Ahab’s W#e, or The Star-Gazer:
A Widerrneeper View of Melville’s Tragic Hero and His Times
Tom Matchie
In the opening pages of her novel, Ahab’s
Wife, Sena Jeter Naslund quotes Melville’s Moby-
Dick, where Captain Peleg says that “the old
man” Ahab has a young, “sweet, resigned wife”
and child; so he concludes, “Ahab has his human-
ities! (xvii-xviii). In her recent novel, Naslund lit-
erally recreates the mid-19th century world of
Herman Melville as a way of developing her idea
of that young wife, a perspective that includes
“Ahab’s humanities .,’ It is interesting that Lisa
Norling has just published Ahab Had a Wife
(2000), which is her thorough research of women
and the whalefishery in the mid-century. This is
an era to which Naslund in her novel Ahab’s Wife
is both faithful and transcends, as we shall see.
Naslund writes as though her protagonist were
living at that time; says Walter Schott, she
“brings the era of whaling ships and seafarers
alive” (1397), and she does it in “elegant prose
that is appropriate to the era” (PW 46-7). Still,
her perspective is postmodern. Bob Hughes
claims “its protagonist could only have been cre-
ated now, since she is so hyper-aware of social
ills and societal boundaries” (10E).
It is difficult, of course, to imagine Melville’s
Ahab as a humanitarian. Moby-Dick is basically
about (in Starbuck’s words) a “cruel, remorseless
emperor” possessed with getting revenge on a
white whale for having torn off his leg. But
Naslund expands on the character of Ahab in a
much wider sense than does Melville. And,
unlike him, she adds several women to her story,
though the most significant is Ahab’s wife, Una,
who as the title suggests, is a star-gazer. That title
is a key to the novel. In a negative way it may
imply a person who is “spaced out,” or unreal.
Walter Kern says she is more “a figure of univer-
sal femininity than a human being (65). That is
debatable, for it may also mean she simply has a
85
wider, more inclusive-and in some ways
deeper-vision of reality than her husband,
Captain Ahab. It is my claim that Una not only
expands on Melville’s vision of his times through
her travels on land, but in a psychologicaUmeta-
physical way she also counters Ahab’s single-
minded notion of reality at sea. Norling in her
examination of Victorian domesticity uses “the
metaphor of whaling to explore questions of self,
soul and humanity; of individual and community;
of man’s ability to control his own destiny”
(270). These are the very realities that Una
affirms in developing her complex relationship to
her husband before and after the demise of the
Pequod. Moreover, through her controversial
choices, she emerges as a contemporary woman
and thus a unique figure in recent American liter-
ature.
First, a word on Naslund. In the1980s, she
attended the Iowa Writer’s Workshop- as have
many noted American authors -and has since
published two novels and two collections of short
fiction. In a way, she has struggled with her writ-
ing much like Melville before completing her
latest and, as with him, her most energetic
attempt at creativity -the 668-page novel, Ahab’s
Wife. It is undoubtedly a woman’s perspective on
Melville’s classic all-male journey to subdue the
great white whale. But more than this, it is a
review of mid-19th century literary and cultural
history, as though the protagonist, Una Spenser,
were there herself. It is at once, says one critic, “a
seductive narrative,” that is “historically accu-
rate” (PW 340). Naslund teaches literature at the
University of Louisville, so it is no accident that
Una, named after the Spirit of Truth in Spenser’s
“Faire Queen,” is highly literate. In the course of
her journeys, by land and by sea, Una quotes, or
in some cases meets, American, British, and
86 . Journal of American and Comparative Cultures
world literary figures that help sustain her amid a
variety of horrific trials.
