Читать книгу A Republic of Men - Mark E. Kann - Страница 12

The great authority of the traditional patriarch seemed to be at odds with the more egalitarian ethic of republicanism, but the reality was more complex. R. W. K. Hinton remarks that patriarchal fathers could not fully rule their families as long as they were subjected to the king’s superior authority.²⁰ Thus, when rebellious Americans attacked the monarchy, denounced centralized power, and weakened external controls on paternal governance, they made it easier for family heads to exercise authority with minimal external intervention. American law continued to support men’s patriarchal powers in their families well beyond the eighteenth century. Nevertheless, the destabilization of the traditional ideal diminished its dominance, and the Revolution stimulated the development of new gender discourses and alternative models of manhood.

One alternative was what Michael Kimmel calls the “aristocratic manhood” of the “the genteel patriarch.” A worthy man was someone who adhered to a British upper-class code of honor, cultivated manly sensibilities, relied on inherited wealth or rent on land to support his lifestyle, sired legitimate male heirs to perpetuate his family dynasty, and promoted civic order through philanthropy and public service. An American did not need a title to achieve aristocratic manhood, but he found it immensely helpful to be born into a family that was sufficiently wealthy and cultivated to provide him a proper liberal education, lessons in “manners, taste, and character,” and sufficient land and patrimony to become an independent man who established his own family, dispensed patronage, and wielded local authority.²¹

Richard Bushman points out that one paradox of the Revolution was that patriots associated aristocracy with corruption but still sought to capture “aristocratic culture for use in republican society.” Men of middling means bought books to teach themselves the details of genteel speech and conduct; they purchased homes and objects that testified to their refined status; and they sought social respectability by admission to the ranks of polite society and participation in public leadership. Even “the rustic,” wrote John Perkins, could appreciate and emulate “the gentle manner and obliging behavior of the well-bred and polite.” Often, men who pursued the aristocratic ideal saw women as fellow travelers on the road to refinement. Timothy Dwight stated that refinement “raised both men and women above the brutes ... to make them kindly, cheerful, and modest.”²²

However, the attraction of aristocratic manhood was limited. Men who cultivated their sensibilities were vulnerable to charges of effeminacy. Americans made a fine distinction between manly gentility and unmanly servitude to fad and fashion. G. J. Barker-Benfield reports that men could take refinement only so far, “or it would become effeminacy.” That was why a grandfather who noticed his grandson’s too great affection for his mother worried lest the boy’s “affection should overcome his manhood.” Furthermore, male refinement meant keeping up appearances, which could be deceiving. Popular literature portrayed the licentious libertine as a man with “a polished exterior” that masked an “unmanly ambition of conquering the defenseless,” while political commentators portrayed the demonic demagogue as a man who pretended refinement to seduce and manipulate the brutish masses.²³ An American male might seek aristocratic manhood for himself but still distrusted its corrupting influence on others.

Another alternative was “republican manhood.” This ideal devalued family background, breeding, wealth, and manners to emphasize manly virtue, sociability, and civic-mindedness. The exemplar of republican manhood was the independent farmer who worked his land to ensure his family’s subsistence and security as well as his sons’ patrimony, established kinlike relations with neighbors, and participated in public activities, including militia service. An allied exemplar was the master artisan who owned his shop, passed on trade skills to his sons, earned respect as a useful contributor to the community, and joined social and political organizations committed to fostering the public good. The republican farmer or craftsman mostly went about his own business and allowed local elites to conduct public affairs. However, he staked his manly independence on his willingness to challenge upper-class corruption and elite domination when necessary. For example, Philadelphia artisans generally deferred to merchant and professional leaders but, at crucial moments, organized against them.²⁴

Fictional representations of republican manhood emphasized virtue and independence. In Royall Tyler’s play “The Contrast,” Colonel Manly was a model of honesty, courage, and commitment. He respected his ancestors, emulated the “illustrious Washington” by fighting in the Revolution, and defended liberty for posterity. Manly had an aide but he was no “servant.” The aide affirmed, “I am a true blue son of liberty. . . . Father said that I should come as Colonel Manly’s waiter . . . but no man shall master me.” A republican man sought happiness with a republican woman. He kept company with worthy women; admired their virtues more than their beauty; respected their reason, education, and skills; married one out of mutual affection; and then relied on his republican wife to keep him virtuous and raise patriotic children. Judith Sargent Murray contended that a republican man found fulfillment in a companionable family organized by “the united efforts of male and female.”²⁵

This ideal was suited to a republican age, but it still failed to become dominant. Male misogyny persisted and periodically resurfaced to favor the traditional patriarch, for example, in post-Revolution evangelical churches. Also, many people doubted that most men could or would live up to republican standards of manly virtue. Caroline Robbins reminds us that republicanism was generally quite elitist, assuming the necessity of a propertied ruling class to control the “scum” who made up the democratic masses. Finally, the republican ideal may have been born to obsolescence. Gordon Wood, Joyce Appleby, and John Diggins argue that early Americas republican rhetoric was accompanied by a more powerful liberal individualism and materialism that guided men’s actual conduct. Writers may have felt driven to idealize republican manhood because they sensed its imminent demise.²⁶

