An Analysis of the Patriarchal Tradition of the Leisure-Time Activities of Baseball and Vaudeville in the Gilded Age
Summary:
The rise of organized baseball leagues during the Gilded Age defines the primarily patriarchal culture of sporting events during this time in American history. In their spare time, many middle and middle-upper class sportsman would form baseball leagues, which excluded women this leisure time activity. These leagues would become a dominant form of team-orientated sporting events that provided men with an outlet after work to enjoy competitive sports. In a similar way, male leisure-time activities also included vaudeville as a patriarchal constructed form of entertainment by and for wealthy men to view and exploit…show more content… Of course, financial patronage, management, and organization of these vaudeville acts almost always dominated by males. These aspects of male entertainment were defined through the presence of “classical dances” to audiences eager to see the unclad female body in motion” (Erdman , 2004, p.104). These types of nude acts were primarily meant for male audiences, which exploited women as actors in this type of partirihcal and exploitative environment. This aspect of late Victorian society also defines the unequal status of women in society as servants of male oppression, or servants to their access to public venues that they could not attend due to being isolated within the home. These societal effects of vaudeville define the marginalization of women in the organization and presentation of entertainment for men: “Patriarchal figures were in charge behind the scenes…regulating the amusement fare for mass consumption” (p.104). Certainly, vaudeville provided a dual means of marginalizing the role of women in Gilded Age society, since male dominance controlled all aspects of women’s lives as objects for entertainment or by condemning them to domestic servitude as a result of this form of “amusement” for male audiences. These are the important aspects of sporting events and entertainment venues, which define the patriarchal construct of baseball and vaudeville in the marginalization of women as a broader social problem in the late 19th
