A Whale in a China Shop

     One of the key questions which apparently keep rising during our Melville discourse is 'where are all the women in his fiction?' Looking into Elizabeth Rinker's starting point in "Wife Beating and the Written Page" It seems that all the women in Melville's life including his own mother have hated him for his alleged abusive violent nature. Therefore it shouldn't be a surprise that he has deliberately neglected women by leaving them out of his fiction. However, if considering Rinker's further analysis, it appears that it has been Melville who has feared women for their angelic pure nature, to the extent of not trusting himself to write about them.

     Assuming he has been a violent drunk husband/father, as secret as it might have been, we may question if his actions to be conscious or not while performing such abusive acts. Was he acting out of conscious cruelty, or out of unconsciousness alcohol intoxication? If unconsciousness was the case, could it have been a hidden fear of women leading into unconscious kind of twisted self-defensive/defensive acts?

     If Melville has come to a conscious realization he himself might be a danger to women in his non-fictional world, than it may explain why he has excluded them from his fictional world, since we may assume this was the only place he could control his actions and thus avoid harming them.  

     And so, ironic and absurd as it might seem, I believe it is not the large white whale who may harm the tiny delicate china doll, if to borrow the phrase 'like an elephant in a china shop.' If we take the white whale to be the angelic female, than it would be more likely that the china doll might be the one capable of harming the large whale.  Of course Melville or Ahab for that matter would be the doll, and so nevertheless they may fear both ways.  For once, they may fear to be harmed by the intimidating creature. Secondly, they may fear of becoming a danger to a tortured creature themselves.