Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917

Lamarckian theory held that each individual was the product and representation of the sum total of their ancestors’ evolutionary progress, a progressive stacking of layered developmental achievements. All manner of traits were thought to be inherited, and only white Anglo-Saxons were thought to represent the highest echelon of this progress. While people of color were similarly representative of their own evolutionary lineage in the same way, their perceived stagnation on the part of white people was used as evidence they were of a lower racial caliber.

The term manliness, as used in the Victorian period, evoked the values associated with the ideal of the virtuous man, whose civilized, genteel presence and comportment mirrored his moral forthrightness, unquestionable integrity, and honorable character. A reference to manliness was, therefore, a comment on who someone was as a person, a measure of the extent to which they lived up to those ideals.

Masculinity, a term that grew in popularity as American definitions of manhood migrated away from the Victorian ideal, referenced traits that were more aligned with sex characteristics. Masculine referred to specific behaviors, physical presentations, and attitudes that were associated with maleness. Masculinity referenced traits like ruggedness, virility, aggression, dominance, adventurousness, and brawn.

Neurasthenia was a condition considered to be neurological and not psychological. A condition primarily of the middle class, it struck those who encountered mental strain and excessive stress as a result of the demands placed on them by the rigors and requirements of existing in a civilized society. For men, it was often the result of being overworked in the course of their professional endeavors outside the home. When women developed neurasthenia, it was generally because they were failing to focus on their primary roles of homemaker and mother and becoming overburdened by concerns outside the home, frequently intellectual pursuits.

Recapitulation theory held that as children grew up they underwent the process of reliving the collective experience of all of their ancestors, a necessary, involuntary, and inevitable part of their development. As a child aged, particularly when they entered adolescence, they enacted the emotional experiences their primitive forebears had undergone in all of their previous stages of development.