The history of ‘the West’ provides a fertile arena for exploring the various ways in which what we might now call masculinity (Connell 1987) has been constructed in diverse social, historical and cultural contexts. It is important to realise that, even for ‘the West’, which prides itself on a certain continuity of ‘civilised’ culture, there is no essential or transcendental masculinity that stands above or outside the historical process. Rather, it is necessary to appreciate the extent to which in ‘the West’ the construction of masculinity has varied in accordance with shifts in the way in which power is organised and distributed in society. The result is that the many different social formations that make up the history of ‘the West’ each furnish their own idea of masculinity—or set of masculinities—aspects of which might survive into later formations, while other attributes will be discarded with the passage of time. The history of ‘the West’ can thus be read as a series of successive, parallel and overlapping masculinities, all of which inform, to some extent, the construction of contemporary Western masculinity.
Premodern masculinities
The first instance of a recognisably ‘Western’ form of masculinity appears in ancient Greece, where the definition of the ‘citizen’ as a rational, autonomous, self-governing subject first emerges (Rhodes 1986; Foucault 1985). Here, the definitio n of masculin depended upon exercising control over the self in order to assert control over others, specifically, social inferiors such as women, children and slaves.
The Romans added to the Stoic ideal of the Greeks the idea of empire, which define masculinity in terms of the ability to dominate other cultures. This entailed asserting the cultural superiority of ‘civilisation’ over so-called ‘barbaric’ peoples (Halsall 2004:21). These two attributes—citizenship and imperialism—constitute the two major contributions of the ancient world to the historical construction of Western manhood. Other aspects of ancient masculinity, however, such as the valorisation of homoeroticism, and the pedagogical pederasty that regulated entry into manhood, would be discarded with the rise of Christianity, which excoriated such pagan ‘excesses’.
The medieval world created by the spread of Christianity and the rise of feudalism gave rise to a whole new range of masculinities. Christianity promulgated an ascetic ideal—embodied most clearly in the monks, priests and other churchmen—that urged strict abstinence from worldly involvement (including celibacy) in order to gain access to the divine essence. Through control of the Word and the spiritual ‘capital’ of Christianity, the ascetic masculinity of the male theocracy wielded considerable power (Leyser 1999; Nelson 1999).
Another predominant masculinity of the medieval period is the knightly or chivalric ideal that governed the behaviour of the feudal elite. Prowess in battle, strong homosocial bonding, the practice of ‘courtly love’ and the ability to sire (preferably male) offspring were key aspects of this type. For many aristocratic men, the chivalric ideal was a model they were expected to follow in order to serve their kingdom and glorify their family line (Bennett 1999).
Little is known about the nature of masculinity among the medieval peasantry, due to a lack of detailed sources concerned with recording the practices of peasant society. What is known, however, is that peasant culture was made up of a mixture of pagan and Christian values, and that manhood was defined by kinship ties, ritual ceremonies and marriage strategies, all of which aimed at preserving and increasing the common weal of the kinship network. However, because the peasantry were subject to the authority of the feudal lords, the definition of peasant masculinity was generally quite unstable. Indeed, the compromised masculinity of the peasant is indicated by the custom of ju s pr mae noctis, which entitled the feudal lord to spend the first night with the brides of his male serfs.
Early modern masculinities
The early modern period is marked by the incursion of an expanding commercial economy into the hierarchical world of feudalism (Braudel 1982). This led to the creation of a new class of masculinity, that of the merchant or middle classes, which was defined by what Sidney Pollard calls the ‘capitalist spirit’—the desire for personal gain—and associated attributes of rational calculation and possessive individualism (1968:28).
The rise of this middle-class masculinity inflected existing categories of masculinity, as these were repositioned in relation to the growing influence of commerce and trade. Some noblemen ventured outside the field of military endeavour to dabble in science, agriculture or trade; peasants uprooted by land enclosures took up work as carriers or deckhands in the commercial economy. Currents of economic change were subtly altering the complexion of society, as the divisions of social rank were blurred by the levelling medium of the market.
