The Role of Pirates in Victorian Island Narratives

8/10/2019 The Role of Pirates in Victorian Island Narratives

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The Role of Pirates in Victorian Island Narratives

In this essay I aim to explore the role of pirate characters in the Victorian island

narratives of R. M. Barries Peter Pan (1911) and Robert Louis Stevensons

Treasure Island(1883). Critic Neil Rennie claims in his work Treasure Island:

Real and Imaginary Pirates(2013) that childrens literature of the later

nineteenth century reanimated pirates who were no longer frightening but silly,

melodramatic, artificial, ridiculous creatures for childish fantasy1. I aim to

contend the notion that views literary pirates of late Victorian adventure fiction

as ultimately silly and instead propose that the fictional pirates created by

Barrie and Stevenson, (and indeed those of many other writers such as R. M.

Ballantyne in his 1858 novel The Coral Island), are in fact representative of late

Victorian ideologies and concerns surrounding three main categories. The first, I

will argue, concerns literary pirates that serve as a moral lesson to the young

Victorian readership of adventure fiction where the characterization of pirates

within the texts functions to reinforce the importance of strong Victorian morals.

Secondly, I will explore the representation of pirate characters that is linked

primarily to Victorian notions of masculinity. Lastly I aim to investigate the

island narratives of Barrie and Stevenson within the context of the British

Empire; how Victorian notions of imperialism informed the authors

representation of pirates.

The pirate figure in these texts is one that is surrounded by ambiguity.

Although characterized as villainous in both deed and appearance by the

1Neil Rennie, Treasure Island: Real and Imaginary Pirates, (Oxford: Oxford University Press,2013), p. 193.


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authors, the pirates within both Treasure Islandand Peter Pan seem to possess a

certain allure that represents escapism and adventure. Certainly, Peters

promise of pirates in Never Land is what ultimately persuades the young

character of John in Peter Panto leave his family home in search of adventure:

And there are pirates. Pirates, cried John, seizing his Sunday hat, let us go at

once!2. Part of the Boys Adventure genre that was so prevalent within

Victorian culture and promoted by popular publications such as Chumsand The

Boys Own Paper,island narratives such as Treasure Islandand Peter Panformed

a body of fiction that was written for boys with the intention of teaching them

moral lessons about to how to become the ideal Victorian man. Both Treasure

Islandand Peter Panfeature young boys as the central heroes of the adventure

narratives, continuing the tradition that was started by R. M. Ballantyne in his

adventure story The Coral Island(1858), where, for the first time in the annals of

English juvenile literature, youngsters were able to identify themselves with the

heroes of the tales they were reading3. It is my argument that the young

protagonists of these tales are pitted against the pirate characters in order to

promote a strong Victorian morality, (that was often tied to a sense of Christian

duty), through the young heroes interactions with the pirates. Like John, young

Victorian male readers of boys fiction were undoubtedly drawn to the adventure

story through the promise of piracy, but through careful narrative direction,

they would be brought to reject the amorality of the charismatic pirate villains in

2J. M. Barrie, Peter and Wendy, (London: Penguin Group, 2004), p. 34.3Grace Moore, Pirates for Boys: Masculinity and Degeneration in R. M. Ballantynes AdventureNovels, in Pirates and Mutineers of the Nineteenth Century: Swashbucklers and Swindlers , ed. by

Grace Moore, (Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2011), p. 166.


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favor of the diligent, principled behavior of Ballantynes, (as well as Barrie and

Stevensons), youthful Christians4. Thus, adventure stories were frequently

deployed by authors such as Barrie and Stevenson, who were deemed a

considerable influence on boys, young men and men5, to exemplify desirable

traits of the young English male and to cultivate them in young, impressionable

readers6.

