Critical Analysis Paper on Paul E. Johnson & Sean Wilentz The Kingdom of Matthias - Book Report/Review Example

Yet the underlying tone of Johnson and Wilentz’s narration is that misogyny as a male reaction to the fear of being robed of the power through any social disruption is essentially the unavoidable bitter truth of modern identity; but in a more specific American context, any social disruptions as well as the subsequent social responses to them are to be viewed as the alterations in the family norms including the sexual ones and misogyny constitutes the basic echelon of this response to the fear of castrated power, as Johnson and Wilentz say in this regard, “repeatedly, Americans caught in bewildering times have made sense of things primarily with reference to alterations in sexual and family norms, and a perceived widespread sexual disorder” (Johnson & Wilentz 45).

Indeed though Johnson and Wilentz’s proposition cannot be applied to all of the facets of a social uprising for changes, it appositely can explain the psychological structure of a section of the society, especially the one that is more authoritative than the others. Again referring to Johnson and Wilentz’s proposition, Andrew Delbanco says, “Misogyny misogyny /mi·sog·y·ny/ (mi-soj?i-ne) hatred of women. According to Johnson and Jean, his assumed apostleship was less than an intentional embezzlement and more than a religious fanaticism that could be manipulated to reach his own authoritative ambitious end.

But on the Mathias’s followers’ side, the authors argue that their religious zeal to follow Mathew and their inclination to be influenced by his occult and bizarre lore were the outcomes of the spiritual voids that the pre-second awakening period was fraught with, and of the psychic callowness of the old rural order. Johnson and Wilentz support their thesis with the evidences showing that Mathias’s kingdom mainly consisted of the “poor men who were rooted socially and emotionally in the yeoman yeoman (yo`m?n), class in English society.

The term has always been ill-defined, but generally it means a freeholder of a lower status than gentleman who cultivates his own land.  Click the link for more information. republic of the eighteenth century” (Johnson & Wilentz 49). According to these authors, most of these men were driven to New York City by their economic necessities during the recurring surges of economic crisis in the 1820s following the post 1812-war economic boom. In a number of ways, Mathew was the shrew and fanatic version of these callow rural people who found themselves devastated with the challenge of urban livelihood.

Being raised in an orthodox Scots Presbyterian church, he had to “ EMIGRANT. One who quits his country for any lawful reason, with a design to settle elsewhere, and who takes his family and property, if he has any, with him. Vatt. b. 1, c. 19, Sec. 224. Click the link for more information.live in an anxious