Robinson Crusoe
Last lecture: The world of Daniel Defoe and Robinson Crusoe
Today: How Robinson Crusoe makes sense out of that world
I. Robinson Crusoe as a generic hybrid
A. Spiritual Autobiography
Emp: the shaping of experience according to some pre-established--not to say "predestine"-plan, form, or narrative pattern. The experience of the individual is subordinated to that of the
"type." For example, consider, the pattern of conversion and redemption that we examined in
Rowlandson's captivity narrative. That pattern structures the experience of the individual,
thereby rendering that experience significance and establishing the individual's identity or
significance only as it reveals the larger spiritual pattern. As MR shows us, that distinction is
never entirely consistent, but the point of the account is clearly the spiritual pattern and not the
experience itself.
The point of the narrative is to portray a character (real or not) "rising" above the chaos of
everyday life and acknowledging our dependence on the pattern of Providence that gives that
life its significance. We have seen many examples this quarter. E.g., in addition to
Rowlandson, the way Winthrop describes the Puritans' settlement in America as a "City on a
Hill," in Bradford's portrayal of the massacre at Mystic Fort as an offering to the Lord, etc.
There are lots of very famous spiritual autobiographies: the most famous is undoubtedly
Augustine's Confessions, but for sources closer to Defoe historically and theologically, see John
Bunyan's autobiography Grace Abounding and Richard Baxter's Autobiography. These
autobiographies are accounts of the lives of actual people. However, like Rowlandson's
narrative, the real point of these spiritual autobiographies is not to provide a detailed record of
what happened to that person, but rather to show how that individual's experience is part of a
larger plan.
In other works, the representative nature of that personal experience becomes more prominent,
and the idiosyncratic specificity of the individual's life--whatever may have happened by chance-is replaced by events and details the purpose of which is entirely determined by the plot. That
results in allegorical works such as John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress (1678), which is the story
of a character named Christian who goes on a journey through the Slough of Despond and the
Valley of Humiliation on his way to the Celestial City. (Cf. Journey to the West). The difference
between allegory and spiritual autobiography here is merely one of degree, however, since in
both cases it is the pattern that lends significance to the experience, rather than vice-versa.
B. Journal
Emp: the relatively Unshaped character of the representation, governed by what actually
happened as it happened to an individual eye-witness. One of the most famous examples is
Columbus's journal, which literally is organized day-by-day, but just about any record of
historical events can be considered a "journal" in this sense so long as its organizing principle is
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sheer chronology and there is no overt principle of selection that renders some events or "facts"
necessarily more important than others.
This definition of "journal" is clearly an ideal, since it is difficult to imagine any kind of
human expression that is not shaped by cultural presuppositions, ideological discriminations,
etc. Columbus's journal shows us that. The point here is that a "journal" lacks an OVERT
formal objective to which the sheer chronology and empirical description is subordinated. In
other words, the explicit point of the account is to portray what an individual saw and did in a
particular time and place, not to translate that experience into some other form where its "true"
meaning is revealed.
C. The Novel
Thesis: Robinson Crusoe incorporates both of those two forms of writing, spiritual
autobiography and the journal, more or less successfully. But so did Rowlandson's narrative.
What is important about Robinson Crusoe is that it not only combines these two forms of writing,
but it also suggests a thematic connection between them that was lacking in Rowlandson:
Providence, the pattern and divine origin of the form of spiritual autobiography, is
represented as working within this world and through human agency, rather than as a
transcendent scheme visible only through the translation of this world into divine terms.
So, individual actions and desires take on a spiritual significance they lacked earlier, and
the material world of human action becomes a ground for spiritual insight and
significance.
Thesis: Robinson Crusoe is written at a moment when European society as a whole was
becoming increasingly secular, and the conflict of styles results from an effort to transform
sacred authority into social order. That transformation internalizes divine Providence as
individual desire, and externalizes spiritual conversion as the cultivation of land and the
reformation of social order. The result as a justification of colonialism in the case of RC, but it
opened colonialism up to ethical examination on the basis of what it did in the world (rather than
just its good intentions)--and on the basis of who was doing it, the individual character/identity of
the colonialist. Next week, with Crevecoeur, we will read just such an examination.
