Type
Text
Type
Dissertation
Advisor
Scheckel, Susan | Newman, Andrew | Santa Ana, Jeffrey | Kimmel, Michael.
Date
2014-12-01
Keywords
Domestic ideology, Gender studies, Masculinity studies, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Nineteenth-century United States literature, Separate spheres | Literature
Department
Department of English.
Language
en_US
Source
This work is sponsored by the Stony Brook University Graduate School in compliance with the requirements for completion of degree.
Identifier
http://hdl.handle.net/11401/77572
Publisher
The Graduate School, Stony Brook University: Stony Brook, NY.
Format
application/pdf
Abstract
The conventional argument in literary and gender studies of nineteenth-century United States culture has been that the home was women's claimed sphere of influence, whereas men were excluded from the home because of their economic, cultural, and societal commitments to the public sphere. Even as Catharine Beecher, Lydia Maria Child, Sarah Josepha Hale, and other adherents to a conservative domestic ideology closely associated the private sphere with women, these same writers identified specific roles and spaces that they expected men to occupy in the home. Hardly only a woman's domain, the home was a powerful force in motivating constructions of masculine subjectivities before the Civil War and long after. Building on the works of scholars such as Cathy Davidson, Monika Elbert, and Glenn Hendler, " American Masculinity and Home in Antebellum Literature" considers how nineteenth-century writers defined varying forms of domestic masculinity. Beginning with Nathaniel Hawthorne's definition of the nineteenth-century American romance as a style emerging from the highly domestic space of " the parlor," this study critically assesses authors who, while not all conventionally associated with household rhetoric, used their literature to offer alternative models of gendered identity by building upon, rather than only dismantling, prevalent domestic ideology. Domestic masculinity served as one topic for various writers--including Edgar Allan Poe, Sojourner Truth, George Copway, and Mark Twain--to define alternative forms of gendered, racial, and national identity that could provide readers with a sense of stable home-space, both in untraditional locations and in the midst of drastic changes to American law, culture, and literary form. This study traces the permeable boundary between the supposedly masculine public and supposedly feminine private spheres, to identify the opportunities and challenges that the home provided to United States writers, men and women, and across the spectrums of race, class, region, and religion. | 236 pages
Recommended Citation
McGrath, Derek Scott, "American Masculinity and Home in Antebellum Literature" (2014). Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions). 3372.
https://commons.library.stonybrook.edu/stony-brook-theses-and-dissertations-collection/3372