the polarized
sexes. The relationship between the white man and the

primitive companion joined the refugee from civilization

to his own unconscious, without requiring the sacrifice of

 

3”Fiedler, Love and Death, p. 209.

 

141

his freedom. The "pure marriage of males" was not to be
mistaken for homosexuality as such. It was a sexless

passion.

Herman Melville, in Mobnyick, also chose the

 

model of the "pure marriage of males." Marriage to a
woman would have been intolerable for Ishmael, but he
could be joined tO Queequeg without sacrificing his inner
self. Leslie Fiedler concludes that the pure marriage Of
males is a protest against domesticity. It is men's way
of saying "no" to women and to the role Of father. It
provides an alternative to families and civilized society.
Fiedler believes the substitution Of male companionship for
the society Of women is deeply appealing to the American
mind and is basically congenial to the American experience.””
This accounts for the immense appeal of such themes to the
reading public. The flight Of the male from women and civ-
ilization was satisfying as fantasy and cathartic as it
symbolically expressed the reader's own hostilities and
resentments. Finally, however, it was not to be taken
seriously as real life.

For nineteenth-century middle-class men, approval
and recognition Of self-worth came primarily from one

another. Secretive clubs like the Masons and Odd Fellows

 

39 Ibid. , p. 346.

142

helped to serve this purpose for middle-class men.“°
Interacting with one's fellows was considered of prime
importance. It served as a frame of reference by which

to evaluate other kinds of relationships. Foreign visitors
and other Observers reported that in some places, gambling
was the favorite recreation of the gentlemen, but that it
was kept extremely well out of sight. Even though it was
illegal in many places, billiards were played. Men in
groups liked to drink, play cards, smoke and chew tobacco--
all forbidden in the presence of women."1 These "forbidden”
activities became a kind of symbol of male independence,
fraternity, and quiet rebellion.

Men sought to find more elbow room, to make a com—
fortable distance between themselves and women. European
visitors noted that even at social occasions where, in
Europe, men and women would have been together, the two
sexes were separated in the United States. Mrs. Trollope
noted,

In America, with the exception of dancing

all the enjoyments of the men are found in the
absence Of the women. They dine, they play

 

1”Ronald W. Hogeland, "Charles Hodge: The
Association of Gentlemen and Ornamental Womanhood: A Study
of Male Conventional Wisdom, 1825-1855,” Journal of Presny-
terian Histopy 53 (Fall 1975): 239.

 

 

l”Frances Trollope, Domestic Manners of the Americans

 

(New York: Alfred A. KnOpf, 1949 [original ed. 1832]),
pp. 218-219.

143

cards, they have musical meetings, they have

suppers, all in large parties, but all with-

out women.“2
She added that mixed dinner parties of men and women were
rare. The British visitor was critical of the usual dinner
arrangements, where the men were nearly always grouped at
one end of the table, and the women at the other. Even
at balls, she said, where everything was most lavish and
expensive, it was not uncommon for the gentlemen to sit
down to dinner in one room while the women ate, standing,
in another. Of New York dinner parties, Thomas Hamilton,
the Scots visitor, confirmed her observations."3 Trollope
concluded,

The two sexes can hardly mix for the greater

part Of a day without great restraint and ennui;

it is quite contrary to their general habits; the

favourite indulgences of the gentlemen (smoking

cigars and drinking spirits) can neither be

indulged in with decency, nor resigned with

complacency.““

The alienation of the sexes from one another had

social as well as personal significance. Males not only

experienced a desire to escape from the dominion Of women;

they also tended to separate themselves from those aspects

 

”21bid.

“”Hamilton, in Men and Manners, p. 118, says that "it
is not the fashion to invite the fairer part of creation to
entertainments so gross and substantial, and it rarely hap-
pens that any ladies are present on such occasions, except
those belonging tO the family of the host."

 

l”Trollope, Domestic Manners, p. 299.

 

144

of life which had become associated with the feminine. Two
specific examples are religion and "culture." "Culture" is
not used here in the sociological definition of the word.
Rather, "culture" is meant to describe those things popu-
larly lumped together under the rather inaccurate label:
"culture." For example, it is common for people to group
under that category, literature, the arts, humane learning,
and music. Cut Off from religion and "culture," as defined
above, men viewed both patronizingly. Once again, they
became losers for it. They became alienated from those
aspects of their humanity which permitted, approved, and
blessed sensitivity. They became alienated from that part
of human experience which Offered more holistic and humane
ways of weighing values than those provided by the prior-
ities of business or pragmatism. Men sought to protect
their precarious masculinity by disowning the feminine and
everything associated with femininity. In their defensive-
ness, they diminished the boundaries of their humanity,
narrowed the roles available to them, committed themselves
to a world where only success counted, and set themselves
up to become Philistines. They could not so limit them-
selves without experiencing both 1055 and anger over their
1055. That anger, when turned inward, became a heavy per-
sonal burden; when turned outward, it found a convenient

target in women and everything identified with the feminine.

145

Until the nineteenth century, both religion and
that which is popularly called ”culture” (humane learning,
literature, art, music) had been acceptably masculine in
character. Not only did men dominate the church as an
institution, but they considered religious faith to have
a significant bearing on issues Of importance to the public.
It was the common pattern for churches and clergy to address
issues which concerned society as a whole-~including polit-
ical issues--and to be taken seriously."5 It was seldom
considered that religious spokesmen should restrict them-
selves to some limited, fenced-off area of life. However,
the period between 1820 and 1860 was one in which both
religion and culture became more and more firmly removed
from association with the masculine, and were increasingly

located almost exclusively within the female "sphere.“6

 

“SDuring the Puritan ascendancy, it was certainly
the pattern for religious leaders to apply theological
reflection to practical public issues. As the American
Revolution approached, it continued to be a common practice
for ministers and church bodies to address issues before
society. Rosemary Reuther, a theologian and church his-
torian, has written, in a book co-authored with Eugene C.
Bianchi, From Machismo to Mutuality: Essays on Sexism and
Woman-Man—Liberation (New York/Paramus, N.J}/Toronto: Paul-
ist Press, 1976), p. 18, that "between the 17th and 19th
centuries secularism eroded the established relationship
of Church and state and relocated religious life in the
private sphere Of personal life. . . . The Church, too,
gradually found itself located primarily in the private
domestic sphere as an extension Of the home rather than
in the public sphere as spiritual mentor of kings."

 

 

“”See, for example, Ann Douglas, The Feminization of
American Culture (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977); and
Barbara Welter, "The Feminization Of American Religion:

 

 

146

All of the marginal interests of men gradually came to be
permanently associated with one another: women, religion,
the domestic, and "culture." Lumped together on the
periphery, safely within the feminine "sphere," these
values and interests received at least some indirect rec-
ognition of worth as they were stored away in the keeping
of women against some possible need for them another time.
While men became steadily more preoccupied with business
and politics, religious faith and culture became associated
with femininity and stamped with inferiority in fact, though
not in rhetoric. Religion and culture began to be altered
in character in order to speak to the special circumstances
of a caste of peOple to whom the mainstream Of life was
closed. Mrs. Trollope and Harriet Martineau were among
those who commented on the symbiotic relation that had
deveIOped between women and the clergy. Trollope declared
that she "never saw, or read, Of any country where religion
had so strong a hold upon the women, or a slighter hold

upon the men.""7

On Sunday in New York, the churches
were almost entirely full of women, while the parks were

full Of men. Wrote Trollope,

 

1800-1860," in CliO's Consciousness Raised: New Perspec-
tives on the History of Women, eds. Mary S. Hartman and
Lois Banner (New York: Harper 6 Row, 1974), p. 137.

 

 

“7Trollope, Domestic Manners, p. 75.

 

147

It is impossible not to feel, after passing one

Sunday in the churches and chapels of New York,

and the next in the gardens of Hoboken, that

the thousands of well-dressed men you see

enjoying themselves at the latter, have made

over the thousands of well-dressed women you

saw exhibited at the former, into the hands

of the priests, at least for the day.“”
Martineau believed that at least the better sort Of clergy
must have regretted, as she did, "the evil Of women being
driven back upon religion as a resource against vacuity;
and Of there being a professional class to administer it.""9
In her Opinion, clergymen were not ordinarily taken seri-
ously in matters that had to do with the life of the world.
They were considered by sophisticated people to be naive
and insulated. One man said to her, "You know the clergy
are looked upon by all grown men as a sort Of people between
men and women."5°

The church and its clergy appealed to their pre-

dominant constituency by privatizing the faith and narrowing
it to the concerns of the domestic. Some ministers recog-
nized what was happening and protested it. Writing in

1840, E. H. Chapin appealed to young men not to consider

religion to be confined to church and family.

 

“”Ibid., p. 345.
“”Martineau, Society, p. 354.

s°Ibid., p. 352.

148

Are human responsibility and exposure limited

to any one sphere of action--to the church or

to the domestic circle--or to the range Of the

gross and sensual passions? Are not men daily'

making shipwreck of their conscience in trade

and politics? And wheresoever conscience goes

to work out its perilous problem, shall not the

preacher follow it?51
Chapin confessed to being unable to understand how preach-
ers could feel they must steer clear of great issues just
because they had been labeled as having to do with business,
social issues, or politics. His contention was that the
church should address any and all issues of life in society,
as it had been accustomed to doing in western society from
time immemorial.

Clerical defensiveness about the association Of
religious faith and the sphere of women was expressed
occasionally. Such a posture implied that to be linked
with the feminine was indeed a badge of inferiority. In
an 1837 sermon, the Rev. Jonathan Stearns said, "It is the
standing sneer of the infidel, and his last resort when
arguments fail, that the religion of Christ is chiefly

prevalent among women, and chiefly indebted to them for

its spread. . . ."52 In 1857, the Rev. John Bayley

 

51Chapin, Duties of Young Men, p. 135.

 

52Jonathan F. Stearns, "Female Influence, and the
True Christian Mode of Its Exercise: A Discourse Delivered
in the First Presbyterian Church in Newburyport, July 30,
1837," in Up From the Pedestal, ed. Kraditor, p. 48.

 

149

admitted, however, that ”more than two-thirds of the
pious belong to the female sex."53
During this period, religious faith began to be
associated, as women were, with passivity, dependence,
resignation, submission, and self-sacrifice. Religion
and women alike were seldom identified with strength,
action, or confidence. Nineteenth-century religion began
to emphasize feelings and the softer emotions, accenting
the tendency of the period toward sentimentalization and
anti-intellectualism. If to know God was a matter of
feeling, inspiration, and sensitivity, then a theological
training, or a knowledge of Greek and Hebrew were super-
fluous. Thus the feminization of religion supported
revivalism and undermined clerical authority. The asso-
ciation Of religious faith with the feminine sphere linked
morality and femininity in such a way as to minimize the
relation of morality to the masculine sphere of interests—-
at least in the popular mind. The church, like women,
became a symbol Of the ability Of men to provide. In the
eyes of men, the church had become a consumer rather than
a partner in creative production. Those churches which
consumed most impressively reflected favorably on the
status of their members, thus Offering a means of estab-

lishing or enhancing one's social standing. The church's

 

53Bayley, Marriage, p. 98.

150

mission in this period was characterized by organizations
concerned with purity, temperance, education, foreign
missionary work, and moral reform--Often extensions Of
particularly feminine interests. The church had become
an extension of the domestic sphere and its values. It
had become the spokesman Of an oppressed caste: women.
Although men ran the religious institutions, women used
activity in the church as a means tO exert power and
influence. The church became another element in women's
culture of resistance, just as it was for blacks.

The consequence of the removal Of religion from
the masculine ”sphere" was that religious faith came to
be regarded as utterly separate from larger social concerns.
It was irrelevant to those matters which preoccupied men.
Its advocates were forbidden to "meddle" in any areas not
basically private or domestic.”“ Religious institutions
were believed to be, along with women, irrelevant to the
"real" life of the world. Furthermore, they were dismissed
as incompetent to influence that life of which, in their
innocence, they could know nothing.

For many nineteenth-century men, reading and cul-
ture had become resources for "self-improvement," and had
only a utilitarian purpose. There was little sense of "art

for art's sake," or for beauty's sake, or for the sake of

 

5”See Bianchi and Reuther, Machismo to Mutualiry,
p. 20.

 

151

cultivating one's essential humanity. The Rev. John Todd

illustrated this point of view in his Students' Manual.

 

Music, painting, drawing, and the like, are
appropriate and very desirable, in their places;
but how many have wasted their time in the
pursuit, and thus not merely thrown away their
Opportunities for making solid attainments, but
acquired wrong habits which clung tO them through
life!55
A young American entrepreneur named Ullman, who became
a promoter for a European concert pianist on tour in the
United States, Offered the following definition of music:
"Music is the art of drawing into a given hall, by means
of accessories which Often become principals, as great a
number Of curious people as possible and in such a way that

the receipts will exceed the expenses."55

Certainly there
were others who placed a value on culture and education

more than strictly utilitarian. Todd and Ullman expressed
unusually crass points Of view. And yet, they were in touch
with the spirit of the age. For males, "culture" and educa-
tion had to be justified. If they did not produce a profit
or put one in a position to seize some potential advantage,
they were not likely to be valued or considered sufficiently
"masculine." They slipped over the line into the feminine

"sphere," and any male who pursued them there ran the risk

of slipping over that line himself.

 

55Todd, Students' Manual, p. 181.

 

56Handlin, This Was America, p. 192.

 

CHAPTER IV

MEN AND SEXUALITY

There is no question but that for middle-class
people, both men and women, sexuality was seriously
repressed during the nineteenth century. The prevailing
mythology held that women were only minimally interested
in sex. It was clearly understood, however, that men--
particularly young men--Often experienced urgent sexual
needs. Spokesmen during this time expressed anxiety lest
male sexuality not be adequately restrained. Should ade-
quate controls not be exercised, men were in danger of
becoming a threat to women, to the prevailing social goals,
and to themselves. Masturbation, or "solitary gratifica-
tion," was particularly condemned. Nevertheless, it was
not masturbation only that was feared. Any sexual expres-
sion--including lawful intercourse within marriage--posed
a danger if carried to excess. The awful consequences
of sexual excess included both physical and mental dete-
rioration, extending even to subsequent generations.

These anti—sexual themes were articulated with
special passion by the Rev. Sylvester Graham and William

Alcott, M.D. Their outspokenness on these matters draws

152

153

the attention Of the student, with the possible danger that
their opinions might obscure other men's points Of view
about sex. It is quite possible that many middle-class

men expressed their sexuality in ways quite Opposed to

the principles of Graham or Alcott. In fact, the near-
hysteria of these two about sexual excess, masturbation,
and purity strongly indicates that such was the case.
Nevertheless, these spokesmen do repeat with fidelity the
sexual warnings which can be found in the writings of other
articulate people. In other literature, however, the warn-
ings are rarely so specific or explicit. Nevertheless,
they do not differ in kind so much as in tone. Most
literature of this period demonstrates both directly

and by omission, the same discomfort with sexual themes,
the same suppression Of sexuality, the same concern for
purity and for control. Graham and Alcott simply deal

more directly with these themes than others do.

All nineteenth-century opinions about sexuality
have in common the age-Old conviction that by nature, men
are more highly sexed than women. Beneath all the controls
imposed by society and its values, an almost irrepressible
passion boils. In fact, the idealization of women between
1820 and 1860 had the effect of heightening sensitivity to
male concupiscence. While females were, according to the

conventional wisdom, pure and holy, men bore the burden of

154

all the negative sexual stereotypes. Sexuality became
exclusively of the male "sphere." Alcott insisted that
"wherever impurity can be found, man is, directly or
indirectly, the cause."1

There was a special concern, not surprisingly,
for the dangers of youth. It was believed that sexual
urges became most demanding in young men who, if they
could not restrain themselves, might seriously threaten
the dominant values. It was in young manhood, wrote the
Rev. Joel Hawes, that ”the passions, budding and hastening
to ripeness, acquire a new vigor, become impatient of
restraint, and eager for gratification."2 Young men posed
a particular threat to themselves for two reasons: their
sensual passions were strong, and they were less practiced
in self-control. T. S. Arthur warned that too many young
men thought they could "run into various excesses, and
indulge themselves inordinately in sensual pleasures for
a few years, during the brighter days of their early spring-
time, and, after that, assume the more important and real

3 Arthur was convinced that young men

business of life."
who believed they could sow their wild oats first and become

respectable later were mistaken. Either they would injure

 

1Alcott, Young Husband, p. 249.

 

2Hawes, Lectures, p. 36.

3Arthur, Advice, p. 21.

155

their health, or form habits that would make it impossible
for them ever to become respectable or successful. In
nineteenth-century America, sexual passion always meant
danger; and those most likely to fall victim tO it were
those who most needed to hoard their energies and steel
themselves to attack life aggressively.

For the middle-classes, who were devoted to the
energetic pursuit of success, it was terribly important
that male sexuality be effectively controlled. Both social
restraints and virtuous woman were expected to serve the
cause. In the literature of the period there frequently
appear anxious warnings and condemnations Of licentiousness,
sensuality, and forbidden pleasures. Although the common
image of the Jacksonian male is of a strait-laced, puritan-
ical character who always kept the fastidious sexual rules
laid down for him, his lapses from that model were not
insignificant. Prostitution was sufficiently visible to
the public that it earned condemnations and became the
special target Of reform movements.” Neither was the
nineteenth century without its share of illegitimate births.

Writers like T. S. Arthur believed that far too many young

 

1‘See, for example, Carroll Smith Rosenberg, "Beauty,
the Beast . . ."; and Charles E. Rosenberg, "Sexuality,
Class and Role in Nineteenth-Century America," American
Quarterly 25 (May 1973): 131-153.

