Wisdom and Woe

Patrick White is Australia's only recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature. His literary style is characterized by a "complex spiritual, psychological and emotional experience" that gives "the continent of Australia an authentic voice that carries across the world."

In A Fringe of Leaves (1976), White presents the story of Ellen Roxburgh (née Gluyas), a poor 19th century Cornish girl who marries into wealth. The first half of the novel is a detailed recollection of her history: a rustic childhood, her transition to upper-class life, adjustment to marriage, and a journey with her husband to the Australian penal colonies.

But on the return trip, the ship wrecks off of the coast of (modern-day) Queensland: death and destruction reigns, and Ellen's meticulously constituted world is dashed upon the shores. Ellen is one of only two survivors: captured and abused by the Aboriginal natives, she is reduced to wearing a fringe of leaves which conceals her only remaining possession--her wedding ring.

The novel is based on the real-life Eliza Fraser (1798-1858), the bearer of a precarious legacy in Australian history. Fraser's allegations of abuse by the natives was disputed in her lifetime. Nevertheless, her story was used to justify the massacre and dispossession of the Aborigines and, since 1836, has been perpetrated in the island's given namesake (Fraser Island) until 2023 when it officially reverted to its traditional name (K'gari).

A Fringe of Leaves is a vision of the terrible ordeals of one woman, beset through almost every stratum of society, in her desperate reach for freedom and personal identity. But it is also a vision of the continent itself--the colonials, Aborigines, and convicts residing there--clashing over self-determination to shape a national identity, and the "fringe of leaves" that may be worn to protect it.

A Fringe of Leaves:

With the publication of White Shadows in the South Seas (1919), Frederick O'Brien's writing career paralleled Melville's own: a first work based on personal travels to the Marquesas Islands (and a second set in Tahiti) which met with commercial and critical success. In fact, the book was so popular that it spawned "a craze for the South Seas" and "a host of imitators," helping to stimulate the 20th-century Melville Revival.

O'Brien disembarks at Hiva-Oa, where he penetrates an uncanny world free from the pressures of modern Western civilization. He paints an idyllic scene of natural beauty and alluring possibilities, using colorful anecdotes and an easy "beachcombing" style. But the islands are also heir to a culture of cannibalism--still discernible in the names of the natives there: Exploding Eggs, Vanquished Often, Man Whose Entrails Were Roasted On A Stick--and the scars of colonialism, disease, and exploitation.

O'Brien aimed to make the "reader see and feel the sad and beautiful guises of life" and to reveal "the secrets of a few unusual souls." Less romantically, reviewers remarked on its "bitter denunciation of white civilization and its destructive effects on the lifestyles and cultural traditions of a Polynesian paradise."

Schedule:

• Week 1: Chapters 1-20
• Week 2: Chapters 21-39

White Shadows in the South Seas: ~220pp

With the publication of White Shadows in the South Seas (1919), Frederick O'Brien's writing career paralleled Melville's own: a first work based on personal travels to the Marquesas Islands (and a second set in Tahiti) which met with commercial and critical success. In fact, the book was so popular that it spawned "a craze for the South Seas" and "a host of imitators," helping to stimulate the 20th-century Melville Revival.

O'Brien disembarks at Hiva-Oa, where he penetrates an uncanny world free from the pressures of modern Western civilization. He paints an idyllic scene of natural beauty and alluring possibilities, using colorful anecdotes and an easy "beachcombing" style. But the islands are also heir to a culture of cannibalism--still discernible in the names of the natives there: Exploding Eggs, Vanquished Often, Man Whose Entrails Were Roasted On A Stick--and the scars of colonialism, disease, and exploitation.

O'Brien aimed to make the "reader see and feel the sad and beautiful guises of life" and to reveal "the secrets of a few unusual souls." Less romantically, reviewers remarked on its "bitter denunciation of white civilization and its destructive effects on the lifestyles and cultural traditions of a Polynesian paradise."

Schedule:

• Week 1: Chapters 1-20
• Week 2: Chapters 21-39

White Shadows in the South Seas: ~220pp

In 1794, with U.S. ships no longer under the protection of the British government and in response to attacks by Barbary pirates, the United States Congress passed a major piece of legislation, establishing a permanent standing Navy along with a commission for six frigates.

Many of the guidelines for the fledgling U.S. Navy were not formalized until years later, and in its earliest days, sailors were responsible for providing their own uniforms. This circumstance provides the central conceit of White-Jacket (1850), Melville's fictionalized account of his first-hand experience as an ordinary naval seaman aboard the U.S. frigate United States (designated the Neversink in the novel).

The narrator, joining the ship and anticipating the need to endure the storms around Cape Horn, fashions a coat for himself from the spare materials at hand. But the result--the titular white jacket--proves to be more of a curse than a blessing. His comic ordeal is arguably the funniest among all of Melville's long works.

Around mid-point, however, the novel shifts focus to the tyrannical abuses of officers' powers, with graphic descriptions of the horrors of corporal punishment and the appalling conditions to which seamen were subjected. The escalating conflict again takes its cue from the Navy's nominal dress code: specifically, its regulations concerning facial hair, culminating in what the narrator dubs "the rebellion of the beards."

White-Jacket is both critically acclaimed and historically significant. During a Congressional debate on the military's use of flogging, the original publisher (Harper & Bros.) provided members of Congress with copies of the work, helping to win political support for abolition of the practice. Moreover, "by making life aboard a man-of-war stand for life in the world at large, and by turning flogging into a symbol of man's inhumanity to man, [Melville] contributed to the escalating debate about slavery."

Note: This meetup will be recorded for private use.

Schedule:

• Week 1: Chapters 1-24
• Week 2: Chapters 25-47
• Week 3: Chapters 48-71
• Week 4: Chapters 72- The End

White Jacket; or, The World in a Man-of-War: