A NOTE ON QUAKERISM AND MOBY DICK HAWTHORNE'S "THE GENTLE BOY" AS A POSSIBLE SOURCE By Gerhard Friedrich* A work so complex and so rich in allusions as Moby Dick, which includes the Bible, Shakespeare, and Milton in its genealogy , has inevitably invited scholarly investigation of its more obvious sources and analogues, as well as of its autobiographical and psychological implications. The nature and importance of the Quaker context of Moby Dick has received less attention, and appears still insufficiently recognized. The Quaker element was of course prominent in the history of New Bedford and Nantucket whaling, and the inclusion of Quaker data—names, articles of clothing, idioms, habits, and concerns—reflected actual conditions and helped to establish or reinforce the realism of Moby Dick. Since Quakers were sufficiently different from other men (they were often, and not always quasi-Biblically, referred to as "a peculiar people"), their traits could indeed add a special flavor and interest, and could moreover conveniently set the personalities of the whale-hunters off from the presumably unpeculiar majority. Melville exploited these advantages most astutely, dwelling upon "the peculiarities of the Quaker" in an early chapter ,1 and so differentiating and yet blending Quaker and nonQuaker characteristics in his latter-day representatives of Quakerism that they came to exemplify profoundly human failings. Beyond the functions of local color and the convenience of contrast, then, varieties of Quaker commitment served Melville as a thematic structure. Going from one extreme to the other, the range of Melville's Quaker spectrum of responses to spiritual promptings includes the convert Nathan Swain(e), "once the bravest boat-header out of all Nantucket and the Vineyard," * Gerhard Friedrich is Associate Dean of Academic Planning in the California State Colleges. The material in this article was first presented to the Melville Society in Philadelphia in 1960. 1 Herman Melville, Moby-Dick: or, TL· Whale, ed. Luther S. Mansfield and Howard P. Vincent (New York, Hendricks House, 1952), p. 69ff. 94 A Note on Quakerism and Moby Dick95 whose fabled whaling feats ended when he developed scruples and "joined the meeting"; Starbuck, the prudently conscientious "Quaker by descent" who, as chief mate, ineffectually strives to oppose the captain's mad purpose; Aunt Charity, a Quakeress "most determined and indefatigable . . . but withal very kindhearted ," who furnishes not only "a long oil-ladle . . . and a still longer whaling lance," but also "a night-cap . . . and a spare Bible," hymnals and nonalcoholic "ginger-jub"; Charity's brother Bildad, "educated according to the strictest sect of Nantucket Quakerism," a hard-hearted exploiter demonstrably unaffected by his endless Bible reading; Bildad's gruff associate Peleg, revolted by Bildad's canting (he is described as brown and brawny and stout, in contrast to the long Starbuck, the lean Charity, and the lank Bildad); and the apostate Ahab, foremost of all "Quakers with a vengeance," whom Peleg characterizes as "not a pious, good man, like Bildad, but a swearing good man—something like me—only there's a good deal more of him."2 It is worth noting how skillfully Melville projected this sixsome of Quakerdom: Nat Swaine serves to adumbrate the enervating considerations which trouble Starbuck; Aunt Charity with her well-meant inconsistencies underscores the hypocrisy of Bildad; and Peleg dramatically anticipates the more radical rebellion of Ahab.3 If Moby Dick thus assigns to Quaker oddities a carefully conceived scale of essential values and imperfections, where did Melville find models for his Quaker exemplars, particularly for Ahab? We know that in June 1850 he thought of his book still as "a romance of adventure, founded upon certain wild legends in the Southern Sperm Whale Fisheries, and illustrated by the author's own personal experience, of two years & more, as a harpooneer."4 His Quakerly notions were apparently of later date, and seem to have been developed under the influence of Hawthorne's Quaker story "The Gentle Boy," which he read in the First Series of 2 Herman Melville, Moby-Dick: or, The Whale, ed. Mansfield and Vincent, pp. 11, 90; 111-114; 95-96, 100-101, 321; 73-78; 69-80; 73; 79-80. 3 For a discussion of these Quaker figures and of Ishmael see Gerhard...