Both Stevenson and Barrie construct the pirates within their fiction to

represent the degenerated Victorian male. Although represented primarily as

Other to the white male characters, (which I will discuss in more detail in the

third section of this essay), within the characters of Captain Hook and Long John

Silver in particular are elements of the Victorian gentleman. As Deborah Lutz

affirms: Captain Hook in Peter Pan(and Silver in Treasure Island) manages to be

a dirty, vulgar, evil figure, but also a sympathetic, sophisticated, dandified

gentleman7. Although Grace Moore asserts in her work Pirates and Mutineers of

the Nineteenth Century(2011), that the cursing, brawling pirates of the stories

for boys were often a world away from Byrons brooding, sensitive intellectual8,

both Hook and Silver seem to take inspiration from Lord Byrons Romantic

buccaneer in his 1814 poem The Corsair, as both Silver and Hook are

renderings of the nineteenth-century well-bred pirate, hyper-civilized almost to

the point of foppery9. Both characters are told to be previously well educated:

4Ibid.5Ibid, p. 165.6Ibid, p. 166.7Deborah Lutz, The Pirate Poet in the Nineteenth Century: Trollope and Byron, in Pirates andMutineers of the Nineteenth Century: Swashbucklers and Swindlers, ed. by Grace Moore,

(Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2011), p. 38.8Moore, p. 165.9Rennie, p. 198.


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(Hook) had been at a famous public school; and its traditions still clung to him

like garmentshe still adhered in his walk to the schools distinguished slouch.

But above all he retained the passion for good form10. So too, it is told, that Long

John Silver had good schooling in his young days and can speak like a book when

so minded11. Heralding the pirate as a well-educated figure is not solely

contained within Stevenson and Barries work, however, as Frederick Marryats

The Pirate(1836) had received an excellent education, and it was said that he

was of an ancient border family12. Contending Moores assertion, Deborah Lutz

argues that practically every literary pirate of the nineteenth and early

twentieth centuries was influenced by Byronism and the re-imagining of the

pirate as a gentleman with interior, hidden treasure13. In line with Lutzs notion,

unlike their fellow pirates who are continually referred to as stupid and socially

inferior14throughout the two texts, both Hook and Silver are characterized as

well-educated and therefore in part aligned with the upstanding Victorian male.

Of Hook it is written that he was never more sinister than when he was most

polite, which is probably the truest test of breeding; and the elegance of his

dictionshowed him one of a different caste from his crew15. Stevenson and

Barrie align their dandified pirates with the Victorian gentleman in order to

demonstrate the potential for regression from upstanding Victorian male to

swashbuckling criminal to their young readers.

10Barrie, Peter and Wendy, p. 117.11Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island, (London: Wordsworth Classics, 1993), p. 48.12Lutz, p. 38.13Ibid, p. 37.14Barrie, Peter and Wendy, p. 98.15Ibid, p. 50.


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Like Jim Hawkins in Treasure Islandand Ralph Rover in The Coral Island, the

young male readers of these stories are faced with the decision to align

themselves either with the pirate characters in the tales or those who represent

Victorian morals and Christian duty, such as Stevensons Dr. Livesey and Squire

Trelawney and Ballantynes Jack Martin and Peterkin Gay. Though undoubtedly

identifiable as white, European males, these pirates may have begun life as

Europeans, but their sunburned faces, curious dress and evil aspects point to a

degeneracy that the boy heroes must work hard to avoid16. The degeneracy

that Grace Moore refers to in the previous excerpt is explicitly referenced in

Barries text through Hooks characterization:However much he may have

degenerated, he still knew that this (good form) is all that really matters17. At

the time of these books publications, Charles Darwins theory of evolution that

was documented in his 1859 work On the Origin of Specieswas generally

accepted as fact among the scientific community at the very least. These texts,

through their characterization of pirate characters, invites a reading of Darwins

theory of evolution that invokes the notion of a regression of the human species.

As Moore asserts in Pirates and Mutineers of the Nineteenth Century, the pirates

frequently signify European civilization gone wrong and as such, they are figures

to be feared18. Moores assertion regarding Ballantynes fictionin particular is

one that can be applied also to the pirates of Stevenson and Barrie: He deployed

his ungainly pirates as a warning to young male readers of the dangers of

succumbing to baser instincts and a reminder of the need for rigid moral

16Moore, p. 169.17Barrie, Peter and Wendy, p. 117.18Moore, p. 169.


