This is a boys' own style adventure story written in 1836 and based on the author's own experiences as a Midshipman in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars. As such, it is very much of its time; judging it by the standards of today it leaves an unpleasant taste in the mouth for several reasons:
- Its main theme is that human beings cannot and should not be 'equal'. The father of the eponymous hero brings his son Jack up to believe that all human beings should be equal, a doctrine it is possible for him to hold since he has a large estate with many tenant farmers and a substantial private income. The father is later represented as mad because of his beliefs. When the son joins the Navy he gradually comes to see the error of his ways. In the end he refutes the doctrine, claiming that equality destroys admiration ("what an idle, unprofitable, weary world would this be, if it were based on equality"; 3,11) and that a hierarchical structure to society is "the most perfect form" (3.11); even that "the peasant is more happy than the king, surrounded as the latter is by more cares and anxiety" (3,11). He even employs the doctrine that "the luxury, the pampered state, the idleness - if you please, the wickedness of the rich, all contribute to the support, the comfort, and employment of the poor. (3,11). These are classic arguments in favour of inequality and tend only to be made by those who are rich, are blind to the sufferings of the poor, and are determined to hang on to their privileges in every way they can. That they should be made at a time when there was desperate suffering among the working classes makes them particularly nasty.
- One of the characters is Mesty, an Ashantee prince who has been a slave and escaped to become a servant at the lowest rung of the navy. Granted he is shown to be intelligent, getting Jack out of scrapes, even saving his life, while decrying his present state, but his background is that of a savage skull collector, he talks in classic 'massa' type English, and he appears to live happily ever after as Jack's servant. He is more or less the stereotypical black character.
- Jack's adventures often involve minor characters dying. There is no sense that this is a tragedy. Jack himself has the emotional empathy of a psychopath; the author the instincts of a serial killer. He says early on: "He laughed at pain, as all philosophers do when it is suffered by other people, and not by themselves." (1.1) He doesn't seem to have learned from this reflection.
- Jack appears to have few merits other than luck. He picks or incites duels regularly, causing other members of the navy to be (comically) injured and even killed. He regularly deserts his ship, going absent without leave. He disobeys orders. In effect he repeatedly undermines the effectiveness of the navy. He gets away with it time and time again. His mates the captain and the governor of Malta find his adventures amusing and tolerate his insubordination; after all, how can one expect a rich man to endure military discipline. We have a hero who does all the wrong things and gets away with it because he is rich. A happy outcome for a spoilt and pampered brat.
- Jack's mother has so little effect on her son's upbringing that I thought she had died when he was little. When she does die it is a matter of very little grief. Jack's is a man's world with women as objects for romantic adoration. Fundamentally this book is of its time: racist, sexist and hugely complacent about the class system.
The story itself is a sort of picaresque with the narrative coherence held together by the coincidence of meeting the same people again and again.
I think the book is intended as a comedy, showing how the hero's ridiculous ideas about equality are quite rightly educated out of him. It really isn't very funny.
Perhaps the worst moment is reached when, about half way through, the authorial voice intrudes to boast that it is by his influence with the Lords of the Admiralty that now only recruits of gentlemanly status are admitted to officer rank in the Royal Navy. (2,6)
"Mr Easy turned philosopher, the very best profession a man can take up, when he is fit for nothing else; he must be a very incapable person indeed who cannot talk nonsense," (1,1)
"Mutual forbearance will always ensure domestic felicity." (1.1) Although in this case the mutual forbearance means the wife tolerating and submitting to the whims of the husbands.
"I will apply the Promethean torch and soon vivify that rude mass." (1.4) Frankenstein was published twelve years before this novel.
"There are more ways of teaching than a posteriori" (1.5) referring to the fact that Jack is taught at school by extensive use of the cane, applied to all parts of his body rather than just his backside, a fact of which the author clearly approves.
"No one liked, as a companion, one at whose appearance the very dogs would bark." (1.10) Another prejudice: the equation of physical beauty with merit and ugliness with badness.
"A literary husband is, without exception, although always at home, the least domestic husband in the world, and must try the best of tempers." (2.5)
"A little contradiction, like salt at dinner, seasons and appetizes the repast; but too much, like the condiment in question, spoils the whole." (2.5)
Arguing for arranged marriages and against romantic love: "In the blindness of love, each raises the other to a standard of perfection, which human nature can never attain, and each becomes equally annoyed on finding, by degrees, that they were in error." (2.5)
"Jack, although not much more than seventeen, was very strong and tall for his age; indeed, he was a man grown, and shaved twice a week." (2.7)
"There's nothing passes time more agreeably away than champagne, and if you do not affront this regal wine by mixing him with any other, he never punishes you the next morning." (3.13)
Mean-spirited propaganda for a society based on inequality.
April 2020; 485 pages
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