How we cite our quotes: (Chapter, Paragraph)
Quote #1
Needless to say what distress was the unfortunate man's, when, engaged in conversation with company, he would suddenly perceive his Goneril bestowing her mysterious touches, especially in such cases where the strangeness of the thing seemed to strike upon the touched person, notwithstanding good-breeding forbade his proposing the mystery, on the spot, as a subject of discussion for the company. In these cases, too, the unfortunate man could never endure so much as to look upon the touched young gentleman afterwards, fearful of the mortification of meeting in his countenance some kind of more or less quizzingly-knowing expression. He would shudderingly shun the young gentleman. So that here, to the husband, Goneril's touch had the dread operation of the heathen taboo. (12, 4)
We get precious few mentions of women in The Confidence-Man, and exactly no solid female characters. What female characters we do see aren't presented in the most favorable light. This holds true for Goneril, for example, who shares a name with an infamous Shakespearean villain. (There aren't a lot of Gonerils in the world or in literature, folks, so you can bet this is a direct reference.) Her behavior of creep-touching dinner guests on the arm or shoulder gets gendered here. For the unfortunate—ahem—man, dealing with this becomes a note on his masculinity in this story within the story. How does the dude deal with it? With silent shame. He doesn't look other men in the eye if they've been grazed by Goneril. This gendered domestic cold war also gets another weird layer: the unfortunate man stays silent because of his "good-breeding," which allows for a "heathen taboo" to result from Goneril's actions. In other words, the dude gets aligned with civilization, and the lady with the questionable name is in the heathen camp.
Quote #2
Knowing that she would neither confess nor amend, and might, possibly, become even worse than she was, he thought it but duty as a father, to withdraw the child from her; but, loving it as he did, he could not do so without accompanying it into domestic exile himself. Which, hard though it was, he did. Whereupon the whole female neighborhood, who till now had little enough admired dame Goneril, broke out in indignation against a husband, who, without assigning a cause, could deliberately abandon the wife of his bosom, and sharpen the sting to her, too, by depriving her of the solace of retaining her offspring. (12, 4)
So how can gender relations get even more complicated than they already are? Children, that's how. In this instance, we get a look of what it might mean to be a father, not just a man. This unfortunate man feels duty-bound to take his daughter away from his wife—which puts him in hot water with the women in his neighborhood. This is complicated, because what we get is a narrative of a man who on the outside is abandoning his wife, but no one else knows what his reason is—including the readers. Melville doesn't ever explain what's up with Goneril or quite why the unfortunate man is this distressed. It doesn't help that the unfortunate man is Weeds—the grifter who bums some cash off of the country merchant and has an awkward chat with the scholar. Who do we trust, and why is this characterized as a man-vs.-woman dilemma?
Quote #3
"Surely, friend," returned the noble Methodist, with much ado restraining his still waxing indignation—"surely, to say the least, you forget yourself. Apply it home," he continued, with exterior calmness tremulous with inkept emotion. "Suppose, now, I should exercise no charity in judging your own character by the words which have fallen from you; what sort of vile, pitiless man do you think I would take you for?"
"No doubt"—with a grin—"some such pitiless man as has lost his piety in much the same way that the jockey loses his honesty."
"And how is that, friend?" still conscientiously holding back the old Adam in him, as if it were a mastiff he had by the neck.
"Never you mind how it is"—with a sneer; "but all horses aint virtuous, no more than all men kind; and come close to, and much dealt with, some things are catching. When you find me a virtuous jockey, I will find you a benevolent wise man."
"Some insinuation there."
"More fool you that are puzzled by it."
"Reprobate!" cried the other, his indignation now at last almost boiling over; "godless reprobate! if charity did not restrain me, I could call you by names you deserve."
"Could you, indeed?" with an insolent sneer.
"Yea, and teach you charity on the spot," cried the goaded Methodist, suddenly catching this exasperating opponent by his shabby coat-collar, and shaking him till his timber-toe clattered on the deck like a nine-pin. "You took me for a non-combatant did you?—thought, seedy coward that you are, that you could abuse a Christian with impunity. You find your mistake"—with another hearty shake. (3, 40-48)
This is a good old-fashioned backyard insult battle among schoolboys—except it's among two grown men. All their insults hit at the heart of what each believes to be a decent man—and each believes the other isn't it. Besides the representation of men as prideful verbal sparring combatants, Melville adds further commentary about masculinity when his narrator notes that the Methodist was "holding back old Adam." Wait, say what? Holding back your anger is holding back the first biblical man? What does that mean? Is early-biblical man more violent? Less civilized? Melville's map of masculinity is complicated.
Quote #4
Issuing from that road, and crossing that landing, there stooped his shaggy form in the door-way, and entered the ante-cabin, with a step so burdensome that shot seemed in his pockets, a kind of invalid Titan in homespun; his beard blackly pendant, like the Carolina-moss, and dank with cypress dew; his countenance tawny and shadowy as an iron-ore country in a clouded day. In one hand he carried a heavy walking-stick of swamp-oak; with the other, led a puny girl, walking in moccasins, not improbably his child, but evidently of alien maternity, perhaps Creole, or even Camanche. (17, 9)
Melville captures a spectrum of notions of masculinity in this text, with the super burly woodsman on one end, and the most youthful femininity on the other. The man described here is weighed down by heavy clothes and gear. He's presented in stark contrast to his daughter, who is described as "puny." As one of the very few female characters in the text, it's worth checking out what her presence does for building a definition of masculinity by way of contrast. Like Goneril, she is aligned with "alien maternity." We're sensing a trend here in which dudes and dudettes are categorized as fundamentally different on every front: old vs. young, big vs. small, white vs. not-white.
Quote #5
No sooner was the pair spied by the herb-doctor, than with a cheerful air, both arms extended like a host's, he advanced, and taking the child's reluctant hand, said, trippingly: "On your travels, ah, my little May Queen? Glad to see you. What pretty moccasins. Nice to dance in." Then with a half caper sang—
"Hey diddle, diddle, the cat and the fiddle;
The cow jumped over the moon.Come, chirrup, chirrup, my little robin!"
Which playful welcome drew no responsive playfulness from the child, nor appeared to gladden or conciliate the father; but rather, if anything, to dash the dead weight of his heavy-hearted expression with a smile hypochondriacally scornful. (17, 10-13)
Okay, this is slightly more complicated than your average battle-of-the-sexes stuff. First off, the herb-doctor is being kind of fake in order to get the daughter to be on his team, but soon his masculinity is evaluated against the woodsy father's. While the father is serious, the herb-doctor is jolly and sings a sappy tune to the little girl. In light of the father's grim mood and the daughter's beautifully angst-ridden disgust, the herb-doctor is made into a ridiculous figure. The message? Don't let yourself be too chipper, because your irreverence just might threaten your masculinity. Maybe.
Quote #6
Sobering down now, the herb-doctor addressed the stranger in a manly, business-like way—a transition which, though it might seem a little abrupt, did not appear constrained, and, indeed, served to show that his recent levity was less the habit of a frivolous nature, than the frolic condescension of a kindly heart. (17, 14)
False alarm: the herb-doc's masculinity is spared because we now know that he's not "frivolous." Instead, he is just a good sport. Plus, he's literally described as someone who is an alternative type of "manly." If the big, strong father is manly because he looks like he's conquered nature, then the herb-doctor is sporting the businessman manliness of tackling money matters.
Quote #7
"Are there none here who feel in need of help, and who, in accepting such help, would feel that they, in their time, have given or done more than may ever be given or done to them? Man or woman, is there none such here?"
The sobs of the woman were more audible, though she strove to repress them. While nearly every one's attention was bent upon her, a man of the appearance of a day-laborer, with a white bandage across his face, concealing the side of the nose, and who, for coolness' sake, had been sitting in his red-flannel shirt-sleeves, his coat thrown across one shoulder, the darned cuffs drooping behind—this man shufflingly rose, and, with a pace that seemed the lingering memento of the lock-step of convicts, went up for a duly-qualified claimant. (18, 27-28)
We've got not one, but two women in this scene. It's kind of a big deal. We're going the figure-out-masculinity-by-contrasting-it-against-representations-of-feminitity route, and this one is subtle business. Let's set the scene: the herb-doctor walks back into a room he left earlier. He was kind of laughed out of it because everyone thought his medicine must be rubbish. Now he's back, and he's offering up money for anyone who needs it (though this could just be a ploy to garner goodwill). Anyway, what we want to pay attention to is the crowd.
Just before these lines, one woman gets shamed into not accepting the charity because the rest of the crowd doesn't believe she deserves it. Why? They disapprove of her outfit. Lame. Okay, but right here, there's a weeping widow who ostensibly needs the money. She doesn't get it, either. Is it because she'll be stared down by the crowd, too? Is it because she has too much pride? Jury is out.
Who does get the money? A man whose day-laborer status introduces class into the tricky business of how Melville's text explores being a man. The dude's been injured, and he steps up to receive the cash as if it's been rightfully his all along. He's got a walk that seems to be a "lingering memento of the lock-step of convicts." Is this supposed to make him seem less trustworthy because of a supposed criminal past? Is this to show he's been reformed? We don't know.
What we do know is that nobody stares him into submission. Nobody even tries. He gets to claim the money when two women were denied. This scene demands that we try to assess who is deserving of money. Make no mistake, this moment is majorly complicated.
Quote #8
"At this coon. Can you, the fox, catch him?"