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standards at all times19. The notion of succumbing to baser instincts is one that

Stevenson shows great interest in through not only the characterization of Long

John Silver, but also of his fictional character Dr. Henry Jekyll and his

doppelganger Mr. Hyde in his 1886 novella The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr.

Hyde.

In both Barrie and Stevensons island narratives their young characters

desire to be immersed in the pirate world is fulfilled at various points in the

narrative. As Rebecca Weaver-Hightower rightly asserts in her text Empire

Islands(2007): pirate stories play out fantasies of being incorporated, only that

incorporation is into the pirates lawless but egalitarian/homosocial society20.

The longing to become incorporated in the pirate world that Weaver-Hightower

identifies in this passage is realized in The Coral Islandwhen Ralph is unwillingly

admitted to the pirate schooner and in Treasure Islandwhen similar events

unfold and Jim is reluctantly held captive on the Hispaniolapirate ship. As

Weaver-Hightower proceeds to argue: the replayed story of the pirate threat

also plays out the supplementary fantasy of becominga pirate, which means

being allowed to enact aggressive fantasies, to ignore the laws prohibiting theft

and violence, and to live within an entirely masculine community21. In both

Peter Panand Treasure Islandfantasy become reality. After the death of Hook in

Chapter XV of Peter Pan, the Lost Boys all donned pirate clothes cut off at the

knee22and Peter himself, despite openly detesting Hook throughout the

narration, dons a suit made from Hooks wickedest garmentson the first night

19Ibid, p. 166.20Rebecca Weaver-Hightower, Empire Islands: Castaways, Cannibals, and Fantasies of Conquest,(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007), p. 112.21Ibid, p. 122.22Barrie, Peter and Wendy, p. 134.


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he wore this suit he sat long in the cabin with Hooks cigar-holder in his mouth

and one hand clenched, all but the forefinger, which he bent and held

threateningly aloft like a hook23. A similar adoption of pirate traits is carried out

in Stevensons novel as young Jim acts impulsively and bravely when he sneaks

into the pirates boat in Chapter XIII. He then deserts his own captain in Chapter

XXII, effectively enacting his own mutiny. Jim sails a pirates boat out to the

anchored ship, kills the pirate Israel Hands, and names himself the new captain

of the ship: Ive come aboard to take possession of this ship, Mr. Hands; and

youll please regard me as your captain until further notice24. Even the

character of Long John Silver recognizes Jims transition from a nave boy to an

almost-pirate. Silver becomes a father figure to Jim whose own father passes

away early in the narration, emphasized through Silvers endearing speech:

Nobody more welcome than yourself, my son25. Stevensons other pirate novel

Kidnapped(1886) sees the seventeen-year old David Balfour taken aboard a

pirate ship where he is forced to become cabin boy. Despite at first appearing

charismatic and adventurous, the authors of island narratives such as these seek

to persuade their young readership that surmounting to deviant behavior,

(represented by their literary pirates), is unadvisable. Although events unfold in

the narratives that lead to the young heroes adopting pirate traits, the

protagonists are forcibly conscripted into piracy and their continued resistance

to the pirates lifestyle absolves them of any guilt for indulging in their pirate

fantasies. These characters, that are primarily constructed to advise their

readership of the virtue of strong Christian morals, all ultimately chose to

23Ibid, p. 135.24Stevenson, p. 79.25Ibid, p. 49.


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condemn the pirates and abide by the law. Both Treasure Islandand Peter Pan

could be seen as bildungsroman narratives that chart the learning process and

maturation of their young male characters. Through their heroes rejection of

piracy and acceptance of law-abiding society, both Barrie and Stevenson

encourage their young readers to do the same.

