Stephen Maturin
Stephen Maturin | |
---|---|
First appearance | Naturalist |
Spouse | Diana Villiers |
Children | Brigid Maturin |
Relatives | Several |
Stephen Maturin FRS (/ˈmætjʊrɪn/) is a fictional character in the Aubrey–Maturin series of novels by Patrick O'Brian. The series portrays his career as a physician, naturalist and spy in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars, and the long pursuit of his beloved Diana Villiers.
Maturin was played by Paul Bettany in the 2003 film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World and by Nigel Anthony and Richard Dillane in the BBC Radio 4 adaptations of O'Brian's novels. Bettany was nominated for a British Academy Film Award for his performance.
Biography
Early life
Stephen Maturin, called by his Catalan family Esteban Maturin y Domanova, a
He was in Paris during the outbreak of the
As a passionate advocate of
In 1802, Maturin meets and falls in love with
Personal characteristics
Stephen Maturin is described as short, slight, and dark-haired, with "curious" pale blue eyes and pale skin if not exposed to the sun. He does become fairly dark-skinned when he travels to tropical climes, a result of his Hiberno-Spanish heritage and predilection for naked sun-bathing. He weighs "barely 9 stone" (126 pounds, 56 kg). A French spy who saw him in Brazil as a prisoner on the USS Constitution, after HMS Java rescued them from the tropical seas, wrote that Maturin was "Five foot six, slight build, black hair, pale eyes, muddy complexion, three nails on the right hand torn out, both hands somewhat crippled: speaks perfect French with a southern accent". (quoted in The Surgeon's Mate Chapter 11). Maturin is fluent in Catalan, English, French, Irish, Latin and Spanish, and on his travels, he develops a working knowledge of Greek, Malay, Arabic and Urdu. In the 2003 film, he is also briefly shown speaking basic Portuguese. Although a skilled linguist, Maturin never quite grasps naval jargon or the workings of a ship, a narrative ploy which allows the author to provide the reader with technical information by having helpful crewmates explain things to the ship's doctor.
Maturin is habitually untidy or even disreputable in appearance; he spends as little as possible on clothes, preferring an "old rusty coat" unless the occasion calls for dressier clothes. As a physician, he often wears an old
As well as his activities as a physician and agent, Maturin is a celebrated natural philosopher in the age of scientific discovery. He is, like Aubrey, a member of the Royal Society. His interests are wide, but he has a particular interest in wildlife, particularly birds and their anatomy. He discovers and names the hitherto unknown species of giant tortoise Testudo aubreii on a remote and uninhabited island in the Indian Ocean. An unending frustration for him is to be pulled away from the flora and fauna never before seen by a scientific eye, for the naval mission on which the ship travels. This is most poignant when he and his assistant Martin are promised time to explore and collect samples in the Galapagos Islands, which permission is abruptly rescinded when HMS Surprise must sail immediately on information as to where USS Norfolk can be found, the target of Aubrey's mission in The Far Side of the World. He is considered an expert in suprapubic cystostomy (spelled "cystotomy", without the "s").[3]
Dr. Maturin is prone to self-medication. While pining over Diana, he becomes addicted to opium in the form of a tincture of laudanum. In The Letter of Marque he states his own "moderate dose" is "a thousand drops", when twenty-five drops is a usual dose for a man in pain; in Desolation Island it is implied that he daily takes eighteen thousand drops. Later, he switches to coca leaves, and is a frequent user of khat and tobacco and a devotee of particularly strong coffee with his breakfast.
Maturin is an excellent observer of people, a skill useful in his profession of physician and in his work in naval intelligence. He has a wide network of friends, relatives, fellow students, fellow natural philosophers and, over time, those who work in intelligence. He loves playing and listening to music, and whenever possible, he enjoys duets on cello with Aubrey on violin.
Film treatment of Maturin
In reviewing the film made from the series of books, Christopher Hitchens finds "the summa of O'Brian's genius was the invention of Dr. Stephen Maturin. He is the ship's gifted surgeon, but he is also a scientist, an espionage agent for the Admiralty, a man of part Irish and part Catalan birth—and a revolutionary. He joins the British side, having earlier fought against it, because of his hatred for Bonaparte's betrayal of the principles of 1789—principles that are perfectly obscure to bluff Capt. Jack Aubrey. Any cinematic adaptation of O'Brian must stand or fall by its success in representing this figure. On this the film doesn't even fall, let alone stand. It skips the whole project." He finds the film's action scenes more inspirational: "In one respect the action lives up to its fictional and actual inspiration. This was the age of Bligh and Cook and of voyages of discovery as well as conquest, and when HMS Surprise makes landfall in the Galapagos Islands we get a beautifully filmed sequence about how the dawn of scientific enlightenment might have felt."[4]
References
- ^ Brown 2006, p. 242.
- ^ King 1995, p. 38.
- ISBN 978-0-393-31979-8.
- ^ Christopher Hitchens (14 November 2003). "Empire Falls - How Master and Commander gets Patrick O'Brian wrong". Slate. Retrieved 24 April 2014.
Bibliography
- Brown, Anthony Gary (2006). The Patrick O'Brian Muster Book: Persons, Animals, Ships and Cannon in the Aubrey-Maturin Sea Novels (2nd ed.). ISBN 978-0-7864-2482-5.
- ISBN 978-0-8050-3816-3.