The Serious Functions of Melville's Phallic Jokes

Abstract

I N DETAIL OR IN PASSING, in publications or in casual conversation, most careful readers of Moby-Dick have at one time or another discussed the apparently random sexual jokes and motifs which periodically enliven chapters like Cassock or Squeeze of the Hand or episodes in which makes much more than is proper of some talk about gentlemen harpooning ladies1-or offering horns to queens. Moby-Dick, phallic jokes and images are typically playful and good-natured on the surface-a trait which has often been mentioned'-but beneath that surface they are characterized by hostility and defiance. Through Ishmael, Melville repeatedly uses deceptively understated phallic jokes in order to satirize conventional religious, economic, and social values; to assert the counter value of an integral, socially defiant, creative self; and, in the process, to define his attitude toward the creating of books and toward himself as author in relation to society. connection with Moby Dick, phallic imagery in the three-day chase helps to emphasize not creativity, as with Ishmael, but rather the White Whale's nrimaldefiantdestructive force.3 1 Walter E. Bezanson, Moby-Dick: Work of Art, Moby-Dick Centennial Essays, ed. Tyrus Hillway and Luther S. Mansfield (Dallas, I953), p. 39. 2 For example, ibid., p. 39; Perry Miller, The Raven and the Whale (New York, I956), p. I7; and Howard P. Vincent, The Trying-Out of Moby-Dick (New York, I949), p. 3I3. 'My study is limited to the significance of phallic jokes and to the implications of sexual imagery in the three-day chase. Many previous works have considered similar if not always identical material. For a representative cross-section, see: D. H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature (New York, I923; Anchor Books, I95I), pp. I56-I74; Henry A. Murray, Introduction to Pierre (New York, I949), passim, and In Nomine Diaboli, Moby-Dick Centennial Essays, pp. 3-2I; Simon 0. Lesser, Fiction and the Unconscious (Boston, I957), pp. II8-I20 (Lesser summarizes Murray's position); Richard Chase, Melville, A Critical Study (New York, I949), e.g., pp. I2, 19, 93-94, I22-I25, I59-I63, 220-229; Newton Arvin, Melville, A Critical Biography (New York, I959), pp. I25-I3I, I70-I75; Leslie Fiedler, Come Back to the Raft Ag'in, Huck Honey!, An End to Innocence (Boston, I955), pp. I42-I5I, and Love and Death in the American Novel (New York, I960), pp. 520-552, 6oo (index entry under Melville); E. H. Eby, Herman 'Tartarus of Maids,' Modern Language Quarterly, I, 95-I00 (March, 1940); Walter Sutton, Melville's 'Pleasure Party,' the Art of Concealment, Philological Quarterly, XXX, 3I6-327 (July, I95I); James Baird, Ishmael (Baltimore, I956), pp. 278-298.