As I have already stated, the island narratives that comprise this essay were

part of the boys adventure genre. As a consequence, very little room was

allowed for female characters. Within the whole of Treasure Island, Jims mother

and Silvers wife are the only two females to feature in the narration and both

are paid very little attention by the author. Indeed, Stevensons stepson Samuel

Lloyd Osbourne gave the requirement to his stepfather that women should have

no place in Treasure Island, as confirmed in R. H. W. Dillards introduction to the

novel: Lloyd insisted that there would be no women or girls to get in the way of

the action...26. Naturally, themes surrounding gender and masculinity feature

heavily within the narration of adventure stories and Treasure Islandand Peter

Panare no exception. My argument in regards to Stevenson and Barries literary

pirates relation to gender is that the authors undermine their pirates

masculinity in order to further emphasize the negativity of their characters. In

this way, Stevenson and Barrie encourage their readership yet again to reject

everything that the literary pirates represent and to embrace Victorian

ideologies of manhood.

26R. H. W. Dillard, Introduction, Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson, (New York: SignetClassics, 1998), p. xiii.


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As critic Gary Westfahl argues, Stevensons sinister Silver, and Barries

foppish Hook, have influenced all later depictions of pirates27. What is

embedded most in modern iconography of pirates is arguably the deformities

that both endure. As Neil Rennie states: (Barries) most successful pirate, Hook,

is a piratical type of perfect conventionality as well as distinct originality, the

hook being Barries rejoinder, perhaps, to Long John Silvers crutch28. Hooks

namesake iron hook that replaces his right hand and Long John Silvers peg leg

are what the pirates are defined by within the narratives. Indeed, before the

reader is introduced to the character of Long John Silver he is made known only

as the sea-faring man with one leg29. I argue that the amputation of their limbs,

and subsequent replacement with prosthetics, is what contributes most to the

undermining of their gender.

What scares Jim most about the pirates that he comes across in Treasure

Island are the deformities that they are shown to possess. Jim suffers terrifying

nightmares that envision the disabled pirate captain: Now the leg would be cut

off at the knee, now at the hip; now he was a monstrous kind of creature who

had never had but the one leg, and that was in the middle of his body30.

Similarly characterized as a creature by Jimis the blind pirate Pew, the

horrible, soft-spoken eyeless creature31. Through his use of the words

monstrous and creature, Jim characterizes the pirates as not only terrible but

also lacking; something that is sub-human, not quite men because of their

27Gary Westfahl, The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy: Themes, Works, andWonders, (Westport: Greenwood Press, 2005), p. 600.28Rennie, p. 198.29Stevenson, p. 7.30Ibid, p. 8.31Ibid, p. 15.


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deformities. Stevenson writes in his narration: Yet some of the men who had

sailed with him (silver) before expressed their pity to see him so reduced32.

Silver is a man reduced by his amputation and Hook is similarly treated within

Peter Panas the narration states that he has an iron hook instead of a right hand,

and he claws with it33. The animalistic is invoked in Barries description of his

clawing leadpirate that reaffirms the notion that, as a consequence of their

amputations or disabilities, pirates are to be seen as lesser men, animals. All

pirate characters are referred to as dogs frequently within the texts, Jim stating

at one point in his narration of Silver that none treated him better than a dog34.

These dogs are characterized as inferior to the morally upstanding characters

throughout both Treasure Islandand Peter Pan.

As a result of his amputation, Silver possesses a walking aid: His leg was cut

off close by the hip, and under the left shoulder he carried a crutch35. The

crutch, an image synonymous with the weak, sick and old, further undermines

Silvers masculinity. Throughout the narration his disability and the crutch that

he owns are shown to reveal weakness within the otherwise overtly masculine

character: Wholl give me a hand up? he roared. Not a man among us moved.

Growling the foulest imprecations, he crawled along the sand till he got again

upon his crutch36. This extract is paramount in an understanding of Stevensons

portrayal of Silver as feminine or even child-like. Although a child himself, Jim

aligns himself with the men that he mentions, (not a man among us moved),

32Ibid, p. 48.33Barrie, Peter and Wendy, p. 43.34Stevenson, p. 215.35Ibid, p. 37.36Ibid, p. 66.