In the terms of this quarter, we could say that the novel combines the detail events of the journal
or eyewitness account with the formal rigor of the spiritual autobiography. This shaping resulted
in a formal structure that was derived more from the traditions of allegory and romance. The
structure of the novel differed from those precedents, however, in one very important way that
helped avoid the conflict between pattern and experience. The significance of experience that
was revealed by the shaping of the novelistic narrative was usually based in the lives of
individuals--vs. for example Providence and God; those individuals are usually associated with
what we would think of today as a middle-class culture--as opposed to the nobility shipwrecked
with Prospero, for example; and their actions are driven by motivations that are usually
economic, social, and/or what we would call today psychological--and not based on
transcendent sources of divine inspiration, grace, or Providence. The novel was thus
associated with an increasingly secular outlook that valued empirical observation and
experimentation over revelation; looked to social, economic, and (eventually) psychological
causes rather than Providence to explain events; and elevated the authority of the individual
observer over that of the scholar, minister, or Scriptural text. Another way to say this is that the
order or significance of human experience was to be found in this material world rather than in
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the realm of the spirit, even though that significance was itself ultimately derived from a spiritual
source.
Altogether, these features make up the "flood" of "new realism" that Joyce praised for turning
RC into an ideal representative of British colonialism despite the many factual inaccuracies and
preposterous coincidences that make the novel "unrealistic" in the sense of an accurate
portrayal of real life. They constituted a brand new kind of writing, one that would quickly be
labeled "the novel," and Robinson Crusoe is often cited as one of the earliest examples of this
genre. (The Oxford English Dictionary lists the first appearance of this term with this general
meaning about 1700, and it was half a century later before the term was used to designate what
we would call "the novel" today.)
Robinson Crusoe fits most of these criteria, which is why it is often called the first novel. RC is a
seed merchant and adventurer (economic as well physical) who builds up a small supply of
money and goods into a respectable fortune--a good definition of the middle-class merchant of
his day. His narrative is suffused with concrete details about the stuff of everyday life (bread,
tools, etc.), and much of his time is devoted to reproducing as closely as possible the bourgeois
way of life that he was so anxious to leave as a young man, from his shelter to his farms and
even to his pets. The account of these realistic details is hardly the random accumulation of
experiences characteristic of the journal or eyewitness account, however. The novel is shaped
from the beginning by the retrospective nature of the narration, that is written long after RC has
left the island and that is distinguished clearly from the journal he keeps until he runs out of ink.
That retrospective narration explicitly attempts to explain the significance of RC's actions, which
explain--empirically through the experiment--the natural origins of production (and the errors of
contemporary European economics); which are usually the result of motives are that
immediately recognizable as basic human needs--fear, hunger; and which usually reflect the
social prejudices and practices of his time, including, of course, an unquestioning believe in
social hierarchy and a concomitant belief in the superiority of European civilization over savage
customs of the natives, most notably, cannibalism.
II. Robinson Crusoe as Spiritual Autobiography: Captivity and
Conversion
A. Shipwreck and Original Sin
A. Winthrop's "shipwracke" and the captive as type
Winthrop used the metaphor of shipwreck to dramatize the Puritan's fate if they failed to abide
by their covenant with the Lord and live together as an example to the world, a City on a Hill
[quote sermon]
B. Robinson Crusoe's shipwreck: the novel as spiritual autobiography
In Robinson Crusoe, shipwrecks also follow some offense against a rule or law, and they
subject their victims to severe punishment, usually followed by redemption and a return home.
We can therefore read the novel as a spiritual autobiography or conversion narrative similar to
Rowlandson's. Like MR, RC describes his time on the island as a "captivity," and his rescue as
a "deliverance" (71, 100, 200). And like MR, he tells his story with an acute sense of the
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difference between how he felt about his experience at the time, and how he understands it now
after its spiritual significance has been revealed. Technically, this results in a split between the
character's perceptions and the narrator's account, even though the two are the same person.
1. Original Sin
The first time RC ever goes to sea, his ship sinks. As he says at the end of the novel when he
decides to walk home to England rather than getting on another ship, "I had been very
unfortunate by Sea" (207). His departure had directly contracted the wishes of his father, and
he attributes his disastrous experience to that contradiction, which he associates with his "Duty
to God": 7A.
At the end of the novel, he will describe this disobedience as his "Original Sin" (141).
