Tom Brown and the Schoolboy Crush: Boyhood Desire, Hero Worship, and the Boys' School Story
Document Type
Book Chapter
Publication Date
9-18-2012
Department
English
School
Humanities
Abstract
This article investigates Thomas Hughes's Tom Brown's Schooldays (1857) through the lenses of queer and postcolonial theory to suggest the ways in which homosocial networks and homosocial desire both upheld and threatened to destabilize the hegemony of the British empire as young people attending elite boarding schools were socialized into norms of acceptable behavior. It considers the historical record regarding the schoolboy crush. The article also argues that schoolboy crushes promote the ideals of same-sex bonding while avoiding the danger that romantic friendships might cross the line into prohibited relationships of sex, contamination, and vice. The intimate friendship between Tom and George Arthur is met with similar suspicion in Tom Brown's Schooldays; nevertheless, Tom's relationship with Arthur manages to circumvent this danger. The concept of hero worship connects the notion of the crush with the spiritual sanctification experienced by Tom Brown over the course of Tom Brown's Schooldays.
Publication Title
The Oxford Handbook of Children's Literature
First Page
455
Last Page
473
Recommended Citation
Tribunella, E. L.
(2012). Tom Brown and the Schoolboy Crush: Boyhood Desire, Hero Worship, and the Boys' School Story. The Oxford Handbook of Children's Literature, 455-473.
Available at: https://aquila.usm.edu/fac_pubs/20864
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