Almost immediately following the Civil War, Southerners had proclaimed a ―New South,‖ implying not only the end of the ―Old‖ Southern institutions of segregation and slavery but also the beginning of a new era of growth, industrialization, and prosperity. From the vantage point of the 21st Century, this assessment seemed premature, if not downright wrong. In fact, the South, as Michael O‘Brien explains, remained primarily a land of poor farming lands until the 1940s.114 Only then, and after World War II, did the real New South of
industrial growth and urban development begin to emerge.115
By the 1940s, on the front of economic transformations, the ―regime change‖ of the South, as economists would call it, was almost total. Developments such as the mechanization of cotton harvesting, induced vigorous movements to attract business through tax-breaks, municipal bonds for plant construction, and industrial development, what James C. Cobb refers to as the ―selling of the South‖.116
The forces of Southern boosterism, however, did not come into collision with the demands of racial justice before the 1960s. As a consequence, and as Gavin Wright explains, ―surplus labor conditions made it relatively easy for employers to reserve newly created job openings for white only‖ (82).117
For example, in South Carolina, which had been a black-majority state as late as 1920, 90% of new manufacturing jobs went to whites between 1940 and 1965. The South was thus trying to modernize economically
113 Stephen W. Berry, All that Makes a Man: Love and Ambition in the Civil War South (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).
114
Michael O‘Brien, The Idea of the American South: 1920-1941 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979).
115 On this subject, we can read: Jack Temple Kirby, Rural Worlds Lost: The American South, 1920-1960 (Baton
Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1987). 116
James C. Cobb, The Selling of the South: The Southern Crusade for Industrial Development, 1936-1980 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982. 2d edition Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1993).
while maintaining entrenched traditions and institutions of racial segregation. As historian Numan Bartley puts it, ―in the 1940, the raison d’être of Southern State governments was [still] their protection of white supremacy and social stability‖ (160).118 The hard lesson of this history, as Wright notes, is that ―purely economic forces were relatively ineffectual in bringing about fundamental social change‖ (82). In light of these effects, Blackwelder adds, ―poor education levels and the caste system of the South had discouraged Northern industrialists from moving South in the 1940s and 1950s, despite the attraction of low wages and weak labour organizations,‖ rendering the South‘s particularity surprisingly persistent in economic as well as in cultural or political life (50).
On the front of social change and as early as the 1920s, massive out-migration from the region marked the South, as Southerners were beginning to move into the region‘s towns and cities, a trend that continued into ―the twentieth-century as textile mills, garment factories and tobacco plants rose from the landscape (Blackwelder 45). It was women who ―predominated among these city‘s newcomers‖ (Blackwelder 45). Between 1900 and 1920, for instance, the number of single, white-working women in Atlanta tripled and the number of single African-American women grew as well. With these changes in women‘s work patterns, Julia Blackwelder explains that an ―increasing proportion of white families came to depend on women‘s wages for all or part of their income‖ (45).119
This influx of women into the public arena was particularly unsettling to the men of the period (for Southerners and Northerners alike). In the white-collar office by 1930, women comprised 52.5 percent of the total clerical workforce and 96 percent of all stenographers and
117
Gavin Wright, ―Persisting Dixie: The South as an Economic Region,‖ The American South in the Twentieth Century, eds. Craig S. Pascoe, Karen Trahan Leathem, and Andy Ambrose (Athens: University of Georgia Press. 2005) 77-90.
118 Numan Bartley, ―In Search of the New South: Southern Politics after Reconstruction,‖ The Promise of American History, eds. Stanley T. Kutler and Stanley N. Katz (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982).
typists (Kimmel 87). Little wonder if in the ―gendered office‖ a man might feel he ―had lost his manhood‖ (Kimmel 97). Even before the Crash of 1929 rendered many men jobless and powerless, men's work had become ―an increasingly unreliable proving ground‖ of manhood (Kimmel 192). Inversely, the entrance of women en masse into colleges and voting booths as well as the workplace was perceived as ―masculinizing‖ them (96; see also Allen 73-101).120
Kimmel quotes Anthony Ludovici, who declared in 1927: ―Feminism really spells Masculinism‖ since ―exposure to the vicissitudes and asperities of the struggle for existence brings out the combative, predatory, and latent male side of female nature, and represses and impoverishes its dependent, peace loving and sequacious side‖ (198).121
The flip side of masculinized women was feminized men: a popular song of 1926— ―Masculine Women! Feminine Men!‖—noted that ―It's hard to tell 'em apart today‖ (qtd. in Kimmel 204). As the workplace became increasingly ―a site of uneasiness‖ wherein men did ―women's work‖ (Kimmel 118), the ideal of manhood gradually gave way to the notion of masculinity— something that had to be constantly demonstrated, was always in question, and could easily be ―undone by a perception of being too feminine‖ (Kimmel 120).
