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A Man's Place: Masculinity and the Middle-Class Home in Victorian England
In this fascinating look at the home lives of middle class men in nineteenth-century England, John Tosh shows how contradictions in Victorian ideals of domesticity and masculinity shaped men`s lives. Responding to the conflicts associated with being absent from home for the working day or longer, Victorian husbands and fathers encountered and grappled with issues of gender politics that persist today.
272 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1999
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About the author
John Tosh
23 books14 followersJohn A. Tosh is a British historian and Professor Emeritus of History at Roehampton University. He gained his BA at the University of Oxford and his MA at the University of Cambridge. He was awarded his PhD by the University of London in 1973; his thesis topic being "Political Authority among the Langi of Northern Uganda, circa 1800–1939". He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. In 1987–88, he held a visiting appointment at the University of California, Davis. At Roehampton University, he teaches History, specifically "Reading and Writing History". He served as Vice-President of the Royal Historical Society from 1999 to 2002. He has also published several works on the history of masculinity in nineteenth-century Britain. He is currently preparing a critical analysis of the social applications of historical perspective in contemporary Britain.
Tosh's claim to originality and notability rests largely on his work as a historian and historiographer. Since the turn of the millennium, he has taken a leading role as a public historian in developing the history of masculinity and ensuring it has become an important dimension of social and cultural history. He has shown how domesticity, previously regarded as an aspect of women's history, also conditioned and influenced the lives of men and society. As a historiographer, he has updated the way we look at the study of history and how we construct our knowledge of the past, as well as providing insight into the works of other historians and their impact on the study of the subject.
He is the father of philosopher Nick Tosh.
Tosh's claim to originality and notability rests largely on his work as a historian and historiographer. Since the turn of the millennium, he has taken a leading role as a public historian in developing the history of masculinity and ensuring it has become an important dimension of social and cultural history. He has shown how domesticity, previously regarded as an aspect of women's history, also conditioned and influenced the lives of men and society. As a historiographer, he has updated the way we look at the study of history and how we construct our knowledge of the past, as well as providing insight into the works of other historians and their impact on the study of the subject.
He is the father of philosopher Nick Tosh.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
May 13, 2020
I don’t really have anything to add which hasn’t been said here already, but this is an excellent survey of Victorian middle-class masculinities. It’s fabulous how it doesn’t try to impose one linear trajectory of a singular masculinity, but rather highlights overlapping (and often contradictory) ideas and expectations, as well as complex experiences. Despite its short length, there are ideas in here worthy of many monographs. As a broad point about this book and others like it, I adore how feminist analyses are being put towards subjects who once would have been seen as ‘the centre’ of history. Through Tosh’s work, we see that masculinity is just as historically mutable as any other category.
March 12, 2009
Tosh synthesizes a large body of previous historical work on masculinity and domesticity in the Victorian period, bringing abstract concepts to life by adding “case-studies,” information on the lives of seven Victorian men and their families taken from Tosh’s archival research. Tosh’s book was made possible by two recent scholarly developments: the opening up of women’s studies to include gender/masculinity studies, and the consensus in history studies that domesticity as an ideology is a key aspect of modernity, one that developed in the wake of alienation in response to industrial capitalism. Studying the ways that men were constructed by, and in turn constructed, domesticity is the goal of Tosh’s study: his book “reconstructs how men of the Victorian middle class experienced the demands of an exacting domestic code, and how they negotiated its contradictions” (1).
