Steampunk Character Type: The Gentleman

Image from Victoriana.com

The Gentleman as a Steampunk Character Type is one of those fluid personalities that tends to blend with another archetype rather than stand on its own. Every other Steampunk Character Type can do the same -- there's nothing that says a Mad Scientist/Quirky Inventor can't also be an Adventurer, or a Suffragette, or a Savant, or a Rebel. However, when it comes to The Gentleman as an archetype, you're much more likely to see this personality in combination with another one.

A common thought is the Gentleman Adventurer -- a nobleman who travels the world righting wrongs and doing good deeds for the disaffected people of the world. One example of a Gentleman Adventurer is Othar Tryggvassen, a character in Phil and Kaja Foglio's Hugo-winning Girl Genius comic (I plug the Profs. Foglio because their comic is one of my all-time favorites). Othar has the distinct personality trait of also being kind of annoying to practically anyone he meets, despite the fact that he's convinced he's doing good works.

But anyway, my commentary about how brilliantly put-together Othar is as a character aside, the Gentleman as a Steampunk Character Type appears to be more of an overlay for a simple reason -- a character doesn't have to be born a Gentleman to act as one; the behavior that makes up the "standard" of being a Gentleman is easily translatable across primary character types.

What makes a gentleman though? In John Henry Cardinal Newman's 1852 work, The Idea of a University, the Gentleman is defined as someone who never inflicts pain, whether emotional, mental, or physical, on anyone that he comes into contact with. "He is mainly occupied in merely removing the obstacles which hinder the free and unembarrassed action of those about him; and he concurs with their movements rather than takes the initiative himself. (Newman 208-9)."

The Gentleman's great concern then, according to Newman, is to make everyone feel at home in the space around him. He is affable, articulate, and generally focused on avoiding conflict wherever he can.

"He has his eyes on all his company; he is tender towards the bashful, gentle towards the distant, and merciful towards the absurd; he can recollect to whom he is speaking; he guards against unseasonable allusions, or topics which may irritate; he is seldom prominent in conversation, and never wearisome. He makes light of favours while he does them, and seems to be receiving when he is conferring. (Newman 209)"

It's interesting to note that, although anyone born into the nobility was automatically considered a "gentleman," the Character Type itself isn't limited to those of noble birth in fiction. Doctor Watson from the Sherlock Holmes stories might qualify as a Gentleman, as does Lord Maccon from Gail Carriger's Soulless -- granted, Lord Maccon fails a bit in that he causes Alexia emotional pain on several occasions, but otherwise he more or less falls into the proper classification of the Character Type. Another example of a Gentleman from Carriger's novels is Professor Lyall, who as the Beta of Lord Maccon's pack probably makes a bit of a better example than his Alpha does. 


From older fiction, the character of Phileas Fogg slots nicely into the Gentleman role. He is non-abrasive, does not seek out conflict, and intends to make people -- particularly Aouda -- comfortable in whatever abode they may be. Fogg endeavors throughout his journey to keep calm and thus keep calm the people around him. I mentioned Fogg before, when it came to the Adventurer, but he also fits here under the Gentleman simply because of the way he perceives the world around him.


What other Gentleman can you think of Steampunk (or any other) fiction?

NOTE: If you're interested in reading the Newman text, here's the Google Books link: http://books.google.com/books?id=IY9SyxjhmtwC&dq=the%20idea%20of%20a%20university&pg=PR2#v=onepage&q&f=false

Steampunk Character Type: The Savant

In A Beautiful Mind, Russel Crowe portrays John Forbes Nash, Jr., a brilliant mathematician who struggles with paranoid schizophrenia. This is an example of a character that I've termed The Savant, someone who might be absolutely brilliant in one area and yet have an equally as damaging flaw in another. 