The problem of male identity was even taken up by experts and professionals who sought to foster proper sex-role socialization within the family. The problem of absent or distant fathers, excessive maternal influence, and the ―overfeminization‖ of boys became standard themes in academic and popular discourse, and the enemy for many midcentury male critics was less the female reformer and more the assertive, civilizing woman in the private
119 Julia Kirk Blackwelder, ―Women and Leadership: A Century of Change in the South,‖ The American South
in the Twentieth Century, eds. Craig S. Pascoe, Karen Trahan Leathem, and Andy Ambrose (Athens: University of Georgia Press. 2005) 39-50.
120 Michael S. Kimmel, Manhood in America: A Cultural History (New York: Free, 1996); Frederick Lewis Allen, Only Yesterday (New York: Harper, 1931).
121 Anthony Ludovici, ―Woman‘s Encroachment on Man‘s Domain,‖ Antifeminism in America: A Collection of
Readings from the Literature of the Opponents to U.S. Feminism, 1848 to the Present, eds. Angela Howard, Sasha Ranaé & Adams Tarrant (New York: Taylor & Francis, 1997).
sphere and a looming matriarchy emanating from the home (Schlesinger 246).122 Critics
worried that professional men were now living a pampered life of ease; that the expanding, impersonal bureaucracy doomed too many men to sedentary, unambitious lives of paper pushing and that urban boys lived a namby-pamby existence, enveloped by female influence. Luxury and idleness had long been scorned as emasculating, but the fear that males were internalizing feminine values provoked a new dread as critics decried the ‗overcivilization‘ of the nation by aggressive female reformers and moralizing women who attacked saloons and brothels.
American males thus became the victims of a smothering, overpowering, suspiciously collectivist mass society—a society that had smashed the once-autonomous male self, elevated women to a position of power in the home, and doomed men to a slavish conformity not wholly unlike that experienced by men living under Yankee rule. American men had grown soft. Whether they were ―organization men‖ softened by the ―group ethos‖ (William H. Whyte), ―other-directed‖ men made conformist and self-less by an affluent mass society (David Riesman), men left sexually distorted by puritanical norms that constrain healthy heterosexual relations and ultimately encourage male sexual ―inversion‖ (Robert Lindner), weak men and helpless boys victimized by parasitic women and/or overbearing mothers (Philip Wylie, Edward Strecker), or men who fell prey to some admixture of the above forces (Look writers), American males were now the subject of unprecedented scrutiny.123
For instance, psychiatrists ―routinely diagnosed men as homosexual if they exhibited traits that were seen as less than manly—an abnormal dread of dust and dirt; for example, or a
122 Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., The Politics of Hope (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1963) 237–46.
123 For expressions of concern about the state of the male self in the 1940s and 1950s, see William H. Whyte Jr., The Organization Man (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1956); David Riesman, Nathan Glazer and Reuel Denney, The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1950); Robert Lindner, Must You Conform? (New York: Grove Press, 1956); Philip Wylie, Generation of Vipers (New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1942); Philip Wylie, "The Abdicating Male and How the Gray Flannel Mind Exploits Him through His Women." Playboy 3 (Nov. 1956) 23–24, 50, 79; and Edward Strecker, Their Mothers' Sons: The Psychiatrist Examines an American Problem (Philadelphia: JB Lippincott, 1946).
finicky attention to clothing and personal appearance‖ (such psychiatrists would recognize in Quentin Compson a familiar syndrome) (Kimmel 99). Therefore, to avoid being branded a ―sissy,‖ one worked out in the gym (Kimmel 210) or was drawn, as countless were, to boxing (―the manly art‖) or joined the rest of America in going ―sports crazy‖ (Kimmel 137; see also Allen 66, 172-75). Or one engaged in activities, like hunting, fishing, and riding that recalled earlier historical notions of manly virtue and America's frontier origins or invoked traditional virtues like ―honor‖ and ―thrift‖ (Kimmel 95, 102). One could also signify one's masculinity by reading about all these things. As part of the resistance to ―the feminization of boyhood‖ (Kimmel 121), dime novels and weekly magazines and pulp fiction provided examples for boys interested in becoming real men.
