Redefining British Masculinity in Captains Courageous

Abstract

In the last two decades of the nineteenth century, Rudyard Kipling began to write for adolescents to reorient children’s literature and reflect upon adventure, the British education system, functioning of schools, and teaching of ethical values and morality. This chapter is an attempt to analyse Captains Courageous for its deviation from the dominant sea adventure stories of the late nineteenth century and how Kipling heeds to rapidly changing literary trends to integrate them with colonial boyhood culture. It gives an insight into the methods Kipling adopted to collect information on the fishermen of Gloucester, Massachusetts. It also traces the thematic nodes which Captains Courageous borrows and rejects from Treasure Island—the most widely read nineteenth century sea adventure fiction.