Date of Award
5-2013
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Legacy Department
History
Committee Chair/Advisor
Barczewski, Stephanie
Committee Member
Shockley , Megan
Committee Member
Manganelli , Kimberly
Abstract
Although most scholars locate the crisis of masculinity in the 1880s and 90s, with the emergence of the New Woman and the fin de sicle, through the presentation of narratives, journals, letters, newspaper articles, satirical cartoons, and novels that focus on the aristocracy's role in the Crimean War, interaction with divorce proceedings, and the fallen aristocratic man in sensation fiction, I suggest that the aristocracy's crisis of masculinity happened long before the end of the nineteenth century. Since scholars do not often make a designation between the aristocracy and the middle-class crisis of masculinity, this work seeks to interrogate these phenomena and ultimately suggest that they were very different events. In doing so, I hope to challenge scholars' work that locates this crisis as a result of, and reaction to, the emergence of women from the private home into the public sphere, and reveal the nuances and complicated ways in which aristocratic men endured crises at mid-century.
Recommended Citation
Mogel, Laura, "THE HISTORIC COLLAPSE OF PATRIARCHAL POWER: INVESTIGATING THE ARISTOCRACY'S CRISIS OF MASCULINITY AT MID-CENTURY" (2013). All Theses. 1666.
https://tigerprints.clemson.edu/all_theses/1666