ABSTRACT
Victorian men have been commonly believed to be harsh, stern fathers, subjugating their families by exploiting their legal, financial and often their physical powers over their dependants. They have been viewed as emotional illiterates, domestic despots, bolstering their phallocentric view of the world in the men-only institutions of their professions, bastions of the privilege of their sex. Tosh, in common with other commentators like Newsome, and the contributors to Mangan and Walvin and Hall's anthologies, draws heavily on the archives of families like the Bensons to furnish his theory. Victorian masculinity was also shaped by the articulation of the 'hard' discourses of political economy that emerged to describe the changes in society brought about by the Industrial Revolution. Malthus' shifting views on the operation of out-relief for the poor, the Speenhamland system, are contradictory and have been described as the opposition between Population Malthus and Pastor Malthus.
