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peeervED
OFHIETORY
DEPARTiJIENT
oFvlcToRlA
UtquensrY

Improving Man: a Responseto

Anthony Fletcher,and to the *BaseMan'Model
of Early-Modern English llistory

Patrick McEvoy-Halston
9712576

History338
Dr. Money
Dedicatedto the memory
of Dr. LawrenceStone

(thank you)
 I

John Brewer, in his article "The most polite age and the most vicious", is careful to note that although

he is discussing culture, he is not using the term in the "inclusive, all-embracing way deployed by

anthropologists" (341). Instead he "limits" his discussion of culture to the commercialized culture filling

in the void of court culture in eighteenth-centuryEngland. Howeverohe concludes that this

commerci alizedculture can be characterizedin an all-embracing way: "the seductive woman is analogous

to the culture of which she is apart. She . . . is a prostiti'te...(358). Kathleen Wilson, in her article
\
"Imperialism and the politics of identity", describesimperialidn (foreign policy), initially, as something

which was imagined in eighteenth-centuryEngland in various ways (238). But, she concludes that "[a]s

the antidote to national effeminacy, the imperial project was describedand valorized in the images of an

aggressivemasculini$r' (256). It seemsthat eighteenth-centuryEnglish historiography has a problem on

its hands. Historians seemto prefer to keep their subject multi-faceted, slippery, and thus not amenable

as a subject for social science. Yet they are coming to conclusions which cannot be characterizedas

anything other than singular and totalistic. The dangerousfemale characterizesperceptions of the

domestic "public sphere" and determinesreactionary hyper masculine conceptions of foreign policy.

What spaceis left? Community life? Nope, Laura Gowing tells us that this is all about the dangerous

female too. How about the "private" mind? Nope, Anthony Fletcher tells us that gender "shows itself

above all in the mind, in the intimacies of personal behavior and the unspoken and often unrecorded

convention of private and public life" (xix). Fletcher cuts to the chase. Eighteenth-century England was

a patriarchy. Men, being men, prefer to dominate women. But if all aestheticcomplexities of culture

have at their core this hard, brutal reality, perhaps its time for historians to incorporate the hard, brutal,

uncompromising researchof social science. And wouldn't it be funny if it turns out to be sciencewhich

legitimates studying a subject which, lets face it, if it turns out to be all about men's inhumanity to

women, after excavating its "archaeology of power" so that it doesn't happen again, deservesto be left

dead and buried.

Gender history is beginning to seemakin to deism: once you're on this track you're on your way to

total disbelief, and disenchantmentwith history. John Tosh, for example, concludes a book on

masculinities in eighteenth-centuryEngland, wondering if chronicling the linguistic, discursive changes

in gender definition i.e., gender history, is a trivial sport glossing over the fact that the male, biological,
 2

sex remains depressingly the sameover the years (Tosh would object to this characterizalion; he tries

(twice) to explain that this is not what he is suggestingwhich is instead that male gender remains

perennially the same - leaving me to suspectthat this distinction is more about a conversation Tosh is

having with himself about what possibilities are, and which ones are not, permissible for a historian to

consider than it is about real substance). Culture is often defined in various ways, but certainly history is

axiomatically about change over time, isn't it? Doesn't anthropology, sociology, social science, get all

the cards if change over time comes to seem trivial? Fletcher, too, in apparentdespair over realizing that

"fc]ivility and politeness on the one hand and sexual power on the other begin to look like two sides of a

coin" (346),begins to wonder if there isn't some fundamental male wound. Liam Hudson, a psychologist

(not a Lacanian psychologist, or languagedoctor, but a real one!), is called in to tell us about the

"universals", the "always", of male drives (339). All the nuances,possibilities, the existential glories of

History are becoming hegemonic nonsense,at worst, or an aestheticallypretty way to imagine the past, at

best. For the non-sentimentally inclined though, without his emperors' clothes, our King History,

apparently, really chronicles the journeys acrosstime of the naked ape.

It really is a Darwinian journey which Anthony Fletcher chronicles in his Gender, Sex and

Subordination in England 1500-1800. Norbert Elias, the social scientist studentsof manners, and morals

gender historians normally refer, and react to, is far too optimistic for the base tnrths that these historians

are uncovering. Elias, after all, in his account of how a libidinally driven society changed into a super-

ego managed one, believed that all that was gained and lost in this transition was at least sharedby

everyone. Fletcher offers an account of eighteenth-centuryEngland where men finally manageto

discursively manipulate their environment - gender definitions - so that women become bordered up into

a servile narow niche, leaving all the best fruits for themselves. This is the "other side of the coino'of an

account of the eighteenth-centuryEngland as the rise of a'polite and commercial people." According to

Fletcher, it is the real story.

Still, dominion has its price - its own shadow side. "By definition fFletcher tells us] a system of

ideological subordination produces continuing anxiety in those who are doing the subordinating, together

with a constant need for reiteration and for responsesto those who are contesting the system" (407;

emphasismine). (Who can argue with this? My mother, for example, has ideologically defined some
 3

plants as 'keeds" that constantly threaten to invade her garden,which is why it is, of course, by

definition, impossible for her to relax while in her garden.) But, then again,Fletcher doesn't quite mean

this, becausethe whole point of his book is that the construction of separatespheres,using an ideology of

separategenders,is effective in easing male anxieties about the dangerousfemale. He tells us that "[a]s

men's confidence grew about the ideology of gender construction, they could afford to take a more liberal

attitude than previously to women's learning and intellectual fulfillments" (397). He notes the sheer

confidence, in tone, of John Gregory's A Father's Legacy to his Daughters (1774). He credits this

confidence "undoubtedly'' (392) to a growing assuranceof women's ability to control themselves,to

control their own passions.

But it is true that Fletcher's account of men's situation before ttre miraculous (for men) development

of Lockeian empirical psychology, fits an equation of male dominance with anxiety. For awhile, at least,

women were fortunate that though they had brutish husbands,sons,and brothers, that these same

husbands,sons, and brothers were apparently rather stupid (Fletcher's suggeststhat men might have been

affectionate to their wives, but note below what he says the fundamental goal for men in early modern

England was). Give them an ideology to work with they could craft great evils - or as good as the

particular ideology permitted. But if this ideology was inadequate,men could wait, apparently for

millennium, until, like a gift from God, they were given a better ideological framework to work with.

