scholarly journals A Morality of Mendacity: The Southern Aristocratic Code of Honor in Tennessee Williams's A Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Meliora ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Ferrante
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Behavior ◽  
Family Structure ◽  
American South ◽  
Social World ◽  
Best Friend ◽  
Human Male ◽  
The Social ◽  
Personal Crisis ◽  
The American South ◽  
Concept Of Truth

Tennessee Williams’s A Cat on a Hot Tin Roof centers Brick Pollitt; he is filled with disgust because he feels that he is a truthful man surrounded by liars and schemers. Each character has a different concept of truth and morality, Brick's being the most rigid in definition, and it is this rigidity that causes Brick’s personal crisis. By exploring Satrean existentialism, the foundations of Brick’s crisis are revealed as rooted in an inability to act in alignment with his preconceived identity. Intersecting this personal crisis is America’s idealized conception of childhood homoeroticism as well as Alfred Kinsey’s study Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, both of which inform Brick’s relationship with his late best friend. Brick rejects the social world instead of accepting complication, but is still asked to participate in his family structure. His wife and his father simultaneously uphold and subvert the strict structures of the American South; they find ways to accept complication in their own lives, especially when finding themselves in a socially marginalized position. While Brick’s privilege has protected him from facing the painful yet necessary complexities of being alive, Maggie and Big Daddy accept truth as subjective and make space for human complexity. 

“States of Rebellion”: Civil War, Rural Unrest, and the Agrarian Question in the American South and the Italian Mezzogiorno, 1861–1865

2005 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 403-432 ◽  
Author(s):  
Enrico Dal Lago
Keyword(s):  
American South ◽  
Class Conflict ◽  
Rural Setting ◽  
Formation Continue ◽  
Rural Workers ◽  
Agrarian Question ◽  
Peasant Society ◽  
The Social ◽  
The American South

To date, only a handful of scholars, most notably C.L.R. James and Eugene Genovese, have seen slave rebellions and peasant revolts as having anything in common. Fewer scholars still would be prepared to accept the assumption that slaves and peasants were agrarian working classes that shared significant characteristics. Yet, the issues of rural unrest and class formation continue to haunt the historiography of both slave and peasant societies long after James' and Genovese's studies, and have forced several historians to revise and broaden their definitions of class conflict as a means to describe the social transformations of several rural regions. In this essay, I focus on the American South as a case study of a slave society and on the Italian South, or Mezzogiorno, as a case study of a peasant society. Notwithstanding the fundamental differences between the social structures of these two regions, in both cases debates on the class character of rural workers began when leftist historians raised the possibility of applying Marxist categories to their particular historical conditions. In both cases, they were dealing with a ‘south’ characterized by a preeminently agricultural economy and a persistent social and political conservatism. In both cases, too, the debate has moved from broad theoretical positions to the explanation of specific instances of class conflict in a rural setting—the slaves' resistance to their masters and the peasants' resistance to their landlords, respectively—and then on to a criticism of the Marxist approach to the problem.

Waorani Marriage

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pamela I. Erickson ◽  
Stephen Beckerman ◽  
James Yost ◽  
Rosemary Diaz
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Behavior ◽  
Social World ◽  
Indigenous Populations ◽  
Residential Patterns ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Oil Workers

The chapter records changes in Waorani marriage as acculturative forces reduce the power of young people’s parents to decide whom they must marry. With the arrival of missionaries, oil workers, anthropologists, and tourists, the social world has expanded; new possibilities for marriage have been presented and indeed encouraged by non-Waorani; new residential patterns and ways of making a living have reduced the influence of parents. There are more love matches, more extra-marital pregnancies, and fewer planned alliances between families. Most ethnographers who have worked with indigenous populations have probably noticed that with contact and acculturation, one of the first things to weaken is the authority of the older generation over the sexual behavior of the younger. Because of the dramatic history of the Waorani and the ethnographic attention they have received, this case is particularly well documented and instructive.

A Good Man is a Trickster to Find

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Taylor Tye
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
Social Reform ◽  
American South ◽  
Flannery O'connor ◽  
Southern Gothic ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The American South ◽  
Over The Top ◽  
Traditional Storytelling

In my presentation, I will demonstrate the contrast between the pioneer of the Southern Grotesque, Flannery O’Connor, and her famous story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” with Taylor’s use of the gothic in his YA novel. O’Connor adapted her version of the gothic from her predecessors such as Shelley and Poe. But she veers away from the creation of a fantastical monster tradition of the Romantics to drive the focus of the “monstrous” to the very human but harmful behaviors of her characters. Similarly, Taylor’s narrative does away with the over-the-top fantasy of the Romantic tradition and instead chooses to set the narrative in a realistic space with relevant characters. The difference between O’Connor and Taylor is that in O’Connor’s Southern Gothic the setting is the pinnacle of her story while Taylor’s Indigeneity shines through with his humor, traditional storytelling, and orality in his narrative. Differences aside, it is clear that the motive of each text is a call for social reform in O’Connor’s criticism of the social structure of the American South and in Taylor’s criticism of colonization.

Class and Slavery

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Daniel Wells
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
American South ◽  
Class Formation ◽  
Old South ◽  
Basic Assumptions ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The American South ◽  
Southern Society

This article reviews scholarship on class and slavery. The evolution of the historiography on class and slavery is complex, and historians have only recently begun to revisit some of their basic assumptions about class formation, class ideology, and the social structure of the Old South more broadly. New studies raise questions about the ways in which human bondage and class intertwined in slave societies, particularly the American South, and have initiated a discernible shift in the field. While scholars profitably continue to study the plantation and the lives of masters and slaves, many historians now call for a wider view of southern society to take account of life in the region outside the plantation, and the various ways in which different classes of whites interacted with, and were shaped by, the institution of slavery. It is with these new calls that the subject of class is enjoying resurgence.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Slusser
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
San Diego ◽  
American South ◽  
Military Family ◽  
University Of California ◽  
Cultural Issues ◽  
Distinguished Career ◽  
The Social ◽  
The American South ◽  
The University

This book explores the life and work of Gregory Benford. Born in 1941 in Mobile, Alabama, Benford has strong roots in the American South. But as member of a military family, he spent much of his adolescence in other countries such as Germany and Japan. In the process he developed a cosmopolitan perspective, which gave rise to a lifelong fascination with “alien” cultures. Benford earned a doctorate in physics at the University of California, San Diego, and received his PhD in 1967. This book examines Benford's distinguished career as science fiction writer as well as his ideas on science and scientists “doing science,” the writing of science fiction, and the social and cultural issues raised by science. It also considers Benford's literary production in terms of its main categories.

Queerspace: Sexualized spaces revisited

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diepiriye Sungumote Kuku Kuku-Siemons
Keyword(s):  
Personal Narrative ◽  
American South ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
The Other ◽  
First Person ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
Best Friend ◽  
The World ◽  
The American South

Reflecting on lessons learned from the endemic and tacit homophobia throughout his childhood in the American south, Diepiriye's personal narrative begins with realizing his first ally in a most unlikely corner. His best friend became the first in their class to grow breasts and the world seemed to collapse in on her much the same way the world abandoned him because of his effeminacy. Told in first person, this is the first chapter in a book that regards gender, race and class in the American south with critical the hindsight of a native who has now traversed the world, and currently resides on the other side.

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