Usually as the result of a domestic crisis, sometimes because of the death of a parent
or a decline in the family fortunes, the hero leaves home and undertakes a long and
hazardous journey—to seek other relations, or to repair his fortunes elsewhere. The whole
family emigrate after losing their estate in Marryat’s The Settlers in Canada, but it is also
common for the hero to be an orphan as in G.M. Fenn’s Nat the Naturalist (1883), or to
lose his father early in the story, as Dick Varley does in Ballantyne’s The Dog Crusoe
(1861).
The settings of adventure stories are usually unfamiliar and often exotic. Those in
Britain focus on out-of-the-way places such as the New Forest or the Scottish Highlands,
but normally the hero’s journey takes him even further, sometimes overseas to
European wars, but more frequently to the desert or bush of Africa, the snowy wastes of
Canada or the jungles of South America. These unusual and dangerous locations, as
well as adding drama to the story, often act in a quasi-symbolical way to reinforce the
sense of moral obstacles which the young hero struggles to overcome.
The hero often acquires a faithful companion during the journey, sometimes in the
shape of a surrogate father, such as the old servant Jacob Armitage in Marryat’s The
Children of the New Forest, or sometimes a friendly native, following the precedent of
Man Friday, who can speak the language and knows the local customs, such as
Makarooroo in Ballantyne’s The Gorilla Hunters (1861). Although average in many ways,
the hero often possesses some special asset which proves invaluable on his journey.
Henty’s heroes often have a remarkable facility for acquiring foreign languages as well as
an extraordinary aptitude for disguise, while Captain Good’s possession of false teeth
and an Almanack prove to be unexpectedly useful physical assets in King Solomon’s
Mines.
As the hero continues his journey, all kinds of complications and difficulties threaten
the Quest—shipwreck, attacks by cannibals, treachery. In Rider Haggard’s Allan
Quatermain (1887), for instance, the hero canoes down a dangerous river, rescues a
missionary’s daughter from kidnappers, is swept under a volcanic rock, and survives an
attack of giant crabs, before finally becoming engulfed in a civil war. The story thus rises
by a series of minor crises to a great climax, which is often a ferocious battle against
bloodthirsty antagonists.
Normally the hero survives, and the end of the story sees him rewarded with wealth
and honour. This is sometimes more than the conventional ‘happy ending’, however, as
if the author, having shown how the hero has proved himself through enduring various
trials on his quest, and discovered his real worth, deserves symbolic proof of this. The
young hero generally discovers the truth about his family, and so his real identity, in
such stories as Kingston’s In the Eastern Seas (1871) and Stevenson’s Kidnapped. More
usually, however, the hero returns home laden with great wealth to be warmly greeted
by his family and sometimes to marry.
Religious didacticism is not so apparent in adventure stories produced in the second
half of the nineteenth century as in earlier books. But their authors took their
responsibilities seriously, guiding their young readers towards such virtues as loyalty,
pluck and truthfulness, nearly always within the ideological framework of Victorian
laissez-faire capitalism, a hierarchical view of society, and strict gender divisions. Girls
occasionally play a minor role in adventures, and there were even some women writers of
328 SHAPING BOYHOOD: EMPIRE BUILDERS AND ADVENTURERS