Henry Neville’s Critique of Patriarchal Monarchy and Its Republican Predicaments in The Isle of Pines
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Henry Neville’s The Isle of Pines (1668) starts with the story of George Pine, a castaway in an uncharted island in the Pacific Ocean, who establishes his tribal kingdom through his polygamous relationship with four other female survivors. To transmute himself from a biological father into a patriarch-monarch, George establishes formalized moral systems. George, an advocate of the divine right of kings, derives the foundation of his regal authority from God’s law, and continues to depend on the same law for the ongoing prosperity of his kingdom. The Pines’ kingdom, however, gradually falls into pieces after George’s demise. The island is torn by years of tribal feuds and domestic strifes until the rule of law, whether it be God’s law that sanctions George the first father’s kingship or a human statute his successor puts in place, no longer holds. By transforming George’s utopian dream into a floundering patriarchal system, Neville seems to provide a biting satire on Charles II’s restoration regime. As a salutary warning against a deepening crisis of patriarchal succession, Isle presents Neville’s republican anti-patriarchalism as a burlesques on the sacred account about the patriarchal genesis of national origin. Neville’s caricature, however, loses its critical edges when it becomes an oblique criticism. Instead of directly confronting the fundamental limitations of absolute monarchy, the author ascribes them to the moral failings of the insurgent mulatto tribe named Phills, whose racial alterity is regarded as engendering the nation’s moral degradation. With his exclusive racial logic, Neville betrays an anti-liberal bias that contradicts his republican beliefs; he demonizes the biracial Phills as enemies of the state who must be subjected to draconian penal codes and coercive authority.
Abstract
Henry Neville’s The Isle of Pines (1668) starts with the story of George Pine, a castaway in an uncharted island in the Pacific Ocean, who establishes his tribal kingdom through his polygamous relationship with four other female survivors. To transmute himself from a biological father into a patriarch-monarch, George establishes formalized moral systems. George, an advocate of the divine right of kings, derives the foundation of his regal authority from God’s law, and continues to depend on the same law for the ongoing prosperity of his kingdom. The Pines’ kingdom, however, gradually falls into pieces after George’s demise. The island is torn by years of tribal feuds and domestic strifes until the rule of law, whether it be God’s law that sanctions George the first father’s kingship or a human statute his successor puts in place, no longer holds. By transforming George’s utopian dream into a floundering patriarchal system, Neville seems to provide a biting satire on Charles II’s restoration regime. As a salutary warning against a deepening crisis of patriarchal succession, Isle presents Neville’s republican anti-patriarchalism as a burlesques on the sacred account about the patriarchal genesis of national origin. Neville’s caricature, however, loses its critical edges when it becomes an oblique criticism. Instead of directly confronting the fundamental limitations of absolute monarchy, the author ascribes them to the moral failings of the insurgent mulatto tribe named Phills, whose racial alterity is regarded as engendering the nation’s moral degradation. With his exclusive racial logic, Neville betrays an anti-liberal bias that contradicts his republican beliefs; he demonizes the biracial Phills as enemies of the state who must be subjected to draconian penal codes and coercive authority.
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