If male bonding was part of ―masculine resistance to feminization‖ (Kimmel 124), displaying itself in horseplay, games, and drinking, such resistance was problematized by psychologists and other reformers who linked such male socializing to sexual deviance (125- 26). Furthermore, ―[i]f women abandoned their traditional role as homemakers or if men abandoned their traditional role as breadwinners,‖ wrong messages might be sent (Kimmel 201-02). Bread-making dads, emasculated by default, risked turning their boys into sissies. ―By the 1930s,‖ Kimmel notes, ―three fourths of American fathers said they regularly read magazine articles about child care‖ (201), a statistic that can be interpreted in a number of ways: as indicating a new notion of manhood that included ―a strong orientation toward the family and home‖ (Donaldson 64),124
or as the response of disempowered fathers bent on helping their sons avoid their fathers‘ fate (Kimmel 201).
In their pep-talk about courage and duty addressed to younger boys or to younger men-in-the making, the fathers also suggested that manhood was ―made,‖ in the sense of
124 Susan V. Donaldson, "Cracked Urns: Faulkner, Gender, and Art in the South," Faulkner and the Artist: Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha, 1993, eds. Donald M. Kartiganer and Ann J. Abadie (Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1996) 51-81.
being a personal accomplishment. Manhood thus meant adhering to a set of values by which men could judge other men. As a result ―being a man‖ required proving oneself as one the lads by demonstration of physical strength, ability, sexual prowess, and so on. The injunction ―Be A Man!,‖ as John Tosh remarks, implies that there were indeed only certain ways in which one could be a man. Such standards obviously demanded a high degree of effort and suppression of self.125 Manhood thus became a concept in the critical discourse of gender,
signaling not only an affirmation of masculinity, but also a dissection of its social privileges. Not surprisingly and to use Berry‘s words, a staggering amount of evidence in critical and historical studies has been ―dedicated to the public, external, and projected aspects of men‘s lives and significantly less dedicated to the private, internal, and introspective‖ (11).126
For this reason, this dissertation, then, will be dedicated to the ―inner experience of masculinity, to the private landscapes men negotiated in their confrontation with what their society claimed a man should do and be‖ (Berry 12). Yet, if Stephen Berry attempts an ―empathetic‖ account of Southern manhood, as he calls it, through the lens of diaries and personal letters, I attempt the exercise using the lens of Southern fiction.
The first chapter examines Ned Hazard in John Pendleton Kennedy‘s Swallow Barn, a planter-to-be who strives to fashion himself according to the ideal of the English gentleman and to the chivalric fancies of his ―Belle,‖ Bel Tracy. If one believes the happy ending of the novel, Ned does live up to the ideal of Southern masculinity that he finally ―secures‖ through his official union to Bel Tracy. A close reading of the novel, however, suggests a man less moderate than the persona followed by Ned‘s fellow-planters and gentlemen. Ned, the young
125 John Tosh, Manliness and Masculinities in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Harlow: Longman, 2005). On this subject, we can read: Anthony Rotundo, American Manhood: Transformations in Masculinity from the Revolution to the Modern Era (New York: Basic Books, 1993) or Peter N. Stearns, Be A Man! Males in Modern Society (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1979).
126 Stephen W. Berry, All that Makes a Man: Love and Ambition in the Civil War South (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).
bachelor, is torn by insecurities as he wishes to find balance, learning, and control of the Gentleman but finds his formulation of a masculine self threatened externally by female instability and patriarchal authority and internally by his own insecurities. As John Mayfield remarks, Kennedy suggests that the ideal of Southern gentility is on the verge of extinction, yet the novel serves as an essential point of reference for understanding Southern masculinity (xxv).
