The Measure of Manliness: Disability and Masculinity in the Mid-Victorian Novel provides a fresh look at disability as a trope of nineteenth-century fiction, highlighting the importance of male relationships. Examples abound, from the story of Heathcliff as narrated by the invalid Lockwood in Wuthering Heights, to Nicholas Nickleby and Smike or Adam Bede and Seth, but Karen Bourrier’s book focuses on novels where the weak or disabled man has both a supportive role and also acts as a foil, showing that disability and invalidism are used to assert certain principles of ideal masculinity.
The study explores several key mid-century texts, including Charles Kingsley’s Westward Ho! (1855), Charlotte Yonge’s The Heir of Radclyffe (1853), Dinah Craik’s John Halifax, Gentleman (1856), George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss (1860) and Henry James’ The Portrait of a Lady (1881). Bourrier capably draws together existing ideas from Victorian studies with regards to illness and invalids, and recent work in disability studies regarding the use of disability, to characterise the ‘normal’, applying these to the study of masculinity. Her work builds on Martha Stoddard Holmes’ Fictions of Affliction: Physical Disability in Victorian Culture (2009), focusing on the pairing of the idealised ‘strong man’ with his weaker counterpart. As the Victorians did not use the word ‘disabled’, or distinguish much between the ill and the disabled, Bourrier brings together narratives of invalidism and disability in her study; she points out that, in Victorian fiction, both are marginalised in similar ways and set out as physically different. However, approaches to disability studies are used to build a picture of the Victorians that takes into account that illness and disability are not fixed but fluid, and the book shows that this fluidity could be used to shape the very form of the narrative.
The focus on an idealised form of masculinity necessitates a reading of disability as its other, and Bourrier navigates this by discussing the muscular Christian ideal as the Victorian perception of the ‘strong man’ versus the disabled, affective ‘weak man’. Her work on the disabled figure is shaped by the mid-century vogue for muscular Christianity as the masculine ideal, and it is particularly interesting that the pairing Bourrier describes is tied to the rise of the physically strong Christian hero. The figure of the disabled man took on a new importance in the mid-nineteenth century, in contrast to eighteenth-century literature in which physical difference most often characterised villainy. The weak man of Victorian fiction is instead linked to eighteenth-century ideas about ‘men of feeling’ and a focus on the Christian man as gentle rather than strong. As such, this study shows that in contrast to the strong, silent Christian hero, who acts on instinct more often than thought, the weak or disabled man is shown to be better able to express his feelings as a consequence of his disability. The weak man also plays a key role in articulating the feelings – and narrative – of his stronger counterpart, giving greater depth to the figure of muscular Christianity who otherwise is unable to convey his own depth of feeling. As a result, although the figure of muscular Christianity is the ideal being perpetuated, novels often used the perspective of the weaker man.
Bourrier also convincingly ties the increased physicality of the ideal man of the mid-Victorian period with the rise of industry, suggesting that the idea of the self-made man was another factor that played into idealised masculinity. As masculinity became more centred on strength and vitality, the trope of the weak man became increasingly necessary. The roles fulfilled by this strong man/weak man pairing are elucidated in the four chapters of this study. The first explores Kingley’s novels Westward Ho! and Two Years Ago, both of which centre on Crimea, alongside Charlotte Yonge’s The Heir of Radclyffe which was popular with the soldiers of the time. These three novels together highlight the importance of masculine suffering in becoming the ideal Christian man, as it enables the hero to better express themselves. There is also an established connection between invalidism and authorship: Yonge ties reading with illness, while Kingsley shows more of a tension between this role and the conventionally masculine one by presenting the negative aspects of weakness and authorship in the figure of Elsley Vavasour. In this chapter, Bourrier establishes the importance of the pairing of the weak man and the strong man, particularly with regards to Christian ideas of chivalry and masculinity.
The second chapter explores class divisions in Dinah Craik’s John Halifax, Gentleman, showing the influence of illness on narrative form as the character of Phineas Fletcher focalises the narrative of his friend’s success through his own periods of illness and convalescence. The third chapter deals with the schoolboy novel, showing that Thomas Hughes and George Eliot use the pairing of the strong man with the weak one to show typical schoolboy experience: the weak man is feminised, but also has access to a masculine world that women did not, such as the world of the public school. Here, Tom Brown, rather than being the ideal man, is shown as an ordinary boy in contrast to his classmates. Bourrier posits The Mill on the Floss as a rewriting of the schoolboy novel which problematises the silent, strong schoolboy novel figure of physical prowess, as the disabled man has more affective influence. Chapter 4 moves to the end of the century, and the end of a focus on muscular Christianity, as the invalid figure is now separated from the pairing with the strong man and as a consequence loses some of his centrality. However, we are shown the continuing influence of the pairing in later representations of masculinity and disability.
Bourrier suggests that weak and disabled men were not marginalised in literature, but actually played a central role not only in shaping narrative conventions but also in creating the image of the ideal man. Using Lennard Davis’ model which suggests that the ‘normal’ body helps us to understand the disabled body, this study maps Victorian fictional representations, showing that the pairing of the idealised man and the disabled man is an important structural choice that extends into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The Measure of Manliness therefore resonates with any reader interested in how disability is written and the literary history of disability.
Department of English and Related Literature, University of York, York, UK
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© 2016 Emily Bowles
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2016.1208983