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

Civilization refers to the characteristics exclusive to societies and nations created and ruled by white Europeans or white people of European descent. The notion of civilization as it pertains to the concept in Manliness and Civilization refers to an organized, advanced, and elite system of social parameters and governances, characterized by achievements, whether they be technological, philosophical, intellectual, or emotional.

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.