The Masculine Concept of Honor [ Michael's Operatives T-Shirts || A LFN Convention? || LFN Discussion List || The Redhead-Not Redhead Poll || LFN Drinking Game || LFN - The Musical || Links to More Michael Stuff || More Michael Musings ]

THE SOMMERSBY COMPLEX
(The Masculine Concept of Honor)
(c) 1995 by Rickey R. Mallory

Our friend and fellow listmember Rickey Mallory contributes her thoughtful essay, which was inspired by the movie "Sommersby" but which she feels can be applied to our beloved Michael as well. Please send your feedback to us here at The Sidekicks Society and we'll post it here.

The concept of honor is a masculine one, as I see it in the context of history. The definition of honor which I am adopting for the purpose of this paper is the one which can range, depending on the dictionary, from "a good name or public esteem" to "adherence to high standards of ethical conduct." It seems to me that this theory of honor is a peculiarly masculine one, and one which has often been highly distorted.

Admittedly, during the hunter/gatherer period of human history the male was expected, perhaps because of his greater size and upper body strength, perhaps because the females were busy with the children, to provide protection to the female and the young. The male's impetus, if we consider male and female roles as inherent, was to preserve his seed, and in order to do so, he was obliged to preserve the female (or all the females) in whom his seed was planted.

As hunter/gatherer societies evolved into horticultural, then agricultural societies, the male's role appears to have become less and less defined by necessity, and more and more defined by males themselves. Hence the often presented idea that men deal more with the abstract. matters of the heavens and the common good, while women deal more with reality, matters of the earth and the good of the children.

So, today, when "dis-integration" of society is creating violent gangs of young men who cannot seem to fit in anywhere, the question may be this. Is today's view of honor a distorted perception of how oneself is seen through the eyes of others, or is it integrity, which is housed inside, unencumbered by any need to be recognized by others, an internal set of values, rather than an external laud?

Rarely does one see honor extolled as a feminine quality in literature. Rather, it appears that honor is another of the abstract notions upon which men may hang their sense of worth, while women remain tied to the earth by the mundane chores of daily life.

In much of literature, the word honor occurs in the same sentence as riches, and is often associated with war. In Beowulf the author avows "What a piece of work is man, after all, that so much of his great loyalty and great honor and valor should have been spent then, and spent ever since, on killing."

And later, "And therefore this Offa, this Man spear-keen, widely was honored for wars and gifts of hand."

From the Book of Mormon: ALMA 1:16: "For there were many who loved the vain things of the world, and they went forth preaching false doctrines; and this they did for the sake of riches and honor."

So, considering the definitions of the two words, honor and integrity, which is preferable?

Robert LeVine (1973) sees man as being torn between the two. He must try to balance his own set of morals with his need for acceptance in his community, whether his community is a small southern town which revolves around church, hunting and work, or a gang in the bowels of an impersonally gigantic metropolitan area, where a young man's worth may be measured by the number of cuts he can inflict during a fight or by the stoicism with which he endures his own cuts.

David D. Gilmore believes that manhood is "a culturally imposed ideal to which men must conform whether or not they find it psychologically congenial." Bertram Wyatt-Brown has presented a compelling argument that the Southern concept of honor, not the defense of slavery, was the major element which caused the secession of the south from the union and ultimately the worst of all possible wars -- the war between brothers.

The problem with the distorted masculine concept of honor is that it has, in many cases, come to be elevated as a goal to be achieved over integrity, or moral ethics. It has been twisted into an excuse for wars fought over nothing more than oil, for the enslavement and degradation of man by man, for whatever travesty man may desire to inflict upon himself. Do it in the name of honor, and earn the admiration of other men.

The recent movie, Sommersby, which is a reincarnation of the older French film The Return of Martin Guerre, is a study of the masculine concept of honor and how easily that concept can become so distorted as to destroy a man's life.