 

156

men were dangerously self-indulgent. He Offered the
following advice: "Let a young man, then, keep his
desires, his appetites, and his passions, under proper
subjection, and he will be in no danger of running into
those excesses which sow in his physical system the seeds
Of all diseases."5

Sexual excess was considered dangerous for any man,
young or not, married or unmarried, but unmarried men ran
extraordinary risks. Sylvester Graham suggested that pre-
marital sex was a greater threat to health than intercourse
within marriage, because for the unmarried man, sex was
bound to be more exciting! The greater excitement was
apparently related to the presumption that for the unmarried
man, sexual contact was infrequent. Nevertheless, even the
married man must be careful. Graham urged husbands to keep
a rein on their sexual appetites. He was ready with a care-
fully planned program to help men do just that. A proper
regimen of work, sleep, and exercise formed part of his
discipline, but diet was important too. Graham promised
that "a pure and well regulated vegetable diet serves to
take away or prevent all morbid or preternatural lust."”

Graham denounced what he called "connubial intemperance,"

 

5Arthur, Advice, p. 152.

6Graham, A Lecture, p. 187.

 

157

predicting that it would bring down terrible consequences
upon a man, his wife, and even their children.

For the risk that one ran when indulging in sexual
excess affected not only oneself; it extended to one's

posterity as well. An article quoted in the Graham Journal

 

warned that "it is not unfrequent, yes, it is common, for
the effects of this sin in parents, to be felt for several
generations, in the shattered constitution, and vicious
propensities and the feeble health of their children."7

It was Graham's personal opinion that a healthy and robust
man who wanted to avoid sexual excess should probably not
have intercourse more than once a month. Certainly, if he
indulged himself more Often than once a week, the penalty
would be dreadful.

Despite all the warnings against licentiousness and
sexual excess, it was difficult for the nineteenth-century
male not to discover somehow, in spite of all the rhetoric
of purity, that the age-Old, predatory male ethos applied
to him.” Perhaps it was in the denunciation of it that he
learned that, from time immemorial, physical strength and
aggressive sexual behavior were characteristic of real he-

men. However he absorbed it, the young male knew that the

 

7Quoted from the Journal of Public Morals in the
Graham Journal 1:7 (1837): S6.

 

 

”Charles E. Rosenberg, "Sexuality," p. 145.

158

image Of the absolutely pure-minded gentleman who had never
felt the slightest trace of sexual passion could not pos-
sibly describe him. The frequent warnings themselves must
have drawn attention to the urgency of his own physical
needs.

American women sensed the continued powerful
presence of the traditional masculine ethos and were
hostile to it. This ancient masculine sexual code was
considered to be inimical to the interests Of females.
Certainly it was contrary to society's explicitly avowed
values of purity and domesticity.

Some women set out to expose and uproot this covert
masculine ethos. The New York Female Reform Society's news-

paper, The Advocate of Moral Reform, had as a major theme

 

the ”angry and emphatic insistence upon the lascivious and
predatory nature of the American male."” The Society
believed that mothers, who were in fact doing nearly all

the child rearing in any case, should take special pains

to see that they, and not their husbands, supervised the

sex education of their sons. If done conscientiously and
carefully, a mother could train her sons in such a way as

to protect him from learning the age-Old aggressive sexual
ethos Of masculinity, and accept feminine ideas of sexuality

instead. The power Of the mother could ultimately be used

 

”Carroll Smith Rosenberg, "Beauty, the Beast . . . ,
p. 570.

159

to reshape male sexuality in such a way as to make men
safer and more acceptable to women.

Other women reshaped the masculine image fiction-
ally by creating models of ideal masculine figures. The
ideal male, according to many such authors, was religious,
gentle, solicitous, solidly moral, and had total control
over any sexual impulses he might, or might not, have.

As such, he was, of course, no threat to women or to

himself.10

 

1”See, for example, Helen Papashvily's study of the
nineteenth-century domestic novel, All the Happy Endings.
Papashvily finds that it was common for women who wrote the
sentimental novels to "maim" the male sex in one way or
another to render them harmless to women. She remarks,
for example, that "few whole men appeared in Mrs. Hentz's

 

[Mrs. Carline Lee Hentz] novels. . . . Heroines found it
easier to love a man if, like Marcus Warland, he was
stricken with fever." (p. 91)

Other women novelists removed the husband entirely.
Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth typically described men who
deserted their wives and went off to war, the legislature,
the far West, or "some equally remote corner Of the world
and stayed there until needed for the dramatic reunion in
the closing chapter. . . ." (p. 116)

Another way Of rending the male harmless was dem-
onstrated in Mrs. Southworth's technique Of centering her
stories around a ”child bride," a wife "in name only."
"Mrs. Southworth's child brides were the pampered, petted
darlings of compliant and undemanding Old men--with a
comfortable, independent widowhood in reversion." (p. 117).

In much of the literature, men were rendered harm-
less tO women by the male's own perfectly controlled com-
mitment to a pure and noble-hearted chastity Of mind. The
chaste male, who Offered women protection and an elevated
kind Of companionship, was, of course, an idealized image
rather than a commonplace figure in real life.

160

Even some male authors were sensitive to the threat
posed by aggressive male sexuality both tO women and to
society, and urged men to exercise personal control.11
Many believed that one could control both body and mind
by an effort Of will.12 Control of appetites was considered
essential to prevent the unleashing Of forces destructive
to the values of the Jacksonian social order. The uncon-
trolled seeker Of pleasure was the enemy Of God and poten-

tially inimical to an ordered society.13

The dangers to
order posed by the indulgence of sexual appetites seemed
perhaps most threatening among the lower classes and immi-
grants who lived crowded into urban areas, and followed
sexual standards different from the native-born, middle
class. The middle-class establishment tried to reshape
the sexual mores of these other classes by means of reform
efforts such as those of the American Tract Society.‘“

But if sexual excess, and aggressive male sexuality,

and alien mores posed a threat to men, women, and society,

so did "solitary gratification." One of the more persistent

 

11Eliot, Lectures, p. 126.

12Newcomb, How to Be a Man, pp. 101-102.

 

13Harvey George Neufeldt, "The American Tract
Society, 1825-1865: An Examination of Its Religious,
Economic, Social, and Political Ideas" (Ph.D. dissertation,
Michigan State University, 1971), pp. 274-275.

1“ Ibid., p. 286.

161

themes running through the literature of the Jacksonian era

was that of masturbation phobia.15 In 1833, William Alcott

 

15According to Robert Sunley, in "Early Nineteenth-
Century American Literature on Child Rearing," in Childhood
in Contemporary Cultures, eds. Margaret Mead and Martha
Wolfenstein (Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press,
1955), pp. 157-158, "European doctors were apparently the
originators of such warnings, at least in the literature.
The European works referred to by American writers were by
Tissot, Hufeland, and Lallmand, all of whom wrote between
1760 and 1836."

G. J. Barker-Benfield, in The Horrors of the Half-
Known Life: Male Attitudes Toward Women and Sexualipy in
Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Harper 8 Row, 1976),
p. 167, says that masturbation phobia emerged in Britain
in the early 17005, amid conditions similar to nineteenth-
century America. "But pervasive and obsessive masturbation
phobia in America took hold during the early nineteenth cen-
tury, possibly in the early 1830's, and was extraordinarily
intense through the first third of the twentieth century."

Barker-Benfield's discussion of masturbation is
carried on largely in the context of an analysis of the
life and work of the Rev. John Todd. In Todd's writings,
Barker-Benfield has discovered, he believes, frequent
indirect, Freudian clues to Todd's preoccupation with
masturbation. Barker-Benfield develops his discussion
of masturbation and masturbation-phobia in two main ways:
(1) He considered masturbation to be a response to the
pressures of democracy, in which personal identity had
been obscured by the loss of every measure of worth except
for achievement. Men masturbated apparently to reassure
themselves of their basic masculinity. (2) Barker-Benfield
developed the idea that subconsciously, men had made an
identification between the economic system and their own
male sexual physiology. He cites the fact that in the
nineteenth century, ejaculation was described as ”spending."
Thus, masturbation (spending) threatened the basic values to
which nineteenth-century males were devoted: values which
centered around accumulation rather than expenditure.
The anti-mastubation spokesmen unconsciously translated
masturbatory practice into economic terms and saw it as
running counter to the careful pattern of husbanding
resources for the sake of success.

My own discussion of masturbation differs from
Barker-Benfield's mainly in emphasis. His study, which
considers the entire nineteenth century, probes individual

 

 

 

 

 

162

described the horrible consequences of masturbation:
physical illness, insanity, and divine punishment.16
Writers often denounced "reverie," day-dreaming or fan-
tasizing that all too often led to masturbation. Indeed,
according to Sylvester Graham, even if they did not,

LASCIVIOUS DAY-DREAMS, and amorous reveries,
in which young people too generally--and especially
the idle, and the voluptuous, and the sedentary,
and the nervous--are exceedingly apt to indulge,
are often the sources of general debility,
effeminacy, disordered functions, and permanent
disease, and even premature death, without the
actual exercise of the general organs!17

 

Masturbation, otherwise variously described as "solitary
gratification," "self-pollution," and "onanism," was said
to be "wholly unnatural."1” Among the supposed causes_
leading to masturbation were the pernicious influence of
servants, and influences in public schools, boarding
schools, and colleges.‘” The worst physiological effects

of masturbation were said to be black teeth, pimples,

 

personalities using a Freudian analysis to demonstrate
masturbation phobia and hostility toward women. My study
is more interested in how masturbation, and sexuality in
general, relates to masculine roles. I find most of his
arguments plausible, but somewhat exaggerated.

16Alcott, Young_Man's Guide.

 

17Graham, A Lecture, p. 59.

 

1”Ibid., p. 88.

1”Ibid., p. 92. See also Sunley, "Literature on
Child Rearing," p. 158.

163

hardness of hearing, cancer, and death.2° The emotional
penalties included the possibility of being haunted by
unclean thoughts and eventual insanity.21 The masturbator
would become melancholy and even suicidal. Furthermore,
the genital organs would likely wither away and become
useless.22 Even if one who indulged in this terrible vice
should mend his ways, he would nevertheless be afflicted to
some degree. If they were not aborted, the masturbator's
children could be expected to be weak and puny, and suscep-
tible to disease and death.23 Dr. Edward Jarvis, a physi-
cian at a New York mental asylum, blamed men for excesses of
all kinds. He reported from his experience that men, more
often than women, could trace the cause of their insanity
to vice, sensuality, intemperance, and masturbation.2“

The frequent suggestion that masturbation would lead
to insanity may have been the result of pure speculation.
Certainly, many people had an emotional vested interest in

believing that some catastrophe must inevitably follow such

 

2”Graham, A Lecture.

 

21Alcott, Young Man's Guide; Ray, Mental Hygiene
(especially p. 275); Jarvis, "On the Comparative Liability
of Males and Females to Insanity."

 

 

22Graham, A Lecture.

 

23Ibid.

2”Jarvis, "Comparative Liability."

164

wicked behavior. There are, however, other possible
explanations for the linking of masturbation and insanity.
For instance, sensuality was frequently associated with
"excitement” of other kinds. Medical doctors warned that
excessive "excitement" produced dangerous stress on the
mind as well as on the body.25 It may have seemed inev-
itable that such repeated self-indulgence would prove too
much strain on the nervous system.

Still another possible explanation for the frequent
linking of masturbation with insanity may be related to the
creation and expansion of mental institutions during this
period. It is a logical presumption that in an institu-
tional setting--particularly in a mental asylum where
privacy is seldom provided for, and where inhibitions
are often relaxed--masturbation will be observed occa-
sionally.26 No direct evidence of such observation is
available for this study. Nevertheless, it remains a
serious probability that medical observers were likely

to have seen and noted masturbation in their patients.

 

25Amariah Brigham, M.D., Remarks on the Influence
of Mental Cultivation and Mental Excitement upon Health,
2nd ed. (Boston: Marsh, Capen 8 Lyon, 1833); and also
Jarvis, "Comparative Liability," especially pp. 150, 151,
157, and 358-359; and Ray, Mental Hygiene, pp. 158-159,
222-223. .

 

 

 

26This line of argument is merely a logical deduction
suggested by my own experience working as an aide at the
Yale Psychiatric Institute in 1960-61. It was not uncommon
for patients being held in seclusion, for example, to be
observed masturbating--sometimes in a condition of sexual
frenzy.

165

Such observation would not have been so likely before the
rise of mental asylums.

Outside of an institutional setting, masturbation
is more often presumed than actually seen. Seeing "insane"
persons masturbate may have led to a conclusion in the minds
of observers that went something like this: since the
insane masturbated, those who masturbated might become
insane. In any case, the association of masturbation and
insanity was consistent. It seems as though every symptom
which could be seen in the mentally ill was used to warn
the young against ”solitary gratification."

That there was shame and guilt connected with
masturbation cannot be doubted. Shame and guilt can be
attributed not only to the frequent warnings against it,
which most often must have come too late, but to the con-
spiracy of silence about all things sexual. From no person
of authority--parent, teacher, or minister-~was the young
boy likely to receive any kind of intelligent explanation
of the true function of the genital organs. No doubt this
heavily loaded silence on a subject of great curiosity was
in part an attempt on the part of adults to preserve the
child's innocence and protect him from temptation.

Since sex, in the minds of adults, was associated
with concepts such as "duty," or making concessions to

one's baser nature, it was rarely if ever considered an

166

innocent and potentially joyful experience. The conspiracy
of silence about an area of life which the parents asso-
ciated with shame probably created in most children an
instinctive awareness that this was a forbidden area.

They could sense that it was heavily burdened with
frightening emotions.

At school, it is probable that the boy would acquire
his first sexual knowledge in whispers and amid snickers,
confirming his earlier impression that sex was basically
nasty. His first experiences of sexual pleasure would have
heightened the conflict and tension in his own mind, and
activated his sense of guilt. This guilt would be rein-
forced when, at puberty, he suddenly became exposed to
solemn warnings and vague lectures about "uncleanness"
of body and mind. By this time the boy, who may already
have experienced nocturnal emissions or masturbated, was
vulnerable to any and all dire threats of physical and
mental disaster. Despite every warning, he may have been
powerless to avoid the forbidden.

One can imagine the fears, shame, and conflict
which would have accompanied many a young man into marriage,
where he took as his wife a young woman who, in popular
belief at least, was utterly chaste of mind. Emotional
conflict was bound to lie at the very heart and center of

the most intimate married relationship.

167

If masturbation by males was associated with

shame and guilt, it was considered even more horrible when
practiced by females. The common mythology, after all,
held that the female sex drive was low. "Nice" women were
sexual beings only for the sake of satisfying the needs of
their husbands or for procreation. It is predictable, then,
that masturbation by women would hold a particular horror
and earn a special contempt. In an article strongly com-
plaining about the sickly and self-indulgent condition of
many American women, a physician suggested that the cause
was masturbation.

Why hesitate to say plainly and without quibble

that personal abuse lies at the root of much

of the feebleness, nervousness, pale, waxen-
facedness and general good-for-nothingness of

the entire community? . . . This is one of the
greatest evils of our boarding-school educational
system.27

Masturbating women both defied the common images of the
feminine and insulted men by calling their adequacy into
question. The same writer who accused women of "self-abuse"
also charged them with resorting to abortion and contracep-
tion, which he equated with infanticide. By their vile
practices, such women threatened the health and welfare

of their unborn children. They also threatened to disrupt
the generation of white, middle-class sons and heirs. Hus-

bands could not consider such practices with equanimity.

 

27Gardner, ”Physical Decline," p. 45.

168

Masturbation may well have suggested the fearful
possibility that the two sexes, already polarized in
terms of sex roles, might become autonomous, neither
needing the other. Masturbation, after all, is a kind
of "self-reliance" carried further than expected by those
who sang such virtues. If men were to become "self-made,"
without help from anyone, might they not eventually with-
draw from women altogether? Might they not forsake home,
family, and all that held society together and guaranteed
its future? According to psychologist June Singer, mastur-
bation can be a kind of androgynous experience, in which
the masturbator is both the lover and the beloved simul-

” From childhood and youth, masturbation is

taneously.2
a kind of declaration of independence from the unnecessary
partner. It can also be an act of self-assertion against
super-ego figures such as parents. In masturbation one

is not bound by the needs of interest of another. The
conflict and anxiety at the heart of marriage in the
nineteenth century, centered in the sexual transactions

of husband and wife, were sufficient to arouse fears that
some men would foreswear matrimony completely. It was men

who were threatening the social order by their ambition and

acquisitiveness. It was men who had established political

 

2”June Singer, Androgyny: Toward a New Theory
of Sexualit (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press/Doubleday,

, p. 5.

 

169

autonomy, and perhaps they who had repudiated the political
authority of Great Britain would also forsake their hetero-
sexual obligations. Men had removed themselves from many
of the domestic roles that they had previously accepted,
and who could say that they would not break those ties
altogether? Such fears of the development of a sexual
autonomy were not, so far as I know, expressed directly
or explicitly during this period, but it is possible that
they underlay the extreme anxiety over masturbation. Such
fears are further indicated by the frequently expressed
concern that men were not marrying as soon as they ought.

As noted in an earlier chapter, many observers
during the period expressed a discomfort about men's slow-
ness and apparent reluctance to settle down and get married.
Men were advised to marry young, and were scolded for
believing that they needed to become settled in their
careers first. Some, like William Alcott, urged early
marriage as a remedy for "solitary gratification." The
Rev. George Quinby recited a whole stream of arguments in
favor of early marriage (age 21 for men, 18 for women),
as though he expected considerable resistance. Furthermore,
everyone should marry. Quinby expressed his anxiety over
male autonomy when he wrote in 1852,

There are men in society in our day-~men who

voluntarily choose a state of isolated lone-
liness-—violating the laws of nature, and

170

becoming very sour and dreary as time adds to
their wrinkles, and no wife or children are9
near to smile upon and comfort them.

