Word: froward
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...with any good marine fiction, the sea itself is background, scene shifter and, from time to storm-lashed time, main character. But the series swims also on an ocean of wondrous language, in which inept seamen, for instance, are not only "sad brutish grobians," but "froward dirty disreputable rough good-for-nothing disorderly ragabashes and raparees." If there is a serious flaw, it is that since the novels are mostly about men, they are probably mostly for men. O'Brian writes good female characters, but mostly they remain ashore (and one of the best, Maturin's flamboyant wife Diana, dies...