The author is a feminist in the sense that, no
matter what happens to Una, she is an exciting
person and always her unique self, making her
own decision to go to sea on a whaler disguised
as a cabin boy just prior to meeting Ahab. Here
one is reminded of Melville’s Redburn, only in
this case “the youngster” is a girl. Other charac-
ters admire Una for her knowledge and philo-
sophic views, her spiritual (though non-denomi-
national) energy and optimism, her devotion to
others, no matter their religion, politics, or sexual
preference. It is no doubt a romantic tale. Norling
shows that, after the Revolution, the Quaker hold
on women associated with whalers tended to dis-
sipate as values associated with romanticism and
transcendentalism took root ( 195). Naslund’s
story is consistent with this trend, for Una,
though intellectually curious about different reli-
gious theory and practice, remains unattached to
any one group. And though skilled in the domes-
tic arts, in her travels she explores other areas,
like science and professional art, just as she
relates -personally and sexually -to different
kinds of males and females. In these ways the
author’s tale, rooted in both literature and cultural
history, challenges Moby Dick as a significant
contribution to literary thought and style.
But does it work? Pic0 Iyer thinks that
Naslund, especially when at sea,
matches the master, Melville, in all his unearthly poetry
and unworldly philosophizing, following him not just
into the details of harpooning and coffin-shaped beds,
but also into bloodshed and delirium and diabolism.
Grace Fill says it is a complex, sophisticated
work, brilliantly written, that seems “more real
than fictional,” since Naslund includes not only
fictional characters, but fictionalized real ones,
like Hawthorne, Emerson, and Margaret Fuller,
as she travels on land through the Northeast.
Other critics appear enamored by the book’s plot
that, though occasionally hackneyed, is so
absorbing that Vanessa Friedman says the author
somehow makes “an art out of hokeyness” ( 1 ) .
There are those, of course, who think the book is
a kind of joke. Laura Shapiro contends that
Naslund’s personal agenda is “slathered all over
Ahab’s Wife,” for Una is a pacifist, a feminist, an
abolitionist, and unreservedly accommodating to
gays. For Francine Prose the book has some
“beautiful prose laden with symbolism,” but
because of the plethora of issues it “fails to rend
the heart” ( 2 ) .Nobody is more critical, however,
than Tom LeClair, himself an American literature
teacher, who says the book, though well re-
searched, is more about politics and economics
than Moby-Dick. For him, Ahab’s Wife is overly
sentimental, falls short on the details of whaling,
and never engages the metaphysical battles that
Ahab fought. In the end, says LeClair, it “lacks
Melville’s intellectual adventuring and aesthetic
originality” ( 2 ) .
My own view is that Naslund’s work is no
Muby-Dick, though, as we shall see, not because
the author fails to challenge Melville’s meta-
physics and style, but because as a star-gazer-a
highly symbolic term-Una widens and in some
sense deepens Melville’s vision of reality. In both
social and psychological ways she does address
the problem of evil, and often I think in heart-
rending ways. The plot is obviously captivating;
some call it “suspenseful, affecting, seductive”
(PW 340); Pic0 says it possesses the reader “like
an unholy fever.” Literarily, it mimics Melville
with its passionate letters, provocative mono-
logues, and significant poetry, though, given the
book’s length, it admittedly drags on, sometimes
in superficial ways. Perhaps it covers too much
territory, but because of this Naslund is able to
give a breadth to her perspective obviously not
attempted in Melville. The issues Naslund raises
may be self-serving as a female writer, but it is
not the fact that she raises them, but how she con-
nects them, that gives the book that wider, inclu-
sive-and often provocative-viewpoint. But,
most of all, the book succeeds because of the
characterization of Una. Starr Smith calls her
“one of the most independent and intelligent
voices to appear in recent historical fiction”
(234). Apart from her poetry, politics and aesthet-
ics, she is a relational, other-centered individual,
who does something Ahab in Moby-Dick does
not. She creates a kind of global community, one
that not only includes, as Starbuck says, “the
hearth,” but humankind in general, whatever
one’s pain or sorrow.
Some think the book stands on its own, and
doesn’t even need Ahab (Kern 66), but that is
questionable, for one telling aspect of the book is

related to how Una accepts but differs from
people who are possessed in some single way,
like the later Ahab. The Ahab Naslund creates has
two sides -the one before encountering the white
whale and the one after. From Melville we know
only the one after, the one possessed, but Naslund
develops an earlier Ahab who surprises us. With
that Ahab, whom Naslund creates “from scratch”
(Friedman), Una enters into a surprising love
relationship only hinted at in Melville when
Peleg mentions Ahab’s wife, or when Starbuck
talks about home, the importance of the hearth, in
short, the meaning of love. Here Norling’s work
is important, for she points out that, though
women by and large remained faithful to their
men, Victorian domesticity essentially failed.
