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國立中山大學外國語文學研究所
碩士論文
A Thesis Submitted to
The Graduate Institute of Foreign Languages and Literature
National Sun Yat-sen University
遠離家園：《格烈佛遊記》與《魯賓遜漂流記》中旅行、國家意識
與身分認同危機的交互糾葛
Away from Home: Travel, Nationality, and Identity Crisis in
Gulliver’s Travel and Robinson Crusoe
研究生：闕帝丰 撰
By: Di-feng Chueh
指導教授：田偉文 教授
Advisor: Professor Rudolphus Teeuwen
中華民國 九十四 年 六 月
June, 2005
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … ..i
English Abstract… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … ..ii
Chinese Abstract… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … .iv
Introduction… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … .1
Chapter One: Social Ambience and Cultural Development in Eighteenth-Century
Britain… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … 4
A: Social Ambience in Eighteenth-Century Britain… … … … … … … ..4
B: Cultural Development in Eighteenth-Century Britain… … … … … 10
C: Disharmony in Eighteenth-Century Britain… … … … … … … … … 17
Chapter Two: The Battle of Genres in Eighteenth-Century Literature… … … … … ..19
A: The Battle of Genres in Eighteenth-Century Britain… … … … … ..20
B: Utopia as a Genre Concerning Old and New Values… … … … … ..21
C: Satire as a Genre Concerning Communal Interests… … … … … … 27
D: The Novel as a Genre Concerning Individualism… … … … … … ..31
E: Travel and Travel Narrative in Eighteenth-Century England… … .35
Chapter Three: Gulliver ’s Complex: The Problems of De/Constructing Identities in
Gulliver’s Travels… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … ..40
A: What is Identity................................................................................41
B: The First Stage: Voyage to Lilliput..… … … … … … … … … … … … 45
C: The Second Stage: Voyage to Brobdingnag… … … … … … … … … .51
D: The Third Stage: Voyage to Laputa, Balnibarbi, Glubbdubdrib,
Luggnagg and Japan… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … ..55
E: The Fourth Stage: Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms… … 59
F: Conclusion… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … .64
Chapter Four: A Middle-Station King: Double Identities in Robinson Crusoe… … ...66
A: Stage I: Crusoe’s Life in England and His Solitary Exile on the
Island… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … 66
B: Stage II: Crusoe as a Communal King… … … … … … … … … … … 80
C: Stage III: Crusoe as a Middle-Station Merchant… … … … … … … .84
D: Conclusion… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … ...87
Conclusion… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … ...89
Notes… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … 95
Works Cited… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … ..98
Acknowledgements
It is impossible for me to complete this thesis without the help from many people.
First and foremost, I want to thank my advisor Prof. Rudolphus Teeuwen for his
advice, patience, and encouragement. At the beginning of writing, Prof. Teeuwen and
I both know that this thesis is a hard project since I try to discuss two texts which are
very different in their writing style and meaning in it. However, by means of the
stimulating discussions with and inspiring suggestions from Prof. Teeuwen, I
complete the thesis step by step. Also, I have to thank another two committee
members, Prof. Ting- yao Luo from Department of Foreign Languages and Literature
at National Sun Yat-Sen University, Kaohsiung and Prof. Kuo-jung Chen from
Department of Foreign Languages and Literature at National Chung Cheng University,
Chia- yi, for their close reading and insightful comments and suggestions. I am also
indebted to Prof. Bill Hutchings who is a senior lecturer from Department of English
and American Studies at University of Manc hester, United Kingdom, for his advice
and suggestions to this thesis. Without Prof. Hutchings’s advice and suggestions, I
could hardly finish some parts of the thesis when I was an exchange student to UoM.
Second, I have to thank my dear classmates, Jiunn- yuh Su, Yi- feng Li, Ming- hui,
Kate, Chiu, and Terri He, for their friendship and companionship during these years. I
also want to express my gratitude to the friends I know in Manchester: Jen-ho Chang,
Kassie Chen, Luann Chou, Tai-ching Kuo, Chi- hsiu, Alvyn, Liang ,Hau-tiong Lee,
Su- feng Lee, Easson Lin, Alice Wu, Susan Yeh, and lots of others for their help and
kindness. Besides, I also have to thank all the friends from the reading club for the
things I learn from them and their support.
Last but not least, I want to thank my parents for their unconditional support both
in emotional and financial parts and their everlasting love. It is impossible for me to
finish this thesis without the support from my family.
i
Abstract
The aim of this thesis is to understand the presentations of characters’identity
problems in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe
in relation to their respective genre and to see how the presentations reflect the social
ambience and the cultural development in eighteenth-century England. This thesis
consists of five chapters. In chapter one, I will briefly summarize the social conditions
in eighteenth-century England. This summary of social conditions will sho w
eighteenth-century England as a society of conflicts and contrasts between old and
new values. Two key words here, old and new values, will allude to the development
of literary genres in eighteenth-century England. Novel is a term which first appears
around this time in the history of literary writing and which refers to a new type of
genre. As people have varieties of life styles, so do authors have a new genre to work
with. However, this newness, either in a social or cultural context, coexists with the
old values. In the context of literary writing, the novel, as a genre, has to compete and
cooperate with one of its precursors, the genre of satire.
In chapter two, I will try to understand the relationship between novel and satire
in the light of another genre, utopia. Even though the utopian element in satire is a
counterpoint, meaning the dystopian stance, of utopian traditio ns, there still is a strong
sense of community in satirical writings. Compared with satire, the sense of
individuals is the core of the genre of the novel. Realism, marked by Ian Watt, is a
new trend in novel writing and it is highly connected with the idea of individualism
instead of the sense of community. In order to see this difference, Swift’s Gulliver’s
Travels and Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe are the two texts that I will use in chapter three
and four for detailed discussions. As for the second part of chapter two, I try to single
out the idea of travel with the intention to see its importance in eighteen-century
England.
ii
In chapters three and four, my concern turns to characters’ identity problems in
the two travel narratives: Gulliver’s Travels and Robinson Crusoe. Compared with
each other, the characters of the two travel narratives have different identity problems
and this difference is important in the way of symbolizing the different concerns of
each genre: satire for a sense of community and novel for individualism. Moreover, in
terms of the different endings in the two travel narratives, Gulliver and Crusoe’s
experie nces of their identity problems also suggest an important social condition,
which is the different possibilities of life, in eighteenth-century England. In
conclusion, I will give an overall review of the whole thesis.
iii
遠離家園：《格烈佛遊記》與《魯賓遜漂流記》中旅行、國家意識與身分認同危
機的交互糾葛
中文摘要
本論文旨在透過不同文類的書寫方式來分析強納森•史威福特(Jonathan
Swift)的《格烈佛遊記》(Gulliver’s Travels)與丹尼爾•狄佛(Daniel Defoe)的《魯
賓遜漂流記》(Robinson Crusoe)兩本旅遊敘事當中主角所經歷的身分認同問題。
同時，希望透過身分認同問題的分析來了解兩位主角的身分認同問題如何反映出
十八世紀英國的社會現象以及文化發展。本論文包含了五個章節。在第一章裡
頭，我簡要地敘述十八世紀英國的社會情形以及充斥於新舊價值觀之間衝突與對
立的現象。新舊價值觀的不同會引導我們了解十八世紀英國文化的發展。就寫作
的歷史而言，十八世紀最重要成就是小說(novel)這種新文類的出現。當十八世紀
人們有著更多不同的選擇來經營自己生活的時候，文人們也多了一種新的文類來
發揮自己的才華。然而，這種新型態生活方式或是文類的出現都必須要跟原本舊
型態的生活方式或是文類相依相存。就文學的範疇而言，小說這種新文類就必須
要跟之前的舊文類，諷刺文學(satire)，相互地合作或是競爭。
在第二章裡頭，我試著透過文類烏托邦(utopia)的協助來了解小說跟諷刺文
學這兩種文類之間的關係。雖然諷刺文學所包含的烏托邦寫作傳統是一種反向的
特性，也就是反烏托邦(dystopian)書寫，但是，我們依舊可以在諷刺文學裡頭感
受到作者對於群體議題的強烈關懷。相較於諷刺文學對於群體議題的關懷，小說
的中心主旨反倒是以個人(individual)為其重心。根據伊恩•華特(Ian Watt)的提出
的論點來說，寫實主義(Realism)是小說寫作裡頭的一個新趨勢，該趨勢則和個人
主義而非群體議題緊緊地結合在一起。為了解小說以及諷刺文學關懷主題的不
同，我在第三章以及第四章裡頭分別透過對於史威福特的《格烈佛遊記》以及狄
佛的《魯賓遜漂流記》的討論來呈現之間的差異。在二章的第二部分裡頭，我把
旅行(travel)這一個概念獨立出來討論並且試圖去了解旅行在十八世紀的重要性
為何。
iv
在第三章以及第四章裡頭，我的討論重心轉向《格烈佛遊記》以及《魯賓遜
漂流記》這兩本旅遊敘事當中主角所面臨的身分認同問題。兩相比較之下，兩個
主角所遭遇到的身分認同問題各有不同。這樣的不同反映出兩書不同文類的不同
關懷議題。
《格烈佛遊記》屬於諷刺文學而諷刺文學的關懷重點是群體議題。
《魯
賓遜漂流記》則是以小說的方式書寫而其中的重點則是以個人為主。除此之外，
如果我們從兩本旅遊敘事的最後結局來切入的話，我們可以發現到兩位主角身分
認同問題的經歷也同時反映出十八世紀英國社會生活多樣性選擇的可能。在結論
裡頭，我會根據前四章的內容來加以統整。
v
Introduction:
I had become convinced [… ] that the most penetrating analysis would
always be of forms, specifically literary forms, where changes of viewpoint,
changes of known and knowable relationships, changes of possible and
actual resolutions, could be directly demonstrated, as forms of literary
organization, and then, just because they involved more than individual
solutions, could be reasonably related to a real social history (Williams
25-6).
Literary forms, in the words of Raymond Williams, show their concerns not only
in an individual sense but also in a socio-historical perspective. Individual and social
histories are dual layers in the realm of literature so to speak. Williams’s observation
can be certified not only in the twentieth-century but also the eighteenth-century
context. Individual history is a new concept in the eighteenth-century context because
the rise of individualism and the relationship between individualism and society is
ambiguous. This ambiguity of the relationship between individual and society brings
about identity problems for an individual. An individual’s identity is, in fact, socially
constructed. An individual’s social experiences will therefore exert the influence on
this process of identity construction in the way of either helping or problematizing it
or even doing both. Since literary forms are the conflation of individual and social
histories, literary texts show readers the process of characters’identity construction
and this process will usually reflect the historical reality of that specific time.
