Negotiating the Gentle-Man: Male Nursing and Class Conflict in the ‘High’ Victorian Period

Abstract

This chapter could alternatively be entitled ‘Never Was There Such a Nurse as He’, after a ringing endorsement of masculine care in Charlotte’s Yonge’s hugely popular 1853 novel, The Heir of Reddyffe.1 Yonge’s gendering of her exemplary nurse and hero, Sir Guy, raises questions about mid-Victorian ideals of masculinity and the gendering of tenderness. A paragon of the sickroom, ‘Guy persevered indefatigably, sitting up […] every night, and showing himself an invaluable nurse, with his tender hand, modulated voice, quick eye and quiet activity. His whole soul was engrossed: he never appeared to think of himself, or to be sensible of fatigue; but was only absorbed in the one thought of his patient’s comfort!’ (p. 322). Like many, variously classed, male nursing figures of the period, Yonge’s heir confirms his moral worth through a sacrificial act of nursing. In these high Victorian explorations of the gentle-man, tenderness, rather than ancestry or class position, becomes the defining feature of social value.

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