Masculinity, Age and Life Cycle in the Age of Reform

Abstract

The 1867 Reform Act created a polity in which, for 50 years, age and householding status were frequently more important than class in determining British men's right to vote. In the debates leading up to the act, both age and householder status were deployed to manage fears of greater democratisation. This essay traces some of the associative connections parliamentarians made between the sexual and family status of potential voters; their relationship to their fathers or sons; the kinds of houses in which they dwelt; and their personal decisions to delay or undertake marriage. The claim that the new male voter was distinguished for his ‘independence’ has been much discussed. However, it is suggested here that it was equally the figure of the settled citizen which emerged as significant during parliamentary debate. This was a category which could be interlaced with a stream of connected ideas concerning attachment to the ‘hearth’, the community, and to Anglo‐Saxon heritage itself. During the age of reform, calls to raise the age of suffrage frequently surfaced. This contributed to a climate of opinion which legitimised arguments denigrating the political abilities of the young and which helped to make possible age‐related political structures. Analysed alongside debates over the merits of an education clause in 1866 and the amendment to enfranchise lodgers the following year, the essay considers how class‐specific distinctions of age and life cycle helped to uphold an enduring model of hegemonic masculinity, centring on the mature, householding male.