Social class in American literature

Reading Richard Henry Dana’s memoir of life as a sailor in the 1830s — Confused by the class politics of early 19th-century America — Not sure Melville and Dana were truly rebels, they might’ve just been American — These 19th-century American books show little evidence of the bizarre class system that structures most 19th-century British novels — Is Dana’s book worth reading? — A brief description of Melville’s early works

Nobody can know what the 19th-century was like. None of us were there. But when you read a book from the 19th-century, you are reading exactly the same text as people back then would read.

Isn’t that kind of insane? Right now I’m reading Richard Henry Dana’s Two Years Before The Mast, an 1840 memoir about a Harvard undergraduate shipping out as a common sailor on an American merchant vessel. This book sold 10,000 copies in the first year it was published. And most of the people who bought it probably knew nothing about life as a common sailor on a naval vessel.

The book they read is the same as the book I am reading. And I’m reading it for the same reason: I am curious about what happened on these sailing vessels.

Of course, the reader in 1840 would probably understand a few things better than I understand them. For instance, they would understand whether or not it’s weird for a Harvard undergraduate to ship out as a sailor. Before reading this book, I would’ve thought that it would be extremely strange and border-line taboo for an educated, well-off boy to put himself in a situation where he’d be ordered around morning until night and might be subject to flogging.

But Dana handles this situation so matter-of-factly that I’m starting to get the sense that perhaps 19th-century America was more democratic than I imagined it was.¹

And, you know, now I’ve read non-fiction books by Melville, Dana, and Twain that all have basically the same conceit—an educated person lives amongst roughnecks and describes how they life.

This is obviously not a common experience—the world of ordinary sailors is a strange one for the typical, settled America. As Dana writes in his preface, there have been many naval tales, but usually they’re told from an officer’s perspective. There’d been no accounts of life ‘before the mast’ (i.e. in the front half of the ship, where the sailors lived). That’s exactly why this book became so popular.

But after publishing this book in 1840, Dana went on to a distinguished career as a lawyer. He served as U.S. District Attorney for Massachusetts and was nominated to be Ambassador to Great Britain in 1876 (his nomination was torpedoed by the opposition of a political enemy). Clearly, his experience as a sailor was not held to be too terribly shameful or degrading. Melville, for his part, admitted to much worse experiences in Omoo (he participated in a mutiny and was jailed in a Tahitian prison), and this didn’t stop him from holding a job in the Customs House for many years.²

Slumming it amongst the working people is a phenomenon that crosses time and space

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What I think has been throwing me for a loop is that life in 19th-century America oftentimes doesn’t seem that different from life in 21st-century America. After all, here in 21st-century America, educated people sometimes go slumming amongst the masses and write books about it, and they gain, from those books, a reputation as champions of the common man (as Dana did). That’s exactly what Barbara Ehrenreich did, for instance.³

I’m used to old books feeling really old, but I don’t necessarily get that impression from these books by Dana, Melville, and Twain.

But that’s probably just a result of my own faulty expectations. I mean, I cannot overstate how weird it is to read these 19th-century American books and be like, “Wait a second…they're acting exactly the same way a modern person would act…”

For instance, when I started reading Herman Melville, I was struck by his strong disregard for authority. In White-Jacket, his account of life on a man o'war, he goes on strong tirades against naval authority, and in particular the arbitrary actions and overall incompetence of officers.

I thought, wow, this is really new and different. I can’t believe that Herman Melville is so rebellious.

You see, I had some notion (mostly drawn from British literature) that people in the 19th century tended to be quite respectful of authority—as a result, it was surprising to see Melville’s overt disrespect for authority.

But then I started reading Two Years Before The Mast, and it’s clear from reading his account that a Captain's authority onboard a ship, while nominally absolute, is generally exercised very carefully. Sailors are employees. Yes, they're bound to some contract, but if they desert in some distant port, then...it'll be quite hard to find new hands. Moreover, if you get the reputation, as a captain, for being brutal or arbitrary, then sailors won't want to ship with you, and you'll be left short-handed.⁴

This is, in fact, what happens to the Captain of Dana's ship. He flogs two sailors for specious reasons. Other ships, when they hear about this act, find it to be odd and unwarranted behavior—they start making fun of the Captain. A sailor deserts, and sailors from a neighboring ship hide him (despite the reward offered for his capture), because they think his desertion is warranted. The captain tries to find new hands, but can't.

The sailors in this book seem extremely American. They are sailors, yes, but...they don't want to be treated in a cavalier or high-handed way. They are not cowed by authority. They do not naturally hold the Captain in respect. He's not their God, he's just their boss.

Here is Dana writing about how these two sailors reacted to being flogged:

The different manner in which these men were affected, corresponding to their different characters, was not a little remarkable. John was a foreigner and high-tempered, and though mortified, as any one would be at having had the worst of an encounter, yet his chief feeling seemed to be anger; and he talked much of satisfaction and revenge, if he ever got back to Boston. But with the other it was very different. He was an American, and had had some education; and this thing coming upon him seemed completely to break him down. He had a feeling of the degradation that had been inflicted upon him, which the other man was incapable of. Before that, he had a good deal of fun in him, and amused us often with queer negro stories (he was from a Slave State); but afterwards he seldom smiled, seemed to lose all life and elasticity, and appeared to have but one wish, and that was for the voyage to be at an end. I have often known him to draw a long sigh when he was alone, and he took but little part or interest in John’s plans of satisfaction and retaliation.