Fletcher explains the starting point for men in early modern England involved a "need to find a more

securebasis and future for patriarchy' (401). Men were stuck with a conception of womankind that "left

them in possessionof sourcesof power which men found mysterious and threatening" (402) and of men

defined "in terms of hierarchy rather than incommensurable difference [which] gave them an

insufficiently competent means of imposing a patriarchal order rooted in nature" (402). Men were stuck

with a one-sex model of the body invented by Galen fifteen hundred years before them. They could use it

so that men possessedmore of the good humoral stuffthan did women, but becausegender was not

firmly separated,there could be no fully private and public realms, and men would always be susceptible

to women's "poisons" i.e., they could never get the woman "out of their systems." Moreover, women

might be imagined as men, perhapsas easily as by donning male clothing. And as women, they were

voraciously sexual, so for men to demonstratetheir household superiority, the basis of patriarchy, they
 4

had to sexually satisfy their women. No easy chore - leaving possibilities of feeling sexually inadequatea

very real possibility for most men. This conception, though, of the voracious woman, according to

Fletcher, is an example of what mencould make of this one sex model. He says that "the problematising

of women as themselvespowerfully sexual as well as irational was a solvent to the male senseof

responsibility for making relationships endure" (28). So while this made demonsffating household

superiority a problem, it did still serve men's purposes. But it still amounted to gender disorder. A new

model was needed. Until then, much of popular culture involved an obsessionwith scolds, witches,

being cuckolded and other clear signs of loss of manhood.

Before the two sex model was invented, men were left soothing over their felt inadequacies,and we

S u.r"* tca' should be left wondering why it took so long to come up with a better model. Once culture is defined as a
4l r'OL 6r^Q,

**, ,r-StC, patiarchy, we havemaleactorswho areconsciouslyat:f,ryE\g to oppresswomen. It shouldn'tth€n be

"x-l
WI so easyto irgine a moclellastingfor fifteen hundredyearsthat sewedmen'spurposes,but barely,-o
b.*l ',."'t,'4^ Tr.^ .',",..rr{
fubedlt^ '
so torturously. Why didn't men at somepoint get togeth€rat a "tribal council" andfigure out something u.!t-*
6pOtt*t-
^e
better? Wly on earthdid they constituteany kind of pahiarchywhich might be discursivelyfledbleTfrt F-.+
tt Si. la^tSlttl
$ tYk'*t'"<''a womenknow that they're in charge,simply because.. . andif there'sany problemlet themknow *rr,
ff]!
€t"u,$J bt
get a beating - just like how schoolyard bullies successftllyoperal€. Are thesefoolish questions?Or u W
a"^rtJt'o,*'A
I'tbf 4n
A..rJ |r.cn! ",,lrl"a are they the kind of questionswhich might makeus questionwhetherFletcherandgenderhistorianshave
alv*,ltt
b !/&"b''
the real reason n^t
missedthe real reasonsfor maleanxieties(while usefirlly chroniclingtheir omnipresence), F. f.r..t-r
P44evf$c4"
Ae',t".t'st4e men wdreso afraid of beingunmanned- creatingplays,ballads,on up to foreigD fuhel
that eighteenth-century

policy to nurse their arxieties? In offlering us the explanation that anxieties were generatedby male
l"F*E+
Lt)--*
oppression,gender historians steadfastlyrefuse to imagine it might have worked the other way around.
Yt@+*
Which way, I wonder, might have the more explanatory power? Which one could come closest to I,*'c*
^*J
actually be proven? To this I now turn, and in the process,hopefully offer us an alternative image to the P',4A\4

static, base, man: the improving man. It is a story which will eventually turn to a developmentql
A.'4 h itr'
F',^6+',t rlDJ)^"
psychologistfor insight- a psychologist(scientist?),anda form of psychology,which (immenselyt)
+f4 CnEb_.ct
ironical1ytakestheimportanceofchangeovertimemoreserious1ythansomehistoriansnowdo.+,,^W1

generatethe eighteenth-century
Did anxiety-provokingexperiences with the dangerous
obsession

female,effeminacyfears,anda needto createa socialstnrcture- patriarchy- by which to keepwomen

g avsttr u't' ta *'-6t''oa l+'"-& u "o

T'n, n* c-.* 4t-^'ett*' CB y xt*<
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 f,

hernmedin? This is not quiie the questionthat LalvrenceStoneasksin his Ii e.Fanily, Sa, and

Marriage in England t 500-1800,t/trf it follows naturallyif oneacc€ptshis aooountof the consequences

ofthe dwelopmentofwarner family environnentsthroughthis paiod. Stone,like Toslr, sortstbrough

ideologicalohangeandis left uncertainwhetherdocumentingmovementsofi<leasis the bestway to

accountfor humanbehavior. Tosh's concemis that the fluidity andmovementof ideasare a nismatch

for the apparentcontinuousorientarionof the malesex. Stone,leadingto the oppositeconclusion,

wondersif"[t]he rise ofaffect . . . is only partly a productofindividualism . . . [whioh seems]to haveits

roots also in a basicpersonalitychange"(268). Stono,believingthereto havebeeaa rise ofa personality

with a 'steepgradientaff€ct' (wamth) amonglhe upperbourgeoisieandsquiarohy(268), associates

this

ofmost cnrel sports,

with the "end for suchtlings asthe abolition ofthe slavetrade,tle sup,pression

prison refonn, andreform in the treament ofthe mentallysiclC'(237). He characterizes

these

developmentsas"guruinely moral" (238). He is ambiguousaboutwhich onecausedthe otheri.e., did

warmerfamily €nvirotrmentsg€neratemoral socialchanges,or did a nore relaxedsocial atuospher€

generatewarm€rfamily environm€nts,but we areleft with an equationwhereeither sidemight have

playedthe generativerole.

/-. a. I t ln contrast,with Fleicher,familiesplay a meeHygenerativerole ifat all; the bestthey cando is

V4rtq ^rL ,:
bravely andspiritedly resista powerfirl andsinisterenvitotrm€nt(this againis quite Darwinian;Darwin
&Ag
W ry hasthe envhonmentdo all the big things; seeBarzun 1981). Noie, for exaryle, how Fletch€(descn:bes
aa"+'{n,a&s
/4 e-L the relationshipbetweenhusbandsandwives. He says:
t4
Wlaj4^ What emergesquite cl€arly is tbat thesehusbandsandwives wereawareof rhe public
tty-.L1 td.ttl teachingsa-boj authorityandfemalesubordinatioawhich we find in a whole range
,tt <'114,4 ofdiscoursessuchashomilies andconduotbooksandwhich arc reflectedin the drama
\|'- ofthe period,in balladsandsatiricalliterature.But thisdo€snot meanthateith€rhusbands
ro414- n t'tf -,-,
or wives wereableix,yyilling simply to matchtbeir behaviorto the rulesof prescription. The
t t.^ '- Lltr4 marriagestlat havebeendiscussedherewereonly in certainlimited wayspatriarcbalin
1** ' , , practioe. In eachcasetherewas an intemal dynamicto the relationshipthat intimat€
e- Coa{q Ml24 historical sourcesallow us at leastto glimpse. The ingedients of this intemal dynamic
- werealwaysparticular,consistingofthe hopesanddesires,the stength ofwill aadthe
9l*t-glS 't emotionalinclinationsof the partnersconcelned' (172)
Mt). Fletcher seemswilling to conclude that the resistanceto patriarchal norms could be considerable. For

instance, he points out that "[c]onduct book writer gave as careful attention to the relationship of master

and servant as to that of parent and child" (2L2) but also that "there is plenty of evidence in diaries and

letters that most mothers and many fathers were deeply involved with and strongly attached to their
 gt?^4da'36 q-o'bL
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 6

children" (188). Remarkable, considering that the "biological and social role of a fertile married woman

made her life arduous" (184). But he does not allow all this goodnessin the family areal connection with

social changes. The same sort of social changethat Stone might connect with the growth of affective

individualism in the family, Fletcher maintains has more to do with patriarchal oppression. The 1624