Harriet Martineau was struck by the number of
American men who delayed marriage in the middle period
of the nineteenth century. She offered the opinion that
"men do not choose to marry early, because they have learned
to think other things more important than the best comforts
of domestic life)“” Martineau noted the number of New
England women married to men old enough to be their fathers.
She attributed this to the absence of young men due to
westward migration, making it necessary for young women
to marry widowers twice their age.

Many commentators believed that men postponed
marriage because of the luxury and rivalry of fashion and
the indolence and extravagance of young women. In an intro-
duction to the American edition of a French romantic novel,
Timothy Flint justified the need for the translation when
he declared that "our country swarms with bachelors, the
most useless of the bipeds, and, apparently, only born to

"31

eat up the corn. It would not have been surprising,

amidst all the strenuous advice that men work, save, and

 

2”Quinby, Duties, p. 23.
3oMartineau, Society, p. 300.

31Timothy Flint, The Bachelor Reclaimed, or Celibacy
Vanquished (Philadelphia: Key 8 Biddle, 1834), p. iii.

 

 

171

make their fortunes, had young men of character put off
marriage for years. Statistics of the period do not show
with precision whether men were actually delaying marriage
or remaining unmarried in significant numbers or not.
Probably there was a gradual increase in age of men at
marriage, but this was primarily true mostly of urban
dwellers and the more affluent classes.32 There is no
doubt, however, that concerned observers had the impression
that there were more bachelors and that many men were delay-
ing marriage--an impression sufficient to arouse anxiety.
This anxiety can be linked to masturbation phobia, probably
unconsciously and indirectly, at the point where some
observers had become unsettled about the polarization of
the sexes. At an irrational level of the mind, they feared

the development of male sexual autonomy. This fear

 

32Referring to the nineteenth century, Thomas P.
Monahan wrote in The Pattern of Age at Marriage in the
United States, vol. 1 (Philadelphia: Stephenson-Brothers,
1951), p. 104 and pp. 112-113, that "increasing singleness
and delay in marriage called forth public comment, but
remarks to this effect must be appreciated as probably
not applying generally, but to urban dwellers and certain
special classes. . . . Genealogical studies extending back
to the colonial period would seem to show a probable slight
upward trend in the age at marriage up to 1900, but allow-
ance must be made for some bias in the data. . . . All in
all, the data are not sufficient to draw a satisfactory
conclusion respecting any large area or segment of our
population. It may be that the upper classes, who form
a small part of the population, may have delayed their
marriage since Colonial times, but what happened in the
general population cannot be known from the studies. . . ."

 

 

172

partially accounts for the extreme intensity and uneasiness
centered around masturbation.

It is not surprising that there was anxiety in this
period focused on the whole area of sexuality. What happens
to the innocence and mutuality of sex in marriage when woman
is spiritualized to an extent that she is more angel than
flesh and blood human being? And how can there be an easy
and simple sexual relationship between man and wife when
she has become a super-ego figure--a surrogate, as far as
the male conscience is concerned, for Mother? Here was a
problematic situation. In her innocence and in her role
as moral figure and Mother, no man could make love to a
woman without arousing an Oedipal conflict. Though per-
mitted and licensed, sex in marriage bordered emotionally
on the forbidden. How could it be enjoyed with a free
conscience? The answer, of course, is that it was not.

It was suffused with a sense of shame and guilt. How
could a man marry, and take to bed,zn1angel or Mother?
Melville had his character Pierre reflect,
This to be my wife? . . . I to wed this heavenly
fleece? Methinks one husbandly embrace would
break her airy zone, and she exhale upward to
that heaven whence she hath hither come, con-
densed to mortal sight. It cannot be; I am of

heavy earth, and she of airy light. By heaven,
but marriage is an impious thing!33

 

33Herman Melville, Pierre or, The Ambiguities
(New York: Hendricks House, Inc., 1962’TOriginal ed.
1852]), p. 68.

 

173

This conflict represented the backfiring of the
development of polarized sex roles in which the female was
required to play out in real life an idealized identity.
Having been given charge of the male conscience, and become
responsible for his morality and virtue, she could hardly
also play the part of sexual partner without causing her
male Spouse shame and guilt. If she were more angel than
human being, woman should inspire awe and worship rather
than sexual desire. Love, then, became detached from sex.
If woman was at some level of the mind, feared and forbid-
den, then what legitimate beloved was there other than the
self? It may well have been that masturbation was partic-
ularly disturbing because it was intuitively sensed that
it could be a potentially disastrous flight from the
forbidden woman.

Some anxiety about sex--both masturbation and sexual
"excess" within marriage--was related to physiological the-
ories of the times. It was generally believed that the
body was a closed system. If energy were drained from
one part, other parts of the physical system could become
debilitated. Or, if one organ were overstimulated, it could
cause damage to other parts of the system. In his Lectures

to Young Men, Henry Ward Beecher warned his audience,

 

174

Experience shows that, within certain bounds,

excitement is healthful and necessary, but

beyond this limit exhausting and destructive.

Men are allowed to choose between moderate

but long-continued excitement and intense but

short-lived excitement. Too generally they

prefer the latter.””
Beecher described various vices in terms of the degrees of
"excitement" they aroused. He wrote of flushed cheeks and
the "heat" of excitement as though all vices-~gambling,
drinking, the theater--were all sexual at bottom. Medical
doctors responsible for treating the insane often described
the "excitement” of the fast-moving times in almost sexual
terms.35 Whatever the source of excitement, it threatened
to debilitate the physical system, but most especially the
brain. Sensual excitement, according to another author,
quickened the action of the brain and burned it out pre-
maturely. "The results," he said, "are hundreds of painful
diseases, which shorten life, hasten death, and burden the
soul with unspeakable guilt."36

The excessive use of an organ such as the brain

could cause the depletion of vital energies.37 The

 

3“Henry Ward Beecher, Twelve Lectures to Young Men,
on Various Important Subjects (New York: D. Appleton & Co.,
1901 (original ed. 1852]), pp. 106-107.

 

 

35Brigham, Remarks, p. 88; Jarvis, "Comparative
Liability," p. 359; Ray, Mental Hygiene, pp. 158-195.

 

36Van Doren, Mercantile Morals, p. 341.

 

37Ray, Mental Hygiene.

 

175

association of excitement and over-stimulation with the
debilitation of various organs within the body ultimately
connected the brain with the reproductive system. Express-
ing his disapproval of early mental stimulation of children,
Sylvester Graham warned that education of the young could
cause "a disproportionate exercise of the brain, which leads
to a general debility of the nervous system, involving the
genital organs, and greatly increasing the reciprocity of

influence between them and the brain."””

The reciprocity
of physical systems meant that the loss of semen was a loss
of vital fluids and vital energy. The ejaculation of semen,
whether by masturbation or sexual intercourse legitimate or
illegitimate, was a dangerous threat to a young man's
health.”” Frequent ejaculation, even in marriage, could

be weakening. Nocturnal emissions were a source of concern.
They were not treated as normal, but as the result of some

pathological condition. It was the mind, the brain, the

mental faculties which were believed to suffer as a result.

 

3”Graham, A Lecture, p. 47.

 

3”Sylvester Graham quoted an unnamed source who said
that "the emission of semen enfeebles the body more than the
loss of twenty times the same quantity of blood,--more than

 

violent cathartics and emetics. . . ." (A Lecture, p. 52)
Graham himself considered this to be an exaggeration. See
also Charles Rosenberg, "Sexuality." Henry Ward Beecher,

in Twelve Lectures, p. 206, used a revealing image when
he wrote, T'It i5 strange to see how men will drain them-
selves of vitality in the ways of vice."

 

176

Sylvester Graham recommended certain regimes of diet,
exercise, and other practices as the way to health.
He believed,
All kinds of stimulating and heating substances,
high-seasoned food, rich dishes, the free use of
flesh, and even the excess of aliment, all, more
or less--and some to a very great degree--increase
the concupiscent excitability and sensibility of
the genital organs, and augment their influence
on the functions of organic life, and on the
intellectual and moral faculties.“°
Graham recommended that, to avoid unhealthy physical or
mental stimulation, people should ignore the quack remedies
and follow the "natural" treatment he prescribed: no wine
or liquor, little meat, no stimulants, exercise, and fresh
air.

The probable reason for the anxiety over the loss
of vital energies was that with the polarization of sex
roles and the idealization of women, the whole area of
sexuality became one of increased tension. If the loss
of semen or over-excitement were threatening to the health
of the physical system, then not only masturbation but
women as well posed a threat to men.

Women represented that carnal temptation which could
ruin a man if he were not strong enough to suppress his
urges. In contrast to the male, women could function

sexually without erection or excitement, and they could

do so indefinitely. There is an age-old fear in man that

 

””Graham, A Lecture, p. 47.

 

177

women cannot be satisfied sexually, and that, once she

is awakened, she will drain him dry or turn to others for
satisfaction. This primitive awareness of the comparatively
greater sexual capacity of women has always made men some-
what anxious about their relationship to the female."1
Historically, females have been considered sexually
insatiable. In the mid-nineteenth century, by contrast,
popular theory held that women had a very low sex drive

if any at all. Either point of view arrived at the same
conclusion. If the female was insatiable, she could not

be satisfied; if she had no great need for sexual contact,
then no man could be considered inadequate if he could not
arouse her. Either way, the male was not responsible either
for satisfying, or failing to satisfy, a woman. A quotation

in Bayley's 1857 work, Marriage As It Is and As It Should

 

B3, cited in an earlier chapter, expressed hostility toward

women as consumers and described them as "money maelstroms,"
and condemned "the enormous draughts they are making on the

exchequer of the world."“2 These images, while overtly eco-
nomic, were covertly vaginal. They symbolized the male fear
of the demands made by women--emotional, ethical, and sex-

ual--on their limited energies.

 

“lMyron Brenton, The American Male (New York:
Coward-McCann, Inc., 1966), p. 175.

 

l”Bayley, Marriage, p. 141.

178

The tremendous growth of economic opportunity
between 1820 and 1860 opened up great possibilities for
men who could discipline themselves to take advantage
of them. The exhortations centering around the theme
of systematic ambition were similar to the warnings
against over-stimulation or the loss of semen. Deferred
gratification, self-reliance, the cautious and measured
expenditure of time, exercise of a disciplined will--with
only slight alterations these values could as easily rep-
resent nineteenth-century attitudes toward male sexuality
as toward the pursuit of economic success. Just as a
man was to order nature and conquer technological or
merchandising problems, he was to command the passionate
part of his being in order to channel it into socially
acceptable ways. The same effort of will which mastered
sexual impulses could tackle obstacles to success. Sexual
energy and social energy were intimately related, and
either could be drawn upon and reinvested in the other.

Some students of the period have seen rather
direct connections between the accumulation of semen

and the accumulation of money.”” The rationalist system

 

“”See, for example, Barker-Benfield, Horrors; and
Charles Rosenberg, "Sexuality," in which he descr15es, but
is suspicious of such views if pushed very far. Peter T.
Cominos, in "Late-Victorian Sexual Respectability and the
Social System," International Review of Social History 8
(1963): 18-48, writing particularly of Victorian England,
suggests direct connections between popular sexual theory
and economic theory.

 

179

of capitalism, some say, was closely related to the
rationalist view of sexuality as a system of careful

saving and cautious "spending." (”Spending" was a col-
loquial term for orgasm.) Although these may be linked,

it was an unconscious association rather than a relationship
of cause and effect. In any case, the values of the times
included diverting vital energy from sexual activity into
efforts at becoming a success. Success usually meant suc-
cess in economic terms. The sexually-controlled, repressed
male was also the thrifty, ambitious (not to say driven)
entrepreneur.

The rechanneling of sexual energy was not without
implications for men's relation to women. Sigmund Freud
believed that what psychic energy men invest in building
a civilization or in creativity, they withdraw from their
sexual lives and from women. He also suggested that men's
constant association with other men, and their dependence
on one another in the world of affairs cause an estrangement
from their duties as husbands and fathers.”” It seems that
between 1820 and 1860, middle-class American men did, in
fact, withdraw energy from women in order to invest it in
the achievement of socially encouraged ambitions. Sylvester
Graham put into a formula: "Remember that the higher capa-

bilities of man qualify him for more exalted and exalting

 

””Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents,
translated by Joan Riviere (Lond6n: HOgarth Press, 1930),
p. 73.

 

180

pleasures than lie within the precincts of sexual
enjoyment!“S

Men, though judged to be basically passionate
and sexually aggressive, had sublimated this dimension
of their humanity. They had, in a sense, put it aside
in order to concentrate their energies on the pursuit of
success. While they certainly did not cease to function
sexually, satisfaction of the sexual impulse was given a
relatively low priority. It was, of course, psychic energy
rather than vital fluids that was being husbanded.

Insofar as men's primitive instinct still recognized
in woman a drain on vital powers and a test of masculinity,
she was a threat--an obstacle standing in the way of their
commitment to ordering the world, subduing nature, and get-
ting ahead. The idealization of woman and redefinition of
her as the symbol of domesticity served not only to create
an island of familiarity and stability in a sea of change;
it served also to reduce the level of temptation. Woman as
moral barometer, the watchdog of virtue, as "Mother" and
super-ego figure could not be easily conceived as a sexual
being.

Insofar as all wives represented Mother, the
mythology of the times defined them as virtually asexual.

They were creatures without passions, cheerfully willing,

 

””Graham, A Lecture, p. 84.

 

181

however, to do their duty as they must when necessary to
answer man's natural urges and to reproduce the species.
The prevailing mythology of passionless woman served as
a counterpressure against the primitive fear that woman
might actually be insatiable. The woman who merely
"submitted" and "did her duty" left a man free not to
be put to the test. He was free to invest the bulk of
his energies and attention in his own ambitions. The
more he left his wife alone, the higher his esteem in

a husband's own eyes, as measured by the convenient
prevailing mythology.

Men withdrew from women, in all but forms and
manners, and tried to compensate by their deferential
rhetoric and ritualized behavior. Of course, in the
literature no man was ever counseled to withdraw from
women. They were strongly urged to relate only to
"virtuous" women, which unmistakeably meant women who
would make no sexual demands. The horror of masturbation,
while no doubt traceable to other, more comprehensive
origins, nevertheless also served as a similarly convenient
discouragement of the wasting of energies. What man with-
drew from his sexual life, he could reinvest in the active
life of the world. Insofar as he indulged his sexual appe-
tites, he threatened the prevailing priorities and put

himself in danger of failure.

182

Women and "self-gratification" were saboteurs in
the project of sublimating sexual energies. But there was
also another enemy in the form of "bad books." Nothing was
more consistent in nineteenth-century advice literature than
the warning against dangerous reading. One author warned,

Thousands who cry out against visiting the the-

atre, the gaming salon, and the brothel, have

not inquired how many were made the patrons of

these abodes of infamy by the fascinating, impure

works of fiction. The man who walks at midnight

the "path that takes hold on hell," was there in

the glowing pictures of imagination long before

when his passions kindled over the obscene

romance. How many have first imbibed a taste

for the grossest forms of vice, how many were

really made the slaves of burning passion by

the unchaste novel we shall not know until the

Judgment Day.“6
The warning against bad books was very often linked to a
warning against masturbation. John Todd took his stand
against reading bad books and insisted that "it is almost
inseparable from the habit of reverie. . . ."”7 Some
authors strongly discouraged juvenile books of any
description written specifically for the young. Dr.
Isaac Ray expressed the conviction that young men should
read adult books, as had been the pattern in the past.
Books especially for the young over-simplified, he said,

and also over-stimulated. Such books aroused licentiousness

in young men and led to masturbation. Ray reported that one

 

””Thayer, Hints, pp. 212-213.
”7Todd, Students' Manual, p. 147.

 

183

could see patients in every hospital for the insane whose
pathology could be traced to the reading of "bad books."
These patients suffered from "a form of disease pre-
eminently loathesome and difficult to cure," he said."8
What were these "bad books?" Although they were
seldom specifically identified, it was clear that quite
often they were novels of an ordinary kind which would be
considered quite innocent by twentieth-century standards.
The single author most often named was Lord Byron, who was
almost universally condemned.”” Clearly, not all "bad
books” were so judged on the grounds that they were lewd
or suggestive. Some were condemned because of their
religious skepticism. The single author most often praised
was Walter Scott, but even Scott had his critics. And yet,
some commentators who warned against "bad books" seem to
have had in mind something quite different. Henry Ward

Beecher warned of "EVIL BOOKS" and "EVIL PICTURES," and

 

””Ray, Mental Hygiene, p. 277.

 

””Samuel Goodrich [Peter Parley], in Recollections of
a Lifetime, or Men and Things I Have Seen: In a Series of
Familiar’Letters to a Friénd, Historical, Biographicdl,
Anecdotal, and Descriptive, vol. 2 (New York: (Miller, Orton
8 Mulligan, 1856), pp. 140-141, describing the poet James
Gates Percival, remarked that Percival had been cold and
withdrawn, living an isolated and loveless life. Goodrich
remarked, "I think he had been deeply injured--nay ruined--
by the reading of Byron's works, at that precise age when
his soul was in all the sensitive bloom of spring, and its
killing frost of atheism, of misanthropy, of pride, and
scorn, fell upon it, and converted it into a scene of
desolation."

