Manliness: The Evolution of a Victorian Ideal

Manliness was the central educational ideal of the Victorian public school: it was not however a static ideal, for its interpretation experienced continual evolution. The first chapter of this study traces the formulation of the ideal of manliness, seeking to portray it through the words and actions of its chief exponents. Manliness was essentially an ideal of 'doing' rather than 'saying', thus in the second chapter attention is directed towards Edward Thring's Uppingham for a contemporary picture of the ideal in practice. It is here during Thring's long reign at an effectively new school that manliness flourished-longest and best. Even as Thring began his headmastership, so the evolution continued: elsewhere the ideal took an athletic tilt, and as the mid-Victorian years receded so the allegiance to Sparta increased. The development of 'masculinity' is traced in the third chapter. By the end of the century, manliness had imperial and militaristic overtones added to its athletic ones, and in the Golden Age of the public schools the ideal reached a gaudy and noisy zenith. This forms the substance of the fourth chapter. Then, during the crusades of the Great War, the ideal was thrown to a glorious climax, but in the falling it died, quite suddenly. This, on the surface, seems the end of manliness, but during the years of the hearty athletic back-slapping and through the imperial pomp and show, the modest Thringian ideal lived on at smaller, less hearty and less brash schools. This lifeline of manliness is traced in the final chapter. When, in the years after the Second World War, the time was ripe, this ideal was seen to have as much value and validity now as it once had at Thring's Uppingham.