When the men went to sea, for instance, their
women became involved in social reform, aboli-
tion, temperance and women’s rights (222). Una
becomes involved in all of these when Ahab is at
s e a , though she always remains his “sweet,
resigned wife.” For so m e her romance is
“sugary,” (PW 34); for others the union works
because they both have passionate tempers and a
stubborn tenacity (Burkhardt 141). But it is really
Una’s story, and underneath all of her journeys,
thoughts, and beautiful writing is that feminine
quality that goes beyond her marriage to Ahab. It
is related to her care for people, symbolized by
her sewing, that ties the book together. Kern
relates her quilting to the structure of the book, a
kind of “creating harmony from scraps” (66). But
on the symbolic level, Una’s is a wide perspec-
tive that makes the novel a literary success in
spite of its faults. In one critic’s words, Una is a
global personality who “typifies and transcends
her times” (PW 340).
A brief look at the plot. The novel begins with
Una giving birth in Louisville (Naslund’s home
territory) to Ahab’s child, Liberty, who dies, as
does her mother seeking help during a storm.
Ironically, a black woman, Susan, escaping
bounty hunters, helps her in the birthing. Later
she in turn helps Susan escape to the north, like
Stowe’s Eliza stepping on ice over the Ohio-one
of the many parallels the author uses to pick up
on other fiction of the era, indeed of all time. This
beginning gives Naslund a context for starting to
address slavery, or abolition-a burning issue at
the time. Then the book flashes back to Una’s
adolescence, where she is horrified by her father’s
Ahab’s Wife or The Star Gazer 87
abusive, dogmatic approach to Christianity,
because of which her mother sends her to live
with an aunt, uncle, and younger cousin, Frannie,
in Nantucket. This break furnishes the author
with a context for her critique of mid-19th cen-
tury religion. Later, Una will meet and discuss the
subject with Unitarians, Universalists, and
Quakers, though she always remains her own
spiritual guide. It also lets the author switch to the
northeast, a literary hotbed where she will meet
various literary greats, especially her feminist
idol, Sarah Margaret Fuller. In “Woman in the
Nineteenth Century,” Fuller argues for the inde-
pendence of women, asking them to follow “their
own experience and intuition” (1715). This is
exactly what Una will do out east. The change to
Nantucket also places her next to the sea where
she will eventually meet Ahab. Una lives in a
lighthouse where she has some telling experi-
ences, including a bout with an eagle and tempo-
rary blindness following a lightning flash. The
eagle may be an equivalent to Ahab’s struggle
with Moby-Dick, as her blindness suggests a
corollary to his mental blindness regarding the
white whale. Una, however, transcends her strug-
gles to find wider views of reality.
At the lighthouse she also meets two key
characters, Kit and Giles, who are fitting the
place with a Frensel lens, a scientific advance-
ment of the time. Later, she meets Maria Mitch-
ell, an astronomer seeking to discover a new
comet at about the time of the appearance of
Haley’s comet. These events, while incidental,
add to the sense of the times, about which Una is
always curious, always expanding her vision -up
as well as out. But Kit and Giles are more impor-
tant because of their continuing relationship to
Una. As a sixteen-year-old, she journeys to New
Bedford where she joins the crew as a cabin boy
on a whaler, the Sussex, on which Kit and Giles
are also employed. Though a little far-fetched as
it is sometimes humorous-it’s difficult for her to
urinate in the presence of men-this adventure
enables her to elaborate on the business of whal-
ing. In effect, this makes her an equal of Ahab
(and Melville) on the details of that business,
though some critics deny this c l a i m . Here
Naslund also develops Una’s special talent- she
has an unusual eye for seeing things, like stars
and whales; symbolically it also speaks of her
keen insight into people.
88 . Journal of American and Comparative Cultures
Eventually, she is discovered by her two
friends, cementing their tri-part and sometimes
homosexual relationship; it is an experience quite
different from monogamy (her marriage to Ahab),
but important in defining Una’s overall character.