Infanticide Act, for instance,according to Fletcher, originates from "an obsessiveconcern about the

problem of uncontrolled female sexuality among the poor" (278). According to Fletcher, it was clearly

( A'^ r-4<'f f4-r

{ -rr+

Fletcher would likely not have consideredwhether patriarchy was the consequence,not the product, of

household anxieties becausethe generative ability of his loving and warm householdsis apparently quite

limited. Once young boys were taken away from their loving mothers, and subjectedto punitive

apprenticeshipsor schools, they apparently becamethe samemen who kept patriarchy afloat. However,

if we consider household environment as a powerful generative agent of the social environment, could it

be that Stone's characterizationof the sixteenth and early-seventeenthcenturies as a period where a

"personality type with 'low gradient' affect, whose capacity for warm relationships was generally limited,

and who diffused what there was of it widely among family, kin, and neighbours" (268) predominated,

might be part of an explanation for the omnipresenceof male anxieties for the period?

Fletcher, whose thesis seemsa parallel work to Stone's, covering the sameperiod, and the same subject
--r Ly rt1,->'
matter,mustbe awareof this possibility(andmight havesomethingto do with someof tfry^ff4\arhples
(-2
he insists should be characteized as examplesof parental love), but leavesus with a sensethat this option

is in essencevery difficult to explore. Alas, intimate source material is limited. The nature of relations

between husbandsand wives, and parents and children can only be a matter of conjecture, and perhaps

should be left to common senseanyway. Common sensewould tell us that "[t]he age, like all ages,had

its child abusers" (208). As a way of getting at private master and servantrelations we could use public

records. But public records, according to Fletcher, "predictably reveal sadistswho went far beyond the

bounds of what was considered acceptableat the time" (2I4). However, common sensewould also tell us

that something is amiss when public records are used to defuseany sensethat barbaroustreatment of

servantswas the nonn, and also to prove and emphasizethe importance ofthe omnipresenceof

"moderate" violence against women in the household. Fletcher saysthat "[t]he absenceof systematic

II
I
 7

records of wife-beating would seemto suggestthat it was common and that a moderate level of violence

within marriage was seenas acceptableand not as a matter of public order" (194). But here he is not

defusing marital violence. Instead he usesthis statementto introduce a lengthy documentation of the

horrors of being a wife in this period, towards a conclusion that ["s]uch incidental evidence reminds us of

a huge untold story of the contestednessof English Patriarchy within the early modern home" (198;

emphasismine).

If we turn to anthropology to help us gain insight into aspectsof history where we might especially

wish, as Stone comments,"actually [to] be present,with notebooks, tape-recordersand czrmeras,at the

events we describe" (1987,86), we'll realize why this oft-repeatedwish might be somewhat

disingenuous. What I am suggestingis that if we like the stories we tell about a period of history we are

interested in, the absenceof evidence might help us keep these stories the way we want them to be.

Fletcher doesn't turn to anthropology, but he does refer to a number of gender historians who as a group
,b"t T
tend to dip into the anthropological well to help make their cases. With anthropology,you/irdn't need a

new generation of gender or social anthropologiststo unearth an obsessionwith dangerouswomen - it's

omnipresent. But when history takes on subjects like mannersand morals, consumption, and foreign

policy, and finds the "dangerous womar"o we are left with one more reasonto turn to anthropology - and

to anthropologists with their notebooks, tape-recorders,and camerasto investigate pretty much anything

they want to (slight to substantialexaggeration;seeTuzin 1991). As noted, even the traditional

historian's trepidation about anthropology tending "to be one of the most a*ristorical of disciplines in its

lack of interest in change over time" (Stone 1987,85-86) should now newly serve as an advertisementfor

anthropology considering, as we have explored, that some historians are developing the samehabit. And

if we look to anthropology I think a casecan begin to be made that the effort to explain the omnipresence

of male anxieties has thus far failed to explore a more likely explanation for them than we have thus far

been offered.

The anthropologist Donald Tuzin begins a paper written for the reading public of Social Science and

Medicine by stating that if you fn]ame any behavior . . . [you would] probably get agreementfrom most

anthropologists that we need to know more about it" (867). But he arguesthat what is curious about sex

is that anthropologists "seem unable to decide whether they know too little or too much about it" (867).
 8

He asks: "Facts? We have plenty of facts about sexuality, in the senseof descriptive reports, but few

data, in the senseof facts as they are valoized in a context of analysis" (867). Tuzin's complaint is the

opposite one of gender historians who offer plenty of analysisbut complain about the relative absenceof

accounts of intimate behavior. Tuzin, himself, though, does work with his ethnographic facts to build up

a theory to explain a particular sexual act: the self-administeredpenile blood letting of Ilahita males (a

practice, he explains, that is not unusual in the ethnographic world). The usual explanation offered for

this behavior is that adult males have been socialized to understandthis activity as necessary" in order to

rid their bodies of maternal and other feminine essences"(871). He notes that what could only be

understood by witnessing the behavior was the unmistakably autoerotic element in the observedbehavior.

He asked the man, and he asked himself, how the participant managed to sustain an erection during the

procedure. Were custom or social nonns sufficient to explain why the man would hack at his own glands

with a crab claw? He concludes that "unlike when the ordeal was first administered when a terrified

youth feared castration,penis-cutting has a tonic effect, largely becauseit is a reassuranceof his

masculine power to control, dominate and expel agentswhich owing to their feminine source, are

weakening and debilitating. Importantly lhe writes], this effect occurs not only becausecultural

understandingsdictate ttrat it should; by virtue of its independenterotic component the experienceverifies

and by so doing naturalizes the culturally constituted idea that penis cutting is, indeed, an effective means

for ridding the body of noxious, specifically feminine, substances"(871).

