Jan 31 2010
where have all the women gone?
It is quite clear from the beginning of this novel that Melville views whaling and seafaring as a man’s world; in the description of the boarders,
“[t]hey were nearly all whalemen; chief mates, and second mates, and third mates, and sea carpenters, and sea coopers, and blacksmiths, and harpooneers, and ship keepers…” (p. 29);
this list is only a brief suggestion of all the roles upheld by men in this profession. It becomes important, then, in analyzing gender roles in this novel to first acknowledge the absence of a female presence and then look to the examples we are given to formulate some idea of what women stand for in this novel, and how they stand in contrast to the heavily masculine (though potentially “homosocial” or homoerotic as someone has already stated) lifestyle and personality depicted in this book.
In this first section, we see women in two basic ways: as upholding the stereotype of the female as predominantly a wife and housekeeper, and secondly as someone who reprimands or is overly stubborn and frantic in disposition. The first is evidenced primarily by the role of Mrs. Hussy, who is the first real female character we encounter; she runs an inn and readies the meals and keeps weapons out of the rooms in a motherly fashion but does little else of importance. In addition to this there appear small details such as the women who sit, mourning the loss of their seamen in the chapel, and the difference between Queequeg’s honorable relatives:
“His father was a High Chief, a King; his uncle a High Priest; and on the maternal side he boasted aunts who were the wives of unconquerable warriors” (p. 53);
the women gain status only by the men they align themselves with.
The second aspect of the female I observed is also present in the character of Mrs. Hussy who is seen reprimanding both upon our first view of her and when Ishmael seeks her out to open his door. We see this particularly clearly during the panic that ensues when Ishmael becomes concerned about Queequeg behind the locked door and she is wholly concerned with the house and the door not being broken and in fact matches Ishmael’s emotional level in protecting it. The housemaid, as well, reveals a sense of women as irrational, overly emotional beings, who cannot keep their heads on during a state of panic in her reaction by screaming out “murder” and running about the house; this may contribute, though not directly stated, to the complete absence of women we see on the actual boats, which Ishmael makes quite clear is a demanding, honorable, and manly endeavor.
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Rebecca, this is a good first effort, as you noticed something that many critics have noted about the novel — that this is a wholly masculine world, and that there are few to no women in this novel. We’ll see later in the text that there is a hidden feminine presence in the novel — but until then, it’s good to focus on the minor elements of the feminine, and then later, you’ll want to focus on the aspects of masculinity that interest you. This post is good — it points out the minor female characters and their stereotypical, often negative, behavior — but for the future, try to move beyond observation and into analysis. What, for example, does it mean to represent women in this way? Is it because Melville wants to exclude them from the labor of the whaling ship and the whaling industry? Why represent them in such a negative way in the start of the book? Why does Ishmael feel they are so tangential to his story? Why does masculinity take such primacy in the first chapters, clouding the presence of the few women, who are drawn as caricatures?