Feminization of American Culture

by Ann Douglas

Draws on novels, religious pamphlets and manuals, and anti-sentimentalist writings of nineteenth-century America to show how genteel women and Protestant clergymen fostered the emergence of a consumer culture

Genres: History, Cultural, Nonfiction, Feminism, American History, Gender, Politics

403 pages, Hardcover

First published May 12, 1977

About the author

Ann Douglas is Parr Professor of Comparative Literature at Columbia University. Prof. Douglas teaches twentieth-century American literature, film, music, and politics, with an emphasis on the Cold War era, African-American culture, and post-colonial approaches.

Before Columbia, Professor Douglas taught at Princeton from 1970-74 - the first woman to teach in its English Department.

She received a Bicentennial Preceptorship from Princeton for distinguished teaching in 1974, and a fellowship from the National Humanities Center in 1978-79 after publishing The Feminization of American Culture (1977). She received an NEH and Guggenheim fellowship for 1993-94.

Her study Terrible Honesty: Mongrel Manhattan in the 1920's (Farrar, Straus, 1995) received, among other honors, the Alfred Beveridge Award from the American Historical Association, the Lionel Trilling Award from Columbia University, and the Merle Curti Intellectual History Award from the Organization of American Historians.

In Spring 2002, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences for her work in History.

She has published numerous essays, articles and book reviews on American culture in papers and periodicals such as The New York Times, The Nation and Slate, and introductions for Little Women, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Charlotte Temple, Minor Characters, The Subterraneans, Studs Longian, and Word Virus: The William S. Burroughs Reader.

See also other authors with similar names.

Reviews

[El · Rating 3 out of 5]

The premise here was immediately interesting to me: The partnership between the clergy and women created a "sentimental society" during the Victorian period in America. Unfortunately the book turned into more of a Who's Who in the clergy world than I cared to read. Things picked up primarily towards the end during the chapters about Margaret Sanger and (I can't believe I'm about to say this) Herman Melville.

It's hard to really nail down what this book is about - feminism? theology? literary criticism? It somehow manages to be all of the above and more. Douglas is incredibly researched and knowledgeable, and I would love to pick her brain in either an academic setting or just over a few drinks.

Having just read Middlemarch and Tenant of Wildfell Hall I was interested in her thoughts on the clergy/temperance writing - or at least it put some things in perspective now, even though I don't recall there being any actual reference in this book to either Eliot or Bronte ('cause, duh, it's about Victorian America). Some shout-outs included Louisa May Alcott, Henry David Thoreau, Fanny Fern, Catherine Sedgewick, Ralph Waldo Emerson, etc.

I learned more than I expected to learn, so there's something to be said about that. It wasn't quite what I expected, so I have to dock it a star rating for that reason.

[Douglas Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stupendous.

[Courtney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably the most difficult book I’ve read in a while. I highly doubt anyone is reading this or needs to, but I liked reading it. I can’t say I recall everything I read (or who did what), but it was rewarding to understand while reading, and sometimes really interesting. Heavy thought exercises for me.

Scholarly, and maybe a little mis-labeled as just a feminist text, as it had just as much to do with how Christianity changed in America, and how women and ministers comingled in their small powers to strive for a place of relevance in the country. Since they were not working men, women and ministers were forced into competing for cultural influence because of expanding, industrializing, early capitalist America.

The book could have been titled “Sentimentalization of American Culture” instead because it illustrates the segregation of sexes in Victorian era America, which led to the cultural split between “the intellect” and “the feelings.” I enjoyed the short biographies of Margaret Fuller and Herman Melville at the end, who realized the big picture of their culture and tried to resist it in their own ways, rather than producing sentimentalism along with everybody else at the time.

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent study in the ironies of mass culture in its early years. Douglas shows a generation of early 19th-century liberal ministers and a younger generation of women writers collaborating to promulgate an ideal of the gentle and the nurturing in American life. But, she argues, these writers merely tried to soften the edges of an aggressive, patriarchal, and capitalist culture; they failed to communicate an ideology that would actually challenge that culture. Ministers and women retreated to the margins of American life even as they became the key producers of its mass literature. Unfortunately, Douglas doesn't mind anachronism in her assessment of the "feminist" nature of antebellum writing, she has a tin ear for religion (apparently, she can't tell the difference between Calvinism and Lutheranism), and she makes the tiresome mistake of treating "New England" and "America" as synonyms. Still, the book is very good once you get past the first chapter.

[Molly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though she gets rather bogged down by necessary but dry historical detail at the beginning, Douglas really hits her stride with the brilliant discussion of Fuller and Melville that ends this book.

[Heather · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a worthwhile book in that Ann Douglas presents an intriguing explanation for the rise of Victorian sentimentality and its enduring effects on American culture at large. She focuses on the lives of liberal Christian ministers (Unitarians, Universalists, a few Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and others) and of popular women authors in America of the 1820s-1880s or so. It is remarkable to see how entirely the ministerial vocation succumbed to a sentimental version of Christianity, mostly devoid of real theological doctrine at the same time that women were finding broad audiences for their writings, which were highly popular but ephemeral in the historical view because of their extreme sentimentality.

The amount and detail of research Ms. Douglas has done is astonishing, though also sometimes ponderous. The average reader may not benefit from all the exacting details of the lives of so many ministers and women. In addition, the concluding chapters on Margaret Fuller and Herman Melville felt somewhat tacked-on. The writing style is refined bu often dense. This is not a quick read.

My gravest critique of this book is that it does not satisfactorily follow through on what it purports in its introduction to present. It certainly does provide a historical and literary critique of the feminization of America culture, but it is far less direct in following through to show the continuing influences of the nineteenth-century trend on the twentieth-century or beyond. This would have been, by far, the more interesting angle unless you were looking for a literary critique of nineteenth-century sentimental novels. Nevertheless, there is still enough here to recommend the book for those interested in the titular phenomenon, even if the savvy reader might benefit from some judicious skimming.

