An Eve-less Genesis: Reading Herman Melville’s Billy Budd, Sailor

Abstract

This research on Herman Melville’s seafaring narrative, Billy Budd, Sailor consists of theoretical generalizations on its origin or empirical correlations of a multitude of attitudinal and theoretical variables on human sexuality, homosocial ‘euphoria’ in particular. The present study relates homosocial practice in Billy Budd, Sailor to the rejection of powerful sex-normalised social institutions. It does so by theorization and application of the concept of homosociality in the text, which refers to social preference for crew members of one's own gender; specifically between Captain Vere and Billy Budd, but does not necessarily imply erotic attraction. This concept is tested for its relationship with homosocial utopia in the research. Traditional explanations of homophobia (which center around religious and sex-role conservatism) are similarly explored and dissected to support proposed hypothesis that the zone of romantic male friendship is destroyed and the hopes of homosocial utopia are pitilessly crushed because of the society that regards homosexuality as exceptional and unnatural.