Does Victorian Poetry chart a representation of a crisis of masculinity?

Questioning the Quandary of Masculinity through Women’s Eyes.

This essay aims to discuss the issue on the crisis of masculinity in Victorianism, putting into question

assumptions about the 19th century which somehow could shake the view by means of which the

argument is pursued. Particularly, this paper intends to challenge the veracity of the suppositions
relating to a possible weakening of manliness in the age of Queen Victoria. To reinforce this idea, one
famous woman poet of the century will be taken into account, together with an example of a male
poet who hid in his poetry all the masculinity which is thought to be lost. Specifically, it is seeking to
question the above-mentioned enfeeblement of man, starting from the idea that the Victorian woman
obtained more room in literature, compared to the previous century and going through the most
discussed topics in the socioeconomic and religious spheres.

The first assumption, which could make the reasoning “vacillate”, lingers on the matter of the Victorian
women who began to give thoughts words and in certain circumstances they prevailed over men
within literature. The issue analysed here is focused on poetry as a literary genre. This type of art was

seen in the 18th century as men’s property, indeed everything that represented the sublime, the mind,

the intellectual and spiritual activities, hence in wider terms “thought”, was considered out of the
female world. Burke’s concepts of the sublime and the beautiful in 1757 could explain the reason of
the anxiety having overloaded the figure of man less than a century later, when the presence of
women in poetry considerably increased. In his treatise, the woman always deemed as the “object of
love” (Burke 240) is described as “the most affecting beauty”(Burke 188) and the idea of beauty clearly
appears as not “applicable to the qualities of the mind”(Burke 189). Thus, a weakening of manliness in
poetry might be due to the fact that women were acquiring a stronger voice during the century,
making men uncertain of their power and authority.

The aforementioned theory could be easily accepted since Victorian women used literature as means
of social protest, dealing with issues that until then were typically male. Despite the validity of these
reasons relating to the willingness to justify the crisis of masculinity with a first women's
empowerment in the Victorian Age, these data, however, when analysed more closely, would show a
number of shortcomings. This is the case of Elizabeth Barrett Browning who wrote poems in order to
increase public understanding around the feminist question and try to make women aware of their
essence as thinking subjects and not objects of men. Yet her poems, despite displaying a strong
awareness and criticism towards the situation of women of her century, conceal at the same time a

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female emancipation too ideological and not very feasible, in a climate which continues to be
dominated by men and represented to be ruled by women only inside the fiction of a poem, such
as the verse novel Aurora Leigh. Nevertheless, phantasy hides not only the illusion of an
impracticable condition, but also the truth of a harsh reality which at that time offered little hope.
In fact, Aurora Leigh was a kind of heroine in those days. The protagonist manages to become a
woman writer and to achieve her purposes, she refuses a proposal of marriage from her cousin
Romney. However, the whole poem revolves around the figure of a woman who travels to seek
inspiration and who eventually always comes across with her cousin. Furthermore, Elizabeth
Barrett Browning set these meetings and the thoughts of the protagonist in order to be noticed.
For instance, Aurora, despite being an “untrustworthy” narrator because of her continuous doubts
and inconsistent thoughts as Alison Case states:”[…]Aurora as narrator is continually revealed as
unreliable, in error, through her conspicuous repressions and denials regarding her feelings”(28),
she gradually reveals herself marking the progression of time by calculating the months passed
since she saw her cousin; in the fifth book she explicitly claims:

” For instance, I have not seen Romney Leigh

Full eighteen months . . add six, you get two years.

