The dandy and the aesthete: Middle and upper class homosexual identities in late nineteenth-century America.
Item
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Title
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The dandy and the aesthete: Middle and upper class homosexual identities in late nineteenth-century America.
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Identifier
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AAI3189027
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identifier
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3189027
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Creator
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Doyle, David D., Jr.
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Contributor
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Adviser: David Nasaw
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Date
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2004
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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History, United States | American Studies
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Abstract
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This dissertation seeks to document a thriving sex and gender system in the late nineteenth century---a system quite distinct from the one known to us today. In a highly detailed biographical reconstruction of the life and times of two upper class American men who reached maturation during the 1880's, this work sheds light on a hitherto occluded sexual subculture; complete with its own institutions, language, and fully realized identities centered on male same-sex attractions. Among the most important manifestations of this subculture was the sexual underworld found in such cities as New York. Equally important, but until now generally neglected by the historiography, were the far-reaching friendship networks that connected men of this sexual "temperament:" and which extended across the Atlantic---bonding European and American together, irregardless of national identity. With friendship as really the only viable option for allowing intimacy in their lives, men of this "temperament" transformed these relationships into something central to their lives, in a way the larger culture---and the historiography---has failed to appreciate.;Also of significance in this dissertation is the documentation and analysis of differing identities in currency during American society in the latter years of the nineteenth century. New York playwright Clyde Fitch (1865-1909) and Boston architect Ogden Codman (1863-1951) serve as representative models of the wide continuum of upper class male identities centered on same-sex attractions. With his alternative, and highly effeminate gender behavior Fitch battled hostility and discrimination continuously throughout his life. As an effeminate man, he was often stigmatized and ostracized---yet more for his effeminate behavior than for any perceptions of him as a homosexual. In contrast, Codman, as a man with normative gender behavior, suffered no stigma or hostility during his long life---at least until well into the twentieth century, when our modern sexual system began to dominate the culture. Until that time, he pursued the sexual objects of his, choice---invariably young men---with impunity.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