In this thesis, I try to use two eighteenth-century travel narratives to understand
the social and cultural development of the time in terms of identity problems that
characters experience. There are two reasons to choose these two travel narratives,
Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, as the
primary literary texts to explain the social and cultural development in
Chueh 2
eighteenth-century England. First, the two narratives belong to respective genres,
Gulliver’s Travels is a satire and Robinson Crusoe is a novel. These two genres have
their different concerns, satire for the society and novel for the individual, but their
different concerns are the results of the social shift. The social shift here means that
eighteenth-century Englishmen emphasize the importance of the individual at the
expense of the relationship between the individual and the society. In Gulliver’s
Travels and Robinson Crusoe, we can see these two ideas in terms of Gulliver and
Crusoe’s confrontation with the conflict between their identity and the society. The
second reason to choose these two texts is because of the basic style of their writing,
namely, travel narrative. Traveling is an important idea in eighteenth-century England
because it means much more than just a way to relax or to extricate people from their
daily pressure as we assume nowadays. In eighteenth-century England, travel
functions as a way to educate the mind of people and to explore the world. To educate
means to understand the cultures of other countries and the differences between them.
To explore means also to see the differences between them and other countries in
certain ways but it has another important mission and that is to carry out English
overseas trade, which is a prominent trade to England at that time. In short, Gulliver’s
Travels and Robinson Crusoe illustrate eighteenth-century English culture inside and
outside of the country by means of presenting the life of an individual within a society
in relation to his identity problems and the significance of travel to show how this
idea of travel problematizes Gulliver and Crusoe’s identity.
There are four chapters in this thesis. In chapter one, I will give a general
description of the eighteenth-century social ambience and its cultural development
with the intention to bring out the social shift and how this shift influences the cultural
development at that time. In chapter two, I will go into further detail with regard to
the cultural development by explaining the characteristics, development, and
Chueh 3
relationship among three genres: satire, novel, and utopia. At first sight, these three
genres may seem to be so loosely related or not at all. However, they are correlated
with one another in some aspects. The second part of chapter two will focus on the
importance of travel in eighteenth-century England to see the role of travel in the
relationship between an individual and a society. In chapter three, I will center on
Gulliver’s identity problems in his four voyages. The main problem of Gulliver’s
identity crisis is that there is never a way for him to fit into a society he visits; even in
England, at the end of the book, he is a cultural other. The process of Gulliver ’s
identity construction keeps being problematized because of his inability to change the
fact that he is a cultural other. Crusoe’s identity crisis is different and this will be my
central issue in chapter four. Crusoe’s crisis comes from his double identities at three
stages of his life. To be more specific, Crusoe’s double identities are related with his
desire to get away from his father’s wish, which is about the making of Crusoe into a
middle-station person, and his inseparable relationship with England. At the three
stages of Crusoe’s identity construction process, it is clear that there is a tug-of-war
between his desire to leave and his wish to return and this ambivalent position brings
about the double identities. Besides, in both chapter three and four, I will try to see
how the presentation of individuality differs from each other and how this difference
corresponds to each different genre. In the conclusion, I will try to see how the two
types of identity crisis correspond to the social reality and cultural development in
eighteenth-century England.
Chueh 4
Chapter I:
Social Ambience and Cultural Development in Eighteenth-Century Britain
New squares, and new streets rising up every day to such a prodigy of
buildings, that nothing in the world does, or ever did, equal it, except old
Rome in Trajan’s time, when the walls were fifty miles in compass and the
number of inhabitants six million eight hundred thousand souls (Defoe,
Tour 286).
Eighteenth-century London, in Defoe’s eyes, both in the size of the city and the
number of its inhabitants, is as great as old Rome in Trajan’s time. London will hardly
come to its greatness except through a time of change. This experience of change
belongs not to London exclusively but is a pervasive trend in eighteenth-century
Britain as a who le. The problem is, what is this change about and where does this
change come from? The beginning of the change comes “from the Old England to the
New, the break- up of a way of life which [has] lasted for some fifteen hundred years”
(Cowie 1). As Cowie continues to explain, this transformation owes its depth and
breadth to Britain’s relationship with other European countries, especially France, to
burgeoning industry, namely, commerce, and to improvement in technology. In this
chapter, my concern is to understand how these factors influence English society and
how this influence is related to cultural developments in eighteenth-century Britain.
Social Ambience in Eighteenth-Century Britain
The social ambience in eighteenth-century Britain is typified by the
“unsystematic and largely individualistic character of English life” (Cowie 32). The
word “unsystematic” implies that eighteenth-century English society is a place where
the old systems are not arbitrary as they were before and people can claim their
natural rights by challenging those who are superior in the social status or by
Chueh 5
self- improvement either in an economic or in a literary way. Eighteenth-century
English society’s unsystematic and individualistic characters come also from the
possibility for different individuals to have their voices. With the possibility to have
their voice heard, people are empowered to distinguish themselves from others by
accenting their unique qualities.
In writing about eighteenth-century English society, we could see that the social
fabric was intricate in matters such as gender role, social hierarchy, and so on.
Contrasts in the society “were strong, variation legion, and inequalities vast” (Porter,
English Society 47). Contrasts, variation and inequalities dominated the life with “the
gulfs between rulers and ruled, rich and poor, propertied and unpropertied” (Porter,
English Society 47). Cowie credits eighteenth-century English society with “greater
freedom and equality [… ] of those days than in other European countries, yet society
was based upon quite rigid class distinctions” (21). Probably, both Cowie and Porter
are right. Porter uphold s that contrasts, variation, and inequalities flow in
eighteenth-century Britain if we take a vertical view of the society. Meanwhile,
freedom and equality are the two features if we take a horizontal view of the society.1
Faced with a complex reality like eighteenth-century English society, we have to
understand what happens inside and outside of the country.
It is not surprising to know that the upper, middle, and lower classes constitute
eighteenth-century English society since the divisions apply to the previous time of
English society also. What differentiates these constituents from those in the previous
periods of time is the possibility of social mobility. At the top of English society,
namely, the upper class, were the nobility, who were few in the number with the land
as the source of their wealth and power. Usually, the nobility and their families
monopolized “the political office, the foremost ecclesiastical preferment and the
higher ranks in the armed forces” (Cowie 22). Gentry or squirearchy also situated
Chueh 6
themselves in the upper class. Gentry were “landowning families who were not
connected by birth with the aristocracy” (Cowie 22). Even though they were not
blue-blooded, the gentry had a considerable annual income, which ranged from three
hundred to two thousand pounds sterling. The wealthy gentry and their families
practically emulated the building and the collective activities of the nobility. This
emulation highlighted a high standard life in the rank of the gentry and this kind of
life style also marked off the gentry from the middle and the lower classes since the
latter could hardly afford it or, even if they could afford it, had no inclinations to lead
such a life.
After the aristocracy and gentry came the middle class. Compared with the upper
classes, the middling sort2 formed a less cohesive group because the divergence in
wealth, occupation and the way of life was great in different middle class families and
there was “a further distinction between those in the country and those in the town”
(Cowie 23). In the country, millers, innkeepers, freeholders, and leaseholders formed
the middle class. Meanwhile, the ranks of lawyers, physicians, civil servants,
clergymen, soldiers, sailors, architects, school masters, and so on were recruited from
the middle class. From the beginning of the century, Britain’s trade was “managed by
middle-class men who ranged from private bankers, shopkeepers, ironmongers,
linendrapers, and other fairly substantial urban figures [… ] who controlled companies
concerned with trade, banking, insurance and every form of overseas commerce”
(Cowie 24). Gradually controlling the national trade, the middle class exerted their
influence on the decisions of governmental policies. I will come back to this issue in
the latter part of the discussion to see the contributions made by the middle class to
eighteenth-century Britain and the crisis of the upper class.
The nobility, gentry and middle classes comprised not a great part of the whole
population compared to the manual workers. In the country, these manual workers
Chueh 7
were usually either yeomen or cottagers. In the towns, craftsmen like printers,
coach- makers, glaziers, porters, and so on were largely in their numbers of manual
workers. Even though wages rose sharply in the later part of the Hanoverian age, the
wars with France and the bad harvests of the seventeen twenties sharply increased the
daily subsistence. Fortunately, after the French wars and the bad harvests, food was
plentiful and cheap and lower class families could live with their meagre wages even
though they tasted hunger and poverty still. Along with manual workers, “women
domestic workers, the aged and infirm, naval and military veterans crippled in the
wars” (Cowie 28) were members of the lower class also. The relief of these
unfortunates was based on the Poor Law Act of 1601. Under the protection of the
Poor Law Act, these unfortunates had the chance to find work to support themselves.
Unfortunately, with the imperfections of the law, these lower class people lived with
bare subsistence. Besides, bad harvests and severe winters caused sharp increases in
the cost of the daily necessities and brought complete destitution, starvation, and
death to these lower class families. In other words, the life of lower class families was
often desolate.
The class frontier was not impermeable. Marriage and money were the passports
to cross the seemingly strongly fortified frontier. In the upper class, primogeniture
was the principle faithfully practised by both the nobility and gentry. As for those
younger sons, they commonly took family livings in the church, became officers in
the army or entered different professions. While these younger sons entered different
professions, they often married “the daughters of professional men and merchants,
and their sisters might marry into the same class” (Cowie 23) and social mobility
occurred when these younger sons married the daughters of the middle class families.
Cowie brings up an interesting question: women’s status in eighteenth-century Britain.
If a son from the upper class can marry a daughter from the middle class, why must
Chueh 8
daughters of the upper class marry into the same class instead? In other words, can
these upper class daughters marry those sons from the middle class families? The
answer for this question will hardly be yes. If a gentleman was casting around for his
daughter to find a suitable husband, his “first consideration was security, family, title,
and land ” because marriage was not narrowly “about love and bliss” but more
concerned about matters of “family policy, securing honour, lineage and fortunate”
(Porter, English Society 26). For the family’s concern, these marriageable daughters
were “strategic pawns ” (Porter, English Society 26). In other words, marriage has a
political goal, to secure the name of the family, or an economic purpose, to hold the
power on family’s wealth, and they make women have no rights to preside their
marriage.3
Money was another way to pass through social frontiers. The middle class people,
especially merchants, could enter the ranks of the upper class by buying lands, which
were the source of power for the latter. The increases of the wealth for the middle
class can be attributed to Agrarian Revolution and Industrial Revolution. Government
played an important role in this matter also. Economic regulations in
eighteenth-century England no longer aimed “primarily at the preservation of a
hierarchical social order but at the encouragement of productivity” (Owen 124). With
the new economic regulations, the mechanism of free market was introduced into the
commerce system. The policy of laissez-faire in commerce flourished the individual
enterprise as its subsequent outcome and this outcome enabled merchants to earn
more money than they did before. Merchants’money came not only from the
commerce inside of the insular island but also from those outside of it. International
commerce did not begin in eighteenth-century England since it could be dated back to
the sixteenth-century overseas woollen industry. Distinguished with her predecessors,
eighteenth-century Britain had her unprecedented success in wars between other
Chueh 9
European countries. The success in wars stimulated the development and secured the
control of the international commerce for eighteenth-century Britain.
Not until the eighteenth century did Britain come into her dominant military role
in European affairs. Britain’s dominant military role in European affairs came from
her experiences of the Glorious Revolution in 1688 and the Act of Union with
Scotland in 1707 and with Ireland in 1800. After the Glorious Revolution and the Act
of Union, Britain enjoyed political stability, which led to the establishment of the
naval power to protect her from invasion and to obtain overseas colonies. With her
strong naval power, Britain had great victory in several decisive wars such as the War
of League of Augsburg (1689-97), the War of Spanish Succession (1702-13) and wars
with France. In fact, Britain herself was not the only beneficiary in these wars.
