1Laura Richards’s novel, Captain January from 1890, tells of an orphaned girl being raised on an island by an elderly childless bachelor, the eponymous Captain January, until his death when she is taken to live at her aunt’s. The tale appears somewhat familiar, bearing a resemblance to George Eliot’s Silas Marner, for example, with one of its (many) interesting aspects being the description of the girl’s education. At the beginning of the novel, January is questioned on the subject by his friend, Nazro: “‘Get the school readers, hey! and teach her yourself, do you?’” (14–15). However, it turns out that there are no school readers on the island: “‘I don't have no school readers. The child learns out o’ the two best books in the world,—the Bible, and William Shakespeare’s book; them’s all the books she ever seed—saw, I would say” (15). The novel is subsequently strewn with references to and quotations from Shakespeare and The Tempest in particular. Accordingly, this paper first examines the connection between Captain January and The Tempest and considers how the latter might change our reading of Richards's novel, arguing that the phrase “still-vexed,” which, plucked from its specific semantic context in The Tempest, constitutes an important theme in Richards’s novel. The discussion is then widened in the second part of the essay to suggest how the importance of Shakespeare for Richards and her way of relating to his work in Captain January are still relevant to the teaching of Shakespeare.

2Shakespeare played a remarkable role in the lives of women in the USA from the 1880s to the 1940s. According to Katherine Scheil, over 700 Shakespeare clubs were founded by women across the country, including in Montana and South Dakota, far from any cultural metropolis (82). Scheil’s contention is that this geographical reach indicates that Shakespeare's works were read and studied not only by urban elites but also by women whose lives were otherwise limited to manual chores within the house or on farms. From the testimony of participants in these clubs, it appears that their motivations included harnessing the intellectual cachet of Shakespeare to enhance the standing of women, to enrich lives otherwise spent in household drudgery, and transpose metropolitan culture to rural and small-town America. By the 1960s, however, these clubs had all but disappeared, one of the reasons being more and more women attending college (Scheil 120–121). These clubs can, retrospectively, perhaps be seen as one of the last vestiges of non-state and hence non-economy servicing education.

3By the end of the nineteenth century, as societies in US and Europe had rapidly changed from agrarian to industrialised and urban, basic primary education became not only available but also compulsory for all children. To serve the needs of an industrial economy, children were taught reading, writing, and basic arithmetic en masse. The appearance of school readers in the opening of Richards’s novel reflects that development. In light of this, the notion that a 10-year-old child might skip the readers and read Shakespeare and the Bible with only the guidance of an untutored sailor is rather implausible. It arouses curiosity. School readers might be very practical, but Richards’s text seems to raise the question where Shakespeare and the Bible as literature (as opposed to religious instruction) will fit in the new education system and how they will be taught.

Part I: Shakespeare in Captain January

5The same dynamic “vexed-still, still-vexed” occurs in Captain January. At the beginning of the novel January returns to find the orphaned girl whom he has named Star. She is dressed up in clothes taken from her dead mother’s chest which had also been washed up from the shipwreck from which the baby girl had once been rescued by the Captain. The sight of her in ornate clothes, prompts him to liken her to a princess: “[I]t is what you might call surprisin’, to leave a little maid in a blue pinafore, and to come back and find a princess in gold and velvet” (24). Unlike the princess the Captain has actually encountered on his travels in “Africky,” who “‘was as black as the ace of spades, and shinin’ all over with butter’” (25), Star, is “the kind who live in fretted palaces, with music in th’ enamelled stones” (25; emphasis mine). The Captain is apologetic; in fact, throughout the story, he acts more like a servant than a captain, or a father, and is sometimes given the epithet “the obedient Captain” (28). However, this does not stop the tempest that follows:

‘Wal, Honey, I never saw one of that kind, till now!’ said the Captain, meekly. ‘And I’m sorry I hain’t—I mean I ain’t —got no fretted palace [emphasis mine] for my princess to live in. This is a poor place for golden lasses and velvet trains.’
‘It isn’t!’ cried the child, her face flashing into sudden anger, and stamping her foot. ‘You sha’n’t call it a poor place, Daddy! It’s wicked of you. And I wouldn’t live in a palace if there were fifty of them all set in a row. So there now!’ She folded her arms and looked defiantly at the old man, who returned her gaze placidly, and continued to puff at his pipe, until he was seized in a penitent embrace, hugged, and kissed, and scolded, and wept over, all at once.
The brief tempest over, the child seated herself comfortably on his knee, and said, ‘Now, Daddy, I want a story.’ (25–26)