Laurence Kim Peek (1951 to 2009), a Savant with
perfect photographic memory who was able
to recall the contents of 12,000 books.
He had severe motor function disabilities.
(image from Historic Mysteries)

Someone who can do complex mathematical algorithms in his head but is unable to tie his shoes is one example; another is the incredible musician that lacks even basic social skills. It's the scientific and mathematical fields where this character type is seen most acutely -- an interesting side note is that a Mad Scientist/Quirky Inventor might be a Savant, but a Savant is not always a Mad Scientist/Quirky Inventor -- as those fields require extremely high-level brain function that can take from other parts of the brain.

From Historic Mysteries:

A Savant is someone possessing exceptional skill in a particular area, such as art, literature and mathematics. They are a rare breed; only 100 individuals recognized as Savants are alive today. But what is most interesting, is that half of all Savants are autistic, and the other half have some other type of mental disability, such as a brain injury or retardation.

In terms of fictional Savants, the mental or physical difficulties may or may not make an appearance. What might be the damning character flaw that shifts your hyper-intelligent character into Savant status may be something as simple as lack of social grace. If played to its logical extreme, you could have an exceptionally brilliant musician that refuses to talk to people because of difficulty relating. Talk about music, and they discourse for hours; talk about anything else and they clam up because they can't speak about anything else.

Characters that are engineers, scientists, and mathematically focused are especially prone to Savant status. In the more fantastic vein of Second-World Steampunk, you might also see a mage-scientist that has issues relating to people outside of his or her specific brand of high-level knowledge. A pure fantasy example would probably be Raistlin Majere from the Dragonlance series of novels; a more Steampunk choice could be Edward "Leviathan" Mallory from The Difference Engine, a brilliant paleontologist and explorer who nevertheless has difficulty dealing with people who don't conform to his worldview.

It's interesting to note that, in The Difference Engine, the word "Savant" is used to refer to the meritocracy that rules Britain. When you're a Savant in the Britain of William Gibson and Bruce Sterling's seminal Steampunk novel, then you're part of the elite of the elite. This is an interesting way to use the highly scientific mind of the Savant to be sure, and something that would be very in keeping with the way a Savant character might view him or herself.

What fictional characters do you think qualify for Savant status?

Steampunk Character Type: The Rebel

Along with the Mad Scientist/Quirky Inventor, the Rebel is one of the quintessential Steampunk character types. The etymology of the word Steampunk, while a riff on the phrase "cyberpunk," is still tied directly to the rebellion against the status quo that Punk desires. To be "Punk," in fact, is to rebel against whatever system/government/social convention is currently in place.

There have been thousands of rebels throughout history; the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War, the Sons of Liberty and others during the American Revolution, the leaders of the Glorious Revolution in Britain, Charles Babbage, Guy Fawkes, Ada Lovelace, Nelson Mandela, and so on and so forth. My naming the revolutions or people isn't a judgment on any other revolutionaries, merely a sampling of the type of person I'm talking about.

In fiction, the list is equally as long. One of the most famous Steampunk trilogies, A Nomad of the Time Streams, has the unique distinction of its author Michael Moorcock being a card-carrying anarchist. In Warlord of the Air, the first novel in the trilogy, main character Oswald Bastable begins the story as a loyal son of the British Empire before he slowly becomes a Rebel when he realizes how wrong things really are in the alternate world he's ended up in.

Whitechapel Gods by S.M. Peters has Oliver, Missy, and the other "heroes" of the novel battling against the servants of Mama Engine, Grandfather Clock, and Baron Hume. Soulless by Gail Carriger has Alexia Tarabotti rebelling against convention while she seeks to help Lord Maccon and solve the mystery that plagues the werewolves and vampires of the United Kingdom.

Steampunk, some will argue, is about rebellion against the Empire in all its forms. The best Steampunks, these same people say, are the ones that reject the way the world is and battle to change it for the better. Perdido Street Station by China Mieville has Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin, a scientist that fills the role of rebel quite nicely once you look at him closely; The Alchemy of Stone by Ekaterina Sedia claims Mattie, the automaton main character, as a rebel against the world. Mattie is an emancipated automaton -- this is something that simply does not happen in the world of the novel. The fact that Mattie remains unharmed and successful is testament to the success of her rebellion.

