The Victorian concept of masculinity is caught in a series of interconnected metaphors relating to empire and national identity. Throughout the Victorian corpus there are numerous texts that create a metaphorical relationship between femininity and the colonized. In Lord Alfred Tennyson's "The Princess," the poem represents the social conquest of fringe feminist politics through a metaphor of military conquest. Sexual and social domination then become metaphorically linked to the colonial enterprise. Likewise, Froude's account of colonial Trinidad serves to feminize natives through the representation of their passivity and connection to the domestic sphere; the direction of the metaphorical relationship is reversed but the effect is similar: the representative practice of both categories is confused and the two become almost symbolically interchangeable. In contrast, the feminization of the motherland has a completely different purpose. The motherland is depicted as a domestic space that needs to be protected and cared for by the colonizing male. Represented by Queen Victoria, the image of Mother England is an enabling and validating but ultimately passive force. This contrasts with the Victorian conception of a colonizing masculinity. This masculinity is active and prescriptive and demonstrates its physical and mental control through colonial exercise. As in the previous examples, the process of colonization and the achievement of masculinity become metaphorically indistinct, such that one is analogous to and part of the other. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay The representation of woman and the colony in Victorian literature works through a system of mutually reinforcing metaphors: the woman is the colony, and the colony is the woman. Lord Alfred Tennyson's poem, "The Princess," attempts to articulate a distinction between masculinity and femininity. Ultimately, the poem repudiates the feminist separatism of Princess Ida and the chauvinism of King Gama. However, the poem implicitly supports a patriarchal power dynamic. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick goes so far as to say that “the prince's erotic perceptions are entirely shaped by the structure of male trafficking in women – men's use of women as exchangeable objects, as counters of value, with the primary purpose of cementing relationships with others." men." Women then become peripheral in homosocial power relations. One of the most interesting aspects of this poem is that this exploration of gender politics is performed by means of a colonial metaphor; the issue of feminism/chauvinism is projected onto a landscape colonial. In it, woman is represented as an "Other" landscape, in need of colonization. The novel merges Victorian anxieties about the session of colonial dependencies (as in 'Opening of the Indian and Colonial Exhibition by the Queen', a 'another of Tennyson's poems#) and radical feminism. Princess Ida states that her aim is to "[d]ist their necks from custom and assert/None more lord than themselves..." - here, the princess draws simultaneously on images of both supporters of separatism in colonial states and radical feminist philosophers of the Victorian period.# The poem also accentuates the cultural differences between the two kingdoms: “I seemed to move in a world of ghosts; The princess with her monstrous guard-woman, The joke and the serious work side by side The cataract and the tumult and the kings were shadows; and the long fantastic night with all its actions and had not been, andall things were and were not. metaphorically, the woman becomes the colonized. This contrasts with James Anthony Froude's "The English in the West Indies" which retains all the individual elements of the aforementioned woman/colonized metaphor but inverts them towards a similar end. That is, Froude uses techniques evident in Victorian representations of women and uses them to feminize (and thus disempower) the "natives." Throughout the text, Froude consistently places the native in a domestic sphere; that is, the traditional space of the Victorian woman. He says: “…the plane trees cast their cool shade on the doors; orange trees and lime trees and cedars perfume the air, and bend their branches under the weight of their golden burdens [...] The children played in swarms, in happy idleness and abundance”. Like English domestic space, Froude's West Indies is a place characterized by simplicity and granted abundance (as opposed to directly earned abundance). Furthermore, the West Indies (again, like the English domestic sphere) are represented as being in a precarious political position. The prelapsarian innocence described by Froude is maintained only “as long as English rule continues…”. In her view, England is not motivated by mere altruism but claims that allowing the West Indies to self-govern would be to "shirk responsibility."# Like the traditional Victorian woman, the West Indian native is an innocent and delicate creature, incapable to maintain their paradise state without the protection of the male imperial project. Ultimately, Froude and Tennyson both construct their texts through the fusion of the feminine and the colonial and, as an inevitable result, indexing masculinity to the imperial project. If Froude and Tennyson use representational practice to code the colonized as a sexual conquest (and vice versa ), contemporary English literature also shows a tendency towards a different feminisation of England – the motherland. The colonizing male is coded as one who provides and protects an idealized domestic home. England, therefore, serves as a metaphor for the domestic maternal figure: spiritually and emotionally nurturing but ultimately in need of protection by the active colonial male. Eliza Cook, in her 1851 publication of 'The Englishman', provides a unique example of a female voice describing the workings of the colonial machinery.