English merchants were fortunate partners with their country to make their fortune.
Merchants’wealth earned in these wars was from two ways. First, the military
strategy adopted by Britain was to use her naval supremacy to defend herself and to
eliminate her rivals’overseas commerce by preventing the despatch of assistance to
their colonies.4 After her rivals lost their control of their colonies, Britain raided these
colonies to increase her international commerce. Consequently, merchants could
import cheap raw materials or human resource, namely, slaves from the colonies and
export products to them to make profits. Obviously, Britain’s strategy looked to
“commercial and colonial gains rather than towards the balance of power in Europe”
(Brewer, Sinews 140). Second, war was the impetus to the domestic markets since it
needed necessities such as navigational tools, munitions, and so on. Again, merchants
could take advantage of this chance to make money. War not only increased
merchants’wealth in a handsome way but also made merchants become the pecuniary
center of the country. During the war time, national debt increased relentlessly and the
financial burdens of war made “the successive government [become] ever more
Chueh 10
dependent upon its bankers and monied men” (Cowie 9). In that case, merchants’
considerable amount of money and the elevation of their status as the pecuniary centre
caused the possible social mobility.
Eighteenth-century English society was a mercantilist place where commerce
was the first priority. Renewed styles of commerce led to the possibility of social
mobility, which never happened before, but commerce also exerted its influence to
eighteenth-century society in another direction. In fact, in a modern commercial
society like eighteenth-century English society, fine arts were viewed as one of the
defining features. The many forms of “cooperation and interdependence created by
trade and economic exchange [… ] encouraged a refinement of manners as well as
propagating better taste” (Brewer, Pleasures xix). This idea is further explained in
David Hume ’s essay ‘Of Refinement in the Arts’:
Industry and refinement in the mechanical arts generally produce some
refinements in the liberal; nor can one be carried to perfection, without
being accompanied, in some degree, with the other (270).
Hume believed that commerce and arts were interdependent. The problem is how
commerce and arts relate with each other.
Cultural Development in Eighteenth-Century Britain
Learning is most advanced in populous cities, where chance often conspired
with industry to promote; where the members of this large university, if I
may call it, catch manners as they rise, study life not logic, and have the
world as correspondents (qtd. in Brewer, Pleasures xviii).
By quoting from Oliver Goldsmith’s An Enquiry into the Present State of Polite
Learning in Europe, Brewer meant to call his readers’attention to the triangular
relationship among learning, city, and industry. Obviously, Hume and Goldsmith are
Chueh 11
in tune to ascribe the development of learning to industry. Goldsmith emphasizes the
urban as the main locale for the development of learning, namely, culture. In other
words, learning as an activity in eighteenth-century Britain was not only
commercialized but also urbanized. This triangular relationship between learning, city,
and industry was not an eighteenth-century English invention since it had started in
the late seventeenth century. In late-seventeenth-century Britain, the development of
cultural activities “moved out of the narrow confines of the court and into diverse
spaces in London [… and] became the partner of commerce” (Brewer, Pleasures 3). At
the onset of the development of cultural activities, the court was always privileged to
be the patrons to promote cultural activities since they had money. Money, to some
extent, was the chief currency of culture. The court’s privilege in cultural activities
was challenged after its pecuniary superiority was replaced by that of the middle class.
It was not only their pecuniary inferiority but also their lack of particular inclination
that made eighteenth-century monarchs indifferent to patronize culture. If the court
was no longer the main source of patronage for cultural development, especially
literature, where could artists find patronage? In Alexander Pope’s An Epistle to Dr.
Arbuthnot, he said:
Oh let me live my own, and die so too!
(To live and die is all I have to do)
Maintain a Poets dignity and ease,
And see what friends, and read what books I please:
Above a Patron, tho’I condescend
Sometimes to call a Minister my friend.
I was not born for Courts or great affairs;
I pay my debts, believe, and say my pray’rs;
Can sleep without a Poem in my head,
Chueh 12
Nor know, If Dennis be alive or dead (163, Line261-70).
Pope’s poem reconfirms that court still could be the patron but it may not be the only
choice since people can live by themselves also. A great poet like Pope definitely had
the right to say that he refused to cling to patrons and claimed for his independence
because patrons came to cling to them inversely. However, these patrons, including
private court patrons, other upper class patrons, or middle class patrons, held different
purposes while they came to these artists. I will come back to this issue in the later
part of the discussion.
This shift of patronage from court patrons to middle class ones signified that art
was not the property exclusively to the court but the one to a larger public. Since art
became the property to a larger public, the city was another stage for cultural
performance.5 It is definitely right to say that a larger public could enjoy cultural
activities but why is that so? In other words, except the reasons from the court, what
were the other possible reasons to propagate art as a civic cultural activity? The
advent of printing technology was an important reason to change the long-existing
reading habit. With the help of the renewed printing technology, the previous bulky
and expensive books were printed into “slim [and] small volumes,” which “were
popular staples among all classes,” (Brewer, Pleasures 174) with cheap prices as their
greatest virtue. While the enterprising publishers began to market cheap sets of the
books, paperback edition came out as an important innovation of the system. Thus,
the reading public moved themselves from intensive reading to extensive reading
since it became easier and cheaper to read and buy books. In effect, printing
technology in eighteenth-century Britain “proved the great engine for the spread of
enlightened views and values” (Porter, Enlightenment 91).
For upper class people and those prospective upper class families, wealthy
merchants for example, enlightened views and values were about the problem of taste.
Chueh 13
Even though money was the chief currency of culture, proper audiences were not
those who were able to pay the price of admission of cultural activities, but those
whose presence reflected “well on their establishments” (Brewer, Pleasures 94). What
cultural establishments were looking for was proper ways of talking, dressing,
behaviours, etc. All these proper ways were relevant to the problem of taste. On the
opening page of his book An Essay on Taste, Alexander Gerard epitomized the
problem of taste by saying:
A fine Taste is neither wholly the gift of nature, nor wholly the effect of art.
It derives its origin from certain powers natural to the mind; but these
powers cannot attain their full perfection, unless they are assisted by proper
culture. Taste consists chiefly in the improvement of these principles, which
are commonly called the powers of the imagination, and are considered by
modern philosophers as internal or reflex senses, supplying us with finer
and more delicate perceptions, than any which can be properly referred to
our external organs (1, original emphasis).
Gerard’s definition showed that taste included the characters of the innate gift, nature,
and the acquired effect, art. Besides, Gerard believed that only through the assistance
of proper culture could nature and art come to their full perfection. In terms of
Gerard’s definition, proper culture implied those activities concerning the powers of
the imagination, but what were those activities? Addison in Spectator No. 421 said,
The Pleasures of the Imagination are not wholly confined to such particular
Authors as are conversant in material Objects, but are often to be met with
among the Polite Masters of Morality, Criticism, and other Speculations
abstracted from Matter; who, though they do not directly treat of the visible
Parts of Nature, often draw from them their Similitudes, Metaphors, and
Allegories (577).
Chueh 14
Addison conferred the pleasures of the imagination on authors of different types of
works, which could regulate and refine readers’passion to improve their taste, by
insinuating that reading is one of the activities with the powers of the imagination.
The pleasure of reading a text was defined by “praxis” (Barthes 51, original
emphasis). For upper class and prospective upper class families, praxis referred to
emulation. The Grand Tour was a feature of the educational undertaking for the
aristocracy. Frequently, a young nobleman or gentleman completed “his education by
driving through the principal European countries by post-chaise in the company of a
tutor” (Cowie 34). These young noblemen or gentlemen were expected to emulate
fashions in the main European cities. Thus, their reading material was the milieu of
the cities. No matter if they were upper class families or wealthy merchant families,
they both read as many publications, such as books, newspapers, etc., as they could to
improve their taste. In these publications, readers could find articles ranging from, as
Addison proposed, morality, criticism, speculation about different topics to the
reflection “on the circumstances of their creation: the environment they inhabited, the
nature of their representatio n and the connections between art and society” (Brewer,
Pleasures 54). By reading these articles, readers made out the social conditions and
differences, which prompted their resolution to emulate those people whose life style
was superior to them, between them and other people in the society.
Second, if enlightened views and values were about the problem of taste and
emulation for upper class people, they were chiefly about reform for the middle and
lower classes. The word “reform” contained two meanings: reform of morality and
reform of skills. On Sundays, children in poorer households “read a few chapters in
the Bible, took a walk for an hour or two, then read a chapter or two more” while the
mistress “would sit down for hours together, with her Bible in her lap, from which she
would read such scriptures as proved the necessity of living a good life, performing
Chueh 15
good works, &c” (Brewer, Pleasures 169). This proves that some of the middle class
families, compared with those who were eager to cross the social boundaries to
become a member of the upper class, believed in a “more ordered, hardworking,
decent and just society based on industry, thrift and goodness” (Cowie 25). In that
case, these families read for the reform of morality. Reading for the refo rm of skills
was also common to middle class families. They needed to read reference books as
the occasion demanded. In conclusion, if the enlightened views and values for the
upper class came from reading materials they were unfamiliar with, the enlightened
views and values for the middle and poor class families were embedded in the careful
examinations of familiar texts.
Published materials were confined not to books only, or to any specific topics.
Provincial newspapers were an important development in eighteenth-century Britain.
By the 1730s “almost every substantial provincial printer ran a paper; by the
mid-century their distribution networks were so extensive that most of England, much
of Wales and the Scottish Lowlands were served by at least one provincial news
sheet” (Brewer, Pleasures 132). The development of the provincial newspapers had its
importance not only in the successful distribution networks, but also in presenting
lives in different cities. Writers in eighteenth-century Britain inclined to use London
as the example in their works if they wanted to portray the urban life in Britain.
However, London was not the only developed city in Britain even though it was
indeed the biggest one. With the development of provincial newspapers, Britons and
foreigners acknowledged the existence and importance of other cities. Periodicals
were another important product in eighteenth-century Britain. Any aspiring authors
“seeking fame, fortune or just the pleasure of seeing their words in print could send
their work to a magazine proprietor, and many a career began with an unsolicited
contribution” (Brewer, Pleasures 141). Periodicals were not only important for those
Chueh 16
novices but also provided a way for female writers to fulfil their literary ambition by
publishing their works either in an anonymous way or not. In scores of periodicals,
such as Examiner, Guardian, Review, Tatler, Spectator, and so on, there was one
dedicated to females exclusively: The Female Spectator. The Female Spectator
appeared in 1744 and was edited by the dramatist and novelist Eliza Haywood. This
periodical was the first magazine “written by, for and about women, being filled with
items on love, marriage and the family, female education, etiquette and health” (Porter,
Enlightenment 80). If the development of the provincial newspapers signified the
importance of other cities, the development of periodicals showed readers a highly
stratified society by creating a republic of authors. Books in eighteenth-century
Britain contained various topics and were written in different genres.6 Variations on
topics and genres in books, periodicals, and provincial newspapers gives us an idea
that eighteenth-century Britain embraced the idea of variety. The idea of variety was
the key to explain the emergence of individualism. In chapter II, I will come to
detailed explanations to this issue.
