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Men Are Back (But did they ever go away?)

15.10.2007

Masculinity studies is one of the hottest fields in British history. This is especially true in Britain, where gender history is more prominent than women's history. Whether this field will continue to justify the history of (mostly elite) men, is debatable. What this new interest in the history of masculinity will hopefully do, however, is to apply to the study of men some of the methods and findings that social, cultural and women's historians have pioneered. These kinds of scholars have shown us that we need to be attuned to differences between people, that we need to look at how people's lived experience is constructed, and that we need to focus on power and how its exercise is always relational. The two books under review, published by Longman's Women and Men in History series (a wonderful series producing introductory monographs well-suited to graduate and advanced undergraduate classes, as well as to historians looking for an introduction to a field), allow us to assess the current state of masculinity studies in British history.

Foyster's Manhood in Early Modern England examines married male masculinity in seventeenth-century England. The author asserts that we have too long assumed that the public lives of men are all that matter, and thus we have not examined their private lives enough. Foyster asks us to contemplate „what did the ideal of patriarchy mean for the reality of men's lives?“ (p. 3). She says that patriarchy did not mean that all men were equal; rather the institution created „subordinate masculinities.“ Unfortunately, Foyster's focus on married masculinity means that those interested in the subordinate manhood of bachelors or homosexuals while not find much here.

As with other recent studies of gender, Foyster's book makes fruitful use of church court records. These sources allow the author to examine ideas about manhood (a term she uses in preference to masculinity, which was not current until the mid-eighteenth century) among people from different statuses, rather than just among the elite. Foyster also utilizes literary sources such as ballads, plays, and conduct manuals. is Foyster fails to include diaries, letters, and memoirs, which is perplexing, especially in light of her assertion that manhood was always tenuous and needed to be asserted. What better way to investigate the presentation of self than in an individual man's record of self?

The author organizes her book into sections on Discovering, Constructing, Asserting, Losing, and Restoring Manhood. The chapter on „Constructing Manhood“ looks at how men experienced their bodies, an important question since women have been traditionally defined by the physical, while men have not. Foyster says that in the early modern era manhood was something that had to be learned by young males and then constantly asserted, while qualities identified as feminine had to be continually suppressed. This chapter includes Foyster's contribution to the growing literature on gender and honor in the early modern era. The author says a man's honor was tied to his virtue, piety, charity, justice, and credit, but also to his behavior in his household and his control over it. An integral part of male honor was self-control. Since men were seen as the rational sex in the early modern era, this put pressure on males to suppress any irrational behaviors, such as drunkenness. Marriage also conferred honor on a man, for an „unmarried man was but half a man“ (p. 46). Foyster argues that while scholars acknowledge that female honor was tied to their sexual behavior, we have failed to see that male honor was also bound up with sexuality and their private lives.

By H-net.org

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