English 341

Professor Arnold

3/10/97

Seeking Sources of Male Power: Refashioning Homosexual and Social Relations

In the chapter entitled "Our Hearts' Honeymoon," in Hero, Captain, Stranger: Male Friendship, Social Critique, and Literary Form in the Sea Novels of Herman Melville, Robert Martin examines the issue of "conventional" male power and authority relative to non-conventional manifestations of gender-ambiguity, homosexual orientation, and "homosocial"[1] or fraternal relations in Moby Dick. He argues that Melville manages not only to violate prevailing social norms by portraying (implied) homosexual bonds, (phallic) symbols, and language (such as wordplay and jokes), but to refashion, specifically through Ishmael and Queequeg, the nature of the male-male relationship itself, so that it is necessarily neither latently nor explicitly based on competition. Rather, Melville presents the possibility of a "nonaggressive sexuality as manifested in male-bonding" (77) as an alternative source of male power. Whereas Queequeg embodies the aforementioned "type" or "self," Ahab reflects a certain patriarchal aggression (inherent and recognizable, for instance, within the context of the capitalist pursuit of wealth) often associated with the darker side of that which is characteristically "manly" or "masculine;" and it is Ishmael who vacillates between these two opposing poles of power, ultimately choosing the former over the latter.

This refashioned notion of male homosexuality based on a noncompetitive fraternal bond not only has the capacity to counter (and finally defeat) powers of patriarchal domination, as Martin suggests, but it also forces us, as readers, to seek out Melville's treatment of other potential forces of male power, such as capitalism, a white hegemonic tradition of colonization, or Calvinism. But how is it that homosexuality, normally marginalized, masked, or subordinated, such a deviation from "convention" and conventional authority, can potentially subvert these more dominant institutions? Consider for a moment the character of Queequeg. While Martin does not imply that Queequeg is purely sexual (or purely homosexual for that matter), he does depict him as a "sexualized" signifier, in one sense, whose demeanor and implied orientation informs and is essential to Ishmael's progression as a character. However, I would argue that Ishmael's initial fascination with Queequeg is based as much on an attraction to the "other"[2] (to that mythic, foreign, perhaps even spiritual essence), as an homosexual or "homosocial" attraction. (If it were a purely sexual attraction, Queequeg's ethnicity and religious practices would almost certainly be of less cultural and historical significance.) It is this element of the spiritual which lends legitimacy to sexuality as a potent force, and thus its ability to defy patriarchal authority.