THREE MEN IN A BOAT

Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) Summary and Analysis

Summary

Chapter 15

George, Harris, and J. argue about who will tow the boat, the most physically demanding job by far. They eventually decide to row to Reading, at which point J. will tow for a while. We learn that J. learned to row by joining a club, but that George had some trouble learning. The first time he went out, with a group of friends on a trip to Kew, the coxswain did not know how to call out directions and they had great trouble navigating.

J. lists the different types of rowing, as well as the pitfalls that novices face when they attempt to row for the first time. He discusses punting, a type of rowing where the passenger stands up in the boat and propels it along using a long pole that is pushed against the riverbed. Punting is hazardous for beginners; J. describes a friend who was not paying attention and stepped off the boat, leaving himself clinging to the pole in the middle of the river as the boat drifted away.

On another occasion, J. and his friends noticed an amateur punter who could not keep control of his boat. Thinking it was someone they knew, they mercilessly mocked him until realizing that the man was actually a stranger. Harris once had a similar experience, when a stranger thought he was a friend and began roughhousing with him, holding his head under water.

J. concludes the chapter with a final anecdote about sailing on the river with his friend Hector. The men had trouble raising the sail, which was very tangled. They eventually ran the boat aground and decided to row back. However, they broke the oars in the process, and had to be towed.

Chapter 16

As the men approach Reading, J. describes several important historical events that happened there. Starting in the 17th century, it became a popular destination for Londoners fleeing the plague. However, it is now crowded and polluted, so the men pass through it quickly.As they leave Reading, J. spots an acquaintance who owns a steam-launch; the steamboat tows them for several miles, giving the men a much-needed break from rowing.As they approach Goring, they spot a dead woman floating in the water.Some other travelers take her to the coroner, but J. later learns that she killed herself after having a child out of wedlock and being abandoned by her family.

Analysis

Chapter 15 features another ‘callback’ to earlier in the text. The men’s argument about who will tow the boat is similar to earlier arguments they have about who will perform the most difficult jobs. (For example, consider the way Harris and J. force George to tow the boat out of Shepperton.) Both moments also reflect a similar sense of irony, since J. speaks proudly about his work ethic in both places while being clearly unwilling to work. These moments also conform to the novel's recurring theme of the illusions people have about themselves.

Most of Three Men in a Boat is written to be accessible to readers who are unfamiliar with boating. Although rowing and sailing were popular past-times in England at this time, they were not universal among the book’s intended audience. Three Men in a Boat was written as a comic travel novel rather than as a technical description of rowing. Chapter 15 is unusual, then, in that it features a number of anecdotes about punting and sailing that can only be fully appreciated by readers familiar with the activity. Despite these occasional technical interludes, Three Men was popular with boating and non-boating audiences alike, and is credited with popularizing the sport among travelers.

Readers familiar with English geography will note that Jerome uses a very antiquated location name: Wessex. Between 519 and 927 AD, Wessex was a kingdom in England. However, Victorian readers would have recognized the term from the work of Thomas Hardy. Thomas Hardy’s novels are set in Wessex, a fictional region in southern England where pastoral beauty and human drama collide. Jerome refers to Hardy’s works elsewhere in the novel, too. For instance, in Chapter 1, he uses the phrase “far from the madding crowd,” which was also the title of a Hardy novel (12). These literary allusions are just one more approach Jerome uses in this multi-faceted novel.

The dead woman in Chapter 16 heralds a marked departure from Jerome's usually comedic tone. Although it only unfolds over a few pages, the woman’s story provides an example of the gritty, earnest social realism that was popular during the Victorian period. In the nineteenth century, many English writers felt an obligation to portray society's injustices. Jerome’s short vignette about the unfortunate young mother is inspired by these ‘social realist’ stories, which often portrayed the difficult situations faced by members of the lower classes.

However, the short scene can also be connected to the novel's larger themes. His ire in the anecdote is directed particularly towards the family, which abandons the woman because of her trouble. Considering how often Jerome finds humor in the way humans lie to themselves, this scene provides an interesting counterpoint. The woman's family, clearly believing themselves above such behavior, made themselves implicitly responsible for her death. It is arguable that Jerome wishes us to realize how certain pretensions can be inexorably harmful, even if others are merely sources of simple irony.

Chapter 17

The men try to wash their clothes in the Thames, but only succeed in making them dirtier than before. They pay a washerwoman in Streatley to do their laundry, and she charges them three times the normal rate because the clothes are so dirty. They do not complain.

After describing Streatley as a fishing town, J. advises readers not to fish in the Thames because there is nothing to be caught there but minnows and dead cats. J. explains that being a good angler has nothing to do with fishing, and everything to do with one’s ability to tell believable lies about the number of fish one has caught. He provides several examples of men he has met who have lied convincingly about their catch.