The three end up together in a boat after ship-
wreck by a black whale-a deliberate twist on
Moby-Dick, because however horrendous the
event, they survive, even having to eat the flesh
of others, that of the captain of the Sussex and his
son. Naslund is fond of such difficult ethical situ-
ations, for it means people have to make judg-
ments in difficult circumstances, whatever their
religious tenants, be it Quaker, Transcendental, or
whatever. These are the kind of contexts that
make Una unique and her story postmodern.
Truly, Una is a survivor, always thinking, always
choosing, never locked into a single view-as, of
course, is Melville’s Ahab. The fact that this
whale is black rather than white may also suggest
a deeper psychological level on which Una oper-
ates, as we shall see.
The three are picked up by the AZba Albatross -
a name reminiscent of Coleridge’s “Ancient
Mariner,” which is more important to Una than
religion, for poetry helps her deal with her guilt
in a human way. Actually, she will confess her
cannibalism to Charlotte (a woman who wanted
to marry Kit, and later follows him into the
wilderness), and Judge Lord, an understanding
figure on shore who cares for her in a fatherly
way - something she never had in Louisville.
Una simply inspires intimacy; Ahab does not.
The novel is also filled with literary connections,
a concern Una learned from her mother and
which Naslund uses in many contexts to expand
on Una’s view of the universe. In one case Una
sees herself as Shakespeare’s Cordelia from King
Lear, for she is constantly dealing with mad-
ness-her father’s, later Kit’s, and then Ahab’s.
Whatever its form, however, she is not done in by
it, as is Cordelia, but continues to transcend its
effect. Once rescued at sea, Una is transferred to
the Pequod, where she meets her future husband,
but not before marrying Kit. Giles mysteriously
commits suicide by jumping from a mast, a sad
moment for the other two, but indicative of
another male’s blindness, or inability to deal with
tragedy, like cannibalism on the lifeboat and Kit’s
desire for anal sex. Una, by contrast, comforts
Kit, even obliges him sexually in a way Giles
would not, and finally allows Ahab to marry them
to save Kit’s mind, though he goes gradually
mad. Here again, Una goes beyond society’s
moral boundaries and hence emerges as postmod-
ern, that is, quite different from the 19th century
wife portrayed by Norling in her research on the
period. Naslund uses Kit’s madness as a kind of
parallel to Ahab’s later on. Ironically, Ahab sees
Kit’s madness clearly and accommodates the
man, but later is blind to his own when losing a
limb to Moby Dick.
After returning to Nantucket, Una shares her
experiences with Charlotte, who has now married
Mr. Hussey, though she had always loved Kit,
whom she now thinks is dead. Una shares with
many in the novel, women and men, which sets
her apart from Ahab. But it is Ahab who most
accommodates Una, at least initially. As I have
said, there are really two Ahabs in the novel. The
former is a gentleman of the first class. On the
Pequod he takes care of Kit and Una, offering
them his own cabin. When the trip is over, he
sees that Kit receives some pay, which helps the
couple survive on shore. Then Kit is jailed, and
later at the instigation of Testego-one of Ahab’s
harpooners-goes to live with the Indians. Here
the suggestion is that Natives are more equipped
to deal with mental illness than whites, whose
only recourse is jail. But now Una and Ahab are
free to marry, and the love relationship between
the two on shore is carefully though indirectly
developed through separate monologues and inti-
mate conversations. In the process, he inadver-
tently calls Una his “spring,” while she instinc-
tively refers to him as “brother.” After Kit’s
departure, he sets her up with a house, money,
and contacts to make her life comfortable. Later,
his letters betray a man truly in love, and in this
sense the novel as romance succeeds. This is a
surprising Ahab, one that moves even the materi-
alist Peleg, who owns the Pequod, to claim that
even Ahab “has his humanities.”