Who is the rebel in Steampunk though? What type of person is he or she?

Well there are two kinds: the Rebel-as-Hero and the Rebel-as-Villain. The Rebel-as-Hero is someone who fights for a cause above all else. Sometimes that's to right a wrong, sometimes that's to move themselves up in the world against resistance, and sometimes that's because they rode into town and realized "wait a minute, that lord/king/baron/sheriff isn't treating his people right." The Rebel can be an Adventurer as well, but there's no guarantee that an Adventurer is a Rebel. A good example is Phileas Fogg, perhaps one of the most famous Adventurers in fiction, who does not waste any time on his trip around the world by rebelling against anything. He does save Aouda, but that's not a rebellion against her native culture. Rather, it's a simple rescue taking place throughout the course of the novel.

The Rebel-as-Villain is a bit trickier to tease out. This villain-rebel might use fear to make his point, is often mistake for a terrorist, and will use any means necessary to achieve his end goal. The rebel may have altruistic ideals at the beginning, but those quickly become subsumed under an overriding desire for revenge, anger at the establishment for a (sometimes incorrectly) perceived wrong, or even pain at something that happened in their past. The Rebel-as-Villain also makes common use of extreme violence in his acts. Guy Fawkes's plan to blow up Parliament in the 1600s is a good example of a common Rebel-as-Villain plan. They want to kill as many people as possible to prove their point. I'm not saying Guy Fawkes fit the bill of Rebel-as-Villain, mind you.

Nemo from the film
"The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen"

Perhaps the most famous Rebel in Steampunk fiction is Captain Nemo. The Villain-Hero of Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea is one of those characters that almost defies description; he is a Mad Scientist, and a Rebel, and an Adventurer, and everything else about a Steampunk hero that writers strive to include.

From different perspectives, you can argue that Nemo is both a Rebel-as-Hero and a Rebel-as-Villain. He uses fear to get his point across; as the novel opens, Professor Pierre Aronnax is sought out to study the effects of an attack by a giant cetacean on several vessels in the Atlantic shipping lanes.

Nemo also battles the Empire to revenge himself for the failed Sepoy Rebellion of 1857 to 1859. We see Nemo in the guise of Rebel-as-Hero for his role in that rebellion, as the main thrust of that conflict was to expel the British from India. Nemo is also a Rebel-as-Hero because he gives aid to others rebelling against their masters -- in one case aiding the Greeks against the Ottoman Turks in the Cretan Revolt of 1866 to 1869.

Nemo fills the Rebel-as-Villain role primarily for his unrelenting desire to destroy the British Empire's power by any means necessary. He ruthlessly and silently attacks British warships in such a fashion as to kill everyone on board without being seen by ramming the vessels below the waterline. He spreads fear and terror throughout the Empire simply through existing. The sheer stories that are passed around about him spark speculation and terror among all the Empire's possessions.

The Rebel, whether as a Hero or as a Villain, is an important part of Steampunk fiction. There are many people who say that if there isn't a rebel character, then the story isn't really Steampunk. I don't know if I agree with this statement, as Steampunk has swiftly morphed into more of a Pulp-adventure genre than anything, but that's neither here nor there. The point is that Steampunk and Rebels go hand-in-hand.

What other Rebels can you think of in Steampunk?

Steampunk Character Type: The Suffragette

Both women and men can fulfill the Mad Scientist/Quirky Inventor or Adventurer character types in Steampunk, but there is one particular character type unique to women that took on particular importance during the late 1800s. The Suffragette arose with the drive for women's rights that took place throughout much of the Western Republics during the late 19th/early 20th centuries. We have women like Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Muriel Matters, Louisa Lawson, Viscountess Nancy Witcher Astor, Emmeline Pankhurst, and the list goes on and on.