In the previous discussion, I have mentioned that culture moved out of the
narrow confines of the court and into diverse spaces in London in the late seventeenth
century. However, what are these places? In fact, cultural activities slipped into coffee
houses, reading societies, debating clubs, assembly rooms, galleries and concert halls.
Taverns and coffee houses in eighteenth-century Britain served many different
purposes. They were places “of pleasures and business, catering to customers from all
walks of life, centres of rumour, news and information” (Brewer, Pleasures 34).
Furthermore, their chief attraction was that they were centers of conversation and
intelligence, commercial premises and private exchange where deals were cut and
money, goods and information traded. Conversations and intelligence in these clubs
and coffee houses were about books, concerts, plays and pictures. In other words,
Chueh 17
clubs and coffee houses shaped social and cultural life in eighteenth-century Britain.
Even though these clubs and coffee houses were open to people of all walks of life,
the former were largely the gathering places for a group of people with same political
inclination. These clubs adopted a pose of fraternal equality and this fraternal equality
made its members ignore the inequalities that existed in society at large. If the readers
intended not to buy books but to borrow, they could go to the commercial libraries or
circulating libraries in big cities. As for people who lived in small towns and large
villages, book clubs had the same service as commercial or circulating libraries in big
cites. Personal borrowing and lending was also possible in eighteenth-century Britain.
In gentlemen and aristocrats’country house would have the run of a library. Visitors
to these gentlemen and aristocrats were given their rooms to read books in this private
library. In short, in eighteenth-century Britain, books, print and readers were
everywhere because of the impact of the publishing revolution.
Disharmony in Eighteenth-Century Britain
In the Spectator No. 125, Addison depicted the ills of national disharmony:
There cannot a greater judgment befall a country than such a dreadful spirit
of division that rends a government into two distinct people, and makes
them greater strangers to one another, than if they were actually two
different nations. [… ] Knowledge and Learning suffer in a particular
manner from this strange prejudice, which at present prevails amongst all
Ranks of the British Nation. [… ] Books are valued upon the like
Consideration: an Abusive Scurrilous Style passes for Satyr, and a dull
Scheme of Party-Nations is called fine Writing (510-1).
Even though Addison’s depiction of national disharmony was mainly about the
political conflict between Whigs and Tories, his depiction attests that disharmony
Chueh 18
exerted its influence not only to the political but also to the cultural sphere. Factions
“factionalized and polarized all arenas of life” (Porter, English Society 106). In the
society, the possibility of social mobility factionalized the traditional community
either in a vertical or horizontal way. In the cultural development, different topics and
genres, change of patronage, and different places for cultural activities, exemplified
that traditional types of cultural activities were challenged by the new ones. In other
words, eighteenth-century Britain experienced contrasts in various perspectives and
these contrasts were between oldness and newness. In chapter II, I will narrow down
my discussion concerning the contrast between oldness and newness to a competition
between several literary genres: utopia, satire, novel, and travel narrative.
Chueh 19
Chapter II:
The Battle of Genres in Eighteenth-Century Literature
Instead of supposing a single mirror reflecting happenings in the world at
the moment of their occurrence, it would be better to suppose a system of
mirrors facing inward and outward at different angles, so that they reflect
occurrences in the mirrored world through the diverse ways in which they
reflect on another. Discussion among mirror-watchers therefore has to do
with how the mirrors reflect on another, even before it focuses on the
possibility that there is something new in the field of vision. It would be
better still to suppose that the mirrors are arranged diachronously as well as
synchronously, so that while some of them share the same moment in time,
others are located in its past and future. [… ] [T]he historical animal deals
with experience by discussing old ways of perceiving it, as a necessary
preliminary to erecting new ways, which then serve as means of perceiving
both the new experience and old modes of perception (Pocock 29)
Pocock’s beautiful metaphor of the historian as a mirror-watcher implies that the
vision of a historian of discourse should not be restricted to one mirror with one angle
only. That is, a historian of discourse sets out to understand the world from disparate
and vario us perspectives: culture, sociology, politics, to name but a few. Among these
diachronic and synchronic perspectives, reflections of past and future will emerge
from the mirrors simultaneously. This is how I, too, try to understand
eighteenth-century Britain as a whole. In chapter I, I have already sketched the social
and cultural conditions of eighteenth-century Britain. In this chapter, I will
concentrate on the literary development, focused especially on the genres of utopia,
novel, satire, and travel narrative.
Chueh 20
The Battle of Genres in Eighteenth-century Britain
The function of concepts or genres is relevant to the idea of history because they
are the institutions of a set of historical accidents and contingencies. Trying to
understand why genres, too, are institutions of historical accidents and contingencies,
we need to understand what we can see in them. Michael McKeon brilliantly
maintained that:
Genres provide a conceptual framework for the mediation (if not the
“solution”) of intractable problems, a method for rendering such problems
intelligible. The ideological status of genre, like that of all conceptual
categories, lies in its explanatory and problem- “solving” capacities. And
generic form itself, the dense network of conventionality that is both elastic
and profoundly regulative, is the prior and most tacitly powerful mechanism
of the explanatory method of genre. Genres fill a need for which no
adequate alternative method exists. And when they change, it is as part of a
change both in the need they exist to fill and in the means that exist for its
fulfillment (20).
McKeon take an introspective standpoint to examine the propensity of a genre to
indicate its explanatory and problem-solving capacities. To be more precise, a genre’s
explanatory and problem-solving capacities are the collective customs within it. In
that case, when we study a genre, it allows “the coordination of immanent formal
analysis of the individual text, with the twin diachronic perspective of the history of
forms and the evolution of social life” (Jameson 105). As McKeon suggests, a genre
might undergo some changes and these changes were, as Jameson proclaims, the
history of forms and the evolution of social life. In short, the function of a genre is to
become an institution of historical accidents and contingencies to reflect the changes
in the social life and in history. Guillen takes one further step to view genres as “a
Chueh 21
function of [...] the character and development of nations ” (106) because the
confrontation of genres may “be due to a kind of coexistence on the level of
experience or of the imagination, rather than to mere substitution or dialectical
succession” (133). That is, the configuration of a genre is on the basis of its
experience and change in the history of a nation. In conclusion, the function of a
genre is, first, its explanatory and problem-solving capacities to those people who live
in the time as the emergence and development of a genre happens and its second
function is to become a text for the future readers to understand the social and
political milieu of a specific time. With this understanding of the function of a genre, I
will try to make out the relationship among utopia, novel and satire and to see how
their relationship presents several important issues in eighteenth-century Britain.
Utopia as a Genre Concerning Old and New Values
To choose the genre of utopia as the criterion to examine two other genres, satire
and novel, and as the mirror to reflect the conditions of eighteenth-century Britain
may need an explanation. Utopia “is a threshold genre [… ] that lie[s] on the boundary
between fiction and nonfiction because they are about that boundary, or, to be precise,
about the analogous boundary between social ‘fact’and social ‘fictions’” (Morson 92).
Inferring from Morson’s words, we come to the conclusion that Utopia is a
representative for different genres because it incorporates various characteristics of
them within itself.
The literary nature and sense of Utopia as a genre is “in general agreement about
the proper social function of literature – and about the failure of all existing literature,
as the corrupt product of a corrupt world, to fulfill it” (Morson 81). In other words, a
literary utopia values in its social function to describe a world with flaws but to find
the flaws of a world is only the first step of Utopia ’s social function since its ultimate
Chueh 22
value is to come up with the possible solutions to correct these flaws. Such an idea
can also been found in H. G. Wells’s A Modern Utopia:
Our business here is to be Utopian, to make vivid and credible if we can,
first this facet and then that, of an imaginary whole and happy world. Our
deliberate intention is to be not, indeed, impossible, but most distinctly
impracticable, by every scale that reaches only between today and
tomorrow (6).
If Morson’s view of utopia is to show a world of imperfection, Wells’s utopia
experiences a practice to make something imaginary become vivid and credible even
though the practice seems to be distinctly impracticable, it is not impossible. The
difference between the two is that Morson’s view of utopia is the one of the present
world but Wells’s utopia is the one of a possible better future. Although Wells’s utopia
is ambiguous in the way of being impracticable but not impossible, this ambiguity is
the pathway to the function of utopia.
The definition of the term utopia shares the character of ambiguity of Wells’s
utopia because utopia is a place which is “nowhere (outopia)” and “somewhere good
(eutopia)” (Kumar 1). Like “impracticable” and “impossible” in Wells’s utopia,
nowhere and somewhere, again, strengthens the argument concerning the ambiguity
in utopia. However, this definition is challenged by Judith Shklar who reiterates the
view that utopia is “nowhere, not only geographically, but historically as well” and it
exists “neither in the past nor the future” (104). If either Well or Kumar’s definition of
utopia implies a possibility of the existence of utopia, Shklar ’s phrases stand in a
diametrically opposite position for denying any possibilities of the existence of utopia
in both a geographic and a historical sense. Shklar’s geographic argument is plausible
because utopia has still not been located but the plausibility of her historical argument
is problematic. To contest with Shklar’s argument will require us to understand
Chueh 23
another two aspects: tradition and essence or characteristics of utopian writings.
To understand the tradition of utopian writings is another way to examine the term
utopia from a historical perspective. This historical perspective is the confluence of
the text and the context and the examination will bring out the essence and the
characteristics of utopian writings. Starting with this historical perspective, we can
avoid the threat of “falsity in [utopia’s] history and incompetence in [utopia ’s]
philosophy” (Dunn 85).7 During the process of the studies of utopia, Quentin Skinner
believed that people
[will] come to see that the uses to which the idea has been put are
bewilderingly various, then it would seem little more than a very misleading
fetishism of words to go on trying to make any sort of historical study out of
focusing on the “idea” of Utopia itself. [… ] The only history to be written is
thus a history of the various statements made with the given expression.
This – rather than the history of the sentence – would of course be an almost
absurdly ambitious enterprise (39).
Skinner is right in saying that the various statements constitute the history of utopia
because utopia, as a concept, is the focus of “different strands of aspiration” (Nozick
309). Truly as Skinner said, examination of the history of utopia would be an
ambitious enterprise but it will be accomplished when we embed its tradition in those
giving expressions of the various statements. Utopia’s basic tradition is to find or to
build a place “where all is well” (Cuddon 957). To be more precise, the tradition of
utopia is to present a world that cannot possibly be real but that everyone fervently
wishes it were or it is a projection “of man’s wishful fantasies, answering to the
longings for the good life” (Elliott 7). Plato, at the end of Book IX in his Republic
said, “[the ideal land] is laid up as a pattern in heaven, where he who wishes can see it
and found it in his own heart” (334). If Plato is the progenitor of the idea of Utopia,8
Chueh 24
what traditions except the basic one I have mentioned above will the prospective
utopian writers find in his work and follow in their works? Thomas More, in his
famous work Utopia, said, “I freely admit that there are many features of the Utopian
Republic which I would like – though I hardly expect – to see adopted in Europe”
(132). Reading through both Plato’s and More’s words, we can conclude that
dilemmatic position is another tradition in utopian writings because the former sees
Utopia both in heaven/nowhere and in man’s heart/somewhere while the latter looks
forward to the possibility of the practice of ruling systems coming from the ideal land
even though it is not about to come. This tradition of dilemmatic position corresponds
to Wells’s impracticability and possibility and it also typifies utopian writers’ fervent
wishes and inability in realizing, to conceive and to bring into concrete existence, the
idea.