[Ietrio · Rating 1 out of 5]

Strict adherence to gender roles. Separation. Stereotyping. The basis for the opposite of equality between sexes. Quite predictable from an academic bureaucrat that wants to fit in, as opposed to a researcher who wants to find out.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don’t really care about literary critique. This looks at the role of women in American literary cultures in the 1800s.

[Kyle Grindberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been plodding my way through this one for years, but it was worth finishing. It loses a star for her feminist assumptions, as well as her obnoxious indictment of Calvinism.

[Amy Hansen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Absolutely fascinating; well written and researched. Would definitely recommend

[Jeremy]

Quoted positively in Why Ministers Must Be Men (p. 44).

[Exodus Books · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book might as well be titled The Sentimentilization of American Culture because what author Ann Douglas identifies is not a promotion of genuine feminine virtues but a sad parody of them as found in Victorian America's literature and religious culture. Sentimentality is inherently nostalgic and anti-intellectual, and its embrace by any society inevitably results in a loss of that society's manly virtues and a debilitating fascination with shallow ideals.

That American society has languished in such a desperate condition for decades now is self-evident with its transformation of Hollywood into a religious Mecca, the conflation of leadership and celebrity, and the faux spirituality and megachurches that have nearly extinguished the light of genuine Protestant Christianity. The Feminization of American Culture is not simply an identification of these trends, however, but an investigation of how they managed to take hold of a culture en masse and edge out the gender diversification that marked American society before the Victorian Era.

The real culprits, she argues, were women and religious leaders, who because of increasing marginalization were limited to express themselves primarily through literature. Yet their literary output, instead of defending gender diversification and egalitarianism, extolled the only virtues they were assumed to possess—timidity, piety, a disdain for competition. Beginning with the scene of Little Eva's melodramatic death in Uncle Tom's Cabin, Douglas charts these trends throughout the 19th century and their consequences today.

Read more of this review (and more like it) on our website.

[Kristi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Douglas makes the argument that modern (twentieth century) mass culture is rooted in Victorian sentimentality. She contends that American clergy and women were displaced from their practical roles in American society at the beginning of the 19th century, and that as a result both groups turned to literary pursuits. These literary pursuits, according to Douglas, engendered a mass sentimentalist culture to replace waning religiosity, which idealized "feminine" qualities of piety, motherhood, and mourning as a means of religious influence, that simultaneously limited women's social roles. She closes her study with case studies of Margaret Fuller and Herman Melville as oppositional figures, who were limited by the dominant cultural modes that defined gender through literature in the nineteenth century. The development of sentimental culture is well argued, while the argument for its primacy to modern mass culture was, to my reading, less compelling. Douglas's argument herein operates on a the judgment that sentimental culture, as well as modern mass culture is a negative form of mindless consumption. In my view, this undermines the subversive uses of sentimental culture by women in the 19th century, as well as under-appreciates any meaningful critique of twentieth-century popular culture.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ann Douglas has a way with words...even when she casually concludes that _Pierre's_ Isabel "seems retarded, a bit like Faulkner's Benjy in _The Sound and the Fury_" (313). For the most part, I do agree with her general argument about the feminization of American culture that resulted from the rise of sentimental literature and culture. Her insistence that ALL sentimental literature has feminized (read: debased, anti-intellectualized) American culture and only the romantic (and very masculine (read: good)) Margaret Fuller and Herman Melville resists the sentimental impulse to create "good" literature, however, gives me pause. I contend that sentimental authors like E.D.E.N. Southworth and Fanny Fern, though working within a sentimental framework, do confront some of the same psychological and social problems that Melville and Fuller combat, albeit on a more accessible level. For Douglas, however, only the ambiguity and intellectual complexity are the stuff that makes literature good. My question is: can good literature be accessible? can good art also be accessible? I think Douglas would disagree and she CAN, indeed, point to large quantities of sentimental crap to prove her argument.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Douglas explores how women, especially women writers, forced the shift from in American culture from a rigid, partiarchal, Calvanist society, to a sentimental, feminized, Evangelical society in the 19th century. It's a fascinating analysis of the earliest stages of the women's movement, 19th literature (both the male cannon and the women's sentimental fiction), and American religion - and it's incredibly relevant to understanding our own culture today.

[Brittany Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful book. Most reviews of 20th century feminism only go back to the 1950s or 60s. Douglas goes all the way back to the early 19th century and traces the rise of Victorianism as early feminism. She then shows mid-20th century feminism as a rebellion against Victorianism, but then, such as the right-wing/left-wing political dichotomy, they are really just two sides to the same thing.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

If I were to re-read this book, I might not rate this book as highly, because the 1980's version of feminism was to disown much of what is feminine--rather than value it on par with what is masculine.

[Laurel]

This was one of those rare times when I could not finish a book. I do not mind dense, academic prose, but I had thought the author had a more modern focus. I am not interested in 19th century literature, so could not concentrate on the text.

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Surprisingly accessible. But no, this wasn't my choice.

[Bops · Rating 4 out of 5]

victorian Americans, 19th C Culture, feminist, calvanists! I think I am in love.

[Lindsey Doolan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read it a second time for thesis, and it made much more sense. Probably read it again someday, because it truly does explain us.

[RK Byers · Rating 3 out of 5]

interesting premise: women replaced the clergy as the nation's leading influence. and i say, it's all right.

[Caitlin Simmons · Rating 4 out of 5]

Extremely interesting, especially her take on the shifting role of Christianity.

[Macalester Linguistics]

A 15.0