6The term “fretted palace,” stressed through repetition, plays on the double meaning of fretted in a similar manner to “still” in Shakespeare’s phrase “still-vexed.” Fretted as decorative gives the unproblematic meaning of an ornamented palace, but fret in the sense of rub, chaff, or gnaw, and hence by metaphorical extension to annoy or vex, makes little sense except for evoking Puttenham’s “crosse-couple” idea of a vexing palace. The “brief tempest” no sooner over is immediately followed by a bubbling pot, “lifting its lid in its eagerness to be attended to” (26), representing another small tempest which needs stilling. The “fresh access of remorseful hugging” (26), which follows suggests a further vexation which the girl attempts to still by her rather tempestuous actions. The bubbling or bobbing water in the pot conjures up another character, Bob Peck, who will appear later in the story. Bob, who is, somewhat similar to the Captain, characterized as “[t]he obedient Bob” (69), conforms to the other meaning of his name which is to nod or to briefly curtsey. At another time the Captain asks him why, in his agitation, he is “‘h’istin’ and lowerin’ [his] jib in that onarthly fashion?’” (89), another instance of bobbing up and down.

7The “still-vexed, vexed-still” dynamic continues when Star demands that Captain January tell her, once again, how she was rescued by him from a shipwreck, and hence how she came to be living with him on the island. The situation is analogous to that of Prospero’s narrative in Hunt’s example of “vexed still.” While there will be no tempests throughout the second chapter of the novel, in which January tells the story to Star, we have already learnt at the end of the first chapter that the story has to be continually retold: “‘Why, Snowdrop, you know the story by heart, better’n I do, I believe. ’Pears to me I’ve told it reg’lar, once a month or so, ever since you were old enough to understand it’” (33). The story’s “stilling” effect wears off.

8The apparent stasis of the idyllic island is constantly punctuated by bouts of vexation and eventually jeopardised by the arrival of the aunt to claim her niece. At first January, albeit with great difficulty, tells the child that she should go with her aunt: “‘You’ll have—my—my respeckful [sic] love and duty wherever you go, my dear, and you growin’ up to be a beautiful lady, as has been a little wild lass’” (111). The child is, however, indignant at the thought that this might indicate that the Captain could manage without her. She “snatched the cap from his hands and flung it into the fire, then faced him with blazing eyes and quivering lip. ‘Do you want me to go? Are you tired of me?’” (112). The Captain tries once more to convince her to go—he is getting old and would be “quieter” by himself (112). But the child refuses: “‘You lie to me, and you lie to God: and you know you lie’” (112). Given that it is clear from the story that the Captain would suffer if Star were to go, his initial attempt at persuasion should be seen as his trying to act for the good of the child even if neither of them wishes to part ways. In the face of her continuing fury though, the Captain backs down and the aunt ends up pledging never to come between them again: “‘[M]ay God never pardon me, if ever word or look of mine come again between you and the child whom God gave you!’” (114). The chapter ends with “a great glad cry,” and Star falling on “Captain January’s breast” (115). The reader is, most likely, more than relieved that the Captain and Star remain together and are not bereft of each other.

9Yet the “fretted palace” and the references to The Tempest throughout the novel, serve to undermine any such initial reaction. The story opens with January’s friend Captain Nazro wondering: “‘Ain’t it time she was going to school, January? .... Seems as if sh’d oughter be round with other children now’” (13). This evidently judicious advice is given during Captain January’s lengthy trip—unaccompanied by the girl—from the bustling mainland to the island, thus accentuating its isolation. The sense of the girl’s confinement to the island is thus established, with the Captain and, as will emerge in due course, a cow (named Imogen, perhaps after the heroine of Cymbeline) for her only playmate, and Bob as an occasional visitor: “Captain January was not fond of visitors, and gave them no encouragement to come, Bob Peet being the single exception to the rule” (74).