In his introduction, Tosh lays out the above justification for his project, suggesting that the concept of “separate spheres” ignores the fact that men could move at will between the public and private. He argues that the domestic sphere is “integral to masculinity. To establish a home, to protect it, to provide for it, to control it, and to train its young aspirants to manhood have usually been essential to a man’s good standing with his peers” (4). Traditionally, work and home were the same place. But during the Victorian period, men in large numbers began to work outside the home, often in places considered polluted and dehumanized. Thus, the home became constructed as a place of refuge from the ills of work: “It provided not only the rest and refreshment which any breadwinner needs, but the emotional and psychological supports which made working life tolerable” (6). The pull of domesticity for men competed, however, with two “longstanding aspects of masculinity”: homosociality, or “regular association with other men” (6), and the idea of masculinity as heroic and adventurous. Domesticity was also challenged by its own inner contradictions:
Expectation of a companionate marriage linked with strong investment in sexual difference;
The tendency “for fatherhood to be reduced to a providing role, since the relational nurturing aspects of parenting were deemed ‘feminine’” (7); and
Tensions regarding boys’ education and childrearing “since their gender identity seemed threatened by the attentions of the mother; this was one reason why a rising proportion of middle-class youth was educated away from home” (7).
The subsequent book is split into three parts: the first outlines the “pre-conditions” that led to the rise of domesticity in England; the second describes mid-Victorian domestic ideology; the third focuses on the challenges to domestic ideology in the late-Victorian period.
Chapter one describes changes in the middle-class household taking place during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries: the shift from the family being a productive unit to being a nonproductive unit; the shift in the family’s purpose, from being an economic site to an emotional/sentimental site; the removal of the wife from the realm of work; the segregation of servants from the rest of the household; and the emergence of the house as a sign of status in a society in which class distinctions, particularly in the middle class, were more openly contested. The second chapter discusses the ideal of domesticity that emerged in the wake of these social and cultural changes. The rise of the companionate marriage was key to domestic ideology. Companionate did not mean equal, however; the husband was still in charge. Also important was the rise of sexual identity polarity. In the past, women had been conceived of as lesser than men, but during the Victorian period, they came to be seen as different rather than lesser. The rise of Evangelicalism, as well as changing ideas in the conception of childhood also contributed to the rise of domestic ideology as a “cultural norm” by the 1830s and 40s in England. Tosh concludes this chapter by discussing the key player in domestic ideology: the moral, passionless mother: “The elevation of the Angel Mother cut the moral pretensions of men in the home down to size, and their significance as parents was correspondingly diminished” (47).
The second section, which covers the period from 1830-1880, focuses on marital relations, father/child relations, the transition from childhood to adulthood for boys/men, and the growth of male associational groups in the period.
The final section, focusing on the period 1870-1900, discusses the reasons why domestic ideology began to lose its hold on the Victorian imagination.
I agree with James Eli Adams, who, in his Victorian Studies review of Tosh’s book (Summer 2001), praises it for its elegant writing, its synthesis of a wide range of scholarship, and, above all, its convincing challenge to the “received wisdom about the separate spheres” (658). I also find Adams’ one qualification – that Tosh ignores masculinities at odds with domesticity during the period, reading the public sphere as only a site of self-estrangement rather than as a place where a different, and equally (or more?) pleasurable aggressive masculine identity, could be performed – well worth exploring
In his introduction, Tosh lays out the above justification for his project, suggesting that the concept of “separate spheres” ignores the fact that men could move at will between the public and private. He argues that the domestic sphere is “integral to masculinity. To establish a home, to protect it, to provide for it, to control it, and to train its young aspirants to manhood have usually been essential to a man’s good standing with his peers” (4). Traditionally, work and home were the same place. But during the Victorian period, men in large numbers began to work outside the home, often in places considered polluted and dehumanized. Thus, the home became constructed as a place of refuge from the ills of work: “It provided not only the rest and refreshment which any breadwinner needs, but the emotional and psychological supports which made working life tolerable” (6). The pull of domesticity for men competed, however, with two “longstanding aspects of masculinity”: homosociality, or “regular association with other men” (6), and the idea of masculinity as heroic and adventurous. Domesticity was also challenged by its own inner contradictions:
Expectation of a companionate marriage linked with strong investment in sexual difference;
The tendency “for fatherhood to be reduced to a providing role, since the relational nurturing aspects of parenting were deemed ‘feminine’” (7); and
Tensions regarding boys’ education and childrearing “since their gender identity seemed threatened by the attentions of the mother; this was one reason why a rising proportion of middle-class youth was educated away from home” (7).
