Form and Content
Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Black Arrow is the story of a young man’s maturation during the mid-fifteenth century, when England was torn by thirty years of civil war, known as the Wars of the Roses. As such, the novel combines several important conventions of historical fiction, as well as those of the coming-of-age novel: The hero learns about himself and his place in a world fraught with danger and violence. The internal narrative of events in the life of the young hero and the external events concerning warfare between two English royal houses are mixed in this complex novel. Ultimately, the two skeins are inextricably tangled, as national events give Dick Shelton the means to discover who he really is and who he wants to be.
The intermingling of personal and national concerns dominates this fascinating novel. Shelton, the son of the former lord of Tunstall Manor, has been reared by Sir Daniel Brackley, to all appearances a virtuous, although stern, nobleman. He begins to learn the truth about Brackley, however, when an outlaw, John Amend-all, vows revenge against Brackley and his followers. Shelton finds a threatening message in which Amend-all pledges to kill the murderer of Sir Harry Shelton, the young hero’s father. After Shelton learns that Brackley may have been responsible for the murder, he is profoundly shaken, having realized that things are not always as they seem.
Shelton begins to look into his father’s murder but finds his investigation thrust aside by larger events that demand an ever-increasing amount of his attention. Shortly after Amend-all begins his campaign of vengeance, Shelton meets another young person, John Matcham, and helps him escape from Brackley. Shelton is put in the position of reconciling his friendship with Matcham with his loyalty to his foster father.
Eventually, Shelton and Matcham are persuaded to return to Tunstall Manor, partly because Brackley lies to Shelton and partly because he invokes Shelton’s sense of duty: Even Tunstall Manor has become embroiled in the Wars of the Roses, and Shelton believes that he must put personal concerns aside. Although their escape is finally unsuccessful, the two young people become friends; and when he learns that Matcham is actually a young noblewoman, Joanna Sedley, Shelton realizes that he has fallen in love.
Shortly thereafter, Shelton tries to rescue Joanna several times, each time more certain that he loves her. Meanwhile, he meets and befriends another, more ruthless young man, Richard Crookback, the duke of Gloucester, who compensates for his physical disabilities with an arrogant demeanor and a determination to win the civil war. Joining Duke Richard’s forces, Shelton lays siege to the town of Shoreby, where Brackley’s forces are concentrated. Even though their army is outnumbered, Shelton and Duke Richard win the battle, forcing Brackley to flee with Joanna back to Tunstall Manor. Just as Shelton catches up with them and rescues Joanna, Amend-all’s last black arrow kills Brackley.
Places Discussed
*Tunstall Forest
*Tunstall Forest. Hardwood forest dotted with knolls and hollows and crossed by numerous dirt trails that lies in Suffolk, though the county is never named in the novel. The forest was larger in the fifteenth century than it is today. Since at least the time of the Robin Hood legend, woods have often played a romantic role in English literature. In Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel, Tunstall Forest stands in for the Sherwood Forest of Robin Hood. The woods provide hideouts for the heroes, young Dick Shelton—the protagonist—and the honorable “outlaw” band known as the “Black Arrow.” It also serves occasionally as a source of threat when it...
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cloaks potential ambushes.
Lawless’s den
Lawless’s den. Den excavated under a giant beech tree in the forest that is partially uprooted during a storm that is the hiding place of Dick Shelton’s accomplice Will Lawless. Although the cave has a hearth that gives it a homey feel, its roof is of roots, its walls of sod, and its floors of dirt.
Tunstall Moat House
Tunstall Moat House. Castle of Sir Daniel Brackley, Dick Shelton’s guardian and the story’s chief villain, located within the forest. This moss-covered fortress of the woods is complete with guard towers, a lily-strewn moat, a supposedly haunted room, and secret passageways that are both narrow and dank. It is heavily romanticized, even to the point of helping to reinforce what later become literary clichés about medieval castles.
St. Bride’s Cross
St. Bride’s Cross. Crossroad point within the forest where two major plot advancements occur. There, Dick Shelton meets Lord Foxham, who helps in his quest to marry Joanna Sedley, and Richard “Crookback,” who will one day be King Richard III of England. Shelton saves Crookback in a battle beneath the cross, then joins the future king to fight for the House of York against the House of Lancaster—Sir Daniel’s side—in the civil war.
Shoreby-on-the-Till
Shoreby-on-the-Till. Fictional small town on the river Till near where the river supposedly empties into the North Sea. Shoreby is the site of a battle between the forces of Lancaster and York. Its streets serve as battlefields, its taverns as command centers. After the battle, the town is sacked. The division of the town during the battle serves as a metaphor for the division of England during the Wars of the Roses, although it is unclear if Stevenson intended such a connection. The sack of Shoreby may well represent the devastation of England caused by the wars.
