Mike O’Malley Would Be Proud

OK, I study legal and diplomatic history. I work as an antitrust lawyer. I admit it, contrary to the masses (are there masses of historians?) I don’t really get into social history all that much. I tend to want to “fast-forward” through the gender, race and class issues sometimes. But sometimes, I think I’m wrong, and this is really the fascinating stuff.

Walter Friedman’s Birth of a Salesman is one of those moments. I can’t think of a book where someone has brought issues of gender home in a meaningful way. Some books (hmm, let’s say the author’s name rhymes with Schminkley), pay lip service to providing some attention to gender, race or ethnicity, and appear to do so with one eye on the politically correct clock. Friedman, conversely, really latches on to the image of masculinity as a desirable trait for salesman during this developmental period. Military imagery, hale-fellow well-met bonhomie, and other stock masculine traits were desirable, and inculcated into these commercial travelers and salesmen by the “scientific” sales managers. Women were courted by management as assets to their husband-salesmen, and instructed to provide support services, bribed with the promise of some household item.

Fascinating stuff–I may have to read these things more carefully. Mike, I stand corrected–perhaps we have more in to talk about than we thought!

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