“Those Who Cannot Work”

Abstract

This paper considers how Henry Mayhew, a nineteenth-century social investigator and reformer, explicates the ideal of “Christian manliness” through the metaphoric body of the disabled man. In particular, it assesses how Mayhew's desire to “grapple manfully” with the uneasy classification of crippled, blind, or otherwise disabled men, indirectly makes visible a crisis in Victorian masculinity.2 This crisis, which reflected the insecurity brought about by social and industrial changes in the new urban centers, was undergirded by a fear that the working classes, if not checked, had the potential to become the dangerous classes. In the face of this fear, middle-class Victorian men united in an attempt to articulate a “moral” masculinity and the corresponding, all-encompassing concept of the “Universal Brotherhood” of man, (London Labour, IV: xiv). In order to reveal and establish this “new” masculinity and render it unproblematic, it was necessary to eliminate, as far as possible, any difference between men while, at the same time, clearly and hegemonically defining a masculine identity suitable for articulating a coherent capitalist and Christian utilitarian ethics appropriate to the growing nation and the growing modern metropolis. In Mayhew's classificatory system, the disabled man is assigned no intrinsic value and, consequently, remains a mere object for middle-class scrutiny. He “who will or who can work” becomes a convenient vehicle for the promotion of a self-reliant, Christian masculinity, while he “who cannot work” represents a monstrous masculinity, and a danger to the future well-being of the human race. This study argues that this nineteenth-century classification and construction of manhood foreshadows disability prejudices that are still somewhat prevalent in the twenty-first century. 1. An earlier version of this article was published in Culture and the State, Vol, IV, ed. James Gifford and Gabrielle Mailloux-Zezulka (Edmonton: CRC Humanities Studio, 2004).”