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while Silver is relegated to the status of an infant, crawling while the men that

surround him observe in an act of masculine power. Later on in the narration

during the treasure hunt, Silver, although captain and leader of the expedition,

was alreadythirty yards behind us, and on the verge of strangling37- his

disability is debilitating. The narration of Treasure Islanddocuments Silvers

degeneration, like that of the regression from gentleman to pirate, from Captain

Silver to the old cripple38.

Within Peter Pan, Peter brags to the other child characters that it was he who

severed Hooks hand: I cut off a bit of him39, he states. Pans statement invites

a psychological reading of the amputation of the pirates hand. Metaphorically,

the amputation of both Hooks hand and Silvers leg can be read as the castration

complex that Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud theorizes in his essay The

Dissolution of the Oedipus Complex. The castration complex that can be read

into pirate characters of island narratives suggests their symbolic emasculation,

loss of power and control, and their subsequent relegation to the realm of the

feminine. As Weaver-Hightower asserts, Ballantynes The Coral Islandprovides

yet another example of the feminization of pirates: it contrasts its hyper-

masculine, undisciplined pirates with Bill, the reformed pirateThe novel codes

Bills feminization through his advanced age and his ultimate powerlessness

against the other pirates (he is mortally wounded in battle against them)40. In a

similar way, Peter Panand Treasure Islanduse verbal description to equate

pirate gender with lack of command over their bodily drives. Often the

37Ibid, p. 210.38Ibid, p. 209.39Barrie, Peter and Wendy, p. 43.40Weaver-Hightower, p. 104.


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narratives depict pirates craving for bloody deeds as coming from unrestrained

and undeniable lusts, from undisciplined masculinity as stemming from a

feminine lack of discipline. Often coexisting in the same text, both hyper-

masculinity and femininity equal lack of discipline41.

Peter Pans feminine coding of Hook stems from his dandified appearance and

also his identification with the female: If I was a mother I would pray to have

my children born with this (hook) instead of that (hand)42. Indeed, Barrie even

makes explicit the feminine aspects of his pirate character: In his dark nature

there was a touch of the feminine, as in all the greatest pirates, and it sometimes

gave him intuitions43. Barrie implies through this statement that all great pirate

figures in literature are defined to some extent by their femininity, heightened

further by their deformities. The pirates in Peter Panand Treasure Island, (and

indeed in The Coral Island), represent the male body gone wrong as a

consequence of indulging in a sinful lifestyle and succumbing to baser instincts.

The eyeless, handless and legless pirates of these texts threaten their young

readers with the consequences of choosing not to abide to the law.

In the last section of this essay I am going to explore how the representation

of pirates in island narratives such as Treasure Islandand Peter Pancorresponds

to Victorian notions of empire and imperialism. Peter Panand Treasure Island

were published during Britains "imperial century" that spanned from 1815 to

1914. Britains victoryover Napoleon left it without any serious international

rival and the British navy was unchallenged at sea. Despite its strengths and the

41Ibid, p. 102.42Barrie, Peter and Wendy, p. 53.43Ibid, p. 80.


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addition to its empire of ten million square miles of territory and roughly four

hundred million people, the anxiety over its empire was wide felt throughout the

nation. This anxiety was reflected in island narratives where the pirate figure

came to represent an opposition to the strength of the British Empire. As

Weaver-Hightower argues, narratives of encounter between the castaway and

the pirate provide insight into how texts work to process readers anxieties of

empire44. It is evident within both texts that pirates represent an opposing

Other force to the white male characters. Their language is not that of Standard

English with the use of piratical phrases such as affy-davy45. Their flag, the Jolly

Roger, stands in direct opposition to the Union Jack that Jim beholds over

Treasure Island that is representative of imperial power of geographical space.

