I always felt it was bizarre, too, but the last time I read the series something occurred to me. Just preceding the bear incident was the whole love triangle thing among Jack, Diana and Stephen. Jack is unfeelingly flirting with Diana although he knows Stephen is in love with her.
Following right on the heels of this is the bear incident. I think O’Brian wanted to show Jack being humiliated after the Diana thing. Stephen did seem to carry it on longer than was necessary. I think he was enjoying making Jack sweat and suffer.
That’s putting it mildly. This book should be read and re-read by anyone with a shred of interest in ships and the sea.
It’s one of the very few authentic accounts of shipboard life from “before the mast” (i.e. in front of the mast, where the ordinary seamen berthed). Dana is observant and tells his tale well. His description of the “Kanakas” (Hawaiian sailors) and his watchmate Tom Harris are wonderful.
I remember thinking last time I read about the bear that Stephen wanted to make the point to Jack that his secret squirrel stuff could at times be incredibly mentally and physically gruelling, and that he sometimes felt taken for granted or slighted for having to maintain the facade of the landlubberly surgeon on the ship.
Two things wrong with that theory - First, it wasn’t a facade. It was his primary identity. He considered his job as a naval physician at least as if not more important than his job with Naval Intelligence.
Secondly, at the time of the dancing bear incident, we the reader had hardly seen Stephen act as an intelligence agent. That doesn’t show up at all in Master & Commander, and they don’t go to sea until after the bear incident in Post Captain - the entire first third of the book before they escape to France occurs during the Peace of Amiens. He doesn’t really hit his stride as an agent until later books.
I just take it for what it claims to be - they had to keep Jack in the skin while they walked to Spain, since 6 ft tall blonde Frenchman with English accents are few and far between in France. The fact that everyone believed it was a bear just takes some suspension of disbelief.
LOL, I remember reading one book in the series, driving to the book store (like we did in days of yore), finishing the book in the parking lot, going into the store to buy the next book and then sitting in the parking lot for another hour to read the first part of the new book.
I recall Jack attempting to speak French; two Frenchmen stare at each other until Stephen translates.
It is apparently funny as hell if you understand French grammar.
And the bits where Jack wants to be polite when being introduced to Frenchmen.
Since a well-bred Englishman at that time would say “your servant, sir” in English, Jack tries to do the same in French. But since the French didn’t really use that particular phrase, and Jack is a famously incompetent translator, it ends up with Jack basically bowing and saying “Chambermaid” to the no-doubt extremely confused Frenchmen.
And yeah, I don’t think the bear suit needs any justification other than the straightforward one of hiding a six-foot blond Englishman while smuggling him out of France. The question is why, in a series that tries extremely hard to be accurate and plausible in regards to details of sailing and society, the reader is expected to believe it would work for more than ten minutes.
The bear suit is in Post Captain (book 2), Babbington and the rescued lesbians is in The Ionian Mission (book 8), Manu and the cannibal castrating lesbians are in Far Side of the World (book 10). So if you’re going in order jsc1953, you’ve read all of them.
Do you remember the event in FSoTW at all? Stephen was in the cabin, leaning out the window with a net to catch some prized specimen and fell in. Jack dove in after him, but by the time he got Stephen back to the surface the ship was too far away to hear his hail. They were picked up by a pahi full of women.
It’s sort of implied they were lower-case lesbians as well - they all hold hands while on the ship “to show respect”, and they wanted to be returned to their home, while the women kidnapped from other islands were content to stay with their captors.