Like Pendleton‘s character, William Faulkner himself was all too aware that he had an imposing masculine legacy to live up to. In an era defined by historians such as Michael Kimmel, Anthony Rotundo, Clyde Griffen, Angus McLaren, and Kevin White as ―anxiety- ridden‖ with a radical instability and multiplicity of identities—femininity, masculinity, and heterosexuality—it is no wonder then that masculine performances in Faulkner tend to reverberate with considerable anxiety.127 Gender became increasingly crucial, ―often
eclipsing,‖ Angus McLaren argues, ―one's rank, status, profession, race, or religion as the key determinant of personality‖ (1). Also, in a time when gender and sexuality were receiving ever-increasing emphasis as determinants of identity, worries were publicly voiced about what was perceived as a collective decline in virility. If manhood could be achieved through various rites of passage—through war, hunting, athleticism, ordeals of various sorts—it could also be lost, and the possibility of that loss hovered over Faulkner and his entire generation. From this perspective, the flowering of Southern literature in the 1920s and 1930s testified to this search for another South and it brought with it a different approach to Southern
127
On this subject, read Susan V. Donaldson, guest ed. ―Faulkner, Memory, History; Faulkner and Masculinity; Faulkner and Sexuality.‖ Special Issues of The Faulkner Journal, (Fall 2004/Spring 2005) (Fall 1999/Spring 2000) (Fall 1993/Spring 1994). Michael Kimmel, Manhood in America: A Cultural History (New York: Free, 1996); Michel Gresset, Fascination: Faulkner's Fiction, 1919-1936 (Durham: Duke UP, 1989); Clyde Griffen, "Reconstructing Masculinity from the Evangelical Revival to the Waning of Progressivism: A Speculative Synthesis," Meanings for Manhood: Constructions of Masculinity in Victorian America, eds. Mark C. Carnes and Clyde Griffen (Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 1990) 183-204; Kevin White, The First Sexual Revolution: The Emergence of Male Heterosexuality in Modern America (New York: New York UP, 1993); Angus McLaren, The Trials of Masculinity: Policing Sexual Boundaries, 1870-1930 (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1997).
masculinity, surprisingly ―resurrecting the old paradigm of honor and mastery‖ (Friend xvii). As Numan V. Bartley explains, the ―ethic of the Old Order was reexamined in order to provide an angle of moral vision never attempted in the South‖ (116).128
Seen in this light, the three brothers at the center of The Sound and The Fury represent not only three different masculinities, but three different ways in which Southerners of the era sought other worlds to live in: Quentin Compson, the eldest, embraces the aristocratic model of southern gentlemanliness; the next brother, Jason, attaches himself to the present and the emerging southern liberalism that framed the rise of the New South; the youngest brother, Benjy, is beyond time, ―stripped of history, memory, and authority‖ as well as the conceptualizations of race and gender. As embodied through the three brothers at the center of the novel, the atmosphere in which Faulkner‘s male characters live (and in which Faulkner lived) is one of hesitation and gender confusion (Mayfield xvii). Chapter three of this dissertation will thus attempt to explore this world as it is portrayed in Faulkner‘s The Sound and the Fury.
The fourth chapter examines the masculine self-fashioning of General Archbald in Ellen Glasgow‘s The Sheltered Life. Given what is expected of the ―hero‖ in Southern romance, the novel appears as a devastating satire on patrician values. As Archbald reflects on his life as Southern gentleman in a time of cultural and historical transformation, the issues of father-son relations, southern gentility, the hunting tradition, and aging emerge as the most important aspects for Archbald‘s and the other men‘s constitution of masculinity. Glasgow identifies General Archbald as something of a liminal figure, poised between an older organic, hierarchical worldview and self-made individualism. General Archbald‘s struggle, especially his attempt to question the patriarchal model prescribed for elite men, and his younger neighbor George Birdsong‘s failure to fashion himself according to Eva Birdsong‘s ideal, highlight conflicting ideals of masculinity in twentieth-century Virginia. General Archbald‘s
128
reflections on aging and the young generation‘s departure for war demonstrate that roles and expectations for aging patriarchs and for the young men of this period were indefinite and frustrating.
The fifth chapter focuses on Margaret Mitchell‘s Gone with the Wind and the masculine images it portrays in a time of war, a time demanding an effective display of typically-masculine qualities (strength, courage, control, mastery, honor). The novel offers a catalog of manly positions and men live in a zone where polarities (Southerner vs. Yankee, soft vs. hard masculinities, masculinity vs. femininity) are not as fixed as they first appear. Men—Ashley, Rhett, or even Gerald O‘Hara—and women—Scarlett or Melanie—are no longer static representatives of a decorous culture but emphasize that a new ideal was being born. To use Mayfield‘s words, and seen through the lens of masculinity, Gone with the Wind witnesses a type of ―masterless men who cut themselves loose from society, challenge it, redefine it, and often leave it altogether‖ (486). This type of man helps to reflect on what William Gilmore Simms himself defined as a ―mixt‖ character, whose ―place on the Great Chain was shaky and who was taking new forms, for better or for worse‖ (Simms, qtd. in Mayfield 486).129
The sixth and final chapters explore two works of Tennessee Williams and his portrayal of the Southern ―bachelor-boy‖ to the detriment of the Southern man and to the detriment of the Southern Beau who seems to have completely ―disappeared‖ from both A Streetcar Named Desire and The Glass Menagerie. Scholars such as Harvey Graff recognize the importance of ―adolescence,‖ to use an anachronistic term, as an important aspect of