Boys’ school stories from the Victorian period engage persistently with debates about masculinity, and fictional representations of school life provide provocative commentary on what might constitute manly behaviour. School (both the private variety and, more tenaciously, the public school) was recognised by many authors in this period as the embodiment of a set of social values associated with patriarchal dominance and elitism, but also as a crucible to forge the masculinity of its young male brethren. In Victorian fiction, educational adventures primarily examine moments of school life that take place beyond any form of detailed academic accomplishment, to focus more on the individual's moral development, socialisation, reputation, the forging and testing of friendships, the perils of temptation, and physical prowess. They therefore recount the potential to explore both moral and somatic forms of progress outside of the classroom, making school a significant element in successful (or failed) masculine development.

Rather than centre solely on the psychological and moral aspects of school life, this essay takes as its focus the ways in which such moments are experienced by the youthful male body and, in particular, the texts examined here illustrate some of the abuses to which the schoolboy body is subject in Victorian fiction. Physical, tactile interaction between boys (or boys and their teachers) emerges as a way of reading both individual and collective experiences at school. The essay isolates examples from the work of Charles Dickens and George Meredith to highlight the ways in which corporal punishment was used to illustrate the lack of agency possessed by the vulnerable schoolboy body. The lasting impression of pain and indignity associated with flogging or caning, however, is also shown to inspire a kind of fraternal bonding in these episodes, experienced through the boys’ shared physical suffering and sympathy. In a more competitive strain, bullying and fighting, recounted in the satirical work of W. M. Thackeray, shows how the young male body becomes a tool for displays of dominance and the coveted popularity among peers. Lastly, the essay interrogates the ways in which the schoolboy body becomes sexualised in these fictions, through analyses of two of the more famous Victorian boys’ school stories: Thomas Hughes’ Tom Brown's Schooldays (1857) and Frederic W. Farrar's Eric, or Little by Little (1858).