"My Beard Is My Own": Herman Melville’s Beard Poetics In His Narratives Of Maritime Masculinity.

Abstract

This article celebrates the vital role of the beard in Herman Melville’s narratives of maritime masculinity. While the limited commentary on the beard has thus far focused on the hair on Melville’s face, this article shifts the focus to the beard on the page of Melville’s early texts to explicate the nuances in Melville’s developing beard poetics. These appear first in Typee (1846), Omoo (1847), and Mardi (1849), three texts which begin with the traditional idea of the beard as a symbol of native Otherness before introducing the symbolic power of the braided beard and setting out the importance of the beard in male homosocial relations. This final strand is key in Melville’s most sociologically charged writings, no more so than in White-Jacket (1850). From the communal cultivation of the beards on board the Neversink, to the tragic events of “The Great Massacre of the Beards,” White-Jacket displays an acute awareness of the discourses of hegemony, hierarchy, power, and authority that underscores the power of the beard in the performativity of masculinity of Melville’s characters on the sea.