“Has He Madeira of Fifty Years Standing?”: Gentility, medievalism, masculinity, and the allure of the Virginia Springs in the late antebellum South

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article begins a critical revision of a historiography that has overestimated themes of honor and race in understanding constructions of elite white masculinity in the antebellum South. Gentility, too, played a decisive role in framing appropriate manly behavior. By investigating the specific interaction between the Southern discourses of gentility, medievalism, and masculinity, this article indicates a direction for significant future study of Southern elites. It first addresses these themes in a broader, conceptual sense, before turning to the embodiment and apotheosis of gentility, medievalism, and gender roles in the South: the leisure resorts of the Virginia Springs.