I've, um. I've researched this a little - not a lot, mind you, and it definitely doesn't make me an obsessive or anything, and I would totally bow to the better-informed opinions of, say, damned_colonial and her ilk. My take is:
The books provide a fairly decent sampling of opinions as they were in the Navy at that time. Homosexuality/sodomy/buggery seems, from what little I have gleaned, to have been pretty much beyond the pale in most other parts of polite society back then; I mean, I wouldn't expect a lady even to know what it was, necessarily. But Navy men were generally aware of the practice of buggery, even if not of what we'd call homosexuality (i.e., the sexual preference).
Within the Navy, opinions seem to have varied extensively. You see this in the books, as when Jack and Stephen are talking about the decision of another Captain to court-martial a man for sodomy. Or all the ways the men (and past Captains) reacted to the gay officer that had a crush on Jack.
What I think is significant - although this could be pure self-delusion - is that PO'B chose to put Jack and Stephen at the far end of the tolerance spectrum. (And *both* of them - it isn't often that they agree on things like this, especially in the beginning.) And he addresses it fairly often, too, and in a number of different ways.
no subject
The books provide a fairly decent sampling of opinions as they were in the Navy at that time. Homosexuality/sodomy/buggery seems, from what little I have gleaned, to have been pretty much beyond the pale in most other parts of polite society back then; I mean, I wouldn't expect a lady even to know what it was, necessarily. But Navy men were generally aware of the practice of buggery, even if not of what we'd call homosexuality (i.e., the sexual preference).
Within the Navy, opinions seem to have varied extensively. You see this in the books, as when Jack and Stephen are talking about the decision of another Captain to court-martial a man for sodomy. Or all the ways the men (and past Captains) reacted to the gay officer that had a crush on Jack.
What I think is significant - although this could be pure self-delusion - is that PO'B chose to put Jack and Stephen at the far end of the tolerance spectrum. (And *both* of them - it isn't often that they agree on things like this, especially in the beginning.) And he addresses it fairly often, too, and in a number of different ways.