Thusfar, if Fletcher wanted to use an anthropologist to support his thesis, Tuzin might serye. If early

modern English men, stuck with a model of a one-sexbody and a correspondingpatriarchal model based

on gender hierarchy, rather than inseparability, could figure out a way to substantiate these norms with

the real felt experienceof household dominance, they too would feel pleasure. Tuzin's Ilahita may have

been somewhat more inventive, or perhapswere prepared to go to further lengths, than Fletcher's

eighteenth-centurymale men, becausethe Ilahita, too, lived with a mythological charter myth that left

patriarchy perennially vulnerable (1999, 160). Remember,Fletcher told us that early-modern English

men were stuck with a conception of womankind that "left them in possessionof sourcesof power which

men found mysterious and threatening" (402). In essence,the Ilatrita men believed in a charter myth that

credited the original discovery or inventionof paramount cult objects, like bullroarers, to women. Thus,
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 9

it was feared that should women ever find out these secrets,which were "kept secreto'within the confines

of the male initiation rite - the Tambaran,that the end of secrecywould "mean the end of women's

credulity and men's legitimacy" (159). The Ilahita were stuck within an ideological framework which

was potentially far more disastrousfor them than was true for eighteenth-centuryEnglish men. The

Ilahita, did not hurr. r to women.

Instead, the Ilahita charter myths gave the greatestpowers to women. So men feared that should women

find out these secrets- secretswhich were told by each generationof men to the next - that there would

be an "apocalyptic collapse of male authority" (159). Apparently, the Ilahita, too, could have used an

ideological reconstruction of their charter myths, becausethey were otherwise left fearing (although

immediately before hand, joyfulty anticipating - explanation to follow) a deluge. And, in fact, that's

what they got: the Tambaran did break down and Tuzin revisited his Ilahita friends to uncover the results.
trkll
Fletcher several timesp the work of Lyndal Roper and to her work Oedipus and the Devil. Roper

discusseshow discovering that "[t]he axiom that gender identity was not a biological given but a

historical creation was immensely liberating: the historian's task was to lay bare the precise historical

meaning of masculinity and femininity in the past, thus relativizingthe content of these constructs in the

present"(13). Clever gender historians could excavatethe archaeology of gender construction, and dig up

the nasty secretsthat help keep men in power in the present. Tuzin tells us though that the secretsof the

Tambaran were exposednot by the women but by Ilahita men themselves. He recounts:

[In] September 1984,the people of Ilahita experiencedan event of historic significance to

themselves. During a Sunday church service, severalmen in their forties came forward to the
platform, and by prearrangementeach in turn confessedto the women in the congregation that
the secretmen's cult - known locally and throughout this region as the Tambaran - was a lie.
To be exact, the secretwas that there was no secret. Contrary to what the women and their
foremothers had been told for generations,the spirits of the Tambaran did not mateialize
and sit with the men in their secret conclaves,did not eat the sacrificial feasts,did not sing in
voices of another world. These were merely illusions, createdby initiated men with the help
of imaginative tricks, prodigious appetites,and clever man . . . (1; emphasisin original)

He asks himself: "Why did the men do it? What would have incited them to obliterate, in the spaceof a

few moments, the soul of an ancestraltradition that encompasseda vast range of cognitions, values, and

social relationships?"(20). He speculatesthat it was possible that Christianity undermined their sacred

truths, but he is unconvinced. He asks:

twlhy did it take thirty-two years of exposureto Christian teachingsbefore they made the
final leap to faith? The most general answer is that it took a generation's worth of challenging
 10

circumstances,grudging adjustments,and spiritual decay before the Tambaran, hugely

successfulin its time but alsofraught with moral contradictions, finally becameunwelcome in
its own home. In other words, it was not only that Christianity - its tenents and promises, as
construedby the villagers - pulled Ilahita in that direction; something else, something old and
internal to the culture pushed it there. (2; emphasismine)

'T.{ambweapa'f'.
He is referring to the Ilahita Creation myth about the Cassowary-Mother - the story of

This story "foretells the death of male hegemony as an act of revenge,one to which, also prophetically,

the men fatally, avoidably, exposethemselves" (65). The men were as happy about this as Roper is about

the prospects of undermining the myths of patriarchy in the present day. "The men rid themselvesof the

contradiction that had bedeviled them since the inception of the ritual system in the last century: the

reliance on secrecy and deceit, which undermined the legitimacy of male authority and produced a sense

of moral uneaseand vulnerability among the men themselves" (65). The men expressedto Tuzin that "to

reveal the Tambaran to the women meant conquering their fear that its secretswould be discovered . . .

[which is] why, as was later describedto [him], the occasion was triumphant, festive. The act was a

catharsis,a brave, spiritual cleansing. By returning the cassowary's skin to the women . . . the men

resolved a moral dissonancethat had haunted male society from is mythic beginnings" ( 176).

Tuzintells us the later results:

With no deceptionsand secretsto hide, there is no need for masculine, conscience- soothing
considerateness.Domestic relationships are increasingly raw and unbuffered. From both
observed casesand the general impression gotten from living in Ilahita, it is clear that acts of
violence by men against women - mostly against wives, but also against mothers - have greatly
increasedin frequency with the decline and death of the Tambaran. The reason is nearly
always the same: with the Tambaran gone, wives no longer bend to their husband's will; indeed
some wives, believing men are now powerless, attempt to dominate their husbands. What they
find is that, with the Tambaran gone, husbandsresort to their fists, which in the short term hurt
far more than rhetoric does . . . Men no longer dominate women and therefore they no longer
fear them. The loss of the Tambaran has removed the sublimation channel, exposing women to
a level of domestic brutality much higher than was previously observed. Ritual menaceand
rhetorical violence have gone, replaced with the real thing. Ironically, it would appearthat the
Cassowary - Mother's final revenge,the ultimate force of the Deluge, is not the liberated
savageryof women, but the unsublimated savageryof men. (177)

It was a Burkeian horror story made real. But for Tuzin, experiencing this horrid turnabout to a people he

clearly had come to love brought about a clear realization - something he couldn't understandfully until

the Tambaran was dissolved.

Tuzin admits that "fd]uring [his] first fieldworlq problems in the mother -son relationship were

detectablebut overshadowedby the effects of ritual controls on this and all other relationships . . . [but]

by the time of [his] return the death of the Tambaran and the altered state of gender relations had yanked
 1l

theseproblems into stark visibility'' (165). He saysthat what the men could not know when the

Tambaran was being dismantled was that "while the Tambaran may have engenderedfears at one level, it

dissipated fears on another. Those fears, older and more primitive than the Tambaran, were not really

fears about women at all, but about Mother - though, of course, it was and is women who suffer because

of them" (177). He says "what is clear in retrospect is that the Tambaran - that most woman hating of

institutions - actually helped to protect the maternal relationship by displacing and diffusing much of its

negative affect" (168). He says that "becausewomen endured a free-floating resentment,which perhaps /-Ca""
?
closest to capturing the generalized senseof subordination she experiencedas woman" (172) that it is

"not surprising that the woman's firrstrated anger settled upon her sons - those other males in her life who

were not fully under the protection of the Tarrbaran" (172). "Ironically [he says] this maternal behavior

propagated its own tragedy by giving boys an experienceof women that was consistent with the grim

lessons of the Tambaran. Never mind that the boys may have grown up to be caring husbands, men who

were not always happy with what the Tambaran required of them; the morbid thoughts . . . found outlet in

the violent imagery of the Tarnbaran. It was to those tyrannies that wives responded. Like mothers

before them, wives would vent their frusffations upon their sons, and so the cycle was repeated:men

punishing mothers, in the guises of wives" (172).

