Melville’s Portrait of Same-Sex Marriage in Moby-Dick

Abstract

Herman Melville’s writings include portrayals of same-sex eros. In his own life, he encountered socially acceptable homosexuality when he lived on the Island of Nukakiva in the Marquesas in 1842. There he encountered a tayo, a homosexual who cared for him and shared his bed. In a number of novels prior to Moby-Dick, Melville provided fictional sketches of tayo figures. In Moby-Dick, Melville describes Ishmael’s “wedding” with Queequeg, his “bosom friend,” tayo, or “bridegroom” as a “marriage,” or “hearts’ honeymoon,” between the two men. Thus, out of the indigenous rites of Polynesia, Melville formed his portrait of same-sex marriage. In this article, the author examines the archetype of same-sex marriage as a calling (“Call me Ishmael”). The author argues that Melville’s portrait of same-sex marriage, and his passionate love-letter to his friend and mentor, Nathaniel Hawthorne, with its “infinite fraternity of feeling,” has universal significance for our times.