Steerpike is one of the most fascinating fictional creations and one of my personal favourites – I chose the name as my alter ego on Last.fm and E-music (I wanted to use it on WordPress too but somebody beat me to it).
The character appears in Mervyn Peake’s Titus trilogy being first introduced in Titus Groan (1946) and featuring prominantly in the second novel entitled Gormenghast (1950). The trilogy concluded with Titus Alone in 1959.
The novels are a rich combination of Dickensian satire and surreal Gothic fantasy. The quest for freedom is a key theme as followed principally through the heir apparent Titus Groan, wild child Lady Fuschia and an outsider employed as a kitchen boy who is Steerpike.
Steerpike personifies a kind of Nietzchian will to power in his goal of taking over the influential post as Master of Ritual and essentially control the lives of all those in the castle . He plots the downfall of the hierarchy with a single mindedness which ultimately becomes wildly obsessive and recklessly self destructive.
He is initially the most human of the many diverse characters in the novel but gradually becomes crueller and ruthlessly manipulative as the story progresses. He is a brilliantly conceived anti-hero and and the novels form a masterly trilogy. The second volume is by far the best and where all the key action happens.
Mervyn Peake (1911 – 1968) was also an accomplished and under appreciated artist and poet. He illustrated the Titus books himself and many other works of children’s literature including Alice In Wonderland.
