Natasha Anand
IGNOU (New Delhi), India
Volume 7, Number 3, 2015 I Full Text PDF
Abstract
This article presents an overview of critical studies on Victorian men and Victorian masculinity. It begins by defining masculinity and delineating how its sociology is typically understood as consisting of three main ‘waves.’ It then proceeds to tracing the early beginnings of Victorian Masculinity Studies through the late 1970s to the early 1980s. Subsequently, it provides a reading of major works on Victorian masculinity from the 1990s to the 2000s. In so doing, it argues how the trajectory of both literary and historical scholarship has moved away from the traditional focus on a unitary, homogeneous, and culturally sanctioned form of Victorian masculinity to the plurality of Victorian masculinities. Drawing from Connell’s theory of hegemonic masculinity, which posits a hierarchy of multiple masculinities engaged in power relations, the article reviews works that examine a series of dominant as well as subordinate masculinities as created, negotiated and sustained in the Victorian era. The article finally shows how the analysis of multiple forms of Victorian masculinity points toward the fluidity and instability of masculine identities thereby constructing the subject of Victorian masculinity as an ever-changing theoretical phenomenon embedded within historically, culturally and socially embedded discourse that is crucial not only to an understanding of Victorian studies but also to the academic study of both literature and history.
Keywords: hegemonic masculinity, masculinity vs. masculinities, subordinate masculinity, Victorian gender ideology Keep Reading