The subsequent book is split into three parts: the first outlines the “pre-conditions” that led to the rise of domesticity in England; the second describes mid-Victorian domestic ideology; the third focuses on the challenges to domestic ideology in the late-Victorian period.
Chapter one describes changes in the middle-class household taking place during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries: the shift from the family being a productive unit to being a nonproductive unit; the shift in the family’s purpose, from being an economic site to an emotional/sentimental site; the removal of the wife from the realm of work; the segregation of servants from the rest of the household; and the emergence of the house as a sign of status in a society in which class distinctions, particularly in the middle class, were more openly contested. The second chapter discusses the ideal of domesticity that emerged in the wake of these social and cultural changes. The rise of the companionate marriage was key to domestic ideology. Companionate did not mean equal, however; the husband was still in charge. Also important was the rise of sexual identity polarity. In the past, women had been conceived of as lesser than men, but during the Victorian period, they came to be seen as different rather than lesser. The rise of Evangelicalism, as well as changing ideas in the conception of childhood also contributed to the rise of domestic ideology as a “cultural norm” by the 1830s and 40s in England. Tosh concludes this chapter by discussing the key player in domestic ideology: the moral, passionless mother: “The elevation of the Angel Mother cut the moral pretensions of men in the home down to size, and their significance as parents was correspondingly diminished” (47).
The second section, which covers the period from 1830-1880, focuses on marital relations, father/child relations, the transition from childhood to adulthood for boys/men, and the growth of male associational groups in the period.
The final section, focusing on the period 1870-1900, discusses the reasons why domestic ideology began to lose its hold on the Victorian imagination.
I agree with James Eli Adams, who, in his Victorian Studies review of Tosh’s book (Summer 2001), praises it for its elegant writing, its synthesis of a wide range of scholarship, and, above all, its convincing challenge to the “received wisdom about the separate spheres” (658). I also find Adams’ one qualification – that Tosh ignores masculinities at odds with domesticity during the period, reading the public sphere as only a site of self-estrangement rather than as a place where a different, and equally (or more?) pleasurable aggressive masculine identity, could be performed – well worth exploring
March 17, 2014
A Man’s Place by John Tosh explores the shifts and constructed ideals that defined masculinity and domesticity during Victorian England. Tosh’s goal is to illuminate the nuances of how these two factors changed over time. Throughout the book he notes that his study largely benefited from woman and feminist studies, giving him an avenue to research to discuss a rarely relationship, men and domesticity. A Man’s Place presses the reader to rethink the public and private dichotomy, demonstrating that the home—cult and ideal—were weaved into masculine expectations. Tosh further historicizes this process by asking key questions, such as: How were family relationships formed? What meanings are family and gender ideals invested with and how do cultural expectations condition those meanings? Lastly, how did the sociopolitical economy participate in the shifting meaning of patriarchy? While the book offers many topics and questions to analyze, this essay will focus on three areas: domesticity and the domestic ideal, the socioeconomic shift from rural country to empire, and the remaking of patriarchy. Analyzing these three areas will unpack the core ideas presented in A Man’s Place, as well as connect this work with other areas of study.
Tosh’s strength is centered in his innovative use of gender and cultural studies to critically read his sources. His main primary sources include advice literature, diaries and journals, magazines, legal codes, and photographs. Tosh is able to engage with Victorian gendered ideals by studying advice books, which varied from home life to Christian Manliness to rearing children. At the same time, diaries allow him to peak into the expressed emotions of Victorian couples. Combined, these sources illustrate that emotional care and labor are linked to class and culture. In addition, Tosh explains the importance of gender studies, Victorian histories, woman studies, history of emotion (such as Peter Gay), history of childhood, and religious studies. One other useful source was Clifford Geertz’s work, which urged Tosh to think about “webs of relationships,” breaking the study of masculinity and patriarchy from the usual space: the public. By using an interdisciplinary approach, as well as sources typically viewed as “woman studies” sources, Tosh is able to provide Victorian masculinity a progressing life.
