Pygmalion in Rehearsal, 3/5 – “King Enough For Me” – Part 3

At the height of its influence as recently as 1901, Muscular Christianity and Victorian Masculinity alike stressed that to be a “real man”, men must be physically strong and athletic, the pater familias, ruling over their homes with extensive power and keeping their wife and children under control. Middle-class men in particular were expected to be seen to work outside the home, and to be the breadwinners for their families, lest their masculine status be imperilled – woe betide the male writer, that would be forced to shut himself indoors away from the world to avoid the mockery and scorn of other men for taking up such a feminine pursuit within the domestic sphere of women. So too did men have to be consistent in their homosociality, and be careful to always be seen to associate with other men in gentlemen’s clubs and taverns, which would serve to keep them away from the feminine home as long as possible. Most strikingly, one author once observed of the poisonous philosophy: "If asked what our muscular Christianity has done, we point to the British Empire."

With Imperialism at the height of its cultural power and influence, the masculinity of Muscular Christianity emphasised that a man was courageous and enduring, a hunter, adventurer and hardy pioneer that was self-sufficient and independent, with a very broad education and knowledge. Not coincidentally, men like this made excellent military recruits during a time when the British Empire was deemed to be in danger during the Scramble for Africa. Indeed, it would seem that toxic masculinity itself makes for an excellent means of training soldiers for free from boyhood into manhood. No army needs go to any great effort or expense to recruit and train when society itself will do all the work of leading emotionally broken, dehumanised young men straight into recruitment offices in the name of patriotism and manliness. The young and impressionable oft become what it is they are told they are by those in authority –the technical term for this, in education theory, is The Pygmalion Effect.

Freddy's timid, socially clumsy reserve is far removed from the ideal of Victorian manhood.

In Shaw’s romance, though, despite very likely having grown up in an environment that would have stressed all of this in his (albeit sub-par) primary school years and his later unrefined socialite upbringing, Freddy Eysnford-Hill is emphatically none of those things. E.M. Forster once lamented that Victorian masculinity’s valorisation of the athlete as a boy’s-own hero had had a ruinous effect on their emotional development, noting that it had led to “well-developed bodies, fairly developed minds, and undeveloped hearts”, and most importantly to Shaw, his unsung hero Freddy, if he has nothing else, genuinely has a heart. He is a far cry from that Edwardian ideal of a strong, self-sufficient romantic hero figure, described by Shaw in the play’s prose sequel as not being strong in his constitution, and unable to cope with life’s emergencies. Unlike his contemporaries, Freddy does not work as a man is expected to, nor does he have the run of his home with Eliza, and throughout the play, his social associations are not with any other men, but with women – his mother, his sister, Mrs. Higgins, and his wife-to-be, with the written afterword suggesting that only Colonel Pickering has any sort of manly relationship with him, and even then as a kindly, avuncular financial benefactor in his marriage for Eliza’s sake.