As last week laid out, Henty has a standard protagonist, and that standard protagonist seems a bit Mary-Sue-ish. He’s not got much vice, he’s really good at what he does, and he sits at the right hand of so many important events, so many important people. Of course, we also saw how that’s not the whole story; the Henty protagonist is distinguished from the Mary Sue by actually working for his skill, by having limited and realistic skills, and by the way the world does not warp to suit their needs. This alone, however, seems insufficient to truly distinguish them from being Mary Sue adjacent, if not full-blown. Competence is merely one of the common traits of the Sue, and the poison of that archetype can infect the story whether or not every possible trait is there. What, then, shall we say about the Henty protagonist’s place in the world?

Other People’s Responses

One standard trait of the Mary Sue is that characters around them behave oddly towards them. These characters, regardless of previous characterization or interaction, will consider the Mary Sue to be the ‘best ever’, in skill and morals. The Mary Sue will be given responsibility commensurate to a veteran genius rather than a newbie, with any better candidates for the job recognizing the Mary Sue’s perfection and stepping aside. Indeed, any character who does not bow to the Sue’s surpassing excellence is demonized; that single sin makes them evil to the core, for nothing less than complete evil could fail to recognize the perfection of the author’s wish-fulfilment puppet.¹ Should they desire a relationship, romantic or otherwise, it is theirs for the taking; even those who hate them can be redeemed (should the author wish it) by complete submission to the Sue’s supremacy.

Henty’s protagonists share some superficial traits with the above description. They are indeed often close to historically impressive personages; they are often given significant honors, responsibilities, and praise by such. Walter Somers is commended by the king, by the Black Prince, and by the right-hand man of the king all in two chapters relatively early in the book. Ronald Mervyn (not a typical protagonist but apropos here because I’m reading his story currently) is picked out by his commanding officers as an exceptionally good recruit to their new military unit. These protagonists also tend to be romantically successful, when Henty includes a romance.²

Already, however, a crack in the similarities should be apparent, even when I’m playing them up. Henty’s protagonists are close to exceptional and powerful people, not dominant over them. Moreover, let us examine the character of this closeness. Henty’s protagonists are not given commendation simply for existing. Walter Somers is distinguished to the king by winning a tournament, to the prince by winning a scrimmage with sticks, and to the king’s righthand man by the king’s recommendation, as well as that tournament. Mervyn, similarly, is distinguished by three facts: his taste in horses, his obvious experience as an officer (one readily speculated to be enlisting in the ranks due to legal issues), and his actual performance in the course of moving towards their posting. In short, Henty’s protagonists earn their place and their honors by realistic but impressive displays of grit and skill.

The quality of the approbation too is different. Where a Mary Sue is prioritized by the characters around her (or him), regardless of capacity, treated as a perfect being, invincible or delicate according to the author’s whim, Henty’s protagonists are treated by those around them as men treat a competent, reliable man. Thus, the protagonist’s superiors put some reliance on them to do difficult tasks; thus, their subordinates have not unlimited trust and affection for them; thus, their peers have some admiration, some envy, and much comradery with them. The general liking given to the protagonist is earned by his demeanor and his actions. In other words, he displays the genuine charisma of a self-possessed, competent, socially capable man (one typically without much self-importance, unlike the Sue, though fully capable of self-assertion), and people respond appropriately.

One resemblance to the Mary Sue must here be accounted for. If a character turns up who hates the protagonist and is not a historically recognizable personage, he’s usually going to be the protagonist’s personal nemesis, the antagonist for the non-historical section of the plot. Thus Sweyn in The Dragon and the Raven emerges as Edmund’s inveterate foe, thus Sir James Carnegie in Saint George for England. In appearance, this seems to match the common pattern of the Mary Sue: the character who hates the Mary Sue is evil to the bone. Several characteristics differ, however. First, the means of stirring this nemesis’s hatred is usually the protagonist’s interference in an already established villainy or in some other vicious action, an interference at worst well meaning and often outright heroic on the protagonist’s part. In other words, like Bugs Bunny in the cartoons he triumphs in, Henty protagonists don’t start the fight. Second, where the true sin of the Mary Sue’s hater is that very hate, usually motivated by sheer malice or envy towards the Mary Sue’s perfection, the sin of Henty’s villains lies in the actions they take, not just towards the protagonist but towards others. Carnegie is a villain because he wants to murder his cousin and forcibly marry her daughter for the inheritance. Third, these villains are not made out to be uniquely evil. Whereas the Sue’s foe is by that foe-ship made a total evil, these villains are just evil men like other evil men- any man who does the actions they do will be as much a villain as they, regardless of relationship to or even awareness of the protagonist.

