But then, doesn’t the species need to reproduce, and wouldn’t the presence of a beautiful woman add spice to the hero’s repeated displays of dominance while also offering opportunities for heroic rescues? If we work from the premise that Tarzan of the Apes has enjoyed so much success at least in part because of the gratifications it offers its male readers, then what sort of woman would Burroughs introduce into his narrative? The “beautiful white girl” enters the story neatly supplied with a suitor, Cecil Clayton, a rival over whom Tarzan can repeatedly prove his superiority. Jane is not an English-woman like Tarzan’s birth mother, but a plucky American girl (from both Wisconsin and Maryland, she is northern and southern). Perhaps Burroughs means to imply that Jane, although a well-brought-up young lady, is not “overly cultivated” like some European women, and still retains a distinctly American vitality. Consistently calm in the face of danger, Jane is dramatically rescued by Tarzan from ruthless mutineers, a lioness, a forest fire, an unwanted suitor, and, most memorably, the clutches of a salacious ape.
In the sequence in which Tarzan battles Terkoz, the tensions between civilization and “instinct,” and the interplay between aggressive and sexual impulses, become especially vivid. As Tarzan sinks his knife into the fierce Terkoz’s heart, Jane watches, her “hands tightly pressed against her rising and falling bosom, and her eyes wide with mingled horror, fascination, fear, and admiration,” atavistically aroused as the primordial ape battles with the primeval man “for possession of a woman—for her” (p. 162). As the fight concludes, “the veil of centuries of civilization and culture was swept from the blurred vision of the Baltimore girl,” and “a primeval woman ... sprang forward with outstretched arms toward the primeval man who had fought for her and won her” (p. 162). Tarzan takes her in his arms and does “what no red-blooded man needs lessons in doing.” As Jane has exposed Tarzan’s “hereditary impulse” to protect white womanhood, Tarzan has exposed Jane’s primitive sexual nature. It is not long, however, before civilization again makes its demands in the form of “outraged conscience.” Blushing, Jane withdraws from Tarzan’s kiss and begins “striking his great breast with her tiny hands” (p. 162). Baffled, Tarzan hesitates, but not for long. “And then Tarzan of the Apes did just what his first ancestor would have done. He took his woman in his arms and carried her into the jungle” (p. 163). At this point Burroughs changes the scene for several pages, leaving the reader in suspense about what the couple are doing as we are returned to the cabin where Clayton watches the approach of the French cruiser. In the next chapter we find Jane in a state of “dreamy peacefulness,” enjoying a sense of “perfect security” as Tarzan, comparing his intentions to those of Terkoz, decides that he cannot be guided by the law of the jungle, in which the male “take[s] his mate by force” (p. 169). Here heredity triumphs over learned experience; Tarzan’s aristocratic birth—“many generations of fine breeding... which a lifetime of uncouth and savage training and environment could not eradicate”—is expressed in his chivalrous acceptance of Jane’s refusal (p. 174).
What Burroughs is working out is a fantasy appropriate for his audience in 1912. Jane reveals her sexual desire in this sequence; she is aroused by Tarzan’s violence, by the “instinctive urge” to give herself to the dominant male. However, Jane simply cannot surrender to Tarzan for many reasons, not least of which is propriety. (Not always considered appropriate for all audiences, two volumes from the Tarzan series were denounced in 1961 by a schoolteacher in Downey, California, as “pornographic.”) Moreover, Burroughs’s readers do not want Jane to be “easy.” Revered white women cannot be wanton; that trait belongs to the “lower races.” Instead, Jane renounces instinct and becomes the conventional female embodiment of civilized morality. In the serene, even Edenic, chapter in which Tarzan feeds her exotic fruits and sleeps chastely and watchfully outside her shelter, Jane’s renunciation protects not only her own virtue but Tarzan’s innocence as well. Put another way, if Tarzan is civilized by instinct, as his sexual behavior toward Jane suggests, this means he has no need to renounce his aggression. Tarzan is free to beat and kill, to be the virile male, if, when the woman says no, he is willing to respond, while the combination of aggression with chivalry produces in Jane a perfect sense of well-being and a powerful sexual attraction.