They say he's very busy with good works” (l. 572-574)

In addition, several times in this work of art the main character turns out to be subtly jealous of
the other women on the verge of marrying Romney. After a while, again in the fifth book, when
she discovers that her cousin has decided to make a marriage proposal to Lady Waldemar, Aurora
asks bewildered to herself:

“And after all, now, . . why should I be pained,

That Romney Leigh, my cousin, should espouse

This Lady Waldemar?” (l. 1064-66)

“From here she launches into an elaborate series of reflections on marriage, men, and Romney in
particular, in an attempt to confront this "pain" and resign herself to the marriage.”(28) Alison
Case affirms. And after some quick considerations, the protagonist adds:

“'Tis clear my cousin Romney wants a wife” (l. 1069)

And, then, she concludes:

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 “At board, at bed, at work, and holiday,

It is not good for a man to be alone,–

And that's his way of thinking, first and last;

And thus my cousin Romney wants a wife.” (l. 1082-85)

The repetition of the sentence “my cousin Romney wants a wife” marks a pressing pace and underlines
her bewilderment about the discovery. It additionally represents a “failed resignation”(Case 28) in
putting an end to her jealousy and obsession towards her cousin. All these considerations are part of
the idea that the woman of Victorianism, although she was seeking independence from man, will not
succeed to detach fully from the male figure. What the Victorian woman reached was the awareness
of a state of submission, trying to imagine herself away from him, and autonomous with her own work.
Surely, therefore, a new consciousness emerged and this happens to such an extent that women were
no longer unconsciously manoeuvrable objects of the males, they shared this latest awakening with
other women and attempted to make them likewise aware of it. In conclusion to this first assumption,
it has emerged the idea that an earlier state of the independence of women was not the cause of a
crisis of masculinity, because the man was a strong presence in their lives, even in an author like
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, predominant leader in the fight for women’s rights in Victorianism.
Besides, through Aurora Leigh’s eyes it is easy to delineate a figure of a man who controls her life
staying in the background, a male capable of preserving whatever docile female in order to dominate
her or any other woman.

In the Victorian domesticity, masculinity, therefore, remained intact and the female gaze in poetry
reveals this difficulty to break away from a more authoritarian figure. The age of Victorianism,
however, offered new ways to men to show off masculinity even outside their homes and these
attitudes have a common explanation: The Origin of Species. In 1859 Charles Darwin with his scientific
publication was able to upset the majority of women and men of the century to such an extent that he
drove their minds to a real crisis of faith. The human beings, moreover, found out that the species to
which they belonged was no longer superior to that of other animals; indeed, they even became aware
of their derivation from apes. What made the human being’s blood run cold was the thought of not
having a divine providence around ready to make choices in their place and such a religion that could
have offered hopes after death. Hence, the human race had to learn to overcome obstacles without
divine aid and try to develop a capacity to adapt in a changing environment for the new science
declared that only a strong race would have not risked extinction.
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Even the male gender, thus, was living a spiritual crisis that led him to focus on reality. By these
actions, men began to exploit differently their masculinity and develop a new physical strength
rather than intellectual, due to the spread of a more materialistic view of life, resulting from the
Darwinian theory. The new masculinity was based on the importance given to the concrete,
material assets and the physical pleasure. The body and the muscle were part of this category and
the man progressively intensified their vigour. This new perception developed a real “movement
labelled by its derogators as "muscular Christianity" [which] arose, paradoxically perhaps, among
notably liberal men, the Christian Socialists”(Rosen 17). Charles Kingsley, a priest of the Church of
England, was one of them and he “helped create a masculinist image of an imperial English nation
concerned with formal territorial expansion”(Wee 66); namely, he exalted an idea of primitive
masculinity who “helped give impetus to the rise of late-Victorian New Imperialism”(Wee 66).
Somehow, Kingsley rejected the “English modernity for the pleasures and vigors of a vital
primitivism”(Wee 67). The return to primitiveness through the encounter with the Other in the
colonies thus allows man to find a purest masculinity, or physical strength, after a crisis of faith
which did not give him expectations. Muscular Christianity, therefore, intended to expand
manliness from the domestic point of view to the far ends of the colonial world.

