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Cult of Domesticity and Middle-Class Davy Crockett

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Cult of Domesticity and Middle-Class Davy Crockett 120 CROCKETT, DAVY Smith -Rosenberg, Carol!. Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in passions at a time when the market revolution, urbanization, Victorian America. New Yo rk: Knopf, 1985. westward migration, and partisan politics removed tradi­ tional communal restraints on male behavior. Through the FURTHER READING nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the cult of domes­ David, William C. Three Roads to the Alamo: The Lives and Fortunes ticity provided a powerful conceptual rationale fo r organiz­ of David Crockett, James Bowie, and William Barrett Davis. New ing (and reorganizing) social relations. Yo rk: HarperCollins, 1998. Derr, Mark. The Frontiersman: The Real Life and Many Legends of The Cult of Domesticity and Middle-Class Davy Crockett. New Yo rk: William Morrow, 1993. Manhood in the Nineteenth Century Lofaro, Michael A., ed. Davy Crockett: The Man, the Legend, the Between the 1780s and the 1840s, the United States devel­ Legacy, 1786-1986. Knoxville: University of Te nnessee Press, oped from a preindustrial society comprised of small com­ 1985. munities to a more urban and industrialized society. This transformation created a middle class that occupied a dis­ SELECTED WRITINGS tinct social and cultural stratum in U.S. society, and new Crockett, Davy. A Na rrative of the Life of David Crockett of the State models of masculinity helped to define this new class. To of Te nnessee, with Thomas Chilton. Philadelphia: Carey and Hart, respond to the competitive pressures and opportunities of an 1834. Reprinted as Davy Crockett's Own Story. Bedford, Mass.: expanding domestic market, middle-class men relocated Applewood, 1993. their businesses from their households into separate offices ---. Col. Crockett's Exploits and Adventures in Te xas, Written by away from the home. This fu nctional separation of work and Himself (Attributed to Richard Penn Smith). New York: production from the home environment prompted middle­ Graham, 1848. class men and women to redefine the domestic sphere as a ---. Life and Adventures of Colonel David Crockett of West counterpoint to a competitive, and often vicariolls, market­ Te nnessee (Attributed to Matthew St. Clair Clarke). New Yo rk: G. place, making the home a private refuge from the hustle and Munro, 1882. Reprinted as Sketches and Eccentricities of Colonel bustle of public life. This separation also prompted the con­ David Crockett of West Te nnessee. North Stratford, N.H.: Ayer, struction of new definitions of manhood and womanhood 1975. suitable to the emerging social and economic order. The ideology of domesticity defined men as naturally RELATED ENTRIES competitive and aggressive providers-traits appropriate to a Boone, Daniel; Boyhood; Hunting; Individualism; Jackson, Andrew; public world of expanding commercial capitalism and to Leatherstocking Tales; Politics; Property; Western Frontier their responsibilities as breadwinners-while it defined -Elizabeth Abele women as naturally suited to home life through their incli­ nation to compassion and piety. According to the cult of domesticity, males would be morally strengthened by women CULT OF DOMESTICITY in the private sphere of the home, where they would be influ­ enced by Christian piety, moral resolve, and such sentimen­ The "cult of domesticity" was fi rst explored as a historical tal values as sincerity, candor, and faithfulness. While social phenomenon in antebellum U.S. society by Barbara Welter, change encouraged men to be more assertive and pursue who wrote in 1966 of a "cult of true womanhood," though their individual self-interest, Victorian Americans, con­ the phrase itself was coined by the historian Aileen Kraditor cerned that such characteristics threatened social cohesion, in 1968. Part of a broader nineteenth-century northern mid­ envisioned the ideal man as a Christian gentleman who dle-class ideology of "separate spheres," the cult of domestic­ abstained from excess in all walks of life while fulfilling his ity identified womanhood with the private or domestic obligations as a breadwinner and a citizen. sphere of the home and manhood with the public sphere of The cult of domesticity expressed middle-class Americans' economic competition and politics. While the cult of domes­ discomfort with the kinds of social relations fostered by mar­ ticity primarily concerned a definition of femininity, defin­ ket capitalism. The insistence on the separation of the private, ing the home as a space governed by women's sentimental, or domestic, sphere from the public sphere was intended to moral and spiritual influence, this ideology also contributed prevent the intrusion of market fo rces into the home and the to definitions of