When Ahab leaves after impregnating Una,
she returns to Louisville to give birth, and we are
back to the beginning of the book, though only
half through its pages. Norling, in Ahab Had a
Wife, also mentions that it was not unusual for
whalers’s wives to remain with their parents
when their men were at sea (223). After a roman-
tic time following the second voyage, Ahab
impregnates Una with Justice. Liberty and

Justice, of course, are names that for the author
seem to be more personal pleas than realities in
pre-Civil War America. This new meeting is pre-
ceded by love letters that define an Ahab that is
not only an intelligent, powerful captain, but one
who is highly literate, one who looks at Una as
“his equal,” and being with her the goal of his
life. In short, Una is “una,” the one, though a
woman and an unusual one at that. On the third
voyage that changes, for now he loses his leg to
Moby-Dick, and this is the kind of man she and
the four-year-old Justice meet on his return.
Though Una responds to her husband as before,
as personalities they now emerge antithetical.
While he has narrowed his focus on the whale,
she is ever expanding her experience and knowl-
edge of people and reality. On the fourth voyage
he dies, though Una receives more information
about the Pequod from different ships- the
Jeroboam, the Samuel Enderby, the Delight-
each providing some details of Ahab’s preoccupa-
tion with the whale and the eventual destruction
of the Pequod. Now she is alone again to refash-
ion her life in an environment far from her origi-
nal home and family.
So what about Una as a character? And how
does she contrast to Melville’s Ahab? After Ahab
leaves on the second voyage, she visits Boston
and meets Margaret Fuller, the mid-19th century
writer and feminist through whom Una learns
about Emerson and Transcendentalism- which
Fuller challenges. This is Una’s kind of woman,
for she has wide ranging experiences and tackles
many subjects in her writing. From Una’s view,
the philosophy of Emerson is too narrow because
it lacks heart. Heart is something that several of
the women in Una’s life do have, including Mrs.
Macy, who gives Una a job sewing to keep her
occupied on shore, similar to her job patching
men’s garments for another woman, Sallie of the
Alba Albatross, following the wreck of the
Sussex. Again, for Norling there are examples of
women joining their husbands at sea (240). On
the subject of slavery, Frannie, Una’s cousin and
prottgC, meets Frederick Douglas and goes west
to work on abolition, which is a tribute to Una
and her influence. Before and after Ahab’s death,
Una keeps touch with Susan, who returns to the
South to help her mother. This woman (like
Ahab) lost a leg to the bounty hunters, so she
cannot escape; but she is no Uncle Tom, and nei-
Ahab’s Wife or The Star Gazer . 89
ther is Susan an Eliza, for she returns to help her
mother in a region still “unfree” of white
Christian slaveholders.
Una also has an influence on David Poland,
the bounty hunter who helps her journey to the
north after losing Liberty. Later this man, a
dwarf-so different from Melville’s Stubb, who
unthinkingly follows Ahab’s single-minded, dia-
bolic quest-changes and begins to help slaves
escape. Una also becomes interested, not only in
the scientist Maria Mitchell and her passion for
comets, but Robyn Allen, a male artist who sculp-
tures busts. His art tells her something about
beauty in a different way from poetry and fiction.
Beauty for Una as a star-gazer is part of life, one
that helps transcend horrendous experiences and
violent people. It is part of her spiritual approach
to the universe at large. In short, Una is more
than Ahab’s wife, and there is more to her life
than love and marriage. There is the whole con-
text of the mid-19th century, when great thinkers
and writers are afoot and Una, the star-gazer,
would be part of it all. Hughes calls her a “yearn-
ing, spiritual, truthful, tolerant, even ernest” char-
acter who “fully inhabits the teeming, richly real-
ized 19th century.”
What really gives value to Naslund’s vision is
the fact she, like Melville, is a writer, as is
Ishmael, whom Una meets late in the novel and
with whom she is with at the end. It is interesting
to review recent critics of Moby-Dick, for much
of what they say might apply to Naslund/Una as
writer and truth-seeker. Though Robert Lee sees
Moby-Dick as an organic whole- the story, the
details on whaling, the metaphysics (“The Tale”
125-26)-others say that structurally it remains
“an awkward and sometimes sloppy book”
(Davis 22). Hayfold shows how the work
changed considerably in its writing. Originally
Peleg was to captain the Pequod, before the task
was reassigned to Ahab (13 1-140). So one cannot
be too critical of the structure of Ahab’s Wife. As
the reader works through Naslund’s, really Una’s ,
many journeys, one might get lost in characters,
subplots, or ideas, but they do work together in
the end. Though criticized because the book is
long and sometimes boring, one can also argue
that like Melville she puts together, as Lee argues
of Moby-Dick, a tri-part scenario-a story, details
about whaling, and a search for truth (cf.
