Jessica Ferguson
Andrew Strombeck
ENG 420
20 January 2009
Real Men Run Away?
In “Born to Run,” Michael Kimmel outlines the mid-nineteenth century American man’s
struggle to define, and prove his masculinity. Kimmel explains how economic competition, the
removal of men from the domestic sphere, and the belief that facing physical hardship and
avoiding civilized comforts were necessary to preserve masculinity led to a social phenomenon
in which large numbers of American men simply left their established lives behind for the lure of
adventure. He provides a historical background for the concept of the “Self-Made Man,” and
explains how the rise of a capitalist society and the separation of the male and female worlds led
to manhood being primarily defined by its rejection of women and the ‘soft’ luxuries of
civilization. Kimmel explains how these factors led men to leave the cities for the West, and later
the Civil War, in an effort to escape the emasculating tendencies of city life. He asserts that the
Union victory in the war not only feminized the Southern man, but solidified the role of financial
success in America’s definition of manhood. He closes his article by noting that by the end of the
war, men could no longer turn to escapism to define their masculinity.
The “Self-Made Man” was the popular stereotype of masculinity at the turn of the
nineteenth century. Democracy meant that few Americans were born into their social status, and
everyone was in competition with one another for economic (and therefore social) success. A
“Self-made Man” not only created his own fortune, but must also be in control of physical urges
which would compromise his potential success. The rhetoric of self control was both preached
and published in the early 1800’s. Advice manuals for young men advocated not only abstaining
from alcohol, but also railed against the physical and moral damage of masturbation. Kimmel
notes that in the opinion of mid-nineteenth century doctors, “the willful sexual control of a body
was the ultimate test of mind over matter” (Kimmel, 31.) Health advocates also encouraged men
to avoid eating meat and consuming alcohol, and encouraged men to seek out strenuous exercise.
Men were advised to sleep on hard wooden beds, lest a soft, luxurious bed compromise their
physical and moral strength. Men were under tremendous social pressure during this time period
to be in constant control of themselves. However, the rise of capitalism pushed more men into
the marketplace, where fears of economic failure and the creation of homosocial spheres for men
and women contributed to unprecedented alcohol consumption by American men. Kimmel notes
that 1830 marked the highest per capita alcohol consumption America has ever seen. Christian
temperance movements, made up almost entirely by women, began to spring up all over the East
in an effort to curb “’the great American whiskey binge’” (Kimmel, 34.) As temperance
movements gained popularity, women assumed the role of “moral restraint,” which led to the
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idea that part of manhood meant rejecting the domesticating attempts of mothers or wives.
Kimmel writes that a son “was raised to shed his familial dependence like a snake sheds its skin”
(Kimmel, 36).
The industrialization of the workplace moved men into the burgeoning cities, where the
rise of capitalism was creating a new work environment for the average American man. The
middle class man found himself in the uncertain marketplace with many competitors. Kimmel
notes that “although industrialization pushed more and more men together in the workplace, it
also increased the distance they each felt from one another” (Kimmel, 38.) This sense of
competition among men led to the end of physical intimacy between men because “such
tenderness and intimacy were tainted by fears of dependency” (Kimmel, 38.) It was not long
before this fear morphed into homophobia. Men turned to their wives for the emotional support it
was no longer acceptable to find amongst other men, and found that their absence from their
homes had left those changed, too.
Kimmel quotes historian Ruth Schwartz Cowen: “Virtually all the stereotypically male
household occupations were eliminated by technological and economic innovations” (Kimmel,
36.) This, coupled with careers that now removed the man from the home for most of the waking
day, resulted in the socialization of the domestic realm as one that was entirely feminine.
Kimmel writes that “the workplace became harder, the home softer” (Kimmel, 36.) Sex roles
were rigidly defined which led to an image of the ideal American family which has survived in
present day society: “the Breadwinner Father and Homemaker Mother and children who
remained under their mother’s immediate charge” (Kimmel, 40.) These distinctly separate
worlds of men and women led to men being “increasingly exiled from the home, unable to return
without fear of feminization” (Kimmel, 39.) If the workplace was emasculating because it was
“humiliating,” and the home was emasculating because it was “soft,” where could a midnineteenth century man feel like a man?
“Go West, young man, and grow up with the country!”publisher Horace Greeley
famously said in 1837. This claim was heeded by thousands of young men who wanted to
reclaim their masculinity in the harsh frontier of the American West. In fact, so many men left
home and settled in California during the Gold Rush that the state population was reported to
have been 93 percent male in 1849 and 1850. Men who participated in the Gold Rush or
ventured into the other western territories found themselves able to live a life of “’rude freedom’
outside the conventional boundaries of civilization and away from the wives” (Kimmel, 42.)
Going west was the ultimate form of escapism for mid-nineteenth century men. Men were
escaping from the economic rivalry of capitalist society, the moral restrictions imposed on them
by their wives, and the feminizing luxuries of civilization. Societal pressures to be a ‘Self Made
Man’ ever exercising self control were also relieved by leaving civilization behind.
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If a man could not afford to go west, he could satisfy his quest for masculinity by reading
about those who did. James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales series, which included
Last of the Mohicans, was widely read during this time, as were romanticized, embellished
‘biographies’ of Davy Crockett and other heroic men. Women and families were notably absent
from these types of fiction, which usually featured a hero who tested his physical and emotional
strength in some harsh, natural environment.
The Civil War gave Northern men yet another outlet for proving their masculinity. A
soldier’s life was the ultimate test of hardship and danger. Harper’s Monthly magazine
encouraged Northern men to enlist as soldiers because “the discipline of the camp is a wonderful
check upon effeminacy and self-indulgence” (Kimmel, 48.) For Southern men, the Civil War
became a showdown between the two differing ideals of manhood that existed in the North and
in the South. Southerners saw Northern men as having traded in their morality for money and
self-improvement. When the South fell, so did the Southern man. “The Union triumph ensured
that American men would ground their identities in the shifting sands of the marketplace,” writes
Kimmel (Kimmel, 52.) The Southern man was no longer considered a ‘real’ man, and in the
coming years he would strive to exert his masculinity against the newly freed blacks.
The Northern man’s masculine identity was also harmed by the war. Women had moved
into the workplace during the years of the war, bursting the homosocial bubbles that had existed
before. The workplace was no longer an exclusively male realm. Droves of men moving west to
escape civilization had ironically brought civilization to the west, and the influx of European
immigrants had brought a new wave of potential rivals into the marketplace. Over the course of a
generation, the American man had come full circle: here he was once again, seemingly trapped
by economic competition, civilization, and the integration of women and freed AfricanAmericans into a former white man’s world. With no unspoiled frontier to escape to, a man
could no longer claim his masculinity by turning his back on civilization. Manhood could no
longer be defined by removing oneself from perceived threats to masculinity. Kimmel’s article
stops here, begging the question: backed into a corner by this new society, how would the
American man now prove his manhood?
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Works Cited
Kimmel, Michael S. Manhood in America: A Cultural History. New York: Oxford University
Press, 2006.