How American respectability has been built by maligning those who don't make the grade How did Americans come to think of themselves as respectable members of the middle class? Was it just by earning a decent living? Or did it require something more? And if it did, what can we learn that may still apply? The quest for middle-class respectability in nineteenth-century America is usually described as a process of inculcating positive values such as honesty, hard work, independence, and cultural refinement. But clergy, educators, and community leaders also defined respectability negatively, by maligning individuals and groups—“misfits”—who deviated from accepted norms. Robert Wuthnow argues that respectability is constructed by “othering” people who do not fit into easily recognizable, socially approved categories. He demonstrates this through an in-depth examination of a wide variety of individuals and groups that became objects of derision. We meet a disabled Civil War veteran who worked as a huckster on the edges of the frontier, the wife of a lunatic who raised her family while her husband was institutionalized, an immigrant religious community accused of sedition, and a wealthy scion charged with profiteering. Unlike respected Americans who marched confidently toward worldly and heavenly success, such misfits were usually ignored in paeans about the nation. But they played an important part in the cultural work that made America, and their story is essential for understanding the “othering” that remains so much a part of American culture and politics today.

ウースナウは、中産階級の「品行方正」という光が、異端者への排除という影で形作られた真実を暴きます。社会の枠から零れ落ちた者たちの声を拾う筆致は、私たちの自尊心がいかに「他者化」の上に成立しているかを突きつける、極めて文学的な深みに満ちています。 映像版では疎外された人々の孤独が鮮烈に可視化されますが、原作の真髄は内面に潜む差別意識を解剖する知的な鋭さにあります。精緻な分析と映像の情緒が響き合うとき、現代の排他性の根源が露わになり、読者の魂を激しく揺さぶる比類なき体験が立ち上がるのです。