‘Married Men and the Fathers of Families’: Fatherhood and Franchise Reform in Britain

McCormack, Matthew

doi:10.1007/978-0-230-20785-1_3

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 3 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Voters should not only possess property, but should be 'married men and the fathers of families', since their familial and domestic situations guaranteed their respectability, responsibility and capacity for government. 46 Moreover, the electoral citizen was legally defined as being male for the first time. Political historians who regard the 1832 Reform Act as having a crucial role in defining the Victorian citizen make much of this, but Kathryn Gleadle has queried its impact in practice.…”

Section: Periodisationmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Man’s Sphere? British Politics in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

McCormack

2018

The Palgrave Handbook of Masculinity and Political Culture in Europe

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The study of masculinity is now well established within the discipline of history, but its impact has been uneven. As the essays in this collection show, historians of different periods, regions and topics have often explored it in quite distinctive ways. The study of masculinity in British politics is a case in point. This is a national context where gender clearly plays a huge role in political culture, but the particular ways in which the histories of gender and politics have developed in Britain has meant that a dedicated history of political masculinities has struggled to take off. This chapter will survey work that has been done in this field and I will get into this question by reflecting on my own experiences of working across masculinity and politics over the last two decades. We will see that the field has very specific contours in modern British historiography, with particular chronologies and accounts of historical change. The second half of the chapter will then survey the key themes in the literature and will consider how the field is poised to develop in future.Like many historians of masculinity, I did not start out as one. My PhD thesis began as a political study, exploring the emotive idea of 'independence' in the Georgian period. Like many postgraduate students in the 1990s, I was influenced by the linguistic turn's approach to social description and political traditions, 1 and so I was seeking to explore the role of an important keyword in political life. As the doctorate became more focused on the notion of The original version of this chapter was revised: For detailed information please see erratum. The erratum to this chapter is available at https://doi.

show abstract

Section: Periodisationmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Man’s Sphere? British Politics in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

McCormack

2018

The Palgrave Handbook of Masculinity and Political Culture in Europe

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…As much as in his masculine status, this was measured through his manly, temperate body, and physical strength. 123 It was central to the attempts to improve working-class men's bodies through the means of self-help. As the literary scholar Michael Budd comments, the second half of the nineteenth century saw 'the development of a new notion of the embodied self -one emphasizing the possibility of improving the body and character'.…”

Section: Working Men's Muscular Armsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Between Poise and Power: Embodied Manliness in Eighteenth- And Nineteenth-Century British Culture

Begiato¹

2016

Trans. R. Hist. Soc.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper explores representations of the manly body and the ways in which its relationship with masculine identity and embodied selfhood changed over time and class. It spans a period in which different types of masculinities were dominant, from the later eighteenth-century man of feeling to the later nineteenth-century muscular Christian, and proposes that an embodied approach offers a more nuanced consideration of the ways in which ideals of masculinity were culturally viewed and utilised. First, it provides a chronology of the manner in which the ideal manly body changed over the two centuries, demonstrating that abstract masculine values were always rooted in male bodies. Secondly, it proposes that although most idealised masculine identities were elite, attention to the more corporeal aspects of gender offers evidence that there were features of the manly body, for example hardness, that appealed across social ranks.1 Elite men valorised idealised working-class men's bodies and saw in them something to emulate. Moreover, working-class men used classically inspired figures to represent themselves when formulating class and gender identities.

show abstract

“…35 As McCormack has pointed out, citizenship in the polity was reliant on successfully establishing domestic responsibilities in ways which were explicitly defined as masculine throughout the process of reforms to the franchise in the nineteenth century. 36 This was recognised in legal terms; husbands and fathers had long-established common law and legislated rights to represent and determine family life with few formal restrictions. 37 A sub-text of authority based on Christian teaching can also be traced, with the language of God the father permeating social discourse.…”

Section: Interdependence and Masculinitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Fatherhood and Family Shame: Masculinity, Welfare and the Workhouse in Late Nineteenth-Century England

Doolittle¹

2009

The Politics of Domestic Authority in Britain Since 1800

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

‘Married Men and the Fathers of Families’: Fatherhood and Franchise Reform in Britain

Cited by 3 publications

References 3 publications

A Man’s Sphere? British Politics in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

A Man’s Sphere? British Politics in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

Between Poise and Power: Embodied Manliness in Eighteenth- And Nineteenth-Century British Culture

Fatherhood and Family Shame: Masculinity, Welfare and the Workhouse in Late Nineteenth-Century England

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About