 

 

 

184

complained in knowing terms about French and English
pornography.”° During this period, a considerable volume
of pornographic works were published in England, some of
which apparently had found their way to the United States.
Nineteenth-century English pornography was quite as vivid

”1 To those who

and explicit as anything published today.
had found it important for social and personal reasons to
sublimate their sexuality, pornography or other "bad books"
posed a particularly terrifying threat. As one man wrote

in 1852, "It is thus bringing unholy fire to the collected

tinder in every unsanctified heart which kindles all the

 

soBeecher, Twelve Lectures.

 

51Steven Marcus, in The Other Victorians: A Study of

Sexuality and Pornography in Mid-Nineteenth-Century England
(London: Weidenfeldia Nicolson, 1964), p. 284, says that
"during the [middle and later decades of the nineteenth
century] pornographic writings were produced and published
in unprecedented volume--it became in fact a minor industry.
The view of human sexuality as it was represented in the
subculture of pornography and the view of sexuality held by
the official culture were reversals, mirror images, negative
analogues of one another. For every warning against mastur-
bation issued by the official voice of culture, another work
of pornography was published; for every cautionary statement
against the harmful effects of sexual excess uttered by
medical men, pornography represented copulation in excelsis

for every effort made by the official culture to min-
imize the importance of sexuality, pornography cried out--
or whispered--that it was the only thing in the world of
any importance at all. It is essential for us to notice
the similarities even more than the differences between
these two groups of attitudes or cultures. In both the
same set of anxieties are at work; in both the same obses-
sive ideas can be made out; and in both sexuality is con-
ceived of at precisely the same degree of consciousness."

 

 

 

185

passions, and produces such disaster to a sound mind."52
But it took much less than explicitly sexual books to
arouse horror. Even ordinary romances were bad enough.
"Bad books," like alcohol, were a threat to self-
control and self-direction. They undermined will power,
sabotaged self-discipline, and released feelings and
impulses which threatened disorder in the life of the
individual and chaos in a society where all strong feelings
but ambition had been sublimated for the sake of conserving
and concentrating energies. Thus, the perennial advice to
young men was to check with authority: "Make it a rule
never to read any book, pamphlet, or periodical, till you
have first ascertained from your parents, teachers, or
minister that it is safe, and worth reading."53
Condemnation of the theater represented a similar
fear of a stimulus which might break down sexual self-
control. In reference to the theater, a clergyman wrote,
"In our theatres actresses are frequently applauded by
the audience for introducing licentious gestures in their
actings, whoever may be present."5” Bad books, the theater,
masturbation, "reverie," and female sexuality together rep-

resented a common threat to the masculine ascetic commitment

 

52Van Doren, Mercantile Morals, p. 354.

 

53Newcomb, How to Be a Man, p. 160.

 

5"Van Doren, Mercantile Morals, p. 399.

 

186

to achieve. If they had been allowed, these pernicious
influences would have undermined the Jacksonian male's
almost monastic commitment to a kind of spiritual celibacy--
celibacy not for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, but for
the sake of untold kingdoms waiting to be built by the hands
of single-minded, undistracted men.

Of course, not all Americans during this time-period
shared the values of the dominant culture. Some Americans
were in search of alternatives to the current social con-
sensus on sex roles and sexuality as such. Some perfec-
tionists and believers in religious sanctification exper-
imented with forms of free love. John Humphrey Noyes
gathered a community which practiced a controlled type
of sexuality almost like group marriage. Led by the
revelations of Joseph Smith, the Mormons began to practice
polygamy, while the Shakers cut the Gordian knot and put
all sex aside once and for all. These and other experi-
menters indicated their dissatisfaction with the role of
sex in the culture of nineteenth-century America. They
tried to pioneer the way to new solutions of the tense
relationship of men and women. Significantly enough,
these communal experimenters also sought alternatives
to the prevailing individualism, personal ambition, and
competitiveness of the United States between 1820 and 1860.

In their cooperative work patterns, and frequently communal

187

ownership, they attempted to challenge what they often
conceived to be the destructiveness, or dehumanization

of life in their times. They saw, or discovered, con-
sciously or unconsciously, that work patterns and patterns
of sexual relationship were interrelated. As in many other
centuries, work and sex were, in one way or another, the
primary themes during this era.

In what way did the nineteenth-century treatment
of sexuality differ from the attitudes of previous gener-
ations? In the popular mind, at least, the Puritans are
usually blamed for narrow and austere sexual views and
harsh, rigid practices. This opinion must have been
current in some circles even in the nineteenth century,

judging by such works as Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter.

 

Recent students dispute this view of Puritanism. John
Demos believes that the Puritans probably took sex more

in their stride than most later generations of Americans.55
Edmond Morgan agrees. He states his belief that the Puri-
tans were neither blindly zealous nor narrow-mindedly
bigoted in matters of sex, as they are commonly supposed
to have been.56 The Puritans did, in fact, establish a

code of laws which demanded perfection. Their theology,

 

55John Demos, "Infancy and Childhood in the Plymouth
Colony," in The American Family, ed. Michael Gordon, p. 184.

 

56Edmund Scott Morgan, "The Puritans and Sex," in
The American Family, ed. Michael Gordon, p. 294.

 

188

however, took a view of human nature which did not expect
human beings to be able to achieve anything like perfection.
They were not surprised at incidences of fornication, rape,
adultry, or even homosexuality. Nor were they so severe
with offenders as their code of laws would lead us to
expect. Given their theological insight, they tolerated
such violations of the law as predictable human weakness.
In fact, such violations were all the more likely to appear
in a devout community where the normal course of wickedness
was frustrated by godly laws. Although the Puritans
believed in absolute, God-given values when it came to
sex, their doctrine of sin preserved them from naiveté
about human nature. They knew that the sons and daughters
of Adam and Eve could never perfectly obey the laws of God.
Trusting in God's grace,they treated offenders more
patiently and leniently than the text of the laws would
indicate. They concentrated their efforts on prevention
more than on punishment. Leslie Fiedler suggests that it
would not have occurred to the Puritans to ignore sex or
to ban sexual vocabulary from literature, as it did to
nineteenth-century people.57

It is true that authorities in the eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries also spoke against sexual excess,

but they did so in a much calmer, even a bland, tone. A

 

S7Fiedler, Love and Death, p. 52.

 

189

collection of lectures given between 1805 and 1819
by Eliphalet Nott, the president of Union College in
Schenectady, New York, illustrates the difference between
counsels about sex before and after 1820. Nott's point of
view was intensely religious, but strikingly generous in
its sentiments. He did issue the standard warnings against
vice, but they were much milder than their later equivalents.
There was in Nott's lectures a pre-Jacksonian view of work.
There was no entrepreneurial tone, no celebrating of iron-
willed systematic ambition. Few similar lectures after
1820 would have been capable of saying, as Nott did, that

the senses . . . are a real source of enjoyment;

nor would I wish you either to despise or under-

value them. The God of nature has not thought it

derogatory to his wisdom, his goodness, or his

sanctity, to bestow on you this class of enjoy-

ments; and surely it cannot be derogatory to yours

to receive them at his hand.””
Nott condemned those who used religion as a means of
spreading gloom or of denigrating the legitimacy of sensual
pleasures. Religion required no sacrifices except disease,
pain, and infamy. True, he wrote, "You may not steal at
midnight to the infamous pleasures of the brothel; but you

may cherish at your homes the refined, the hallowed pleas-

ures of connubial friendship."”” In Nott the earlier, more

 

5”Eliphalet Nott, D.D., Counsels to Young Men on the
Formation of Character, and The Principles Which Lead to
Success and Happiness in Life (New York: Harper 6 Bros.,
1850 [original ed. 1840]), pp. 27-28.

 

 

 

””Ibid., p. 36.

190

easy-going attitudes prevail, and they are less intense,
more humane than later views.

What were the causes of the growing anti-sexual
and repressive patterns of the mid-nineteenth century
middle class? No single explanation seems adequate to
explain those patterns fully. Many historians believe
that revivalism played a major role. While revivalism
did address issues with social dimensions, its emphasis
was on the regeneration of the individual. Each person
was called to make an evangelical decision which was to
become the first act in a major reform of his or her own
life. Millenial expectations sparked the perfectionist
movement, which included a call for a tightly-controlled
and disciplined sexuality.

In addition to revivalism, the sexual repressiveness
of Victorian England may also have exerted an influence
across the Atlantic. Historians have often identified the
sublimation of sexuality with the Evangelical movement in
Britain.”° Steven Marcus associates it with a major attempt
by the lower classes to rise above their degradation and
become respectable.61 Marcus tells the story of a young

girl who was repeatedly met in the street by a well—to—do

 

6°For example, Peter Gabriel Filene, Him Her Self:
Sex Roles in Modern America (New York/London: Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich, 1974)] p. 93; and Houghton, Victorian
Frame of Mind, p. 359.

 

 

 

 

61Marcus, Other Victorians, p. 148.

 

191

gentleman who offered her money in exchange for discreet
sex play. With this and similar stories for background, he
suggests that the values of "chastity, propriety, modesty,
and prudery" may have functioned as positive and humanizing
moral values. This was, after all, an era when the London
masses were generally immoral and promiscuous in a context
of poverty and degradation. Sexual repression was the
result of a kind of self-restraint which amounted to a
refusal to accept the indignities of exploitation. Such
restraint helped enormously in a self-administered program
to humanize a class of persons who had been considered so
degraded as to be almost sub-human. Marcus links sexual
self-restraint with learning to defer gratification and to
rationalize and systematize one's daily activities to reach
a given goal. While it does not seem possible to see a
parallel in American society (even if one attempts to find
similarities between the London masses and the American
urban poor), Marcus' position does suggest that the rigid
and controlled masculine character in the United States
might have emerged in exchange for some other value. While
men were required to shut down parts of their human nature,
they paid this cost for an almost unparalleled focus of
human energy on economic development and the ordering of

a whole continent. It may be--and the hypothesis cannot

be proven--that sexual sublimation was essential to produce

192

the kind of personality that made possible the economic
development of the United States in the nineteenth century.
Other students of the period suggest that Americans
were alarmed by the extent of freedom in the young nation.62
More than any other nation, America had encouraged economic
and political freedom. Many people exercised that freedom
by movement-~to the West, to the cities, beyond the reach
of their childhood communities and the control they repre-
sented. The "Benevolent Empire" set up by Protestant
churches had as one purpose to attempt to impose some
order on American freedom. The churches were concerned
that freedom not degenerate into license and anarchy.
They followed people to the various frontiers--western
or urban-~attempting to establish institutions and to
develop inner restraints which would protect the people
from themselves. Sexual excess symbolically represented
the flight from authority and the tendency towards personal
autonomy. As the London masses practiced repression to
establish their humanity, the American middle class embraced
a philsophy of self-restraint as a form of protection
against a breakdown of social order. Suppressed emotional
needs found alternative means of expression through such
mechanisms as revivalism and in other movements, programs,

and enthusiasms.

 

62For example, Douglas Miller, in conversation.

193

It seems likely that middle-class sexual repression
derived from multiple causes. One further explanation for
the anti-sexual patterns of the period supplements, but
does not contradict, others. That explanation ties the
patterns of sexual repression more directly to the process
of modernization. Economic changes and changes in work
patterns significantly reordered the northern middle-class
way of life. There was a redefinition of sex roles and a
redirection of personal and social goals and energies. If
the penalty of women's new role as keeper of the cult of
domesticity and mothering figure was that her sexuality
was redefined and minimized, it was men's loss. Paradox-
ically, however, it was also men's gain. Men lost a free
and easy access to their own wives as sexual partners--and
also lost access to their own sexuality--but they gained
freedom from distractions. With that freedom, they could
devote themselves to another mistress--the single-minded

pursuit of success.

CHAPTER V

CLASS AND REGIONAL VARIATIONS

Not all men between 1820 and 1860 were restless,
ambitious entrepreneurs who unconsciously sacrificed parts
of their own humanity to get ahead. This study has focused
on those men who were, or aspired to become, middle-class.
There were, no doubt, individual men of that class who
did not embody the Jacksonian consciousness, and lived
by other roles. As we have seen in Chapter I, there were
whole groups of people who experimented communally with
alternative ways of perceiving the world, structuring their
values, and designing sex roles. But there were differ-
ences, also, that could be ascribed primarily to class
or regional variations. Upper-class men, immigrants and
urban poor males, and southern men might be expected to
have at least somewhat different images and expectations
of themselves as men.

This chapter provides a rough survey of masculine
roles and images among men of these various class and
regional sub-groups. It is not based on extensive research
in primary materials and by no means pretends to be defin-

itive. However, it does provide contrasts with the main

194

195

themes of the study, sketching a background which will
highlight middle-class masculine roles and images as
historically relative and culturally conditioned.

At least during the earlier years of the period
under study, there continued to be a self-conscious upper
class, consisting of gentlemen who were descendants, by
heredity and point of view, from the upper classes of the
colonial and early national periods. TO the pre-l820 gen-
tleman, the hero to be admired was not the entrepreneur,
but the "neo-classic" hero. Magazines and biographies in
the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries lifted
up a view of life which celebrated the classic tradition
of duty, order, and social obligation. There was, in such
a tradition, a concern for the nation as a whole and for
the welfare of society rather than for the individual
career. The qualities of mind most admired by the upper
classes before 1820 were those fitting to the gentleman
and the scholar, "a strong, active, comprehensive mind
'improved by education and embellished by taste.'"1 The
ideal man of such a class aspired to be a gentleman, con-
scious of his duty, moderate in all things, and regular

in practice of religious faith. Such a man admired

 

1Theodore P. Green, America's Heroes: The Changing
Models of Success in American Magaiines (New York: Oxford
Univer5ity Press, 1970), p. 47.

 

196

self-restraint more than self-expression, modesty rather
than ambition, dignity rather than forcefulness, and
responsibility to one's duty rather than making one's
mark on the world in new ways.

The most admired figures of the pre-18205 gentleman
were those in occupations serving the state, the military,
or the church. Many of the early heroes were educators,
and classical education was universally appreciated in them.
In the lectures given by Eliphalet Nott at Union College
between 1805 and 1819, this classic view of masculine roles
was obvious. He warned against the dangers of aspiring to
wealth, and simply presumed that the young men in his
audiences would go into some public-spirited profession.

In an 1811 commencement address, Nott advised the young
college graduates to strive to imitate--not merchants or
bankers--but men noted for their impact on society as

public-spirited servants of social justice. The address
mentioned particularly four British men who were held up

as models: Howard, Sharpe, Clarkson, and Lancaster.2

 

2Sharpe was an advocate on behalf of Negroes;
Clarkson was involved in emancipation efforts; Howard was
an advocate for prisoners; and Lancaster's concern was to
make education accessible to the poor.

According to Nott, in Counsels to Young Men, p. 88,
"animated by the purest virtue, and’hent on be1ng useful,
they seized on the miseries of life as the world presented
them; and by deeds of charity and valour performed in
relieving those miseries, they converted the very abodes
of ignorance and wo into a theatre of glory."

 

197

The speaker then urged the "young gentlemen" to go out

into the world imitating the example of these worthies:
correcting prejudices, instructing the ignorant, reclaiming
the vicious, and alleviating misery. Nott's lectures and
speeches represented the point of view of the traditional
American upper classes--a point of view which prevailed in
the print media before about 1820.

The pre-1820 values of the upper classes persisted
among their descendants after 1820, but they were no longer
the dominant values expressed in the culture, and they were
not the model set before the lower and middle classes. The
new model, which dominated the print media, had become that
of the systematically ambitious character, who was almost
ascetically devoted to the work-related virtues. The upper-
classes, representing only a minority point of view within
the culture, very probably enjoyed a sense of identity and
personal status which made achievement less emotionally
urgent than for the middle and aspiring classes. It is
tempting to speculate, furthermore, whether upper-class
men would have turned quite so readily from a task-oriented
to a time-discipline ethos; or whether their sons, dependent
in many cases on a future inheritance, soon departed from
paternal authority. In any case, evidence indicates that
among the upper-classes, male perspectives were much less
likely to have been as radically polarized from those of

women as they were in other classes.

198

Women were definitely idealized, deferred to, and
treated as dependents. Nevertheless, there was more over-
lapping of the feminine and the masculine among the upper
classes than in the middle classes, as had been true in
earlier society. In a book such as Cecil B. Hartley's

Gentlemen's Book of Etiquette, one is struck by the fact

 

that many—-certainly not all--of the qualities encouraged
in men who saw themselves belonging to the "gentlemanly"
class would probably have been considered "effeminate" by
the standards of the average Jacksonian entrepreneur.”
The enjoyment of reading for its own sake, rather than

as a means of self-improvement; the appreciation of good
conversation; and the enjoyment of good music were more
typically associated with upper-class men than men of
other classes. It was true, nevertheless, that however
much masculine roles may have overlapped with roles asso-
ciated with the feminine "sphere," upper-class women were
equally as restricted as they were in other social classes.
Ronald Hogeland says that "ornamental womanhood," the most
conservative and restrictive of several distinctive life-
styles available for women between 1820 and 1860, was
associated (in addition to the South) with the upper

classes in New England and the cities along the Atlantic

 

3Hartley, Etiquette.

 

199

coast.” The restrictions of women's roles to the
"decorative" and consuming roles may have represented a
continuation and intensification of traditional practice
in this social class, and served as a model for men with
upwardly mobile ambitions, thus contributing to the polari-
zation of sex roles among the emerging middle class.

