The modern idea of Victorians is that they were emotionless prudes, imprisoned by sexual repression and suffocating social constraints; they expressed love and affection only within the bounds of matrimony-if at all. And yet, a wealth of evidence...
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The modern idea of Victorians is that they were emotionless prudes, imprisoned by sexual repression and suffocating social constraints; they expressed love and affection only within the bounds of matrimony-if at all. And yet, a wealth of evidence contradicting this idea has been hiding in plain sight for close to a century. In Manly Love, Axel Nissen turns to the novels and short stories of Victorian America to uncover the widely overlooked phenomenon of passionate friendships between men. Nissen's examination of the literature of the period brings to light a forgotten genre: the fiction of ro
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Contents; Acknowledgments; Introduction; 1. What's the Story? The Fiction of Romantic Friendship, Part I; 2. Odds 'n' Ends: The Fiction of Romantic Friendship, Part II; 3. Sex and the City: Cecil Dreeme and the Antebellum Sex/Gender System; 4. Compulsory Domesticity: Roderick Hudson, Love, and Friendship in the Gilded Age; 5. How the Other Half Loved: A Saloonkeeper's Daughter in the Company of Women; 6. A Tramp at Home: Huckleberry Finn, Romantic Friendship, and the Homeless Man; 7. The Other Man: Homofiliation, Marriage, and A Hazard of New Fortunes; Abbreviations; Notes; Bibliography
