Representations of Masculinity in Wilbur Smith's Courtney Saga

2 1 JUNY 2000 -j •& ?3 32- Representations of Masculinity in Wilbur Smith's Courtney Saga. Contextual Causes and Strategies of Authorial Control i* Mi, M. Isabel Santaulària i Capdevila 88 Representations of Masculinity... Chapter 4: Imperialist adventure. Genealogy and characteristics 4.1. Imperialist adventure: an attempted genealogy Specific adventure formulas can be categorised in terms of the location and nature of the hero's adventures. This seems to vary considerably from culture to culture, presumably in relation to those activities that different periods and cultures see as embodying a combination of danger, significance and interest. New periods seem to generate new adventure formulas while to some extent still holding on to earlier modes. Adventure situations that seem too distant either in time or in space tend to drop out of the current catalogue of adventure formulas to pass into another area of the culture.l Although adventure stories retain an underlying story-plot or archetype, different adventure sub-genres have emerged depending on the location of the adventure, the period when it is narrated (or when the adventure is supposed to take place) and specific cultural determinants such as the activities different cultures and periods regard as adventurous. New periods generate new adventure patterns, and as Martin Green2 argues, the beginning of a modern world system in Europe, in which two core countries, England and Holland, wielded power over the rest of Europe increasingly after 1550, and over the rest of the world after 1650, necessitated the emergence of a new type of adventure. The modern world system was characterised by the abandonment of feudal practices and the creation of politically strong core states, mercantile and industrial capitalism, the re-structuring of society and the emergence of new castes, notably the merchants, and, above all, geographical expansion. In order to subsist financially, the core states needed the profits derived from exploiting the periphery and trading with the arena surrounding the system, which, by the way, suffered enormously from the effects of this systematic and unruly exploitation. As Martin Green puts it, John Cawelti, Adventure, Mystery and Romance, 40-41. Martin Green, Dreams of Adventure, Deeds of Empire, 8-14. Imperialist adventure 89 [U]nconsciously or indifferently the core countries weakened the state machinery and cultural life they encountered out there, reducing the states to dependencies if not to colonies." The new colonial and capitalist state of affairs affected the development of adventure narratives in England in two different ways. In the first place, the nature of the hero had to be altered. The hero of pre-capitalist adventure (the knight of the chivalric romance) had relied on the chivalric code of honour to guide his actions, and on Fortune and other magical helpers to assist him against fantastical enemies in a world steeped in the atmosphere of the marvellous. By contrast, the paradigmatic modern hero is a figure constituted from traits drawn from mercantilism: a rational, prudent, calculating man defeating the challenges he meets by means of tools and techniques, drilling and organisation, and clearly moved by economic interests (interests coated in altruistic and civilising robes). Secondly, the location of adventure was removed from imaginary landscapes and translated to the peripheral territories, Britain's most marvellous possessions and the foundation of the British empire, where the hero used rationalised and systematised habits of thought to "create order and value out of the wilderness in which he [found] himself, and to subdue its native inhabitants to his will."4 These two complementary additions to adventure are epitomised in Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719), which is considered the founding text of modern adventure. Empire became Britain's most valuable asset and its maintenance and support, a matter of necessity. And adventure stories faithfully served this purpose; they were used to celebrate the opportunities that empire offered to Britain, to the extent that "to celebrate adventure was to celebrate empire and vice versa."5 Not all writers could sincerely adopt a celebratory attitude to empire. In fact, the morally serious were readier to condemn it, or purposefully to ignore it; they turned away from adventure to write 'serious' fiction - essays and poems, for example - which implicitly advocated a quite different career. Celebration of empire, therefore, became the domain of adventure stories, and the emerging imaginaries of empire, together with new Martin Green, Dreams of Adventure, Deeds of Empire, 9. Graham Dawson, Soldier Heroes, 59. Martin Green, Dreams of Adventure, Deeds of Empire, 37. 90 Representations of Masculinity... historical forms of English nationality and masculinity in relation to the colonised Other and other forms of human life, notably women and other colonial forces, sedimented into its structure. Imperialist adventure stories, in the tradition inaugurated by Defoe, emerged for the purpose of preparing the young men of England to "go out to the colonies, to rule, and their families to rejoice in their fates out there."' These imperialist adventure stories up to Conrad, silenced the ills of imperialism: the more sordid aspects of the trading expeditions, the more appalling aspects of the technology that the traders employed, the complete annihilation of native forms of life, the destruction of natural resources, etc. Only jingoistic tones were used for the construction of the imperial subject and the support of the "ideologies in force."7 Adventure evolved into pro-empire 'propaganda', predetermining the population's outlook and attitude towards empire. As Andrea White puts it: [T]he concurrence of adventure novel's great popularity in the nineteenth century with the growth of Britain's empire into an extensive and formidable world power was not an accidental one. Like any other genre, adventure fiction reflected and constructed a social reality. This adventure fiction and much of the travel writing of the time also purported to chronicle the English adventure in the lands beyond Europe then being explored and colonised, but they did so in such a manner that they formed the energising myth of English imperialism. While seeming to inform the stay-at-homes, this writing shaped a particular outlook. In fact, as these discourses engaged in narrating the story of the white man in the tropics, sorting out who those Others were who inhabited the foreign lands, who the tellers and readers of the story were, what their relationships were, what was civilisation and what was savagery, the overall stance was largely interpretative and as such served as the culture's dominant fiction, arguing that the benefits of civilisation justified the white man's - especially the Englishman's - incursions into other lands.8 The expansive thrust of the white races, the creation of the new nation states in Europe, and the necessity to promote and propagandise empire help to explain the emergence and development of imperialist adventure in nineteenth-century England. However, and applying Martin Green's metaphor, it takes four fingers to make one fist and other factors of various kinds - social, technological, moral, religious or literary - 6 Martin Green, Dreams of Adventure, Deeds of Empire, 38 7 Tzevan Todorov, The Conquest of America (New York: Harper & Row, 1982) 253. Andrea White, Joseph Conrad and the Adventure Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993) 6. Imperialist adventure 91 have to be taken into consideration if a full account of the conditionings that propitiated the emergence and evolution of the genre is to be provided here. Empire itself was a key determinant, but other factors conditioned both the appearance and characteristics of imperialist adventure. First of all, following the education reforms of 1870, the creation of free Board Schools led to an increased demand for juvenile and popular literature and a host of writers essayed to quench the thirst of the newly literate juvenile readers. Secondly, technological developments also facilitated, for the first time, the production of cheap books and newspapers. The development of rotary presses and mechanical typesetting devices, the adoption of new bookbinding techniques and cardboard covers, and the introduction of inexpensive pulp paper, made possible the mass production and mass circulation of cheap popular editions of the classics, missionary writing, travel and exploration stories, lives of great men, and accounts of naval and military engagements - suitable tales of adventure and excitement to satisfy the thirst of the new reading public. Thirdly, and as C.C. Eldridge explains, "the launch of the new style of adventure story was to some extent a deliberate ploy designed to counteract the popularity of the notorious 'penny dreadfuls' (mainly stories of glamorised violence and crime which were thought to undermine society's values)."9 Concern about the material available to the literate classes was not new to the 1880s. From the late nineteenth century, attempts had been made to direct reading habits. The Sunday school movement, for instance, was accompanied by the establishment of religious publishing societies in an attempt to provide reading material of an improving nature. However, although these readings had a pious nature and a highly moral content, and probably because of this, their appeal was limited. People preferred the

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