James Fenimore Cooper was perhaps the most
articulate spokesman for the point of view of upper-class
males during the Jacksonian era. In his advocacy of that
perspective, Cooper was influenced by the defensiveness
he felt in a society where democratic values obviously

prevailed. In Cooper's novel Home As Found, the upper

 

classes are contrasted with Unemiddle and aspiring classes.”
The image of the upper-class man was of one who treated
women with great formality and delicacy; who was traditional
in outlook, and quite comfortable in a deferential system;
who was personally controlled and always proper. Such men
were sensitive to the feelings and needs of others. Eti-
quette and good manners were instinctive, but not pompous

or overdone. Money was taken for granted, and a passionate

 

”Ronald Hogeland, "'The Female Appendage'": Fem-
inine Life-Styles in America, 1820-1860," in Our American
Sisters: Women in American Life and Thought,C2nd ed.,
eds. Jean E. Friedman and William G. ShadeC(Boston: Allyn
8 Bacon, Inc., 1976), p. 134.

 

 

”James Fenimore Cooper, Home As Found (New York:
Hurd & Houghton, 1865 [original ed. 1838]).

 

200

interest in it was considered quite vulgar. There was,
among the upper-class men in the novel, no question of
having a career or of justifying the lack of one. Some
men were merely "gentlemen." Learning, taste, and refine-
ment were valued by men of this class. A gentleman was
distinguished from others by his "attainments, practices,
and principles, which if they are not always moral, are
above meanness, and he has . . . no pride in the mere vulgar
consequence of wealth."” An upper-class male valued his
individuality, and resisted the conformity which seemed
to be required by democratization.

To Cooper, the concept of "gentleman" was associated
with virtue, but also with the stable wealth of land owner-
ship. Wealth in commercial capital did not conform to his
image of an authentic "gentleman.” For that reason he
exulted when Jackson broke Biddle's bank. Cooper described
the role of the gentleman when he wrote,

The social duties of a gentleman are of a high
order. The class to which he belongs is the
natural repository of the manners, tastes, tone,
and to a certain extent, of the principles of a
country. . . . If the laborer is indispensable to
civilization, so is also the gentleman. While the
one produces, the other directs his skill to those
arts which raise the polished man above the bar-
barian. The indulgence of [the gentleman's] very

luxuries encourages the skill that contributes to
the comforts of the lowest.7

 

6Cooper, American Democrat, p. 150.

 

7Ibid., pp. 147-148.

201

The upper-class gentleman was not ambitious for
himself or committed to striving for personal gain.
Rather, he placed "service" before anything else. In
fact, to be ambitious, to want anything except to serve
was to call in question one's standing as a "gentleman."

Learning was the mark of a gentleman.” Education
was not a meal-ticket, but a means of shaping leaders of
civilization. This was a strong contrast to the estimate
of the value of education by the middle classes. The
Scottish traveler, Thomas Hamilton, accurately described
the role of education from the point of view of the
ordiniary man.

Even to the present day, the value of education
in the United States is estimated, not by its
result on the mind of the student, in strength-
ening his faculties, purifying his taste, and
enlarging and elevating the sphere of thought
and consciousness, but by the amount of avail-
able knowledge which it enables him to bring

to the common business of life.”

The tradition of Benjamin Franklin, which had come
into its own in the mid-nineteenth century, celebrated the
down-to-earth, the practical, the utilitarian. Franklin,

who was frequently offered as a model for middle-class

masculine roles during the period, represented the opposite

 

”Edwin Harrison Cady, referring to an opinion voiced
by Cooper, The Gentleman in America: A LiteraryStudy in
American Culture (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press,
1949), p. 117.

 

”Hamilton, Men and Manners, p. 362.

 

202

of the "gentleman's" or the "high-brow's" values.
Anti-aristocratic rhetoric illustrated a significant
hostility which had developed toward the upper classes
and their values. Such rhetoric was increasingly accepted
in the United States over the first third of the nineteenth
century. Professional men, particularly, came to be targets
of the hostility of upwardly mobile people, who wanted
access to professional standing on terms less stringent
than had developed in the latter part of the eighteenth
century.1°

Individual achievement of an outstanding nature
was valued less than standardization of performance. Being
respectable was better than being outstanding. "Culture"
and learning were devalued for men except as they were com-
mon to all or served a utilitarian purpose that all could
admire. At least one student believes that the tradition
of the gentleman represented, for one thing, a battle

against Philistinism. Edwin Harrison Cady suggests that

 

1”Daniel H. Calhoun, in Professional Lives in
America: Structure and Aspiration, 175041850 (Cambridge,

 

 

Mass.: HarvardCUniversity Press, 1965)] p. 188, points out
that "the result was a kind of mediocritization of law,
medicine, and ministry. . . . Legislators in many states

abolished compulsory medical licensure, withdrew recognition
from medical associations, discarded hierarchic distinctions
among lawyers, loosened restrictions on who could practice
law, or weeded out mystifying common-law elements from the
forms of legal practice. Congregations asserted preferences
for a warmer, more exciting, but less authoritative
ministry."

203

the struggle of thinking Americans to prevent the loss
of the heritage of European culture represents a kind of
"genteel tradition" in America. He argues that "civili-
zation" exists in America now in large measure because of
the gentleman and his traditions.11

James Fenimore Cooper and others of his class felt
the loss of their own status as "democratization" proceeded.
They resented the encroachments of those who had apparently
become blind to class distinctions or hostile towards them.

In Home As Found, Cooper caricatured the classes who were

 

so determined to display their conviction of equality and
also those who aspired to upper-class status. The egal-
itarians had little respect for authority of any kind.
Cooper described a group of young apprentices who chose
the front lawn of the Effinghams as the place to organize
their ball game, and refused to move it when asked. The
town barber, summoned by Mr. Effingham, refused to take
the trouble to come to his home, replying that Effingham
could as easily come to him. Cooper saw the barber's
independent reply as another instance of arrogance in

the lower classes. He was afraid that the rights of the
majority were in danger of eroding the rights of the
individual. Of those who aspired to higher status, Cooper

remarked,

11Cady, Gentleman, p. 17.

 

204

He who would have learning, and taste, and

sentiment, and refinement of every sort, ought

to respect its possessors, and, in all things

but those which affect rights, defer to their

superior advantages. This is the extent of

the deference that is due from him who is not

a gentleman, to him who is; but this much is

due.12

Cooper's understanding of masculinity as an upper-

class gentleman was quite different from the understanding
of masculinity held by those who aspired to higher status.
He particularly resented those who thought that the status
of a gentleman could be bought for cash, and who believed
that being a gentleman had no particular value except for
establishing a newer and more desirable status. To Cooper
and the traditional upper classes, masculine roles centered
around "service," taste, and personal culture, and not
around money or personal ambition. Understandably, the
traits associated with the systematic pursuit of personal
ambition and "self-improvement" would be irrelevant to the
life of an upper-class man, who was already in possession
of status and some sort of financial security, even if not
always wealth. The resentment aroused in the gentleman by
the spread of the egalitarian ethos and the breakdown in
respect for the values he represented made him seem defen-

sive, peevish, and snobbish from the perspective of the

aspiring classes. Under such circumstances the values

 

12Cooper, American Democrat, p. 148.

 

205

advocated by the gentleman lost much of their attractiveness
and seemed mainly to serve as marks of class-distinction.
One of the traditional marks of what has been called
the "age of Jackson" was a growing egalitarianism--that same
quality which in its crasser forms, Cooper and other upper-
class men had found so abrasive. Nevertheless, it was not
true that all class-consciousness had melted away during
this era of heightened democratic zeal. Writing in 1829,

the author of A Description of the Etiquette at Washington

 

City made the following observations:

Every individual of every community looks up

or down upon all the others that compose it,

according to the grade he presumes that he stands

in; and, however, indistinct the different grades

may appear to others, yet, in almost every in-

stance, each one thinks himself something superior

or inferior to those even with whom he associates,

as his daily and most intimate companions.13
Nowhere is this class-consciousness more apparent than in
the attitudes toward those men who violated the "respect-
able" canons of the middle class. Virtue had become so
specifically associated with the ethos of the "self-made"
and "self-improving" that those who lived by a different
structure of values--whether the idle rich or the urban
poor—-could not be thought of as virtuous.

The urban poor consisted for the most part of an

increasing immigrant population. The values by which they

 

13E. Cooley, M.D., A Description of the Etiqnette at
Washington City (Philadelphia: L. B. Clarke, 1829)} p. 20.

 

 

206

lived were much different from those of the upper classes,
yet they did have something in common. The way of life of
the urban poor and the ethos of the upper classes were
similar in that both were reminiscent of an earlier era.

In that commonality, they were distinguished from middle-
class values, which were very up-to-date in that they had
been formed in response to current social and economic con-
ditions. The habits, mores, and work-style of the urban
poor resembled those which had been widespread throughout
the entire population before the Jacksonian era. Immi-
grants, for example, had brought with them to the new
country their traditional attitudes toward work. As
Herbert Gutman points out, each new wave of newcomers

had to begin over again at point zero to learn the values
associated with modernization and industrialization.1”
Immigrants found it difficult to absorb the time-discipline,
systematic attitudes which had become commonplace among
native Americans when home-based work was left behind. The
newcomers continued their age-old, task-oriented approach
to work, punctuated by time for socializing and celebrating.
Immigrants were not, at the outset, either consumed with
ambition or preoccupied with work. They had not lost the

ability to be comfortable with leisure time.

 

1"Herbert Gutman, "Work, Culture, and Society in
Industrializing America, 1815-1919," American Historical
Review 78 (June 1973): 531-588.

 

207

Even among many native Americans during this
period of transition from a more nearly traditional to
a more nearly "modern" consciousness, there were those who
preferred the old ways. Writing of Lynn, Massachusetts in
the 18205 and 18305, Alan Dawley and Paul Faler describe a
developing polarization between what they call "modernists"
and "traditionalists." This polarization extended across
all classes. What distinguished the "modernist" was that
be embraced the newly developing middle-class ethos orga—
nized around the disciplined use of time and the pursuit
of personal ambition. The "modernist" was, in a sense,
a "true-believer," who had accepted the doctrine that
those who carefully organized their energies could conquer
obstacles and rise in the world.15 The modernist might be
either an employer or an employee--both types were repre-
sented in this group. The "traditionalist," on the other
hand, did not adopt the new point of view. He continued
living and working with the same basic outlook as his father
or grandfather had had. The traditionalist did not believe
that gigantic effort would bring great rewards, or was not
interested in the sacrifices necessary in the attempt. He

continued to live in a more traditional style whether at

 

1”Alan Dawley and Paul Faler, "Working Class Culture
and Politics in the Industrial Revolution: Sources of
Loyalism and Rebellion," Journal of Social History 9
(June 1976): 437.

 

208

work or at leisure--a style which Dawley and Faler describe
as a more "libertine" morality.

Those who subscribed to the new middle-class values
were not able to understand or appreciate the ways of the
immigrants or the traditionalist natives. The middle class
did not perceive the ways of the lower classes as vestigial
remains of an earlier ethos which were, perhaps, worthy of
respect. And yet it is true that the more easy-going way
of life of the lower classes, including the enjoyment of
alcohol, had been typical for ordinary middle-class people
in 1800. By the middle period of the nineteenth century,
however, that sort of relaxed approach to life and con-
viviality had been left behind by the ambitious classes.
With the beginnings of modernization and time-discipline
consciousness, a way of life which had been quite respect-
able at the turn of the century had become associated in
the public mind with lazy habits. After all, the poor
immigrant enjoyed taking a holiday from work and spending
time with his cronies at the tavern. His relaxed approach
to work was bad enough, but his enjoyment of a drink asso-
ciated him with "vices" that seemed inimical to middle-
class discipline and the need for stringent personal
controls.

Increasingly, the urban poor began to be associated

with a pattern of life in which achievement was not a

209

central goal around which life was organized. In 1835,
over 50,000 European immigrants landed in the United States,
many of whom brought along their traditional attitudes and
points of view. The volume of immigration of Irish peas-
ants increased considerably in the 18405 and 18505. The
immigrants' attitudes toward the use of time, toward edu-
cation and drinking were often at odds with most of the
native population. When they became employed, immigrants
were forced into an encounter with a modern consciousness,
particularly in factory work. The conflicts and difficul-
ties of this meeting between representatives of traditional
society and a modernizing society worked to the special
disadvantage of the immigrants. The native American middle-
class saw the immigrants and their work patterns not merely
as different, but as inferior. They were regarded as ethi-
cally deficient because they did not embrace the morally
laden work-related virtues of the time, as reinforced by

a lingering Puritan morality. The forces of temperance

and moral reform saw the urban poor as objects to be
reformed, so that they might better fit middle-class

images of propriety. Richard Brown states that insofar

as immigrants behaved like modern, middle-class men, they
found acceptance. He further suggests that native disdain
toward the immigrants may very well have been related to

the fact that the newcomers represented the traditional

210

values that the natives had been working so hard to leave
behind. The ways of the Irish, for example, in their love
of family and community, in their church allegiance and
tavern-haunting, reminded the natives too much of their
own grandfathers. To the native-born, the ways of the
immigrants seemed a step backward.16 The presence of a
sizeable number of people representing the discarded values
of the past may have threatened the middle-class men who
were struggling so hard to put temptation behind them in
order to invest all their energies in the struggle for
progress. The urban poor, with their easy-going ways,

may have seemed to pose a danger to the middle-class
experiment.

The values by which the urban poor lived were
connected with poverty as cause to effect. The middle-
class point of view was that poverty was not circumstantial,
but directly related to lack of personal morality and an
improper attitude toward work. Jacob Abbott, for instance,
instructed his young readers that in the vast majority of
cases, poverty was the result of "idleness, mismanagement,
or vice."17 Poverty, he said, was a punishment from God.
Abbott ruled out environmental factors almost completely

by insisting that anyone could provide a comfortable living

 

1”Brown, Modernization, p. 153.

 

17Abbott, Way to Do Good, p. 120.

 

211

for himself in almost any country of the world if he had
good character, was industrious and prudent. He conceded
the faint possibility that a man might be both poor and
virtuous, but such circumstances were rare. In nearly

every case, poverty was directly correlated with personal
attitudes and habits. Therefore, if one wished to escape
from his condition of poverty, he should first consider his
faults and failings, and then repent. In nearly every case,
a change of attitude would result in an improvement in a
man's economic condition.

The Connecticut schoolmaster assured his readers
that charity only exacerbated the problem of poverty,
because it merely treated symptoms and did not deal with
the moral character of the poor. Abbott suggested that
his young readers should not allow themselves to be terribly
touched by the poor. After all, those who lived in poverty
had become toughened to hardship, and could not feel the
pain of it as a middle-class person would. Attitudes like
Abbott's were typical, and provided a rational structure
which served to protect the middle class from having to
deal with the poor or come to terms with the phenomenon

of poverty.’” Thus the middle class tried to reassure

 

1”David J. Rothman, in Asylum, pp. 156, 188, says
that "the poor not only lost the1r former status as neigh-
bors in a stable community, but their position in an
hierarchical order. As a result, they became suspicious
and culpable characters." He described the almshouse as

212

themselves of the virtue of their own values. The poor,
by their misery, served as living proof that systamtic
ambition was the way of righteousness.

The specific vice most often associated with poverty
was excessive drinking. In a barroom conversation in T. S.

Arthur's classic Ten Nights in a Bar-Room, a man claimed

 

that if the temperance party scored a political victory in
an upcoming election, the local poorhouse would be closed,
and his uncle, the superintendent, would lose his job.

"Only, they say, they're not going to have a
Poor-house in the county at all."

"What! Going to turn the poor wretches out to
starve?" said one.

"Oh no! (hic), "and the fellow grinned, half
shrewdly and half maliciously, as he answered--
"no, not that. But, when they carry the day,
there'll be no need of Poor-houses. At least,
that's their talk--and I guess maybe there's
something in it, for I never knew a man to

go to the Poor- house, who hadn' t9 (hic) rum

to blame for his poverty.

The next dialogue concerned the local jail, and made the
very same point. Poverty, crime, and ruin were almost
always attributable to intemperance. All the middle-class
values--orderliness, neatness, enterprise, discipline,

fidelity--were dissolved by drink. Poverty was treated

 

an institution which would teach and enforce middle-class
values. "The new [Jacksonian] almshouse would insist upon
order, discipline, and an exacting routine."

1”Timothy Shay Arthur, Ten Nights in a Bar-Room: And
What I Saw There (Boston: L. P. Crown 8 Co., 1855): p. 128.

 

213

by mid-nineteenth century persons as attributable to

drunkness, never vice versa.

 

As poverty was associated with drinking, drinking
was associated with an outcast or low social position, and
contrasted with abstinence as the symbol of middle-class
life. The drinker was said to lose his industrious devo-
tion to work. He lost his reputation for reliability, and
finally he became unemployed. He could be restored, but,
according to the temperance literature of the times, only
by reform, sobriety, pledging to abstain, and a return to
the work-related virtues (in short, the middle-class
values), could he hope to return to respectability.

Just as drinking and poverty had become associated
in the middle-class mind, so had poverty and sexual license.
Sylvester Graham was not atypical in his suggestion that
children often learned to masturbate from servants. He
wrote that "servants and other laboring people of loose
morals, often become the secret preceptors of children in
this debasing sin."2° A loose attitude toward work, enjoy-
ment of drinking and conviviality, poverty, and a lack of
sexual inhibition had become characteristics associated
with the under classes. These traits all symbolized, to
the middle-class mind, a lack of personal discipline and

self-control, and a threat to social order.

 

2”Graham, A Lecture, p. 92.

