'Post equitem sedet atra cura': How the diverse codes of Victorian masculinity create masculine debility in Victorian novels

"Masculine debility," the enervation of the male mind and body, is noticeable in the patriarchal identity performance of middle-class Victorian English men and fictional male characters in novels of the period. Unstable definitions of "successful" masculinity conflict with men's individual desires for identity performance; masculine debility is generated from this conflict, and then compounded by the fear of failing to be successfully masculine. As a result, middle-class men/male characters often become weak or ill until they can reconcile their desires with their patriarchal society's demands. This study addresses and applies feminist theory's stances on patriarchal society and somatic readings of women to support its analysis of masculine debility. Descriptions of masculine debility are characterized into three modes of experience: Mental, Physical, Madness.; Historical research on living men and the novels of Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, George Gissing and Anthony Trollope are used to examine episodes of masculine debility in Victorian life and in fiction. A historical survey of variable Victorian masculine identity codes, confused education systems for young men, diverse middle-class career opportunities and Christianity's changing influence help define the parameters of the middle-class male experience which the Victorian authors above used to cause masculine debility in their male protagonists.; The conclusion of the study suggests that the task of performing patriarchal masculinity successfully was, for a large percentage of middle-class Victorian men, remarkably emotionally and physically debilitating. This project fortifies the usefulness of examining the discomforts and paradoxes patriarchal men create in their identity constructs. The importance of such analysis, I believe, is that if we can better understand what masculine concerns were in the past, we can perform fair and constructive readings of patriarchal masculine identity presently, and thus contemplate a more effective approach to an egalitarian society in our future.