Characters Discussed
Ebenezer (Eben) Cooke
Ebenezer (Eben) Cooke (EH-beh-nee-zur), the main character, who moves from the position of naïve fool to wounded and wise sophisticate during this novel, which describes his adventures as he learns the difference between his romantic view of the world and cruel reality. Eben and his twin sister Anna were born in 1666 in Maryland, on Malden, a tobacco plantation owned by their father, Andrew. Eben’s mother died giving birth to the twins. Andrew returned to England for the children’s education, hiring Henry Burlingame III as their tutor. Eben attends Cambridge University. While there, he meets a prostitute, Joan Toast. He does not have sex with her; he vows eternal love to her and promises to maintain his virginity as a tribute to her. He has been adrift in his life; she inspires him to be a poet. His father asks him to return to Maryland to run the plantation. At about the same time, he has an interview with Lord Baltimore, a former governor of Maryland, who appoints Eben poet laureate of the colony and asks Eben to help him regain his former post as governor. The man posing as Lord Baltimore is really Henry Burlingame III in disguise. This episode is the first of many tricks played on Eben by a person he thought he could trust like a member of his family, and before long his head is spinning, and he no longer knows what to believe. Fearing trouble from those plotting against Lord Baltimore, Eben exchanges identities with his servant, Bertrand Burton. They travel to Maryland (after being taken by pirates and thrown overboard), where he mistakenly gives away his estate and is forced to work on it as a common servant. After further misadventures, the worst of which is his capture by murderous Indians, Eben regains the plantation, marries Joan Toast, and writes a bitter, cynical poem, The Sot-Weed Factor, which is very different from the romantic epic he had first planned.
Henry Burlingame III
Henry Burlingame III, Eben’s friend and teacher, a master of disguises. As a baby, he was found by Andrew Cooke floating in Chesapeake Bay with a note reading “Henry Burlingame III” pinned to his clothes. Burlingame adopts many roles and disguises as he pops in and out of the story, always one step ahead of the befuddled Eben. His goal is to recover the lost journal of Captain John Smith, which he hopes will reveal his true identity. He finally discovers that he is one of three brothers descended from a priest and an Indian maiden. Burlingame marries and has a child with Anna, but at the end of the novel, he disappears, perhaps off on another of his many escapades. He acts as a contrast to Eben because, unlike the poet, he sees the world as it really is and adapts to it to get what he wants.
Joan Toast
Joan Toast, Eben’s love. She travels to the New World with a group of whores. Their vessel is attacked by the same pirates who take Eben prisoner, but she arrives at Malden. She is stricken with smallpox, but Eben follows through on his vow of love for her and marries her.
Bertrand Burton
Bertrand Burton, Eben’s servant, who acts as Eben’s master for most of the story. While he is pretending to be Eben, he gets a landowner’s daughter pregnant and gambles away much of Eben’s estate. Bertrand is always looking to save his own skin, no matter what the consequences for others.
John McEvoy
John McEvoy, Joan Toast’s pimp, who pursues Eben because...
(This entire section contains 739 words.)
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the poet never paid for his meeting with the prostitute. He also goes to Maryland, where he becomes another irritation for Eben.
Captain John Smith
Captain John Smith, an early explorer of Maryland and Virginia. He appears as a character in his own journal, which reveals that his friendship with Pocahontas was very different from the traditional legend.
Henry Warren
Henry Warren, a scoundrel who, in Andrew Cooke’s absence, turned Cooke’s tobacco plantation into an opium farm. He is Eben’s adversary as Eben attempts to take back the land.
Drepacca
Drepacca, also known as Drakepecker and Dick Parker, the king of a band of runaway slaves. When Eben, Bertrand, and McEvoy are captured by hostile Indians, he remembers his friendship with Eben and helps them out of this desperate circumstance.
Characters
Ebenezer Cooke, the main character in The Sot-Weed Factor, is the son of a Maryland tobacco planter, but he grows up in England as an orphan alongside his twin sister, Anna. He receives his education at home under the guidance of the family's tutor, Henry Burlingame. Eventually, Ebenezer attends Cambridge, where his vivid imagination and lack of seriousness lead to mediocre academic performance. His struggles here are reminiscent of Todd Andrews' challenges in The Floating Opera (1956) and foreshadow many of his future troubles. After Cambridge, Ebenezer pursues a career as a poet in London. Naively, he views his own innocence and virginity as a sign of his poetic calling and is appointed as the poet laureate of Maryland before being sent to manage his father's estate in the colony. His role as a poet is based on historical fact; the real Ebenezer Cooke wrote famous satirical poems about colonial Maryland, including one with the same title as Barth's novel, excerpts of which appear in the story.
During their voyage across the Atlantic, Cooke and his cunning servant encounter pirates and are captured, forced to walk the plank. They manage to swim to safety and reach Maiden, where Cooke's father's estate is located. However, Ebenezer loses the estate in a strange episode of spontaneous colonial justice. With considerable effort and the assistance of Burlingame, his former tutor who is entangled in murky political plots involving Lord Baltimore, William Penn, the French, and the Native Americans, he eventually recovers it. These political intrigues and Burlingame's numerous disguises illustrate Barth's interest in the uncertainty of knowledge and the unpredictable consequences of human actions.
Anna, Ebenezer's sister, follows him to America, driven by her affection for Burlingame, and the three reunite at Maiden after Ebenezer reclaims his estate, which had been turned into a brothel and opium den. Joan Toast, a former London prostitute and Ebenezer's first almost-lover, uses her charm and legal authority to assist him. Although she is suffering from syphilis and nearing death, she marries Ebenezer, and by consummating the marriage, he secures legal ownership of his inheritance. At the story's conclusion, Burlingame vanishes into the complex world of colonial politics, Joan Toast dies alongside her infant son, but Anna's son, Andrew, survives and is raised by Ebenezer and Anna at Maiden.
Following the publication of his satirical work on Maryland, Ebenezer loses his laureateship, although it is later offered to him again. He refuses the offer and eventually passes away with little recognition. This blend of disappointment and occasional success at the novel's end reinforces Barth's theme of the mixed outcomes of nearly any human endeavor.
