Military Men of Feeling: Masculinity, Emotion and Tactility in Victorian Warfare

The project explores a key, but previously unrecognised, figure in the history of masculinity: the Victorian military man of feeling. Using a wide range of cultural forms, including literature, reportage and exhibited visual art, as well as craft and writing produced by soldiers and their families and friends, the project makes a case for the cultural centrality of the ideal of soldierly gentleness throughout the nineteenth century. It augments a growing body of work on the diversity of Victorian masculinities, focusing on the previously unrehabilitated figure of the soldier, still held as an imaginative icon for the uncommunicative, stiff-upper-lipped model of nineteenth-century manliness. Recognising a widespread emphasis on soldiers' emotional articulacy and aptitude for physical care, this project deposes stubbornly persistent ideas about masculinity in this period as well as enhancing our understanding of the complexities of battlefield feeling.
The central research is organised thematically, with sections each treating a different facet of felt experience, with feeling interpreted, through theories of affect and materiality, in its broadest sense, to comprise emotion, tactility and sensation:
1) Reading War: Paranoid and Reparative Strategies and the Politics of Affect
The project begins with a self-conscious examination of its political implications, considering how far representations of the gentle soldier suggest a revision of attitudes towards to warfare and the extent to which they can be deployed in the service of militaristic agenda.
2) "The company of gentlemen": Thackeray's Military Men of Feeling and the Eighteenth-century Tradition
Colonel Newcome, protagonist of the novel Thackeray published during the Crimean war, is inspired by Orme's bloodthirsty and imperialistic Tales of India, while his literary hero is Richardson's pacifistic Sir Charles Grandison. This section traces competing models and literary legacies of manliness, from C18th Imperialist history and sentimental fiction, up to Colonel Newcome's popularity with WW1 soldiers.
3) Sentimental Soldiers: Dickens's Christmas Writings and the Heroics of Emotion
Dickens's Christmas number for Household Words of 1854, a tale of physically and morally restorative soldiering, participated directly in the journal's engagement with the Crimean war through detailed reportage. I consider how sentimental treatments of the soldier in fiction and art, responded to the journalistic representation of the Crimea and broader calls for army reform.
4) "Our poor Colonel loved him as if he had been his own son": Family Feeling in the Crimea
Here I bring together literary and first-hand treatments of the regiment as family, focusing on an extraordinary, previously unstudied album held at NAM, which records responses to the death of Captain Lempriere in the Crimea, the diminutive "child of the 55th regiment".
5) Children of the Regiment: Narratives of Battlefield Adoption
This section accounts for the extra-ordinary proliferation of the narrative of the soldier adopting a dispossessed child in the literature, art and music of the 1850s and 60s.
6) Soldier Art: Textiles and Tactility
While 'Trench Art' of the First World War has received detailed treatment, the range of art and craft produced by soldiers in the Crimea has not been studied. I consider the non-militaristic felt experience of soldiers who knitted and quilted.
7) Reparative Soldiering: Cultures of Male Care-giving
Nightingale's legacy has totally eclipsed the male provision of physical care in the Crimea. This section recognises the contribution of ambulance men, wound dressers and orderlies using previously unstudied material at the Wellcome library.
Afterword: Legacies of the Gentle Soldier in the 21st Century
A research group, which places this central project in an international context, and a range of Impact events will be central to the development of the thinking outlined here.

This project asks that we look critically at received ideas about soldiers and manly behaviour. The impact activities planned (see Pathways) will invite a range of audiences - serving military personnel, military museum visitors, war society members, school children, teachers, and a wider interested public - to scrutinise their views about masculinity and war. Given that ideals of gendered behaviour and perceptions of how war should be waged continue to profoundly shape our day to day experience, this research has substantial social benefit.

This project's introduction and afterword explicitly consider the political implications of my work and continuities in representations of the soldier. I also examine the legacies of perceptions about the gendering of bodily care, and the impact that this has had on the development of Army Medical Services, recruitment and gendered specialisms.

Public debate about the appropriate expression of feeling for war dead (a topic my project directly addresses) continues, as witnessed by the discussions about the level of tribute given on the return of soldiers' bodies to British military bases. A broader interest in the connections between the army, national character and the history of emotion was reflected in Ian Hislop's recent BBC documentary series about the rise of the 'Stiff Upper Lip'. Hislop identified the Crimean War as the point at which this form of manly firmness was democratised to become a national attribute embodied by ranking soldiers and officers alike. While my project focuses on the impact of the Crimean war in the re-making of British masculine ideals, the research group I will run as part of the Fellowship extends the focus to the other countries involved in the war. In gathering a number of different national perspectives, the research group will consider the different legacies of this conflict in the shaping of masculine styles and emotions across Europe, from the nineteenth-century to the present.

The project, like my previous research, makes reflections on histories of gender and sexuality which are pertinent now. I have a proven track record in engaging non-academic audiences with the questions raised by my research. My work on Dickens has helped to change perceptions of Dickens and his age, especially of gender, sexuality and domesticity, and it will be used as an Impact case study in my department's submission for REF. To date in this Dickens bi-centenary year I have engaged in dialogue with over 25,000 Dickens readers through projects including a Facebook reading group, a blog, a Schools' resource, workshops and talks. I have presented new perspectives on Dickens in various media during the celebrations: writing for newspapers and online fora, giving radio interviews, and advising BBC TV production 'Mrs Dickens's Family Christmas'. Since Queer Dickens I have been asked to speak at events to mark Gay and Lesbian history month and a THE review acknowledged the book's significance to GLBTQ communities.

The Fellowship will allow me to develop my commitment to public engagement, and to build upon existing collaborations with non HEIS, by allowing me more time to deliver fairly ambitious plans for impact. At the core of these is an extension of my role with the National Army Museum. I will also work with Limehurst School and the English Association to create resources for secondary teachers, and with HRO and the Crimean War Research Society to deliver military/family history workshops with a gendered focus. I plan to approach the Princess of Wales's Royal Regiment - it now incorporates the 77th Regiment, which features in my research. I will use the University Press Office and contacts established through my Dickens work to present the project through a variety of media channels. All these activities are designed to actively engage participants in critical rethinking and to encourage public debate.