In one of the book’s most important passages, J. But, as creatures of comfort, the men prove ill-equipped to truly live “wild,” and instead take the stresses of modern life with them. They believe that city life is superfluous and ridiculous, and that their trip will somehow allow them to rise above it. The men live in London at a time of rapid urban expansion in the wake of the Industrial Revolution, and the stresses of modernity intensify their longing to return to nature. and the three men are constantly coming into contact with the same petty concerns that they face on land. But whereas Romantic poetry gives pride of place to nature in opposition to the negative effects of city living, J. This attitude is in part inherited from the Romantic poets, who placed nature at the center of their work.
thinks, will let the men reconnect with an earlier, purer time. discusses how camping would be “wild and free.” He also slips into a richly descriptive passage that idealizes the simplicity of the natural world while criticizing modernity: “we fall asleep beneath the great, still stars, and dream that the world is young again … sweet as she was in those bygone days when, a new-made mother, she nursed us, her children, upon her own deep breast-ere the wiles of painted civilization had lured us away from her fond arms.” Journeying up the river, J. J., the novel’s narrator, is especially prone to personifying nature-as “Night,” or the “Sun,” or the “River” itself-and ascribing to it a kind of radiant benevolence that sends him into “deep thought.” Before the men have even set off, J. Jerome explores this tension between idealism and reality to suggest the men have bought into an overly-romanticized version of the natural world, the search for which leads only to frustration and disappointment. The men imagine nature as a return to a purer, more wholesome way of living, but this is an ideal it rarely lives up to. Whenever a sense of communion with nature is reached, it isn’t long before it’s interrupted. The men quickly struggle with the river environment, however, finding it difficult to control the boat, prepare their meals, and get a good night’s sleep. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat, friends J., Harris, and George, are united in the simple goal of boating up the river Thames, an attempt to restore their health and well-being by escaping the allegedly toxic influence of London and getting back to nature.
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