Reviews of Books

Captain Ahab Had a Wife, Lisa Norling's wonderful book about the New England whalefishery, is replete with people and paradoxes. It examines men and women who subscribed to a common gender ideology but encountered grave difficulties in acting out their assigned roles because of economic forces that demanded unusual compromises of them. Norling turns dependence and independence upside down, posing men dependent on the whims of a capricious ocean against women independent of ordinary marital constraints. In exploring the evolution of the whaling industry, Norling persuasively shows how gender and the economy were inextricably linked.	1
Norling describes how Quaker entrepreneurs on Nantucket, seizing opportunities generated by the demand for whale oil, bone, and candles, initiated the whaling industry in the 1720s. By midcentury, whaling dominated the Nantucket economy. In turn, Nantucket's fleet commanded the American whalefishery. In the early years of whaling, sloops patrolled nearby waters, and voyages lasted several weeks. A century later, after New Bedford had overtaken Nantucket in the industry, whalers might not return for years, during which time they sought the increasingly elusive creatures as far away as the Falkland Islands or the coast of Africa. As the deep-sea fishery replaced offshore whaling, the shift dramatically affected families whose livelihood depended on a successful venture.	2
Much of what Norling discusses in the early pages of the book will be familiar to readers, since most of the colonial mainland seaports were organized in similar fashion. "Maritime paternalism" (p. 35) was pervasive, a necessary feature of societies where husbands and fathers were away for months or even years. At the same time, Norling highlights the central role of the Society of Friends in the formation and organization of the colonial whaling fleet and confirms the importance of Quaker networks to the success of business enterprises.	3
While certain Quaker beliefs were shared by non-Quakers on the mainland, according to Norling, Quakers emphasized frugality, orderliness, sobriety, and business consciousness to a greater degree than their Yankee neighbors. Members of the Society shunned outward displays and put a premium on simplicity and self-discipline. Their reputation for benevolence was widely known. And during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, they passed these qualities on to their children. Because Quakers dominated Nantucket "numerically, politically, and culturally" (p. 63), social pressure to ensure conformity was largely successful.	4
By the Revolution, consumerism had made inroads even among the plain people, and a strong reform movement in the 1770s failed to rebuff the incursion of worldly values. Music, dancing, and card playing challenged Quaker tenets, and although prosecutions for breaches of discipline led to an increasing number of disownments, reformers were unable to reinvigorate the dedication of the movement's early years. The ways of the Friends had become irrelevant to the majority of people on Nantucket.	5
The whaling industry suffered during the Revolution but rebounded in the 1780s. Crews were recruited from the mainland, creating an ethnic and religious diversity that reduced the Society of Friends to 10 percent of the island's population. Such worldliness brought new ideas, behavior, and culture, to the distress of the remaining Quaker leadership. Even the readership of traditional religious tracts declined as sentimental novels and poetry gained in popularity. In these romantic works, writers emphasized the senses rather than reason, enthusiasm rather than moderation, unfettered freedom rather than personal restraint. Predictably, love, courtship, and marriage took their cues from the new values being promulgated through such literature.	. . .