The second important theme addressed in the study is domesticity, which became an important ideal for Victorian masculinity. While domesticity, a nineteenth century invention, deeply affected the lives of both men and women, it is typically treated as a female experience. However, Tosh argues that domesticity is integral and important when studying masculinity. He describes domesticity as a “web of obligations” that delineates “a state of mind as well as a physical orientation.” In other words, the domestic and ideal home created expectations that marked societal rhythms that were rewarded if met. For example, married men with families (a wife and children) were given promotions above bachelors. Also, men were expected to oversee that home life matched moral and class ideals. The growth of the middle-class meant more stratification and a desire by those in the upper echelons to imitate or socialize with the elite. This also created a shift in the image of middle-class women from lascivious and dangerous to pure and spiritual. The more that women engaged with this construct, as the harbinger of moral superiority, the greater they would achieve familial and social leverage. It also meant that men who engaged in the impurity of business and trade could be given more blame for an unruly household. Victorian culture created a home and work dichotomy that symbolized purity and murky territories.
Home became a place of refuge from the shifting political landscape brought about by the expansion of capitalism and pressures of modernity. Thus, a new social norm was created where having a peaceful and amicable domestic life became an aspiration. Despite these changes, the reproductive and emotional needs of the male patriarch remained central to the rhythms of the ideal home. The home was central to Victorian masculinity because of two reasons. First, it was a space that symbolized the patriarch’s (head of household) social standing. Second, as a place of refuge, the home provided the patriarch with emotional care that was denied by the public, modern world. While the home was not synonymous with domesticity, they were interrelated. Tosh demonstrates that Victorian masculine domesticity expressed how well a man ruled and provided for his household, which differed from female domesticity markers. However, the domestic and home ideals were not static concepts that could escape dialectic shifts.
In contrast, the meaning of Victorian middle-class masculine domesticity altered over time. Tosh describes how the onset of capitalism divided home and work, along with town (rural) and city (urban). There are three important factors that created these shifts that need to be analyzed: generational, economic, and world politics. Early on the Victorian period had relative peace, meaning Britain was not involved in major conflicts. This period coincided with the growth of capitalism and the development of urban cities. Later, as employment in business and trade expanded, more men began working away from home and even relocating to urban cities. These geographic and economic changes altered social rhythms, generating nostalgia for the rural life for the early Victorian generation. In discussing this shift, Tosh demystifies Victorian cultures as the inherent outcome of previous British cultures. In other words, the stuffiness and images of sexually repressed Victorians is a product of the Victorian period, not British cultural teleology. These early shifts thus laid the groundwork for a gendered middle-class culture that embraced the nuclear family and the cult of the home. However, its exportation was due to another consequence.
By the end of the Victorian period, Tosh notices how the generation raised in the “ideal” home rebelled against the confined nuclear family and parlor games. The attempt to create a picturesque home that provided domestic comfort became stifling for some. Furthermore, the hyper gendered Victorian world produced differences amongst the sexes (and Tosh might argue at times diverging differences) most noted by their gendered education. Boys attended all-male boarding schools at an early age, removing them from the home, while young girls remained engrossed in the daily chores and training in social propriety. As these young men matured, they participated in all-male spaces such as sport clubs (from rugby to hunting), while the young women stayed home in order to protect their spirit and body (meaning virginity). The haughty gaze of Evangelical morality in the early Victorian period was resisted (or avoided) by the later generation, who are nearly described as Victorian brats. Meeting Evangelical spiritual expectations became a source of anxiety for many men, giving the younger generation a cause to flee. In his last two chapters, Tosh explains how the expansion of the British Empire and the need for more bureaucrats and agents gave many men an avenue to leave the familial and social gaze. Did the growth of empire create a desire for flight or did the high expectations brought about by the cult of the home motivate departure? Tosh seems to argue for the latter.
