Summary Of Maureen Montgomery's Natural Distinction

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The nineteenth century was a period of significant change for the newly established United States of America. The bloody and destructive Civil War had left the weakened country in a state of disorder and adjustment. Although politically unified, the country was still socially divided between the North and the South. In addition to the social issues that conflicted their way of life and economic foundation, the South had to correspondingly adapt to the rise of “industrialization and corporate capitalism, urbanization, and migration“(14). In the essay the “Natural Distinction”, Maureen Montgomery constructs a standpoint to interpret the identity crisis that the nation had succumbed to. This episode of vast change and transformation would ultimately …show more content…

Subsequently, many of the upper class subjugated various forms of cultural capital to expand social distinction and prestige to their financial fortunes. The “culturally rich” embraced this lifestyle of extravagance, luxury, and travel as a means to climb up the social ladder. As the popularity of these transatlantic voyages grew, European travel quintessentially became the Bourgeois experience and a common manner of discovering the American heritage. These prevalent excursions grew into a means of breaking the monotony of everyday life and an “instrument of social leverage in a ferociously competitive economy” by the end of the eighteen seventies (9). Montgomery goes on to describe the sheer paradox of the American excursions with her depiction of two American women traveling through southern Italy. She uses their offensive description of the local inhabitants as “dirty, shiftless, and dishonest” to show the sheer irony that came with these extravagant and prodigal trips (9). In doing so, she is able to quickly uncover the underlying issues that resonated at home during this time and the sheer arrogance that followed the American Bourgeois

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