 

214

Since the prevailing masculine ethos was so strongly tinged
with a sense of its own morality, those who dissented

from it could not be viewed from a neutral perspective.
Middle-class men considered indifference to their values

to be the equivalent of immorality.21 The urban poor.

and men who had not embraced the "modern" values of
systematic ambition represented a tacit dissent from

the masculine ethos of the middle-class. Such dissent,
which was associated with lack of moral energy, was per-
ceived by the middle-class as a threat to their fundamental
values. As immigrants and other lower-class men acquired
the ambition to become accepted in American society, they
learned to imitate the middle-class. They adopted the
modern outlook and the system of masculine values that

stemmed from it.22

 

21Joseph R. Gusfield, in Symbolic Crusade: Status
Politics and the American Temperance M6vement (Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1963), p. 57, writes spe-
cifically of the temperance ethic as a symbol of middle-
class values. He says, "Out of the political conflicts of
the 1840's and 1850's nondrinking had become more and more
a symbol of middle-class, native American respectability.
The urban, immigrant, lower class had emerged as both the
counter-image to the Temperance hero and a political oppo-
nent of significant concern." Jacob Abbott, T. 8. Arthur,
and others clearly represent the point of view which-iden-
tifies the life-style of the lower classes with lack of
personal discipline and moral deficiency.

 

22Stephan Thernstrom, in Poverty and Progress:
Social Mobility in a Nineteenth Century City (New York:
Atheneum,il972), p. 137, describds how members of the
working-classes, particularly Irish immigrants, adopted
middle-class values, including the desire to acquire

215

Far away from the northern urban poor and from
middle-class men, the southern male also was subject to
an ethos and image of masculinity which differed from the
standard northern middle-class pattern. The "southern"
male, of course, is a broad term. Southern males included
black slaves, poor whites, and independent farmers, as well
as the masters of plantations. This study will describe
masculine roles chiefly in relation to the planter class.

The evolution of society had been different in the
South than in the North, with important consequences for
masculine roles. The modernization process in the South
had been retarded. The transportation revolution, the
availability of capital for investment in development, and
industrialization were slow to materialize. The persistence
of the plantation agricultural economy reinforced the tradi-
tional social patterns. By 1860, southern children attended
school only about ten days per year, which approximated the
level of the whole nation in 1800. Northern children
averaged more than five times as many days in school.23

Southerners grew up with minimal exposure to the modernizing

 

property, to save money, and even to form temperance
societies. He writes, ". . . it was no coincidence that

a Roman Catholic Temperance Society was formed in Newbury-
port at just the time that the Irish immigrants began their
climb upward into the propertied sector of the working
class."

23Brown, Modernization, p. 140.

 

216

systems of school or factory. There was no temperance
movement and there were no significant reform movements

in the South. The paternalistic master/slave relationship
undercut the development of a significant middle class.
Thus in that region the cultural milieu tended to reinforce
traditional, pre-modern values and habits of thinking and
working.

This is not to say that the southern planter was
ignorant of or indifferent to the capitalist values such
as industriousness and efficiency. Whatever his own per-
sonal outlook and preferences, the planter valued the
modern, systematic, disciplined model--at least for his

employees and his slaves. In Time On the Cross, Robert

 

Fogel and Stanley Engerman take the point of view that the
southern planter was as fully indoctrinated into capitalist
values as his northern counterpart. They argue that since
investment in slaves, according to their research, was
profitable, slaveholders must be credited with shrewdness
in making a dollar exactly as northern middle-class males
were. In fact, Fogel and Engerman deny that southern
slaveholders were "precapitalist," or that they subor-
dinated a desire for profit to considerations of power

and lifestyle.”” They see the planter as a hard-headed

 

2"Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman, Time

 

On the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery
(Boston/Toronto: Little, Brown 8 Co., 1974), pp. 71-73.

217

businessman, no less than the entrepreneurs of the urban
North.

Eugene Genovese's research, while not completely
discrediting Fogel and Engerman's point of view, finds the
southern planter more complex than they do. Genovese sees
the planters as, indeed, deeply attached to the traditional,
premodern values and habits. They had not internalized the
capitalist values, even though they did in fact push their
slaves toward the modern style of work-discipline akin to
the achievement orientation of the northern urban middle
class. While the planters, as businessmen, accepted the
capitalist values, as individual human beings they resisted
adopting for themselves the efficient, hard-working, entre-

preneurial way of life. In Roll, Jordan, Roll, Genovese

 

writes that the problem of the planters was essentially
how to preserve for themselves the traditional way of life
while convincing their slaves to leave it behind. The
planters would have liked to instill a factory-like disci-
pline into their slaves, but found it immensely difficult.
For all the efficiency with which the plantation might be
organized, agricultural work remained tied to the rhythms
of nature and to pre-modern attitudes toward the use of

time and the enjoyment of leisure.”” Genovese maintains

 

2”Eugene D. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World
the Slaves Made (New York: Vintage Books, 1976), p. 286.

 

218

that the slaveholders carried out their enterprises within
the context of a capitalist world market; they presided
over the production of commodities; and they had to be
concerned with profit and 1055. Therefore, they did in
fact develop a commitment to what is commonly considered
to be the "Puritan" work ethic. That commitment, however,
extended only to their slaves. As far as their personal
ethos was concerned, the planters developed a counter-
culture to that which prevailed in the western world at
that time in business circles. Certainly they did not
live lives of leisure, sipping mint juleps and courting
the lovely young belles. They carried heavy responsibil-
ities, and worked hard enough in their own way. But, says
Genovese, they could hardly be accused of Puritanical
steadiness, or of bourgeois respect for time and attention
to duty, or of single-minded devotion to business as a holy
calling.26 The slaveholders, like the northern men "on the
make," and like the great landed classes of medieval and
early modern Europe, had a strong acquisitive spirit and
were happy to pursue opportunities to make a fortune.
However, unlike the rising urban middle-class males of

the North, they saw money as a means to a particular kind
of good life, not as an end in itself. They showed little

respect for the methodical, systematic, sustained effort

 

2”Ibid., p. 296.

219

of the northern entrepreneur. In fact, southern
intellectuals almost uniformly pointed to this distinc-
tion as being fundamental to the southern ethic, and the
mark of the superiority of the southern culture.27

The plantation economy encouraged the survival of
the preindustrial, task-oriented pattern rather than a time-
discipline approach. Since the plantation economy was tied
to land ownership, the pattern of relations between fathers
and sons continued to follow the traditional fashion. The
fathers maintained authority based on the dependence of
their sons, who waited to inherit family estates. This
pattern gave the fathers considerable control of their
sons' futures. The kind of mobility which in the North
had created discontinuity between the generations and
encouraged the development of systematic ambition was
less evident. The complaints of southern women indicate
that there persisted in the South a very pronounced double-
standard of sexual morality.2” This suggests that fathers
may have played a somewhat larger role in the formation of
their sons' consciences than they did in the urban North,

or at least that Mother did not have a completely free hand

 

2’ Ibid. , pp. 296-297.

2”Anne Firor Scott, "Women's Perspective on the
Patriarchy in the 1850's,” The Journal of American History
61 (June 1974): 60.

220

in the programming of her male child's sense of right
and wrong. It seems quite likely that the father, in
a plantation economy, would have been more accessible
to his sons since he was not obligated to leave home for
the bulk of every day. If so, he would have provided a
living model of what it was to be a man, making it less
necessary for his wife to spell out for the child an
abstract version of the conventional masculine roles.
The lack of a Puritan background in the South
meant that there was relatively less emphasis on a morally
reinforced work ethic. The presence of slavery further de-
sanctified work as a value among planters. The distinctive
nineteenth-century middle-class ethos emphasizing will-
power, self-discipline, deferred gratification, ambition,
and achievement was not personally accepted by southern
planters because it did not fit their image of themselves.
Among the planters, the traditional values were
romanticized even more consistently than they were lived.
The southern gentleman cultivated the image of the chival-
rous gentleman who embodied the rural values of the English
landed gentry. This view of himself became incorporated
into popular images of the planter in both the North and
the South. This image portrayed him as a horseman, a
military officer, a man of courage and honor. He was not

acquisitive, but aloof from money-making. The southern

221

gentleman was conceived as a domestic patriarch, ruling
benevolently over family and slaves. His life was believed
to be gracious and unselfish; he supposedly spent his money
grandly and generously, hardly noting the cost. The image
of the southern planter was of a man of disinterested ser-
vice, but also a man who enjoyed his leisure. He was not
defined by his work. This image of the southern gentleman,
so highly devloped in nineteenth-century fiction, seemed
fact to some foreign visitors. Thomas Hamilton believed
that in style of life, southern gentlemen were decidedly
superior to all other American men. They had, he believed,
more spirit and vivacity, and were inhibited by a less
prudent caution. Speaking of the "opulent" and "educated"
Southerner, Hamilton wrote that he

is distinguished by a high-mindedness, generosity,

and hospitality, by no means predictable of his

more eastern nieghbors. He values money only for

the enjoyments it can procure. . . . I think it

probable that Englishmen unconnected with business

would generally prefer the society of gentlemen of

this portion of the Union to any other which the

country affords.2”
The conventional image of the patriarch included the picture
of him as a fine physical specimen, tall, slender, athletic,
and finely formed. He was, according to the ideal image,

highly educated, firm, commanding, in possession of a

natural dignity, one for whom the use of authority was

 

2”Hamilton, Men and Manners, pp. 283-285.

 

222

habitual, and thus a perfect patriarch. He was virile,
and the master of his environment. The southern gentleman
was believed to be strong, chaste, decisive, and wise. In
addition to planting, politics and military service were
his preferred occupations rather than the professions.

No doubt the popular images of the southern male
were based on some real differences between northern and
southern men, but from the very beginning there existed a
certain tension between the ideal of the southern gentleman
and reality. The reality of the southern gentleman differed
somewhat from the myth. Southern novels in the nineteenth
century, written when the process of rapid change was under
way in the North, disclosed some of the reality. The gen-
tleman was no longer depicted in chivalrous terms, but
rather as a spendthrift, a gambler, or the dupe of his
overseer. Southern novelists in the period pictured the
gentleman in such a way as to call his usefulness into
question. He was revealed as improvident, almost childishly
impetuous, and irresponsible. His inflexibility and inabil-
ity to adapt to the times seemed to spell his doom. Accord-
ing to William Taylor, in the 18505 the southern gentleman
came to be characterized as a symbol of "honorable failure

11 30

and the lost cause. Some southern writers pictured him

 

30William R. Taylor, Cavalier and Yankee: The Old
South and American National Character (New York: Douhleday
8 Co., Inc., 1963).

 

 

223

as a kind of southern Hamlet, introspective, given to
brooding, one for whom resignation had somehow replaced
motivation to action. The southern novelist revealed the
gentleman to possess an obvious lack of vitality and
masculinity, those qualities most emphasized in the
romantic legend.

Southern women were particularly aware of the gap
between the legend of the southern gentleman and the husband
of reality. The writings of southern women revealed that
the sexual promiscuity of men was deeply troubling, and
particularly when it crossed the racial barriers. Divorce
petitions submitted to the Virginia legislature frequently
recounted stories of husbands who had had sexual relations
with black mistresses. Anne Firor Scott says that even
apart from miscegenation, southern women deeply resented
the general sexual freedom society accorded to men.31

The image of the wise, benevolent, and genial
patriarch was also a distortion of reality. Not only did
southern men often turn over many of their responsibilities--
temporarily or permanently-~to their wives, they held the
reins of patriarchy defensively and insecurely. Southerners
felt fearful as they observed changes in northern society
which emphasized individual capacity. The increasingly

open society threatened an eventual adjustment of status

 

31Scott, "Women's Perspective," p. 60.

224

for everyone. The planter gentleman, already bewildered
and discouraged by the decline of the plantation economy
in the tidewater region, had begun to feel a measure of
self-doubt, an inability to believe in his own effective-
ness. It was, perhaps, this sense of insecurity which
partially accounts for the fact that southern males to
such a large extent habitually carried lethal weapons--
pistols sometimes, but more often fighting-style knives--
in court, legislative chambers, barrooms, or wherever they
might meet a challenge.

While aristocratic life had often made the male
seem weak and ineffective, the southern woman appeared
strong by contrast. Her responsibilities extended over
the entire plantation, white and black alike. The heavy
demands made on the planter's wife enhanced her dignity
and increased her status. And yet, the ideal of ”ornamental
womanhood” was most prominent in the South. In fact, woman-
hood as such was romanticized and idealized in the South to
an even greater extent than in the North. As in the North,
idealization served to set women aside and remove them from
significant influence in men's exclusive world. In the
North, women had been assigned the task of protecting men
from self-indulgence and acquisitiveness. In the South,
the emphasis was slightly different. Women were to protect

men from self-indulgence and from idle pleasure. Southern

225

men, Anne Firor Scott believes, were afraid of women.

Their overinsistence on praising her supposedly God-given
dependent status gave away their fearfulness. And why were
they afraid? Scott believes that part of the reason was
that women, to whom men had granted the custody of con-
science and morality, might actually apply that conscience
to the male's way of life. In other words, she might turn
her judgment against his sharp trading in the market place,
his inordinate fondness for alcohol, or his nocturnal visits
to the slave quarters.32 Furthermore, men were aware that
women who had been restricted to the home had often shown
unusual power within their limited domain. They had man-
aged the family, watched over the slave population, and

set standards for behavior. If women could accumulate and
use so much power even in such a restricted position, there
was a risk that she might do far more, given more freedom.
Southern men, at some level aware of the incipient power

of their own women, identified the hated abolitionism with
the work of "strong-minded" northern women. Maria McIntosh,
who lived in the North but had been raised in the South,
saw southern men as compromised by their condescending
attitude toward labor and their cultivation of leisure.

She believed that southern women could make men over into

 

32Anne Firor Scott, The Southern Lady: From Pedestal

 

to Politics, 1830-1930 (Chicago/London: ’University of
Chicago Press, 1970), p. 19.

 

226

a more industrious pattern. "The Southern Woman," said
McIntosh, can

make it a law of the social life in which she

rules, that nothing so surely degrades a man as

idleness, and the vices to which it almost inev-

itably leads. Thus she will proclaim the dignity

and worth of labor, and she will find her reward

in the new impress made on the yet ductile minds

of her children.33
Despite the conventional images of feminine and masculine
roles in the South, the aristocratic, patriarchal system
had actually served to emphasize women's inherent ability
and strength, and men's weakness and ineffectiveness.
Women's unadmitted and unacknowledged strength made it
possible for men to maintain the illusion of their own,
despite their growing insecurity and self-doubt. The
southern male felt the pressures of the changes of the
modernizing period, but mostly at a distance, as those
changes took shape in the North. The pressures of change
increased his insecurity and defensiveness, which served

to heighten his attachment to his own images of proper

southern planter masculinity.

These few, brief examples of alternatives to, or
variations on the northern, middle-class definitions of
masculinity illustrate that there was no uniformity of

masculine roles between 1820 and 1860. No doubt there were

 

33McIntosh, Woman in America, p. 125.

 

227

an even greater number of alternatives or variations than
those discussed here. And yet, as urban, industrial,
commerce-oriented society spread its influence gradually
throughout the United States, its values and its point of
view slowly brought about an increasing conformity to the
middle-class masculine ethos. The process of modernization
itself, as it made its influence felt in every corner of the
nation, was probably the single most important factor in the
stimulation of a homogeneous masculine ethos in the setting
of American society. However, Kathryn Kish Sklar suggests
that the spread of the cult of domesticity may itself have
had a homogenizing influence. In her study of Catharine
Beecher, Sklar argues that Beecher had perceived that the
home and domesticity provided a perfect vehicle for national
unity, because it was almost the only universally experi-

enced institution.3“ The growing homogeneity of women’s

 

3“In contrast to the rest of American society, women,
by their role in the home, formed a homogeneous group.

Sklar writes, in Catharine Beecher, pp. 160-161, that
"employing Tocqueville . . . Catharine noted further that
most of American society acknowledged the homogeneous iden-
tity of women by generalizing the domestic relationship
between men and women throughout the culture. Thus the
whole culture was in a sense made 'safe' for women, so that
wherever they moved in it, the ideology of male protection
and female dependence would be maintained."

Every woman, then, became a purveyor of middle-class
culture. "The emphasis given to gender identity can be
viewed as an attempt by a society laden with class and
regional anxieties to compensate for these divisive
factors."

 

228

roles contributed to a kind of cultural consistency across
class and regional boundaries. At the same time, it also
contributed to the growing polarization of sex roles. This
very homogeneity abetted the spread of the corresponding
masculine roles which had developed among those who first
felt the impact of modernization. Certainly variations--
and even alternatives--continued to coexist with the pre-
vailing middle-class description of masculine roles.
However, the roles that had developed and been shaped
under the influence of modernization were destined to
become those most characteristic of American society,

whether for good or for ill.

CHAPTER VI

THE SITUATION TODAY

The study of nineteenth-century masculine roles
has important implications for our understanding of male
roles and relationships between the sexes today. I believe
that nineteenth-century developments helped significantly
to shape the situation in which we find ourselves at this
moment. The polarization of the sexes and the partition
of the world by sex created a highly-charged emotional
climate which is still with us. Though circumstances have
changed in many ways, these changes have not been such as
to de-fuse the potentially explosive relationship between
men and women. This chapter will explore some of the
issues that still face us, will ask some questions about
responsibility, and will make some tentative predictions
and prescriptions for the future.

Dating particularly from the period 1820 to 1860,
American children have suffered from too much mother and
too little father. This remains a fact of life in American
society even though the relations between the sexes are
quite different, in some ways, than they were 125 years

ago. In most societies, the father plays a much larger

229

230

role in socializing his sons than he does in ours.1 In
this country more than in almost any other, the role of

the father is a vestigial one. As in the nineteenth cen-
tury, middle-class men today continue to be absorbed in
their work and in the advancement of their careers. Even
though more men may change diapers and share babysitting
tasks now than in the last century, they are still marginal
to the emotional lives of their children. Women are the
primary shapers of the conscience. The distinctive char-
acteristic of the conscience of American males is that it
speaks with a feminine voice.2 To men, women are super-ego
figures. It is this role, into which women are thrust by
default, that is key to understanding the strained rela-
tionship between the sexes even today.

