Bederman

Bederman, Gail. Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States 1880-1917. Chicago: University Press. 1995.

Manliness and Civilization analyzes the changes at the turn of the twentieth century from a Victorian model of “manhood” that exercised restraint, to a new concept of “primitive masculinity” which exhibits physical masculinity and violence. During the time period of 1890-1917, Bederman argues that “white middle class men actively worked to reinforce male power, their race became a factor which was as crucial to their gender” (pg. 5). The Anglo-Saxon white male’s power was being threatened by racial and sexual challenges. In the introduction, Jack Johnson is used as a case study of an individual who challenged these Victorian ideals. It was Johnson’s success as a prize fighter and his white girlfriend that angered whites. White males saw Johnson as someone that was challenging white superiority by showing off his primitive masculinity. Bederman explores the relationship between manhood and race through the discourse of “civilization”. How this discourse could be “manipulated in a variety of contradictory ways to establish what it meant to be a man and, in doing so, to establish or challenge male dominance and white supremacy.”

1

Manliness and

Civilization uses excellent case studies to demonstrate the different ways this discourse could further their own opinions. Due to this change in discourse at the time, the author sees gender relations at the time as unstable due to a variety of social and cultural factors.

1

Griffin, Clyde. Review of Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917, by Gail Bederman. American Historical Association. Vol. 102, No. 3. (1997): 903-904.

The case studies are diverse; Ida B. Wells’ anti-lynching campaign used manliness to encompass black males and when she could not get the response she was looking for went on a trip to England to highlight the inequality of the races in America. G. Stanley Hall’s Psychology of the white adolescent questioned whether “over civilization was endangering White Manhood” (pg. 77). Charlotte Perkins Gilman believed that manliness includes females, but her approach only included white females. Theodore Roosevelt was able to use his ideas of imperialism to confirm his beliefs of white superiority. The conclusion explains how the persona of Tarzan encompasses all these ideals of manliness and civilization. The link between the case studies is how race and gender become the major factor in each person’s arguments. Hall and Roosevelt are obvious choices as examples to show these changes, but Gilman and Wells are less likely choices to exhibit this discourse of “civilization”. All the examples help to highlight the opinions at the time. Bederman’s argument is controversial. Manliness and Civilization gives excellent and soundly written case studies through four essays. The only weak part of the author’s argument is the conclusion, in which she attempts to summarize the effects of the turn of the century civilization on post 1920’s opinions of gender and race. Manliness and Civilization provides an excellent link between race relations and gender at the turn of the twentieth century and shows how these relations were responsible for changing the national identity of America.

William Tyler Grove Appalachian State University