Gender at Work in Victorian Culture: Literature, Art and Masculinity

by Danahay,Martin A.

• ISBN13: 9780754652922
• ISBN10: 0754652920
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-09-28
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Martin A. Danahay's lucidly argued and accessibly written volume offers a solid introduction to important issues surrounding the definition and division of labor in British society and culture. 'Work,' Danahay argues, was a term rife with ideological contradictions for Victorian males during a period when it was considered synonymous with masculinity. Male writers and artists in particular found their labors troubled by class and gender ideologies that idealized 'man's work' as sweaty, muscled labor and tended to feminize intellectual and artistic pursuits. Though many romanticized working-class labor, the fissured representation of the masculine body occasioned by the distinction between manual labor and 'brain work' made it impossible for them to overcome the Victorian class hierarchy of labor. Through cultural studies analyses of the novels of Dickens and Gissing; the nonfiction prose of Carlyle, Ruskin and Morris; the poetry of Thomas Hood; paintings by Richard Redgrave, William Bell Scott, and Ford Madox Brown; and contemporary photographs, including many from the Munby Collection, Danahay examines the ideological contradictions in Victorian representations of men at work. His book will be a valuable resource for scholars and students of English literature, history, and gender studies.

Author Biography

Martin A. Danahay is Professor of English at Brock University.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	viii
General Editors' Preface	ix
Acknowledgements	x
Introduction: Working Definitions	1	(22)
Victorian Work and Industry	23	(26)
Gendering Work in the 1840s	49	(18)
Dickens, Work and Sexuality	67	(20)
Ford Madox Brown and the Division of Labor	87	(18)
Perversity at Work: Munby and Cullwick	105	(20)
John Ruskin, Digging	125	(18)
Gissing and the Demise of the Man at Work	143	(14)
Conclusion: New Women, New Technologies and New Work	157	(6)
Works Cited	163	(12)
Index	175