Tuzin, now really seeing the abuseof sons within the household comes to conclusions he hadn't

previously about the nature of pleasurein penile self-mutilation. Earlier he had been arguing that men

took pleasure from this act becauseit made substantialthe myths concerning the dangersof female

poisons. Now, he begins to argue that the men took pleasure in the myths becausethey made substantial

real felt feelings of female domination and emasculation. Perhapsdriven by the horrors he was now

witnessing, he unapologetically asks questionswhich had been with him for some time. "Why [he asks]

did men of the Tambaran preserve the incriminating charter? If the secrets were lethal to the men's

interests,why did they not simply stop telling them, buryrng the secrets,once and for all, under six feet of

amnesia? Or, better yet, why didn't the mythmaker concoct q set of talesjustifying the men's seizure of

ritual prerogatives from the women?" (160; emphasismine). He answers,definitively, that "[t] he answer

is that the Ilahita men cleaved to these stories in order to cope with felt vulnerabilities . . . Naming or

narratiizing an existential fear is no cure for it . . . [but] [n]evertheless, named fears are less terrifying
 t2

than unnamed ones, and the ability to project thesefears as pictures, stories and ideologies is a large part

ofwhat separatesusfrom the beasts" (160-161; emphasismine). Tuzin is concluding that the myths

which gave to women fundamental powers was a reflection of felt experienceby men within the

household. Boys might resist abuse,but they experiencethe mother as all-powerful. Tuzin refers to the

larger adult turbulences as "a continuation of problems in the mother-child relationship at an . . . earlier

stage . . . before gender differentiation is clearly established;when personal identity is being formed and

the presenceof absenceof essentialtrust in primary relationships is setting the trajectory of future stages

of development" (173). Men take pleasure in getting "the woman" out of them becausetheir personal

identity is being formed at a time when their mothers have clear dominion over them. It works, but its

not enough: "the men keep telling thesestories to themselves[stories of female power, and male

emasculination]" (169; emphasisin original), demonstratingtheir chronic anxieties.

Tuzin has come to a theory to organize his facts which - whether he knows it or not - may explain

why anthropologists have left "facts . . . theoretically unassimilatedand conceptually undeveloped" (867).

FrancesDolan (a gender historian who is apparently quite trendy - she has been recommendedto me a

few times lately) cites Linda Gordon to make a point about "current fears" in gender scholarship:

"Defending women against male violence is so urgent that we fear women's loss of stafus as deserving,

political 'victims' if we acknowledge women's own aggressions." Dolan remarks that "[i]n the last

decadeor so, this reluctance, and a practical concern about diverting scarcefunds away from battered
'domestic violence,'
women, has created deep divisions between researchersand activists focusing on
'family
which is usually construed as synonymouswith wife abuse,and those who define their topic as

violence,' to include attention to women's aggressionas well as their victimization" (221). While Dolan

agrees"with those who focus on battered women that men's violence causesmore harm and is therefore a

more pressing social problem, [she] also think[s] that the reluctanceto scrutinize women's violence

obstructs the project of understandingeveryday life in the past and of improving it now" (221-222; bless

her). It is not the intention of my essayto revisit the material evidence that historians like Stonebelieve

prove growing affective relations, or, like Linda Pollock (note that Pollock turned to evidence from

sociobiology, studies of primates, and (selectively!) from anthropology to make her case(Cunnigham

l4)) or Keith Wrightson, believe disprove Stone's theory. I am simply not yet familiar enough with the
 13

material evidence to even consider doing so. However, I am hoping I am presenting my own kind of

evidence that might make those who are more familiar with the material evidence than I am consider if

answers as to the nature of parent-child relations in the past lie in further exploration beyond what we

now know, or in considering whether previous interpretations have a lot to do with what historians are

prepared to admit to themselvesconcerning its nature.

Returning to Dolan. She cites some of the sameevidence Fletcher does - Shakespeare'sTaming of the

Shrew - but to help prove that both men and women used violence in the household. Fletcher says that

the play is about how "[p]atriarchy has its price for women, a price paid in terms of certain requirements

for public behavior" (107). But Dolan points out "that Katharine's violence toward charactersother than

'shrewish'. This is, it is not invariably depicted as something

Peffuchio is not necessarily,or not ody,

she must learn not to do. For if the blow she strikes at Petnrchio allies her to the shrew tradition, some of

her other outburstsplace her in the tradition of spirited English lassesor, as Petnrchio says admiringly,

'lusty wenche[s]"' (209). She arguesthat "[t]he focus on Petruchio's methods of taming Katherine, as

well as the assumption that domestic violence is always and only enactedby husbandsagainst wives, can

obscure who hits whom and why in the play'' (208). "As Katharine learns to entreat and beseech,then, it

is not surprising that she employs physical force to command her audience's attention, dragging in Bianca

and the Widow 'as prisoners of her womanly persuasion'. The focus has shifted from overt physical

violence. . . to less injurious coercion . . . and to discursive domination ... In relation to more acceptable

targets and by means of more acceptabletactics, Katharine still dominates others" (22lt;emphasis mine).

Continuing to problematise the- sharp dichotomy between aomin# and subordinate,Dolan notes
I 6r";* h.cJ^-erz.'^?,
of womenascasualtiesin courtrecordsandaskillers in a rangeof legaland
"thatthe shalryff:presentation

literary representations- collapseswhen the focus shifts from murder to non-lethal forms of violence. So

does the sharp opposition between court records and other kinds of evidence" (205). She is correct: if

ffue, this does problematise current favoured representationsof patriarchy. For if all the ballads, plays,

etc., about powerful, dominating women, scolds, witches, and whores, can be related to real experiences

of dominating women, we should be left wondering if maintaining patriarchy necessitatedthe creation of

these stereotypes or whether real experiences of dominating women maintained patriarchy - the same

question Tuzin ended up pondering.