Critics commonly describe the end of Tarzan of the Apes, when Tarzan appears willingly to forfeit Jane to his cousin Cecil Clayton, as Burroughs’s ploy to interest readers in a sequel in which Tarzan and Jane will be reunited. Tarzan’s decision to relinquish his title and estates at the very moment he learns they are his, and to surrender the woman he loves to his inferior cousin, transpires in an emotionally charged scene that Burroughs depicts with rare narrative restraint. Jane has told Tarzan that she loves him but has pledged herself to Clayton, and that her honor demands that she keep her word. Just moments later after Tarzan reads the telegram from D’Arnot confirming that he is indeed the son of Lord and Lady Greystoke, Clayton extends his hand to Tarzan, thanks him for all he has done, and then asks, “How the devil did you ever get into that bally jungle?” Tarzan answers, “I was born there.... My mother was an Ape, and of course she couldn’t tell me much about it. I never knew who my father was” (p. 252). What is the meaning of this mysterious lie? Is it a selfless, aptly noble gesture to remove all doubt from Jane’s heart about her marriage to Cecil? Does it express Tarzan’s sense of loss upon realizing that Kala was not his real mother? Is he rebelling against Jane’s status-obsessed world, in which he sees little to respect? His renunciation of privilege, property, and the possession of a woman in favor of “the waving foliage of mighty trees, and, over all, the blue of an equatorial sky” (p. 251) gives us a glimpse of Tarzan’s unbounded spirit. Picturing Tarzan swinging through the trees reminds us of yet another order of human fantasy, that of joyful motion, freedom, energy, and the eternal—in 1911, recently realized—desire to take flight.
Maura Spiegel teaches literature and film at Columbia University and Barnard College. She is the coeditor of The Grim Reader: Writings on Death, Dying, and Living On (1997) and the coauthor of The Breast Book: An Intimate and Curious History (2002), and she coedits the journal Literature and Medicine. She has written on popular culture for the New York Times, and she also writes on film.
I
Out to Sea
I had this story from one who had no business to tell it to me, or to any other. I may credit the seductive influence of an old vintage upon the narrator for the beginning of it, and my own skeptical incredulity during the days that followed for the balance of the strange tale.
When my convivial host discovered that he had told me so much, and that I was prone to doubtfulness, his foolish pride assumed the task the old vintage had commenced, and so he unearthed written evidence in the form of musty manuscript, and dry official records of the British Colonial Officea to support many of the salient features of his remarkable narrative.
I do not say the story is true, for I did not witness the happenings which it portrays, but the fact that in the telling of it to you I have taken fictitious names for the principal characters quite sufficiently evidences the sincerity of my own belief that it may be true.
The yellow, mildewed pages of the diary of a man long dead, and the records of the Colonial Office dovetail perfectly with the narrative of my convivial host, and so I give you the story as I painstakingly pieced it out from these several various agencies.
If you do not find it credible you will at least be as one with me in acknowledging that it is unique, remarkable, and interesting.
From the records of the Colonial Office and from the dead man’s diary we learn that a certain young English nobleman, whom we shall call John Clayton, Lord Greystoke, was commissioned to make a peculiarly delicate investigation of conditions in a British West Coast African Colonyb from whose simple native inhabitants another European power was known to be recruiting soldiers for its native army, which it used solely for the forcible collection of rubbe
r and ivory from the savage tribes along the Congo and the Aruwimi.
The natives of the British Colony complained that many of their young men were enticed away through the medium of fair and glowing promises, but that few if any ever returned to their families.
