Class Year
2018
Document Type
Blog Post
Publication Date
12-21-2015
Department 1
Civil War Institute
Abstract
There are two images of masculinity in Walt Whitman’s Drum-Taps, his collection of wartime poetry: one, the strong, hardened soldier, the image of manliness, and the other the boyish, rosy-cheeked recruit. Whitman’s sexuality, while not the Victorian social norm, was no secret, and he wrote openly of the hospitalized soldiers during his time as a Union nurse with admiration, affection, and love. Some critics, such as Thomas Wentworth Higginson, castigated Whitman’s queer themes to be overwhelming, distractingly sensual, and "unmanly," while others, like William Sloane Kennedy, dissented, arguing instead that the overt sexuality present in Whitman’s work was precisely what contributed to its masculinity, whether its desires were traditional or not. Whitman’s work, "Drum-Taps" included, certainly does overflow with themes of gender and sex with hardly any mention of women. How, then, did the poet find himself in a crossroads of contradicting ideas of masculinity, and what are the implications of this dichotomy? [excerpt]
Copyright Note
This is the author's version of the work. This publication appears in Gettysburg College's institutional repository by permission of the copyright owner for personal use, not for redistribution.
Recommended Citation
Jensen, Anika N., "Dead Broets Society: Masculinity in Walt Whitman’s War Verse" (2015). The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History. 132.
https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/compiler/132
Comments
This blog post originally appeared in The Gettysburg Compiler and was created by students at Gettysburg College.