B. Despair
Once back on dry land, though, the young (18 yr. Old) RC is consumed by wanderlust and
eventually winds up in Brazil, where he starts a plantation and eventually is talked into going to
Guinea to bring back some slaves for himself and the other planters. That leads to the
shipwreck that strands him on the island (Sept. 30, 1659), and plunges him into despair: 4647A
C. Revelation
After 9 mos. on the island, he gets very sick, has a terrifying dream right out of the Book of
Revelations, reproaches himself for the spiritual thoughtlessness of his past life, recalls his
father's warning, appeals to the Lord for help, and tries to pray: 67
D. Conversion
The next day, he rummages around in the trunk he took from the ship and finds a Bible, opens
it, applies the words to his own situation, and is able to pray for the first time for years: 69.
RC's conversion (accompanied by substantial doses of rum-soaked tobacco) is represented as
a change in the way he reads or interprets his situation. Whereas before he thought of his
situation in literal or worldly terms, now he sees it in typological terms that reveal the spiritual
significance of his experience: 68-71.
E. Redemption and "Deliverance"
RC's conversion is followed by his physical recovery from the illness, which awakens in
him--after 10 mos. on the island, the urge to "Discover." What he discovers is a "wild" land, with
melons and grapes just lying around for the taking, "like a planted Garden," just waiting for his
cultivation. It is like Eden, and it is just for him: 72-73.
This scene obviously recalls all those descriptions of the New World as an Eden-perhaps, if Vespucci is correct, THE Eden.
6. Return
To make a long story short, he cultivates his garden and then goes home.
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III. Providence and Prudence: Internalization of Providence as Human
Initiative
What happens in the interval between his discovery of the Garden and his deliverance back to
England considerably complicates a reading of the novel as spiritual autobiography. That
complication stems in part from the same slippage we saw in Rowlandson's narrative between
the narrative of conversion and those aspects of her experience that did not really have a place
in that story, i.e., the adventure.
That slippage is the cause of the biggest split in the way people have read he novel, i.e.,
the religious vs. the economic readings. The difference between those reading can be
described as a difference between causal arguments for what happens to RC, a distinction
between divine and human agency. Or, using terms that RC himself applies, a distinction
between divine Providence and human Prudence (125).
What distinguishes Robinson Crusoe from Rowlandson's narrative, and one of the things
that has made the novel so important and influential, is that these two stories, i.e., conversion
and adventure, are not simply different perspectives on the experience. The novel offers a third
kinds of causal argument that connects divine and human agency through the idea of labor,
hard work, or personal initiative.
A. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (by Max
Weber, published 1904-05)
In this famous book, the German scholar Max Weber argued that Protestant theology-particularly as developed by John Calvin and pursued by the Puritans--reinforced certain social
and psychological factors in the 18th and 19th centuries to give birth to what we know today as a
"capitalist" attitude. He actually mentions Defoe at one point (180), not as a novelist but as an
example of the extent to which Puritans and other Calvinist dissenters were interested in the
material world and economic relations--a side of Puritanism quite different from the theological
concepts we have studied earlier.
Weber's argument is complicated, but for our purposes his claim can be summarized as
follows: Providence has established that certain people (the Elect) have a "calling" to live in a
certain way (a Covenant), and if they follow that calling, they will succeed. Their worldly
success thus becomes a measure of their spiritual identity, and Weber describes his as the
"spiritualization of personality."
B. Providence as Opportunity
In Robinson Crusoe, this complicated idea takes on a very simple formulation: God, or
Providence, still governs everything, but not as directly as Rowland argues. Instead,
Providence functions as opportunity, and the individual must therefore build on that opportunity
to realize his spiritual calling.
Thus, when some corn he has dropped from his pocket accidentally begins to grow, he
declares it (in retrospect) as one of the "pure Productions of Providence (58)," but he must save
the corn and, most importantly, work on it to produce the bread he eats. This necessity leads to
the string of events that causes RC to reproduce the history of technology, thereby joining the
products he enjoys to their natural orgins through his work, or labor, rather than attributing the
products themselves directly to God, as Rowlandson might have done (NB her refusal to
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escape when given the opportunity). Thus, God's work, and man's work, are joined, and he
works for what God provides, turning Corn into Bread, a thoroughly worldly miracle: 86-87.
