Overview
Fascination with the little girls pervaded Victorian culture. For many, girls represented the true essence of childhood or bygone times of innocence; but for middle-class men, especially writers, the interest ran much deeper. In Men in Wonderland, Catherine Robson explores the ways in which various nineteenth-century British male authors constructed girlhood, and analyzes the nature of their investment in the figure of the girl. In so doing, she reveals the link between the idealization of little girls and a widespread fantasy of male development—a myth suggesting that men become masculine only after an initial feminine stage, lived out in the protective environment of the nursery. Little girls, argues Robson, thus offern an adult male the best opportunity to reconnect with his own lost self.
Tracing the beginnings of this myth in the writings of Romantics Wordsworth and De Quincey, Robson indentifies the consolidation of this paradigm in numerous Victorian artifacts, ranging from literary works by Dickens and Barrett Browning, to paintings by Frith and Millais, to reports of the Royal Commission on Children's Employment. She analyzes Ruskin and Carroll's "high noon" of girl worship and investigates the destruction of the fantasy in the closing decades of the century, when social concerns about the working girl sexualized the image of young females.
Men in Wonderland contributes to a growing interest in the nineteenth century's construction of ghildhood, sexuality, and masculinity, and illuminates their complex interconnections with a startlingly different light. Not only does it complicate the narratives of pedophilic desire that are generally used to explain figures like Ruskin and CArroll, but it offers a new understanding of the Victorian era's obsession with loss, its rampant sentimentality, and its intense valorization of the little girl at the expense of mature femininity.
Editorials
Library Journal
In this insightful study, Robson (English, Univ. of California, Davis) analyzes the "relationship between middle-class men and little girls in nineteenth-century British culture." Documenting the phenomenon of "girl worship" in the literary works of canonical male authors, including Wordsworth, Dickens, Ruskin, and Carroll, she explores the idealization and idolization of little girls in the Victorian era and suggests that such fantasies offered the adult male "the best opportunity to reconnect with his own lost self." Her argument is further supported by an examination of cultural artifacts such as conduct books, government reports, paintings, and popular journalism. The treatise ends with an examination of the decline of the notion of the ideal girl, prompted by growing social concerns over the exploitation of children as laborers and prostitutes. This wide-ranging, penetrating investigation contributes significantly to the areas of childhood and gender studies, masculinity studies, and 19th-century British social history. Highly recommended for all academic collections. Carol A. McAllister, Coll. of William & Mary Lib., Williamsburg, VA Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.London Review of Books
What is new about Robson's argument is her contention that for many well-to-do men the image of perfect childhood, lost and desired, remained feminine. . . . Understood this way, the idealisation of little girls in Victorian culture is an attempt to repossess the remembered self rather than a wish for sexual possession of the other.— Dinah Birch
Independent on Sunday
[An] illuminating study of the relationships that existed between little girls and a whole synod of Victorian middle-class men. . . . What Robson detects in these men is less paedophilic desire and more a melancholy sense of something lost. . . . Ruskin, Carroll, and their fellow enthusiasts, she contends, were chasing their own pasts. . . .— Matthew Sweet
Times Literary Supplement
Robson skillfully interweaves the tales of these two seminal Victorian [Ruskin and Carroll] with discussion of child-labour legislation, painting, literature and conduct books.— Gill Gregory
Choice
An important addition. . . . Well written, scrupulously researched.Times Higher Education Supplement
[Victorians] certainly had a complicated relationship with sexuality and the young. This book can be recommended for throwing at least some new light on this troubled topic.— Nicholas Tucker
Nineteenth-Century Studies
A provocative addition to ongoing debates about gender and subjectivity.— Christine Roth
Nineteenth-Century Literature
An excellent book . . . powerfully and persuasively written . . . free of jargon, rich in its scholarship, and fully in touch with recent work in a burgeoning field. In all, it is a valuable addition to a growing list of books that help us see the Victorians and their world in fresher, richer ways.— Carole G. Silver
Nineteenth Century Studies
A provocative addition to ongoing debates about gender and subjectivity.
— Christine Roth