Secret ritual and manhood in Victorian America / Mark C. Carnes.

Includes bibliographic references (p. [171]-218) and index.

1 Masks. 2 Words. 3 Darkness. 4 Fathers. 5 Secrets

'...Using insights gleaned from gender studies, history, anthropology, religion, and psychology, Carnes explains how paternal rituals functioned as a male religious counterculture in unconscious opposition to an increasingly liberal and feminized Protestantism. Fraternalism also addressed anxieties Victorian middle-class boys carried into adulthood over how to make the psychological transition from maternal nurture to the aggressive and competitive domain of adult men....'

Hardcover.