However, this blurring of rank actually led to an exaggerated investment in the notion of ‘honour’ as a marker of male social distinction. Noblemen whose livelihoods were threatened by economic forces stoutly clung to ideas of lineage and ‘blue blood’; bourgeois upstarts seeking to make their way in society were particularly anxious to guard their reputation and ‘good name’. As a result of this heightened status anxiety, we see in the early modern period a veritable explosion in the practice of duelling as a way of proving one’s honour (Foyster 1999:179–81; Stone 1977:234). This phenomenon is observable in the literature of the time—i.e. the plays of Shakespeare and Beaumarchais, Spanish Golden Age literature—where the ‘point of honour’ (the challenge of a duel) is frequently invoked.
The expansion of the secular state in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries also contributed to the decline of feudalism, as monarchs such as Louis XIV and Henry VIII sought to restrict the power of the nobility and centralise authority in the hands of the Crown. As state bureaucracies replaced the feudal lords, obedience to the sovereign replaced loyalty to kin, clientage and factions. This is what Lawrence Stone calls the shift from lineage society to civil society (1977:134). As part of this process, we see the emergence of the ‘restricted nuclear family’ as the dominant social unit, an institution in which power was increasingly invested in the husband and father over wife and children. The Protestant Reformation also contributed to this transformation in masculinity, as the Lutheran revaluation of matrimony as a ‘holy’ state transferred to the male head of household much of the religious authority previously monopolised by the priest (Stone 1977:135–6).
Modern masculinities
A recognisably ‘modern’ type of masculinity emerged during the Enlightenment, when the economic, social and religious reforms of the early modern period coalesced to create a new social order that nominated ‘man’—specifically the educated, propertied ‘white’ man—as the subject of history (Foucault 1970). According to Enlightenment thinkers, ‘man’ could use his reason to understand and control the natural world, and thereby bring about a continual increase in human happiness and well-being.
The reorganisation of knowledge around the concept of ‘nature’ enabled gender to be redefined along biological lines: men and women became anatomically categorised as belonging to one of two mutually exclusive biological sexes. This was a new development, as Thomas Laqueur argues: previously, to be a man or woman was to hold a social rank, not to belong to a biological category (1992:8). At the same time, as industrialisation began to take hold, operations of scientific classification were applied to the natural and social world as a whole, creating a new discourse of power that installed the middle-class European male as the sole legitimate agent of knowledge and power. Operating under the guise of scientific disinterestedness, this new regime of ‘bio-power’ sought to legitimate the emerging social structures of industrial capitalism (Foucault 1978), including the Victorian ‘separation of spheres’ which excluded women from participation in public, productive life. Women’s exclusion was justified on the basis of their ‘biological’ infirmity. Likewise, the exploitation of the working classes was justified on the basis of their hereditary predisposition to labour; and the colonisation of the New World was explained away as the result of evolutionary processes and the ‘survival of the fittest’ (McClintock 1995:40).
In this context, masculinity was identified with the agents of this apparatus of knowledge-power: in other words, the educated, middle-class white men who administered and put into effect the imperatives of the industrial-imperial regime. At the same time, the regime of ‘bio-power’ created a whole range of subordinate masculinities: the bucolic lower-class male; the primitive black man; the unruly half-caste; and later in the nineteenth century, the degenerate homosexual. The new industrial regime also produced its share of self-proclaimed cultural ‘misfits’, such as the Romantics, the Pre-Raphaelites and the dandies, all of whom broadcast resistant forms of masculinity that sought to defin e themselv es in opposit io n t o the ends mentality of the scientific—industrial complex.
By the turn of the twentieth century, the progress of the natural and human sciences—coupled with the expansion of industrial capitalism—had produced a new global order of Western masculine hegemony. This order would fin d extre me manifestat io n i science of eugenics, which sought to eradicate racial and sexual ‘deviants’ from society and create an ideal race free from the dreaded taint of ‘degeneration’ that haunted the limits of industrial society: in the ghettoes, the shanty towns, the colonial backwaters. The Western masculine dream of a scientifically engineered society was mirrored by the increasing artificiality of everyday life, where technology was invading more and more aspects of existence: electric lights, automobiles, telephones, elevators, etc. In this context, Western masculinity was increasingly identified with the making of technological progress, an association often celebrated, and sometimes parodied, in the modernist movements of the early twentieth century. Perhaps the most fitting monument to the technological progress of ‘Western man’, however, is the two world wars which provided the coda to both the Enlightenment belief in historical progress through science, and the ‘modernist’ identification of Western masculinity with technological advancement. As science enabled war to reach ever-greater levels of technological destructiveness, the dark side of the Enlightenment dream of scientific progress became apparent. At the same time, the potential inadequacy of the Western male subject was glimpsed, in the form of mutilated, shell-shocked and traumatised soldiers, whose wounds carried not the prestige of honour but the stigma of inadequacy (Silverman 1992:53). The historical trauma of the world wars, and further shifts in economic and social structure, would stimulate a new phase in the history of Western masculinity.
