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  • Oxbridge Men: British Masculinity and the Undergraduate Experience, 1850–1920
  • Sheldon Rothblatt (bio)
Oxbridge Men: British Masculinity and the Undergraduate Experience, 1850–1920, by Paul R. Deslandes; pp. iii + 319. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005, $45.00.

Paul Deslandes is a highly-knowledgeable scholar of Victorian and Edwardian Oxbridge with a fine grasp of the primary and secondary literature. He has also read widely in the large corpus of literary, historical, and anthropological writings on gender and ritual. His book is one measure of the sophistication and methodological breadth that has occurred in studies of the British universities during the last thirty years or more. While specialists will recognize many of his themes and will not be surprised by the main conclusions, he is now an established authority on the question of male undergraduate bonding and its ramifications at the two fin-de-siècle senior universities.

Elite universities—using "elite" in its more neutral rather than in the mainly pejorative sociological sense used by Deslandes—attract more attention from scholars than do other types of universities. They usually, if not invariably, have history on their side; enjoy monopoly advantages; attract the rich, the prestigious, and the able; and supply nations with graduates of distinction who show up in various kinds of leadership, business, or artistic roles (even if most graduates are never heard from). In the case of Oxford and Cambridge, the period after the mid-Victorian reforms was particularly noteworthy, a golden age of sorts. Despite student criticisms of academic careerism, as Deslandes relates, teaching was actually stronger than earlier. The universities' commitment to some element of research was more conspicuous, and the demand for entrance was greater and, if limited, more competitive. It was not only the parliamentary reforms and more effective use of endowments that accounted for improvements, but also the strengthening of Oxford's and Cambridge's reputations as select institutions because of the general expansion of higher education. By the end of the century, England (and the United Kingdom overall) had a differentiated higher education system. The newer institutions absorbed the developing demand for postsecondary education, allowing Oxford and Cambridge to concentrate on elite functions.

Trends in undergraduate culture and activity that developed in the earlier part of the century intensified and flourished in the second part. As Deslandes vividly describes, societies and student journalism proliferated, and there were parties galore. In a fascinating discussion, he focuses on the annual boat races as a microcosm of undergraduate culture, dividing the river into the distinct worlds of participants and spectators. However, what made all student activities special and worthy of attention was the presence of women. And even if they were not actually present, they were always the ghosts at the banquets.

Historically, only men attended Oxford and Cambridge, but from the 1860s onwards women's colleges were founded, often with the support of prominent dons. We have new and fine histories of some of the colleges, but Deslandes takes us much further afield. He notes that it was the presence of women in the ancient universities as students and competitors that transformed routine male activities into a continual definition and redefinition of what it meant to become a man. Whether this should be termed what Deslandes calls a "masculine crisis" is a matter of opinion (or wording), but it is undeniably central.

Generally unaccustomed to the presence of respectable women and segregated from them at boarding school, male adolescents certainly found the New Woman [End Page 163] student of the late Victorian and Edwardian period a terrifying emotional and sexual threat. Add an aggressive feminist movement into the mix and the demanding regimen of the honors degree examinations—a topic attracting much scholarly attention but not from a gendered perspective—and we have the ingredients that produced the ridiculous statements, immature and insulting behavior, and fears associated with coming of age. It became necessary to assert male superiority by denigrating women and guarding the boundaries of male space, for which the exclusive London clubs would certainly have provided an example. The notorious episodes that delayed women's degrees until well into the twentieth century were the fiercest counter-attacks. They were particularly...

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