Book description:
"... most would assume that masculinity is the stuff of politics, commerce, or hard physical labor. But Thomas Foster turns this conventional portrait on its head. Vividly using court records, newspapers, sermons, and private papers from Massachusetts, he shows that sex—understood as a mix of behaviors, desires, and identities associated with eroticism—was a crucial component of the colonial understanding of the qualities considered befitting for a man.
Sex and the Eighteenth-Century Man begins by examining how men, as heads of households, ultimately held responsibility for sex within marriage and the sexual behaviors of dependents and household members.
Starkly challenging current views, the book details early understandings of sexual orientation and a surprising number of stereotypes until now believed to originate a century later, including those of the black rapist and the unmanly sodomite—figures that underscore norms of white male heterosexuality.
Editorial review:
This compelling study of 18th-century male gender mores and sexuality is filled with engrossing historical details, demonstrating that 18th-century American ideas about masculinity were complexly tied to religion, economics and the body. For example, a 1746 newspaper article proposed a tax on single people, since they "promise no help to the future generation"; American colonists understood male effeminacy to be as much a sign of wasteful consumption as sexual deviance;
Amazon.com
"In this thoroughly researched and well-crafted book, Tom Foster shows convincingly that American notions of sexuality and manliness have long been linked in complex ways. He has uncovered a history that we need to know—a history that exposes the roots of many contemporary attitudes toward masculinity."—Mary Beth Norton, author of Founding Mothers & Fathers: Gendered Power and the Forming of American Society
"Thomas Foster's intriguing book reveals what sex meant to eighteenth-century men. He argues persuasively that all matters concerning sexuality, including premarital fornication, marital sex, infidelity, same-sex intimacy, desire, impotency, sexual violence, and interracial sex, were linked to ideals of masculinity. Sex and the Eighteenth-Century Man shows impressive range."—Elizabeth Reis, author of Damned Women: Sinners and Witches in Puritan New England
Oxford Journal of American History
- Lisa Wilson
Connecticut College New London, Connecticut
