- Date added
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Dec. 27, 2021, 2:32 a.m.
- Description
- Notions of American masculinity have long drawn on a shallow pool of tropes, most of which we tend to associate with fictionalizations of the frontier: the lonesome swagger of John Wayne, the gruff reticence of the cowboy. But up until the end of the nineteenth century, the ideal of American masculinity was far more communal. The historian E. Anthony Rotundo has observed that the masculinity of the colonial era wasn’t defined by chest-thumping machismo or brawny, entrepreneurial pluck, but was measured instead by a man’s willingness to forfeit his time and resources for the betterment of his community. Hardly was this a matter of “emotional intelligence.” Rather, his duties were fulfilled through “publick usefulness.”