If the basic tradition of utopian writings is to find a society where all is well, then,
what is this society possibly like? In other words, what are the essence and the
characteristics of this society? In simple and plain words, Utopia is the one of
progress. The word progress signifies “some conception of Man’s removal from his
present predicament to the eventual attainment of the ideal” (Kenyon 149). This
removal to the ideal includes not only physical movement, from one place to another,
but also psychological moveme nt, from a defective human nature to a wholesome one.
Utopian society is “an ideal or flawless state, not only logically consistent in its
structure but permitting as much freedom and happiness for its inhabitants as is
possible to human life” (Frye, Varieties, 31). Utopia is thus, according to Frye, under
the control of its structure and this structure is “built in safeguard against radical
alternation” (31). Describing utopian society, Frye uses the word “static” (31) but
Frye’s static society refers not to one without vitality but to one without radical
alternation in structure. To be more explicit, Frye defines utopian society as a place
Chueh 25
where people would be satisfied with their status quo and this satisfaction would
prevent them from desiring to transgress their social boundaries. If an examination of
utopian society follows Frye’s viewpoints, we may say that a utopian society is static
from inside. Both Plato and More’s texts make that same point. Frye is right, I believe,
to say that a static society refers not to a society without vitality but to a society with a
well-organized social system to maintain the social order. There are other reasons as
well that make Utopia a fascinating idea. If utopian society is static from the inside,
what will it be like from the outside?
If we take utopian society out of its text, namely, literary nature, and put it in its
context, historical perspective, it turns out to be a dynamic satire. Utopian society is
“incongruous with reality but substantiates the status quo ” (Kenyon 129). This
incongruity symbolizes Utopian writers’social and political speculation between the
dream, utopian society, and the reality, the present world. Besides, this speculation
proposes another possible living style for the inhabitants of the existing world. More’s
Utopia is a typical example for this speculative proposal because it “contrasts the
unhappy state of European society with conditions in an ideal country” (Turner 10-1).
In terms of its speculative proposal, Utopian society not only provides its readers with
the positive blueprint for the ideal land but also decries the existing world. In both its
positive and negative characteristics, utopian writing is a mirror reflecting utopian
writers’ “psychic economy” (Manuel xxi). This psychic economy is the combination
of utopian writers’observation of the existing world and their model of the imaginary
land. Furthermore, this psychic economy “engages [utopian readers’] sympathies and
desires in the direction favoured by the writer” (Kumar 24) by serving as a torch
lightening the way to the Utopias.
In conclusion, utopia’s essence and characteristics is its oppositions, fact and
fiction, possible and impossible, real and fantastic, etc., between the existing world
Chueh 26
and the imaginary land. Confronting the present, utopian writers will reconsider the
situations of the present and the past to draw a map about the imaginary perfect land
in their minds.
Utopian writings’oppositions are the very basis of the function of Utopia. If
Utopia is the bridge to “span the gap between the old order and the new interests,”
(Mumford 12) the present and the future, its cardinal function is to bring “totality,
order, [and] perfection” (Davis 38) to its readers. This function can be achieved in two
forms: “utopias of escape” and “utopias of reconstruction” (Mumford 15). Utopias of
escape offer its readers an immediate release to escape from the present world while
utopias of reconstruction plan to improve the present world. In fact, utopias of escape
are a prerequisite before we enter utopias of reconstruction. In the course of our
journey into utopia, we may remain in these utopias of escape a little while but should
not bide there long because the blank perfection in these utopias of escape is not the
exact thing we are looking for. Instead, utopias of reconstruction “may likewise be
colored by primitive desires and wishes; but these desires and wishes have come to
reckon with the world in which they seek realization” (Mumford 21). In other words,
personal desires and wishes still exist in these utopias of reconstruction but the
realization of these personal desires and wishes needs to answer to the concerns of
Utopia: to “maximize harmony and contentment, to minimize conflict and misery
[and] to produce a perfected society where social cohesion and the common good are
not imperiled by individual appetite” (Davis 19). That is, individual appetite in
utopias of reconstruction is not ignored but has to be fulfilled on the basis of the
common interest.
Through the discussions of the value, definition, tradition, essence or
characteristics, and the function of utopia, we can see that utopia is a genre with old /
common and new / individual propensities and that is the reason why I choose utopia
Chueh 27
as the criterion to examine two other important genres in eighteenth-century literature.
In the following discussions, I will try to understand how old / common and new /
individual propensities are presented in the genre satire and novel.
Satire as a Genre Concerning Communal Interests
In his “Epilogue to the Satires: Dialogue II,” Pope apostrophized satire thus:
O sacred Weapon! left for Truth’s defence,
Sole Dread of Folly, Vice, and Insolence!
To all but Heav’n-directed hands deny’d,
The Muse may give thee, but the Gods must guide.
Rev’rent I touch thee! (702, Line 212-16).
In Pope’s words, satire is a weapon to defend truth from the threats of folly, vice and
insolence. This is, actually, one of satire’s functions either to the society or to the
satirists themselves. Before we go further to other functions of the genre of satire, we
have to enrich our understandings of satire in terms of its definition. Stephanie Barbe
Hammer gives a composite tripartite definition: “1.) Satire is a literary kind which
borrows its form from other sorts of writing, 2.) satire is characterized by an attack or
censure of vice and evil in society which refuses the aesthetic and ethical, and 3.)
satire is characterized by its use of rhetorical and dramatic irony to effect it critique ”
(12). Hammer ’s tripartite definition looks at satire in three ways: form, function, and
techniques. Satire, for Hammer, is a concept/kind rather than a genre. Satire, as a
concept, is like a container of different narrative forms, such as prose, poetry, and
drama, symbolize various objects put in this container. This container/satire will be
labeled with different tags to function in different ways on the condition of its
ubiquity in different objects/narrative forms.
Allowing different narrative forms to adopt this concept satire in them, we will
Chueh 28
have at least four ways by which the satiric meaning may emerge, namely, “by what a
man does (or fails to do), by what others do to and say of him, by what he says of
himself, and, by what the author says of him” (Pollard 24). Pollard’s four techniques
have their concerns on drama particularly but these are also the general rules for most
of satires even though some of them are less important or obvious than others in
different narrative forms. Besides, Pollard’s four satiric techniques remind us that
authors and characters’language and behaviors are the ways to present the meaning of
satires. Satiric language and behaviors are “always acutely conscious of the difference
between what things are and what they ought to be” (Pollard 3). This difference
between what things are and what they ought to be represents satirists’awareness
between the present false and the future truth and it is similar with utopian writers’
consciousness between the flaw of the existing world and the improvement of the
future imaginary land. The difference between utopian writing and satire is that the
former portrays the future land in opposition to the existing world with the clear
delineation while the latter is like a literary “Trojan horse for which polite (or politic)
artfulness produces a dissembling form, serving first to contain and conceal, and then
to unleash the primitive passions of the satirist” (Connery 2) and this polite artfulness
refers to the camouflage of satirists’ language or behavior. In their usage of
camouflaged language or behavior, how can satirists expect their readers to
understand the satiric elements in the satire? In this regard, the tone of satire seems
the possibility to answer this question. Frye suggests that “two things [… ] are
essential to satire; one is wit or humor founded on fantasy or a sense of the grotesque
or absurd, the other is an object of attack. Attack without humor [… ] forms one of the
boundaries of satire (i.e., invective or denunciation). The humor of pure fantasy
[forms] the other boundary of satire” (Anatomy, 224-5). In other words, the invective
tone of satire is one way to impute follies to some individuals or to some places,
Chueh 29
nation for example. Besides, the tone of humor is an important key to the satire
because it reinterprets and discovers harm and even evil in the ridiculous by
employing the comic techniques to redirect readers’attention to serious concerns.
Satire, according to the quotation from Pope, is a weapon to defend the truth but
this is only one of the functions of it. Dryden believes that:
Satire is a kind of poetry, without a series of action, invented for the purging
of our minds; in which human vices, ignorance, and errors, and all things
besides, which are produced from them in every man, are severely
reprehended; partly dramatically, partly simply, and sometimes in both
kinds of speaking; but for the most part figuratively, and occultly; consisting
in a low familiar way, chiefly in a sharp and pungent manner of speech; but
partly also, in a facetious and civil way of jesting; by which either hatred or
laughter, or indignation, is moved” (Dramatic, 143).
Obviously, Dryden is a step further than Pope in relation to the function of satire
because satire is “not only used for those discourses which [decry] vice, or [expose]
folly, but for others also, where virtue [is] recommended” (Dryden, Discourse, 575) to
purge readers’minds from being deceived by the follies of the existing world. In
conclusion, the function of satire is “a sort of Glass, wherein Beholders do generally
discover every body’s Face but their Own” (Swift, Battle, 375) and to find their
foibles presented in either a humorous or an invective tone with the intention to
arouse their attention in a serious way through the reflective images on the glass.
In European literature, much of the eighteenth-century is generally called the
golden age of satire. Reasons commonly put forward are that eighteenth century is “a
period of fairly highly developed civilization and culture” which breeds the satirists
whose need and purpose is “to protect this culture from abuse, aberration and
corruption” by “ridiculing and bringing scorn upon those who [threaten] to impair it”
Chueh 30
(Cuddon 783). That is, satirists will not delegate the job of guarding standards, ideas,
and truths of the time to any one else but to themselves because they view themselves
as the self-appointed guardians of the society. If satire is a literary fashion in
eighteenth-century, what characteristics make it distinctive compared with other
periods? Eighteenth-century satire is the “operation of its constructive and
deconstructive thrusts” and this binary operation “can be understood
epistemologically as two periods – one looking backward to Renaissance models, the
other looking forward to eighteenth-century Enlightenment models ” (Zimbardo 2).
The examination between the old, Renaissance models, and the new, Enlightenment
models, is the recourse of the binary operation of eighteenth-century satire. This is
once again like utopian writings in the way of putting the old order and the new
interest together but they, namely eighteenth-century satire and utopian writings,
differ from each other by means of their respective ways to de/reconstruct the
relationship between the old and the new. If utopian writings seek to span the gap
between old and new to bring totality, order, and perfection to their readers, the
constructive and deconstructive operation of eighteenth-century satire is the point of
“dissolution of order and the point of departure of the construction of order”
(Zimbardo 2) and this collapse of order will urge satire readers “toward a truth that
appears outside the borders of its texts,” namely history (Zimmerman 63). In fact, this
collapse of order influences eighteenth-century satire readers in the sense of building
a zero point where all things will have a new beginning and have a different look.
Hitherto, we have been examining the term satire in the light of its form,
techniques, and function but there is one thing more we need to know about satire
before we turn to the genre of novel. From the outer look of both utopian writing and
satire, we may postulate that the welfare of the community is the final goal for them
to achieve even though they adopt different methods – to offer a blueprint for the ideal
Chueh 31
land/Utopia and to ridicule threats to the society aggressively/satire – during the
process. As I have said in the section on utopian writing, this postulation is incomplete
because it is in favor of the interests of community but ignores the importance of each
individual. In utopias of reconstruction, utopian writers are aware of those primitive
desires of each individual and will examine those desires to see whether they are
compatible with the ideal society or not to make sure that the ideal society will not be
contaminated by offensive desires. Like utopian writers, satirists are also fully aware
of the primitive desires of human beings but the way they deal with these desires is
quite different with utopian writers. If utopian writers try to propose an ideal land
where primitive desires may or may not be accomplished will be determined in
accordance with its compatibility with the society, satirists prevent primitive desires
from getting into individual heads by ridiculing them first. In both of the situations,
individuality is still a concern in satire and utopian writings even though this concern
is inferior to the interests of community to some extent.
