Iron John: A Book about Men

by Robert Bly

H. Lawrence described what this was like in his essay “Men Must Work and Women as Well.” His generation in the coal-mining areas of Britain felt the full force of that change, and the new attitude centered on one idea: that physical labor is bad. Lawrence recalls that his father, who had never heard this theory, worked daily in the mines, enjoyed the camaraderie with the other men, came home in good spirits, and took his bath in the kitchen. But around that time the new schoolteachers arrived from London to teach Lawrence and his classmates that physical labor is low and unworthy and that men and women should strive to move upward to a more “spiritual” level—higher work, mental work. The children of his generation deduced that their fathers had been doing something wrong all along, that men’s physical work is wrong and that those sensitive mothers who prefer white curtains and an elevated life are right and always have been.