Will, Passions and the Manly Body c.1760-1860Professor Joanne Bailey

Richard Dadd, Sketch to illustrate the Passions - Drunkenness, 1854

Manly Matters in England 1760-1860• Manly - term used (1760-1860) to describe idealised

behaviour and actions associated with men• How were the qualities of the manly man communicated to a

wide audience?• (My focus) through material culture and materiality - in objects,

emotions and bodies• To conform to manly standards men were required to control

bodily appetites and emotions; not to do so rendered them unmanly.

• How was this reinforced? • Was being manly rewarded and being unmanly penalised?

The regulated manly body: application of ‘will’

• Virtue indicated male strength and power; was undermined by the passions• A fit, outburst, or state marked by or of strong excitement,

agitation, or other intense emotion. In early use also: a fit of madness or mental derangement. (OED)

• Will was an inner strength of mind that was to be used to overcome and combat passion

• Overcoming passions 1760-1860 required reason, the channelling of benign feelings, and a strong constitution hardened by controlling appetites

• Some examples follow …

Thomas Penrose sermon, published 1759

The practice of religion and virtue recommended; especially in times of danger. A sermon preached in the parish-church of Newbury, on Sunday, ... London, 1759

• Let me beseech you then, in the Spirit of Love, to acquire and exemplify a manly Sobriety, Chastity; and Temperance. Carry with you a constant regard for Virtue; a constant Love and Affection for good Morality and Christian Piety

Self-control, gender and class identities• Thomas Bewick 1753-1828

• Thomas Bewick (1753-1828 recorded in his memoirs written from 1822 how he came to adopt temperance as a lifestyle after he became unwell as an apprentice engraver from intensive work indoors. The doctor advised him to take up ‘temperance and exercise.’ In order to do so he read Lewis Cornaro and other books on temperance. Thereafter he determined only to eat a small amount of ‘animal food’ as he did not want his constitution over-stimulated. The result was an improvement in his ‘health, strength, and agility’ and the overall hardening of his constitution. All this contributed to his sense of masculine identity which was rooted in bodily moderation, health and endurance, factors that he also associated with his Northumberland, yeoman-stock and character.

Self-control, gender and class identities

A frugal lifestyle was a crucial component of self-improvement in Samuel Smiles’ Self Help (1859); part of a life-style of self-discipline. Smiles explained his motivation for writing the book by recounting the success of a talk he gave to young Northern working-class men in which he set out examples of successful men to show them that ‘their happiness and well-being as individuals in afterlife, must necessarily depend mainly upon themselves,—upon their own diligent self-culture, self-discipline, and self-control,—and, above all, on that honest and upright performance of individual duty, which is the glory of manly character’. He advised working-class men to be frugal with money and diet. By this point self-denial, was in and of itself a virtue that supplied ‘strength to the character’. Its lack led to discontented poor men: ‘weakness, self-indulgence, and perverseness’.

• Samuel Smiles 1812-1904

The unregulated manly body: passions and insanity

• Ambiguities of masculinity: drinking, smoking, eating, womanising (activities rooted in conviviality and virility) were also less respectable means by which masculinity was constructed and sustained among peers

• Male behaviour of excess had disorderly repercussions – therefore carried social, economic cultural and personal penalties

• The most extreme forms of failure of self-control of bodily appetites and emotions were defined as insanity

• Explanations for insanity vary over time: in the reformation it was possession by the Devil, in the first half of the eighteenth century, the result of bodily disease. From the 1790s to 1850s it was understood that madness lay in disordered nerves and minds, caused by factors like poverty, stress, and emotional problems- passions were central

Uncontrolled Passions cause insanity

Samuel Tuke, Description of the Retreat (1813)

• The approach of a maniacal paroxysm, is generally marked by an uncommon flow of spirits, and great warmth of the passions. For a time, these are not unusually kept in considerable subjection; but the mind, in this state, seeks for situations unfavourable to its calmness. The mental excitement of some, leads them to form indiscreet and hasty attachments [what he calls disappointed affections], which, leading to disappointment, hastens or perhaps induces the complete development of the disorder. Some rush into imprudent commercial engagements; and others devote themselves to religious speculations. These often run from one place of worship to another, preferring those where the passions are most excited.

Admission notes for Lewis Aaron

Middlesex County Lunatic Aslyum (Colney Hatch) 1851

• Lewis Aaron. Admitted August 22nd 1851. • Aged 35, married and a Clothes Salesman. A Jew with very

marked features of that persuasion. He has been married about two years previous to which time he had a very Debauched life which evidently has caused the maniacal attack that he at present labours under. He has had two or three Epileptic Fits. His health is good and he affirms there only to have been fits of passion over which he had no control. His wife says that his passion and tempers are so ungovernable that it is impossible to live with him. His conversation is rational, though excessive and he complains bitterly of the confinement.

• 1851 December 5 – discharged not improved.

Treating insanity by restoring self-control

• ‘Moral Therapy’- removal from the damaging environment into the asylum where the patient could regain control of emotions and learn self-regulation

• In England, this was initially a lay treatment influenced by continental models, deployed by the Quaker Tuke family at their private asylum established in 1796 the Retreat in York. Samuel Tuke, writing in 1813, defined the therapy as a reaction against coercive discipline previously promoted in asylums.

• ‘ultimately a therapy of the passions. It worked on the passions, through the passions’ (Louis Charland on the Retreat 1796-1820s)

Treating insanity by restoring self-control

• Gender-related treatment? Diagnosis and treatment were influenced by what society considered suitable behaviour for the sexes

• Tuke on the Retreat: ‘An apartment near this day-room is used, when necessary, for the entire seclusion of a [male] violent patient. … This room also affords an opportunity of temporary confinement, by way of punishment, for any very offensive acts, which it is thought the patient had the power to restrain; but this very rarely occurs; and I am happy to say, the apartment is frequently unoccupied’

• Under the regime men lost the will and agency that defined being manly; for though treatment sought to restore self-control, male patients were placed in a childlike and dependent state

Conclusion• Being manly brought rewards• Being unmanly (displaying unregulated feelings, body and mind)

was a very risky business that undermined a man’s place in society, community, and family.

• In being unmanly, as definitions of insanity surely reminded them, men also lost bodily, emotional and mental integrity

George Cruikshank – series The Bottle (1847) : The bottle has done its work - it has destroyed the infant and the mother, it has brought the son and the daughter to vice and to the streets, and has left the father a hopeless maniac.