manliness and sought to control male commodification of personal relations. Yet by assigning men CULT OF DOMESTICITY 121 exclusive purview of the public realm and defining them as Domesticity and Class in the Nineteenth Century ' naturally inclined to competition and aggression, it legiti­ The cult of domesticity defined an emergent middle-class mated an amoral and acquisitive male individualism. The cult manhood by contrasting middle-class men not only with mid­ of domesticity thus used diametrically opposed definitions of dle-class women, but also with working-class men. Like mid­ masculinity and femininity to create a coherent middle-class dle-class men, working-class men increasingly had to seek value system that embraced the apparently conflicting forces work outside their homes. However, because working-class of competitive capitalism and moral behavior. men were often unable to earn sufficientincome to allow them While middle-class men found in the cult of domesticity to be their families' sole breadwinners, their households a basis fo r a marketplace model of manhood and their remained sites of income-generating work as their wives and monopolization of economic and political power, many of children labored to supplement working-class men's earnings, them also used it to construct a model of middle-class man­ especially during times of unemployment. The notion of the hood that emphasized domestic attachment and the pleasures home as a moral counterpoint to the amoral public sphere, as of private life. Such men tended to resent, rather than cele­ a feminine arena where masculinity was spiritually fortified, brate, the separation between their public and private lives. was therefore a signifier of middle-class status unavailable to For example, the southern lawyer and U.S. attorney general many working-class men. William Wirt and his wife Elizabeth were separated by his At the same time, however, many working-class men used position fo r most of their marriage. Wirt enjoyed his public the idea of domesticity as a gauge against which to measure career, but lamented his separation from his family and from their own manhood and to define their class-based agendas. the joys and duties of domestic life. Regarding the domestic sphere as integral to their manliness, Men like Wirt perceived domestic life and its affectionate, they argued that the higher wages and shorter hours they sentimental relations as central to male life and identity. sought would allow them to become breadwinners responsible Similarly, several male authors between 1820 and 1860 cher­ for nonworking spouses and children, and thus achieve greater ished men's capacity for domestic life. In novels such as domestic involvement. Nathaniel Beverly Tuckds George Balcombe (1836) or James Fenimore Cooper's Wy andotte (1837), the domestic sphere fig­ The Tw entieth Century: Domesticity Challenged ured as a source of happiness and true fulfillment for both and Affirmed women and men. In these and many other works of fiction, Through the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth male characters actively desired marital bliss, domestic life, century, the cult of domesticity and the ideology of separate and the morally and spiritually elevating influence of a wife as spheres provided an influential matrix fo r ordering social life, indispensable to male wholeness. defininggender roles, and conceptualizing middle-class man­ In the second half of the nineteenth century, middle­ hood. However, with the increasing presence of women in class men became more ambivalent toward domesticity. On public life, politics, and the workplace during the twentieth the one hand, they developed an ideal of "masculine domes­ century, these ideologies began to appear antiquated, losing ticity"; that is, they sought to cultivate the domestic compo­ their former cultural power in ordering U.S. gender relations. nents of masculine identity and to masculinize a domestic Yet many Americans continued to retain nostalgic attachment sphere that had become increasingly mother-centered after to notions of domesticity and its conceptualization of man­ the market revolution began removing male labor from the hood, particularly in response to perceived threats to the home. On the other hand, middle-class men, increasingly American way of life. concerned that female domestic influence left them overciv­ For example, the Great Depression of the 1930s prompted ilized, excessively genteel, or even effeminate, often rejected calls to give men priority in hiring as a way to stabilize domes­ domesticity in favor of ideals of "passionate manhood" and tic life amid the crisis. Similarly, Cold War anxieties of the a "strenuous life" that emphasized duty, obligation, military 1950s sparked a defense of traditional patriarchal domesticity valor, physical vigor and exercise, struggle
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