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George Macdonald BRUNEL UNIVERSITY In the Name of the Father: Manliness, Control and Social Salvation in the Works of George MacDonald _______________________________________________________ Jenny Neophytou 30th June 2014 Acknowledgements As is inevitable with any work of this nature, it would have been impossible to complete this analysis without the support and assistance of a number of individuals. Of these, some require special mention. I would therefore like to express my heartfelt gratitude to my supervisors, Professor Pete Smith; Professor Maureen Moran; Dr Jessica Cox and Dr Sean Gaston. Their advice has been invaluable, and I deeply appreciate their willingness to listen, to guide, and most importantly, to keep me calm! I would also like to thank the curators of the George MacDonald Collection at the Beinecke Library (Yale) for their assistance in providing me with microfilm copies of MacDonald‘s correspondence, and for their kind permission to digitise said correspondence. As anybody who has attempted to read MacDonald‘s cross- hatched handwriting will tell you, this permission was a vital necessity! In addition, thanks are due the staff at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, and the curators at the Foyle Special Collections at King‘s College London for their incredible assistance in locating texts and references. I would also like to recognise the support and sense of community inspired by the George MacDonald Society, in particular the indefatigable Roger Bardet, whose emails of encouragement kept me from losing heart during this long process. Finally, none of this would be possible without the love and belief of my friends and family outside the MacDonald environment, whose persistent reminders to ‗stop slacking‘ kept me on my toes. To my sister, whose willingness to talk me down from the proverbial cliff at 2am kept me sane, and to my mother and father, whose steadfast belief that I could finish made it impossible that I should not. Each of you did your part to keep me out of the garret and on this side of the mirror, and I shall be eternally grateful. ii Table of Contents Abstract ...................................................................................................................................... v Introduction ............................................................................................................................... vi In the Name of the Father ...................................................................................................... vi George MacDonald – Origins and Inspirations.................................................................. viii An Overview of the Thesis............................................................................................... xxxii Chapter 1: Rewriting Manliness – The Defender of the Homeland .......................................... 1 Military Manliness in ‗The Broken Swords‘.......................................................................... 9 Class Conflict in Manchester ............................................................................................... 18 Soldiers in the Home ............................................................................................................ 30 Chapter 2: Class and Employment – Manliness in the Workplace .......................................... 39 ‗Gentlemen‘ at Work ............................................................................................................ 41 Manual Labour and Divine Service ..................................................................................... 52 Performing the Manly Role .................................................................................................. 59 Chapter 3: Homosocial Interaction – the Recognition of Manliness ...................................... 69 Filial Obedience ................................................................................................................... 71 Validating Manly Authority ................................................................................................. 80 Teaching Manliness.............................................................................................................. 96 Chapter 4: Men in the City – Victims and Reformers ........................................................... 108 Urban Fairy-lands ............................................................................................................... 110 Observing the City ............................................................................................................. 123 Paternalism and Urban Reform .......................................................................................... 131 Chapter 5: Saintly Androgyny ............................................................................................... 142 The Economy of Nature ..................................................................................................... 145 The Manliness of Christ ..................................................................................................... 151 Manliness and Social / Spiritual Evolution ........................................................................ 156 Chapter 6: Unmuscular Christianity – Obfuscating Femininity ............................................ 169 Obfuscation through Idealisation ....................................................................................... 172 Obfuscating the Feminine Body ......................................................................................... 186 Obfuscation through Victimisation .................................................................................... 197 Chapter 7: Urban Environments, Sexuality and Domestic Control ....................................... 209 Unnatural Mobility ............................................................................................................. 210 The Sexual Double-Standard ............................................................................................. 218 Domestic Violence and Patriarchal Control ....................................................................... 225 Conclusion: Fatherly Power, Domesticity and the National Health ...................................... 244 Bibliography .......................................................................................................................... 250 iii ‗I may love him, I may love him, for he is a man, and I am only a Beech Tree.‘ George MacDonald, Phantastes ‗Malcolm had early learned that a man‘s will must, like a true monarch, rule down every rebellious movement of its subjects.‘ George MacDonald, Malcolm ‗And as they grew misshapen in body they had grown in knowledge and cleverness, and now were able to do things no mortal could see the possibility of. But as they grew in cunning, they grew in mischief, and their great delight was in every way they could think of to annoy the people who lived in the open-air storey above them.‘ George MacDonald, The Princess and the Goblin iv Abstract This thesis considers the representation of manly identity in the works of George MacDonald, and the way in which that identity is formed in relation to shifting power networks and contemporary social discourses. I argue that the environment of technological and societal change experienced in the mid-Victorian era (in the wake of industrialisation, urbanisation, changes in suffrage and war) led to a cultural need to re-align social, political, physical and economic power within a framework of male moral strength. Taking his lead from Thomas Carlyle and German transcendentalism, MacDonald promoted a paternalist ‗ideal‘ of manliness that articulated a synthesis of moral and physical power, yet which also served to promote a paradigm of domestic authority within diverse areas of male interaction. The dual purposes of this ideal were the defence of national identity (the purview of what I term the ‗Soldier body‘), and the enforcement of a paternalist authority hierarchy that is swiftly subsumed within a hierarchy of social status. As a result, we see the growth of close inter- relationships between the representation of manly identity and the language of class, heavily influenced by Christian socialist narratives of individual development through social education and quiescence. Moreover, we begin to witness disturbing scenes of violence and control, as aspects of MacDonald‘s culture defy confinement within his model of patriarchal domestic authority. v Introduction In the Name of the Father What is a father? Whether we approach the question psychoanalytically, historically or socially, the answer remains elusive. Indeed, as John Tosh and Eve Sedgwick demonstrate, the concept of fatherhood is closely tied to the social context, and is therefore dynamic – adjusting according to new social realities, new discourses, new ideologies (Tosh, 2005; Tosh, 1995; Sedgwick, 1993).1 In this thesis, I approach the question of fatherhood as a source of masculine social power in the works of George MacDonald. The theoretical basis relies on the Foucauldian concept of identity as structured by the tripartite axis of truth, power and ethics (Cocks, 2006: 1212; Simons, 1995: 2), considering in particular the construction of manliness through the inter-relationship of discourse and history within MacDonald‘s social circle. Through analysis of the implicit power-dynamic contained within such discourses, I investigate the way in which MacDonald‘s narratives document
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