The flight from domesticity also signified a shift in the meaning of patriarchy and fatherhood. In the attempt to create the picturesque family and home, the generation that supposedly benefited from these ideals did not embrace it fully. Living in this male privileged society gave men more flexibility to reinvent their lives and provided space to restructure patriarchy from the previous generation. While colonialism allowed some British men an opportunity to escape the Isles and benefit from colonial oppression, other men refused to conform by simply not marrying or spending their extra hours in taverns and playhouses. Thus, Tosh shows that in the middle Victorian period the majority of sex worker clientele were working class men. He substantiates this that by noting that while middle-class men had economic access to pay for sex, many were overcome with guilt due to the weight of Evangelical morality. Yet, was this emblematic of a shift in sex worker clientele by the younger generation who spent their nights in taverns and playhouses? Tosh does not explain, but it is assumed.
In contrast to the earlier period, the late Victorian generation took distance from the zealousness of their parents’ Evangelical and Methodist ideals. However, religion was only one aspect from which they were fleeing. The cult of the home was also based on the romantic notion of ‘help-meet’ and a companionate marriage that was suppose to be harmonious and loving. The younger generation reacted against the companionate ideal in which Tosh notes that, “Young men emerged from these [boarding] schools, it was said, with veneer of good manners and social poise, but with scant respect for women of their own or any other class.” Did the increase of homosocial spaces instill a more misogynistic patriarchy? If this was true, the women of the late Victorian period also found ways reinvent the role of middle-class women. The concept of the New Woman, who was modern and urban, and the growth of the suffrage movement challenged the public politics and the domestic home. In other words, the increase of a misogynistic patriarchy did not parallel a female culture of deference and isolation, just as the public presence of suffrage activists and New Woman à la mode failed to end male privilege. However, the gendered negotiations of the late Victorian period had no intention in ending patriarchy or destroying women. Friendships, marriage, sex, and the home were reconfigured in the twentieth century, in which its relationship continued to be negotiated and are places that inform us a lot about how gender functions.
On a final note, A Man’s Place is a valuable study to better understand Victorian and British culture. Furthermore, it is a much needed and helpful study for scholars and graduate students who research other areas of the world and time periods. The study of masculinity is relatively new, but as Tosh’s research demonstrates, learning about how masculinity is constructed in relationship to a space that was typically treated as female, sheds light on gendered relationship and shifts in patriarchy. It is all too easy to treat the home, the private sphere, and diaries, as feminist or feminine topics and sources. The tendency to essentialize spheres curtails our possibility to examine the process and processes of gender, patriarchy, and class. The most striking comment by Tosh is when he notes that men’s history has been the history that men wanted to tell, but do not reflect the totality and experiences of men. The focus on male heroic feats and metanarratives masked other realities. As Tosh demonstrates, men are tender and violent, loving and distant, with family and workmates, and men are father and child. The study of masculinity does not only allow a better understanding of men, but also of women and the complex relationships in which gender is made.
Tosh’s strength is centered in his innovative use of gender and cultural studies to critically read his sources. His main primary sources include advice literature, diaries and journals, magazines, legal codes, and photographs. Tosh is able to engage with Victorian gendered ideals by studying advice books, which varied from home life to Christian Manliness to rearing children. At the same time, diaries allow him to peak into the expressed emotions of Victorian couples. Combined, these sources illustrate that emotional care and labor are linked to class and culture. In addition, Tosh explains the importance of gender studies, Victorian histories, woman studies, history of emotion (such as Peter Gay), history of childhood, and religious studies. One other useful source was Clifford Geertz’s work, which urged Tosh to think about “webs of relationships,” breaking the study of masculinity and patriarchy from the usual space: the public. By using an interdisciplinary approach, as well as sources typically viewed as “woman studies” sources, Tosh is able to provide Victorian masculinity a progressing life.