“Anatomy” 78). For Naslund these include: a
90 . Journal of American and Comparative Cultures
journey (by sea, but also by land), scientific facts
(about whaling, but also astronomy), and meta-
physics (descriptions of evil acts, including the
misuse of religion, slavery, the abuse of women,
problems within marriage, but also tragic aspects
related to homosexuality and single life beyond
marriage).
But what about Ahab’s Wife as a search for
truth-what for Melville is reaching “behind the
mask.’’ Davis claims that Moby-Dick is really
about a whale, not primarily Ahab, and that
Ahab’s desire to “reach beyond the mask” is
really the effect of a troubled man, rather than the
desire of a truth seeker to discover the nature of
evil (9). Adamson psychoanalyzes those troubles,
that is, his madness as guilt coupled with shame.
For him, Ahab’s loss of a leg is symbolic of his
lost stature; the guilt limits his strength and the
shame covers his weakness (102). Davis adds that
it is Ahab’s lack of a sense of the body, “first
physically, then mentally, that drives him mad.”
He says this “self-destructive sterility’’ is founded
on an idea of the whale rather than the real nature
of the whale, that Ahab fails to accept the corpo-
reality of Moby-Dick, in fact, what he calls the
“lower stratum” of reality which excites and
appeals (cf. 8-9).
All this is important because Naslund is
involved in a search for truth too, as a writer, but
also as a philosopher, though she does it in a dif-
ferent and wider way. It is about how a woman
relates to a man, but more than this, how one
relates to reality itself -nature, people, and ideas.
Regarding the meaning of evil, Lee claims
Melville thought true reality was ultimately inde-
cipherable, that it lies hidden behind Melville’s
layers of mask and emblem (“The Tale” 15). In
this sense, Melville goes beyond Ahab’s troubles
to Ishmael’s total perspective. While Melville
may admittedly be more profound in his ambigu-
ity, or the doubleness whereby he treats the mys-
tery of evil overall, Naslund is more direct,
descriptive, or sociological, though the psycho-
logical and moral implications are there. Ahab’s
Wife certainly speaks to the nature of evil-Una
has to deal with eating another human’s flesh,
unnatural sexual acts, and the reality of suicide,
all of which she is a part. But what is more to the
point, if Moby-Dick is about madness in the sense
that it is a preoccupation with a single, irrational
goal, Una has to deal with after effects of that
madness rather than what actually causes it.
Initially, she leaves a violent father, whom
she loves, and even takes his name, Ulysses, as a
cabin boy on the Sussex. After Kit loses his mind
on that ship, she feels obliged to stay faithful to
him. Back on shore, she relates in a loving way to
Charlotte, who feels she must leave her marriage
to pursue a single-minded end -Kit among the
Indians. She stays responsive to Ahab, even
though he puts the whale above their relationship.
Though Una does not go into a psychoanalysis of
guilt and shame, she does wrestle with the effects
of people possessed with one thing. But there is a
deeper aspect to these different preoccupations. If
Ahab really fails to acknowledge any corporeal-
ity, or the lower stratum of reality, as Melville’s
critics say, this is exactly what Una is able to do.
From the time she is abused by a headstrong
father through her marriage to the single-minded
Ahab, she struggles with “the body” in many
senses. Ironically, she is not only a star gazer, but
someone who does not shy away from eating
flesh or having unnatural sex when the case
demands. Actually, the black whale, in contrast to
Ahab’s white whale, is symbolically the differ-
ence between operating only from the head, and
the ability to live deeply when the situation
demands. That is what Una is about.
In conclusion, this book is about a woman
who meets the challenge, not only of a whale, but
of a century. Like Ishmael, whom she meets in
the end, she is a writer who sees things whole.
