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Book Review
Canada and the United States
| Anne S. Lombard. Making Manhood: Growing Up Male in Colonial New England. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 2003. Pp. xii, 244. $45.00.
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| Anne S. Lombard examines "what did it mean to be a man" (p. 2) in colonial New England in the century after the end of King Philip's War in 1676. In particular, she develops the prescriptive ideal that adult men should exhibit rationality, moderation, and self-control. They should also competently perform the roles of provider, family head, husband, and father. Like most historians of gender writing today, Lombard emphasizes manhood as a historical and cultural construct and correspondingly downplays its biological or essentialist aspects. Unlike contemporary scholars of gender, however, New England colonists did not focus on the relational dimension of masculinity. Authors were more concerned to define what it meant to be an exemplary member of a Christian community. Further, to the extent that manhood was defined relationally, the "other" category was more likely to refer to boys than to women. |
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