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 14

As mentioned, Fletcher refers to Roper's work Oedipus and the Devil several times in his text (more

than any other scholar in fact). Yet strangely, he does not do so when he discusseswitchcraft (the subtitle

of Roper's book is: witchcraft, sexuality and religion in early modern Europe). Fletcher saysthat "[w]ell

establishedpatriarchal attitudes . . . made a connection in contemporary demonological theory between

women and witchcraft predictable. The issue,as in all sexual politics, was one of power. Faced by

women who behaved in away that was suspicious and irrational , men in authority . . . jumped easily to

the conclusion that witchcraft was involved" (26). What Roper says about witchcraft is this:

[W]itchcraft accusationscentrally involved deep antagonismsbetween women, enmities so

intense that neighbours could testifu against a woman they had known for years in full
knowledge that they were sending her to a 'blood bath' as one accusedwoman cried to her
neighbours as they left the house for the chancellery. Their main motifs concern suckling,
giving birth, food and feeding; the capacitiesof parturient women's bodies and the vulnerability
of infants. This was surprising, at least to me: I had expectedto find in witchcraft a culmination
of the sexual antagonism whichl have discernedin sixteenth- and seventeenth-centuryGerman
culture. (202; emphasismine)

Roper ends up concluding that the reasonmothers accusedother women of beings witches is so "[s]he

and those around her are able to crystallize her own ambivalencetowards her infant by projecting

intolerable feelings on to the lying-in-maid" (215). She talks about the experienceof new mothers:

"[G]iving birth and caring for an infant might raise memories of her own infancy, recalling the terrifying

dependence on the maternal figure for whom she may have experienced unadmitted, intolerable feelings

of hatred as well as loveothere was another person playrng the maternal role to hand" (2LI). "She

projected the evil feelings about herself on to the 'other' woman" (2ll). Roper's account of witchcraft

leads in an entirely different direction than does Fletcher's. Indeed, Roper points out that it was not a

matter of misogyny: "after all fshe explains], it was becausethe statetook the fears and accusationsof

suffering mothers seriously that casescould be prosecuted" (217). So I am left wondering: If it is

possible for historians to look at the same material evidence (or essentially the same,Ropers' examples

are mostly about Germany though Fletcher is quite awate of this) and come to nearly opposite

conclusions concerning the nature of the dangerousfemale, how much of this history is self-serving?

Shouldn't we consider whether what gender historians like Roper and Dolan are doing is moving us

slowly, but surely, to the same conclusions about early modern England (Europe) that anthropologists

like Tuzin (there are many others, and his account of Ilahita is widely applicable throughout New Guinea

- at the very least) came to concerning the cultures they were studying. Will we eventually conclude that
 15

the reason a one-sex model existed for over a millennium is not becausemen weren't capable of

inventing something better until Locke came around, but becauseit accurately characteized what it felt to

be a man during this period? We might need our ideological frameworks to reflect the way we feel (as

Tuzin proposes). If we can allow ourselvesto imagine ideological systemsin this way, then Stone's

account of the development of affective individualism might in fact be linked to the development of a

two-sex gender model (and, unlike Stone's account, this might have been an improvement for both men

and women). Perhapsyou couldn't have a two-sex gender model until men felt less like they were full of

'man of feeling'? the private vs.

maternal poisons. And what about the development of manners?the

public distinction? Will we eventually realize that collapsing characterizationsof these developments

into forms of gender conffol, might miss the real story that they had more to do with an improvement of

relations between man and woman, between generations,that allowed for a kind of social grourth

previously impossible to imagine? Tuzin offered us an anthropologist's (by and large - he refers to the

work of psychologists) perspective of the consequencesof the maternal abuseof their sons. If we imagine

that the consequenceof being reviled as "the dangerousother" in early modern England was not

Fletchers' Uebermenschenmothers, but was instead the same as for Ilahita women, perhaps its now time

to turn to a developmental psychologist to investigate the nature of the growing child.

Tuzin refers to the importance of identity formation in the early ygars of a child's life. Stanley

Greenspanoffers an expansive look at this in his book Growth of the Mind. Before I get into this, a few

words about Greenspan. Like Tuzin, Greenspantends to be the kind of scholar that elicits comments like:

"Greenspan generously shareshis insights . . .which are brilliant and exciting. . . a clear guide to the early

stagesof emotional development". (This quotation is from Berry Brazleton, a psychologist that historians

like Linda Pollock and David Stannard have actually used to support counter arguments to the one I am

making). Something in their overall calmness(Tuzin's outburst waited until 1999) in manner, their

respect for other scholars,and perhapsbecausethey "don't take their argumentstoo far" (this book by

Greenspanwould be deemedan exception here), allows them to get away with presenting arguments

which are not politically correct and yet remain on "acceptable" reading lists. Greenspanbegins his book

by introducing us the importance of emotions for the development of the mind:

In recent years, through our research and that of others, we have found unexpected common
origins for the mind's highest capacities: intelligence, morality, and senseof self. We have
 l6

charted critical stagesin the mind's early growth, most of which occur even before our first
thoughts are registered. At each stagecertain critical experiencesare necessary. Conffary to
traditional notions, however, theseexperiencesare not cognitive but are types of subtle
emotional exchanges. In fact, emotions, not cognitive stimulation, serye as the mind's primary
architect.(l)

He continues:

Historically, emotions have been viewed in a number of ways: as outlets for extreme passion, as
physiologic reactions, as subjective statesof feeling, as interpersonalsocial cues. Our
developmental observationssuggest,however, that perhapsthe most critical role for emotions
is to create, orgarize, and orchestratemany of the mind's most important functions. In fact,
intellect, academic abilities, senseof self, consciousness,and morality have common origins in
our earliest and ongoing emotional experiences. Unlikely as the scenario may seem,the
emotions are in fact the architects of a vast array of cognitive operations throughout the lifespan.
Indeed, they make possible all creative thought. (7)

However:

Becausethe formative emotional experiencesthrough which our minds develop vary so much
from person to person, individuals differ considerably in the levels of the mind they master and
maintain. Some have difficulty with forming relationships and modulating feelings and
behavior. Some master only the mind's early levels. They interact and communicate
predominantly though behavior (hitting when angry, grabbing when lusty, stealing when
greedy). Others progressto using symbols, including ideas and words, to communicate their
wishes, feelings, or intentions but still tend to function in polarized, rigid ways. Others who
progress further are capable of reflecting on feelings, dealing with gray-area ambiguities,
collaborating and negotiating with their own and other's wishes, and formulating values and
ideals. Also . . .the depth and breadth of each individual's mental development varies. The inner
world of some people encompassesmay of the emotional themes of life - closeness,
dependency,sexual pleasure,assertiveness,anger,passion, empathy,jealousy, competition.
Others experienceonly a shallow, repetitive drama. (164)

Greenspantells us that "the child can develop a rich inner life only if she has experiencesfrom which she

can derive and refine inner images" (8a) This is intuitively understoodby historians when it comes to,

say, the experiencesof people encounteringthe "enriched" environment of London in early modern

England (when they are not talking about the anxieties of the London environment that is). But according

to Greenspan, although later experiences are important, the most fundamental and determining

experiences (or lack thereof) occur in early childhood with interactions (or lack thereof) between

children and their mothers (within the household). Painful experiencecan polarize patterns. "Projecting

one's own inner desires on others can result in a fixed attitude about how the world operates,one that can

become self-fulfilling. Regarding other people with suspicion, for example, may lead them to act angrily,

which only confirms the individual in believing they are not to be trusted. Fixed beliefs derive from rigid

personal needsthat do not allow an empathic grasp of the complexities of other people's lives" (L22)