The second important theme addressed in the study is domesticity, which became an important ideal for Victorian masculinity. While domesticity, a nineteenth century invention, deeply affected the lives of both men and women, it is typically treated as a female experience. However, Tosh argues that domesticity is integral and important when studying masculinity. He describes domesticity as a “web of obligations” that delineates “a state of mind as well as a physical orientation.” In other words, the domestic and ideal home created expectations that marked societal rhythms that were rewarded if met. For example, married men with families (a wife and children) were given promotions above bachelors. Also, men were expected to oversee that home life matched moral and class ideals. The growth of the middle-class meant more stratification and a desire by those in the upper echelons to imitate or socialize with the elite. This also created a shift in the image of middle-class women from lascivious and dangerous to pure and spiritual. The more that women engaged with this construct, as the harbinger of moral superiority, the greater they would achieve familial and social leverage. It also meant that men who engaged in the impurity of business and trade could be given more blame for an unruly household. Victorian culture created a home and work dichotomy that symbolized purity and murky territories.
Home became a place of refuge from the shifting political landscape brought about by the expansion of capitalism and pressures of modernity. Thus, a new social norm was created where having a peaceful and amicable domestic life became an aspiration. Despite these changes, the reproductive and emotional needs of the male patriarch remained central to the rhythms of the ideal home. The home was central to Victorian masculinity because of two reasons. First, it was a space that symbolized the patriarch’s (head of household) social standing. Second, as a place of refuge, the home provided the patriarch with emotional care that was denied by the public, modern world. While the home was not synonymous with domesticity, they were interrelated. Tosh demonstrates that Victorian masculine domesticity expressed how well a man ruled and provided for his household, which differed from female domesticity markers. However, the domestic and home ideals were not static concepts that could escape dialectic shifts.
In contrast, the meaning of Victorian middle-class masculine domesticity altered over time. Tosh describes how the onset of capitalism divided home and work, along with town (rural) and city (urban). There are three important factors that created these shifts that need to be analyzed: generational, economic, and world politics. Early on the Victorian period had relative peace, meaning Britain was not involved in major conflicts. This period coincided with the growth of capitalism and the development of urban cities. Later, as employment in business and trade expanded, more men began working away from home and even relocating to urban cities. These geographic and economic changes altered social rhythms, generating nostalgia for the rural life for the early Victorian generation. In discussing this shift, Tosh demystifies Victorian cultures as the inherent outcome of previous British cultures. In other words, the stuffiness and images of sexually repressed Victorians is a product of the Victorian period, not British cultural teleology. These early shifts thus laid the groundwork for a gendered middle-class culture that embraced the nuclear family and the cult of the home. However, its exportation was due to another consequence.
By the end of the Victorian period, Tosh notices how the generation raised in the “ideal” home rebelled against the confined nuclear family and parlor games. The attempt to create a picturesque home that provided domestic comfort became stifling for some. Furthermore, the hyper gendered Victorian world produced differences amongst the sexes (and Tosh might argue at times diverging differences) most noted by their gendered education. Boys attended all-male boarding schools at an early age, removing them from the home, while young girls remained engrossed in the daily chores and training in social propriety. As these young men matured, they participated in all-male spaces such as sport clubs (from rugby to hunting), while the young women stayed home in order to protect their spirit and body (meaning virginity). The haughty gaze of Evangelical morality in the early Victorian period was resisted (or avoided) by the later generation, who are nearly described as Victorian brats. Meeting Evangelical spiritual expectations became a source of anxiety for many men, giving the younger generation a cause to flee. In his last two chapters, Tosh explains how the expansion of the British Empire and the need for more bureaucrats and agents gave many men an avenue to leave the familial and social gaze. Did the growth of empire create a desire for flight or did the high expectations brought about by the cult of the home motivate departure? Tosh seems to argue for the latter.
The flight from domesticity also signified a shift in the meaning of patriarchy and fatherhood. In the attempt to create the picturesque family and home, the generation that supposedly benefited from these ideals did not embrace it fully. Living in this male privileged society gave men more flexibility to reinvent their lives and provided space to restructure patriarchy from the previous generation. While colonialism allowed some British men an opportunity to escape the Isles and benefit from colonial oppression, other men refused to conform by simply not marrying or spending their extra hours in taverns and playhouses. Thus, Tosh shows that in the middle Victorian period the majority of sex worker clientele were working class men. He substantiates this that by noting that while middle-class men had economic access to pay for sex, many were overcome with guilt due to the weight of Evangelical morality. Yet, was this emblematic of a shift in sex worker clientele by the younger generation who spent their nights in taverns and playhouses? Tosh does not explain, but it is assumed.