10While at first it seems that Star corresponds to Shakespeare’s Miranda in The Tempest, it turns out that she is but Ariel. In the fifth chapter entitled “Captain January’s Star,” she kicks off her shoes and stockings because “‘Ariel never wore such things as those!’” (97). Star then goes into the kitchen where the “housewife in her triumphed for a moment over the fairy: she raked up the fire, put on more wood, and swept the hearth daintily” (97). However, she quickly reassures herself that even in doing so she can remain Ariel: “‘But Ariel did such things for Prospero’” (97). Star wants to be what she thinks the Captain wants her to be. As she then tells the lady who arrives on the island to claim her as her niece: “Sometimes I am Puck, and sometimes Titania; but Daddy likes Ariel best, and so do I’” (102). The Captain and Star’s unwillingness to give up their attachment is reminiscent of the dynamic between Ariel and Prospero as opposed to that between Miranda and Prospero in Shakespeare’s The Tempest.

11When Miranda asks if she is loved, the question is addressed to Ferdinand, her prospective husband, and not to her father (Tempest 3.1.67). In Captain January the phrase “delicate Ariel” appears twice: “‘Say ‘delicate Ariel’, sobbed Star. ‘You haven't said it to-day, and you always say it when you love me’” (30). Later she tells her aunt: “‘I was delicate Ariel’” (102). In The Tempest these words are Prospero’s answer to Ariel’s question as to whether he loves him:

ARIEL
Do you love me, master? No?

PROSPERO
Dearly, my delicate Ariel. (4.1.48-49)

12When Bob tries, very hesitatingly, to bring up the possibility of change, suggesting the transference of Star’s affections to someone other than the “ol’ Cap’n,” it arouses another storm in the girl: “‘Folks likes to v’yage,’ said Bob Peet, with mild toleration. ‘Heaps—nothin’ t’ do—hot spells—v’yages.’ He added, with an approach to a twinkle in his meek and cow-like eyes, ‘Try it—some day—git tired of ol’ Cap’n—ol’ rock—pooty soon—take ye—v’yage—’” (Richards, January 76). However, Bob’s speech “was interrupted by a sudden and violent dash of water in his face” (76). Bob quickly backs down and “[t]he tempest subsided as suddenly as it arose” in that recurring pattern of alternating storms and calm (77). The apparent “‘playfulness’ of the pretty child” (77), as seen by the watchers from the ship beyond, takes on a darker aspect as indicated by putting the term “playfulness” in scare quotes. Star “forgives” Bob for his suggestion but with a proviso: “But if you ever say such a thing again as my getting tired of Daddy, I’ll kill you’” (77). This follows an earlier depiction of Star in the midst of an idyllic scene, “[t]he blue of sky and sea, the ripples breaking in silver on silver sand, the jewelled green, where the late dandelions flecked the grass with gold” as “the lovely, laughing child, mounted on the white cow, tossing her cloudy golden hair” (69–70).

13This seeming playfulness evokes Ovid’s story of Europa and Jupiter, “the father and ruler of all the Gods” (Bk. 2, ll. 847–848), who comes down from the heavens “in the form of a bull” (l. 849). The “large white cow” that Star rides recalls Jupiter’s bull, whose whiteness is stressed: “His hide was the colour of snow before it is trodden by clumsy feet or turned to slush by the southerly rains” (ll. 852–853). The princess Europa with “her right hand clutching one horn” (l. 874) returns the reader to Star’s having seized “the delinquent’s horns” at the start of the chapter (Richards, January 59). While the term delinquent is used jokingly for the cow who does not listen to Star reciting some lines from Shakespeare, it also applies to the “delinquent” Jupiter who licks Europa’s “hands as a prelude to other and sweeter pleasures, pleasures he barely, barely could wait for” (Ovid, Bk. 2, ll. 862–863). However, in contrast to Europa who ventures to sit on the bull, but is “unaware whose sides she was resting her thighs on” (l. 869), and Miranda, who transfers her affections to her future husband in The Tempest, Star invites her father to share her ride: “‘It isn’t quite as high as a heaven-kissing hill, but it’s a heaven-kissing cow, for Imogen is really very high. Dear Daddy, won’t you come and try it? There’s plenty of room!’” (70; emphasis in the original).

