ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the relations between Jack and his monarch, then between Jack and his wives, and finally Jack's own relationship with birth and wealth. The novel articulates these relationships slightly differently, even while inviting analogies that cross familial, social, economic and political discourses, and even different ideological positions within these discourses. Lincoln Faller, addressing these peculiar analogies, perceptively suggests that, In its effort to achieve wholeness of meaning and form, Colonel Jack may be saying more than Defoe knows, can admit, or even wants to say about social hierarchy, politics, economic struggle, the dreadful position of men before God, or of men with respect to their wives. The novel's central concern with Jacobitism is signalled most emblematically by its eponymous title: 'Jack' being an appellation for the Jacobite movement. Colonel Jack is a rambling and restless novel that brings together a kaleidoscopic range of contemporary issues.