The conscience with a feminine voice is the peculiar
legacy of the era between 1820 and 1860. There is evidence
that both in the period under study and today as well, men
feel an element of hostility toward women and the feminine.
Dr. Karl Stern, a psychiatrist, has described men who fit
the pattern of "hustler," "go-getter," managerial and exec-

utive types. He is convinced that at the root of their

 

1Geoffrey Gorer, The American People: A Study in
National Character (New York: W. W. Norton G Co., Inc.,
19435, p. S4.

 

21bid., p. 56.

231

activism there is typically a maternal conflict and a
rejection of the feminine.3 The feminine voice of the
conscience urges a man on to success, but also accuses
him of not being as successful as he ought to be. He
reacts with internal conflict and hostility. Julius Fast,

a contemporary commentator who wrote The Incompatibility

 

of Men and Women, insists that once they stop speaking of

 

women in idealized terms, most men see women as bitchy and
castrating.”

This hostility toward women and the feminine has
repercussions in areas of life which initially seem far-
removed. Margaret Mead suggests that men who feel they
are failing are particularly likely to feel anger toward
women and the values they represent. Those values may be
symbolized by laws designed to protect the weak, such as
welfare or social-security legislation.s But it is not
only men who are failing who experience hostility toward
the feminine. The man who feels he is paying too high a
price for his success is liable to remind himself frequently

of how hard he has to work, and to complain about how soft

 

3Karl Stern, The Flight from Women (New York:
Farrar, Straus, G Giroux, 1965), pp. 1-2.

 

l’Julius Past, The Incompatibility of Men and Women
(New York: M. Evans 6 Co., Inc., 1971).

 

5Mead, Male and Female, p. 312.

 

232

things are for others. Business and politics have been
considered the exclusive domain of males, arenas where
the nagging female conscience does not belong. Geoffrey
Gorer suggests that a great deal of the animus felt and
expressed against the New Deal by businessmen and their
spokesmen was related to the fact that its social legis-
lation seemed to be introducing the "meddling female
morality" into areas reserved for masculine judgment.6
These areas, after all, had come to representtfim:
"real world" in the minds of most men. When masculine
and feminine roles became polarized and designated as
belonging to separate "spheres," the feminine world was
defined in terms of the home. The masculine world, defined
exclusively by material values, became the "real" world.
This "real," masculine world was hard and tough and imper-
vious to sentiment or moralizing.7 Humanistic education
and the arts became an extension of the feminine sphere,
as did religious institutions. Therefore they were pri-
vatized and set apart. Altruistic morality was believed
to belong only in the private sphere of person-to-person
relationships, like marriage and the family. In the "real"
world of business and politics, much morality was considered

"unrealistic." Whoever tried to bridge the two worlds by

 

6Gorer, American People, p. 60.

 

7Bianchi and Reuther, Machismo to Mutuality, p. 49.

 

233

applying moral judgments in politics and business was
dismissed as unrealistic and sentimental, and his
masculinity was questioned.8

A similar pattern exists today. Not only are
liberal social programs identified with "bleeding hearts"
(i.e., the sentimental and effeminate), but institutions
which advocate social responsibility are also considered
to be biased by a feminine perspective.

This helps to explain men's widely felt aversion
to churches and other religious institutions addressing
themselves to public issues. The battle-cry most often
used to justify restriction of the church's concerns to
the boundaries of private (i.e., more or less domestic)
life is the Shibboleth upholding the separation of church
and state. For example, when the churches joined the
movement for civil rights for American blacks, they were
widely condemned--often by their own laymen--for breaching
the barrier between church and state. They were similarly
criticized when they took positions against United States
involvement in the Vietnamese War. The hostility aroused
in men--within or outside religious institutions--when
those institutions or their officers become concerned with
issues popularly conceived as political or economic cannot

be accounted for by loyalty to the "separation" formula.

 

8Ibid., p. 50.

234

In any case that formula refers only to institutional
relationships between government and ecclesiastical systems,
rather than limiting the areas with which churches may con-
cern themselves. This hostility stems not from passion for
a principle so much as from the association of the churches
with the feminine, the domestic, and the delicate. It is a
further symptom of the generally unacknowledged hostility

of men toward the feminine. Church leaders and others, such
as educators, who may support progressive public policy are
labeled as having ventured outside of their proper "sphere."
They are called naive and accused of being unaware of what
life is like in the "real world." Like women, they are
judged incompetent beyond the domestic sphere and its
extensions. This covert hostility, directed originally
towards women but displaced onto individuals and insti-
tutions which have become associated with the feminine,

has played a significant role in the history of American
religion and politics. Although this attitude has changed
and is changing, it has not disappeared. It has more often
simply moved underground.

As in the nineteenth century, male hostility toward
women is matched, if not surpassed, by women's hostility
toward men. Helen Papashvily believes that this hostility
is apparent even in twentieth-century American literature.

Women find it difficult to love a whole man, she suggests,

235

so in literature men are emasculated. The male figures
in women's writings often suffer from blindness, amnesia,
paralysis, and other afflictions which reduce their threat’
to women and women's interests.9 Leslie Fiedler also con-
tends that throughout American fiction, males are frequently
humiliated.1° The hostility between men and women is a con-
tinuing reality with both personal and social repercussions,
and yet, with the exception of the recent feminist movement,
that hostility has seldom been expressed openly. The
dichotomies between church/world, "culture"/business,
private/public all reflect the polarity between masculine
and feminine roles. The intensity with which the boundaries
between them are guarded is an indicator of the strength
of feeling dividing men and women. Although the hostility
runs both ways, the probability is that, because of the
circumstances of socialization into masculine roles, men
are more hostile toward females than women are toward
males.11

The changing pattern of relationships between
the sexes today makes it likely that, for a time at least,
hostility between them may increase rather than decrease.

The angry rhetoric stemming from some segments of the

 

9Papashvily, Happy Endings, p. 212.

 

1°Fied1er, Love and Death, p. 64.

 

11Lynn, Parental and Sex-Role Identification, p. 63.

236

women's movement; demands that men share in domestic
tasks and in child care; competition from women for jobs
traditionally reserved for men; affirmative action; the
increased aggressiveness of women in sexual relationships--
all make it likely that men will feel crowded and become
defensive. Their level of latent anger toward women is
likely to escalate. Although in some cases men may be
able to admit their anger and deal with it, generally it
will be impolitic to do so. Many men, intimidated by the
case made against them by militant women, will make a great
effort to conform to the expectations laid out for them by
those women seeking a redress of grievances. The likelihood
would seem to be that for many such men, yearning for a
clear conscience, women will continue to function as
super-ego figures, although inducing guilt in new ways.
What is the likely result of increasing men's
defensiveness and/or heightening their sense of guilt as
they believe themselves to be trying perpetually to please
women, and constantly failing? It would seem that in the
near future, the relations between the sexes would continue
to be problematic. The hostility of men toward women is
likely to grow and to be reciprocated. There are likely
to be increasing strains on family life, on single persons,
and on the culture as a whole because of it. It is also

quite conceivable that men's covert anger toward women may

237

seek acceptable surrogate targets in institutions,
attitudes or programs which are identified with femininity
either directly or symbolically.

Study of the period 1820-1860 reveals that it was
not only women who suffered from the polarization of sex
roles during the modernizing period. As was noted even by
some perceptive observers at the time, men also suffered
deeply from the narrowing of sex-role possibilities. This
suffering was not always registered on a conscious level
(nor was the suffering of women always consciously recog-
nized), but was frequently a suffering of diminishment.

It was a suffering of a loss which could not be measured
by those experiencing the loss, akin to that of one born
blind. Raised in a culture where one's work became a
fundamental mark of identity, achievement, status, and
worth, men learned to withdraw much of their energy and
interest from other things to invest in their vocations,
professions, or daily work. Work came to consume a
disproportionate share of one's life and vitality.

Although American culture has learned and is
still learning to value things other than work, it is
still true that for many middle-class men, work gives
them their basic definition of identity and absorbs their
best energies. Myron Brenton has observed that men are

more likely to be immobilized by the loss of their jobs

238

than by a death in the family. Certainly men do suffer
terribly from divorce and from personal tragedies, but

they react much more drastically when things are going

badly with their work.12 The same author points out that
intense devotion to one's work is a way of reaching a goal,
but it is also a way of running away. The more one is
devoted to one's work, the more acceptable an excuse for
avoiding other commitments elsewhere--often commitments
demanding a deeper level of intimacy. A man avoids those
deeper, more demanding commitments because he feels less
than adequate to handle them. Without being consciously
aware of it, men may become highly active in some aspects

of their functioning as a way of remaining passive in
others. The passivity denotes a feeling of inadequacy.

In other words, men often prefer to take small satisfactions
rather than bigger ones, because the bigger ones are fright-
ening and arouse anxiety. Men's work, whether in the nine-
teenth century or the twentieth, offers opportunities to
escape facing up to one's own felt inadequacy. This is
perhaps even more true for middle-class men in the twentieth
than in the nineteenth century. Today, middle-class men are
more likely to be committed to work which is capable of
absorbing far more time and energy than can be consumed

in a scheduled working day. The problem was and is that

 

12Brenton, American Male, p. 20.

 

239

work itself is not always a successful escape. Men felt
and feel anxious and insecure in the world of work. They
feel constantly put to the test. This is the steep price
paid for the chance to better themselves.

What are twentieth-century men fleeing from? They
are fleeing from intimacy, from close personal relationships
in which their weaknesses and their emotional neediness may
be exposed. Men have been trained to be strong, protective,
and to prove their strength by achievement. In the process,
they learn that it is unmanly to be seen as they know they
are: not always strong, but sometimes weak; not only ade-
quate, but sometimes dependent on others; not only protec-
tive, but at times and in certain ways in need of protection.
Dr. Karl Stern describes men who are particularly devoted to
these conventional masculine images as especially likely to
be embarked on a "flight into work," while fearful of being
loved. In such persons there may be noted an extraordinary
denial of feeling. There is a tendency to avoid tenderness.
Such men exhibit a fear of dependence or passivity.13 For
such men, the thought of being dependent is almost terrify-
ing. In observing such men who were diagnosed as suffering
from peptic ulcer of the stomach, medical researchers found
that many were hard-working and Spartan in their habits.

They shied away from any pleasures of "receiving," from

 

13Stern, Flight from Woman, p. 2.

 

240

accepting tenderness, from all forms of passivity--even
healthy ones. However, deep down they exhibited a need to
be mothered, to be fed. The term "deep down" is literal
as well as figurative, because the conflict they were expe-
riencing manifested itself deep down in the body. The
patient's whole lifestyle was a protest against "being
fed," while their stomach revolted at not being fed.

These men were not able to be nourished emotionally.

They could not allow themselves to be open to love, to
trust in a childlike way. Their flight from dependency
may manifest itself in terms either of an aggressive
activism or by undue intellectualism. Stern says that
some psychiatrists describe such men in terms of a "frigid
character." They tend to be rationalists, and to shy away
from all interior means of communion. They are great
believers in the mechanics and manageability of human
relations.

Stern has described extreme cases, perhaps, although
everyone knows such men, or men who tend in that direction.
And yet, it is the extreme case that clarifies the pressures
felt by most American men. A young man, commenting on his
own experience, writes,

I, like all male children, was taught that my
value as a person depended on my power over

others. I was taught that I must compete for
personal power, and that to be successful I

241

must conceal feelings of weakness, tenderness,
and dependence, and present myself to other
men as self-sufficient and insensitive.1“

A student of sex roles has discovered that intimacy
has been discouraged among American men by two aspects of
the masculine role which are learned early on. One is
that it is not "manly" to show most emotion or to express
dependency needs. Another is that one is to be aggressive
and successful, which almost requires that males regard one
another as competitors for status. It is unwise, of course,
to reveal weakness to the competition. Among males, sexual
prowess is more acceptable as a conversational topic than
emotional commitment.15 The stereotype of a virile man
as the "strong and silent" type grows out of male vanity
rather than the impulse to protect women. It is a vanity
that says, in effect, that "no one must see me hurt or up-
set, because that would destroy for both of us my image of
invulnerability which I struggle to live by and which is
all I want others to see in me."

In a culture like ours, in which competition is
extremely important, and where a man's self—esteem and
personal happiness have been made dependent on his
acquisitive success or lack of it, physical contact

and the emotional response it creates may be a severe

 

1“Michael Silverstein in Men and Masculinity, eds.
Pleck and Sawyer, p. 107.

 

15Chafetz, Masculine/Feminine or Human? p. 183.

 

242

disadvantage.16 Because of the male requirement of
competition and success, the culture in which he lives
discourages interpersonal closeness. Physical contact,
simple touching, are shied away from. It is probable that
males learn to recoil from physical closeness while still
infants. They learn this reaction from their own mothers,
who have been culturally conditioned to handle them dif-
ferently than female infants precisely to discourage
physical intimacy as a male trait. Ironically enough,
it may be that men have a greater need for such personal
contact than women do.17

Thanks in large part to the women's movement and
its spin-off of "male liberation," it is becoming less
shameful for men to show or admit dependency needs, weak-
nesses, and emotions. Even physical contact has become
more acceptable for males. Nevertheless, the "stiff upper-
lip" mentality is strongly embedded in American masculine
culture, and it continues to affect men's lives. Since the
onset of industrialization men have learned to shut down
part of their vital humanity. They have traded it for the
sake of living up to role expectations centered around

toughness, determination, and achievement. The gains from

 

16Michael Lewis, "Culture and Gender Roles: There's
No Unisex in the Nursery," Psychology Today 5 (May 1972):
57.

 

17Ibid., p. 57.

243

that trade-off are obvious. All around us we see a highly
developed economy, a society which is highly 50phisticated
in business and technology, and enormously powerful mili-
tarily. These are the results of an intense concentration
of energy and a heavy investment in human emotion on the
part of American men. (Women, too, have shared the cost,
as should be obvious.) Quite apart from the question of
whether the trade-offs were worth it or not is the question
of whether it is now possible for men to begin to recover
what they have so long been required to stifle in the
interests of "progress." This is the real issue before
us, and it is a complex one.

The pressures to conform to a narrow, rigid, sex-
typing pattern for males are applied beginning almost in
infancy. The little boy who shows interest in ”girls'"
activities causes his father to break out in a cold sweat,
and makes his mother terribly nervous, too. Both--but
particularly the mother--will work to discourage the boy
from any and all interest in things labeled "feminine."
The little boy will receive a message, heavily charged
with parental emotion, that something is wrong with him,
or will be if he fails to live up to expectations. This
conformity continues to be reinforced as he grows older.
It is masculine and thus acceptable to play ball and read

the sports page; it is not quite masculine to play the

244

piano well or to be interested in drama. Teachers, coaches,
other children of both sexes, and other adults join the
parents in enforcing a conformity to conventional masculine
images no matter what price the boy must pay. Sex roles
are stereotyped even in psychological testing. When the
young man goes to college or graduate school and takes
vocational interest tests, his interest may be labeled
"masculine" or "feminine" depending on whether his responses
lean in the direction of engineering or of poetry.18 If the
warnings and signals from parents and others are shrill
enough, the boy will become more doubtful than ever about
his masculinity. In America, for a male to be in doubt of
his masculinity is to be in doubt of his acceptability as
a human being. Margaret Mead has stated that in America,
maleness has to be re-earned on a daily basis.19
Fortunately, the pressure to conform to masculine
stereotypes is being reduced, at least among the middle-
class. There is more room for diversity under a broader

canopy of masculinity than there used to be. It is

 

18This is rapidly changing under the pressures of
the times. However, according to Dr. Ralph Kron of the
Counseling Center at Michigan State University, the
Minnesota Multi-Phasic Inventory continues to use these
categories. Until six or seven years ago, the Strong
Vocational Interest test definitely employed stereotyped
masculine and feminine categories in interpreting results.
The Strong test has since been replaced by another instru-
ment, but personal experience reveals that the old test has
continued to be used here and there at least as late as 1976.

19Mead, Male and Female, p. 318.

245

beginning to be understood that masculinity cannot be so
narrowly limited to specific roles. It remains true,
however, that males are far more likely to identify
masculinity (as socially defined) and adequacy. There
continues to be significant anxiety centered around one's
success or failure in living out the masculine roles.

Since men have to prove their masculinity by
achievement in the "real" world (the world of work and
other men), they make a much higher emotional investment
in that world than in home and family. Certainly, in every
known human society there is some form of the family. There
is everywhere some set of permanent arrangements by which
males assist families in caring for the young. Men can
and do learn how to share in nurturing behavior. And yet,
in our society, the role of fatherhood differs from that
of motherhood in three crucial ways. Janet Saltzman Chafetz
describes those dissimilarities. First, the role of father
is a very minor part of the total masculine role constel-
lation. It ranks low on the list of priorities males are
supposed to have, and they are not strongly rewarded or
punished for playing this role either well or poorly.
Second, American society does not have a clear consensus
concerning the definition of the fatherhood role, except
for the omnipresent expectation that a man "provide" for

his children financially. Third, practically nothing is

246

provided males in their fatherhood experience to orient
and equip them for the father role. Chafetz goes on to
say that the "masculine mystique" discourages men from
learning to relate to people, including children, in a
warm, open, compassionate way. Men have been taught all
their lives to place a value on achievement. This orien-
tation leads them to praise their children's successes,
but makes it difficult for them to sympathize with their
weaknesses, errors, and failures. Fathers are typically
able to offer what seems to be only a conditional affection.
Furthermore, if the father is not particularly successful
at his work, he is apt to join his wife in pressuring his
children—-especially the boys--to succeed. It is hoped
that their success will offer him vicarious satisfaction
for his own failures and frustrations. His own success
needs are likely to have a decisive influence on the way
he relates to his sons, thus perpetuating the syndrome
centered on success and anxiety over failure.

