PROBLEMATIC SHORES: THE LITERATURE OF ISLANDS

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1 PROBLEMATIC SHORES: THE LITERATURE OF ISLANDS

2 Also by Diana Loxley THE POLITICS OF THEORY (co-editor) CONFRONTING THE CRISIS: WAR POLITICS AND CULTURE IN THE EIGHTIES (co-editor) EUROPE AND ITS OTHERS (co-editor) LITERATURE, POLITICS AND THEORY (co-editor)

3 Problematic Shores: The Literature of Islands Diana Loxley Palgrave Macmillan

4 ISBN DOI / ISBN (ebook) Diana Loxley 1990 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition All rights reserved. For information, write: Scholarly and Reference Division, St. Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y First published in the United States of America in 1990 ISBN Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Loxley, Diana, Problematic shores : the literature of islands : discourses of nineteenth-century imperial ideology / Diana Loxley. p. em. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN English fiction -19th century - History and criticism. 2. Islands in literature. 3. Colonies in literature. 4. Imperialism in literature. 5. Defoe, Daniel, 1661? Robinson Crusoe. 6. Stevenson, Robert Louis, Treasure Island. 7. Verne, Jules, Criticism and interpretation. I. Title. PR830.I75L ' dc CIP

5 For Alison, Colin, Harriet and Tom

6 Contents ~if~~~ ~ Acknowledgements ix Preface xi Introduction 1 1. The Latitudes of Empire: Jules Verne's Mysterious Islands Islands of Civility, Seas of Savagery 'Slaves to Adventure': The Pure Story of Treasure Island 129 Afterword 170 Notes and References 172 Bibliography 183 Index 191 vii

7 List of Illustrations 1. John Everett Millais, Bt ( ), The Boyhood of Raleigh [Courtesy of the Tate Gallery]. xii 2. 'The Mysterious Island', illustration from The Boy's Own Paper, Vol. V, No. 217, 10 March 1883, p.372 [Courtesy of the Bodleian Library] 'Poor, But Happy!', illustration from The Boy's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 317, 7 February 1885, p.301 [Courtesy of the Bodleian Library] 'I was kept busy all day in the cave, packing the minted money into bread-bags', illustration from Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson, 1885, p.285 [Courtesy of the Bodleian Library]. 128 viii

8 Acknowledgemen ts For their considerable help over the years, I thank Dorothy Gibson and Sylvia Sparrow in the Department of Literature at the University of Essex and Terry Tostevin in the Library of the same university. Many people have contributed in various ways to the writing of this. But I would like to thank, in particular, Marijn Barker, Pat Campbell, Jude Ellis, Mary Ferrill, Jane Heath, Celia Hirst, Claire Hobbs, Margaret Iversen, Martin Macaulay, Marianne Majerus, Mitch Stuart, Lesley Theophilus and Sissy Velissariou. I gratefully acknowledge the critical comments of Elaine Jordan and Peter Widdowson. The intellectual production of this book is greatly indebted to Francis Barker, Jane Heath and Peter Hulme whose sustained encouragement, support and patience made its completion possible. Thanks are not enough, but I thank them for everything nevertheless. The author and publishers wish to acknowledge the following: Airmont Publishing Company, New York, for permission to quote extracts from The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne (1965); Morton Cohen, for permission to quote extracts from 'The everopen dead man's chest' in the Guardian (19 November 1983); J. M. Dent & Sons, and Everyman's Library, for permission to quote extracts from The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann Wyss (1910) and from Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson (1977); Jacqueline Rose and Macmillan Press for permission to quote extracts from The Case of Peter Pan (1984). Every effort has been made to trace all sources and to seek permission to reproduce texts. Any further information will be gratefully received and acted upon. ix

9 Preface This book examines the centrality of the topos of the island in nineteenth-century literature as it coincides with the era of high imperialism in Britain and its ideological consolidation within colonial, political, cultural and educational discourses of the age. Within the context of the development of a fully-fledged imperial ideology, the importance of the centrality of this topos is charted through analysis of five texts: Verne's The Mysterious Island [1875] (Chapter 1), Wyss's The Swiss Family Robinson [1800], Marryat's Masterman Ready [1841], Ballantyne's The Coral Island [1858] (Chapter 2), and Stevenson's Treasure Island [1883] (Chapter 3). The significance of the island motif is examined at the level of its institutionalisation as an ideal discourse - guaranteed by the state and embedded in the educational apparatus - whose nuanced negotiation of the relationship between Britain and the outside world provides a model formula for the assimilation of the language of conquest, masculinity, supremacy and authority and also of the supposedly inherent, eternal values of that language. Defoe's Robinson Crusoe emerges as a pivotal text within this particular discursive formation and the book addresses itself to an understanding of its implicit legacy, on the way it has been rewritten and variously used and the importance attributed to the history of its meanings and motifs. In its analyses of the nineteenth-century reworkings of the core narrative of Robinson Crusoe, this book shows how the major ideological themes of British colonialism and imperialism are rearticulated in these five texts in ways that can be related to significant stages in the elaboration of the colonial enterprise. The motif of the island cannot simply be understood as just another 'theme' that variously appears and reappears throughout British and European literary history. It is not, therefore, an arbitrary choosing of one specific strand in literature, the historical persistence of which alone might justify its examination. What, on the contrary, is being proposed is that the texts examined must be seen not simply as variations on a theme but, in essence, literary representations of the theme of British colonialism. xi DL London

10 John Everett Millais, Bt ( ), The Boyhood of Raleigh [Courtesy of the Tate Gallery].

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Stevie Smith This page intentionally left blank Stevie Smith Between the Lines Romana Huk Romana Huk 2005 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2005 978-0-333-54997-1 All rights reserved. No reproduction,