Auf der Suche nach anderen Beiträgen zur männerverteufelnden Moderne bin ich auf eine feministische Perspektive gestoßen:
Barbara Welter „The Cult of True Womanhood“ (1966)
Welter sammelt Eindrücke und Zitate aus Frauenzeitungen zwischen 1800 und dem Bürgerkrieg, die sehr gut die Kehrseite der gestern besprochenen Männerverteufelung darstellen:
Es ist ohne Zweifel nicht leicht, die Verkörperung des Bösen zu sein.
Es ist ebenfalls ohne Zweifel nicht leicht, keine andere Options zu haben, als als Engel zu leben.
Das übliche tl;dr in Form von Zitaten:
Einleitung
The nineteenth-century American man was a busy builder of bridges and railroads, at work long hours in a materialistic society.
The religious values of his forbears were neglected in practice if not in intent, and he occasionally felt some guilt that he had turned this new land, this temple of the chosen people, into one vast countinghouse. But he could salve his conscience by reflecting that he had left behind a hostage, not only to fortune, but to all the values which he held so dear and treated so lightly. Woman, in the cult of True Womanhood presented by the women’s magazines, gift annuals, and religious literature of the nineteenth century, was the hostage in the home.
In a society where values changed frequently, where fortunes rose and fell with frightening rapidity, where social and economic mobility provided instability as well as hope, one thing at least remained the same – a true woman was a true woman, wherever she was found. If anyone, male or female, dared to tamper with the complex of virtues that made up True Womanhood, he was damned immediately as the enemy of God, of civilization, and of the Republic. It was the fearful obligation, a solemn responsibility, which the nineteenth-century American woman had.
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