![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
Abstract
Since the release of Stephen Spielberg's Lincoln (2012), film critics and scholars have debated the film's depictions of race and who was responsible for abolition, as well as its historical accuracy and the actors' portrayals of the Lincolns and key characters in the White House and House of Representatives. There has been a more scattered response, however, to the film's representations of family relationships and gender politics. This essay explores how the film blends twenty-first century perceptions about nineteenth-century expectations of fathers and mothers, men and women, and political and familial agency. The film encourages this type of analysis by turning the two ‘Houses’ into sites for affirming, reinforcing, policing, and challenging gender appropriate practices.
Notes
1. Three of the many are particularly noteworthy because they contain or summarize multiple scholars' viewpoints (‘Film Roundtable: Lincoln’ 2013; Bush Citation2013; Pinsker Citation2013a).
2. In fact, Field's tenacity in convincing Spielberg to allow her to play Mary Lincoln after Liam Neesom bowed out of the project seemed to parallel her portrayal of the strong-willed Mrs. Lincoln. When Daniel Day-Lewis signed on to play the title role, Spielberg planned to find another actress to fill the First Lady's role because Field is ten years older than Lewis and Mary was more than ten years younger than Lincoln. In interviews, Fields hints that Lewis advocated on her behalf with the director, perhaps channeling his character's penchant for behind-the-scenes maneuvering, so she was able to keep the part (Dean Citation2012; Whipp Citation2012; NPR Citation2012).
3. American Historical Association executive director Grossman (Citation2012) predicted that scholars would have complaints about Lincoln, noting that ‘Spielberg seems to get the importance of manhood, but doesn't really know how to use gender as a category of political analysis.’
4. Hunter (Citation2012) credits historians with having ‘disposed of such vacuum-tight conceptions of gender. Instead, we view male subjectivity as a complex identity constructed by cross-currents of class, race, and femininity.’ For example, see Divided Houses: Gender in the Civil War (Citation1992) and Battle Scars: Gender and Sexuality in the American Civil War (Citation2006), both edited by Nina Silber and Catherine Clinton.
5. See also John Ness, ‘Film Roundtable’ (2013, 363).
6. For a similar interpretation, see Zeitz's ‘Fact-Checking “Lincoln”’ (Citation2012).
7. See Mary Niall Mitchell's ‘Seeing Lincoln: Spielberg's Film and the Visual Culture of the Nineteenth Century,’ Figure 6, in this issue.
8. In ‘Film Roundtable’ (2013, 364–365) Kevin Levin points out that new scholarship on Lincoln and his oldest son makes a convincing case for a closer relationship between the two than the movie portrays.
9. Like his tender interactions with Tad, Lincoln's familiarity with his secretaries, particularly John Hay, offers a notable contrast to the awkwardness between Lincoln and Robert. A striking scene portrays the president sitting on the end of a bed waking Hay up to discuss the pardoning of a 16-year old deserter. According to the film script, Lincoln ‘signs the pardon. Then he gives Hay's leg a few hard thwacks and a squeeze. It hurts a little. Hay winces’ (Kushner Citation2011, 73). What appears on the screen is more avuncular, almost fatherly, than what the script describes: Hay does not wince but seems to snort bemusedly; Lincoln stands and musses Hay's hair affectionately as he leaves the room. For a different interpretation of this scene, see Lowder, ‘How Gay is Lincoln?’ (Citation2012).
10. Several scholars point to this scene as fictional and ahistorical, given the Lincolns' child-raising practices, including Miller et al. (Citation2013, 365), Cornelius in Bush (Citation2013, 16), and Gilbey (Citation2013).
11. For a historical critique of this scene, see Pinsker (Citation2013b).
12. On the other hand, Michael Shank (Citation2012) notes that the absence of Frederick Douglass in the film ‘illuminates just how much more work we need to do on equality, whether in Hollywood or Washington.’ See Sweet in Bush (Citation2013, 19) for an analysis of the 2nd inaugural scene.
13. According to Pinsker (Citation2013b), there is no historical evidence that either woman visited the House chamber to watch the debates.
14. Holzer suggests, ‘Mary Lincoln's presence in the House chamber may be meant to suggest how intertwined the family's private and public life have become.’
15. The number of representatives in the 113th Congress, which was elected in November of 2012 one month before Lincoln's release, is 435, of whom 82 are women (19%) (Manning Citation2014, 1).
16. Lincoln did meet with petitioners, who lined up outside his office with requests for his assistance. It is more than likely that Mr. and Mrs. Jolly are fictional characters, although it is interesting to note that the actors who portray them, Elizabeth Marvel and Bill Camp, are married.
17. Pinsker analyzes the historical incongruities in the scene with the Jollys but does not comment on how gender is depicted in it (Citation2013b).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Andrea Foroughi
Andrea R. Foroughi is an associate professor of History and director of the Women's and Gender Studies Program at Union College, Schenectady, NY. She teaches U.S. women's history and Civil War history, including a seminar, ‘Lincoln: From Politician to Pop Icon.’ Her current research examines how Civil War-era cartoons and prints dress male political leaders in female dress to critique their leadership.