The Novel as a Genre Concerning Individualism
The novel, broadly speaking, denotes “a prose narrative about characters and
their actions in what [is] recognizably everyday life and usually in the present, with
the emphasis on things being ‘new’or a ‘novelty’” (Cuddon 561). This modern
definition is, not too surprisingly, congruent with the eighteenth-century viewpoint. In
his book, Cuddon quoted William Congreve’s definition of novel to say that novels
“are of a more familiar Nature; Come near us, and present to us Intrigues in Practice,
delight is with Accidents and odd Events, but not such as are wholly unusually or
unpresidented, such which being not so distant from our Belief bring also the pleasure
nearer us ” (564). Several key words can be deduced from both modern and
eighteenth-century definitions of the term novel even though these key words are not
Chueh 32
the exact words in which they are put: individual, society, and newness. Momentarily,
we will come to the discussions regarding the relationship among novel, individual,
and society and to see how this relationship is presented in the eighteenth-century
novel as a whole.
The relationship between novel, individual, and society is an intricate one
because the novel “habitually accords both to the individualization of its characters
and to the detailed presentation of their environment” (Watt 18). In eighteenth-century
novels, these “newly distinctive individuals and their surrounding social
circumstances lack the clear-cut separation between self and a totalized social order”
(Richetti, English Novel 9). In other words, self- identity of a character in a novel,
especially in an eighteenth-century novel, is a socially constructed one. This idea of
the socially constructed self can be applied to the individual readers also because
reading novels functions in a way for the readers to know the world and by their
acquisition of this knowledge, they are much more aware of their self- identity in the
light of “their experience in the world to society and [to discover] his or her
implication in history and community” (Richetti, Eighteenth-Century Novel 5-6). In
the words of Watt and Richetti, society enables individuals to construct their
self- identity but the problem remains: how and why society can function in such a
way especially in the eighteenth century. In order to answer these two questions,
social ambience and realism will be further explained here.
In chapter one, I have tried to explain the social ambience of eighteenth-century
Britain in terms of the possible social mobility and the conflicts between old and new
values. In eighteenth-century novels, readers can find that the adaptation of
“traditional structures and beliefs is visible, and [novels are] well described as various
attempts to draw maps of these shifting configurations ” (Richetti, English Novel 12).
That is, the content of the novels is about the existence of the old traditions and the
Chueh 33
configuration of the new values. The depiction of the old traditions and the
configuration of the new values are called “communicative rationality” which is “not
the relations of a solitary subject to something in the objective world that can be
represented and manipulated, but the intersubjective relation that speaking or acting
subjects take up when they come to an understanding with one another about
something” (Habermas 392). Habermas focuses his observation on the
interrelationship among the objects in the novel writing, but this theory of the
interrelationship, or intersubjectivity, is also applicable to the novel readers since the
construction of their self- identity is relative to their readings. One may ask, how can
novel readers be convinced that the presentation of intersubjectivity in the novels can
be applied to them? Realism may be a helpful term to explain it. By adopting realism
as a writing methodology in the novel, novelists gather particular characters, places,
plots and time aspects of their novels in a pertinent sense to their time of writing. In
touch with these particular characters, places and plots, readers will recognize and
identify with these characters, places, and plots as those they can see and visit in their
true lives. In its manner, novels are like satire because they both function as a mirror
to reflect self-reflexive images of mirror watchers even though the images of the
former may include diverse topics while the latter aims to show the follies of the
mirror watchers.
In its relation to utopia, the novel, according to Morson, reflects two antithetical
philosophical assumptions in the way of first “[… ] in the novel, unlike the utopia, the
narrative is to be taken as representing a plausible sequence of events (i.e., as
designed to be ‘realistic ’). Second, in a novel, the statements, actions and beliefs of
any principal character (or the narrator) are to be understood as a reflection of his or
her personality, and of the biographical events and social milieu that have shaped it”
(77). Morson’s words seem to be plausible but a few explanations need to be made. If
Chueh 34
characters’ subjectivity is, as Habermas said, based on their interrelationship with
different objects in the novel, Morson’s two assumptions, in fact, refer to the
relationship between individual and the society because all the events described in the
novels are the results of cha racters’actions and beliefs along with characters’actions
and beliefs, in Morson’s words, are to be understood as a reflection of their socially
constructed personality. In the previous discussion, I have mentioned that Utopia is a
place where communal welfare is its first priority. In order to achieve this goal,
personal desires will not be taken in consideration unless they are conducive to it.
What’s more, personal desire is, in fact, a part of characters’personality. Since utopia
aims to construct a profitable collective personality for all the citizens, individual
personality will not be the main concern of it. Unlike in utopia, the aim of characters
in the novel is to find their subjectivity through their experience with the objects of
the society. Such an aim will single out the process of construction of characters’
personality as the first priority for the narrative of novel. In that case, utopia and novel
hold different attitudes towards the issue of the relationship between individual and
community.
In writing of old traditions and new values, utopia and novel set in a different
tune. The former, as I have said, will indicate the flaws of the existing world and to
propose a perfect imaginary land on the basis of the reconstruction of the old world
and with the conflation of the new values. In novel writing, both old traditions and
new values will be presented in the narrative but novelists have no strong intentions to
urge readers to choose because readers instead of writers are the choice- makers. In
other words, readers of utopia read it in a passive way because utopian writers make
them believe that Utopia is the best choice for them to accept while readers of novels
can actively choose what they want to believe since reading is a process of the
construction of their self- identity and this process varies in relation to readers’
Chueh 35
substantially different life experience.
Travel and Travel Narrative in Eighteenth-Century England
I was the world in which I walked, and what I saw
Or Heard or felt came not but from myself;
And there I found myself more truly and more strange
(Stevens Tea at the Palaz of Hoo, 10-12).
Stevens’s spiritual travel reveals his identity in the way of unveiling its truth and
strangeness. The function of Stevens’s travel corresponds to Jacques Ranciere’s but
Ranciere chooses different phrases to describe it by saying that travel is a way to
disclose the “paradox of identity” (33). Ranciere’s paradox of identity is, to some
extent, similar to Stevens’s truth and strangeness because, seemingly, truth and
strangeness contradict one another but they still co-exist in the realm of identity.
Travel is also a crucial issue in eighteenth-century England because of the forms
of desire behind travel. If travel “is going from one place to another, it often is forms
of desire that make us go: desire for lucre, for knowledge, for spreading knowledge,
for fame, for empire, for political influence, for bragging rights, for a better life, for
variety novelty, and excitement” (Teeuwen 3). All these desires, no matter their
purposes are positive or negative, make Europe experience “that crucial moment [… ]
when, thanks to the great voyages of discovery, a human community which had
believed itself to be complete and in its final form suddenly learned [… ] that it was
not alone, that it was part of a greater whole, and that, in order to achieve
self-knowledge, it must first of all contemplate its unrecognizable image in this
mirror” (Levi-Strauss 102). For the travelers’ sake, travel is a way to understand their
self- identity in the way of finding their self- image in a mirror, which is a metaphor for
a human community since a big mirror contains different self- images which consist of
Chueh 36
a human community. This human community has its general meaning by referring not
only to a specific place, traveler’s birth of place for example, but also to the whole
world. Since desires are a kind of impulse to bring out practices of travel, what are
those desires that encourage eighteenth-century Englishmen to sail away from their
home? Eighteenth-century Englishmen’s desires for traveling range from varieties but
“a chief, if not the chief, reason for traveling has been for trade” (Adam 57). Of
course, trade can possibly not be the only reason to arouse eighteenth-century
Englishmen’s desire for traveling because Grand Tour, as we have seen in chapter one,
is also one of them. However, this point of trade is worth stressing because of its
importance in eighteenth-century England. In fact, overseas trade is not the privilege
of eighteenth-century Englishmen. In the early decade of the sixteenth century,
England exports a wide range of woolen cloth to European countries. Besides, with
“the development of shipping and navigational skills in distant trades and fishery in
the later decades of the sixteenth century” (Davis, Commercial 8), Englishmen extend
their overseas trade to the Atlantic and Asia. However, the expansion of trade does not
come to maturity until the period fifteen-seventy to sixteen- forty. In this period,
English overseas trade expands its range because of two reasons. The first reason is
the collapse of “London-Antwerp axis ” and the second one is the “weakening
competition of Mediterranean industries” (Davis, Commercial 5, 7). In the middle of
the sixteenth century, the position of Antwerp as the universal entrepot begins to
weaken because “more direct exchanges [are] established between areas” instead of
central Europe and it is “involved in the upheaval if the revolt against Spain” (Davis,
Commercial 5). The war between Antwerp and Spain bring damage to both sides. For
the former, the war ends its great time as a trading city. For the latter, the war weakens
its ability to compete for overseas trade. As a whole, the decline of Antwerp forces
England to find new entries into European markets. Later on, the movement turns out
Chueh 37
to be the “precursor of the much greater geographical widening of trade” (Davis,
Commercial 6) that comes a hundred years later. Overseas trade in the eighteenth
century shifts its concern from European markets to “colonial markets” (Davis,
Commercial 18). Besides, the decline in the growth of woolen exports is also an
eye-catching change at that time and this could be seen from the “tendency for the
price of wool to fall from the Restoration until far into the eighteenth century” (Davis,
“English Foreign Trade” 101). In short, the value of overseas trade grows rapidly in
proportion to total national income from the sixteenth century to the eighteenth
century. Defoe describes his country as “not only a trade country, but the greatest
trading country in the world” (Defoe, Complete English Tradesman 20). Obviously,
travel has its historical importance in relation to the diverse desires behind it in
eighteenth-century England but wha t is its importance in the literary narrative,
especially in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe,
which are the two main texts for discussions in the later chapters?
Travel “is a specific concentration of mental and emotional energy on some
outlying thing that must be had” (Teeuwen 4, original emphasis). In other words,
travel is an issue relevant to the word “possession” but the relevance between two
implies not only the positive meaning, the action of getting something to someone’s
possession, but also the negative meaning, “the loss of what [someone] once
possessed” (Teeuwen 4). In Gulliver’s Travels and Robinson Crusoe, both positive
and negative meanings of the word possession are being brewed at different stages in
relation to Gulliver and Crusoe’s identity problems. That is, Gulliver and Crusoe’s
identity problems are in a regard of the process of their possession, loss and regain of
their identity. In most of the time of the two travel narratives, Gulliver and Crusoe
experience those pathetic moments concerning the challenge of their identity. During
those moments, Gulliver and Crusoe are in a “sense of failure, regret, and nostalgia,”
Chueh 38
which “usually accompanies the efforts of regaining past conditions ” (Teeuwen 4).
