Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917

Bederman concludes her work by illustrating how the immensely popular 1912 novel Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs encompassed all of the social and cultural values demonstrated through the works of the authors she has explored. As the perfect man, dangerously male yet sufficiently white, Tarzan amassed a huge following of fans who were engrossed by the excitement of the popular genre of exotic adventure story and who embraced the main character as a man they could admire and root for.

The main character, Tarzan, is the son of a British nobleman and his wife, orphaned as an infant when his parents’ ship is cast ashore. Raised by apes and able to communicate with them in their language, Tarzan is possessed of tremendous physical strength, prowess, and knowledge of wilderness survival skills. He learns to read from the cache of books from the wreckage of his parents’ ship, and he develops a sophisticated relationship to the ape mother who raises him. When she is attacked by a brutish, powerful male from the ape community, Tarzan murders him as act to avenge her. Thereafter, Tarzan, having tasted blood and found that he enjoys engaging in violence, acts with impunity and unmitigated aggression, never hesitating to use force to meet his own needs.