Paper Money Men : Commerce, Manhood, and the Sensational Public Sphere in Antebellum America

Paper Money Men: Commerce, Manhood, and the Sensational Public Sphere in Antebellum America by David Anthony outlines the emergence of a “sensational public sphere” in antebellum America. It argues that this new representational space reflected and helped shape the intricate relationship between commerce and masculine sensibility in a period of dramatic economic upheaval. Looking at a variety of sensational media—from penny press newspapers and pulpy dime novels to the work of well-known writers such as Irving, Hawthorne, and Melville—this book counters the common critical notion that the period’s sensationalism addressed a primarily working-class audience. Instead, Paper Money Men shows how a wide variety of sensational media was in fact aimed principally at an emergent class of young professional men. “Paper money men” were caught in the transition from an older and more stable mercantilist economy to a panic-prone economic system centered on credit and speculation. And, Anthony argues, they found themselves reflected in the sensational public sphere, a fantasy space in which new models of professional manhood were repeatedly staged and negotiated. Compensatory in nature, these alternative models of manhood rejected fiscal security and property as markers of a stable selfhood, looking instead toward intangible factors such as emotion and race in an effort to forge a secure sense of manhood in an age of intense uncertainty. Frontmatter List of Illustrations (page IX) Acknowledgments (page XI) Introduction Fantasies of Treasure in Antebellum Culture (page 1) Chapter One "Sleepy Hollow," Gothic Masculinity, and the Panic of 1819 (page 41) Chapter Two Shylock on Wall Street: The Jessica Complex in Antebellum Sensationalism (page 70) Chapter Three Banking on Emotion: Debt and Male Submission in the Urban Gothic (page 102) Chapter Four Tabloid Manhood, Speculative Femininity (page 123) Chapter Five "Success" and Race in The House of the Seven Gables (page 156) Epilogue Bartlebys Bank (page 183) Notes (page 187) Works Cited (page 204) Index (page 216) "Sleepy hollow," gothic masculinity, and the panic of 1819 Shylock on Wall Street; or, the Jessica complex in antebellum sensationalism Banking on emotion: debt and male submission in the urban gothic Tabloid manhood, speculative femininity "Success" and race in the House of the seven gables.