The story, essentially, is of a man who had been a disreputable, cowardly thief who gets the chance to start anew when his fellow prisoner of war, whom he resembles remarkably, dies. He assumes the dead man's place with his town, his wife and his child. For various reasons including the fact that Sommersby himself wasn't a very nice or honorable man, Sommersby's wife accepts the imposter into her home and her bed. They fall in love, which Sommersby and his wife never did.

After an idyllic time together, during which the imposter manages to maintain his charade with his wife and all the townspeople, turns the impoverished town into a thriving tobacco industry, and gains respect and -- yes -- honor, for his newly adopted "self," he is accused of murder -- or Sommersby is.

The imposter, rather than confess his duplicity and return to his shameful former life, is hanged for the murder that Sommersby committed.

There is no explanation in the movie for the imposter's reasoning. He appears to have the idea that the town is depending on him to be Sommersby, and there is a vague notion put forth in the movie that if the imposter were to reveal his true identity, the prosperity of the town would collapse, which, since the prosperity is based on a real product -- tobacco -- seems to be faulty reasoning.

On the other hand, there are so many clues throughout the movie that the man is not Sommersby (he pretends an injured hand to avoid writing; when he goes to buy a new pair of shoes, Sommersby's shoe form doesn't fit his foot; he takes an interest in the town and is nice to his wife, which Sommersby never was) that it is improbable that the townspeople are so dense that they don't have some inkling that he isn't Sommersby.

Also, his wife is pregnant. This, at least from the feminine point of view, is perhaps the greatest reason to preserve one's own life, and makes the end of the movie even more frustrating.

What forces could compel a man to give up a life in which he had proved himself a man of integrity, give up a wife he loves and a child he will never know, because he is ashamed of something he has done in the past? Apparently more ashamed of his past and his duplicity than he is of admitting to murder under his newly adopted identity. This movie is the embodiment of my theory of the distortion of the meaning of honor. It is a complete inversion of everything that the concept of honor is supposed to convey.

If honor is a personal sense of worth, an integrity, then the imposter has proved his worth. He is in the company of people who care for him, who admire him for his actions since the war. They did not know the cowardly thief who went to war, and the movie clearly implies that they didn't admire the callous, selfish Sommersby who was cruel to his wife and cared little for the town, and who murdered a man in cold blood.

The imposter finds himself in a dilemma which is baffling to me. The shame of admitting who he really is will be fleeting.

Death is forever.

The world is a large place, even in the unlikely event the town rejects him. However, it is hardly conceivable that these townspeople, who prospered greatly from the imposter's intelligence and business acumen, and who genuinely welcomed him into their hearts like they had apparently never welcomed the real Sommersby, will spurn him when they find out he has impersonated Sommersby.

The decision of this man who had actually done a remarkable job of turning his life around to die for a crime he didn't commit represents the very embodiment of distorted honor, a notion of manhood that defies explanation, at least to his wife and to me.

Steve Smith illustrates a similar conundrum in his book Gender Thinking with the theme of the movie High Noon, in which a man must choose between his new wife who abhors violence, and his honor, which demands that he meet for a shootout several desperate criminals intent on murdering him, "or lie a coward, a craven coward" in his grave.

An interesting point in this movie is that most of the townspeople try to encourage Will Kane to flee, although only the women in the film see avoidance of conflict as honorable. The men are more interested in the reputation of the town if there is a gunfight, or in Kane himself, whom they do not want to see killed.

So Kane, in order to preserve his masculine sense of honor, must endure the possibility of losing his wife, and must physically defeat a friend of his in order to be able to stay and face death.

Another point that Dr. Smith makes is that after all, when Kane goes to meet the killers in the street, his wife actually kills one of them. However, Dr. Smith is quick to point out that Amy has no notion of aiding her husband's honor. In fact, it seems to me that she has actually hurt Kane's efforts to be a man of honor. Her killing of one of the killers could hardly be viewed as anything except Kane hiding behind a woman's skirts, whether or not Kane knew about or condoned her actions. And Amy certainly isn't acting for anyone's good but herself and her new husband. She uses the violence she abhors to save her husband, not to "save the world" or to avoid being branded a coward.

