“The Most Blatant of All Our American Myths”: Masculinity,Male Bonding,and the Wilderness in Sinclair Lewis's Mantrap

Abstract

This essay explores the representation of masculinity in Sinclair Lewis's novel Mantrap. Of particular interest are changing definitions of masculinity and male friendship at the turn of the 20th century, the closing of the American frontier, and the implications of these sociohistorical changes on the literary depiction of masculine identity and male friendship. Lewis's novel highlights the tensions engendered by a nostalgia for wilderness renewal and manly love combined with a modern ethos of individual material success. In Mantrap, it is possible to see the ways in which both the wilderness and friendship disappoint the modern man. The argument in this essay has implications for the history and psychology of masculinity at the turn of the century as well as for literary studies of the ways in which masculinity is portrayed in fiction of the period.

Keywords

masculinity Sinclair Lewis male friendship American frontier wilderness masculinity in fiction

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Allen

(1979). The wilderness convention in Main Street, Babbitt and Arrowsmith. The Gypsy Scholar, 6, 74–92.

Bederman

(1995). Manliness and civilization: A cultural history of gender and race in the United States, 1880–1917. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Hunt

(1938). One American and his attempt at education. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Kaplan

(1990). Romancing the empire: The embodiment of American masculinity in the popular historical novel of the 1890s. American Literary History, 2, 659–690.

Kimmell

M.S.

(1994). Consuming manhood. In Goldstein

(Ed.), The male body: Features, destinies, exposures (pp. 12–41). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Kolodny

(1975). The lay of the land: Metaphor as experience and history in American life and letters. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Leverenz

(1991). “The last real man in America”: From Natty Bumppo to Batman. American Literary History, 3, 753–781.

Lewis

(1985). Sinclair Lewis and Mantrap: The Saskatchewan trip ( Koblas

J.J.

& Page

, Eds.). Madison: Main Street.

Lewis

(1926). Mantrap. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company.

10.

Lewis

(1927). Elmer Gantry. New York: Grosset and Dunlap.

11.

Lewis

(1945). Arrowsmith. New York: Grosset and Dunlap.

12.

Lewis

(1950). Babbitt. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company.

13.

Light

(1975). The quixotic vision of Sinclair Lewis. West Lafayette: Purdue University Press.

14.

Lingeman

(2002). Sinclair Lewis: Rebel from main street. New York: Random House.

15.

Love

G.A.

(1993). Babbitt: An American life. New York: Twayne.

16.

Lundquist

(1973). Sinclair Lewis. New York: Frederick Ungar.

17.

Merish

(2000). Sentimental materialism: Gender, commodity culture, and nineteenth-century American literature. Durham: Duke University Press.

18.

Miner

M.M.

(1992). Documenting the demise of manly love: The Virginian. The Journal of Men's Studies, 1, 33–39.

19.

Mitchell

L.C.

(1996). Westerns: Making the man in fiction and film. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

20.

Moss

(1995). Manliness and militarism: Grooming young men to fight 1870–1914. Popular Culture Review, 6, 5–20.

21.

Rotundo

(1987). Learning about manhood: Gender ideals and the middle-class family in nineteenth-century America. In Mangan

J.A.

& Walvin

(Eds.), Manliness and morality (pp. 35–51). New York: St. Martin's Press.

22.

Schorer

(1961). Sinclair Lewis: An American life. New York: McGraw-Hill.

23.

Turner

F.J.

(1966). The significance of the frontier in American history. Ann Arbor: University Microfilms.