After reading this passage, I realized that much of what I thought was strange in Melville is actually not strange—it's just the typical American seaman's attitude towards authority. Both Melville and Dana are accurately relating something that already existed.

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Ultimately I think what’s confusing me is that a lot of my experience of 19th-century literature comes from reading British novels. And British novels are structured by this absolutely bizarre class system that is so foreign and so strange and so different from anything in contemporary life. I mean, in Britain, there was this concept that some people were gentlemen and some people weren't, but...there was no overt difference between gentle- and non-gentle people! The gentleman was usually educated, but being educated didn't make you a gentleman. The gentleman usually had parents who were gentle-people, but often their grandparents or great-grandparents weren't of particularly distinguished birth (it was not at all uncommon for gentlemen to have farmers or small-holders or tradespeople as their grand- or great-grandparents). There was a whole process by which bourgeois people could launder their money and create children who were somewhat-accepted in gentle society. And there was also a downwardly mobile aspect, where people of gentle birth were given sinecures (often in government or the church) that would suffice to anchor their own class status, but not that of their kids.

And there were all these ideas about what the 'essence' of gentility was, but...it was all so amorphous. It was just an image that you were projecting all the time. And we read these books, and then we try to map this society onto something we know, and it's just not doable, because there's no such thing as a gentleman, either in 19th-century or contemporary America, in the way it existed in 19th-century Britain. In fact, it didn't even exist in France in the same way as it did in Britain. In Britain, someone like Robespierre (a well-liked and respected lawyer) would've been a gentleman. But in France that wasn't true—he was just another bourgeois—and that's exactly why they had a French Revolution.

And because I am so used to reading these British novels with this bizarre class system, I get confused when I read a 19th-century English-language books where this class system does not exist and does not seem to be a strong consideration. Maybe that seems silly, but the British class system exerts such a strong effect on its national literature (and, as a result, on the English language as a whole) that it’s genuinely surprising sometimes to realize that actually this system was the product of a certain time and place, and that it didn’t really exist in America in the same way.

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Is Dana’s book worth reading?

It occurs to me that I haven’t actually told you whether it’s worthwhile to read Dana’s book. I’d say…you have to be really interested in 19th-century sailing vessels. Because I’ve read so many naval books, I definitely possess that interest.

As a literary artifact, the book might be slightly too long for its content, but it is quite well-written, and in addition to being a great source on naval life, it’s one of the few English-language accounts of life in California under Mexican rule. Moreover, the ending (where he revisits California twenty-four years later) does have some measure of pathos. You realize that for Dana, this adventure, undertaken at a tender age, was truly the adventure of his life, and when he revisits these scenes, he vividly feels the passing of his own youth:

The past was real. The present, all about me, was unreal, unnatural, repellant. I saw the big ships lying in the stream…the boats passing to and fro; the cries of the sailors at the capstan or falls; the peopled beach; the large hide houses with their gangs of men; and the Kanakas interspersed everywhere. All, all were gone! not a vestige to mark where one hide house stood….

I alone was left of all, and how strangely was I here! What changes to me! Where were they all? Why should I care for them⁠—poor Kanakas and sailors, the refuse of civilization, the outlaws and beachcombers of the Pacific! Time and death seemed to transfigure them. Doubtless nearly all were dead; but how had they died, and where? In hospitals, in fever-climes, in dens of vice, or falling from the mast, or dropping exhausted from the wreck⁠—

The lighthearted boys are now hardened middle-aged men, if the seas, rocks, fevers, and the deadlier enemies that beset a sailor’s life on shore have spared them; and the then strong men have bowed themselves, and the earth or sea has covered them.

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On Melville's early books

I've now read three early works by Melville: Typee, Omoo, and White-Jacket. What's funny about Melville is that he had a very distinct five-year career at sea, and each stage of that career resulted in a different literary work.

His initial voyage, a six-week trip to Liverpool, turned into his fourth book, Redburn.

Then he shipped out the next year on a whaling vessel. His experience on that vessel became his sixth book, Moby-Dick.

After about eighteen months, he got tired of this ship, and he deserted, running away on an isolated island in the South Pacific. During this time, he spent a month with a native tribe. This became Typee (his first book).

Afterwards, he was picked up by a whaler, but this also wasn't to his taste, so he participated in a mutiny and was arrested for a while in a Tahitian prison. This is the basis for his second book, Omoo.

Then he contracted for a short voyage, which discharged him in Hawaii. After four months working as a clerk in Hawaii, he found a berth on a U.S. naval vessel which brought him home, ending his career at sea. This experience on a military vessel was the basis for his fifth book, White-Jacket.

