Introduction

Introduction to The 19^th-Century Gentlemen
 

Mr. R.P. Black

T

Mr. R.P. Black,
Newport, Rhode Island 2014

he 19^th-Century Gentleman is the tale of a modern man who is slowly transforming himself into an American Victorian gentleman. What started out as American Civil War reenactment has become a lifestyle of dress, manors, attitude, and social experiment.

What is a Gentleman?

The concept of the 19^th century Gentleman is a complex one, though it is one which is, as one recent critic has noted, "the necessary link in any analysis of mid-Victorian ways of thinking and behaving." Members of the British aristocracy were gentlemen by right of birth, but in the Victorian Age the definition of a Gentleman had changed. The Victorians of England were not certain any more what a gentleman was, what his essential characteristics were, or of how to become one. In the United States the term gentleman was even more confused that in Great Britain.

The Victorian etiquette manuals of the day discuss the proper way to be a gentleman, or lady, with all the intricacies and details needed to maintain a proper and civil society. These manuals spend a lot of time disparaging the behavior of the boorish, so one must therefore assume that the Victorian world was populated with a fair smattering of boorish people. The majority of 19th Century Americans had no use for the elaborate rituals spelled out in Victorian etiquette books, but got by with common courtesy and country manners. Once one traveled outside of the Original Thirteen and into the West the Victorian ways of the Newport (Rhode Island) elite faded away to common decency and politeness.

Victorian America

The Victorian Age began in 1837 at the start of Queen Victoria’s rule in Great Britain and ended in 1901 at the time of her death. The term Victorian is used to describe this time period in America because Americans have never found a uniquely American term which encompasses as much as succinctly as Victorian. Victorianism was an offshoot of this period and lifestyle that occurred in the United States, chiefly in heavily populated regions such as New England and the Deep South. Victorianism reflected the heavy British cultural influence on the nation during this time.

Victorian America was a time of uncertainty for Americans. The wealthy were not yet sure what it was to be an American and they showed their uncertainty by borrowing heavily from English and European culture. These wealthy families were always striving to keep ahead of the middle-class as the middle-class continually tried to imitate those who were wealthier.

Victorian values dominated American social life for much of the 19th century. The notion of separate spheres of life for men and women was commonplace. The male sphere included wage work and politics, while the female sphere involved childrearing and domestic work.