JOURNAL ARTICLE

Temperance, Slavery, and Reforming Excessive Appetite in White-Jacket and Moby-Dick.

  • Published In: Canadian Review of American Studies, 2025, v. 55, n. 1. P. 26 1 of 3

  • Database: Academic Search Ultimate 2 of 3

  • Authored By: Stewart, Carole Lynn 3 of 3

Abstract

This article examines how Herman Melville's novels *White-Jacket* (1850) and *Moby-Dick* (1851) redefine nineteenth-century temperance reform and self-restraint through the lens of biopolitical and civilizing processes aboard naval ships and in oceanic environments. It explores the regulation of appetite and addiction—particularly alcohol consumption—within the disciplinary regimes of the man-of-war, linking these to broader metaphors and realities of slavery, wage labor, and cannibalism. The analysis highlights how Melville situates temperance not merely as individual self-control but as embedded in social power, global capitalism, and environmental ethics shaped by the ocean's consuming forces. Ultimately, the works propose a temperate, reciprocal cosmology that negotiates human, cultural, and ecological relations amid the ocean's indeterminate and cannibalistic nature.

Additional Information

  • Source:Canadian Review of American Studies. 2025/04, Vol. 55, Issue 1, p26
  • Document Type:Literary Criticism
  • Subject Area:Literature and Writing
  • Publication Date:2025
  • ISSN:0007-7720
  • DOI:10.3138/cras-2025-002
  • Accession Number:185817850
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