Her relationship with Ishmael remains undevel-
oped, though they are soulmates in a way Ahab
might have been, but chose otherwise. Critics of
Moby-Dick see Ishmael as the real thought-diver
(Lebowitz 143), as the one who in contrast to
Ahab not only describes in poetic terms Bulking-
ton’s soliloquy on landlessness, or in a comic
way the view of Capt. Boomer on the Samuel
Enderby, but rises at the end to put in perspective
others’ views, like that of Quequeg (whose reli-
gion is more “Christian” than the Christians), and
Starbuck (who though weak knows the impor-
tance of the hearth). Una is like that. In Ahab’s
W i f e , Naslund employs many of Melville/
Ishmael’s techniques, from multiple-narrators , to
Shakespearean asides, to scientific descriptions to
tell her story. In this way, says LeClair, she has
done her research well ( I ) , and those who read
Norling would find that she reflects in many
ways the changing role of women in the 19th

century. But unlike Melville’s Ahab, Una is not
single-minded, nor merely intellectual, nor only
an unconditional lover, but a whole person, a
writer who lives what she says, and with Ishmael
survives at the end to “tell her story.”
Works Cited
Adamson, Joseph. Melville, Shame, and the Evil Eye: A
Psychoanalytic Reading. Albany: SUNY, 1997.
Davis, Clark. After the Whale: Melville in the Wake of
Moby-Dick. Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P, 1995.
Friedman, Vanessa V. “Review of AhabS Wife, by Sena
Jeter Naslund.” Entertainment Weekly (8 Oct. 1999):
66+.
Fill Grace. Review of Ahab’s Wife, by Sena Jeter
Naslund. Booklist 95.22 (August 1999): 1988 .
Fuller, Sarah Margaret. “Woman in the Nineteenth
Century.” The Heath Anthology of American
Literature Vol. 1, ed. Paul Lautner. New York:
Houghton Mifflin, 1998. 1714-35.
Hughes, Bob. Review of Ahab’s Wife, by Sena Jeter
Naslund. Wall Street Journal (24 Sept. 1999): col5.
Iyer, Pico. Review of Ahab’s Wife, by Sena Jeter
Naslund. Time (25 Oct. 1999): 128.
Kirn, Walter. Review of Ahab’s Wife, by Sena Jeter
Naslund. New York (8 Nov. 1999): 65-6.
Lebowitz, Alan. Progress Into Silence: A Study of
Melville ’s Heroes. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1970.
LeClair, Tom. Review of Ahab’s Wife, by Sena Jeter
Naslund. Nation (1 3 Dec. 1999): 44
Ahab’s Wge or The Star Gazer 91
Lee, Robert E. “Moby-Dick as Anatomy.” Herman
Melville Reassessments. ed. Robert E . Lee. Totowa:
Barnes and Noble, 1984.68-89.
-. “Moby-Dick: The Tale and the Telling.” New
Perspectives on Melville. ed. Faith Pullin. Kent:
Kent SUP, 1978.86-127.
Melville, Herman. Moby-Dick. New York: W. W.
Norton, 1967.
-. Redburn: His First Voyage. Garden City: Anchor
Books, 1957.
Mottram, Eric. “ ‘Grown in America’: Moby-Dick and
Melville’s Sense of Control.” Herman Melville
Reassessments. ed. Robert E . Lee. Totowa: Barnes
and Noble, 1984.90-115.
Naslund, Sena Jeter. Ahab’s Wife, or The Star-Gazer.
New York: William Morrow, 1999.
Norling, Lisa. Captain Ahab Had a Wife: New England
Women & the Whalefishery, 1720-1870. Chapel
Hill: U of North Carolina P, 2000,
Prose, Francine. Review of Ahab’s Wife, by Sena Jeter
Naslund. People Weekly (29 Nov. 1999): 63+.
Review of Ahab’s Wife, by Sena Jeter Naslund.
Publishers Weekly (9 Aug. 1999): 340.
Shapiro, Laura. Review of Ahab’s Wife, by Sena Jeter
Naslund. Newsweek (7 Sept. 1999): 67.
Smith, Starr E. Review of Ahab’s Wife, by Sena Jeter
Naslund. Library Journal (1 Sept. 1999): 234.
Tom Matchie teaches American Literature i n the
English Department at North Dakota State University in
Fargo, North Dakota. He has published numerous arti-
cles, focusing on multicultural and midwestern authors.