These conditions “will have changed during” the absence of Gulliver and Crusoe and
“with the original fit damaged,” Gulliver and Crusoe “can no longer satisfactorily
reenter them” (Teeuwen 4). Such traveling leaves Gulliver and Crusoe “stranded
where [they] are: homesick and forced to live a life that comes to feel inauthentic in a
world of unfulfilled promises, banality, or hostility” (Teeuwen 4). In other words,
travel in Gulliver’s Travels and Robinson Crusoe has no promising endings in terms
of their identity problems because after the travel, whether Gulliver or Crusoe is like
an outsider to their original world in the sense of their inability to fit into it.
In conclusion, travel is a way for eighteenth-century Englishmen to practice their
different desires, including trade, education, to name but a few. Besides, the ability for
overseas trades also testifies to eighteenth-century England’s naval superiority
comparing with other European countries as a consequence of her improvement in
nautical skills. As for literature, travel narrative is also another way to certify
England ’s superiority on the sea by making characters on their way to overseas travel.
However, this journey is not simply a way to propagate England ’s greatness of her
naval power but a way to question characters’identity problems. The reason why
identity problem turns out to be a crucial issue in travel is that eighteenth-century
England is a society with various possibilities. Living in a society like this, people
have different choices to make and one single choice may have great influence on
their lives and their identity construction. In Gulliver’s Travels and Robinson Crusoe,
both Gulliver and Crusoe have their free will to make their own choices, but they also
have to take the responsibility for their choice. Travel makes this identity problem
much easier to be understood in both of the two travel narratives in the way of taking
Gulliver and Crusoe away from their home to let them experience a life that they can
hardly imagine while they live in their mother country. With the experience like this,
Chueh 39
Gulliver and Crusoe can examine their identity from different perspectives.
Chueh 40
Chapter III:
Gulliver’s Complex: The Problems of De/Constructing Identities in Gulliver’s Travels
I have finished my Travells, and I am now transcribing them; they are
admirable Things, and will wonderfully mend the World [… ] but the chief
end I propose to my self in all my labors is to vex the world rather then
divert it. [… ] I have ever hated all Nations professions and Communityes
and all my love is towards individuals [… ] but principally I hate and detest
that animal called man. [… ] Upon this great foundation of Misanthrophy
[… ] the whole building of my Travells is erected (Swift, Gulliver’s Travels
260-2)9 .
In his correspondence to Charles Ford and Alexander Pope, Swift’s contradictory
purpose with Gulliver’s Travels is obvious to see: to mend or to vex the world. This
ambivalent position is not Swift’s only, but his narrator Lemuel Gulliver ’s also. In his
correspondence to Mrs. Howard, Swift explained that Gulliver ’s “chief Study is to
extenuate the Vices and magnify the Virtues, of Mankind, and perpetually dins our
Ears with the Praises of his Country” (Swift 269). Gulliver’s chief study, or we should
say mission, is plausible and practicable at the first sight, but, at the end of his memoir,
this mission fails in terms of Gulliver’s ambivalent position in the process of
practicing it. The failure of Gulliver’s mission is worth stressing because it is a
reminder of how Gulliver de/constructs his problematic identities during his four
voyages. In his four voyages, Gulliver’s identity is problematized at two stages. First,
during the first three voyages, Gulliver could not fit himself in those countries he
visits because of the discrepancy between the disparate cultures of the three countries
and his Englishness. Second, in his last voyage to Houyhnhnms, Gulliver, conversely,
becomes incompatible with his previous Englishness by adopting a reclusive life
corresponding to the life style in Houyhnhnms. In short, as I will argue, Gulliver’s
Chueh 41
original intention to extenuate the vices and magnify the virtues can never be a
success but prove a dream instead because of his inability to fit in any cultures with
the intention to carry out his great mission. With his failure to fit in those countries he
visits, the process of de- or construction of his identities is at an impasse on Gulliver ’s
account. Gulliver’s failure in his mission and his problematic identities are not hard to
foresee since the genre, satire, conveys impending doom as a possible final ending to
the readers. In the following discussion, I will try to see how these issues, identity,
image of nation-state and doomed failure, are interwoven in the text. Before the final
result is carried out, we have to bring the question of identity to the fore.
What Is Identity?
In the words of Stuart Hall, identity, in common sense language, is based on:
some common origin or shared cha racteristics with another person or group,
or with an ideal, and with the natural closure of solidarity and allegiance
established on this foundation (Who Needs “ Identity” 16).
In his paper, Hall, firstly, views the term identity in the sense of its natural bond;
namely, genealogy. Genealogy “is to expose the body totally imprinted by history and
the processes of history’s destruction of the body” (Foucault 63). To combine Hall and
Foucault’s words, the presentation of one ’s identity is about one’s origin or shared
characteristics with other people or groups. In fact, a person’s origin or shared
characteristics are his/her imprints of history on his/her body because all these things
are in his/her blood after his/her birth. Here, the term history contains both a broad
and a narrow definition because the former refers to the history of the family and the
latter means the personal history. However, identity is not a matter only about history
but also about space since identity is “a cluster of meanings related to a defined legal
or social status, a focus of loyalty, a requirement of duties, an expectation of rights
Chueh 42
and a yardstick of good behaviour ” and all these meanings are associated with “any
geographical unit from a small town and the whole globe itself” (Heater 163). Besides,
space is the place “where ideas, perspectives and feelings can be shared” in the
modern society and the availability of space is “crucial for the development of the
self” (Stevenson 5). To understand why space is an influential factor in the discussion
of identity, we have to correlate the discussion with another realm: citizenship.
Citizenship is a supportive perspective to understand identity because most of
people live their lives as a member to a specific nation or group. In this group or
nation, all citizens “who possess the status are equal with respect to the rights and
duties with which the status is endowed” (Marshall 87) and this social bonding
involves “a direct sense of community membership based on loyalty to a civilization
which is a common possession. It is a loyalty of free men endowed with rights and
protected by a common law. Its growth is stimulated both by the struggle to win those
rights and by their enjoyment when won” (Marshall 96). The citizenship that Marshall
suggests is analogous to Angus Stewart’s “state citizenship,” which “involves the
identification of citizenship with the elaboration of a distinctive, formal legal status,
which elaboration is co-terminous with the emergence of nation-states and their
diverse lineages” (65). This state citizenship proposes a state-centered, shared, and
homogeneous identity for all the citizens in a nation state and it assumes that
“preferences, interests and identities are given exogenously in advance of public
discourse and deliberation, whether by explicit state-specification or implicit state
prioritization” (Stewart 75, original emphasis). The proposition of state citizenship
itself is a Utopian project, which is not impossible but impracticable because the
construction of a nation state is “by a diversity of discourses among which there is no
necessary relation but a constant movement of overdetermination and displacement.
The ‘identity’of such a multiple and contradictory subject is therefore always
Chueh 43
contingent and precarious, temporarily fixed at the intersection of those subject
positions and dependent on specific forms of identification” (Mouffe 28). In other
words, a state-centered identity is possible in the way of universalizing all subjects in
a nation state in order to pursue the common good but this homogeneity is challenged
because all the discourses are on a constant movement. This constant movement not
only refers to the fluidity of history or space in a country but also suggests the
possible force from the outside to de- or re-territorialize the seemingly enclosed
country in relation to the issues of its history or space. Besides, this constant
movement also symbolizes the operation of heterogeneity in a country. In fact, the
operation of heterogeneity is not a singular activity but a concomitant product with
the practice of homogeneity. In order to understand how homogeneity and
heterogeneity cooperate or compete with each other and how the issue of identity
responds to the cooperation or competition between the two, inclusion, exclusion, and
difference are the keys to answer this question.
The inherent duality of modern nation-state citizenship is “a status at once
universal and particularistic, internally inclusive and externally exclusive. [… ] Such
citizenship is inherently bounded” (Brubaker 72). This internally inclusive part of
citizenship is an odd form because it “combines universalist and particularist criteria
in the same process” (Halfmann 514). In the words of Halfmann, universalism and
particularism are the two features in the process of inclusion/homogeneity. The
conflation of two features may seem to be antithetic at first sight but they are not
contradictory actually. In More’s Utopia, the basic assumption of the project is to
build a nation state based on the agreed systems with the intention to achieve the
common welfare, which is the idea of universalism, but all Utopian citizens, if they
happen to have particular interests in different crafts, can choose their jobs freely
according to their disposition, which is relevant to the idea of particularism, unless
Chueh 44
one specific craft is eagerly in need to the nation state. In that case, the operation of
homogeneity and heterogeneity can cooperate in a harmonious way internally in a
country.
Exclusion is the feature when we consider the operation of inclusion and
exclusion in an external way. When a cultural other, whether s/he intends to or not,
penetrate the boundaries of a nation state and brings threats to it, this nation state
“invests the Other with its terrors. It is the threat of the dissolution of self that ignites
the irrational hatred and hostility as the centre struggles to assert and secure its
boundaries that construct self from not-self” (Rutherford 11). Rutherford here
presupposes that a nation state is a homogenous one while a cultural other is
heterogeneous to that culture. When a nation state senses the possible threats from this
cultural other, it becomes a center of oppression to expel this cultural other to keep its
integrity. While this cultural other experiences the intended marginalization from a
nation state, he will try to find a place of resistance to secure his identity by asserting
it. By asserting his identity, this cultural other tries to articulate his identity. The
articulation of identity is like the term performativity in Butler ’s words.
Performativity is:
[… ] thus not a singular “act,” for it is always a reiteration of a norm or set
of norms, and to the extent that it acquires an act-like status in the present, it
conceals or dissimulates the conventions of which it is a repetition.
Moreover, this act is not primarily theatrical; indeed, its apparent
theatricality is produced to the extent that its historicity remains
dissimulated (and, conversely, its theatricality gains a certain inevitability
given the impossibility of a full disclosure of its historicity) (12-3).
To rephrase Butler’s words in a simple way is to say that our identity is the
presentation of histories that we experience and this presentation is similar with
Chueh 45
Foucault’s word “imprint” in my previous citation. The reason why Butler proclaims
that the historicity of identity remains dissimulated is that history is always in process.
When we still live our lives, our identity is always under the influence, which is the
result of the operation of inclusion or exclusion, of histories we confront. That is,
identity is a product, “which is never complete, always in process, and always
constituted within, not outside, representation” (Hall, Cultural Identity, 222).
In conclusion, the constitution of identity comes from two operative vectors: “the
vector of similarity and continuity; and the vector of difference and rupture (Hall,
Cultural Identity, 226). These two vectors are relative to the issue of history and space
in the light of the operation of inclusion and exclusion. In Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels,
the construction of Gulliver’s identities and his identity crisis during his four voyages
are highly connected with these two vectors.
Gulliver’s Complex: Voyages of De- or Constructing Identities
In his four voyages to remote countries, Gulliver experiences a kind of complex.
This complex comes from Gulliver’s crisis in terms of the ways in which he de- or
constructs his identities. Each voyage is a different stage in Gulliver ’s complex
because each of them problematizes Gulliver ’s identity to different perspectives and
extent.
