'A Man, So Very Nearly Perfect': William Dean Howells' 'Editha', the Spanish American War, and American masculinity in the late nineteenth century

Abstract

William Dean Howells' short story 'Editha' identifies and criticizes the major role that masculine rhetoric played in the Spanish American War of 1898. Through his story, Howells reveals that at the heart of both Editha's desire for George, her fiancé, to enlist, and his willingness to go despite his condemnation of the war, is the issue of his masculinity. Both Editha and George acknowledge that he needs to become a 'real man' before they marry and that fighting in the Spanish American War will make that happen. That George dies in a relatively bloodless war shows how misguided such an idea was in the first place. To build this argument, this article draws on Kristin L. Hoganson's Fighting for American Manhood (1998), a historical study that illustrates that a national obsession with the supposed declining manhood of American males in the late nineteenth century provoked the United States' intervention in Cuba in 1898. War became widely touted by politicians and the press, according to Hoganson, as a way to bolster and regenerate American masculinity. While most of the gendered criticism on 'Editha' focuses on the femininity of its title character, my interpretation expands gendered criticism of this classic anti-war tale by focusing on the role that masculinity plays in the story.