Postmodern masculinities
The industrial-imperial ideals of Western masculinity began to tarnish in the postwar period, as the economy shifted away from manufacturing towards services and information, creating a ‘postindustrial’ economy, and the imperial project entered a ‘postcolonial’ phase of ‘imperialism without colonies’ (McClintock 1995:13). The protest and counter-culture movements of the Sixties reinforced the fact that the social authority of the gender order was in jeopardy. Thousands of young men in North America avoided the draft for the Vietnam war, underscoring that traditional definitions of masculinity were being challenged by younger generations. Indeed, after Vietnam, general conscription quickly became a thing of the past. Readiness to fight was no longer an assumed prerequisite for masculinity. Expanding consumerism throughout the West led to the reconceptualisation of gender identity along the lines of consumption and ‘lifestyle’. Masculinity was increasingly equated with the consumption of certain types of commodities—cars, motorcycles, televisions, hi-fi systems, yachts, watches, etc.—deflecting attention away from women’s incursion into the workplace in the wake of feminist struggles for economic equality. Work was no longer an adequate site for the construction of masculinity; the Victorian ‘separation of spheres’ was starting to blur. As a consequence of upsetting the ‘natural’ boundaries between men’s and women’s spheres, in the latter part of the twentieth century we see gender difference itself perhaps beginning to blur in certain settings, as the emergence of gay and lesbian minorities challenges the mutually exclusive definition of ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’ in some social contexts. The increasing presence of ‘queer’ identity in mainstream culture—particularly in film, television and radio—suggests that the blurring of gender definition in response to the social transformations of late capitalism may continue to partly mark Western culture for some time. However, in spite of the challenges posed by the postmodern era, the structure of male hegemony remains intact throughout the West, due to the fact that the key strongholds of masculine power—politics and business—remain male-dominated, even if they do appear increasingly subject to contestation. The question for the future will be whether the alleged crisis of ‘postmodern man’ has any substantial effect upon the overall distribution of power in the West—not only between men and women, but also other disenfranchised groups: racial and ethnic minorities, the working classes, sexual minorities—or whether the postmodern represents merely another stage in the ongoing reproduction of masculine hegemony.
References and further reading
Bennett, M. (1999) ‘Military masculinity in England and Northern France c.1050—c.1225’, in D.M. Hadley (ed.) Masculinity in Medieval Europe, London and New York: Longman, pp. 71–88.
Braudel, F. [1979] (1982) The Wheels of Commerce: Civilisation and Capitalism 15th-18th Century, Vol II, London and Sydney: William Collins Sons.
Connell, R. (1987) Gender and Power, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Foucault, M. (1970) The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences, New York: Random House.
——[1976] (1978) The Will to Knowledge: The History of Sexuality Volume 1, London and New York: Penguin.
——[1984] (1985) The Use of Pleasure: The His of Sexuality Volume 2, London and New York: Penguin.
Foyster, E.A. (1999) Manhood in Early Modern England: Honour, Sex and Marriage, London and New York: Longman.
Halsall, G. (2004) ‘Gender and the end of empire’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 34(1): 17–39.
Laqueur, T. (1992) Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud, Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press.
Leyser, C. (1999) ‘Masculinity in flux: nocturnal emission and the limits of celibacy in the early Middle Ages’, in D.M. Hadley (ed.) Masculinity in Medieval Europe, London and New York: Longman, pp. 103–20.
McClintock, A. (1995) Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest, New York: Routledge.
Nelson, J.L. (1999) ‘Monks, secular men and masculinity, c. 900’, in D.M. Hadley (ed.) Masculinity in Medieval Europe, London and New York: Longman, pp. 121–42.
Pollard, S. (1968) The Idea of Progress: History and Society, Harmondsworth and Baltimore, MD: Penguin.
Rhodes, P.J. (1986) The Greek City States: A Source Book, London and Sydney: Croom Helm.
Silverman, K. (1992) Male Subjectivity at the Margins, New York and London: Routledge.
Stone, L. (1977) The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500–1800, London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson.
