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The Muscular Christian As Schoolmarm, John C. Hawley

English

In 1859 the Saturday Review was one of the first journals to associate Charles Kingsley with a "younger generation of writers of fiction" who fostered the sentiment that "power of character in all its shapes goes with goodness." "Who does not know," the reviewer asked, "all about the 'short, crisp, black hair,' the 'pale but healthy complexion,' the 'iron muscles,' 'knotted sinews,' 'vast chests,' 'long and sinewy arms,' 'gigantic frames,' and other stock phrases of the same kind which always announce, in contemporary fiction, the advent of a model Christian hero?"1 After Kingsley's death in 187 5, however, Henry James …