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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.