In contrast to the earlier period, the late Victorian generation took distance from the zealousness of their parents’ Evangelical and Methodist ideals. However, religion was only one aspect from which they were fleeing. The cult of the home was also based on the romantic notion of ‘help-meet’ and a companionate marriage that was suppose to be harmonious and loving. The younger generation reacted against the companionate ideal in which Tosh notes that, “Young men emerged from these [boarding] schools, it was said, with veneer of good manners and social poise, but with scant respect for women of their own or any other class.” Did the increase of homosocial spaces instill a more misogynistic patriarchy? If this was true, the women of the late Victorian period also found ways reinvent the role of middle-class women. The concept of the New Woman, who was modern and urban, and the growth of the suffrage movement challenged the public politics and the domestic home. In other words, the increase of a misogynistic patriarchy did not parallel a female culture of deference and isolation, just as the public presence of suffrage activists and New Woman à la mode failed to end male privilege. However, the gendered negotiations of the late Victorian period had no intention in ending patriarchy or destroying women. Friendships, marriage, sex, and the home were reconfigured in the twentieth century, in which its relationship continued to be negotiated and are places that inform us a lot about how gender functions.
On a final note, A Man’s Place is a valuable study to better understand Victorian and British culture. Furthermore, it is a much needed and helpful study for scholars and graduate students who research other areas of the world and time periods. The study of masculinity is relatively new, but as Tosh’s research demonstrates, learning about how masculinity is constructed in relationship to a space that was typically treated as female, sheds light on gendered relationship and shifts in patriarchy. It is all too easy to treat the home, the private sphere, and diaries, as feminist or feminine topics and sources. The tendency to essentialize spheres curtails our possibility to examine the process and processes of gender, patriarchy, and class. The most striking comment by Tosh is when he notes that men’s history has been the history that men wanted to tell, but do not reflect the totality and experiences of men. The focus on male heroic feats and metanarratives masked other realities. As Tosh demonstrates, men are tender and violent, loving and distant, with family and workmates, and men are father and child. The study of masculinity does not only allow a better understanding of men, but also of women and the complex relationships in which gender is made.
April 28, 2022
highly informative with great excerpts from famous victorian thinkers
September 1, 2022
Pretty good.
Read
January 1, 2024School
September 8, 2013
This is a seminal work in the application of masculinity-studies to historical research. The concept of masculinity has been approached by social scientists and historians repeatedly, but ultimately most influentially by Raewynn Connell in the book “Masculinities,” which is a definite influence on Tosh.
The idea of applying feminist analyses to men has met with some understandable resistance in the field of women’s-and-gender-studies. Why, they ask, when we still know so little about half (or more) of the population’s history, are historians turning back to the well-worn path of “men’s history,” and, perhaps even worse, studying dominant classes rather than the oppressed? Tosh’s work on masculine identity and domesticity is a fascinating answer to that question. Rather than maintain the classical (and inaccurate) divide between public and private spheres, with men neatly dominating the public and women the private, Tosh has inserted men back into the private world of the home, and questioned the nature of patriarchy where it lived during a recent and highly influential modern period. In doing so, he not only undermines the sense that men were “naturally” dominant, and finds that much of what appears eternal about patriarchal relations are historically contingent and often quite new, he demonstrates that a feminist understanding of the past has radically transformed our perceptions of it for both genders.
Tosh builds a narrative of shifting masculine identity, following male members of four middle-class families through the nineteenth century, and exploring their domestic relations as thoroughly as possible, while comparing these specific case studies to broader trends and more well-known exemplars of masculine identity. It becomes clear that each Victorian generation differed in terms of its definition of “a man’s place” in terms of the home, but that throughout the period, the concept of being head of a home was fundamental to the sense of being a man. I found the sections on rearing and training of sons to be especially interesting – assuring their future manhood was a problematic and at times stressful burden on fathers, often far more than protecting the “honor” of daughters was. Daughters, Tosh finds, often received more affection and unrepressed love from their fathers, because there was no concern that “coddling” them would leave them dependent on their fathers – women were supposed to be dependent, while men were not.