14We also now note in retrospect a previous appearance of the bull and horns in Captain January’s narration of the shipwreck, part of the tale as to how Star came to be on the island: “‘You know the Roarin’ Bull, as sticks his horns out o’ water just to windward of us? the cruelest rock on the coast, he is” (45). And that the blow on the head that Star’s mother received came “from one o’ the bull’s horns, likely” (50).

15In The Tempest, Ariel’s release comes only at the end of the play. Miranda, however, as soon as she meets Ferdinand transfers her affections to him, and her father, after a relatively short test of the young man, concurs and enables their nuptials. This contrast is brought out by Richards’s use of Ariel’s song. On finishing the household chores, and whilst reassuring herself that she is still January’s Ariel, Star takes up lines from his song: “‘Come unto these yellow sands, / And then take hands!’ she sang, holding out her hands to invisible companions” (98), thus reminding the reader once again of her loneliness. She never finishes the song as it appears in The Tempest, however, veering off into her own version of the song and playing on the last line of Ariel’s original version: “‘Oh! foot it featly, and feat it footly, and dance and sing, and tootle-ty ting!’ cried the child, as she flitted like a golden cloud about the room” (98).

16What is evaded in Star’s rendition of the song is the kiss between Ferdinand and Miranda, marking the end of Miranda’s childhood. As Maurice Hunt comments, “this kiss, Ariel’s poetry implies, will be so miraculous as to still the wild waves” (305), constituting, in other words, a stilling of the state of “still-vexed.” Moreover, “Ariel, auditors know, is Prospero’s magical agent in this respect” and “hence the song is actually the magician’s song, ordered to be voiced through his compliant spirit” (305). The proposed union between Ferdinand and Miranda facilitated by her father, will also go some way to still Prospero’s lingering vexation at the wrong done to him, so enabling them both to take up again a place in society.

17The aunt’s offer to take Star into her own home, offering a better social position for the child, is resisted. In George Eliot’s Silas Marner, the adopted child Eppie refuses a similar offer from her biological father, which would have lifted her from working class to gentry. Unlike Star, Eppie is, however, engaged to be married and due to leave her childhood home. While Eppie can still move on and out of her father’s home without at the same time trying to climb the social ladder, Star can do neither. Star’s aunt backs down from what she had seen as both her duty and wish to take the child when her husband no longer supports her: “Let him have the child, and send him one or two of your own into the bar—” (113). His joke is both apt and funny. The proposal to add “one or two” of the aunt’s own children is of course preposterous but simultaneously levels the score between the adults, suggesting that it would be only fair, if the Captain kept Star. The aunt has two children of her own already. While this contributes to the feeling of relief on the part of the reader that the Captain does not lose Star, it ignores the child’s predicament. She remains, as the chapter’s title “Captain January’s Star” indicates, his possession. The next chapter opens with the sentence: “Quietly passed the days, the weeks, the months, in the lonely tower on the rock fronting the Atlantic surge” (116), a further reminder of the loneliness of life on the island. Moreover, the words “quietly” and “surge” reinvoke the “still-vexed” motif.

18Thus, while the exclusive father-daughter relationship in The Tempest ends because Prospero allows his daughter to become another’s wife, and Eppie is free to marry in Silas Marner, in Richards’s novel the separation from the father only comes through his death: “For Captain January’s last voyage is over, and he is already in the haven where he would be” (133). Although his death appears in the story as occurring naturally due to old age, it can also be seen as deus ex machina releasing the girl from her confinement, which none of the characters managed to effect even though all, except for the aunt’s husband, are shown to have known, at some level, that it would have been right for Star. The haven metaphor not only accords with the seafaring theme of the story but, being a place of stillness and respite from the raging or tempestuous sea, also resolves the “still-vexed” state. It represents, for the Captain, a final and permanent stilling of the vexations of life. His death though will force the girl to take up the voyage she has refused, having preferred the Captain’s island as her seemingly safe haven in the hope of remaining his star, his all. The continual scheming on the island in Shakespeare’s play making clear that apparent resolutions at the end of stories are only temporary (royal courts, in particular, are arenas where nothing will stay still or harmonious for long), Star’s new situation will bring its own vexations, especially after the isolation of the island; at least she will be free of the bondage of being Ariel to Captain January’s Prospero.

