The Valiant Soldier

In Be a Man! Males in Modern Society , Peter Stearns observes that ‘for men, the nineteenth century, effectively launched and ended by major wars, was a militant, indeed military century. A greater percentage of European men served in the military, even in peacetime, than ever before’ (68). This militarism was part of what Stearns denominates as the ‘self-conscious assertiveness about nineteenth-century masculinity’ (78) mani-fested in myriad dimensions of the culture. The great number of campaigns cited by Brian Bond ( Victorian Military Campaigns ) and by Byron Farwell ( Queen Victoria’s Little Wars ) demonstrates the degree to which warfare dominated Victorian consciousness and contributed to the formation of ideologies of masculinity, constructing paradigms of activity, aggression, dominance, endurance, heroism, comradeship, patriotism and power. These constructions advanced racist, sexist and classist agendas. As Norman Vance argues in Sinews of the Spirit , ‘the alliance of manliness with imperialism … represents an extension of the mid-Victorian combination of manliness and patriotism’ (195).