Susan B. Anthony

Though the historical Suffragettes crusaded for women's rights, there isn't a need to do the same in order to fall under the Suffragette character type. A fine example of this character type, in fact, is Alexia Tarabotti from Gail Carriger's Parasol Protectorate series. Alexia is intelligent, independent, and though she's aware of her place within society she isn't hidebound by the societal mores she doesn't agree with.

The proper Suffragette character type is that type of woman -- intelligent, independent, and capable of ignoring established laws when they stand in her way. The Suffragette's of history were almost all very, very smart women who were focused on altering the established rules of society to give women all sorts of rights under the law that they didn't have before in the Western Republics.

Not every independent female character is a Suffragette-type, but many of them are. The character archetype of the Warrior Woman from fantasy novels is subsumed under the Suffragette umbrella within Steampunk, primarily because the drive for Women's Suffrage took place smack in the middle of the time period where much of Steampunk is set. Both character types can still exist in a Steampunk world, but the Suffragette is almost more natural because she understands the nature of the society she lives in and seeks to change it for the better.

In terms of real-life Steampunks, I can think of few better examples for the attitudes of the "punk" suffix of the word than the Suffragette. She quests for change in the world around her, to give a voice in government to groups that don't yet have one or to help change an attitude that has sent her nation spiraling down the proverbial tubes. She also might be a wife and mother, sometimes to a husband that shares her goals and sometimes to one that tells her she should give up and accept the world for what it is. However, the fictional Suffragette can't do that because she sees an injustice and something in her character forces her to right it.

I realize, as I write this, that I've created Moriah Rowani (heroine of CALLARION AT NIGHT) as a Suffragette character. She doesn't really start off this way, but eventually becomes a leader when she realizes the true depth of the wrongs going on in the city.

An alternate side is the Suffragette-as-villain; this might be someone who's had a psychotic break and is convinced that something's wrong with the world when it's really not, or someone who's taken their quest to the extremes of using fear tactics and hatred to change things. Granted, this is my personal opinion (and one you're welcome to disagree with).

Can you think of any other Suffragette characters in fiction?

Steampunk Character Type: The Adventurer

We've all seen them in fiction -- the Adventurer-Hero strikes a victorious pose with his fists on his hips and chest puffed out while the villain scrabbles away, defeated. But while this evokes images of the superheroes extant during the comic book Golden Age, and is the one that many of us can conjure up, I'm talking about Adventurers that occur in fiction significantly earlier.

Allan Quartermain. Tom Sawyer. Phileas Fogg. The Time Traveller. These are just a few of the Adventurer characters from classic fiction. As to the names from Steampunk novels? Well that's easy too -- Modo and Octavia (The Hunchback Assignments), Croggon Hainey (The Clockwork Century), Bergen (Whitechapel Gods) ... you get the picture.

We see the Adventurer a lot in Steampunk fiction, but what really typifies the character? How do we know when we've seen an Adventurer and not a regular person thrust into the story's primary plot line against their will?

The Adventurer is comfortable in dire situations. In fact, he almost prefers them to the the quiet supposedly idyllic life he once came from. The classic Adventurer were men (and the occasional woman) who went off into the world in search of far-off lands and peoples, sometimes with the intent to study them but more often to see the sights and see what would happen to them there. A sub-character type is the Adventurer Archaeologist (Indiana Jones), which is actually nothing like archaeology actually is anymore (but once was in the 19th Century).

The Voyages Extraordinaire of Jules Verne are rife with Adventurer characters which, seeing as those are Adventure stories, isn't really that big of a surprise. Phileas Fogg, Captain Nemo, Professor Arronax, etc and so on -- the characters that exist in Verne's stories are men of Action and Adventure. That's the kind of Adventurer-Hero many people have come to expect. He's the man of Action who acts without thinking, and yet somehow always manages to win the girl at the end of the story.