19In contrast to Miranda, the girl’s stymied accession to a place in society is also depicted by way of names in the story. Rescued from the sea together with her mother’s chest, the only thing the Captain can ascertain as to her name is the syllable tar. Uttered by the infant it is, as it turns out, no part of her given name, Isabel. January has nevertheless turned it into Star. As noted, at the beginning of the novel the child appears dressed in her mother’s clothes, signalling that now, at the age of 10, she is neither the bachelor Captain’s Star nor tar. This dressing-up, however, does not lead to an assumption of her identity as her mother’s daughter, or even mark the beginning of that transition from “a little maid in a blue pinafore” to a woman (24). Even when the aunt reveals Isabel's name, it is never used for the girl at any point. The proper name though confers on a child both an identity, a potential personhood and simultaneously some freedom. Identity comes from the proper name just by virtue of its being one and the same (“I am Isabel”) in contrast to the myriad of appellations used by the Captain for the girl: “Rosebud” (37), “Star Bright” (19, 23, 28, 34, 38, 53, 57, 129), “Jewel” (57), or “Jewel Bright” (45, 49, 108, 127, 130), “Pigeon Pie” (24, 41), “Honeysuckle” (31,42, 48, 53, 56, 129), and “Blossom” (34), or “Peach Blossom” (70, 95). Parents of course do give their children nicknames, but again, as with the given name, usually just one. At the same time, the proper name, in its very non-referentiality, bestows an openness, some choice in who to become, in contrast to the appellations the Captain bestows on Star and which identify the girl as the Captain’s star, jewel, or another precious object.

20The practice of naming links Richards’s story to another tale from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Phaeton, the son of Phoebus, God of the Sun, doubting his mother’s assertion that he is the son of a god, goes to inquire directly of Phoebus. The god assures him that he is his father and, and as proof, offers to bestow upon him any favour whatsoever. The son asks for his chariot for one day. The father, aghast, tries to dissuade him but Phaeton insists. However, Phaeton is unable to control the horses and as the earth begins to burn, Jupiter hurls a thunderbolt, destroying the chariot and killing Phaeton. The son demands to know the identity of his father; hence his own name and this father does not say ‘no’ to the son’s demand, despite his certainty that the son will not be able to control the horses. In Richards’s tale, the girl is missing both the name of the father, Maynard, which, as with Isabel, is given but never used, and the father’s “no” coming neither from the Captain, who never says no to his princess, nor from the obedient Bob. In other words, Star has for a father someone who, while providing for her, does not enable her to become a subject within the wider social order. Within this context a part of Star’s monologue with Imogen the cow takes on new meaning, “And Daddy says, ‘The child is a-growing with the flowers,’ he says; ‘and she’s a-growing like the flowers’” (61). January’s answer to the minister who inquires how the girl is doing may sound innocuous and even idyllic, but it masks the fact that a child cannot grow like the flowers, deprived of education through human companionship.

Part II: A Sense Deferred

21In this part, I expand the discussion beyond an analysis of Captain January to consider what I read as Richards’s tall tale of the Bible and Shakespeare as substitutes for school readers. I further examine the quotations from Shakespeare throughout the work and explore the issue of the worth and purpose of reading his works. I argue that by moving swiftly past those aspects of words that do not pertain to sense and substance, readers miss not only what for the critic Stephen Booth accounts for the worth of Shakespeare’s writing. To this end, I am going to examine more closely the context of the phrase “still-vexed” in The Tempest, highlighting the difference between the way it is typically glossed in editions of the play that are used for teaching and Hunt’s insight that the point of the phrase “still-vexed” lies not in its immediate semantic context but in its oxymoronic strangeness, a quality that is glossed over.

