Talk:Stephen Maturin

Comments on the Page
I think it's quite telling that the page devoted to Stephen Maturin is of much greater quality than the page on Jack Aubrey, who is also a fascinating character in his own right. It is interesting that the Aubrey page seems to be inspired by the movie, while the Maturin page is clearly concerned with O'Brian's own complex depiction. Sigma-6 23:40, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

I was fascinated when I followed up the occasional reference in the books to Stephen's owning a Breguet watch. He has his original stolen during his "interrogation" in Mahon I think, but retrieves one from a dead French agent as a replacement. I thought that it was just a rather dandy notion that he would have a watch whose brand name is still recognisable today, and which is a standard of excellence and precison engineering, when he is such a dowdy and unpunctual character. If you read the Wikipedia article on Breguet you will see that he was associated with the French court and was connected with the "scholarly people" of Paris, as was Maturin himself. Maturin would have had to have known him! A nice little touch I think.SlipperyJim (talk) 16:18, 22 February 2010 (UTC)


 * The level of understanding which O'Brian brings to the period is phenomenal. A few historians have begun to take interest in the themes identified by him and used it to drive changes in interpretive history. Check out the Beinart source in the Aubrey-Maturin series article. Sadads (talk) 19:35, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

This article currently ends with this statement: "He eventually sells the Surprise to Aubrey." Stephen did agree to sell the Surprise to Jack. But Jack soon after had financial setbacks and it is unclear that the sale was ever completed. In 21, Jack told a superior officer that he could not order the Surprise to carry passengers, as Stephen was her owner. It would be uncharacteristic for Aubrey to lie to an admiral for a trivial purpose about a verifiable detail. Mori kopel (talk) 21:17, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

About reference [4] says "He is considered an expert in suprapubic cystostomy (spelled "cystotomy", without the "s")" I write to say these are two different operations, cystotosmy and cystotomy; the occasion referenced on p 47 gives no reason to believe that these two operations involved exteriorizing the drainage (cystostomy). They were simple cystotomies, perhaps to remove stones, and not misspelled cystostomies. "The wind, ..., did not interrupt Stephen's habit of visiting the hsoptial every morning: he generally went there with Jacob, and on two separate occasions he had the pleasure of carrying out his particular operation of suprpubic cystotomy in the presence of the Physician..." 97.113.6.120 (talk) 19:46, 20 February 2017 (UTC)Susan Jeswine O'Shea

Spy
The lead refers to him being a spy, but there is nothing in the article to explain that. Can someone add? DeCausa (talk) 22:44, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

hurling / Gaelic games categories
I just noticed that this article was in the hurling culture category, which apparently led it to being added to the Gaelic games Wikiproject. That doesn't make sense. I've read the Aubrey/Maturin series more times than I'd like to admit, and the only mention of any Gaelic game that I can recall is a comedic scene in which Dr. Maturin is confused by rules of cricket but mentions that he was an excellent player in his youth. He briefly joins the action and does something which apparently is appropriate in hurling but not in cricket - I honestly didn't get the joke since I don't know much about either sport, but the rest of the crew reacted with a mix of mirth and shock. In any case, both the match and the conversation are interrupted by a call to action immediately thereafter. I do not believe that hurling is mentioned at any other point in the entire series. A couple of paragraphs out of twenty-one novels isn't enough to link the good doctor to a bunch of articles about actual hurlers or the Gaelic games in general, imo. Zeng8r (talk) 15:38, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

Style of "Personal characteristics" section
This section, at least, reads much more like a book review than an encyclopedia article. I removed the last paragraph, which was particularly unencyclopedic in style. Eric talk 03:12, 16 January 2023 (UTC)