In 1895: Drama, Disaster and Disgrace in Late Victorian Britain, Nicholas Freeman discusses the way that same-sex desire in men was viewed, arguing that surprisingly late in the nineteenth century, ‘homosexuality had yet to be articulated in the bourgeois consciousness, and late-Victorian perceptions of it had not crystallized into the fatally neat syllogism, “he is not ‘manly’ therefore he may be an ‘invert’ “ ‘ (Freeman 2011: 13). Despite this lack of rigid categorisation in relation to homosexuality, simultaneously, the male body was being categorised, judged, and in the case of Oscar Wilde, eventually condemned. Throughout the Victorian era there were things that a white male body was not supposed to do; bodily acts that were not allowed to be performed, sexualities that were taboo, clothes that adorned the male body that were deemed inappropriate. The male body, in the nineteenth century was bound, constricted and limited in how it could express itself. Or so it would seem. In fact, the way that the white male body was seen and spoken about changed over the Victorian period, shifting from the rigid prescription of manliness to flamboyant and extrovert celebrations of otherness and sometimes back again. However there is no neat correlation between these extremes, and both were apparent (and many other bodily expressions and expectations in between) at various times in the nineteenth century. The Victorian Male Body examines the differing expressions and forms that the white male Victorian body represents and embodies, turning the spotlight onto one of the most ideologically important of all Victorian bodies.