Frequently, the piratical men are defined by their darkness and are nearly

always characterized as black in colour. The reader encounters pirate characters

such as Black Murphy, Black Dog, Morgan, who is a mahogany faced sailor46,

Mr. Arrow, a brown sailor47, and a nameless pirate who is simply referred to as

that gigantic black48. In this way, the pirates of the island narratives are aligned

in both appearance and savagery to the colonial other of Victorian Britain.

Rebecca Weaver-Hightower defines the connection between the literary pirate

and the colonial subject through the abject, as coined by Julia Kristeva in her

1982 text Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Weaver-Hightower asserts

that island texts mark them (pirates) as abject by marking their bodies, in effect

racializing the pirate skin and exoticizing their body coverings to demonstrate

44Weaver-Hightower, p. 108.45Stevenson, p. 62.46Ibid, p. 38.47Ibid, p. 42.48Barrie, Peter and Wendy, p. 49.


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their marginality within a culture of imperial white privilege49. The pirates of

these texts choose their abjection through their decisions to tattoo their skin and

expose their bodies to the weather. Their look, which corresponds directly with

the darkened skin of the colonial other, signifies a choice that reflects abjection.

In this way, writers such as Barrie and Stevenson are able to blame the pirate for

his own colonial victimhood and simultaneously justify the expansion of the

British Empire. The colonial reader, in this case young male readers of

adventure fiction, is put at ease and is able to process the violence against the

pirate who is representative of the savage before empire.As Weaver-

Hightower point out, The Coral Islandalso employs notions of the abject in order

to reaffirm in the imperial reader a divined right of colonial conquest: Ralphs

description of the irredeemable piratesintimates that they purposefully display

their abjection through their assumption of darkened skins and exotic

costumes50. The pirates clothing is yet another display of their differences to

the Euro-American protagonist and stresses their deliberate display of their

abject lifestyle. The pirates in these tales participate, by negation, in such

fantasies of naturalized colonization51. So too are these pirates legally abject as

they stand outside of the law as long as they are marginalized and persist in

inhabiting no set location.

Hook in Peter Panis characterized as the blackest and largest jewel in that

dark setting52who, in personwas cadaverous and blackavized53. His voice

49Weaver-Hightower, p. 105.50Ibid, p. 107.51Ibid, p. 94.52Barrie, Peter and Wendy, p. 49.53Ibid.


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accepting some but rejecting others60. The piratical figures of both Hook and

Silver in Peter Panand Treasure Islandare absorbed in a similar way by the

metaphorical colonists in the texts (the white males). Jim Hawkins forms a close

bond with the pirate Silver whilst Hook is noted by the narrator of Peter Panas

being not completely irredeemable in his dying moments: James Hook, thou not

wholly unheroic figure, farewell61. Misguided though he was, the narrator

states, we may be glad, without sympathizing with him, that in the end he was

true to the traditions of his race62. It is through the pirate figures of Hook and

Silver, (and Bill in The Coral Island), that Barrie, Stevenson and Ballantyne

reassure their imperialist readers that white men had some level of humanity at

least when soured by the act of piracy. This was a conscious decision on the part

of authors such as Barrie and Stevenson, who would have been aware that their

readers regarded the British Empire being built in part as a consequence of the

labor of pirates such as Sir Francis Drake, whose behavior was sanctioned by

the Queen. Reformed literary pirates such as Bill, Hook, and Silver reflected real

life pirates who successfully completed the transition from criminal to upholder

of the law during the seventeenth-century. Examples include men such as Sir

Henry Morgan who was reformed by the English government, knighted, and

subsequently was made governor of Jamaica in the 1680s. The island

narratives, however, also need inherently evil pirates such as those that

surround the infamous Silver and Hook, or The Coral Islandspirate captain, in

order to justify real-world violent persecution of outlaws.

60Ibid, p. 98.61Barrie, Peter and Wendy, p. 132.62Ibid, p. 130.


