Romancing the Pacific Isles before Byron: Music, Sex, and Death in Mitford's Christina

Abstract

Mary Russell Mitford's four-canto romance poem of 1811, Christina, the Maid of the South Seas , dramatizes the early history of Pitcairn Island, the destination of mutineers and Tahitian exiles following the mutiny on the HMS Bounty . Mitford's adaptation of Pitcairn's early history is unusual in exposing memories of a racial and sexual conflict that destroyed most of the original male founders. Within Christina , Pitcairn's traumatic memory is staged for its first outside visitors in song and oral narration. Mitford's attention to musical performance poses a Romantic tension between verbal authority and nonverbal resistance, echoed in Byron's The Island of 1823.

Mitford vs. Hemans: Resisting the “Omnipotence of Words” in Dramatic Romance and Romantic Drama

“…Especially marked in this poem is Christina's extreme passivity in relation to the commanding patriarch, Fitzallan (Addison 73, Beshero‐Bondar “Romancing,” 28–31). Though Henry verbally challenges Fitzallan's authority in Canto IV, Christina shies away from direct confrontation, preferring instead her solitary music.…”

“…Both parents are long dead by the present time of the poem and the subjects of extensive retrospection within it. Christina Christian is the meek antitype of her bold Polynesian mother, whom Christina mourns in tears and music throughout the poem, seeking isolation in the quiet site of Iddeah's grave (Beshero‐Bondar “Romancing,” 277–308). Mitford applies the fictitious name Fitzallan to the last surviving mutineer who now governs the Pitcairn Island community and serves as Christina Christian's adoptive father.…”