Both children and their fathers suffer from the
limitations of masculine roles and stereotypes. Fathers
do not ordinarily share actively in the petty daily prob-
lems and needs of their children. Although they are
involved in the great and special moments of excitement
or disaster, fathers tend to be marginal to the intimate

lives of their children. Since they are not well equipped

247

by their own training in masculine roles to deal with
their children on a deep emotional level, and caught as
they usually are in all-consuming devotion to work and
"success,” fathers are not able to involve themselves
in their children's livesvery fully. At least, not fully
enough to develop the more compassionate and humane aspects
of their own personalities. If they did, they might, in
turn, learn to relate to their children better. The
American ethos has assumed that father never knows best.
The father has come to expect his sons to reject him both
as authority and as model. Geoffrey Gorer believes that
the immigrant experience has affected all relations and
expectations between American fathers and sons. The son
of the immigrant father was transformed into an American--
something the father could never quite become. Even if
the father was not an incomplete American, he was almost
certainly old-fashioned. Fathers do not expect their sons
to follow in their footsteps or to be like they are. In
fact, they look forward to their sons' rising socially or
professionally, and achieving a higher status than their
own.20

The marginal role which fatherhood plays in a
man's life can be traced in part to the undervaluation

of the home as an arena for males. Since the period

 

2°Gorer, American People, pp. 45-56.

 

248

1820-1860, the home has been considered indispensable,
but, paradoxically, not very important. The result is
something of value lost between fathers and children, and
a perpetuation from one generation to another of stereo-
typed, conventional roles and diminished humanity.

Cultural change clearly has an impact on personal-
ity, with ramifications affecting society as a whole. This
study has traced the changes of the modernizing period to
changes in character structure in the middle period of the
last century. The United States in the latter quarter of
the twentieth century is experiencing rapid change. Speed
of communication, the advent of computerization, the tech-
nological utilization of space, the energy crisis, changes
in the status of minorities, and the economic success of
other nations have combined to stimulate rapid change in
American society--so rapid that in reaction to it, some
persons show personality changes as a result of the dif-
ficulty of coping with their experience.

One characteristic which appears under such
conditions is nostalgia for coherence and consistency.
Such nostalgia may make persons vulnerable to religious
or political movements of the kind which offer simplistic
solutions to all problems. Certainly nostalgia for an
apparently simpler past is a very real feature of American

life in the 19705. There are an abundance of movements

249

offering unitary solutions, from "dropping out," and
communal movements both religious and secular, to Scientol-
ogy, est, the charismatic movement, and political ideologies
of the extreme left or far right. A second characteristic
of the personality under the impact of social change is that
discrepancies develop in habits of disciplining children,
organizing domestic relationships, and managing work. There
will also be an unevenness in the ways that people grasp the
culture in which they are living. As a result, people will
tend to turn to "inner rhythms" as ways of coping with the
pressures of change. Rapid social change puts strains on
the personality. Some manage to live with those strains

and turn them to a creative use (for example, the aboli-
tionist during the last century), while others do their

best to avoid facing reality. We can find examples of

both in the period 1820-1860 and today. A polarization

of sex roles emerged out of such change 150 years ago,

and we may expect that similar pressures today will not
leave the American personality unaffected. Sex roles are
likely to register the impact of social change as they did
then. Certainly, some will find the ambiguities of such a
time so intolerable that they will be driven to some narrow
dogmatism to ease the strain. Others may turn to creative

purpose the contradictions they experience in society.

250

We are living in a time of change, in which nearly
everything once thought settled is open to question. Among
the social arrangements which have been under attack in
recent years are the stereotyped sex roles which, in their
major outlines, are descended from their prototypes of the
nineteenth century. These conventional sex roles have been
under attack chiefly by women, who, in spite of changes in
women's roles, have felt that they have continued to be
bound and oppressed by practices and attitudes derived from
the traditional roles. The form of their protest against
oppressive roles has often been an attack against men as
the oppressors. The public discussion of the oppression
of women has opened for consideration the whole issue of
sex roles. It has spawned a minor movement for "male lib-
eration" which has taken the view that the conventional
roles do not serve men any better than women. Some men
are ready to presume that it is their own sex which must
bear the chief responsibility for the roles which have
become a burden to both sexes. Who is to blame? Or is
it possible at all to fix historical responsibility for
the development of the roles which by now have long been
conventional? Are American men historically guilty for
the roles which have been judged inappropriate and unfair?
In my opinion, it is not possible to fix historical respon-

sibility for the current dilemma. Men are no more "guilty"

251

than women for the uncomfortable alignment of sex roles
among middle-class Americans. Margaret Mead has pointed
out, quite rightly, that the world has not been made by
men alone. It is historically and socially naive, as well
as insulting to women, to believe that females are merely
passive and helpless when it comes to defining roles.21
From culture to culture, sex roles have been styled in
ways that function well or badly for one sex or both.
Sometimes the masculine role has been defined in such

a way that males have seemed to have an easier time.
Sometimes women's roles have seemed to offer females

the advantage. At times, sex roles have been reasonably
balanced and well coordinated with the realities of life
in a given society, and other times not. Whenever the
roles of either are too narrow, or demand a perfection
not easily attainable, then both men and women suffer.
When this suffering finds a voice, leverage for change

is exerted. Roles can and do change as historical sit-
uations change. Due to cultural inertia, role changes

do not always keep pace with the development of a society.
When the discrepancy becomes wide enough, special efforts
become necessary to create pressure for a more appropriate
alignment. The periodic resurgence of the feminist move-

ment in this country has served that purpose. Nevertheless,

 

21Mead, Male and Female, p. 200.

 

252

while the rhetoric which is sometimes heard indicting men
as oppressors may serve as a useful political instrument,
as well as heightening awareness of needed changes in role
definitions, it ought not to be taken literally.

_The polarized roles which developed in the nine-
teenth century, of which we are indirect heirs, did not
emerge asziconspiracy of either men or women. They devel-
oped piecemeal as a response to social patterns which did
not appear all at once, but coalesced over a period of time.
The new roles were never visualized as a whole before they
appeared, nor could they have been anticipated. It is not
at all clear that when men first followed their work out
of the home that they were eager to go or that their wives
were eager to follow them. Some families no doubt lamented
the new developments while others greeted them with enthu-
siasm. It is certainly true that the roles which developed
in the Jacksonian era gave to men more freedom and more
choices. This indicates that the new roles served the
interests of men better than of women. Freedom and choice
are greatly prized in our culture, but no doubt there were
men who found that both increased the difficulty and com-
plexity of their lives. Surely there were women who pre-
ferred not to be faced with either. Although men had a
relative advantage over women, it was not one they could

enjoy without paying a heavy price. It is by no means

253

certain that every individual male would voluntarily have
chosen to pay the price in exchange for the benefits.
Whether men gained more than women in this period finally
involves a whole series of value judgments. Was it a fair
exchange to sacrifice whole dimensions of one's affective
life, to lose contact with needs, instincts, and feelings,
to depersonalize one's relationships with wife and children
in trade for a chance at making a mark in the world econom-
ically, professionally, or politically? Was the cost that
had to be paid when that chance had failed or aborted a
reasonable price to pay? Those questions can be answered
in the affirmative and with confidence only if one presumes
that active life in the world is a value that always takes
priority over a multitude of other human values. If one
has any doubts about that, one is forced to be somewhat
hesitant before rushing to the conclusion that one sex

or the other sacrificed more from the sex roles prescribed
by society between 1820 and 1860.

A danger today is that if we too quickly jump to
the conclusion that the losses of women were vastly greater
than those of men, we may contribute to the point of view
that the traditionally masculine "sphere," the arena of
activity in the world, is the only arena in which a human
being may express himself or herself creatively and find

some measure of fulfillment. The issue before us is not

254

whether one sex or the other ought to be restricted in
some way, required to sacrifice themselves for the "good"
of the whole. The issue is rather whether those aspects
of human life traditionally associated with the feminine
sphere are going to continue to be undervalued by both
sexes. If so, the tragic result will be that the maimed
and reduced humanity organized around systematic ambition
and associated with the masculine sphere will become the
universal model of what it is to be an optimal human being.
The truth is that both men and women made enormous sacri-
fices as a result of the polarization of sex roles. Those
polarized roles were dehumanizing for both sexes. Out of
them emerged tension and covert hostility between men and
women which continue today and have further complicated
their relationship.

Probably most nineteenth- and twentieth-century men
have perceived themselves to have had the advantage in the
distribution of sex roles, without consciously counting
their own losses. However, men may also be unconsciously
aware that they have left something valuable in the keeping
of the opposite sex. Men may not be eager for a reconsider-
ation of the conventional sex roles, for fear that those
values which have been entrusted to women for safekeeping

may become permanently lost.

255

Although American men do not always respond
positively to movements to reexamine or redesign sex roles,
we live in a time when inherited sex roles have come under
critical scrutiny. Some observers, like Ruth Hartley, are
fearful that the observable prevalence of male hostility
toward females will make it very difficult for some males
to adjust to a society where feminine roles are changing
substantially.22 The adjustment for men and for many women
may indeed be a difficult one, and for some, impossible.
And yet, the ”renegotiation" of sex roles might reasonably
be expected to be a continuing process which can only be
evaluated in the long run. The redefining of sex roles is
necessary for men's sake as well as for women's. When men
feel required to conform to masculine stereotypes which
conflict with their real temperaments, frustrations and
anxieties are multiplied. Distorted compensatory behavior
increases. Justifiable or not, when men are required to
adjust to stereotypes that do not fit them personally,
they respond by becoming hostile to women or overdependent

on them.23

 

22Ruth Hartley, in "Sex-Role Pressures," p. 466,
comments that "the frequency and intensity of cross-sex
hostility in our male subjects, their manifest anxiety
about their adequacy, and the prevalence in them of
marked inflexibility, suggests a dismaying prognosis
for their future adjustment in a society where feminine
roles are changing rapidly."

23Brenton, American Male, pp. 40-41.

 

256

For the sake of a healthier relationship between
the sexes as well as for the sake of human individuality,
roles need to be reconsidered. Every individual needs to
have the freedom to make role choices which are suitable
to his or her own personality. Some crucial social roles
must be shared by men and women, particularly child-raising.
If the relations between men and women are to be drained
of hostility as much as possible, men can no longer turn
over child-raising so exclusively to women. They must find
ways of offering direct models for their children. The
choice to have children must be accompanied by a mutual
commitment to raise them. Just as stigmas need to be
removed from women who seek active, aggressive roles in
the world, they need also to be removed from either men
or women who seek quieter styles of life and work. Mascu—
linity and femininity must be recognized to have infinite
variations. Masculinity must no longer be something which
has to be earned or defended. A crucial factor in the
redefining of sex roles must be a positive consideration
of those roles traditionally associated with the feminine
"sphere," so that both men and women may affirm their value
and incorporate them into their own lives as individually
appropriate. The values symbolized by "domesticity,” for
example, ought not to be rejected as symbols of bondage

and subordination. They ought to be embraced by both men

257

and women in balance with other values. What the shape
of future roles will be, and to what extent roles will
be more or less specifically associated with one sex or
the other, is impossible to predict. It is unlikely that
any arrangement will be absolutely final for all time,
since the historical process itself requires continual
adjustments. The goal of the process of rethinking sex
roles should be the recovery, for both sexes, of a fuller
humanity; and of a positive, healthy, and creative
relationship between men and women.

June Singer, a psychologist and follower of Carl
Jung, says that we begin our lives as infants in a kind
of "psychological hermaphroditism," growing out of an
undifferentiated union with the mother. We then grow
into our sexual identity as male or female, and in the
course of ego development tend to polarize the sexes and
sex roles. The development of polarized sex roles over-
rules the tendency toward what she calls "androgyny," a
realization of "masculine" and "feminine" aspects within
a single individual. Nevertheless, says Singer, creative
and imaginative people of every age have managed to cross
the boundaries of gender roles. Furthermore, as one grows
older, rigidly stereotyped roles have less and less power
over us. Both men and women find that in old age, they no

longer have to prove their identity or their adequacy as

258

human beings. They become more able to turn inward and

I.

let themselves be who they really are.2 Androgyny, or
the discovery within oneself of traits characterized by
society as "masculine" and "feminine," is perhaps a fitting
symbol for the recovery of the fullness of humanity. A
complementary relationship between men and women, unburdened
by the hostility created by polarized sex roles, is a
necessary ingredient for the discovery of one's own
essential androgyny.

The agenda before both men and women is to create
a climate in which the essential tasks and opportunities of
life are shared equitably. Men must no longer be symbols
for oppression or aggression, and women must no longer be
symbols of a harsh and nagging super-ego. Whether sex
roles as they developed between 1820 and 1860 were appro-
priate for that time, place, and situation or not, they
are no longer functional in a highly developed society
where rapid growth is not needed, but creativity and
humaneness in the solving of social problems and the
enrichment of our common life has become essential.

Even in the nineteenth century there were a few

far-sighted souls, men as well as women, who were keenly

aware that polarized sex roles and the division of the

 

2"Singer, Androgyny, p. 321.

 

259

world into mutually exclusive "spheres" was dehumanizing

and costly. In a letter to Elizabeth Cady Stanton written

in 1855, Gerrit Smith wrote that

believing man and woman to have the same nature,
and to be therefore under obligation to have the
same character, I would subject them to a common
standard of morals and manners. The delicacy of
man should be no less shrinking than that of
woman, and the bravery of woman should be one
with the bravery of man. Then would there be

a public sentiment very unlike that which now
requires the sexes to differ in character, and
which, therefore, holds them amenable to
different codes. .25

 

ed.

25Gerrit Smith, quoted in Up from the Pedestal,
Kraditor, p. 128.

 

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The Columbian Lady's and Gentleman's Magazine (New York).
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Godey's Magazine and Lady's Book (Philadelphia). Vol. 49,
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Graham Journal of Health and Longevity (Boston). Vol. 1,
1837.

 

The Knickerbocker or New—York Monthly Magazine (New York).
Vols. 7 and 53, 1836 and 1859.

 

Mechanic's Advocate (Albany). Vol. 1, 1846.

 

Merry's Museum and Parley's Magazine (New York). Vol. 1.

 

The Saturday Evening Post (Philadelphia). Vol. 1, 1821.

 

26S

Marriage Manuals

 

Alcott, William Alexander. The Young Husband, or Duties
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Bayley, John. Marriage As It 15 And As It Should Be.
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Bean, James. The Christian Minister's Affectionate Advice
to a Married Couple. New York: American Tract
Society, 1832.

 

 

Quinby, George W. Marriage and the Duties of the Marriage

 

Relations, In a Series of Six Lecturesy_Addressed to
Youth, and the Young in Married Life. Cincinnati:
J. A. 8 U. P. James, 1852.

 

 

Thayer, William M. Hints for the Household; or Family
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Medical Comment

 

Brigham, Amariah, M.D. Remarks on the Influence of Mental

 

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Gardner, Augustus K., M.D. "Physical Decline of American
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Jarvis, Edward, M.D. "On the Comparative Liability of
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Ray, Isaac, M.D. Mental Hygiene. Boston: Ticknor 8
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266

Miscellaneous

 

Abbott, Jacob. Gentle Measures in the Management and
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Alexander, Archibald, D.D. Practical Sermons: To Be Read
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Dwight, Theodore, Jr. The Father's Book; or Sgggestions for

 

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Egan, Pierce. Sporting Anecdotes, etc. Philadelphia:
H. C. Carey 8 I. Lea, 1822.

 

Hunt, Freeman. Worth and Wealth: A Collection of Maxims,
Morals, and Miscellanies for Merchants and Men of
BuSiness. New York: Stringer 8 Townsend, 1856.

 

 

Hunt, Thomas P. The Book of Wealth; In Which It Is Proved
From the Bible, That It Is the Duty_6f Every Man to
Become Rich. New York: Ezra Collier, 1836.

 

 

 

McIntosh, Maria J. Woman in America: Her Work and Her
Reward. New York: D. Appleton 8 Co., 1850.

 

Sedgwick, Catharine. Means and Ends, or Self-Trainipg.
Boston: Marsh, Capen, Lyon 6 Webb, 1839.

 

Waterston, Robert Cassie. Thoughts on Moral and Spiritual
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Arthur, Timothy Shay. What Can Woman Do? Philade1phia:
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Burdett, Charles (Esq.). Arthur Martin; or, The Mother's
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Flint, Timothy. The Bachelor Reclaimed, or Celibacy
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267

Judson, Emily Chubbuck. Allen Lucas; the Self-Made Man.
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McIntosh, Maria J. Two Lives: Or, To Seem and To Be.
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Mitchell, Donald Grant [Ik Marvel]. Reveries of a Bachelor
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Sons, 1863 (originai ed. circa 1851).

 

 

Sedgwick, Catharine M. The Poor Rich Man and The Rich Poor
Man. New York: Harper 8 Bros., 1836.

 

Social Comment

 

Arthur, Timothy Shay. Ten Nights in a Bar-Room: And What
I Saw There. Boston: L. P. Crown 8 Co./Phi1ade1phia:
J. W. Bradiey, 1855.

 

 

Chipman, Samuel. The Temperance Lecturer: Being Facts
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Cooper, James Fenimore. The American Democrat or Hints on
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