At the edge of Shoreby stands a beach house in which Joanna Sedley is held captive by Sir Daniel during portions of the narrative. This is actually a collection of buildings lying amid sand-hills and patches of grassy upland dotted with brush. A more important building in Shoreby is the abbey church where Dick is trapped after escaping from Sir Daniel’s house in town. The church itself is a holy place, but not all of its human representatives are holy. This contrast between the sacred and the corrupt may be a comment on the politicizing of religion, particularly during the Wars of the Roses.
*Tunstall Hamlet
*Tunstall Hamlet. Small village of scattered houses at the edge of Tunstall Forest. Stevenson describes it as lying within a green valley that rises from a river. There are farms on the outskirts of Tunstall Hamlet, including that of Nick Appleyard, an old soldier who is the first to die by the Black Arrow. Tunstall Hamlet was a real place but is heavily fictionalized by Stevenson; the name is still known to local inhabitants but is not officially recognized by the government.
River Till
River Till. Wide and sluggish stream whose many fens and marshy islets provide both atmosphere and a barrier to travel for the characters in the novel. (England has at least three rivers named Till, but none of them appears to be close enough to the real Tunstall Forest to be the river Stevenson uses in his story. However, a tributary of the River Tweed in Northumberland that is named Till matches the physical description of the River Till in The Black Arrow.)
Setting
Set in late fifteenth-century England, The Black Arrow unfolds during the Wars of the Roses, a protracted civil conflict between the House of Lancaster, represented by the red rose, and the House of York, symbolized by the white rose. Historically, the Yorkist faction, led by Edward IV and his brother Richard III, ousted the Lancastrian ruler Henry VI. Eventually, Henry VII defeated Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, but the book concludes well before this event.
Stevenson's narrative starts in the village of Tunstall in East Norfolk towards the end of Henry VI's reign. Seventeen-year-old Dick Shelton embarks on a quest to avenge his father's murder and rescue a young heiress, leading him through the English countryside. Along the way, he fights alongside Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who later becomes Richard III; allies with the enigmatic followers of John Amend-All; and commandeers a ship in a doomed attempt to save the heiress. Dick encounters a range of characters, both fictional and historical. Gloucester features prominently in the story, and Dick's adventures unfold against the historical backdrop of a civil war infamous in English history.
Literary Qualities
Stevenson revitalized Romanticism with his historical adventure novels. At the start of the nineteenth century, Sir Walter Scott began crafting lively tales of the Middle Ages and Scotland, set during the Renaissance and the eighteenth century. Scott's historical fiction enjoyed immense popularity and influence across three generations. However, by Stevenson's era, when realism was gaining traction, readers' interest in Romanticism waned. Stevenson's works reflect the realist influence through his psychologically intricate characters and his acute awareness of time, place, language, and historical detail. Much of his fifteenth-century detail was sourced from The Paston Letters, a collection of correspondence written between 1422 and 1509 to a notable Norfolk family.
While Stevenson may not match Scott's depth, his brisk narratives showcase his prowess as a stylist. Similar to Scott, Stevenson skillfully recreates Scottish dialect in Kidnapped, David Balfour, and Weir of Hermiston. However, like Scott, he also indulges in artificial archaisms in the dialogue of his medieval stories. This archaic language detracts from The Black Arrow, although it becomes less noticeable as the story progresses.
The Black Arrow is not a major novel, nor did Stevenson regard it as such. Primarily intended for entertainment, the book transcends its genre through the author's vivid realism, sense of moral complexity, and energetic narrative style.
For Further Reference
Daiches, David. Robert Louis Stevenson and His World. London: Thames and Hudson, 1973. This concise biographical and critical study by a prominent Scottish literature critic includes ninety-nine illustrations.
Furnas, J. C. Voyage to Windward: The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson. New York: William Sloane, 1951. This book is the most comprehensive modern critical biography of Stevenson.
Hennessy, James Pope. Robert Louis Stevenson. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974. Published posthumously, this more recent study of Stevenson came out after the author was tragically murdered.
James, Henry. Literary Criticism, American and English. Edited by Leon Edel and Mark Wilson. New York: The Library of America, 1984. Henry James, a significant novelist and close friend of Stevenson, provides insightful critical appreciations in his essays "Robert Louis Stevenson" (1888) and "The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson to His Family and Friends."
Japp, Alexander H. Robert Louis Stevenson: A Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1905. This work is an appreciation by one of Stevenson’s literary associates and correspondents.
Osbourne, Lloyd. An Intimate Portrait of R.L.S. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1924. This book offers a personal recollection of Stevenson by his stepson and collaborator.
