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Bederman, Gail. Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in
the United States, 1880-1917. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.

Gail Bederman has opened a new door to the cultural history of the United States

during the Progressive era. Her study of gender and race in the United States provides

the scholarly world with a new perspective on the cultural shift of civilization manliness.

This shift Bederman is referring to is the shift from “manhood” to “masculinity.” She

argues that at the turn of the century the middle-class male tried to reinforce his power

and control and through this race became a factor that was central to gender. (5) In order

to argue this point Bederman takes on four candidates to study including, Ida B. Wells, G.

Stanley Hall, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Theodore Roosevelt. Through these four

examples, Bederman is able to show how this drive to maintain an Anglo-Saxon social

hierarchy caused the culture of America to shift in a different direction than the

“manhood” of the Victorian America, where sexual restraint and strong character were

essential characteristics. This is what Bederman considers the discourse of civilization

during the end of the nineteenth century and the examples she provides throughout the

book represent the ways that historical figures tried to control and influence society to

justify their authority.

Ida B. Wells was an activist that was against lynching in the South. Bederman

uses her as an example to explain how white men in the South used the concept of black

inferiority and white superiority to justify lynching. She then goes on to show how Wells

was genius in the way she fought against this white man’s burden. Wells took the

concept and twisted it to favor lynching. She did this by explaining that lynching was a

barbaric and uncivilized trait, so these men were actually just as inferior as the black

man. For example, Bederman states when referring to Wells that “she manipulated the
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discourse of civilization to play on their fears about declining male power…Wells was

able to raise the stakes among middle-class Northern whites, who had previously

tolerated lynching.” (45)

G. Stanley Hall was a scholar that was devoted to the advancement of psychology

and pedagogy. With Hall Bederman focuses on primitive masculinity and does this by

showing how Hall was worried that the middle-class had lost their sense of manliness.

He feared that they were not as tough and as strong as they had been before in

civilizations that enabled them to continue to move upward. Bederman uses Hall

defining the stages of adolescence in terms of race instead of age to explain how “white

American men continued to see nonwhite races, primitiveness, and violence as powerful

ways to represent a virile masculinity much desired by civilized men.” (120)

Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a feminist theorist who pushed for the equality of

woman. Bederman uses Gilman to show an example of how a white woman used the

white supremacy concept to try to get equality for white woman. She claimed that white

woman were as civilized as white men and therefore equally superior to the other races.

(169) Bederman is able to depict how even a white feminist was finding ways to use the

white supremacy and that Gilman’s argument against male dominance depended on the

shared racial bonds that outweighed the primitive, animalistic, and sexual difference.

Theodore Roosevelt was the president of the United States who pushed for

imperialism and progressivism. In this part, Bederman uses Roosevelt as the prime

example of manhood. She states “one cannot understand…Roosevelt’s evocation of

powerful manhood without understanding that…race and gender were…intertwined with

each other…with imperialistic nationalism.” (214) She explains that Roosevelt’s actions
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showed American men how to exert this racial male dominance. For example, she states

“ Roosevelt had worked long and hard to revitalize American manhood by predicating it

on white racial dominance.” (215)

Bederman concludes the book with a cultural connection between Roosevelt,

Hall, and Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Tarzan of the Apes. Bederman is clear in her overall

objective of this study by stating in this conclusion that “my objective in analyzing the

turn-of the century discourse of civilization has been to contribute to recent scholars’

observations that race and gender cannot be studied as…two discrete categories.” She

then goes on to clearly explain her main point that “this study suggests that neither

sexism and racism are rooted out together” and that “male dominance and white

supremacy have a strong historical connection.” (239) This is one of the strongest parts of

this study, that Bederman is very clear with her objectives and arguments. She has

provided the scholarly world with an adequate and extensive cultural study of the

Progressive era and in doing so has explained how the shift of the American cultures

view of manhood. Bederman’s work has provided a different way to look at gender and

race.

John C. McKnight

Appalachian State University