Athletic antagonism in wilkie Collins’s man and wife

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.