| This dissertation traces the male characters and the masculinities present in each of the following works: Susan Warner's The Wide, Wide World (1850), Fanny Fern's Ruth Hall (1855), Harriet E. Wilson's Our Nig (1859), and Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861). Utilizing Barbara Welter's study on the "cult of true womanhood" and the attendant tenets that women of the nineteenth century were supposed to embrace (piety, purity, submission, and domesticity), I examine masculinities looking for the qualities that these women writers most value in their male characters. Depending on the extent to which these authors obtain true womanhood status according to the cult's definition, we can expect that the model behavior of the men in their texts will be more or less transformed from the status quo for nineteenth-century men. Regardless of the relative conservatism or radicalism of the individual text; however; Warner, Fern, Wilson, and Jacobs all model male characters who will treat their heroines with respect, be pleasant companions, practice gender role flexibility as situations change, and allow for the equality of both partners in the relationship. |
