[p. 18]

The biblical allusion here highlights the importance of such activity, which suddenly reaches tragic dimensions when the returning whalers are seized by the press-gang.

Against this background of conflictual and externalized action the male characters operate in a public sphere, seeking to effect change or to insert themselves into historical processes. At the same time, they are linguistically empowered, in the enabling arena of patriarchal discourse. They have access to the public medium of words not only through oratory – Robson incites the rioters by his impassioned speech, as Sir Sidney Smith urges on his men at Acre – but also through reading and writing. With no amorous feelings for her cousin to inspire her, Sylvia has no interest in these skills and fails to respond to Philip's laboured and largely unsuccessful attempts to teach them to her. Her mother, however, sees their worth, associating them with the acquisition of property (p. 103).

At one end of the spectrum of this masculinity is Daniel Robson, whose involvement with outer events is at the level of anarchic individualism. Denying the mediating idea of nationalism, he voices a direct challenge to the tyrannies of authoritarianism, as he tells Philip: ‘“Nation here! nation theere! I'm a man and yo're another, but nation's nowheere,”’ (p. 42). His intervention into the progress of events by inciting the rioters and encouraging violent resistance to the press-gang results in disaster and is truly death-orientated; yet ironically, for all his apparent miscalculation, he does inscribe himself into history as a martyr, a symbol of defiant individualism represented in the narrative not without some admiration. At the same time, however, such violence is shown as destructive not only of family relationships but also of the self: ‘His face became a totally different countenance with the expression of settled and unrelenting indignation, which his words called out' (p. 52). This hatred becomes obsessional, and even his sympathizers see it as ‘a supernatural kind of possession, leading him to his doom' (p. 233).

Charley Kinraid represents the more progressive aspect of assertive masculinity. His whaling exploits render him a glamorous and admired figure, while his capacity to turn apparent disaster to his advantage is shown by his ascension through the naval ranks, from impressed sailor to captain. His determined opportunism becomes evident when he is captured by the press-gang:

His soul was beating itself against the bars of inflexible circumstance; reviewing in one terrible instant of time what had been, what might have been, what was. Yet while these thoughts thus stabbed him, he was still mechanically looking out for chances. [pp. 201–2]

Significantly, while he is contemplating a regressive temporality (‘what had been, what might have been‘) which seems to offer him no choice, almost instinctively he seeks to convert it into a new, self-determined future. His opportunistic drive towards specific goals operates also in the romantic sphere. Confident of winning Sylvia and of his continuing influence over her, he accommodates his involvement with her to the conditions of the wider, outer world: the two spheres are not oppositional. In manipulating circumstances to his own ends in the private as well as the public arena – hints of his earlier flirtations are succeeded by the rapid transferral of his thwarted love for Sylvia to another, materially more substantial, object of affection, ‘Miss Clarinda Jackson, with a fortune of 10,000l.’ (p. 396) – he embodies a forward movement of successful achievement.

Philip Hepburn seems at first to be far less representative of stereotypical maleness. Generally regarded as somewhat unmanly because he works in a draper's shop, in a town dominated by a traditionally masculine employment (Daniel Robson comments, ‘ “thou'rt little better nor a woman, for sure, bein' mainly acquaint wi' ribbons”’ (p. 192), he does not approve of iconoclastic individualism. He argues that the press-gang is acting for the good of the country as a whole, and, alarmed at anarchic impulses, he dissociates himself from revolutionary activity, a position reinforced by his Quaker affiliations (and the pacifism of Quakerism itself is seen as antithetical to an obvious masculinity). He is, too, far more trapped in the private world of love than is Kinraid, as is shown in his circular self-debate about whether or not to abandon his hitherto unsuccessful courtship of Sylvia:

It was better to give it up altogether and at once. But what if he could not? What if the thought of her was bound up with his life; and that once torn out by his own free will, the very roots of his heart must come also? [p. 149]

This is as obsessional as Robson's hatred of the press-gang, but in its focus on a-historical, inward-directed desire it may be seen as more female- than male-orientated.

Yet Philip has an influential place in the outer world. He operates in the commercial sphere, becoming a business partner of the Fosters, and eventually, with William Coulson, taking over the shop; trusted by the two brothers, he goes to London on their behalf, ‘quietly laying the foundation for enlarging the business in Monkshaven' (p.