"A Novelist-Gardener": Masculinity and Illness in Progressive Era California

Author(s): Kim Christensen

Year: 2016

Summary

Warren Cheney (1858-1921) of Berkeley, California lived during the period in which ideals of Victorian manliness shifted to those of a more brutish masculinity.  Suffering from ill health and neurasthenia for most of his life, he pursued an "outdoor life" while also participating in the Bay Area literary arts scene, embodying the tensions and contradictions of shifting gendered behavior ideals.  Historical documents and archaeological excavations undertaken at the Cheney family home enable us to examine his navigation of changing ideals within the context of illness, parenting, and white middle-class American identities through study of the home’s landscape and material culture.

Cite this Record

"A Novelist-Gardener": Masculinity and Illness in Progressive Era California. Kim Christensen. Presented at Society for Historical Archaeology, Washington, D.C. 2016 ( tDAR id: 434571)

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Keywords

Spatial Coverage

min long: -129.199; min lat: 24.495 ; max long: -66.973; max lat: 49.359 ;

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 745