C. The "Calling" of Labor
This association of individual industry with the workings of Providence relegates Providence to
the background, where it functions as an influence on the human mind, a divine force, but
internalized in the human agent: 127.
Thus, when he discovers the British sea-captain, who has been put ashore with a couple
of his crew by some other members of his crew who have mutinied, RC compares the help is
about to give them with Providence providing the ship-full of goods after the shipwreck, and the
British captain in turn is astonished to seem him, saying "Am I talking to God, or Man!" (182,
183).
IV. An American Prospero: Externalization of Spiritual Conversion as
Colonization
A. Robinson Crusoe's "Inchanted Isle"
This internalization of providence creates great power in the individual; RC rules on his island
like a Prospero. But unlike Prospero, Robinson Crusoe achieves his "Wonders" through labor,
hard work, not through magic: there are no magic books here, and no Ariel to do his work for
him--until, of course, he meets Friday. I want to explore these parallels and differences to
suggest the extent to which labor, and the actual transformation of the land, has supplanted
magic and illusion as a way of gaining insight into the truths of human nature and the
foundations of social order.
A "collection of Wonders": When he rescues the British sea-captain from the mutineers, he
amazes the captain with his "collection of Wonders" (186), and when the mutineers find their
boat ruined and hear voices in the woods, RC notes: 191.
B. "How like a King I look'd"
RC repeatedly fantasizes about being the King and Lord of his island, just as Prospero
was on his island: 174. Once the British mutineers come on shore, intending to leave their
captain to die on the island, he actually has more than one subject, and the more people who
arrive, the more deliberate is his effort to rule as a king.
RC does not exactly look very regal, however: hybrid costume
He therefore must create the illusion of power, which he does at the end by hiding
himself from the mutineers, "for Reasons of State": 193. 195.
Finally, with the help of some clothes from the British ship, he dresses as an
Englishman, calls together all the mutineers, and reveals himself to them as the Governor of the
island: 198.
Deciding to leave the worst of the mutineers on the island, he tells them the "history of the
place," leaves them some guns, and explains to them about domesticating the animals, and
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making cheese, and finally gives them some peas, "and bad them be sure to sow and encrease
them," just like God tells Adam in Genesis.
C. Tilling the Garden (labor and typology)
1. Cheese and the Word
The work that RC does literally reshapes the island, or at least parts of it, into a Castle, a
Country House, Enclosures, etc. He turns grapes into raisins, grain into bread, and also reforms the fauna as well as the flora, domesticating the goats to make cheese--that "milk with
memory" we heard about in Winter Quarter, by now for us a powerful symbol of civilization--and
even teaching the parrots how to talk: immediately following the passage where he turns corn
into bread, he teaches a parrot how to says the name he gives it (87), and later, most famously,
teaches a parrot to say his own name. Following the parallel between the works of God and
man above, we might say he is re-forming the island world in his own image.
2. Making a man in his own image
The most famous "reformation," of course, is Friday, whom RC names, teaches to speak
by calling him master, dresses Friday just like himself, puts to work in the garden, teaches to
shoot, etc. (148-60). The point is pretty clear, as RC says at one point, "if I would have let him,
he would have worshipp'd me and my Gun" (153).
This physical reformation leads to Friday's spiritual reformation and conversion,
accompanied by a reading of Scripture and, of course, RC's careful direction. This is followed
by Friday's promise to go spread the word--RC's words, of course, and the gospel of European
production: 162.
D. The Footprint: Tracking the Darkness Within
The relation between RC and Friday has some obvious parallels to the relation between
Prospero and Caliban in The Tempest. RC finds Friday there on the island, considers him a
child of nature, teaches him to speak and otherwise "civilizes" him, and expects his undying
gratitude and obedience in return. Unlike Caliban, of course, Friday only praises, never curses,
his master--this is, after all, RC telling the story--and he and RC are joined by love, not cruelty.
(Would having a daughter along--or a wife on the island--have complicated that relation?).
But as you remember, I suggested a more profound relation between Prospero and
Caliban: Caliban was that "thing of darkness" that Prospero had to recognize as "mine own"
before the play could end with the restoration of Prospero's homecoming and his return to
Naples. The same point is made by this novel, but between RC and the savages from whom
he rescues Friday.