The spirit of Adventure that runs through the root works of Steampunk, and the genre's other basis in the pulp adventure novels of the late 1800s, make it clear that the Adventurer character type is here to stay.

What other traits can you think of that describe an Adventurer character?

Steampunk Character Type: The Mad Scientist/Quirky Inventor

Among my fascinations is the study of archetypes and stereotypes in fiction and life. Steampunk, for all the possibilities it provides, isn't immune to the creation of such character standards. In fact, one of the most prevalent Steampunk character types is the Mad Scientist or, if the scientist is a good character, what I've termed the "Quirky Inventor."

The distinction is important for several reasons: A Mad Scientist and a Quirky Inventor both create outlandish inventions that defy the laws of science, but the differences lay in how the invention is used. Where the Mad Scientist uses his inventions to gain power for himself or to prove someone wrong, the Quirky Inventor is more apt to use his science to help people or, in the more naive examples, believe that he's helping people.

A good example of a Quirky Inventor is Doctor Emmet Brown from the Back to the Future movies. His time machine was invented because he came up with the idea and wanted to see if he could make it work. The intentions behind the Delorian time machine were innocent -- building the device only -- but the end result of how it was used became the central conflict of the movies. Even at the end of Back to the Future, Part III, the steam-powered time train was created so Marty wouldn't worry about Doc and Clara.

By contrast, a standard Mad Scientist is someone like Doctor Moreau from H.G. Wells's The Island of Doctor Moreau. According to TVTropes.org, one of my all-time favorite websites:

"The titular vivisectionist isn't as early as Frankenstein, but he played a major role in shaping the trope. He had Einstein Hair - decades before Einstein. He had the Mad Scientist Laboratory - his island (and he likely brought tropical island laboratories into vogue). Cast out from society, with only one assistant? Oh, yes. He did it all For Science but used extremely painful methods that would give any PETA representative nightmares. Turned on by his own creations? Of course. Several films adaptations even give him a beautiful daughter of his own creation. He also provided the beginnings of the Reluctant Mad Scientist - he never intended to get revenge on the other scientists who cast him out, and in his own mind he had noble purposes for his work; it's only his (possibly willful) ignorance of how torturous his methods are that makes him less than a sympathetic character."

For non-literary examples of the proper Mad Scientist, who is completely unrepentant and uncaring about who his science hurts, you don't have to look much farther than the Doctor Who series. Davros, who created the evil race of Daleks, is the prime example of the maniacally evil Mad Scientist who uses his brain power to further his own twisted goals.

Steampunk is rife with Mad Scientists. There's Doctor Cornelius Hyde in Arthur Slade's The Hunchback Assignments, Professor Minnericht in Cherie Priest's Boneshaker, the Hypocras Club/Order of the Brass Octopus* from Gail Carriger's Parasol Protectorate series, and John Scared in S.M. Peters's Whitechapel Gods to name a few. Wacked-out inventions that run on steam power or clockwork mechanics, strange uses of biology to develop new creatures, genetic anomalies made even weirder in the gaslight. Steampunk is very much the playplace of the mad scientist.

Take these madmen of science though, and give them a heart. Give them remorse and an aim to better the situation of their fellow man. Then you have a Quirky Inventor. He may have the same insane devotion to SCIENCE that the Mad Scientist does, but the difference is that the Quirky Inventor has a morality that essentially forces him to follow some variation on the Hippocratic Oath. Distilled down to its essence, the Quirky Inventor is a Mad Scientist who uses his brilliance for good and not for evil.

What other examples of Quirky Inventors or Mad Scientists do you know of in fiction or in real life?

NOTE: I avoided talking about Victor Frankenstein, the eponymous doctor of Mary Shelley's seminal novel, because he's an unique case in fiction -- many Mad Scientists don't reject their original aims like he did, which is the point of that story.

* Gail Carriger gave me the correct name of her Mad Scientist group on Twitter earlier this evening. Hence you see the correction.