Further, if the interactions between the mother and child are overly hostile "emotions fail to cohere into
 l7

comprehensiblepatterns. Intense storms of feeling rage acrossthe mind, whipping up huge waves of

affect that capsize andwreck thought, logic, and the senseof reality''(190). 2
i' / o alaQ.nb E"^6- ua'44
Assuming you had a generation raised without the affective, interactional involvemeo(t t^nan says

characterizesthe adult who reacts to situations impulsively, who attributes hostile intentions in

ambiguous situations, and who tend to think in a stereofypedpolarized ways, would they be at all similar

to the generationsconstituting eady modern England? John Beattie has argued that "violence was part of

everyday life" (37). Stone concludesthat "[dt already seemsclear. . .that medieval English society was

twice as violence-prone as early modern English society, and early modem English society at least five

times as violence-prone as nineteenth-centuryEnglish society" (1987,310). The normal explanation for

this change in the level of violence (Beattie notes the decreasein violence too) is that a commercial

society could not function without sellrestraint. Robert Shoemakertells us that in London, "[i]n a

rapidly, growing metropolis, filled with immigrants and permeatedby new forms of wealth, men of all

social classesneedednew ways of establishing and defending their honour" (1999, 138). So new

prescriptive codes emphasizing manners(self-restraint) decreasedphysical violence (though Shoemaker

tell us it increasedthe use of public insults by men). In Shoemaker'sarticle on "The Decline of Public

Insult in London'he arguesagainst a top down imposition of this civilizing process. He saysthat

'civilizing process' as the developing state and

"[w]hereas Elias identified the key agentsof the

interactions between the ruling and upper-middle classes,the changes[he documents] were for the most

part unrelated to the state. . ." (130; unlike, say, Paul Langford 1999). My complaint with historians who

are concernedto tell us not to look at "pressuresfrom above" is that they do not themselvesget to the

"boffom" of the maffer. If Greenspanis right, and if developmentalpsychology is a valid discipline, then

we must stop imagining the mind as tabula rasa, so that it isn't common sensethat if prescriptive codes

start (and if these norlns weren't resistedby "the oppressed")prescribing self-restraint that that itself

would inculcate it.

Greenspan is arguing that self-restraint has more to do with emotional development and that conflict

resolution has to do with self-restaint and empathy:

Conflict resolution, however, is not a purely cognitive enterpriseor a rational weighing of

options. It involves other capacities as well: the ability to empathize and a moral sensibility,
both of which stem from mastery of the different levels of emotional development. In many
ways, a person's ability to deal with conflict is a natural extension of her ethical or moral
 18

awareness. Successfuloonflict resolution requires the ability to put yourself in another's shoes,
to acknowledge and empathically experiencethe other's objectives. It's difficult to give up any
of your own goals if you can't intuitively understandthe reasonthe other person feels so
strongly about his own" (234).

In other words, manners really are related to morals, and that both are not part of a hegemonic ideological

system but signs of real personal, and thus also societal, growth. The conventional explanation for the

development of sympathy (Adam Smith) is related to the new needsof a commercial society, or even

more to new conceptions of the body focusing on "nerves". We are often offered little discussion

whether or not this was related to a real growth in human sympathy and sympathies.

For example, Paul Langford tells us that in the eighteenth-century,characterwas coming to be

associatedwith "a sffonger senseof the complexity of human psychology, of the range of choices

available, unconsciously as much as consciously. With this went a still clearer notion of the richness of

human experience. Personality becameless, not more, explicable and harder to judge definitively, more

prone to delicate and uncertain distinctions" (294) This resemblesalmost exactly how Greenspan

characterized anemotionally well-developed person. But Langford is documenting a new charactertype

of the English gentleman - who had read The Man of Feeling - and so he says: "[w]hat real effect it had

on ordinary behavior it is impossible to estimate. Perhapsit was a self-delusion" (295). But Langford

does recognize the growth an entirely new social category (credits it to needsof the state), and for

Greenspan,and I hope for us, this itself a clue as the nature of its origins.

Greenspan remarks that "[i]n both theory and practice we have tended to underemphasize the

generative aspectof intelligence, the oreation of intentions and ideas, instead focusing more on how

intentions and ideas are put into a frame of reference" (127) He speculatesthat "perhaps we have paid

less attention to the generative aspectsof intelligence becausewe haven't understood the processes

involved in their production. Becauseideas emergefrom affects and intentions, it is quite possible that

the dichotomy between reason and emotion is partly responsiblefor our oversight" (127). I think that this

is an example of Greenspan'sgenerosity. My experiencehas been that there has always been a

preference for the Hobbesian man in history and the social sciences- or the Darwinian (Darwin does

discuss man's development of morality but characterizesman's ability to replicate or rival the creative

processesof nature as "pathetic" (1859). The overall model of ideological growth we normally

encounter, as I have already mentioned, is Darwinian. The biologist Brian Goodwin complains about the
 t9

greatesterror of Darwinismandneo-Darwinism,"which is to describebiologicalprocessat the

not of
organismsbeingseenasthe manifestations
organismiclevel in termsof purecontingencies,

but solelyin termsof contingentevolutionaryhistories"(57).

rationalordertogetherwith contingencies,

Neo-Darwinism,he says,"doesnot havea theoryof organismsasself-organizingentities"(54) He

expandsinto an argumentof the potentialability of the mind to internalizetheenvironmentaspart of a

processof creatingalternativesto their currentenvironment.This potential,asGreenspan

hasexplained,

dependson thenatureof early child -parentrelations.Without an affectiverelationshipwith the mother,

andGoodwin,offer
life asa "shallow,repetitivedrama"(164).Together,Greenspan
the child experiences

of thepowerof ideologicalframeworksto stralffjacket the creationof

challengesto easyassumptions

new paradigms. Instead, the unusual staying power of an ideology requires explanation.

But if we follow my line of argument, the new two-sex gender model, and the creation of private

(female) and public spheres(male) should be an improvement over the one-sexmodel - and not for the

reasonsFletcher offers. Even Stonebelieves this to have been a disaster. I'm going to let Anne Mellor

make this case for me. Mellor arzues:

'invading' and 'colonizing' the private sphere,as John

Rather than seeing the public sphere
Brewer does, I seethe values of the private sphereassociatedprimarily with women-moral
virtue and an ethic of care - infiltrating and finally dominating the discursive public sphere
during the Romantic era. As a result of women's published writing in this period, generationsof
children were taught to seethe role of the nation differently. Women writers were primarily
responsible for insisting that the conduct of the British govemment must be moral - that political
leaders should demonstrate the same Christian virtues that mothers and daughters - and fathers
and sons - were expectedto practice at home. It was this transformation in public opinion, in the
political culture of Britain, that made the financial excessesand sexual promiscuity of George
IV increasingly less acceptableto his subjectsand ensuredthat no future monarch of England
during the nineteenth or twentieth century would be permitted to indulge in such fiscal and
moral irregularities. ( 1L-t2)