The Englishmen in Africa went even further, saying that these poor blacks were held in virtual slavery, since after their terms of enlistment expired their ignorance was imposed upon by their white officers, and they were told that they had yet several years to serve.
And so the Colonial Office appointed John Clayton to a new post in British West Africa, but his confidential instructions centered on a thorough investigation of the unfair treatment of black British subjects by the officers of a friendly European power.1 Why he was sent, is, however, of little moment to this story, for he never made an investigation, nor, in fact, did he ever reach his destination.
Clayton was the type of Englishman that one likes best to associate with the noblest monuments of historic achievement upon a thousand victorious battlefields—a strong, virile man—mentally, morally, and physically.
In stature he was above the average height; his eyes were gray, his features regular and strong; his carriage that of perfect, robust health influenced by his years of army training.
Political ambition had caused him to seek transference from the army to the Colonial Office and so we find him, still young, entrusted with a delicate and important commission in the service of the Queen.
When he received this appointment he was both elated and appalled. The preferment seemed to him in the nature of a well-merited reward for painstaking and intelligent service, and as a stepping stone to posts of greater importance and responsibility; but, on the other hand, he had been married to the Hon. Alice Rutherford for a scarce three months, and it was the thought of taking this fair young girl into the dangers and isolation of tropical Africa that appalled him.
For her sake he would have refused the appointment, but she would not have it so. Instead she insisted that he accept, and, indeed, take her with him.
There were mothers and brothers and sisters, and aunts and cousins to express various opinions on the subject, but as to what they severally advised history is silent.
We know only that on a bright May morning in 1888, John, Lord Greystoke, and Lady Alice sailed from Dover on their way to Africa.
A month later they arrived at Freetownc where they chartered a small sailing vessel, the Fuwalda, which was to bear them to their final destination.
And here John, Lord Greystoke, and Lady Alice, his wife, vanished from the eyes and from the knowledge of men.
Two months after they weighed anchor and cleared from the port of Freetown a half dozen British war vessels were scouring the south Atlantic for trace of them or their little vessel, and it was almost immediately that the wreckage was found upon the shores of St. Helena d which convinced the world that the Fuwalda had gone down with all on board, and hence the search was stopped ere it had scarce begun; though hope lingered in longing hearts for many years.
The Fuwalda, a barkentine of about one hundred tons, was a vessel of the type often seen in coastwise trade in the far southern Atlantic, their crews composed of the offscourings of the sea—unhanged murderers and cutthroats of every race and every nation.
The Fuwalda was no exception to the rule. Her officers were swarthy bullies, hating and hated by their crew. The captain, while a competent seaman, was a brute in his treatment of his men. He knew, or at least he used, but two arguments in his dealings with them—a belaying pine and a revolver—nor is it likely that the motley aggregation he signed would have understood aught else.
So it was that from the second day out from Freetown John Clayton and his young wife witnessed scenes upon the deck of the Fuwalda such as they had believed were never enacted outside the covers of printed stories of the sea.
It was on the morning of the second day that the first link was forged in what was destined to form a chain of circumstances ending in a life for one then unborn such as has never been paralleled in the history of man.
Two sailors were washing down the decks of the Fuwalda, the first mate was on duty, and the captain had stopped to speak with John Clayton and Lady Alice.
The men were working backwards toward the little party who were facing away from the sailors. Closer and closer they came, until one of them was directly behind the captain. In another moment he would have passed by and this strange narrative would never have been recorded.
But just that instant the officer turned to leave Lord and Lady Greystoke, and, as he did so, tripped against the sailor and sprawled headlong upon the deck, overturning the water-pail so that he was drenched in its dirty contents.
For an instant the scene was ludicrous; but only for an instant. With a volley of awful oaths, his face suffused with the scarlet of mortification and rage, the captain regained his feet, and with a terrific blow felled the sailor to the deck.
The man was small and rather old, so that the brutality of the act was thus accentuated. The other seaman, however, was neither old nor small—a huge bear of a man, with fierce black mustachios, and a great bull neck set between massive shoulders.
