The Pirate’s Life for Me
When I wrote my dissertation (a book-length document on the subject of my choice) as the last step toward earning my Ph.D. in literature, my dissertation director explained that a student’s choice of topic said something about her personality.
I think she brought that up because mine was sort of an unusual choice: eighteenth-century British pirates. And I’m pretty sure she wondered why I chose pirates given that I didn’t seem particularly pirate like.
I think of myself as a non-comformist in some ways. I do question authority. I make up my own mind. But I’m not a violent, rum-swilling, law-defying type of person.
Rather than conclude that my dissertation director was wrong — that my choice didn’t reflect my personality — I wondered why pirates for me, never coming to a satisfactory answer.
I finished the dissertation, writing about, among others, the two female pirates, Anne Bonny and Mary Read, and the famous Blackbeard. Anne and Mary cross-dressed to escape dull, conventional lives that held almost no economic opportunities. Blackbeard became infamous for the lit fuses he tucked in his beard to appear more fearsome when he boarded ships. He encouraged rumors that he was in league with the devil, and he reportedly once shot one of his own men as they sat playing cards — to remind his crew of who he was. He was a master at manipulating his image. He didn’t have to engage in too many fights because when the captured crews realized they were facing Blackbeard, they usually surrendered.
I continued writing about pirates after I graduated, but I still didn’t have the answer as to why I chose that topic.
After a while, I moved on from pirates to eighteenth-century Methodists. The connection seemed obvious to me, though, understandably, to no one else.
The texts written about pirates and Methodists during the eighteenth century are filled with incredible fear and anger. Pirates were hanged as warnings on the ends of docks in chains, left to rot and for birds to pick at their corpses. Methodists were attacked by mobs when they attempted to meet for worship.
So I was curious about why so much anger against these two groups. Yes, they called attention to flaws in the systems of power of the time, but collectively they were small groups and didn’t really threaten the everyday lives of most people.
Still, no answer to that other question: Why did I write about them?
Eventually, I moved on to Jane Austen and have been writing about her for a while. One question often asked about Austen is why is she so beloved this many years later. Why is an author who wrote six novels centuries ago so adored that there is a name for her fans — Janeites — who come together in all sorts of venues to celebrate her birthday with tea parties and her fiction with one annual conference that attracts about 800 participants, many wearing Regency costumes.
Maybe it’s because I ended up living in a pirate town on top of everything else, but as pirates invaded again for Gasparilla Day this year, I finally had an answer.
Whether it was pirates, Methodists, or Austen, what I really wanted to know is: what inspires hate or love?
And I wanted to know that not because I was a pirate but because I’d met the modern equivalents of Blackbeard too many times in my life.
What I really wanted to know was why I had been bullied, not once but repeatedly in my life.
Why did those modern Blackbeards need to remind themselves of who they were by taking their anger out on me?
Maybe writing about Austen currently is a good sign. The bullies, I’m happy to say, are more obvious to me now, and I’m doing a much better job of avoiding them. I’m also finally realizing that they bully because of their own pain and suffering, not because there’s anything wrong with me.
The question of how to cultivate love is certainly a better one than how to avoid hate.
I’m going to continue to dress up as a pirate on Halloween, channeling the modern and friendlier version of pirates found at Disney or once a year at Gasparilla.
I’m definitely going to read and love Austen for the rest of my life.
And my personal quest for knowledge will be how to cultivate the kind of love that produces compassion for all — even those Blackbeards.
