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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

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

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authors, the pirates within both Treasure Island and 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 Pan to 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 Chums and The
Boys Own Paper, island narratives such as Treasure Island and Peter Pan formed
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
Island and Peter Pan feature 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

J. M. Barrie, Peter and Wendy, (London: Penguin Group, 2004), p. 34.

Grace Moore, Pirates for Boys: Masculinity and Degeneration in R. M. Ballantynes Adventure
Novels, in Pirates and Mutineers of the Nineteenth Century: Swashbucklers and Swindlers, ed. by
Grace Moore, (Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2011), p. 166.
3

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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:

Ibid.
Ibid, p. 165.
6 Ibid, p. 166.
7 Deborah Lutz, 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), p. 38.
8 Moore, p. 165.
9 Rennie, p. 198.
5

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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
inferior14 throughout 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.

10

Barrie, Peter and Wendy, p. 117.

Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island, (London: Wordsworth Classics, 1993), p. 48.
12 Lutz, p. 38.
13 Ibid, p. 37.
14 Barrie, Peter and Wendy, p. 98.
15 Ibid, p. 50.
11

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Like Jim Hawkins in Treasure Island and 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 Species was 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 fiction in 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

16

Moore, p. 169.
Barrie, Peter and Wendy, p. 117.
18 Moore, p. 169.
17

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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 Island when Ralph is unwillingly
admitted to the pirate schooner and in Treasure Island when similar events
unfold and Jim is reluctantly held captive on the Hispaniola pirate ship. As
Weaver-Hightower proceeds to argue: the replayed story of the pirate threat
also plays out the supplementary fantasy of becoming a 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 Pan and Treasure Island fantasy become reality. After the death of Hook in
Chapter XV of Peter Pan, the Lost Boys all donned pirate clothes cut off at the
knee22 and Peter himself, despite openly detesting Hook throughout the
narration, dons a suit made from Hooks wickedest garmentson the first night
19

Ibid, p. 166.
Rebecca Weaver-Hightower, Empire Islands: Castaways, Cannibals, and Fantasies of Conquest,
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007), p. 112.
21 Ibid, p. 122.
22 Barrie, Peter and Wendy, p. 134.
20

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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
23

Ibid, p. 135.
Stevenson, p. 79.
25 Ibid, p. 49.
24

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

26

R. H. W. Dillard, Introduction, Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson, (New York: Signet
Classics, 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 Jim is 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
27

Gary Westfahl, The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy: Themes, Works, and
Wonders, (Westport: Greenwood Press, 2005), p. 600.
28 Rennie, p. 198.
29 Stevenson, p. 7.
30 Ibid, p. 8.
31 Ibid, 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 Pan as 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 lead pirate 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 Island and 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),

32

Ibid, p. 48.
Barrie, Peter and Wendy, p. 43.
34 Stevenson, p. 215.
35 Ibid, p. 37.
36 Ibid, p. 66.
33

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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 already thirty yards behind us, and on the verge of strangling37- his
disability is debilitating. The narration of Treasure Island documents 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 Island provides
yet another example of the feminization of pirates: it contrasts its hypermasculine, 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 Pan and Treasure Island use verbal description to equate
pirate gender with lack of command over their bodily drives. Often the
37

Ibid, p. 210.
Ibid, p. 209.
39 Barrie, Peter and Wendy, p. 43.
40 Weaver-Hightower, p. 104.
38

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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 hypermasculinity 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 Pan and 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 Island and Peter Pan corresponds
to Victorian notions of empire and imperialism. Peter Pan and Treasure Island
were published during Britains "imperial century" that spanned from 1815 to
1914. Britains victory over Napoleon left it without any serious international
rival and the British navy was unchallenged at sea. Despite its strengths and the

41

Ibid, p. 102.
Barrie, Peter and Wendy, p. 53.
43 Ibid, p. 80.
42

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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
44

Weaver-Hightower, p. 108.
Stevenson, p. 62.
46 Ibid, p. 38.
47 Ibid, p. 42.
48 Barrie, Peter and Wendy, p. 49.
45

