Unsettling the Normative: Articulations of Masculinity in Victorian Literature and Culture

This article provides an overview of the academic study of Victorian masculinity. It argues that the pioneering work of feminist and sexuality studies scholars in Victorian studies during the 1970s and 1980s made it possible to discuss manhood critically as a historical and cultural phenomenon. It then presents a reading of major works on Victorian masculinity from the 1990s, organized around two major themes: studies that brought to light and analyzed a suppressed history of masculinities that departed from cultural norms (especially homosexual masculinity), and studies devoted to the reassessment of mainstream Victorian manhood. It concludes by looking at a selection of work from the past decade in order to outline recent developments in the field. These studies, which have been able to take for granted that manhood is a valid and coherent subject of inquiry, have been able to integrate the study of masculinity into a variety of Victorian topics, even though there are now fewer works devoted exclusively to masculinity