Abstract
The associations of masculinity with industrialization are explored in Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley and Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South in the present essay. It demonstrates that control of the self and of others is essential to the Victorian understanding of masculinity and class structure. Yet the frequent use of violence in connection with this (self-)control simultaneously props up and undermines mastery — by making it morally and socially dubious. Masculinity is therefore most unstable when it is most physically present. Hard and unyielding men, furthermore, need tempering by feminine influence to turn pure mercantile thinking into socially acceptable care. This also turns them from newfangled captains of industry into the recognizable equivalent of the traditional paternalistic squire. Masculinity in Victorian industrial novels is therefore a project, a goal, a case of redemption of a degraded and contradictory structure rather than the simple assertion of an unproblematic norm.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Works cited
‘Alleged Murder of a Police Constable.’ Manchester Guardian 25 June 1851: 7.
Briggs, Asa. ‘Private and Social Themes in Shirley.’ 1958. The Collected Essays of Asa Briggs. Vol. 2: Image, Problems, Standpoints, Forecasts. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1985. 68–88.
Brontë, Charlotte. Shirley. 1849. Eds. Herbert Rosengarten and Margaret Smith. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998.
—. The Professor. 1857. London: Penguin, 1995.
Carlyle, Thomas. Past and Present. 1843. Ed. Hughes A.M.D. Oxford: Claredon, 1921.
—. ‘The Present Time.’ 1850. Latter-Day Pamphlets. London: Chapman and Hall, 1888. 3–46.
—. ‘Signs of the Times.’ Edinburgh Review 49.98 (1829): 438–59.
Davies, Andrew. ‘Youth Gangs, Masculinity and Violence in Late Victorian Manchester and Salford.’ Journal of Social History 32.2 (Winter 1998): 349–69.
De Ryals, Clyde L. and Kenneth Fielding, eds. Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle. Durham: Duke U P, 1985.
De Tocqueville, Alexis. Journeys to England and Ireland. Trans. George Lawrence. Ed. Mayer J. P. New Haven: Yale U P, 1958.
Dickens, Charles. Letters of Charles Dickens. Ed. Graham Storey, Kathleen Tillotson, et al. Oxford: Claredon, 1993.
Dixon, Robert. ‘Captains of Industry.’ Journal of Economic Perspectives 16.2 (2002): 197–206.
Easson, Angus. ed. Elizabeth Gaskell: The Critical Heritage. London: Routledge, 1991.
Gaskell, Elizabeth. North and South. 1854–1855. Ed. Patricia Ingram. London: Penguin, 1995.
—. Life of Charlotte Brontë. 1857. Oxford: Oxford U P, 1966.
—. Letters. Ed. Chapple J. A. V. and Pollard A. Manchester: Manchester U P, 1966.
Holter, Øystein Gullvåg. ‘Social Theories for Research Men and Masculinities: Direct Gender Hierarchy and Structural Inequality.’ Handbook of Studies on Men and Masculinities. Ed. Michael S. Kimmel, Jeff Hearn and Connell R.W. London: Sage Publications, 2005. 15–34.
Leverenz, David. Manhood and the American Renaissance. Ithaca: Cornell U P, 1989.
Luddite Papers of Sir Joseph Radcliffe, Bart., c 1812–1813, MM [microfilm] 53, U of Huddersfield, Huddersfield, West Yorkshire UK, April 1812: 126/28.
‘Murder in Sheffield.’ Manchester Guardian 10 May 1851: 5.
Stevenson, Catherine Barnes. ‘Romance and the Self-Mad Man: Gaskell Rewrites Brontë.’ Victorian Newsletter 91 (1997): 10–16.
Sussman, Herbert. Victorian Masculinities: Manhood and Masculine Poetics in Early Victorian Literature and Art. Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 1995.
Tosh, John. ‘The Old Adam and the New Man: Emerging Themes in the History of English Masculinities, 1750–1850.’ English Masculinities 1660–1800. Ed. Tim Hitchcock and Michèle Cohen. London: Longman, 1999. 217–38.
‘Training Children to Fight.’ Manchester Guardian 5 Mar. 1851: 5.
Wach, Howard M. ‘“A Still Small Voice” from the Pulpit: Religion and the Creation of Social Morality in Manchester, 1820–1850.’ Journal of Modern History 63.3 (1991): 425–45.
Wagner, Tamara. ‘“Overpowering Vitality”: Nostalgia and Men of Sensibility in the Fiction of Wilkie Collins.’ MLQ 63.4 (2002): 471–500.
Zlotnick, Susan. ‘Luddism, Medievalism and Women’s History in Shirley: Charlotte Brontë’s Revisionist Tactics.’ Novel: A Forum on Fiction 24.3 (1991): 282–95.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2010 Jessica L. Malay
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Malay, J.L. (2010). Industrial Heroes: Elizabeth Gaskell and Charlotte Brontë’s Constructions of the Masculine. In: Emig, R., Rowland, A. (eds) Performing Masculinity. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230276086_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230276086_4
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-36759-7
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-27608-6
eBook Packages: Palgrave Media & Culture CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)