Importance to the World

Here is a point easily made. As noted before, Henty’s protagonists often get important roles in the historical events they inhabit. They are not given, however, the truly central roles which authors arrogate to Mary Sues as part of centering the world on the Sue. No, they play more or less important auxiliary roles. They play them well, of course, but the accolades they receive are in proportion to their performance and their performance in accordance with realism, assuming competence and occasionally some good fortune. On the other hand, the protagonists do play front and center for certain parts of the story: their own lives. If we object to this, we must throw out essentially all stories, except perhaps The Great Gatsby, and indeed redefine the word ‘protagonist’ entirely. That Henty’s protagonists are protagonists is in the name.

Morals

The moral character of Henty’s works is radically different from that of the Mary Sue. In the first place, Henty doesn’t mess around with the protagonist-centric morality of a Mary Sue story. Right is right, wrong is wrong, and people are judged by their adherence to objective standards, not their relationship with the protagonist. Where the Mary Sue is right because she’s the main character, Henty’s protagonists are right because they’re doing the right thing. Indeed, they share certain core virtues which are constantly the basis of their interaction with the world: diligence, courage, perseverance, integrity, honesty when appropriate, care for the weak, self-sacrifice, self-control, et cetera. If this were all, of course, we could object that they still suffered from impossible perfection, but four factors deflect this accusation.

First, Henty’s protagonists have human hesitation and reticence. They may take great risks, but they feel the risks. Henty’s style isn’t to include deep psychological analysis or extended self-conflict, but he does convey a realization of danger, the bravery of sitting on the brink of the cliff, taking a deep breath at the sight, and jumping off the edge because through is the only way out.

Second, his protagonists are humble. It may not seem so at first; certainly they do not engage in humility’s stereotypical self-abasement or refusal of credit, but that’s at best a parody of humility. On consideration, though, we can see humility in how they act and react. They do not presume themselves any better than any other, in giving or receiving, in planning or in victory. They do not expect the world to bend to them, and when reward is given, they take it only so far as is appropriate, the workman taking his wage, not seeking to further themselves on the back of virtue- the deed itself is enough. They do not hold themselves moral paragons; they simply act the part, un-self-conscious of their virtue, sure of what is right but only as men are sure.

Third, their virtue does not bend the world to them. Simply doing the right thing is not enough to have an easy life or even to prevent disaster, as some Alger-esque³ books from the 1800s would have it. They may triumph through diligence and bravery and self-control, but they generally get into a lot of trouble because of those same virtues, because of enterprise and hard work and care for the innocent. In other words, they exhibit hard virtue. Importantly, Henty does not flinch from making the issues they face real to us. We may know from a meta perspective that Walter Somers isn’t going to die here in the castle dungeon he’s locked up in, not when we’ve got half the book left, but as the water rises, we don’t see a way out. And why is he in that dungeon? Because he chose to get between an evil man and his prey, because he refused to back down, and because he distinguished himself enough to earn command of an occupied French keep in war time. Virtue has a cost, and Henty’s heroes pay it.

Fourth, while they don’t go on a character arc per se, saying that Henty’s characters don’t change at all would be disingenuous or superficial. Henty’s character may not change morality or philosophy as they struggle, but they do change. At the beginning, the typical protagonist is a boy, impressive but untested. At the end, he is a proven and tempered man, one with responsibilities, relationships, and maturity. He has taken what unformed but promising material and forged it into all that it promised it could be, moved from childhood to manhood. It is not a character arc as many modern novels would have it, but it speaks true to man’s nature nonetheless, particularly to the boys Henty wrote the stories for, who face this precise change in their own lives.

Conclusion

The simple fact is this: Henty’s protagonists are essentially different from Mary Sues. They have the skills, the virtues, and the outlook of men among men, excellent though they may be, and they live in a world which sees them only as men, not gods. Henty may not be following the standard literary playbook, but he fulfils the essential principles. His protagonists declare a true world, limited as all fictional worlds are, and they display that hard virtue which makes characters human. Moreover, as we’ll get into soon, Henty does this his particular task with consistent skill. With all this in mind, we should apply the lesson; we should consider our own works, analyze them not only for superficial resemblances but for how the characters actually line up to the root principles. Only by such understanding will we step beyond the literary milk to that meat of which great art is made.

God bless.

1 – I suspect that such portrayals reflect the author’s actual judgement of critics in his real life interactions.

2 – I only remember one instance where a main character doesn’t get the girl, when there’s a girl to get, which is far from every time. That instance was also in one of Henty’s more atypical books, one with a protagonist, premise, and plot significantly deviated from his norm.

3 – Horatio Alger is a protagonist of a well known (at its time) book which became representative of a genre of morality tales. The distinctive trope of these works was of the protagonist reaching great personal success via unflinching, perfect virtue that the world rewarded without real debate. Having read a few of them, they’re boring, preachy, and unrealistic as all get out. In some ways, he’s a Mary Sue type, though of a little different character (so far as I am aware, objective morality is generally maintained, the main character just happens to be perfect according to said objective morality, with at best cosmetic failings).