‘Boys, Semi-Men and Bearded Scholars’: Maturity and Manliness in Early Nineteenth-Century Oxford

Abstract

In order to show the very different ways in which the categories of ‘manliness’ and ‘masculinity’ have been constructed historically, this chapter will focus on the various contexts in which the language of ‘manliness’ was employed by students and senior members at the university of Oxford in the early nineteenth century. Contrary to the argument of many modern historians, it will suggest that differences of age, generation and maturity were far more important in the construction of manliness in the early nineteenth-century university than distinctions of gender per se. By focusing on the construction of manliness in a largely all-male setting, distinctions between men, rather than between men and women, assume prime importance. Nor is the significance of maturity in the construction of manliness limited to Oxford alone; as the alma mater of almost half of Britain’s political elite in this period, the ideal of manliness cultivated there enjoyed a much wider influence within British society. It helps, in particular, to explain key features of another much-discussed and highly influential contemporary model of manliness, namely that promoted by Thomas Arnold at Rugby School in the 1830s.