Both Will Kane and the imposter in Sommersby are heroes in their own eyes. They perceive that they have met the threat to their manhood and have secured their honor in the eyes of the people around them.

Their wives, while acquiescing to their husbands' distorted notions, hold their own personal integrity intact by protesting the reason the men insist upon sacrificing themselves.

It is inconceivable to the women that anyone would choose death over life because of some abstract sense of what others will think of them. What, biologically and culturally, has led to this male assumption that to be a hero one must place the appearance of bravery and honor above one's own sense of self-preservation?

Is it because the cultural demands made of men have forced them to so completely disassociate themselves from the mundane that they forget that the principal reason for living is to continue life?

Gilmore seems to support this theory. He states that the personality qualities necessary for male contribution to society are the opposite of what is considered a nurturing personality.

"To support his family, the man has to be distant, away hunting or fighting wars; to be tender, he must be tough enough to fend off enemies. To be generous, he must be selfish enough to amass goods . . . To be gentle, he must first be strong, even ruthless in confronting enemies; to love he must be aggressive enough to court, seduce and "win" a wife."

In "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn", Mark Twain illustrates the point entertainingly. Tom Sawyer is disgruntled that their escape is turning out to be so simple. He says "There ain't no watchman to be drugged . . . ain't even a dog to get a sleeping-mixture to. And there's Jim chained . . . to the leg of his bed: why, all you got to do is to lift up the bedstead and slip off the chain. . . .

"You got to invent all the difficulties. . . . Anyhow, there's one thing - there's more honor in getting him out through a lot of difficulties and dangers . . . "

Tom persists in thinking up problems to overcome for the sake of honor and heroism. "We got to hunt up something to make a saw out of, the first chance we get," he insists.

When Huck questions the need of a saw, reminding Tom that all that's needed is to lift the leg of the bed, Tom is astounded.

"Why, hain't you ever read any books at all?- Baron Trenck, nor Casanova, nor Benvenuto Chelleeny, nor Henri IV., nor none of them heroes?" Tom asks. "Whoever heard of getting a prisoner loose in such an old-maidy way as that? No; to saw the bed-leg in two, and leave it just so, and swallow the sawdust so it can't be found, and put some dirt and grease around the sawed place so the very keenest seneskal can't see no sign . . . . Then, the night you're ready, fetch the leg a kick, down she goes; slip off your chain, and there you are. Nothing to do but hitch your rope-ladder to the battlements, shin down it, break your leg in the moat - because a rope-ladder is nineteen foot too short, you know . . . . It's gaudy, Huck. I wish there was a moat to this cabin. If we get time, the night of the escape, we'll dig one."

In his incomparable way, Mr. Clemens has, in a few well-written paragraphs, made the masculine distorted view of honor into a farce of such magnitude that even the most manly of men must laugh at the concept of the two boys digging their own moat, past which they will have to escape.

There is a good argument to be made, if one is to believe Gilmore, about the rituals of manhood, that manliness (or honor) "is a symbolic script, a cultural construct, endlessly variable and not always necessary."

So war and gain and subjugation of others are a man's concept, invented because of his need to provide a reason for his existence.

If it were possible to disabuse men of the notion of honor as a cultural construct, an invention of society to make a man feel manly, could an argument be made for the demise of war, slavery, "man's inhumanity to man?" Integrity, morality, man's devotion to his own code of morals, his family, and his god, might then lead to a sense of self-preservation which would find war and its attendant atrocities as intolerable.

--Gilmore, David D. 1990. Manhood in the Making: Cultural Concepts of Masculinity. Yale University Press.
--LeVine, Robert A. 1973. Culture, Behavior, and Personality. Chicago: Aldine.
--Smith, Steven G. 1992. Gender Thinking. Temple University Press.
--Excerpts from Beowulf, Huckleberry Finn, The Book of Mormon, Electronically Enhanced Text. 1991. World Library, Incorporated.
(c) 1995 by Rickey R. Mallory