22The phrase “still-vexed” appears in The Tempest as part of Ariel’s answer to a question from Prospero about the whereabouts of the king’s ship and her sailors:

ARIEL
Safely in harbour
Is the King’s ship, in the deep nook where once
Thou called’st me up at midnight to fetch dew
From the still-vexed Bermudas; there she’s hid,
The mariners all under hatches stowed,
Who, with a charm joined to their suffered labour,
I have left asleep. (1.2. ll. 224–232; emphasis mine)

23In editions of The Tempest used in schools and academia the phrase “still-vexed” is usually annotated, and is then explained as “still” meaning “always” which is, indeed, the only way to make sense of the phrase. So, for example the New Oxford edition glosses “still-vexed” as “always agitated (by storms)” (88). In the Yale edition the “still-vexed Bermoothes” is the “always storm-afflicted Bermuda” (25). The Arden edition elaborates further:

The uninhabited Bermuda Islands were first brought to Europe’s attention by a Spaniard, Juan de Bermúdez, in 1515 but were dreaded for the hidden reefs and ferocious storms that, nearly a century later, still vexed the island .... Strachey, with a touch of hyperbole, called Bermuda ‘the dangerous and dreaded ... Ilands’, notorious for ‘tempests, thunders, and other fearefull objects ... seene and heard about them. (187)

24Thus, glossing “still-vexed” as “always stormy” is hyperbolic in that the phrase cannot be taken literally. Moreover, none of the glosses picks up on what Hunt saw in the phrase: its oxymoronic quality and signifying a recurring motif of the play. The other possible meaning of “still” is ignored because it does not, at first glance, make any sense. Calm or quiet does not fit with vexed. If Captain January were being glossed in the same way for “fretted palace” we would be given an ornamented palace. While it is syntactically coherent, it misses the connection of “fretted” with to vex which is justified by other aspects of the novel. It should furthermore be noted that “still-vexed” appears in Ariel’s somewhat eccentric answer to Prospero that the king’s ship and her mariners are “in the deep nook” (1.2.228), where Prospero once asked him to bring dew from the Bermudas, at midnight. Indeed, Ariel’s specifying only that the ship is “in the deep nook” (emphasis mine) would have been sufficient, with “the” implying that there was only one such nook on the island. This utter superfluity of the “still-vexed Bermudas” in Ariel’s answer to Prospero supports Hunt’s contention that the point of the phrase lies not in its immediate semantic context but in its oxymoronic strangeness, a quality that the glosses gloss over.

25Stephen Booth, a critic who spent his career advocating for readings of Shakespeare that dwell on the material rather than the functional aspect of words, provides a second example to further illustrate the difference between the glosses and Hunt’s approach: the word ‘compunctious’ in Lady Macbeth’s monologue upon expecting Duncan’s visit to the Macbeths’ castle:

Make thick my blood,
Stop up th’access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose[.] (1.5. ll. 43–46)

26The word “compunctious” is typically glossed in editions of the play as “having compunction, remorseful” (Arden 157). In my view Booth’s “Close Readings,” however, dwells on the word itself implicitly asking why this word was used and what is lost when it is translated. Noting that the speech has as its occasion news that “the king comes here tonight” (53), Booth reads the word in connection with noun which follows it: “the six syllables of ‘compunctious’ and ‘visitings,’” he writes, are an emblem for “the incidental pattern in sounds and senses in the soliloquy that relate to fatal entrances” (53). While the first syllable echoes the sound of “come” and the idea of entrance, the second and third syllables, deriving from the Latin pungere, reverberate with their English derivative “puncture” and so contribute “to establishing an environment already friendly to the knife and wound” which will appear a few lines later (53).

27I speculate that Richards, given the indications in Captain January, would have been at one with Booth’s critique of utilitarian considerations: “Shakespeare is typically mined for social, political and moral issues” so that the “‘moral’ of a play would be more valued than the play in which it is wrapped and in which it so successfully hides that it must be ferreted out by agile critical thinking” (The Function of Criticism 264). The most worthwhile approach to Shakespeare, which accounts specifically for its poetic quality, is undone by such utilitarianism, pressing on the education system to produce something of use. As the author of nonsense rhymes, Richards would, no doubt, also have appreciated the title of one of Booth’s reissued books, Precious Nonsense, a book on the Gettysburg Address, Ben Johnson’s Epitaphs on his Children and Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. The “nonsense” is, moreover, nonsense only at first glance as Booth elaborates in the chapter on Twelfth Night, which centres on the contention that there are passages in the play that seem to make sense but when more carefully examined do not, or at least not the sense that they were too hastily assigned. Evident nonsense has the advantage of alerting one that if there is any sense, it lies elsewhere to be teased out, a deferred sense.