Conclusion: ‘Robinson Crusoe Untravelled…’

Abstract

Men were not born restless. Men were made restless. Physiologically they were conceived as active so the consequences of urbanization, industrialization and commercialization which pushed men into sedentary occupations and tempted them with luxuries were presented as compromising their essential nature. Thomas Carlyle summarized men’s understanding of the problem, its solution and its gendered nature when he wrote that he must live in the country and work more with his muscles and less with his mind so that would once again be ‘a whole man’.¹ The balance implied in Carlyle’s quantification — ‘more’ and ‘less’ — reveals the balancing act the achieving manliness involved. Finding a ‘medium’ between ‘extremes’ — between voluptuousness and abstinence or physical labour and mental exertion, for example — meant that men needed to be’ skilful mariners’, neither slackening their sails too much in fair weather, nor spreading them’ too wide in a storm’.²