Book Review: Hornblower and the Hotspur

We begin Hornblower and the Hotspur with Horatio Hornblower standing at the altar with his blushing bride Maria, desperately informing himself that they’re not married just yet! There’s still time to run for it! Only he can’t bring himself to commit the cruel act of leaving her at the altar, so instead he stands there like a lump and gets married.

This is one of the most inexplicable marriages I’ve ever encountered in fiction. It appears that Maria confessed her love for Hornblower and Hornblower was unable to think of any response except “Will you marry me?”, despite the fact that he doesn’t love her, in fact doesn’t think he should ever marry, and lives in dread of passing his temperament on to his children. (I should note that he is in no way honor bound to her before the wedding: she’s not pregnant with his child and he didn't seduce her. He didn't even flirt with her! He just existed in her general vicinity and she fell for him.)

He then spends the rest of the book asking himself “What would a good husband do?” and then enacting the part of a good husband, in much the way that he sometimes enacts the part of a good captain.

littlerhymes and I discussed many possible explanations for Hornblower’s behavior, none of which were entirely satisfactory, but to be fair, what WOULD be a satisfactory explanation?

1. Hornblower is a deeply closeted gay man who is marrying Maria for reasons of social pressure. However, there seem to be plenty of bachelors in the Navy, so it’s unclear how much social pressure he would actually be experiencing, especially since he seems to have no family clamoring for grandchildren/an heir.

(Whether or not he’s gay, there is alas little evidence here that he sees Bush as more than an excellent lieutenant, although Bush is clearly still nuts about Hornblower. The bit where Hornblower fails to mention his own act of heroism in a letter to the Gazette and Bush is like “It isn’t RIGHT, sir.” And also the bit where Bush is tells Hornblower he’s worried about Hornblower’s health and Hornblower is like who cares about this SACK of MEAT that is my BODY.)

2. Hornblower is SO deeply repressed that he can’t cope with the fact that he is experiencing the weakness of having a human emotion (“love”), but actually does love Maria on some level. He keeps feeling surprising upswellings of tenderness for her. Also, he castigates himself severely every time he DOES experience an emotion (or also human weaknesses like “sleepiness” or “hunger”), which I feel has probably damaged his ability to recognize emotions at all.

But even if he loves her, he clearly doesn’t have a lot of respect for her. Might love her purely in the sense of feeling an animal attraction, and also gratitude for the fact that someone cares about him? He muses at one point that it’s strange to be going to sea with someone on land who gives a damn about him.

3. Hornblower doesn’t think that he deserves nice things, so he marries Maria to make sure that he will have a wife who is ill-suited to him, as he deserves.

Oh, also there are some sea battles and stuff. Hornblower is sent with the fleet to capture some Spanish ships carrying a fortune and then has to hare off chasing another ship at the opportune moment so he doesn’t get a share of the massive amount of prize money. But then the Crown takes the money anyway so he actually would have gotten nothing even if he had been there.

I’m pretty sure these Spanish treasure ships formed the basis for a similar incident near the end of Post Captain, only you better believe Jack Aubrey was on hand to win his part of the prize money. I finished Post Captain confident than Jack could pay off his debts and marry Sophie, but now it looks like maybe he won’t be getting the money after all…?

We will find out in HMS Surprise, but not for about a week, as I am setting off on a trip to Massachusetts on Wednesday! littlerhymes and I will resume our sailing voyages once I return.