As he saw his mate go down he crouched, and, with a low snarl, sprang upon the captain crushing him to his knees with a single mighty blow.
From scarlet the officer’s face went white, for this was mutiny; and mutiny he had met and subdued before in his brutal career. Without waiting to rise he whipped a revolver from his pocket, firing point blank at the great mountain of muscle towering before him; but, quick as he was, John Clayton was almost as quick, so that the bullet which was intended for the sailor’s heart lodged in the sailor’s leg instead, for Lord Greystoke had struck down the captain’s arm as he had seen the weapon flash in the sun.
Words passed between Clayton and the captain, the former making it plain that he was disgusted with the brutality displayed toward the crew, nor would he countenance anything further of the kind while he and Lady Greystoke remained passengers.
The captain was on the point of making an angry reply, but, thinking better of it, turned on his heel and black and scowling, strode aft.
He did not care to antagonize an English official, for the Queen’s mighty arm wielded a punitive instrument which he could appreciate, and which he feared—England’s far-reaching navy.
The two sailors picked themselves up, the older man assisting his wounded comrade to rise. The big fellow, who was known among his mates as Black Michael, tried his leg gingerly, and, finding that it bore his weight, turned to Clayton with a word of gruff thanks.
Though the fellow’s tone was surly, his words were evidently well meant. Ere he had scarce finished his little speech he had turned and was limping off toward the forecastle with the very apparent intention of forestalling any further conversation.
They did not see him again for several days, nor did the captain accord them more than the surliest of grunts when he was forced to speak to them.
They took their meals in his cabin, as they had before the unfortunate occurrence; but the captain was careful to see that his duties never permitted him to eat at the same time.
The other officers were coarse, illiterate fellows, but little above the villainous crew they bullied, and were only too glad to avoid social intercourse with the polished English noble and his lady, so that the Claytons were left very much to themselves.
This in itself accorded perfectly with their desires, but it also rather isolated them from the life of the little ship so that they were unable to keep in touch with the daily happenings which were to culminate so soon in bloody tragedy.
There was in the whole atmosphere of the craft that undefinable something which presages disaster. Outwardly, to the knowledge of the Claytons, all went on as before upon the little vessel; but that there was an undertow leading them toward some unknown danger both felt, though they did not speak of it to each other.
On the second da
y after the wounding of Black Michael, Clayton came on deck just in time to see the limp body of one of the crew being carried below by four of his fellows while the first mate, a heavy belaying pin in his hand, stood glowering at the little party of sullen sailors.
Clayton asked no questions—he did not need to—and the following day, as the great lines of a British battleship grew out of the distant horizon, he half determined to demand that he and Lady Alice be put aboard her, for his fears were steadily increasing that nothing but harm could result from remaining on the lowering, sullen Fuwalda.
Toward noon they were within speaking distance of the British vessel, but when Clayton had nearly decided to ask the captain to put them aboard her, the obvious ridiculousness of such a request became suddenly apparent. What reason could he give the officer commanding her majesty’s ship for desiring to go back in the direction from which he had just come!
What if he told them that two insubordinate seamen had been roughly handled by their officers? They would but laugh in their sleeves and attribute his reason for wishing to leave the ship to but one thing—cowardice.
John Clayton, Lord Greystoke, did not ask to be transferred to the British man-of-war. Late in the afternoon he saw her upper works fade below the far horizon, but not before he learned that which confirmed his greatest fears, and caused him to curse the false pride which had restrained him from seeking safety for his young wife a few short hours before, when safety was within reach—a safety which was now gone forever.
It was mid-afternoon that brought the little old sailor, who had been felled by the captain a few days before, to where Clayton and his wife stood by the ship’s side watching the ever diminishing outlines of the great battleship. The old fellow was polishing brasses, and as he came edging along until close to Clayton he said, in an undertone: