Typee as a Romantic Work


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			Typee as a Romantic Work

				29 March 1999

		Traveling is almost like talking with men of other centuries.
					Rene Descartes

	In the travelogue Typee, Herman Melville imparts much to the reader about civilization, colonization, and the human condition. He does all this within the framework of the literary style of his name, namely Romanticism. In point of fact, this work can be seen as a definitive example of Romantic literature, including several of the main characteristics of the genre. First, Melville concerns himself with a wild and exotic place. Second, the native inhabitants exhibit a moral standard reminiscent of the concept of the "noble savage." Finally, the book concerns itself with questions of social import, such as marriage, religion, and politics; it is not merely reportage of a fanciful voyage. In summary, Melville's work suggests several elements characteristic of the Romantic period, including an exotic setting, an intrinsic morality among the natives, and a running social commentary.

	As the introduction so expressly points out, this book is not a novel. It is a travelogue about places that the average reader, both during Melville's life and during the present day, can only imagine. The scenery described is "like the enchanted gardens in the fairy tale" with "steep and green acclivities, which formed an abrupt and semicircular termination of grassy cliffs and precipices hundreds of feet in height, over which flowed numberless small cascades" (49). And while it is true that there are gardens and cliffs throughout Europe, Melville chooses instead for his action to take place deep in the South Pacific Ocean on a Polynesian island. On this island, almost every vestige of things civilized is gone. Milk is drunk from coconut shells rather than crystal chalices. Food is eaten straight from dirty fingers instead of a Wilfordshire fork. Clothing is a bit of tappa hung indiscriminately around one's waist, not the carefully-tailored cut of a Vera Wang suit. Indeed, this world is truly the Wild, that place which so intrigued the Romantics. Even in this most remote island, Melville does not place his protagonist in the semi-refined colony of the French at Nukuheva where escape to Home would be comparably easy. Instead, his narrator, Tommo, must endure his adventure in the most remote part of the island, with the dreaded Typees. Truly, this makes for a most exotic and intriguing setting, which is certainly characteristic of the Romantic era.


	Another Romantic idea closely associated with an exotic landscape is that of the "noble savage." Long before Aldous Huxley introduced John in Brave New World, Melville introduces an entire class of people with honor, dignity, and a sense of morality with his description of the Typees. Their treatment of their uninvited guests is nothing short of hospitality. As an attendant, Kory-Kory can hardly be faulted for his loyal, faithful, and most generous service. The narrator describes a palpable veneration for the Typee elders. In fact, when modern civilization and the Typee way of life are juxtaposed, Melville does not always concede moral victory to the present. Hypocrisy, grief, and tragedy all seem to be absent from the Typees. Even the fact that the Typees partake of human flesh on occasion does not diminish the overall admirable life of the Typees.

	In a primitive state of society, the enjoyments of life, though few and simple, are spread over a great extent, and are unalloyed; but Civilization, for every advantage she imparts, holds a hundred evils in reserve; - the heart burnings, the jealousies, the social rivalries, the family dissensions, and the thousand self-inflicted discomforts f refined life, which make up in units the swelling aggregate of human misery, are unknown among these unsophisticated people (124-5). The idea of the "noble savage" permeates the text, hearkening back to this staple of Romantic writing.

	Another predominate theme in works produced during the Romantic time period was of a societal bent. Like writers such as Emerson and Thoreau, Melville did more than just write about his wanderings through nature. When describing the various customs and traditions of the Typees involving marriage, religion, and labor, Melville offers a social commentary on the civilized world's own handling of these issues. He is not so quick as to dismiss these practices as "savage" and thus discard them. Instead, the narrator embraces many of the ideas behind these local customs, including, most notably, the absence of money. The narrator writes, "That...root of all evil...was not to be found in the valley" (126), in a section entitled "Their Happiness." In fact, when he compares the relative happiness of the civilization he left behind and the one he found in the valley, it is only the Typees that have "continual happiness" (127). Melville sums up his estimation of the Typee life in the following observation:

	A gentleman of Typee can bring up a numerous family of children and give them all a highly respectable cannibal education, with infinitely less toil and anxiety "whilst a poor European artisan...is put to his wits...end to provide for his starving offspring that food which the children of a Polynesian father, without troubling their parent, pluck from the branches of every tree around them" (112).

	This is a rather dangerous admission, considering that it appears that the narrator is holding the savage Typees in a higher regard than his own fellow civilized Christians. This is hardly the only time that Melville makes such an admission, lending this book the distinction of having the Romantic characteristic of dealing with social problems during the telling of a story.

	Herman Melville's book Typee presents some definitive characteristics of Romantic writing. The narrator deals with social problems, includes the idea of the "noble savage," and sets his action in an exotic locale. While this list is not exhaustive, it does perhaps suggest the true Romantic nature of this early work of Melville.

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