"If you mean," returned the other, not unselfpossessed, "whether I flatter myself that I can in any way dupe you, or impose upon you, or pass myself off upon you for what I am not, I, as an honest man, answer that I have neither the inclination nor the power to do aught of the kind."
"Honest man? Seems to me you talk more like a craven."
"You in vain seek to pick a quarrel with me, or put any affront upon me. The innocence in me heals me."
"A healing like your own nostrums. But you are a queer man—a very queer and dubious man; upon the whole, about the most so I ever met." (21, 75-79)
The herb-doctor is up against another version of the rough-and-tumble woodsman, but this time it's with a man who's a bit sprightlier. What do we make of their interaction? Well, for one thing, we get specific value judgments from Pitch about what type of a man the herb-doctor is, and they're all negative. Contrasting the herb-doctor's more mannered tone against Pitch's volatile jibes, we learn that part of the reason Pitch distrusts the dude (besides the obvious shady medicine thing) is because he talks a good game.
Wait a minute—the herb-doctor's being dissed for being good with words? Well, yeah—he's too good with them. Like, politician-level good—which, as we all know, means that nothing he says can be trusted. Overall, Melville presents a complicated system of manhood in which there is both value and danger in being seen as smart and eloquent. Depending on who you're chatting up, brains can be a boon or, as this coon-hat wearing rustic argues, a sign that you've got no brawn. Even trickier is the fact that Pitch aligns the herb-doctor's talents with the ability to deceive, while the herb-doctor claims innocence and hopes to demonstrate this by keeping his cool—another "manly" trait in this text, but who's keeping track?.
Quote #9
"Hands off!" cried the bachelor, involuntarily covering dejection with moroseness.
"Hands off? that sort of label won't do in our Fair. Whoever in our Fair has fine feelings loves to feel the nap of fine cloth, especially when a fine fellow wears it."
"And who of my fine-fellow species may you be? From the Brazils, ain't you? Toucan fowl. Fine feathers on foul meat." (24, 1-3)
We learn in kindergarten that it's best to keep our hands to ourselves. Pitch really doesn't like it when Frank gets grabby with him—the familiarity is too much, and the text asks us to look at Pitch's "manly" discomfort against Frank's sensual appreciation of Pitch's clothing and body. Pitch responds to Frank's appreciation with disdain: he's not into Frank's "fancy" outfit, which makes him look like a painted bird, and he insults him with a pun on "fowl" by calling Frank's clothes "fine feathers on foul meat." Why is Frank fowl (foul?) to Pitch? Is it because he doesn't ascribe to serious, plain, and rough stereotypes of masculinity?
Quote #10
"'The backwoodsman is a lonely man. He is a thoughtful man. He is a man strong and unsophisticated. Impulsive, he is what some might call unprincipled. At any rate, he is self-willed; being one who less hearkens to what others may say about things, than looks for himself, to see what are things themselves. If in straits, there are few to help; he must depend upon himself; he must continually look to himself. Hence self-reliance, to the degree of standing by his own judgment, though it stand alone. Not that he deems himself infallible; too many mistakes in following trails prove the contrary; but he thinks that nature destines such sagacity as she has given him, as she destines it to the 'possum. To these fellow-beings of the wilds their untutored sagacity is their best dependence. If with either it prove faulty, if the 'possum's betray it to the trap, or the backwoodsman's mislead him into ambuscade, there are consequences to be undergone, but no self-blame.'" (26, 3)
Don't let the simplicity of this pseudo-definition of a backwoodsman fool you; this moment has layers. Layers how, you ask? Well, get this. 1) This definition of a burly backwoodsman is taken verbatim from a judge (a scholastic dude with power) and retold by Charlie (a fake sneaky-sneakerson who tries to get others drunk when he won't drink) to his new "buddy" the cosmopolitan (a fancy world-traveler) in order to diss Pitch, a backwoodsmen looked down on by Charlie, the PIO man, and the herb-doctor for being uncouth.
Phew, that was a lot. The point is that each of these dudes is the embodiment of a very different version of manliness, each of which gets tested out against the others.
So what's up with this definition? For one thing, it's a transparent snapshot of one early version of the American dream, which was to be self-reliant and a tamer of nature. For another thing, it's an insult. For a judge to judge the backwoodsman as "unsophisticated" even when he calls him "strong" and "thoughtful" suggests he's mocking that strength and questioning the value of those thoughts.
Plus, take note of what the backwoodsman gets compared to—an opossum. He's not described as a man of intellect, but one of instinct—like an animal. Ouch. An added insult is that reason and intelligence are often talked about as if they are what separate us from the animals. Is the judge suggesting that certain definitions of manliness are animalistic? Is this Melville's critique? Is Melville just trolling everyone? (A distinct possibility.)