Until the 19th century different poems analysed the issue of women exploited and subjugated by the
white men in the colonies. A strong criticism was raised about the conditions in which they lived and
how they were treated by whites. Among these works, it can be found Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s
poem the Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point. The author gave the floor to a black woman who was
enslaved, suffered violence and whose life was destroyed by the white man. The story initially refers to
a love found in a black slave and subsequently lost because of his death, who was killed by the white
colonizers. Later, she finds herself alone with a white child after getting pregnant due to a rape
inflicted by a white man and she feels obliged to kill her new-born. In a few words, the content of the
story seems to criticize the situation of slaves overseas, especially women. The condition can be
equivalent to that of the British fallen women for they were considered the dregs of society when
compared to the Victorian principled wife who was associated with the figure of “the angel in the
house”. The prostitutes were not accepted by society, despite the birth of associations for the recovery
of these women from the street, and they could not even marry. The narrator in the Runaway Slave at
Pilgrim’s Point can never find “comfort”(l.41) even with the person she loved and their bondage makes
them feel as if they were behind the “prison bars”(l.42). However, the condition in which the black
woman lives in this poem may be compared also to that

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of married Victorian women who lived a kind of slavery in the house as they were totally at the
service of men and could not break the imposed rules. Inside the poem, the situations experienced
by the protagonist which are very similar to the state of confinement of white women could be
various and they can be considered here because of their relation with the main argument of this
paper. Specifically, despite the use of criticism in the poem around “the abuses of patriarchal
power” (Brophy 278), the speaker’s feeling of being estranged from God: “I am black, I am black,
and yet God made me, they say”(l.22-23) and, even if, it is censured “the way Christianity is used
to perpetuate and justify slavery, pointing to the way "white angels" (l.157) suck out the soul of
her child” (Brophy 276), what happened also in Aurora Leigh and that made the image of an
independent woman waver, it is somehow repeated here, because this poem conveys hints of
submission on the part of the protagonist towards the mentioned male authorities, starting from
God himself to the masters who have subjected her to slavery. After the death of her infant she
“sate down smiling there and sung the song” (l.188) she “learnt in maidenhood” (l.199), that is the
song she usually started to sing with her first lover, “and thus” they “two were reconciled, the
white child and black mother”(l.190-191). These lines express the importance of the child’s death
for the black woman in order to eliminate all the anxiety and squalor associated with having a
white son. Moreover, to sing the song connected to her lover after killing her son signifies that she
can meet again the black man she loved as if death erased the rape she had suffered and
everything went back to normal. These circumstances correspond “to conventional notions of
female happiness as dependent on success in the roles of wife and mother”(Brophy 278), for she
acted like the most important thing was not the rebellion against her masters but the death of her
son to re-establish the lost balances and the conventions of love, motherhood (through the
reconciliation with her child after death) and courtesy, which are to be seen as the main Victorian
principles followed by the white women. Furthermore, in the last stanza she even turns out to be
capable of leaving the “white men curse free” (l. 252). Therefore, there is an unacceptable lack of
agency in the poem and “Barrett Browning constructs the slave as a figure who depends on other
people's reaction to her to redress the wrongs done to her, rather than speaking and acting in her
own right”(Brophy 280). All these aspects bring to the fore a conservative instead of a radical
feminist view in Elizabeth Barrett Browning which could be unexpected in this context if it were
not for the partial independence of Aurora Leigh and her obsessive thoughts toward her cousin.

These two poems are the symbols and examples of an extended masculinity which appears to be
rooted in Victorianism. Manly violence can be considered almost psychological in a domestic

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environment as in the case of Aurora Leigh, but physical in the instance of the black woman in the
Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s point (and in fallen women). Far from portraying a crisis, both are ways
for men to display their manliness and women are represented as deeply planted in the idea of
being their worshipful flawless wives. To conclude the discourse here in question, it is necessary
though to delineate the figure of a male poet and show how easy it is to extrapolate from his
words an intense masculinity. The author under consideration is Alfred Tennyson and the poem is
The Lady of Shalott, a choice due to the fact that this work might disclose conflicting thoughts
during the phases of interpretation. Initially, the poem is very engaging and enchanting and
detailed descriptions allow the reader to experience the story like a fairy tale:

