Java Head by Joseph Hergesheimer

Interracial marriage disturbs small New England town

Philadelphia-born author Joseph Hergesheimer (1880-1954) enjoyed some moderate literary success in the early 20th century. His novel Java Head, published in 1919, is his most popular and highly regarded work. Progressive for its time, the novel deals with the issues of interracial marriage, colonialism, and culture clash between the East and West. In 1934, Java Head was adapted into a British feature film starring Anna May Wong.

The Ammidon family owns a shipping company that transports cargo all over the world. Jeremy Ammidon, the patriarch, is a salty old sea dog, now retired. His son William is essentially the CEO who manages the home office or “counting house” in Salem, Massachusetts. William’s brother Gerrit is the firm’s head sea captain who commands its primary sailing ship. The title of Java Head refers to a rocky promontory on the island of Java in Indonesia. It is also the name that Jeremy Ammidon has chosen for the family mansion in Salem. It is at this latter Java Head that the novel takes place. The story never ventures to Indonesia, nor is the reader taken to sea. Unlike metropolitan Boston, Hergesheimer depicts Salem as an insular, provincial, somewhat rednecky town. Many of Salem’s yankees, however, have sailed to Asia, Africa, South America, and the islands of the South Pacific.

The drama begins when Gerrit returns from abroad after a long absence, accompanied by his new Chinese wife. Not surprisingly, this interracial marriage is met with some scorn and indignation: How dare he mate outside his race! A commendably unexpected plot development, however, is that another Salem sailor, an avid sinophile (lover of Chinese culture), is jealous of Gerrit and wants the Chinese woman for himself. Another subplot, not particularly compelling, concerns a Salem woman who has long been in love with Gerrit. This hinges on archaic Victorian conventions that stipulated if a man shows any personal attention to a woman, he’s obligated to marry her, or she’s destined to become a spinster for life. Even if that may be realistic for the time period, it’s hard to take such maudlinness seriously.

Hergesheimer’s prose is annoying from the get-go. You know you’re in for a long haul when the opening pages are spent on an 11-year-old girl contemplating different types of chairs. Then the adult characters constantly spout out non-sequitirs related to distant ports of call, like “It wasn’t bad at Calcutta, either, with an awning on the quarter-deck, watching the carriages and syces in the Maidan and maybe a corpse or two floating about the gangway from the burning ghauts.” OK, I get it, they’re sailors; can we get on with a story now? Judging by all the lengthy descriptions of clothing and furniture, Hergesheimer seems more concerned with showing off his window-dressing skills. “See how clever I am? How I can decorate a stage!” What actually takes place on that stage is almost an afterthought. This kind of verbal ostentation is the same reason I don’t much care for the writings of Joseph Conrad or Rudyard Kipling.

Admittedly, the last few chapters of Java Head are quite good. Hergesheimer finally starts to pay some attention to the Chinese woman at the center of the story. Commendably, she’s not just a racial stereotype. Hergesheimer has clearly done some research into Chinese culture. If anything, he makes her too much of a philosopher and embodiment of Confucianism. Java Head is a short novel, but it still wastes too much time setting the stage before it commences with its story. If the whole book were as interesting as its last three chapters, it would make for a more worthwhile read.