Athletic Antagonism in Wilkie Collins’s Man and Wife

Abstract

ABSTRACT Wilkie Collins’s Man and Wife (1870) has notoriously been criticised by both Victorian and contemporary reviewers for its seeming oversimplified antagonism toward athleticism and sport. However, Man and Wife provides profound insights into the debates and anxieties of the time regarding the cultivation of physical prowess in conjunction with British imperialism. Collins’s antagonism represents a view into Victorian discourse on the unprecedented vogue of athleticism, which made England the first modern sporting nation. This essay argues that Collins became a representative antagonist against athleticism due to his concerns about the decline of intelligence, morality, and even health combined with a concern about the popularity of amateur sports, which served as a means to segregate class. Collins’s controversial portrayal of an aristocrat’s excellence in sports was a warning against elite athleticism, which went against the Victorian current of class mobility. Analysing discourses on athleticism in Victorian periodicals and magazines, this essay offers insights into the shifting contours of sporting ethos and class identity in mid- to late Victorian society and into British endeavours to strengthen its economic and national power by adopting an innovative practice of athleticism.