SOURCE: “‘An Unnatural State’: Gender, ‘Perversion,’ and Newman's Apologia Pro Vita Sua,” in Victorian Studies, Vol. 35, No. 4, Summer, 1992, pp. 359-83.

In the following essay, Buckton claims that the controversy between Newman and Charles Kingsley of the 1860s was a manifestation of Victorian hostility to Newman's religious conversion and perceived sexual ambiguity.

Long before he actually wrote the autobiography that resulted in the transformation of his reputation in his own country, Newman had considered the possibility of writing a narrative of self-justification in order to clarify the motives for his conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1845. For twenty years following this conversion he had been treated with suspicion and hostility by the majority of his countrymen, and public attacks on his “treachery” were not uncommon. As he explained to Alexander Macmillan, however, Newman felt that such anonymous hostilities were not generally worth reciprocation:

I have never been very sensitive of...