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Chapter 3: Hunting and the Masculine Ideal
- University of Virginia Press
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3. Hunting and the Masculine Ideal Our sports are various, surpassingly exciting, and every way, manly. A Mississippi hunter, S from the everyday world but still intimately associated with it, the hunt created a stage for the performance of an evocative drama of white manhood. Thus it provided fertile ground for antebellum authors to create a varied but coherent image of the hunter as a masculine ideal. The particulars of this iconic image varied from author to author, but it retained a core set of characteristics that remained remarkably constant throughout the antebellum era.1 These characteristics included prowess, self-control, and mastery. The first usually emerged through competition. Manifest in hunting skill, it facilitated success in the field. It was attractive to men of all classes, colors, and communities because of its efficacy and simplicity. The second quality, self-control, supplemented prowess with a gloss of rationality that elevated the accomplishments of hunters above mere physicality. It added the triumph of the mind to that of the body. Mastery composed the third, distinctively southern, element of the ideal. Representing control over other people, animals, nature, and even death, this multifaceted concept helped white southern men define themselves as patriarchs and even, in some cases, as paternalists. By blending these elements, hunting narratives offered up the image of an idealized hunter whose actions and demeanor fortified both the righteousness of slavery and the dominance of white males. This ideal gradually developed a class component based upon the idea of sport; nevertheless , it remained remarkably inclusive. Predicated on whiteness and maleness rather than wealth or ancestry, this image of the masculine ideal appealed to white men throughout the antebellum South. It made them, one and all, potential members of a “master class.” The role of the hunter as a masculine icon diffused into southern culture through a variety of channels. The polar ideals of noble savages and European hunter-aristocrats informed popular perceptions of the hunt throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, but an important shift in popular culture came in the late s when a number of developments made hunters an increasingly popular model of white manhood. During this period the appearance of James Fenimore Cooper’s fictional “Leather-Stocking,” Natty Bumppo, the proliferation of biographies of frontiersmen like Daniel Boone, the boisterous national presence of Indian fighter–turned–politician Andrew Jackson, and the dissemination of hunting narratives through the various books and periodicals of the sporting press infused the South with images of the hunter as a model of masculinity. This idea gathered strength and influence throughout the antebellum era, and white southerners embraced the image of the hunter with growing enthusiasm. The clearest descriptions of these expectations appeared in the sporting press, but the private writings of southern hunters revealed comparable conventions.2 Foremost among these characteristics was a carefully crafted form of competitiveness and an attendant desire for display. Few white hunters celebrated the merits of solitary travail; instead they glorified open competition with other white males because their triumphs and defeats in the field meant little unless observed by others. The desire for competition sprang from deep roots, which extended back into the colonial era. Historian T. H. Breen noted the importance of this aggressive competitiveness in his examination of horse racing among the gentry in the colonial Chesapeake. Competitiveness flowered in this young, dynamic society because it provided plenty of situations for the display of prowess. This bundle of masculine qualities, which (in the words of historian Nancy Struna) consisted of “strength, skill, bravery, and even gallantry,” provided a solid, easily recognizable foundation for masculinity. Associated with the ability to achieve wealth and power, prowess not only differentiated successful hunters from women (the essential definition of masculinity), it also elevated them above less capable men.3 Rather than turning hunters against one another, competition actually bound them together. They were united by a common challenge: the pur- Bathed in Blood [44.193.208.105] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 15:54 GMT) suit of game. In his editorial for the initial issue of the American Turf Register , J. S. Skinner described competitiveness as an effective instrument of community building. He contended that while “sympathy springs from habits of association and a sense of mutual dependence on each other, the true estimate of character, and friendly and generous dispositions , are under no circumstances more certainly acquired, nor more assuredly improved and quickened than by often meeting each other in...