Schoeck_2010_EnvyATheoryOfSocialBehaviour.pdf

164 THE ENVIOUS MAN IN FICTION
charged with that prime element of Radcliffian romance, the mysterious, as
any that the ingenuity of the author of The Mysteries of Udolpho could
devise. For what can more partake of the mysterious than an antipathy
spontaneous and profound, such as is evoked in certain exceptional mortals
by the mere aspect of some other mortal, however harmless he may be, if
not called forth by this very harmlessness itself?2
The novelist thus perceives something that the modern social scientist
is seldom able to perceive, because the latter seeks the primary cause of
evil outside the perpetrator. Envy, hatred and hostility may be provoked
in the aggressor while the man with whom the stimuli originated can in
no way prevent this from happening. Only self-disfigurement or selfabasement
might prevent envy in the other. With an understanding of the
problems of human relations on board a warship-problems which
modern small-group research, in costly and laborious experiments,
claims to have solved anew-Melville describes the social climate in
which the drama is played out:
Now there can exist no irritating juxtaposition of dissimilar personalities
comparable to that which is possible aboard a great warship fully manned
and at sea. There, every day among all ranks almost every man comes into
more or less of contact with almost every other man. Wholly there to avoid
even the sight of an aggravating object one must needs give it Jonah's toss or
jump overboard himself. Imagine how all this might eventually operate on
some peculiar human creature the direct reverse of a saint. 3
Many a novelist and most sociologists of our time would be content to
cut short the analysis of Claggart at this point. Melville continues: 'But
for the adequate comprehending of Claggart by a normal nature these
hints are insufficient. To pass from a normal nature to him one must
cross "the deadly space between." And this is best done by indirection.
,4
So far, Melville has not introduced the concept of envy or resentment.
He first recounts a conversation he had once had with a scholar on the
2 Op. cit., pp. 672 f.
3 Op. cit., p. 673.
4 Op. cit., p. 673.