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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 WeaverHightower point out, The Coral Island also 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 Pan is characterized as the blackest and largest jewel in that
dark setting52 who, in personwas cadaverous and blackavized53. His voice

49

Weaver-Hightower, p. 105.
Ibid, p. 107.
51 Ibid, p. 94.
52 Barrie, Peter and Wendy, p. 49.
53 Ibid.
50

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was a black voice54 and his face had gone black with rage55 at one point in the
narration, but yet Hook is also seen to identify physically with the white male in
his description at some points in the narration: Dark as were his thoughts his
blue eyes were as soft as the periwinkle56. In Chapter XII when Hook carries out
his attack on the Lost Boys house, his status as a white man is also made explicit:
The pirate attack had been a complete surprise: a sure proof that the
unscrupulous Hook had conducted it improperly, for to surprise redskins fairly is
beyond the wit of the white man57. Pitted against the Native American redskins
of Peter Pan and the native Samoan islanders in The Coral Island, the pirates in
these island narratives inhabit a marginal space that is neither belonging to the
colonizer or colonized. The reason for this split representation of pirates is, as
Weaver-Hightower asserts, because pirates are simultaneously fascinating and
inherently abject, as hovering on empires social and physical bounds58. As
Weaver-Hightower proceeds to argue, pirates, then, like colonized people,
participate in the paradox of abjection for European imperialists59. The
colonist, (and his culture and reader), spits out the irredeemable but consumes
the reformed. In the original adventure narrative Robinson Crusoe (1719),
Crusoe, for instance, ejects from his island some cannibals while absorbing
others into his community such as the character of Friday and his father. He the
proceeds to act in a similarly split manner to the pirate characters he encounters,

54

Ibid, p. 52.
Ibid, p. 79.
56 Ibid, p. 110.
57 Ibid, p.103.
58 Weaver-Hightower, p. 96.
59 Ibid, pp. 96-97.
55

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accepting some but rejecting others60. The piratical figures of both Hook and
Silver in Peter Pan and Treasure Island are 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 Pan as
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 Islands pirate captain, in
order to justify real-world violent persecution of outlaws.

60

Ibid, p. 98.
Barrie, Peter and Wendy, p. 132.
62 Ibid, p. 130.
61

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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 with Alfred Russel
Wallace introduced his scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution
resulted from a process that he called natural selection, in which the struggle for
existence has a similar effect to the artificial selection involved in selective
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 world is displayed implicitly within
Barries Peter Pan as 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
63

Edward J. Larson, Evolution: The Remarkable History of a Scientific Theory, (New York: Modern
Library, 2004), p. 79.
64 Barrie, Peter and Wendy, p. 50.
65 Weaver-Hightower, p. 96.

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reality66. Although I have previously argued the strength of the British Empire
at the time of Barrie and Stevensons publications, Britain inevitably faced
competition for its colonies such as the scramble for Africa, the Boer War, the
Crimean War or the War of American Independence to name a few. In order to
reassure the reading public of the security of the empire, texts recoded colonial
competition into tales of pirates, thus transferring the disarray of imperial
expansion into a simplified tale of a men successfully defending their legitimately
earned space67.
After exploring the representation of pirates in late Victorian island
narratives, I have discovered that the motif of the piratical figure was
constructed by authors such as Barrie, Stevenson and Ballantyne in order to
represent contemporary anxieties concerning the moral standards of their young
all-male readership, to promote positive ideologies surrounding Victorian
masculinity, and to justify aggressive expansion of the British Empire. Piratical
figures such as Barries Captain Hook and Stevensons Long John Silver provoke
split representations throughout the texts as figures that simultaneously evoke
damaged masculinity as well as represent the colonial Other or competing
European colonist. During my essay, I discussed desires of the imperial reader of
incorporation into the pirate world- the desire to essentially become a pirate.
The popularity of pirate fiction can perhaps be explained through this notion of
incorporation when examined alongside psychoanalytic theory that explains
fantasies of incorporation as often supplementing those of being an incorporator.
Perhaps the imperial author or reader of late Victorian Britain popularized the
66
67

Ibid, pp. 108-109.

Ibid, p. 109.

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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.

ONeill 20
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