History 248 Reading Guide
The “Separation of Spheres”: Womanhood and Manhood
- E. Anthony Rotundo, “Body and Soul: Changing Ideals of American Middle-Class Manhood, 1770-1920,” Journal of Social History 16 (1983), 23-38. Academic Search Premier
- Anya Jabour, “Masculinity and Adolescence in Antebellum America: Robert Wirt at West Point, 1820-1821,” Journal of Family History 23.4 (1998), 393-416. (e-reserve)
Further reading:
- Linda Kerber, “Separate Spheres, Female Worlds, Women’s Place: The Rhetoric of Women’s History,” Journal of American History 75 (1988), 9-39. JSTOR
Questions:
- Rotundo describes a “dramatic shift of masculine ideals” in nineteenth-century America. How does he characterize the changing standards of manhood? What periodization does he offer for the shift?
- How did those changing masculine ideals respond to and reflect changes that were occurring in American society from 1770 to 1920?
- What were the consequences for men of new internalized standards that emerged especially during the mid- to late-nineteenth century?
- Jabour offers a case study of a young man’s “turbulent adolescence” during the middle period of Rotundo’s three-stage shift in masculine ideals.
How does Jabour describe the childrearing methods that William and Elizabeth Wirt followed during Robert’s childhood? At what point in his youth did their guidance and expectations become contradictory and conflicting for their son? Why? - What were the focal points of the tension between Wirt and his parents? How did Wirt, with the support of the male peer subculture of West Point, attempt to resolve that tension?
- According to Jabour, what were the implications for young men such as Wirt of the new ideals of manhood that were emerging in the early 1820s?