The third alternative to the traditional patriarch was “self-made manhood.” This ideal associated manhood with individualism, materialism, and an entrepreneurial spirit. The new man-on-the-make repressed carnality, avoided alcohol and gambling, and sublimated his desires into competition for accumulation. He did not oppose the other ideals of manhood so much as harness them to his own economic ends. He learned that a reputation for good manners and sober morality could facilitate commercial transactions and business success. Indeed, Americans who exemplified self-made manhood eventually transformed aristocratic sensibilities and republican morality into the highly prized “bourgeois respectability” of nineteenth-century America.²⁷

The self-made man was not an isolated, selfish individual. He was a married man who competed in the marketplace to provision and protect his family. He was like George Mason, who explained to his son that he speculated in frontier property not for himself but to ensure his family’s comfort for years to come. Furthermore, the self-made man headed a family partnership. He managed any property his wife brought into the marriage, supervised her paid and unpaid labor during the marriage, detailed her role in transmitting family property to the next generation, and sometimes organized and sold his family’s labor at home or in factories. Finally, the self-made man was sociable. He belonged to social clubs and fraternal organizations that combined self-improvement efforts and fraternal camaraderie. These groups often encouraged entrepreneurship but usually kept it within the bounds of civility.²⁸

Two recent histories of American manhood declare the “triumph of the self-made man” who cultivated “self-improvement, self-control, self-interest, and self-advancement” in the early republic. In fact, the ideal of self-made manhood was the most controversial alternative. Writers, ministers, and politicians equated self-interest to selfishness and factionalism; they attacked materialism as a spur to greed, gambling, profligacy, luxury, conflict, crime, and violence. Commentators who recognized men’s grasping nature as an immutable reality rarely idealized it; instead, they tried to cushion its destructive impact. Certainly, the idea that men should be free to make economic decisions to achieve comfort without political restraint was popularized by Jeffer-sonians in the 1790s but, as Louis Hartz has argued, it was not until the mid-nineteenth century that American culture was able “to electrify the democratic individual with a passion for great achievement and produce a personality type that was . . . the hero of Horatio Alger.”²⁹

America’s mainstream culture of manhood was further complicated by economic, religious, and regional variations of the traditional ideal and its alternatives. Farmers, artisans, gentlemen, Baptists, Congregationalists, northern commercial men, southern planters, and various fraternal groups relied on selective aspects of manhood to isolate dissenters, forge solidarity in their own ranks, build influential coalitions, and defeat opposing interests. Simultaneously, a libertine counterculture cast doubt on all major variations of manhood, while the uncertain gender status of African and Indian males added confusion to the mix. No one knew with confidence whether one alternative or another would predominate, what syntheses might emerge, or if America’s multiple masculinities pointed in any discernible direction. The contested old ideal endured alongside the competing newer ones.³⁰ The chief limit on the cultural diversity of manhood was a general consensus that three norms were central to all manly ideals.

One consensual norm was that manhood required the economic and political independence sometimes known as “manly freedom.” A traditional patriarch relied on rents; a male in search of aristocratic manhood was likely to have a profession; a republican farmer worked his land, a craftsman his shop; and a self-made man acquired and invested capital. An independent man was self-supporting. He determined the nature and pace of his labor and kept free of others’ patronage and government relief. He could afford to have his own conscience and demanded the liberty to exercise his conscientious will in public. He claimed a right to resist any government that threatened to rob him of liberty and property, and he felt entitled to participate in public deliberations and decision making. A “man” was an independent agent of his personal and public destiny.³¹

The second consensual norm was that a mature man was a family man. A traditional patriarch governed a family estate, assisted by his wife and perpetuated by his sons; an aspirant to aristocratic manhood established a respectable family dynasty by wedding a genteel lady and teaching proper manners to his children; a republican farmer or artisan called on his wife to contribute to family welfare and passed on his land and skills to his sons; a self-made man entered into a lifetime partnership with his wife to build a family business and produce sons to sustain and enlarge it. The ubiquitous belief that every man should mature into the head of a family was predicated on the expectation that married men were relatively responsible and trustworthy men. For most Americans, manhood, marriage, and stability were nearly synonymous.

The third consensual norm was that manhood opposed womanhood. Joan Gundersen suggests that Americans used “a system of negative reference” to define manhood. An independent man was someone who was not a dependent woman or a slave to “effeminacy.” Americans also defined a mature man as someone who controlled women. Many years after the Revolution, Americans could still describe a married man as a “king in his family.” Critics of tyrannical husbands rarely questioned their authority over women but simply demanded that they conduct themselves with greater civility toward women. Even Judith Sargent Murray’s argument for “Equality of the Sexes” conceded male “superiority” to the extent that man was naturally meant to be woman’s “protector” and woman was naturally suited to transact “domestick affairs.”³²