Victorian Era Toxic Masculinity: Representation in Life and Literature

Close Reading of Jane Eyre

Mr. Rochester embodies the three Victorian male ideals: strength, finances (wealth), and societal class standing.

STRENGTH

Bertha: Physically sretrains Bertha; this takes away not only Bertha’s autonomy, but her freedom.

“He could have settled her with a well-planted blow” (Brontë 342). 

Adèle: Restrains Adèle from his affection, leaves her alone for long periods, and doesn’t surround her with people who speak her language, French.

“Mr. Rochester asked me if I would like to go and live with him in England, and I said yes; for I knew Mr. Rochester. . .and he was always kind to me and gave me pretty dresses and toys; but you see he has not kept his word, for he has brought me to England, and now he has gone back again himself, and I never see him” (Brontë 122).

Jane: Restrains Jane through not revealing that he is still married; therefore, not truly allowing her the chance to live a happy life with him.

“What this lawyer and his client say is true; I have been married; and the woman to whom I was married lives!” (Brontë 240).

Mr. Rochester uses his strength against their weakness.

FINANCE AND SOCIETAL CLASS STANDING

Mr. Rochester uses his money and social standing as a means to justify what he does to these women.

Bertha: He is only able to successfully hide Bertha away through his money. He pays off anyone who knows of her.

“No—by God! I took care that none should hear of it--or of her under that name” (Brontë 340). For Adèle it is a lack of affection.

Adèle: She is not his biological child therefore he owes nothing to her.

“I am not fond of the prattle of children. . .It would be intolerable to me to pass a whole evening tete a tete with a brat” (Brontë 155).

Jane: Mr. Rochester hurts Jane because he thinks he is invincible. He tries to marry Jane while still being married to Bertha. Once Jane learns the truth of his marriage he then plays the victim in order to use Jane’s emotions against her.

“You must have a strange opinion of me; you must regard me as a plotting profiliage—a base and low rake, who has been simulating disinterested love in order to draw you into a snare deliberately laid, and stirp you of honor, and rob you of self-respect. What do you say to that?” (Brontë 349-350).

UNBALANCED GENDER ROLES

Mr. Rochester thrives in his toxic masculinity as a result of his privilege and unbalanced gender roles. He uses his strength to lock away Bertha, keep Adèle isolated, and exert physical dominance over Jane. Rochester's finance (wealth) and high societal standing allow for him to get away with locking Bertha away, having complete control over Adèle, and preventing Jane from a true happy marriage. This representation of an ideal man leveraging the unbalanced gender roles only served to reinforce Victorian toxic masculinity.

Close Reading of Ruth Hall

Hyacinth embodies the three Victorian male ideals: strength, finance (wealth), and societal class standing.

FINANCE AND SOCIETAL STANDING

“Hyacinth has just married a rich, fashionable wife, and of course he cannot lose caste by associating with Ruth now” (Fern 94).

“It frets Hyacinth to a frenzy to have her poverty alluded to” (Fern 236).

Mrs. Millet later remarks on Hyacinth’s advice for achieving the ideal of social standing by saying, 

"Hyacinth has often told me how much it made or marred a boy’s fortune, the set he associated with” (Fern 100).

Hyacinth’s advice proved to reinforce the toxic Victorian ideal as it was seen by others in his own life. 

STRENGTH

“Here was her brother Hyacinth, now the prosperous editor of the Irving Magazine” (Fern 137).

Not only did Hyacinth gain wealth, a high social standing, but he also gained strength through a powerful job. 

UNBALANCED GENDER ROLES

Hyacinth consistentally leverages the unbalanced gender roles through Ruth's apperance, and then later through her writing.

“Then, Ruth remembered how she used to wish she were beautiful,—not that she might be admired, but that she might be loved. But Ruth was “very plain,”—so her brother Hyacinth told her, and “awkward,” too” (Fern 2).

After Ruth’s husband Harry passes and she is contrived with grief this is his main concern.

“It is really quite dreadful to see her in this way. . .Somebody ought to tell her, when she comes to, that her hair is parted unevenly and needs brushing sadly” (Fern 62).

Hyacinth uses his privelge as editor to keep Ruth down as a writer.

"I have looked over the pieces you sent me, Ruth. It is very evident that writing never can be your forte; you have no talent that way" (Fern 137).

Hyacinth consistently uses the unbalanced gender roles against Ruth in order to keep her in lower position through his strength as her brother and then an editor. He constantly critiques her apperance and talent as a writer. He does all of this all while elevating himself into wealth and high societal standing. This representation of an ideal man leveraging the unbalanced gender roles only served to reinforce Victorian toxic masculinity.

Structures of Confinement: Power and Problems of Male Identity

This article takes a look at the ways in which unrealistic and unhealthy gender roles for men became confining, as well as how the cycle of toxicity began with men themselves.

The importance of “work” imposed new pressures on especially the middle-class man: “This pressure was amplified by the role that hard work played in constructions of middle-class masculinity. The modern man was expected to be entrepreneurial, hardworking, and above all, productive" (142).

A “proper” and “masculine” man in the 19^th century was a confusing ideal to aspire to due to the conflicting messages sent from the capitalist workforce and the greater, family-oriented society. “Moreover, the technologies and infrastructures of industrial capitalism were bound up with complex ideological judgements about modern life and labour, which in turn fed into conflicting understandings of masculine selfhood” (139).

“…the impositions of modernity (overwork, overstimulation, the pressures of trade and commerce) and the social and labour expectations engendered by commercial expansion affected [middle-class men] most keenly" (139).

This system that they created gave birth to the toxic belief surrounding femininine characteristics: “Nervous illness brought men perilously close to the passivity and unfettered emotion usually associated with the feminine, and so threatened ideological distinctions of gender" (144).