# Throughout the poem, Cook creates a space of domestic comfort in the form of spiritual and emotional validation. He describes the titular Englishman as having “…a deep and honest love / The passions of faith and pride” and as “yearning with the affection of a dove / For the light of his own hearth.” Furthermore, writing as a woman, Cook's evocation of national pride and solidarity becomes evidence of true masculinity. If the English are “spirit lions who tread the bridge [and who] / have borne the palm of the brave,” then male subjects who do not conform to this image are, by implication of the poem's representational politics, emasculated and disowned; they are not truly English.# In exchange for their conformity, the figure of the colonizing male is confirmed in his masculinity and granted a privileged cultural status. Their masculinity precludes them from banal mortality. They are “the immortals who shine and live/In weapons, in arts, or in song,/The brightest that the whole wide world can give/To that little earth belongs.” The male subject is validated and immortalized as a reward for his display of masculinity. He can claim the “glorious card”, i.e. “I am English”. This masculinity is obviously directly related to the male's ability to colonize on behalf of the domestic and homelandfeminized. The Englishman is always described in terms of his activity (as opposed to passivity): "The Briton can cross the pole or zone and boldly claim his right; for he calls his own a dominion so vast that the sun never sets on his power". The Englishman's morality is also coded in terms of activity. He “leaps with fiery splendor,/The wronged and the weak to defend;/And strikes at once for a trampled foe/As he does for a soul-bound friend.” In this way, the masculinity of the colonial male is delineated and reaffirmed by the female poetic voice, which in turn represents the validating domestic sphere that is England itself. A similar codification of the mother country can be found in Tennyson's “The Queen's Opening of the Indian and Colonial Exhibition.” The very title of the poem (and indeed the act it describes) shows the power of the domestic female, embodied in Queen Victoria to validate the colonial activity of the male subject. Domestic family relationships are emphasized in the poem; the colonizing agents are not "others" compared to the homeland but "sons and brothers". Tennyson evokes a sense of national solidarity through his constant admonition to the reader: “British people, hold on!” Most significantly, Tennyson expresses his wish that “…as the ages pass,/The mother may be represented in the child.” That is, that the then Prince of Wales, Albert Edward, would live up to the success of his mother, Queen Victoria. The politics of the nation is thus flattened to the domestic sphere: the mother enables the masculinity of the son, who in turn provides: “Produce your field and your river,/the mountain and mine, and the primordial wood;/works of the subtle brain and hand.” ,/And the splendors of the morning earth.” Thus, in both poems, the masculinity of the son of England is indexed to his ability to provide – a metaphor that once again blends domestic and colonial representations. The female voice (speaking from the motherland) may validate and enable this activity, but the activity itself is ultimately the domain of the male subject. These various uses of feminine metaphors serve as a counterpoint to the development of a colonizing masculinity. In Tennyson's “The Queen's Opening of the Indian and Colonial Exposition,” discussed above, the poet constructs the image of England's colonizing sons as a counterpoint to the female servant embodied in the image of Queen Victoria. Like Cook's Englishness, Tennyson's masculinity is an active and progressive force, rather than passive or stagnant. The masculinity of the male subject is not implied but rather achieved through colonizing action: “And may yours forever be That old strength and constancy That made your fathers great In our ancient island state, And wherever his flag flies, Glorious between sea and sky Makes the might of Britain known” The ability of the male to achieve masculinity (through identification with the father) is achieved through military/colonial conquest. If the role of the domestic woman is to allow the conquest of the figure of the son, the form of the paternal figure, fully realized, retains the ability to order and control: the female space can only express a passive matriarchal authority while the male possesses the active authority. power of the patriarch. Tennyson explores this construction with reference to the United States. He states that previous rulers "[d]roved from the mother's nest / That young eagle of the West / To get food for herself." It is the patriarch's job (and responsibility) to organize and control the family empire. The existence of the figure of the patriarch implicitly creates unity.