The New Man, Masculinity and Marriage in the Victorian Novel [Hardcover]

By tracing the rise of the New Man alongside novelistic changes in the representations of marriage, MacDonald shows how this figure encouraged Victorian writers to reassess masculine behaviour and to re-imagine the marriage plot in light of wider social changes. She finds examples in novels by Dickens, Anne Bront?, George Eliot and George Gissing.

1. Middle-Class Manliness and the Dickensian Gentleman  2. Healing Masculinity in Mid-century Fiction  3. Doctors, Dandies and New Man in New Woman Fiction  4. The Retreat of the New Man at the Fin de Siecle  5. Sympathy, Suffering and Schreiner's Colonial New Men Conclusion Works Cited

This book sets out a clear thesis and supports it with sophisticated close readings and historical evidence. In expanding the field of masculinity studies by highlighting the critically ignored figure of the New Man, it joins Phillip Mallett's edited collection as a contribution to our understanding of the Victorian male. - Jacob Jewusiak, Review 19

Tara MacDonald is Assistant Professor of Literature at the University of Idaho, USA.