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I have previously mentioned the work of Charles Darwin in this essay with

regards to his theory of evolution. His joint publication withAlfred Russel

Wallace introduced hisscientific theory that thisbranching pattern ofevolution

resulted from a process that he callednatural selection,in which thestruggle for

existence has a similar effect to theartificial selection involved inselective

breeding63. Darwins theory of natural selection produced in the Victorian

population an inherent belief that their race was scientifically proven to be

superior to those that they colonized. This belief in their divine right to conquer

and convert the savage colonies of the worldis displayed implicitly within

Barries Peter Panas the narrator explains that there was only one thing that

Captain Hook feared: His own blood, which was thick and of an unusual

colour64. Barries reference to Hooks anatomy being biologically different

seems to suggest a belief in an unfounded science that retained that even the

colonizers biological make up was superior to that of the colonized.

As Anne Perotin-Dumon observes, labels of piracy were in fact used in

struggles between opposing European forces for control of the seas and of

potential colonies; one colonizers exploration was often deemed piracy by

another65. In this way, the complex characterization of pirate characters within

island narratives of Victorian Britain can be seen to represent those of competing

imperialist powers. Weaver-Hightower asserts that island tales summon the

real historical figures of thepirate to dramatize fears of losing control of

coloniesto other European imperialists; fears which were very much based in

63Edward J. Larson, Evolution: The Remarkable History of a Scientific Theory, (New York: Modern

Library, 2004), p. 79.64Barrie, Peter and Wendy, p. 50.65Weaver-Hightower, p. 96.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Russel_Wallacehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Russel_Wallacehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_theoryhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phylogeneticshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selectionhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struggle_for_existencehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struggle_for_existencehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_selectionhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_breedinghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_breedinghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_breedinghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_breedinghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_breedinghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_selectionhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struggle_for_existencehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struggle_for_existencehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selectionhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phylogeneticshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_theoryhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Russel_Wallacehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Russel_Wallace


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motif of the pirate as a consequence of a sub-conscious desire to relinquish

responsibility to another, represented in these texts through the ulterior

governing systems and moral codes that the pirate characters abide by. Both

authors consulted real-life pirate figures in order to give their characters, (and

the values that they come to represent in the texts), a historical weight that they

hoped would contribute to the creation of fine Victorian gentlemen. I discussed

in my essay that both the characters of Hook and Silver have influenced all

subsequent pirate texts in their characterization of piratical figures. I also

aligned the literary pirate with Julia Kristevas notion of the abject. With the

popularity of phenomena such as Jerry Bruckheimers Pirates of the Caribbean

film series in twenty-first century society, it would seem that both Victorian

culture, and that of the generations that have followed, possess a fascination

with the abject that character, reader and culture cannot fully admit.


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Bibliography

Ballantyne, R. M., The Coral Island, (Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions Limited,

1993).

Barrie, J. M., Peter and Wendy, (London: Penguin Group, 2004).

Preface, The Coral Island, R. M. Ballantyne, (London: James Nisbet and Co. Ltd,

1913), pp. 1-2.

Dillard, R. H. W., Introduction, Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson, (New

York: Signet Classics, 1998), pp. i-xiii.

Johnson, Charles,A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most

Notorious Pirates, (London: Auflage, 2009).

Kristeva, Julia, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, (New York: Columbia

University Press, 1982).

Larson, Edward J., Evolution: The Remarkable History of a Scientific Theory, (New

York: Modern Library, 2004).

Lutz, Deborah, The Pirate Poet in the Nineteenth Century: Trollope and Byron,

in Pirates and Mutineers of the Nineteenth Century: Swashbucklers and

Swindlers, ed. by Grace Moore, (Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Company,

2011), pp. 23-40.

Moore, Grace, Introduction, Pirates and Mutineers of the Nineteenth Century:

Swashbucklers and Swindlers, ed. by Grace Moore, (Burlington: Ashgate

Publishing Company, 2011), pp. 1-10.

Pirates for Boys: Masculinity and Degeneration in R. M. Ballantynes

Adventure Novels, in Pirates and Mutineers of the Nineteenth Century:


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The Role of Pirates in Victorian Island Narratives

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