“Mine Was a Peculiar Kind of Wreck”: Robert Louis Stevenson’s Deconstruction of Treasure Island in The Wrecker

Abstract

Robert Louis Stevenson had his first major success with novel Treasure Island (1883), a tale built around armature of a maritime quest to an exotic island in search of a hidden treasure that (while never spelled out as such) one might implicitly assume to have been fruit of imperial exploitation by Europe's seagoing nations. Treasure Island has gone on to become a classic of children's literature and adventure writing, as well as a rich source of pirate tropes in contemporary popular culture, but it was not to be last time Stevenson would write of a maritime quest to a far-off island in search of a treasure of dubious provenance.In this essay I will examine Stevenson's Treasure Island alongside The Wrecker (1892), a collaborative novel written with his stepson Lloyd Osborne and one of least known and most intriguing novels in his body of work. One early reviewer noted that the skeleton of story is a tale of full of shipwreck, murder, and sudden death,1 and one might assume novel resides firmly within Revival genre engendered by earlier Treasure Island. I will argue, however, that this is not case, as Stevenson asserted to Charles Baxter that The Wrecker is certainly well nourished with facts, no can touch me there, for by this time I do begin to know something of life in XIXth century.2 My proposition is that, by writing about shipwreck, murder, and sudden death on a far away island in a realist manner, Stevenson was deliberately deconstructing his own Treasure Island. a detailed intertextual analysis of two novels I intend to show how Stevenson problematizes tropes he established in earlier work, how he uses shipwreck of The Wrecker as a metaphor for his own art, and how he himself is the wrecker of title: artist wrecking his own creation.An obvious reading of Treasure Island is to view protagonist Jim Hawkins' central quest as a negotiated journey into manhood, punctuated and advanced by a series of incidents that conform to tropes of Romance genre. In A Humble Remonstrance (1884) Stevenson identifies Treasure Island as a novel of adventure, a class of writing that eschews moral or intellectual interest and portrays characters only so far as they realise sense of danger and provoke sensation of fear.3 The suggestion here is that Romance is essentially amoral, existing as it does to create incident and evoke a visceral response in reader; but Romance also serves as a motivating force within tale itself, and this does have repercussions in fictional world. Jim Hawkins' journey is catalysed by a desire for adventure, but each incident of adventure carries with it choices that shape man Hawkins will become. Character does not solely exist in service of Romance in either Treasure Island or The Wrecker. Rather, character is affected by responses to Romantic incident, and integrity of identity challenged in moments of stress.Hawkins initially comes into contact with animating force of Romance in shabby dissipated person of Billy Bones. The aged pirate functions as a plot device to precipitate adventure, but he also serves as an avatar of Romance inspiring a certain reinvigoration in Hawkins' stultified community. From outset Hawkins is faced with lure of a Romance that is seductively amoral because it carries with it prospect of becoming a pirate. By his own account he [Bones] must have lived his life among some of wickedest men that God ever allowed upon sea, but his very ability to offer an oral account of his deeds and experiences is presented in glowing terms:I really believe his presence did us good. People were frightened at time, but on looking back they rather liked it; it was a fine excitement in a quiet country life; and there was even a party of young men who pretended to admire him, calling him a true sea-dog and a real old-salt, sort of man that made England terrible at sea. …