George and J. go to a pub in Wallingford. There is a large trout hanging on the wall there, and three different patrons (plus the bartender) each claim they were the one to catch it, each with a different story and description of its weight. At the end of the night, George trips and grabs the trout to steady himself. The trout falls to the ground and shatters, and the men realize that it is made of plaster of Paris.

Chapter 18

J. discusses how “the Thames would not be the fairyland it is without its flower-decked locks” (170).

He recalls another rowing trip he took with George to Hampton Court. A photographer was taking pictures of a steam-launch, and called out to George and J. to try to stay out of his photograph. In attempting to keep their boat out of the frame, George and J. fell over and were photographed lying in the boat with their feet in the air. Their feet took up nine-tenths of the image, and the owner of the steam-launch – who had commissioned the photos – refused to pay for them.

J. describes the sights and attractions of Dorchester, Clifton, and Abingdon. These include Roman ruins, a pleasant park, and the grave of a man who is said to have fathered 197 children. J. warns readers about a challenging stretch of river near Oxford.

 Chapter 19

The friends spend two days in Oxford. Montmorency has a wonderful time fighting with the many stray dogs there. J. explains that many who vacation on the Thames start in Oxford and row downriver to London, so that they travel with the current the whole time. He recommends bringing one’s own boat rather than renting one in Oxford, however, because the boats there are of low quality. He remembers once hiring a boat in Oxford and mistaking it for an archeological artifact.

On the journey back from Oxford, it rains incessantly. The men, miserable, pass the time by playing penny nap, a card game, and listening to George play the banjo. Although J. describes him as an unskilled player elsewhere in the book, George here plays a mournful rendition of “Two Lovely Black Eyes” that plunges the men further into depression.

Though they swore to complete the trip, the men decide to abandon the boat and spend the rest of the trip in an inn in Pangbourne. They enjoy a delicious supper there, and tell the other guests about their travels. As the novel ends, they toast their decision to end the trip when they did, and Montmorency barks in agreement.

Analysis

The nineteenth century was a time of elevated awareness about public health concerns. England was becoming an increasingly urban society, and the growing cities had to deal with both internal population growth and an influx of rural migrants seeking work in the factories. Between 1800 and 1900, the population of London grew from one million to six million (Isola et al.). Sewage overflowed and leaked into both the streets and the Thames, and smoke from coal-powered appliances and factories polluted the air. The public health crisis was well-documented at the time, and many Victorian writers – including Charles Dickens and Elizabeth Gaskell - discussed it in their fiction. White-collar workers like George, J., andHarris would have been able to live in relatively tolerable conditions. However, Jerome’s vivid depiction of the polluted Thames shows that the sanitation crisis affected even London’s wealthier residents.

The incident with the plaster fish is another example of Jerome’s liberal attitude toward social class. In the bar, several patrons from different social backgrounds all claim to have caught the fish. In spite of their differences in background, they behave similarly. Through this incident, Jerome seems to suggest that pretension cuts across social classes. In other words, all people lie to themselves, regardless of their levels of comfort.

The humor of Three Men in a Boat is generally lighthearted, but does occasionally veer into very dark territory. One example of this comes in Chapter 18, when J. notes that “the pool under Sanford lasher . . . is a very good place to drown yourself in” (174). The comment is especially abrupt because it comes after a relatively prosaic description of Nuneham Park, and because it appears only pages after the episode where the men find the body of a woman who did drown herself. Jerome’s wild vacillations in tone are one reason why contemporary critics were not sure what to make of Three Men in a Boat, and it is a quality of the text that some readers continue to find challenging today.

All in all, these final chapters (and sections) continue to suggest the idea that Jerome was constructing the novel as he went along. Not only does the tone veer wildly, but the book also becomes significantly more focused on travel descriptions in its final chapters, and the plot becomes rather rushed. The sudden ending has a certain comic quality in its suddenness, but also provides the sense that Jerome has run out of steam much as J. and his friends did.

However, the ending does provide some resolution to its recurring question about what it means to be happy. Jerome suggests throughout the novel that people always want precisely what they cannot have, and see themselves as different from they actually are. The basic set-up reflects these ideas; the men believe they are unhappy in their urban lives and are actually outdoorsmen. Of course, through the journey, they finally accept that spending time off of the boat is more desirable than spending time in it. Ironically, they end up happy in the same urban environment that they found tiresome at the beginning of the novel. According to Jerome, this perennial dissatisfaction with one’s lot is part of human nature, and is what motivates people to keep trying new things. However, we always find our greatest happiness when we explore the new things and then accept who we actually are.