On either side the river lie

Long fields of barley and of rye,

That clothe the wold and meet the sky (l. 1-3)

The Lady of Shalott is shown locked in a tower while “she weaves by night and day // a magic web with
colors gay”(l. 37-38) and “a curse is on her”(l. 40) if she pauses “to look down to Camelot”(l. 41). She
clearly represents the figure of the artist who is forced to stay locked up to make better use of the
artistic inspiration and give birth to excellent works of art. Similarly, Alfred Tennyson hid himself in his
house and reviewed his works a thousand times before their publication, creating poems loaded with
perfection. This interpretation of The Lady of Shalott, concerning the artist's approach to art, may
prove to be correct, given the similarity with the meticulousness of Tennyson in completing his works.
Nevertheless, a second interpretation is necessary to avoid overlooking relevant aspects of the poem
which push towards a specific author's intent. The fact that the main character is a woman artist may
think that Tennyson is an avant-garde literary man giving the possibility also females to take care of
art. However, the more the poem moves forward, the more aspects coming to the fore are anything
but feminist. The woman not only decides at some point to leave art and experience the world with
the risk of not having more time for her artistic work, but she also makes this decision the moment she
sees the figure of a man through the mirror, Lancelot. To give up art might be considered unacceptable
for Tennyson, but a woman acting in this way signifies that she is not appropriate for the role of the
artist. It marks a strong weakness towards men and ineptitude to respect work and achieve admirable
results. As aforementioned, at the beginning the reader is involved in the story, feeling even
compassion for the woman, when she cries "The curse is come upon me"(l.116). This empathy is
throughout the Part 4 of the story but a

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sudden transformation happens in the last stanza, when Lancelot seeing her dead body says: ”She
has a lovely face; // God in his mercy lend her grace”(l.169-170). The levity through which she
decides to follow a stranger and die mixed to his final utterance eventually leave the reader
stunned who in the conclusion looks at the whole story again but through the eyes of a man who
don’t acknowledge either art or love in the figure of the Lady of Shalott. This second manliness
interpretation of the poem is very different from the initial idea and instead of representing a
second way to think of this work, it seems the one and only perspective of it.

To summarize the entire essay, it is important to redefine the selected poems which have offered
seemingly conflicting interpretations about the crisis of masculinity. Although there is a large
amount of papers related to this topic with poems in which somehow the presence of men is
diminished, herein three of them have been analysed and a new rereading has been performed.
Through the works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh and the Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s
Point, have emerged two women anything but active in the revolt against patriarchal authority to
reach a degree of autonomy and men far less than in crisis. Behind the emancipated white woman
turned out to be a weak female, who still gives such importance to the figure of the man that she
is completely obsessed with her cousin. A similar behaviour has been discovered with the black
woman: despite experiencing a terrible situation which could be the reason of her conflicting
thoughts with regard to the violence she had suffered, in a feminist perspective she should at least
not forgive the white men and fight for her rights as a woman and a human being. In conclusion,
with the analysis of Alfred Tennyson’s poem The Lady of Shalott has been explored a veiled but
strong masculinity capable of involving eventually the reader in reinterpreting the whole story,
reaching thus a misogynist point of view.

Flavia Ciarciaglini

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 Bibliography
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Browning, Elizabeth Barrett. Aurora Leigh. Oxford University Press, 2008. Print.

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Case, Allison. Gender and Narration in “Aurora Leigh”. Victorian Poetry. West Virginia Press University. Vol.
29, no. 1 (Spring, 1991). 17-32.

Greenblatt, Stephen, gen. ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 9th ed. Vol. E. New York: Norton,
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Rosen, David. “The Volcano and the Cathedral: Muscular Christianity and the Origins of Primal Manliness.”
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Tennyson, Alfred. “The Lady of Shalott.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Gen. ed. Stephen
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Wee, C. J. W. L. “Christian Manliness and National Identity: The Problematic Construction of a Racially “pure”
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