The Victorian novel and masculinity
By: edited by Phillip Mallett
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: 2015
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 217
ISBN-13: 9780230272323
Subjects: English fiction; History and criticism; Masculinity in literature; Men in literature; Gender identity in literature; HISTORY / Social History; LITERARY CRITICISM / General; LITERARY CRITICISM / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh; SOCIAL SCIENCE / Gender Studies
Description: "'The old ideal of Manhood has grown obsolete,' wrote Thomas Carlyle in 1831, 'and the new is still invisible to us.' The essays in this volume explore the way Victorian novelists tried to answer the question of what it meant to 'be a man': how manhood was learned, sustained, broken, or restored, and how the idea of the manly was shaped by class, schooling, region and religion, and by scientific and medical debate. Topics covered include the playful subversion of gender roles in the early writings of Charlotte Brontë; changing patterns of working class masculinity in London and Manchester; Dickens and the nurturing male; boyhood and girlhood in Eliot's The Mill on the Floss; the challenge to patriarchy in sensation fiction; manhood, imperialism and the adventure novel; masculinity and aestheticism; Hardy's reluctant, failed, or damaged men; and Conrad's studies of men isolated or divided against themselves"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note:; title: PrefaceNotes on the contributors1. Masculinity, Power and Play in the Work of the Brontës; Sara Lodge2. Working-Class Masculinity and the Victorian Novel; Chris Louttit3. Dickens and Masculinity: the Necessity of the Nurturing Male; Natalie McKnight4. Tomboys and Girly Boys in George Eliot's Early Fiction; Shelley Trower5. Manful Assertions: Affect, Domesticity and Class Status Anxiety in East Lynne and Aurora Floyd; Richard Nemesvari6. Growing up to be a man: Thomas Hardy and Masculinity; Jane Thomas7. Masculinity, Imperialism and the Novel; Phillip Mallett8. Aestheticism, Resistance and the Realist Novel: Marius and Masculinity; Emma Sutton9. Conrad's Theatre of Masculinities; Linda M. ShiresIndex.