Captain Frederick Marryat’s Mr. Midshipman Easy proved extremely popular. Informed by Marryat’s own naval experience, all his work allowed a gifted writer the opportunity to shape realistic adventure tales in which he expressed himself in a vigorous style undergirded by slapstick comedy. Like all Marryat’s heroes, the protagonist, Mr. Midshipman Easy, named Jack Easy, is a mischievous, willing, and brave practical joker, able to take a joke as well as administer one.
Raised by a father who deals in rigid democratic notions that rarely prove demonstrable in real life, Jack must learn through multiple adventures at sea that most of his father’s beliefs are absurd. A spoiled boy, he experiences his first dose of reality at the hands of a stern schoolmaster, Mr. Bonnycastle. Marryat exercises a wry wit in the scene when Bonnycastle explains to Jack’s physician that he has “no opinion of flogging, and therefore I do not resort to it,” only to later explain, “I can produce more effect by one caning than twenty floggings.” He manages to teach his unruly pupil a small modicum of self-control.
However, Jack finds ways to do whatever he desires, basing his actions on the ridiculous logic taught him by his father, who found Jack’s “loquacity” pleasing. In one scene, when Jack attempts to convince the owner of a pond where he fishes that he is not trespassing, he explains, “The world and its contents are made for all.” As the gentleman asks how he then accounts for some individuals having more material goods than others, Jack explains that, according to his father, that “only proves that the strongest will take advantage of the weak, which is very natural.” The gentleman bids Jack thank his father for making an important point, as he and his two companions, being stronger than Jack, may take Jack’s fish and his rod and throw him into the pond.
While Jack’s interest in fair play remains focused on himself in such early scenes, he eventually broadens his views, developing true-life skills that replace his useless rhetorical skills.
Marryat’s female characters generally remain flat and, in the case of Jack’s mother, Mrs. Easy, easily manipulated. Marryat often included romance in his adventures, but only to attract a certain readership. Love relationships provided seldom more than a backdrop for more masculine pursuits. In this novel, the hero faces shipwreck and mutiny on the vessel Harpy, at times with the aid of only a “wily negro,” an “excellent” slave named Mesty, an aristocrat in his own Ashantee homeland who refers to Jack as “Massa Easy.” Mesty’s characterization must be understood in the context of Marryat’s era, providing interest for NEW HISTORICIST CRITICS and colonial critics interested in racism and the closely related ideology of IMPERIALISM.
Mesty offers Jack comfort when some of the sailors die due to Jack’s “example of disobedience,” having abandoned the ship to an island. Jack warns them not to try to swim back to the ship in shark-infested waters, but they believe he exercises his normal predilection for practical jokes. In a scene typical of Marryat’s attention to gruesome detail, reflecting his debt to Tobias Smollett, Jack looks up in time “to see the coxswain raise himself with a loud yell out of the sea, and then disappear in a vortex, which was crimsoned with his blood,” a shark having attacked him. Jack never forgets the horror of the scene, sobering thoughts that help him mature into a strong leader.
When he later becomes involved in a foolish duel with the purser’s steward, he understands that he has demeaned himself and promises Captain Wilson to learn from the experience and never commit the “mad pranks” that make the captain anxious. Jack conducts himself well in the face of later danger, and the novel concludes on a happy note. The narrator tells readers, “Our hero, who was now of age, invited all within twenty miles of home to balls and dinners; became a great favourite, kept a pack of hounds, rode with the foremost, received a deputation to stand for the county in the Conservative interest, was elected without much expense, which was very wonderful, and took his seat in Parliament,” becoming an excellent husband for his sweetheart, Agnes, eventually fathering three boys and a girl. A satisfying conclusion to a thrilling adventure tale is one aspect that continues to attract readers to Marryat’s works, which are readily available in print.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Pocock, Tom. Captain Marryat: Seaman, Writer and Adventurer. Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 2000.