The Crisis of American Masculinity in James Herne’s Margaret Fleming (1890)
Abstract
Hailed as the first modern American play, James A. Herne’s Margaret Fleming reflected the theatrical realism depicting the serious and realistic conditions of the modern individual toward the end of the nineteenth century. Touching on core issues such as sexual infidelity in Victorian familial settings, morality, and devotion, Herne’s play was initially praised by scholars for featuring a subversive feminist ending. The critical literature around the play focused thus on the appeal of the New Woman while disregarding Herne’s naturalism in depicting a masculinity in crisis. This article argues that the theme of emasculation targeting the white American men in the Gilded Age is a theme that is implicitly interwoven through the portrayal of immigrant characters, emasculating concerns in relation to the feminization of American culture, failure to live up to the ideals of self-made man, and protestant work ethic that is considered to trap the male in an iron cage.
Keywords
Modern American drama, Margaret Fleming, James Herne, masculinity and the Gilded Age, New Woman
References
- Bucks, Dorothy S., and Arthur H. Nethercot. “Ibsen and Herne’s Margaret Fleming: A Study of the Early Ibsen Movement in America.” American Literature, vol. 17, no. 4, Duke UP, 1946, pp. 311-33, https://doi.org/10.2307/2920954.
- Butsch, Richard. “Bowery B’hoys and Matinee Ladies: The Re- Gendering of Nineteenth-Century American Theater Audiences.” American Quarterly, vol. 46, no. 3, 1994, pp. 374-405. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2713270.
- Connell, Raewyn. The Men and The Boys. Allen & Unwin, 2003.
- Dew, Thomas Roderick. “Dissertation on the Characteristic Differences between the Sexes, and on the Position and Influence of Woman in Society, No. III.” Southern Literary Messenger, vol. 1, no. 12, 1835, pp. 672-691, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/ moajrnl//676/676/657?node=acf2679.0001.012:14&view=text.
- Douglas, Ann. The Feminization of American Culture. Alfred A. Knopf, 1977.
- DuBois, Ellen and Lynn Dumenil. Through Women’s Eyes: An American History with Documents. Bedford, 2016.
- Foertsch, Jacqueline. American Drama: In Dialogue 1714-Present. Palgrave, 2017.
- Griffiths, David L. James A. Herne’s Margaret Fleming and the Emergence of Dramatic Realism in the American Theatre. 1975. Michigan State University, MA Thesis. https://d.lib.msu.edu/ etd/7794.
- Herne, James. “Margaret Fleming.” Representative American Plays From 1797 To the Present Day, edited by Arthur Hobson Quinn, Appleton, 1957, pp. 230-284.
- Hewitt, Barnard. “‘Margaret Fleming’ in Chickering Hall: The First Little Theatre in America?” Theatre Journal, vol. 34, no. 2, Johns Hopkins UP, 1982, pp. 165-71, https://doi.org/10.2307/3207447.