What's most striking about Typee is that it's extremely unbelievable. This is a book that purports to be non-fiction, but...it's about an educated man who ships as a common sailor, deserts his ship on an isolated island, is captured by a native tribe where he (it's strongly implied) has a sexual relationship with a woman, narrowly escapes having his face tattooed, and then flees into the grasp of another whaling vessel.

It's not that this is per se impossible, but it seems quite unlikely that it could've happened to someone who was capable of writing well about it!⁵

Almost from the beginning, he was dogged by allegations that he'd fabricated the whole narrative. But at some point, the sailor who'd deserted with him, Toby (who is described in the book), also showed up and independently verified much of Melville's account.

There are definitely fabrications in the book: he stretches his four-week visit out to four months, but...the broad strokes seem to be true. Or at least that's my impression.

Of these books, White-Jacket is the best—I plan to write about it in more detail for Thursday's post. This will be combined with an interview with Rob Vlock, who narrated the audiobook that I listened to. This is one of the best classics audiobooks that I've read, and it was a self-initiated product: Vlock saw it was in the public domain and approached a publisher independently. I think his example shows the ways that individuals, especially those who deeply understand the material, can often outmaneuver big publishers and produce a superior product.

However, when it comes to the other books, I can neither recommend nor critique them. They're good books, and if you're interested in this sort of thing, you should read them. But they're not nearly as entertaining as, say, Mark Twain's Roughing It.⁶

Here's an example of the writing, style, and attitude of Typee, about how amongst the Typee, there is much freedom, leisure, and food, but...they have to expend a lot of energy rubbing sticks together just to make a fire:

A gentleman of Typee can bring up a numerous family of children and give them all a highly respectable cannibal education, with infinitely less toil and anxiety than he expends in the simple process of striking a light; whilst a poor European artisan, who through the instrumentality of a lucifer performs the same operation in one second, is put to his wits’ end to provide for his starving offspring that food which the children of a Polynesian father, without troubling their parent, pluck from the branches of every tree around them.

Recommendation

Reading these minor works by Dana and Melville, I've had to think a lot about what, if anything, I might be able to give my readers as a take-away. One person on Substack who is great at writing about minor novels is Henry Begler. This guy has been on Substack a long time, but about three months ago he became unanonymous (he used to go just by initials) and started writing extremely polished London Review of Books style articles about...whatever he happens to be reading.

They're the kind of articles where you don't necessarily want to read the book yourself, but you're very happy to spend a few minutes reading about the book. Has been an inspiration to me and given me much food-for-thought in terms of my own approach.

His most popular article so far was about Martin Amis, but I really liked this one about memoirs by Gore Vidal and Tina Brown:

Gossip

P.S. Woman of Letters crossed 4,000 subscribers yesterday. This time last year it had 484. I’d like to thank all of you for lending me your time and attention. I really appreciate it.

1. It’s also possible that Dana himself underrates how odd his escapade was. Later, when he returns to California, he notes:

Many who were on the coast at the time the book refers to, and afterwards read it, and remembered the Pilgrim and Alert, thought they also remembered me. But perhaps more did remember me than I was inclined at first to believe, for the novelty of a collegian coming out before the mast had drawn more attention to me than I was aware of at the time.

2. I’ll note the New York Customs House was famed for its dishonesty, so perhaps a scurrilous past only helped him in gaining this employment.

3. Nor is this a phenomenon limited to America. A few years ago I read a fascinating 1979 Hungarian memoir called Worker In A Worker’s State by Miklós Haraszti, by a writer, from the educated classes, who goes to work in a factory and describes what it’s like to actually work under socialism.

4. Dana remarks upon the unwritten code of propriety onboard ships:

Whatever the captain does is right, ipso facto, and any opposition to it is wrong on board ship; and every officer and man knows this when he signs the ship’s articles. It is a part of the contract. Yet there has grown up in merchant vessels a series of customs, which have become a well-understood system, and have somewhat the force of prescriptive law.

5. In Dana’s memoir, the author recounts meeting an English sailor, George Marsh, who was also marooned on an island in Polynesia, lived with the natives for thirteen months, was tattooed all over his body, and took a wife, before eventually escaping—so this is something that happened to someone. But…that just makes Typee even more unbelievable, because Melville had read Dana’s book, so there was a suspicion that perhaps he’d just embellished Marsh’s tale and taken it for his own.

Dana surmises that George Marsh was also from an educated and well-off background. Writing about this man, Dana says:

His is one of those cases which are more numerous than those suppose who have never lived anywhere but in their own homes, and never walked but in one line from their cradles to their graves. We must come down from our heights, and leave our straight paths for the by-ways and low places of life, if we would learn truths by strong contrasts; and in hovels, in forecastles, and among our own outcasts in foreign lands, see what has been wrought among our fellow-creatures by accident, hardship, or vice.

6. I wrote about Roughing It in this post. Out of all these mid-19th century American nonfiction books, Roughing It remains the most readable and entertaining, even though I find Twain’s smug and dismissive attitude to be grating at times.