1. From the beginning, he begins to reshape the island not only in the image of
his needs and desires, but also in the image of his fears: 45. He builds his wall
much bigger than necessary because of his fears (56). Needs a wall even
though there is nothing to wall out: 76.
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2. when he sees the footprint, he first interprets it as a sign of the Other, the
savages, and even more Other, the Devil, who are lurking to attack and destroy
everything he has built: 112-13.
3. He then concludes that it is his own footprint, realizing that he is afraid of his
own shadow, and then plans to tear down his stuff to protect it from the savages,
i.e., to do to himself what he projected as what the savages would do to him:
116.
4. The fears cause him to suspend building and actually to regress spiritually,
back to the cave, where he encounters a "Devil," the dying ram who sounds like
a sighing man, but he recognizes nothing in the cave is "more frightful than my
Self" (128).
5. His fear of the savages, still strong five years after seeing the footprint, is what keeps him
from going native entirely, back to nature, and keeps him wanting to go home, even after 23
years, after being naturalized to the place: 130-31
E. A "National" Solution
6. Seeing the footprint was the knowledge of others, and of evil, vs. the isolated
state of nature, and that reveals the true goodness of Providence vs. the illusions
of happiness he built on the island himself: 142
7. Thus the savages, and his fantasies of destroying them, his evil impulses, are
a way of his coming to a greater awareness of his own spiritual election: 122-26.
Thus, like Prospero recognizing the darkness of Caliban as his own, Robinson Crusoe comes to
recognize his own connection to the savagery and evil that he fears, and through that
recognition comes to a greater awareness of himself and remakes the island in the image of
that self. This is the same way Europe looked at "the savage" New World throughout the age of
colonization: as a resource to exploit by literally remaking it in the image of colonialist greed
and ambition, a process that was spiritual in a narrative of renewal.
Friday symbolizes that connection between Europe and the New World perfectly: joined
to RC in a narcissistic bond of self-love, he does the work and willingly exposes himself to
danger to protect RC from the threats of the world, and so frees him to work his magic--the
illusions of his omnipotence--by which he rules. RC and Friday are so closely bonded that they
become something different, both strangers in strange lands.
V. The Perfect Stranger
There are some problems with RC's plan, however, that Prospero does not have to face.
A. First, the new clothes don't fit. "Never was any thing in the World of that Kind so
unpleasant, awkward, and uneasy, as it was to me to wear such Cloaths at their first putting on"
(198).
Second, when he arrives home to England after 35 years, he no longer belongs there:
"When I came to England, I was as perfect a Stranger to all the World, as if I had never been
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known there" (200). His parents are dead and they have left nothing for him. He then begins
thinking about returning to Brazil.
So he cannot go home the way Prospero does (and in fact does not, spending the rest of
his life sailing back and forth tending to the little colony he started on his island). Why not?
1.The problem, he says, is that he had become "naturaliz'd to the Place" where he had
been for over 27 years (206).
2. He had "gone native": costumes, and deciding to move inland
B. The Wanderer
So, he heads for Portugal, where with the help of his father-surrogate he is able to get
the proceeds from the sale of his plantation in Brazil. At that point, he begins to worry about
dying in a Catholic land (207) and decides to return to England. Understandably enough, he
has had enough of sailing: 207. So he decides to walk, and he undergoes a horrific journey
across the Pyrenees, where he nearly freezes to death, and through a forest filled with bears
and howling wolves, past the dismembered bodies of two men half eaten by the beasts, until he
can pass into the beautiful land he sees from atop the mountains, the pleasant fruitful Provinces
of Languedoc and Gascoign, all green and flourishing" (210).
After arriving in England, he settles down for a little while, marries and has three
children. His wife soon dies and he becomes restless again, however, so he returns to his
island and spends the rest of his life sailing back and forth, tending to what he calls "his colony,"
sending the men some women and watching his little colony flourish in the New World.
What has happened here is a fundamental dislocation of RC from England. He has been
naturalized to the new world, remade there as an effect of his stay on the island and his
understanding that his relation to the savages is part of a higher plan that also determines who
he is himself.
America thus is a land of strangers, of people who, when they set foot on that new shore,
become something new, something different, and who remake themselves as they remake that
land in the image of their dreams. That is the message of Crevecoeur's Letters, as we will see
next time.