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This
book is an accessible series of reflections about the effects on British white
masculinity of Britain's history of empire, from Victorian times to the present
day. The author examines the pathological middle-class family of Victorian
times: where absent but overbearing fathers ruled with an iron rod; where
mothers presided over a stifling and repressed domestic life; where adolescent
boys were sent away to authoritarian single-sex public schools which were
a cross between a monastery and an army camp.
Small wonder that generations of dysfunctional men were produced, suffering
from mother fixation, narcissism and many other varieties of sexual deviation.
Many of these men left the motherland to act out their fantasies of domination
in imperial adventures.
In an interesting mix of psychoanalytic insight and social history, Rutherford
documents the lives of some of Britain's heroes, villians and mother's boys,
including TE Lawrence, Enoch Powell and Rupert Brooke. Turning to contemporary
culture, he argues that the popularity of stars such as Hugh Grant is evidence
of the lingering of an attachment to the archetype of the perpetually adolescent,
incoherent - yet attractive to some - upper middle-class man.
Go to the Reading
Room to read an extract from the book about Enoch Powell
Jonathan Rutherford is co-editor of Male
Order: Unwrapping Masculinity (Lawrence & Wishart 1997). He lectures
in cultural studies at Middlesex University.