Melville and Women (review)

Abstract

R E V I E W ELIZABETH SCHULTZ AND HASKELL SPRINGER, EDS. Melville and Women Kent, OH: Kent Statue University Press, 2006. Cloth $39.00. 287 pp. T he revival of Herman Melville’s reputation in the early years of the twentieth century was materially assisted by Lewis Mumford’s influential 1929 biography, which rapturously traced the life and work of an author he likened to Homer or Dante. Explaining why his biography contained as much literary criticism as it did, Mumford writes that “Herman Melville’s life and work were one. A biography of Melville implies criticism; and no final criticism of his work is possible that does not bring to it an understanding of his personal development.”1 Mumford’s assessment of Melville’s genius, the necessary relationship he posits between the author’s life and work, and the fact that many of Melville’s works focus on the sea combine to yield a biography that reflects what Mumford suggests is “the one anomaly and defect of the sea from the central, human point of view: one half of the race, woman, is left out of it” (201). Melville’s world, “all too literally,” is “a man-of-war’s world,” he continues, and “One looks for some understanding of woman’s lot and woman’s life in Moby-Dick; and one looks in vain” (201). Although Mumford acknowledges that Melville is not exclusively an author of sea tales, judges the exclusion of women to be an “anomaly” and “defect,” and hints that “Each age . . . will find its own symbols in Moby-Dick” (194), the canon which emerges, thanks in part to his enthusiastic intervention, replicates the principles he articulates, continuing to find little “understanding” or interest in “woman’s lot” or “life” in Melville’s novels. The explicit goal of Melville and Women is to correct this standard critical posture, revealing to the contrary that women appear consistently throughout Melville’s writings and, more importantly, that even when they “are, in traditional terms ‘minor characters’ or less . . . their significance far exceeds the number of words expressly concerning them or their apparent insignificance as literary characters” (4). At their strongest, the essays gathered in Melville and Women succeed handsomely, complicating our understanding of Melville’s authorial practice and throwing new light on seemingly familiar C 2008 The Authors Journal compilation C 2008 The Melville Society and Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 1 Lewis Mumford, Herman Melville (New York: The Literary Guild of America, 1929), 4. 92 L E V I A T H A N A J O U R N A L O F M E L V I L L E S T U D I E S R E V I E W texts; at their weakest, they reinforce the dominant view that insignificant characters are sometimes ancillary to an author’s larger project. The essays address works from the entire span of Melville’s career, considering the poetry as well as the prose. Not surprisingly, Pierre receives the most sustained attention—two of the eleven essays tackle this difficult novel—but Moby-Dick, “Bartleby the Scrivener,” and Billy Budd likewise provide opportunities for reflection on Melville’s understanding of feminine values and influence. The introduction to the volume offers a fine orientation to the essays themselves, and includes an overview of trends in Melville scholarship. In addition, there is a biographical essay on the women in Melville’s life; while it offers little new, the narrative nonetheless is helpful in orienting readers who might be unfamiliar with the details of life in the nineteenth century. Eight plates complement the readings: four of women considered in the essays and four of works by women artists responding to Moby-Dick. These last are particularly interesting, and it is unfortunate that none of the critics integrates these images into their analysis. An impressive array of methodologies is brought to bear on the question of how women fit into Melville’s project, and the volume is arranged around three main areas of inquiry: the articulation of “alternatives to traditional classifications of women in Melville’s works” (10); Melville’s connections with women; and female characters in the works. These multiple...