Romanticism

Individualism

Perhaps the central element of Romanticism's definition of manhood is individualism. In particular, American writers influenced by Romanticism—including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Walt Whitman—emphasized the idea that the individual was, by nature, divine. The intuitive, emotional self, thoroughly grounded in nature and divinity, was therefore the most reliable source of truth. This idea meant that individual expression was all-important in the artistic process and fundamental to true manliness. Emerson declared, for example, that “Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist,” that “Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members,” and that the “great man” maintains “the independence of solitude” (Emerson 1965, 242–244).

Romantic masculinity also required a continual introspective striving for greater knowledge of self, nature, and divinity. This understanding of manhood meshed well with, and may well have played a role in inspiring, American ideals of republican manhood, which similarly emphasized independence and resistance to tyranny. It also reflected a broader American emphasis on self-improvement and the cultivation of inner character, both important components of nineteenth-century constructions of manhood. Finally, Romantic masculinity served the needs of the Romantic writers themselves, who were attempting to establish careers as authors in a society that was disinclined to view writing or other forms of intellectual work as true labor, and therefore regarded male writers as unmanly and effeminate.

Romantic Heroes and Antiheroes

Another important motif in Romantic thought and literature is that of the male protagonist as hero or conqueror. While in European Romanticism this figure operated in fantastic settings and was characterized by a high degree of emotional courtship, the American version was rooted in a much more realistic stance and in a harsh natural setting. Conquering and expanding the western frontier, for instance, inspired a more conservative view on gender, in which the male explorer became the counterpart of the effeminate poet, while the female was to a large extent desexualized, rather than romantically idealized, because she was expected to play her part in overcoming the hardships of life on the trail. The works of nineteenth-century historian Francis Parkman, which emphasize white Americans' conquest of the spectacular natural environment into which they are nonetheless thoroughly integrated, typify this approach to American manhood.

Not only white American men served as heroes in Romantic tales, however. Drawing on French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau's idea that civilization was responsible for social inequality—and that there was no inequality in nature—American Romantic authors portrayed some nonwhite men as “noble savages” characterized by a natural masculinity that placed them in harmonious balance with their natural environment and with each other. Yet as the term itself suggests, this perception of a natural masculinity was wrought with ambivalence. On the one hand, the “savage” individual was presented as a positive counterpoint to the aggressive, colonizing white representatives of so-called civilized society—in accordance with the view held by Romantics that the imaginative powers of the human mind should rule over its rational dimension. Yet Romantic writers often produced overly romantic and condescending images of indigenous American peoples, as is evident in such male fictional characters as Queequeg in Moby Dick (1852), Geronimo, and Tarzan. These images had a strong impact on the shaping and perception of male identity in nineteenth- and twentieth-century America.

...