Craik, Dinah Maria Mulock. The Little Lame Prince. Illustrated by Earl Mayan, New York, 1965. Image title: “Suppose I were a knight; then I should be obliged to ride out and see the world.”
When the Little Lame Prince says, “Suppose I were a knight; then I should be obliged to ride out and see the world,” he evokes the traditional masculine ideal: strong, active, and heroic. His use of obliged suggests that Victorian masculinity was framed as a duty tied to physical action and control. By imagining himself as a knight, the prince highlights how manhood was culturally linked to movement and strength—qualities his disability complicates. His dream reflects both the pressures of toxic masculinity and the possibility of a more imaginative, emotional, and introspective version of manhood. The knight imagery also connects to the ideals of muscular Christianity, which emphasized physical strength, athleticism, and moral righteousness. For Prince Dolor, these ideals are unattainable, reinforcing his distance from traditional masculinity. The background image—of a figure staring out at the knight—visualizes this gap between the prince’s reality and the expectations of manhood. The walls that open onto the knight create a symbolic divide, framing masculinity as an unreachable dream under the terms of muscular Christianity.