Versions of Confinement Melville's Bodies and The

VERSIONS OF CONFINEMENT MELVILLE’S BODIES AND THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CONQUEST A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY of RHODES UNIVERSITY by KEVIN GRAHAM GODDARD December 2002 ABSTRACT This thesis explores aspects of Melville’s presentation of both the whale and the human bodies in Moby-Dick and human bodies in other important novels. It argues that Melville uses his presentation of bodies to explore some of the versions of confinement those bodies experience, and by doing so, analyses the psychology which subtends that confinement. Throughout Melville’s works bodies are confined, both within literal spatial limits and by the psychology which creates and/or accepts these spatial limits. The thesis argues that perhaps the most important version of bodily confinement Melville addresses is the impulse to conquer bodies, both that of the other and one’s own. It adopts a largely psychoanalytic approach to interpreting bodies and their impulse to conquer, so that the body is seen to figure both in its actions and its external appearance the operations of the inner psyche. The figure of the body is equally prevalent in Melville’s exploration of nationalist conquest, where, as with Manifest Destiny and antebellum expansionism, the psychological and physical lack experienced by characters can be read as motivating factors in the ideology of conquest. A final important strand of the thesis is its argument in favour of a gradual shift in Melville’s interpretation of the value and possibility of genuine communion between human beings and between humans and the whale. One may read Typee as an attempt by Melville to explore the possibility of a this-worldly utopia in which human beings can return to a version of primitive interconnectedness. This exploration may be seen to be extended in Moby-Dick, particularly in Ishmael’s attempts to find communion with others and in some moments of encounter with the whales. The thesis uses phenomenology as a theory to interpret what Melville is trying to suggest in these moments of encounter. However, it argues, finally, that such encounter, or ‘intersubjectivity’ is eventually jettisoned, especially in the works after Moby-Dick. By the end of Melville’s life and work, any hope of an intersubjective utopia he may have harboured as a younger man have been removed in favour of a refusal actually to assert any final ‘truth’ about social, political or even religious experience. Billy Budd, his last body, is hanged, and his final word is silence. TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface Introduction: ‘Fast Fish and Loose Fish’ 1 Chapter I: Utopia and its Discontents: Typee 16 Chapter II: The Phenomenology of Whaling 54 Chapter III: Ahab’s Body and the Psychology of Conquest 89 Chapter IV: Deciphering Queequeg 123 Chapter V: Melville’s Anti-Oedipus: Counter-Narrative in Pierre 153 Chapter VI: Bartleby’s Confinement 192 Chapter VII: Of Mimicry and Masques: ‘Benito Cereno’ 221 Chapter VIII: Hanging Utopia: Billy Budd 256 Epilogue 288 Bibliography 292 PREFACE This work began some years ago, spurred by a kind of blind instinct for what Melville might have to say to the present world in general and me in particular, rather than any specific expectation or knowledge of what he does say. The initial task I set myself was the somewhat amorphous one of exploring the ‘image of the body’ as Melville presented it. However, the more I read and wrote the more it became obvious that most of Melville’s bodies are in one way or another confined, and in the process of trying to escape their confinement, endeavour to conquer other bodies, and so conquer and ‘reconfine’ themselves in the process. So the work became one which explores confined bodies and their psychology. At the end of it all it does seem to me that Melville has something to say to the present world about its confinement of bodies and its urge to conquer what it finds in one way or another offensive. He turns his cutting spade to what he deems the world’s ‘false brow’, and is not chary of striking out where necessary. But maybe the most important thing he has to say is what he leaves unsaid. He does not presume fully to understand what lies behind the brow and does not assume that he has to. And inasmuch as he refrains from didacticism, spends more time exploring the ambiguities of experience than its certainties, and falls eventually into a kind of silence at the end of Billy Budd, it seems about right to conclude that it would be wrong to read moral certitude in most of his work. What he may well leave us with is the lesson never to ignore the bodies which populate our world, and which dominate his novels. They are the repositories of all human and ‘other’ experience, and while all the physical and intellectual dissection possible cannot fully elucidate their secrets, their sublime awe and terror, beauty and horror, remain among the few certainties left by which to measure meaning. ‘Read it, if you can!’ I have, in doing this work, come to owe a great debt to many people. I am very grateful to my colleagues at Vista University English Department, who encouraged me, gave me leave when I most needed it, and took up some of my teaching. The university also provided research funding which enabled important work to be done. My supervisor, Professor Paul Walters was, as always, unstintingly gracious and encouraging. Two friends and colleagues must be specially mentioned. Dr Beth Jeffery read an earlier draft of the work and offered invaluable comments. Dr Dan Wylie, in his inimitable way, took on the hefty task of using his own razor sharp cutting spade on a later draft. His acuity has done much to shape the first part of the thesis. Both Beth and Dan have my deepest gratitude. My parents gave me much encouragement too, from earlier than even I can remember. But last and most important I must thank my family for their long suffering patience. Sheena listened, and listened, and listened and never (quite) tired. Much of what may be insightful or valuable in this work comes from her. Shari reminded me, lovingly and gently, that Melville is not very important when you’re sixteen. And Ianthe, with the ingenuous enquiring mind of the five year old, wondered what I could possibly be so busy doing. She thought the monster was, sort of, interesting, but expressed a distinct preference for dragons and dinosaurs. To them, with much love, this work is dedicated. INTRODUCTION ‘FAST FISH AND LOOSE FISH’: INTERPRETING MELVILLE’S BODIES ‘From this the poem springs: that we live in a place That is not our own and, much more, not ourselves And hard it is in spite of blazoned days.’ Wallace Stevens, Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction. In the chapter of Moby-Dick entitled ‘Fast Fish and Loose Fish’ Ishmael the narrator distinguishes between two kinds of fish, those which have been made ‘fast’ by the captor’s harpoon, and those which still remain ‘loose’ for the taking by other predators. ‘A Fast-Fish belongs to the party fast to it’, and ‘A Loose-Fish is fair game for anybody who can soonest catch it’, he says (308).1 A number of things are blended in this brief commentary. There is the literal capture and confinement of the fish. But there is also the question of ownership of what is captured. In other words, there is the moral issue of rights to what seems freely available. Ishmael expands on this latter question when he asks, ‘What was America in 1492 but a Loose-Fish?... What are the Rights of Man and the Liberties of the World but Loose-Fish?’ (310) Ownership is, to him, a moral issue which is closely related to colonialism and the conquest, not only of fish, but of whole continents. Moreover, not only is the conquest that of continents, it may also be conquest of Rights and Liberties too. 1 All references to Moby-Dick are taken from the Norton Critical Edition, edited by Hershel Parker and Harrison Hayford (2002). 1 Yet having provided these apparently neat definitions of ‘Fast’ and ‘Loose’, Melville plays ‘fast and loose’ with us by undermining himself. He questions the nature of all definition in the first place. ‘But what plays mischief with this masterly code is the admirable brevity of it, which necessitates a vast volume of commentaries to expound it’ (308). No definition is actually ‘fast’. His own ‘vast volume’, mirroring the ‘vast fish’ which is its subject, will not provide a final ‘masterly code’ by which to interpret that subject. This suggests that we are left with yet another dimension of ‘Fast’ and ‘Loose’, that of defining not only the morality of ownership, or the nature of definition itself, but also the nature of Being in its wider sense. Can Being, the Fish in this case, be ‘known’ via the ‘masterly code’ used to interpret it? And since this same ‘code’ is used to determine ownership and results from conquest of the Fish, what is the relation between the ‘code’ and the Fish’s confinement? In this short chapter Melville sets out, a little tongue-in-cheek, the essential concerns of most of his fiction, from Typee through to Billy Budd. Most of his novels explore the relation between bodies, the knowledge of bodies, their confinement to and by that knowledge, and the discourses which go to support such knowledge. Throughout his work Melville places bodies before us, in our faces, as it were, and demands that we interpret them.

Load more