What was feminine about Mark Twain, Poe? Am I reading your comment right? Not one darn thing I can recall.
While many in the period didn’t live up to it, there used to be the concept of a gentlemen and it meant something. In my lifetime (and I was born in 1959) I missed most of it thanks to the 1960’s (which were the result of much mining of landscape for decades before).
I’m aware of the defects of the past and how it used to be but I still think it was better than the tapioca we have today.
And I have actually been in Pakistan (in the 1980’s) and have seen what they have there - real American men won’t go for that, not the decently raised ones. It is not pretty over there.
Twain and Poe were progressives. I mean, let’s start with Tom Sawyer. Do you recall that The Grapes of Wrath were written almost 100 years ago? That’s a very progressive book. Isn’t that the point? Progressivism? You and others here are confusing progressivism, feminism and liberalism. You are wrong here. The ideas of the progressives had merit: slavery was wrong, and they used a variety of logical arguments to prove that case. The vote for women was logical, as they argued it. What is not logical is communism and socialism. But it’s not just women buying that. V’s wife.