Mellor, agreeing with Linda Colley, arguesthat "women writers of the Romantic era in Britain

participated fully in the public sphereas Habermasdefined it. Their interventions - through the agency of

the discursive public sphere- thus had political and economic consequencesso far reaching that they call

into question the prevailing scholarly assumptionthat women did not participate in the public sphereor

that a locatable dividing line between the private and public sphere,existed in England between 1780 and

1830" (142).Importantly, for our pu{poses,shepoints out that:

A striking visual confirmation of their successin redefining the image of the ideal British
woman occurs in a design by Lord George Murray that was widely circulated n 1792 by the
loyalist Association for the Preservationof Liberty and Property against Republicans and
 20

Levellers. Etched by Thomas Rowlandson, The Contrast/(792/Which Is Best visually represents

two opposing modes of feminized national identity or governance: England's Britannia versus
France's Marianne . . .ffigure l] "French Liberty''is portrayed as an Amazonian harridan with
Medusa-like, snaky hair, carrying a sword and triumphantly brandishing on her pitchfork the
head of the decapitatedmale corpse beneathher foot. Another hanged gentleman swings from
the lamppost behind her,emphasizing that her savagerevolutionary fury is directed especially
against males . . . In contrast, "British Liberty," or Britannia, appearsholding the scalesof
Justice in one hand, and the Magna Carta in the other. Modestly dressed,wearing the helmet of
Athena, the Union Jack engravedon the shield that forms the side of her chair, with the British
lion sleeping beside her, Britannia is an icon of prosperouspeace and happiness,guarded by the
British man-of-war before her. Most notable, however, is the fact that Britannia holds the
traditional staffand Phrygian cap of Liberfy. This new Britannia, even as she forswears French
license and violence and instead promotes the domestic virtues listed below her - "Religion,
Morality, Loyalty, Obedienceto the Laws, Independance,Personal Security, Justice,
Inheritance, Protection, Property, Industry, National Prosperity, Happiness" - nonetheless
embracesthat "Independance" or'Temale revolution in manners" explicitly advocatedby Mary
Wollstonecraft in 1792.(143-144)

If Britannia is, as Mellor argues,the mother of the nation, Britannia's porfayal as clearly female does not

seemto limit her importance and power. This is what Fletcher has argued should have happened. If we

compare this Britannia with the Armada portrait of Elizabeth, who, Fletcher tells us, is aligned "with the

armed warrior maidens of the psychomachia" (80) and thus, he says, is partly male, we might wonder if

we are seeing the results of growing warmth between children and their mothers over this time. The war-

like powerful "mother" ELizabethfransforming into a softer - though still strong - mother Britannia.

Consider: Why exactly was Marianne depicted as an Amazon? was she partly male? wasn't this sort of

depiction related to a one sex gender model which had by then been replaced?Or do these images, like all

public images and portrayals of women acrosstime, reflect at a cultural level the nature of the experience

of mothers within the household? Women could still be imagined as Amazon-like, even if the French

Marianne and not the English Britannia, in spite of a two-sex model, perhapsbecausemany men had

grown up with experiencesof a terri$ring mother within the household. Yet, to at least imagine a softer,

though still authoritative image of Britannia,may have representeda kind of growth in the imaginative

acceptanceof the portrayal of women. She could be sffong and yet not be warrior-like, or demonic. I am

not suggestingthat there was a complete turnaround, but perhaps,if we do not limit too closely the kind

of public portrayals of women we might think would characterize female empowennent, hidden in late-

eighteenth century images of women might be signs of a growing toleration of the strong woman as

something other than a terrorizing creature that men neededto tame. We might also remind ourselves

that although gender borders may not be a sign of a mature society they well have been an improvement
 2l

over what existed previously. (And consider Tuzin's account of the collapse of borders in Ilahita society .

..).

Consider, too, according to Shoemaker,from "an examination of conduct books . . . and popular

literature shows, for example, that a key aspectof contemporarybeliefs about defamation, the cultural

stereotlpe that women were prone to scolding, lost much of its power in the eighteenth-century. In these

books complaints that women were naturally loquacious and loose with their tongues virtually disappear

after the middle of the eighteenth-century''(119)Shoemakerbelieves that this was a result of the waning

of humoral psychology. Could it insteadbe becausechildren were growing up with less scolding from

their mothers? - a conclusion we might come to assumingthe ise of developmentalpsychology in

history. Fletcher concludes that the end of the eighteenth-centurydid seea reduction in male anxieties. I

agree - it seemsclear from all the material evidence that he and others provide that (some?many?)boys

were experiencing less anxiety provoking, wanner relationships with their mothers, so there was less

reason to feel anxious. (I am, in part, being playful here - I am not maintaining that the nature of city life,

rhythms of commerbe or social changes,hadnothing to do with the experienceof anxiety). Wanner

relations might have made women's greater involvement in the public spherepossible, and it would

certainly be a pre-requisite for Mellor's thesis of women setting the tone of public life (even foreign

policy - she explains that the "concept of the mother of the nation [was] also used to justiff Britain's

colonial imperialism (144)") to be correct. This influence would otherwise, invariably, be construed (and

felt) as poisonous (Wilson demonsffatesthe prevalenceof "poison" imagery or feminized images of

comrption (1998, 223) and hyper-masculine"patriot" imagery but up until 1785 - a careful look at the

nature of changes in this sort of imagery throughout this period and thereafter would seem warranted (my

next step?)).

I have been trying to show that the eighteenth-century may have been the story of the improving man,

rather than part of a continuing story of the base man. Stone once wondered if social psychology might

one-day capture the interests of modish historians in the way anthropology currently had then done

(1987). I would like to make the casefor developmentalpsychology instead. Stone's concern over social

sciencewas that it tended to be reductive and static. I would argue that though much of the history

gender historians offer is a pleasureto read (surprised?),it is becausemany of them are extremely
 22

nuanceduriters. But they are collapsingthe nrumcesof history into a singularparadigmof patriarchal

hegemony,despiteits manyvariations. This paradigmoffers changesin discursivedefinitionsof gender,

say,but along with an (essentially)ulshanging accountof men'spredatorytendencies. Developmental

psychologyanddevelopmentalpsychologistsareaxiomaticallyattachedto the of changeover

TO:*te
time, andto the importance(andpossibiliry)of the particularsof experiencein affectingthe direction of

is all abouta celebrationof the potentialability of all

this change. Moreover,developmentalpsychology

peopleto direct and shapetheir future,their world, to becomecreative,complex,multi-facetedand

"goot'- exactlythe qualitiesthat we shouldhopedefinefunre historiansaswell asfuture citizens. I

would suggestthat psychologistslike Greenspan,with his attentive,extensive,ffid patientobservationsof

his subjectfrom which he intuits remarkableinsightsinto why peopleare asthey are,and do what they

do, shouldserveasa model of what a historianshouldaskof her/himselfin regardsto the studyof herlhis

topic of interest.Lets openupthe questions.. .

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