Toxicity was thus created through the male-dominated sectors of finances, economy, and capitalism without their knowing it. The system they imposed upon themselves became their downfall; the reason for their power became its greatst crux, and “...the normal and the pathological of Victorian masculinity were inextricably intertwined” (145).

The Model Husband

“The Model Husband” is the first of seven clearly identifiable articles published by Fanny Fern in the Olive Branch. The articles cheekily and sarcastically describe how the ideal husband should act according to the wives. In doing so, she shows how much women have to go out of their way for men and what a patriarchal society it was. She implicitly criticizes men for how selfishly they live their life without regarding the wife’s comfort. One exemplary passage is, "He never leaves his trousers, drawers, shoes, etc., on the floor, when he goes to bed, for his wife to break her neck over, in the dark, if the baby wakes and needs a does of Paregoric. If the children in the next room scream in the night, he don't expect his wife to take an air-bath to find out what is the matter. He has been known to wear Mrs. Smith's night-cap in bed, to make the baby think he is its mother." The humorous adaptation shows how women of the era were weighed down by the demands of caring for a child and how little men did to help. Women were simply expected to take over these familial and household tasks, while the men carried none of the burden. They used gender roles as leverage against any pleas for help, as it was simply not right to step outside of gender roles in this time. It is clear that women in this time regarded this balance as unfair since it is addressed in sources like these. Fern was considered bold to bring these matters up, but it was works like these that acted as catalysts for societal change. Fern wrote these articles about 4 years before Ruth Hall, which calls for even more radical change. It calls for economic autonomy for women in a male-dominated economy, whereas in The Model Husband, the wife is still subservient and dependent on the husband. 

Second Primary Source

“Class and Gender in Victorian England: The Diaries of Arthur J. Munby and Hannah Cullwick” by Leonore Davidoff details two Victorian diaries that were found untouched until 1950 (Davidoff 101).

-Hannah Cullwick

-Arthur Munby

These two diaries were extensively kept by their owners

-daily entries

-over one million words total (Davidoff 101).

MUNBY

Munby came from a family of six children, his father a lawyer.

“He became a barrister despite his distaste for the law, probably in deference to his father and his position as eldest son” (Davidoff 102).

Munby kept his diary a way of figuring himself out in the era of the ideal male. This diary also accounts for how the ideal notion impacted who Munby desired to be. He figured this out specifically through studying the other sex.

“A. J. Munby’s avocation (and private obsession) in making encounters with, observing and collecting information on, working girls and women” (Davidoff 101).

Munby used his privelge to make women do whateve he wanted. Sometimes he paid them, othertimes he simply demanded and they had no choice due to the unbalanced gender roles.

“Munby does not acknowledge that this quality he so much admires was at least partly a result of his position as a dominating middle-class man, who for sixpence could feel a girl’s palm and for a shilling could take her to a photographer to have her picture taken in whatever pose he chose to put her in” (Davidoff 105).

Munby’s obsession with women, specifically working women, which was a new progression for the female gender in this era, revealed the traits and expectations of what it meant to be a male in this time. Davidoff writes that Munby was

“using the diary to construct a meaningful identity” (Davidoff 101).

This reveals that the identity placed on men was leaving them unfulfilled, that it was teaching them to be one way and not truely themselves. Munby was leveraging off of Cullwicks unbalanced gender role in order to fulfill the notion of the ideal Victorian male, which stuck him a cycle of toxicity.

CULLWICK

Hannah Cullwick came from a poor family. She began working at a very early age.

“Hannah learned at a very early age that her world was made up of powerful middle-class and upper-class people and that only her strength to labor gave her a footing in the world” (Davidoff 107).

Cullwick provides accounts of men making sexual passes at her, as well as attempting to molest and even rape her, while she was bouncing around jobs.

“She learned early in life that strength of body and personality were her chief resources for both work and self-protection” (Davidoff 108).

The toxic masculinity, or hypermasculinity, theme of dominance, through physical, financial, and societal class, remained reinforced in Munby's life. Cullwick and Munby met and eventually wed.

Munby forced Cullwick to call him by the nickname ‘massa’ [title associated with African-American slave owners] as well as “wear a leather strap around her wrist and a chained collar with lock around her neck to which Munby held the key. He particularly enjoyed seeing her face and arms blackened—in his phrase, “in her dirt”” (Davidoff 114).

Cullwick had no choice but to obey Munby. Not only was she considered his property by being his wife, but he was also her provider for physical shelter and finances.

By reading real accounts of a Victorian male and female, through Cullwick and Munby, it reveals a cycle of toxic masculinity that was created as a result of the ideal Victorian males leveraging unbalanced gender roles.

Final Reflection and Questions

Toxic masculinity as always existed, and its origins seem to be the patriarchy itself. The system that men created in order to benefit from also became the system that caused them to hide emotion, overwork themselves, and hold themselves to a much too high standard of breadwinner and stronghold.  In the literature we studied, we found patterns of men using this toxic masculinity to oppress those around them, primarily women. In relationships, careers, and the general society, men have consistently used this behavior, which now can be identified as toxic masculinity, to form and fuel the patriarchy.

We see this toxic masculinity play out in Mr. Rochester from Jane Eyre, in the way he manipulates the women in his life and uses his power, which comes largely from his money, to enforce unbalanced gender roles.

In Ruth Hall, Hyacinth perpetuated toxic masculinity by using his power and social standing todegrade and suppress his sister’s fame and success. 

While it can be easy to assume that toxic masculinity is a thing of the 19th century, there are still remnants of this behavior and mindset today.