Sentimentalism

A central part of Victorian middle-class culture from about 1830 to the 1870s, sentimentalism shaped cultural constructions of gender by prescribing types of bodily conduct, including speech, posture, gestures, dress, and proper etiquette among both men and women. The goal of these prescriptions was the same for men and women: to foster perfect sincerity, truthfulness, and candor in social relations. But Victorian sentimentalism had different practical implications for men and women because middle-class Americans assumed women to be naturally expressive of their feelings, and therefore naturally sincere, while men were assumed to be naturally more rational, better able to control their emotions, and therefore less sincere. Sentimentalism therefore required of men a strict standard of proper conduct—a conscious performance of behavior appropriate to given situations—that became basic to Victorian constructions of middle-class manhood.

The Victorian concern with interpersonal sincerity, particularly among men, was a response to the new types of social relations and gender definitions being fostered by the market revolution and urbanization. As American economic life grew increasingly competitive and urban life increasingly impersonal, middle-class Americans feared that men, who were being encouraged to pursue entrepreneurial success in this anonymous urban capitalist marketplace, would be tempted to prey on and deceive others to gain advantage. While the middle class was created by, and benefited economically from, the new market economy, its members worried that the new kinds of economic relationships that supported their status, and which did not require the familiar moral obligations of face-to-face small-town exchange, threatened men's ethical grounding. The cultural archetype of the confidence man—who used false sincerity to gain the confidence of others for the purpose of ruining them— became perhaps the most powerful symbol of the morally unconstrained male entrepreneur.

Sentimental prescriptions for middle-class men were formulated in large part as a counterpoint to this negative model. Fearful of the impersonal competitive marketplace, the middle class rooted their ideals of male conduct in the home or domestic sphere—a social space characterized by a companionate family ideal built around emotive, affectionate, and caring relations. They hoped that men might carry the warm, personal character of domestic relationships into their interactions outside the home as well. Men would thus develop a genuine sincerity, honesty, and trustworthiness that could withstand public scrutiny—a solid “character” both inwardly wrought and socially enforced. Sentimental codes of conduct, then, assumed that the intimacy of domestic interactions provided the most promising basis for a model of manhood that guaranteed social trust in a society comprised of strangers.

[Page 415]The sentimental insistence on sincerity was based on the notion that reason, while a fundamental aspect of masculinity, could be deceptive, but that “feminine” emotion was always a genuine expression of the inner self. Thus, sentimental requirements of manhood were based on gender concepts that called into question men's capacity for emotional honesty. This problem was further complicated by the fact that while middle-class Victorians condemned any artificial cultivation of mere public image, they valued outward social reputation and deemed it essential to the business success expected of men. They therefore urged the display of proper manners and appearances in public, but also insisted that such surface expressions reflect one's inner moral principles and true feelings. Middle-class Victorians sought to combine outward conduct and inward sentiment by developing—and pressing with particular urgency upon men—a code of social etiquette called “genteel performance” by the historian Karen Halttunen. Victorians believed that for the truly sincere, adherence to these rules would come naturally.

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