Moby Dick

In Melville’s short story Benito Cereno there appear many of the same themes and dynamics as we observed in Moby Dick. Here, however, we do see women aboard: the “Negresses”  (as Melville calls them) or female slaves upon the San Dominick. In one particular moment, our antagonist Captain Delano sees one of these women asleep with her child crawling by her:

His attention had been drawn to a slumbering Negress…lying… like a doe in the shade of a woodland rock. Sprawling at her lapped breasts was her wide-awake fawn, stark naked, its black little body half lifted from the deck…its hands, like two paws, clambering upon her…This incident prompted him to remark the other Negresses more particularly than before… Unsophisticated as leopardesses; loving as doves.

Both the women and her child are directly compared to animals. It is true that Babo is also described as being a kind of faithful dog to the Spanish captain, but his physical proximity to this white man and his sense of purpose place him in a different rhelm than the black women. This is the common idea of how race creates the notion of the “other”, but even this label has its own divisions; a women of a “lesser” race is more of an “other” than a man of the same.

This idea is further suggested by the relationship between Don Benito and Babo. In Moby Dick, we discussed the homo-social and homo-erotic elements aboard the Pequod, but I wrote a post on how these undertones surfaced due to the natural sexuality of all human beings coupled with the absence of women. Here women are present, yet Babo’s affection is directed not towards them but towards his male “master” and captain. Babo supports Don Benito in many ways including physically:

so that, the better to support him, the servant, placing his master’s hand on his naked shoulder, and gently holding it there, formed himself into a sort of crutch.

This image is somehow sensual and suggestive. This element is present as well in the chapter In the Cuddy, when Babo shaves Don Benito:

the servant commenced operations by throwing back his master’s collar and loosening his cravat.

And when Babo accidentally draws blood, he and Don Benito remain afterwards on good terms causing Captain Delano to consider it all “a sort of love-quarrel”. It seems then that Melville continues in this story on his social commentary or at least questioning of masculinity, sexuality and race. But though we may,as we did in Moby Dick, be struck by the apparently anti-racist push of Melville by reading such bold moments as the following:

“Faithful fellow!” cried Captain Delano. “Don Benito, I envy you such a friend; slave I cannot call him.”

This angelic, bumbling slave is in the end a dangerous, violent and manipulative being. Thus, as always, we are left questioning (perhaps along with Melville) what the message really is and what aspects are the result of prejudices and uncertainties.

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