Men of Blood: Violence, Manliness, and Criminal Justice in Victorian England

Description

This book examines far more thoroughly than ever before the treatment of serious violence by men against women in nineteenth-century England. During Victoria's reign the criminal law came to punish such violence more systematically and heavily, while propagating a new, more pacific ideal of manliness. Yet this apparently progressive legal development called forth strong resistance, not only from violent men themselves but from others who drew upon discourses of democracy, humanitarianism and patriarchy to establish sympathy with 'men of blood'. In exploring this development and the contest it generated Professor Wiener analyzes the cultural logic underlying shifting practices in nineteenth-century courts and Whitehall, and locates competing cultural discourses in the everyday life of criminal justice. The tensions this book highlights are more than simply 'Victorian' ones; to an important degree they remain with us. Consequently this work speaks not only to historians, but also to criminologists and legal theorists.

Martin J. Wiener is the Mary Jones Professor of History at Rice University. His previous books include Between Two Worlds: The Political Thought of Graham Wallas (1971), English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit (1980), and Reconstructing the Criminal (1990).

'... an important and, usefully, an accessible and approachable text. It is well written and presented. ... It is a book that deserves to be widely read.' British Journal of Criminology 'Weiner's book is a striking instance of how a problematic of masculinity opens up the way to new and illuminating questions in well-trodden terrain.' History Workshop Journal 'Martin Wiener's impressive work, Men of Blood, is to be welcomed not only because it fills a huge gap in the field by demonstrating how changes in ideas about manliness affected decision-making at the highest levels of Victorian justice, but also because of the scope and depth of its scholarship, which sheds considerable light on the relationship between civil servants, judges, juries and the wider public. Most significantly, he argues very convincingly that we need to think of Victorian criminal justice as a contested but shifting terrain, in which concerns about liberal citizenship ultimately created a very different approach to gender and justice than that which had been adopted in the eighteenth century. ... undoubtedly an extreemly important work, which will stimulate considerable debate and attention. It is highly relevant to all scholars and students of gender, crime and the Victorian social order; any review cannot do justice to the richness and complexity of information that is contained within its 300 pages.' Crime, History & Societies