Violence and Masculinity in Arthur Morrison's Tales of Mean Streets

abstract:This analysis examines Arthur Morrison's Tales of Mean Streets (1894) through the lens of what is now popularly termed "toxic masculinity." Morrison values a hard, violent masculinity, expressly understood as a working-class masculinity, even as he attempts a categorical rejection of working-class culture. The paper investigates unresolved ideologies at the intersection of class and gender—both for the author and for his fictional protagonists—and considers how they fit into a broader understanding of Victorian masculinity at the end of the nineteenth century.