The Gendering of American Politics: Founding Mothers, Founding Fathers, and Political Patriarchy

Abstract

The tendering of American Politics: Founding Mothers, Founding Fathers, and Political Patriarchy. By Mark E. Kann (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1999. Pp. xvi, 194. Cloth, $55.00; paper, $19.95.) Gender, Race, and Rank in a Revolutionary Age: The Georgia Lowcountry, 1750-1820. By Betty Wood. (Athens: The Univeristy of Georgia Press, 2000. Pp. xvi, 104. $25.00.) Historians have only begun to explore the ways that gender affected those Americans who lived in the early republic. They have gone far beyond the tendency simply to add women and stir as they have complicated our understanding of the meaning of both femininity and masculinity for early Americans. They have analyzed the way that race, ethnicity, and class have interacted with historical notions of gender identity. And they have come to understand that gender conventions-and challenges to those conventions-helped shape the political, social, and economic order of the new nation in fundamental ways. Mark Kann's overview of the gendering of American builds upon his earlier forays into this subject: On the Man Question: Gender and Civic Virtue in America (1991) and A Republic of Men: The American Founders, Gendered Language, and Patriarchal Politics (1998). Designed for classroom use, it is a clear, well-organized, and readable summary of much of what we claim to know about those constructions of gender that lay at the heart of the new Republic's politics. Kann argues that although the Revolution helped some Americans challenge the patriarchal order of the past, elite white men nevertheless kept their hold on the reins of power. No woman obtained recognition as a full citizen in this period. And most men were either excluded from political power altogether or were rendered weak citizens whose authority was minimal at best (ch. 6). The book is divided into two parts, one dealing with the the other with the fathers. Whether they were men or women, argues Kann, the founders never fundamentally questioned the patriarchal politics that had traditionally informed their thinking. The egalitarian principles of the Revolution and the growing respect for women's contributions in some circles did not lead elite men to believe that women had the capacity to act rationally or politically. Nor did most women challenge their nonpolitical status. There were, admittedly, those few who argued that women were morally superior to men, that women assume the role of provider, and that women exhibit the requisite virtues of independence and patriotism that lay at the heart of elite men's claims to political authority. Still, most founders continued to see women as belonging naturally in the domestic sphere. Thus, they were willing to grant elite women status only as republican wives or mothers, giving them influence but not power. America's founding fathers and founding says Kann, could not imagine rights-bearing women exercising citizens' choices or political leaders' prerogatives (67). If elite men saw all women as apolitical at best and downright dangerous at worst, they viewed other men in a more discriminating manner. There were a few virtuous men, those natural aristocrats who control their passions, ruling rationally and deliberately in the interests of the country as a whole. Not only were such men able to command the respect of men and women alike, but they had the strength of character to ignore public opinion and even the law itself when the nation's welfare required that they do so. Most men, however, were disorderly creatures who-to one degree or another-were more like women than men and thus deserved to be marginalized. Some-married, propertied men of the lesser orders, for instance-could be trusted with voting. Others-the propertyless, itinerants, bachelors, African Americans, and Indians in particular-were beyond the pale and needed to be restrained. Kann's emphasis on the growing regard the founders had for married men is especially important. …