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Jolly Fellows: Male Milieus in Nineteenth-Century America
“Jolly fellows,” a term that gained currency in the nineteenth century, referred to those men whose more colorful antics included brawling, heavy drinking, gambling, and playing pranks. Reforms, especially the temperance movement, stigmatized such behavior, but pockets of jolly fellowship continued to flourish throughout the country. Richard Stott scrutinizes and analyzes this behavior to appreciate its origins and meaning.

Stott finds that male behavior could be strikingly similar in diverse locales, from taverns and boardinghouses to college campuses and sporting events. He explores the permissive attitudes that thrived in such male domains as the streets of New York City, California during the gold rush, and the Pennsylvania oil fields, arguing that such places had an important influence on American society and culture. Stott recounts how the cattle and mining towns of the American West emerged as centers of resistance to Victorian propriety. It was here that unrestrained male behavior lasted the longest, before being replaced with a new convention that equated manliness with sobriety and self-control.

Even as the number of jolly fellows dwindled, jolly themes flowed into American popular culture through minstrelsy, dime novels, and comic strips. Jolly Fellows proposes a new interpretation of nineteenth-century American culture and society and will inform future work on masculinity during this period.

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Jolly Fellows: Male Milieus in Nineteenth-Century America
“Jolly fellows,” a term that gained currency in the nineteenth century, referred to those men whose more colorful antics included brawling, heavy drinking, gambling, and playing pranks. Reforms, especially the temperance movement, stigmatized such behavior, but pockets of jolly fellowship continued to flourish throughout the country. Richard Stott scrutinizes and analyzes this behavior to appreciate its origins and meaning.

Stott finds that male behavior could be strikingly similar in diverse locales, from taverns and boardinghouses to college campuses and sporting events. He explores the permissive attitudes that thrived in such male domains as the streets of New York City, California during the gold rush, and the Pennsylvania oil fields, arguing that such places had an important influence on American society and culture. Stott recounts how the cattle and mining towns of the American West emerged as centers of resistance to Victorian propriety. It was here that unrestrained male behavior lasted the longest, before being replaced with a new convention that equated manliness with sobriety and self-control.

Even as the number of jolly fellows dwindled, jolly themes flowed into American popular culture through minstrelsy, dime novels, and comic strips. Jolly Fellows proposes a new interpretation of nineteenth-century American culture and society and will inform future work on masculinity during this period.

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Jolly Fellows: Male Milieus in Nineteenth-Century America

Jolly Fellows: Male Milieus in Nineteenth-Century America

by Richard Stott
Jolly Fellows: Male Milieus in Nineteenth-Century America
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Jolly Fellows: Male Milieus in Nineteenth-Century America

Jolly Fellows: Male Milieus in Nineteenth-Century America

by Richard Stott

Overview

“Jolly fellows,” a term that gained currency in the nineteenth century, referred to those men whose more colorful antics included brawling, heavy drinking, gambling, and playing pranks. Reforms, especially the temperance movement, stigmatized such behavior, but pockets of jolly fellowship continued to flourish throughout the country. Richard Stott scrutinizes and analyzes this behavior to appreciate its origins and meaning.

Stott finds that male behavior could be strikingly similar in diverse locales, from taverns and boardinghouses to college campuses and sporting events. He explores the permissive attitudes that thrived in such male domains as the streets of New York City, California during the gold rush, and the Pennsylvania oil fields, arguing that such places had an important influence on American society and culture. Stott recounts how the cattle and mining towns of the American West emerged as centers of resistance to Victorian propriety. It was here that unrestrained male behavior lasted the longest, before being replaced with a new convention that equated manliness with sobriety and self-control.

Even as the number of jolly fellows dwindled, jolly themes flowed into American popular culture through minstrelsy, dime novels, and comic strips. Jolly Fellows proposes a new interpretation of nineteenth-century American culture and society and will inform future work on masculinity during this period.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780801891373
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date: 09/21/2009
Series: Gender Relations in the American Experience
Pages: 384
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.30(d)
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

Richard Stott is an associate professor of American history at George Washington University and author of Workers in the Metropolis: Class, Ethnicity and Youth in Antebellum New York City.

Table of Contents

Introduction
1. The Tavern Crowd
2. Jolly Fellowship
3. Reform
4. New York
5. The Gold Rush
6. Cultural Connections
7. Wild East and Wild West
8. Sporting Men
9. Continuities and Complexities
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Appendix A: Onset of Moral Reform by Decade
Appendix B: Correlation of Selected Social Statistics, New York City, by Ward, 1855
Notes
Index

What People are Saying About This

Ronald Walters

A lively, often engaging, and sometimes appalling book about men behaving badly, an inexhaustible topic.

— Ronald Walters, Johns Hopkins University

From the Publisher

A lively, often engaging, and sometimes appalling book about men behaving badly, an inexhaustible topic.
—Ronald Walters, Johns Hopkins University

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Related Subjects

History
Social Sciences
United States History
Criminology
Gender Studies
19th Century United States History - General & Miscellaneous
19th Century American History - General and Miscellaneous
19th Century American History - Social Aspects
Criminology - Violence
Masculinity
History
Social Sciences
United States History
Criminology
Gender Studies
19th Century United States History - General & Miscellaneous
19th Century American History - General and Miscellaneous
19th Century American History - Social Aspects
Criminology - Violence
Masculinity

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