The Star-Child: Adolescent Boyhood as Gender

     Gender during the long 19^th century in England has been extensively explored in both social and cultural contexts, but it is a young field, having arisen in the 1980’s, and has only just started to touch on non-feminine identities. Scholarship on masculinity started to appear in the mid-1990’s and early 2000’s, and scholarship exploring the gender of childhood has only just started to explore the identities of youth. Gender is still a relatively new microscope through which to view the past, and scholarship to present on how it pertains to boyhood, and even just masculinity, is fairly limited. Understanding sociocultural roles for boys is crucial to understanding the ways in which the gender identities of men are formed, both in the past and in the present; furthermore, understanding the ways in which boyhood functioned in late Victorian and Edwardian culture creates methods by which to understand how “homosexual” became a valid identifier in Anglo-American culture. This project explores the unique roles relegated to adolescent boys in late-Victorian culture through the lenses of morality, sexuality and attraction, aestheticism, and imperial expansion. It argues, through these supporting points, that adolescent boyhood existed as its own distinct gender role that transcended bounds of chronological age and performed critical roles in the development and continued growth of Victorian culture and influence.

This project is being mentored by Dr. Philip Guerty, Ph.D