Lucky Jack: Changing Stereotypes

Books read this week: Master and Commander (Patrick O'Brian) 8/10, Post Captain (Patrick O'Brian) 8/10, The Ballads (MJC Hodgart) 6/10

Master and Commander and Post Captain are, of course, the first two volumes of Patrick O'Brian's magnificent Aubrey-Maturin series - a stunningly detailed, extremely funny ("In the service, one must always pick the lesser of two weevils!") and very well characterised set of books about "Lucky Jack" Aubrey, an officer in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars, and his surgeon-cum-secret agent friend, Stephen Maturin. I have read (more or less) all the books in the series, and enjoyed them all; slightly hard to get into - the first book in particular can bury you in nautical terminology and late eighteenth century culture - but very well worth it.

One of the interesting things about the Aubrey-Maturin series is that, although he is a very well rounded and three dimensional character, Jack Aubrey is nevertheless a stereotypical upper class Englishman - or, rather, the stereotypical eighteenth century Englishman. It is fascinating how much a national stereotype (moreover a national stereotype held by the English about the English) can change in such a short period. Aubrey is loud, cheerful, often drunk and easily moved to tears; even the name is expressive - Lucky Jack is a name to be joyfully shouted in a tavern, followed swiftly by a manly (manly!) embrace and a pint of beer. And yet within thirty years the stereotypical Englishman is laconic, possessed of a stiff upper lip and an acidic wit and would certainly never shed a tear. A lot of this is due to the cult of the Duke of Wellington - a man who did have a stiff upper lip and a caustic wit. It is still an amazing thing that the self image of an entire society can change in such a short period.

Of course, stereotypes are mutable; such things are "common knowledge" and so people very rarely write them down, and tend, over the course of time to forget what they were; there is a wonderful passage in Orwell's classic essay on boys' magazines that lists the stereotypical features of foreign characters; a list that basically runs: Spaniard - sinister, untrustworthy. Frenchman - untrustworthy, sinister. Arab - sinister and untrustworthy. Mexican - untrustworthy, sinister and carrying a banjo.

One can blame stereotypes about other countries on lack of familiarity; even in Orwell's era, most ordinary English people would never meet someone from France, let alone Mexico or Yemen. But that's not the whole explanation - one would assume that English people had met other English people. Another good example is the changing stereotypes of women; if you look in the Decameron (or other medieval works) the prevailing stereotype is that women are sexually insatiatable, and hence must be controlled (otherwise... yeah, I'm not sure what the dire outcome was supposed to be here either). By the nineteenth century women are being advised to lie back and think of England, and are considered so fragile and delicate that they should barely be allowed outside (and the more astute amongst my readers (all six of you) will have noticed that the net outcome of both stereotypes is the same). And yet one would assume that everyone perpetuating these stereotypes would have met a woman (although in the case of some of the monks, possibly only the once). Was there a rather confused day around 1750 when everyone decided to switch?

The Ballads is an interesting although somewhat dated (published 1962) overview of the popular ballads; it is intended to give a brief overview of scholarship on the ballads, which is does very well, although I assume that in the fifty years since it was published. I think the popular ballads contain some of the best, and most emotional poetry in the English language - what I like most about them though is the sense of magic. And by that I mean that the world of the ballads (supernatural and natural) operates according to clear rules (if there are no rules, it's not magic, it's just chaos) but the passage of time means that we cannot know what those rules are; at most we can guess and extrapolate (perhaps it's just the scientist in me likes having a system to try and puzzle out).

One fascinating thing that comes out of the book is the relatively late date it puts on the composition of the earlier ballads (c. 1350) - obviously, this might have been challenged by more current work that I haven't read. This is interesting because of the amount of pre-Christian, in fact just plain pagan material present in the ballads. If the late date is accurate, then there were obviously people who understood the pagan religion enough to put it into their poetry around in the fourteenth century. On the other hand, an earlier date of composition makes the pagan motifs easier to explain, but the survival of the ballads themselves far more impressive (as if surviving 500 years in oral transmission wasn't impressive enough).

I also appreciate the brevity of the ballad form; I'm not a huge aficionado of long poems, and I always think the most skill is found in making a piece as short as possible. There's one stanza in the Cruel Mother, where the woman looks at the baby she's just delivered and says "Smile nae sae sweet, my bonie babe/Fine flowers in the valley/And ye smile sae sweet, ye'll smile me dead./And the green leaves they grow rarely". There's literally thousands of years of injustice and oppression crammed into just four lines (and two of those are the refrain). It is a marvellously economical and efficient way of telling a story. My absolute favourite ballad though is Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight; Lady Isabel follows the Elf knight to the greenwood, and then in the clearing he says "Seven king's daughters here have I slain/ And you shall be the eighth of them.". So (rather than waiting for anyone to rescue here) Lady Isabel casts a spell on the Elf knight, putting him to sleep, and then ties him up with his own belt, before stabbing him to death with his own sword, before leaving him with a quip worthy of James Bond; "If seven king's daughters here have you slain/ Then lie you here a husband to them all." There is only one word for that, and it is AWESOME.