The feminine of Cicero: Anthony Trollope’s classical critique of Victorian masculinity

Abstract When the Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope, famous for his tales of contemporary British life, published a biography of Cicero in 1880, he surprised and dismayed many critics: the work has often been labelled an unscholarly failure. My study, by contrast, argues for the value of Trollope’s biography as a bold critique of Victorian masculinity which rejects the ubiquitous idealization of toughness and emotional restraint. I begin by establishing the central importance of emotional suppression to Victorian conceptions of masculinity. The article then explores how Victorian histories of ancient Rome created a Caesar–Cicero dichotomy which elevated Caesar’s hard-hearted, militaristic manliness over Cicero’s sensitiveness. The final section demonstrates how Trollope presented Cicero as an alternative to dominant conceptions of manliness, a great statesman who revelled in his passions. Trollope’s celebration of Ciceronian emotion is no amateurish vanity project, but a thoughtful ethical manifesto and a precursor to modern research on the history of the emotions.