History 326 Readings Wiki

You've loaded an old revision of the document! If you save it, you will create a new version with this data.

====== Gentlemen and Soldiers ======

This article overall made me consider the nature of manhood and gender in general, when related to using it to determine power, relies on clear exclusion. It is not enough to simply determine what it is to be a man, but the opposite must be clearly seen as well. This could be seen as simply being a matter of if there is no-one to exert power over, do you actually have any? (Hannah Covin)

===== Military Manhood =====

The descriptions of military life, and the changes that took place in relation to manhood stood out as a clear example of the way that manhood is ever changing and also related to various other factors. Factors such as social status. The article describes well to do men using the military as a way of maintaining manhood, whereas for lower class men the military was a way of obtaining manhood. This shows not only that there is a class related idea of manhood where your class decides where you start on the manhood scale, but also how ideas of what made a man a man changed between those classes. (Hannah Covin)

In Jamestown, more men ultimately chose to follow John Rolfe's way of planting tobacco and gaining profit in order to gain manhood. However, Gates and Dale's idea of obedience making a masculine solider shows remarkable similarities to modern military code which similarly emphasizes obedience to superiors. Additionally, this way of gaining masculinity in a martial setting contrasts earlier settlers' views of strength and ability to munity as true examples of masculinity. (Henry Prior)

In the mid-16th century, economic upheaval in England prompted changes in ways of "attaining" manhood that fed back into speeding up the societal changes. Feudal power structures provided a clear path to manhood for noble and villein. However, with the breakdown of feudalism, men needed to find new ways to attain manhood for themselves, either through the creation of their own household, or through military service. As men increasingly traveled off of the feudal properties of their birth in search of masculine independence, the feudal system broke down even faster. (Nick Thodal)
===== Manhood in Jamestown =====

In comparison to the puritans' ideas of masculinity the ideas of masculinity that the James Town settlers possessed was more based in the masculine ideals of the English military. Men were expected to be strong and not express emotion. Unlike the puritans, military men often found masculinity based in agriculture and domesticity as boring compared to the pillaging and conquest which military men's masculinity was based in. (Henry Prior)

Upon settling Jameston, issues began to rise when a gender imbalance became apparent to Sir Edwin Sandys. He came to the conclusion that there are too many men present and results in violence, instability, and hostility. Their solution of integrating women into this environment is interesting because the colonial men never looked introspectively to solve issues, but instead enlisted women as gendered beings to soften the violence and hostility. (Why not bring over women and children initially?). This addition paved the way for racism, civilian patriarchal rule, and gender/power constructions. This is where Jamestown shifted from being a military installation to a civil installation. The idea of manhood has shifted many times up to this point, causing men to not only struggle with proving their masculinity (to each other) through means of power, money, land, etc while attempting to serve purpose to and provide for their household. (Reiley Gibson)

Manhood in Jamestown was defined by survival, labor, and the ability to maintain authority in an unstable colonial environment. Traditional English ideals of gentlemanly status often clashed with the realities of starvation, disease, and forced work. These conditions reshaped masculinity by prioritizing physical endurance and adaptability over inherited rank, revealing tensions between social ideals and colonial necessity.--Caitlyn Edwards

Edit summary

Note: By editing this page you agree to license your content under the following license: CC Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International