It should be clear from the above that Tosh’s analysis in no way weakens feminist critiques of patriarchy as a means of oppressing women. It does, however, tend to “humanize” it, in the sense that its beneficiaries now appear to be as trapped into hegemonic gender relations as its more obvious victims. I would argue, however, that patriarchy is a human institution, made up of human beings, not one which is imposed by “bad” people onto “good” ones, but which limits the choices of all participants, while certainly privileging one group over another. Understanding both sides of the equation would seem necessary to move beyond it. Tosh’s work on masculinity should be seen in this light, I believe, and appreciated for what it adds to our understanding of a past which is often simplified to the point of caricature.
The idea of applying feminist analyses to men has met with some understandable resistance in the field of women’s-and-gender-studies. Why, they ask, when we still know so little about half (or more) of the population’s history, are historians turning back to the well-worn path of “men’s history,” and, perhaps even worse, studying dominant classes rather than the oppressed? Tosh’s work on masculine identity and domesticity is a fascinating answer to that question. Rather than maintain the classical (and inaccurate) divide between public and private spheres, with men neatly dominating the public and women the private, Tosh has inserted men back into the private world of the home, and questioned the nature of patriarchy where it lived during a recent and highly influential modern period. In doing so, he not only undermines the sense that men were “naturally” dominant, and finds that much of what appears eternal about patriarchal relations are historically contingent and often quite new, he demonstrates that a feminist understanding of the past has radically transformed our perceptions of it for both genders.
Tosh builds a narrative of shifting masculine identity, following male members of four middle-class families through the nineteenth century, and exploring their domestic relations as thoroughly as possible, while comparing these specific case studies to broader trends and more well-known exemplars of masculine identity. It becomes clear that each Victorian generation differed in terms of its definition of “a man’s place” in terms of the home, but that throughout the period, the concept of being head of a home was fundamental to the sense of being a man. I found the sections on rearing and training of sons to be especially interesting – assuring their future manhood was a problematic and at times stressful burden on fathers, often far more than protecting the “honor” of daughters was. Daughters, Tosh finds, often received more affection and unrepressed love from their fathers, because there was no concern that “coddling” them would leave them dependent on their fathers – women were supposed to be dependent, while men were not.
It should be clear from the above that Tosh’s analysis in no way weakens feminist critiques of patriarchy as a means of oppressing women. It does, however, tend to “humanize” it, in the sense that its beneficiaries now appear to be as trapped into hegemonic gender relations as its more obvious victims. I would argue, however, that patriarchy is a human institution, made up of human beings, not one which is imposed by “bad” people onto “good” ones, but which limits the choices of all participants, while certainly privileging one group over another. Understanding both sides of the equation would seem necessary to move beyond it. Tosh’s work on masculinity should be seen in this light, I believe, and appreciated for what it adds to our understanding of a past which is often simplified to the point of caricature.
October 31, 2008
A fascinating piece, but one which too often reads like a history textbook. Tosh's book really investigates the role the home played in the lives of Victorian men, and provides a really helpful men's studies approach to a topic that unfortunately becomes too simplified in many accounts of the 19th century.
January 21, 2013
Tosh's analysis is a wonderful illustration of how the separation between "public" and "private" has always been more shorthand than reality. Tosh provides several case studies of Victorian households, illustrating how masculinity was not only explicitly NOT at odds with "domesticity" (as both a practice and an ideology), but actually intricately intertwined with the domestic.
April 12, 2008
Too much passive voice, but otherwise informative and interesting. Maybe a little too large a project; easy to get lost in details. As I explained to a classmate, this book basically argues that "It's not the money; it's the stuff."
March 18, 2008
This is one of the texts that explained more clearly to me how commuting to work came about.
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