The First Stage: Voyage to Lilliput
I [… ] made a Sign with my Hand that was loose, putting it to the other (but
over his Excellency’s Head, for fear of hurting him or his Train) and then to
my own Head and Body, to signify that I desired my Liberty. It appeared
that [the Lilliputian King] understood me well enough, for he shook his
Head by way of Disapprobation, and held his Hand in a Posture to shew that
Chueh 46
I must be carried as a Prisoner (Swift 20).
In this very first meeting with the Lilliputian King, Gulliver’s behavior
exemplifies his status as a cultural other in two ways. First, Gulliver’s submissive
behavior is typical of a cultural other because a culture’s dominator will oppress a
seeming cultural other in many different ways to make them become submissive. In
this scene, Gulliver is treated as a prisoner and he is even attacked by arrows before
this scene. Lilliputians ’behaviors typ ify that Gulliver is an oppressed cultural other. It
is not hard to perceive that Gulliver is a cultural other to Lilliputians in this scene by
the ways they treat him, but the problem is that what makes Lilliputians see Gulliver
as a cultural other? To unravel this question, the second way to explain Gulliver ’s
cultural otherness in the same scene may give us a hint. While Gulliver asked for his
liberty, he made his request in a very careful way to prevent himself from hurting the
King and his train. Gulliver ’s carefulness is a consequence of his physical superiority,
which is “in the Proportion of Twelve to One ” (Swift 37), compared with the
diminutive Lilliputians. However, this physical superiority is not in favor of Gulliver
with respect to his social status in Lilliput but it is an impetus for the cultural
dominator, the Lilliputians, to marginalize Gulliver as a cultural other. When the full
story comes to be told, Gulliver ’s cultural otherness and identity crisis at this stage
will come to its realization.
In opposition to the previous disapprobation, the Lilliputian council approves
Gulliver’s petition for his liberty on the condition that he signs several articles. The
importance of these articles, nine in total, is to certify that Lilliputians are, on the one
hand, afraid of Gulliver’s physical superiority to bring any possible mischief to the
country, but they, on the other hand, admire Gulliver’s physical superiority with a
hankering for its possible utility to the country. In the first half of these articles,
Gulliver was asked to be obliged to perform:
Chueh 47
First, The Man-Mountain [Gulliver, or Quinbus Flestrin in Lilliputian
language] should not depart from our Dominions, without our Licence
under our Great Seal.
2d, He shall not presume to come into our Metropolis, without our
express Order; at which time the Inhabitants shall have two Hours warning
to keep within their Doors.
3d, The said Man-Mountain shall confine his Walks to our principal High
Roads, and not offer to walk or lie down in a Meadow or Field of Corn.
4th , As he walks the said Roads, he shall take the utmost care not to
trample upon the Bodies of any of our loving Subjects, their Horses, or
Carriages, nor take any of our said Subjects into his Hands, without our
Consent.
These four articles have two significant meanings. First, these articles prove
Lilliputians’fear for Gulliver because of his colossal physical shape and strength.
Second, these articles symbolize Lilliputians’ strategies to marginalize Gulliver from
the power center, Mildendo the metropolis, by confining his movement into it.
Gulliver’s limited physical ability is important on Lilliputians’ account in two ways.
First, Gulliver ’s impaired physical ability will force him to become a figure who can
only passively accept decisions made by Lilliputians since he has no rights and
freedom to decide his physical movement as he wishes. By making Gulliver become a
passive figure, Lilliputians’cultural superiority surpasses Gulliver’s physical
superiority and makes the latter become less threatening than he was before. Second,
Gulliver’s impaired physical ability prepares the ground for Lilliputians to make
Gulliver become the public servant for their country and this intention can be verified
from the fifth to eighth articles. From fifth to eighth articles, Gulliver was bound to
perform:
Chueh 48
5th , If an Express requires extraordinary Dispatch, the Man-Mountain
shall be obliged to carry in his Pocket the Messenger and Horse a Six Days
Journey once in every Moon, and return the said Messenger back (if so
required) safe to our Imperial Presence.
6th , He shall be our Ally against our Enemies in the Island of Blefuscu,
and do his utmost to destroy their Fleet, which is now preparing to invade
Us.
7th , That the said Man-Mountain shall, at his times of leisure, be aiding
and assisting to our Workmen, in helping to raise certain great Stones,
towards covering the Wall of the principal Park, and other our Royal
Buildings.
8th , That the said Man-Mountain shall, in two Moons time, deliver in an
exact Survey of the Circumference of our Dominions by a Computation of
his own Paces round the Coast.
If the first to fourth articles prove Lilliputians’fear and explain their strategies to
marginalize Gulliver, the fifth to eighth articles confirm that Lilliputians admire
Gulliver’s physical strength and believe that this physical strength is serviceable to
their country especially during the war with Blefuscu. Perusing these articles, we may
find that Lilliputians are always in a dilemmatic condition since they cannot decide in
which way they should deal with this Man-Mountain. If we say that Lilliputians can
hardly find a suitable solution in relation to Gulliver, Gulliver himself is fully aware
of his social status as a cultural other to Lilliputians at the onset of seeing these
diminutive people after his sleep. If Gulliver is certain about his cultural otherness, he
may, in some sense, possibly foresee his identity crisis at the very beginning of this
stage. In order to have a clear understanding of this point, we have to know how
Gulliver tries to fit into the Lilliputian society, how he becomes a faithful servant to
Chueh 49
Lilliput, and why he chooses to escape to Blefuscu and the significance of it.
In his early years as a seaman, Gulliver, when he had leisure time during his
voyages, was always “observing the Manners and Dispositions of the People, as well
as learning their Language, wherein had a great Facility by the strength of my
Memory” (Swift 16). Language-learning is the first priority if a cult ural stranger
wants to understand or to be understood by another culture because language,
inevitably, “has no expressions for things or concepts which have no place” (Tippet
84) in a world. In the like manner, when Gulliver was in Lilliput, three hundred tailors
were ordered to “make [him] a Suit of Cloaths after the Fashion of the Country: That
six of his Majesty’s greatest Scholars should be employ’d to instruct me in their
Language ” (Swift 27). The purpose of this process is to assimilate Gulliver into
Lilliput ian culture physically, to dress like a Lilliputian, and mentally, to speak
Lilliputian language. The prospective intention of this cultural assimilation is to
ensure Gulliver that he will “be used with all Kindness” (Swift 27). “Use” is a word
with two- fold meanings. First, it means that Gulliver will be “treated” with kindness
in Lilliput once he appears to be an alike Lilliputian. Second, Gulliver will be “used”
as a public servant to Lilliput. I am inclined to believe that the importance of the
second meaning possibly overwhelms the first for Lilliputians and the last article can
confirm my assumption in the way of saying that:
That upon his solemn Oath to observe all the above Articles, [that is, the
first to eighth articles,] the said Man-Mountain shall have a daily Allowance
of Meat and Drink sufficient for the Support of 1724 of our Subjects, with
free Access to our Royal Person, and other Marks of Our Favour. Given at
our Place at Belfaborac the twelfth Day of the Ninety-first Moon of our
Reign (Swift 36-7).
This is the way for the colonizers to treat the colonized by, firstly, assimilating the
Chueh 50
latter into the culture of the former and by, secondly, trading the servitude of the latter
with the allowance of the former when the former intend to marginalize the latter.
Gulliver is a faithful public servant to Lilliput especially when Lilliput is at war
with Blefuscu but his service to Lilliput and his victory in the war with Blefuscu can
hardly change the fact that he is still a cultural other and the Lilliputian council is
aware of the fact because the “Majesty’s Revenue was reduced by the charge of
maintaining [Gulliver], which would soon grow insupportable” (Swift 59). In other
words, Gulliver ’s physical strength is desirable to Lilliputians, but it is at the expense
of bringing famine to the country. Concerning this problem, Lilliputians contrive a
way to solve it by digging out Gulliver ’s eyes and lessening his food. To Lilliputians,
Gulliver’s loss of his eyes “would be no impediment to [his] bodily strength, by
which [he] might still be useful to his Majesty. That Blindness is an addition to
Courage, by concealing Dangers from [Lilliputians ]” (Swift 58). Besides, by
lessening Gulliver’s food, he “would grow weak and faint, and lose [his] Appetite,
and consequently decay and consume in a few Months [… ] and immediately upon
[Gulliver ’s] Death, five or six Thousand of his Majesty’s Subjects might, in two or
three days, cut [Gulliver ’s] Flesh from [his] Bones, take it away by Cartloads, and
bury it in distant parts to prevent Infection, leaving the Skeleton as a Monument of
Admiration to Posterity” (Swift 59). The Lilliputians’expedient further explains
Gulliver’s status as a cultural other by treating Gulliver as nothing more than a
subordina te servant and a kind of property to show to their posterity.
Knowing this precarious future, Gulliver acts not like a passive figure any more
but chooses to escape to Blefuscu as an active response to the Lilliputians’decision.
This escape to Blefuscu has an important meaning in relation to Gulliver’s identity
problems. Escaping to Blefuscu, Gulliver turns the site of oppression to be the place
of resistance by refusing to accept Lilliputians’expedient and this refusal is a way to
Chueh 51
secure Gulliver’s identity because it is one way for cultural others to regain their
identity.
In conclusion, at this first stage, Gulliver’s identity crisis comes from his
superiority in his physical strength. Gulliver ’s physical superiority makes him become
a useable public servant to Lilliputians. However, Lilliputians are fully aware of the
pros and cons of Gulliver ’s physical strength to their country. In that case, no matter
how Gulliver’s physical strength is advantageous to Lilliputians, he is still a cultural
other in their eyes and this is the main reason to cause Gulliver ’s identity crisis. In his
second voyage to Brobdingnag, Gulliver’s physical strength is also a key to his
identity problem. However, Gulliver ’s experience in Brobdingnag will be
diametrically opposite to the one in Lilliput.
The Second Stage: Voyage to Brobdingnag
Scared and confounded as I was, I could not forbear going on with these
Reflections, when one of the Reapers approaching within ten Yards of the
Ridge where I lay, made me apprehend that with the next Step I should be
squashed to Death under his Foot, or cut in two with his Reaping Hook. [… ]
I screamed as loud as Fear could make me (Swift 73).
This scene is hilarious in the sense of portraying Gulliver as a weeping doll both
in the eyes of Brobdingnagans and readers but Gulliver ’s fear is reasonable because,
at his first sight of these gargantuan-proportioned Brobdingnagans, he said that “as
human Creatures are observed to be more savage and cruel in Proportion to their Bulk,
what could I expect but to be a Morsel in the Mouth of the first among these
enormous Barbarians that should happen to seize me?” (Swift 75). “Size” is a problem
that Swift questions here and it is treated differently compared with the situation in
Lilliput and this difference has a separate bearing on Gulliver’s identity problem.
Chueh 52
In Lilliput, Gulliver is a Man-Mountain and it is his prodigious physical strength
that enables him to serve the country. In Brobdingnag, even though Gulliver ’s
physical strength is inferior to Brobdingnagans, his diminutive physical shape is, like
Lilliputians to Gulliver, an interesting scene to both the common people and the court
because his “capacity as a man of action is limited either to mere performance for the
interested spectators, or self-defence in ridiculous and humiliating situations”
(Erskine-Hill 126). In other words, in Brobdingnag, Gulliver ’s lack of physical
strength turns him into an entertaining scene or an innocuous creature. The
descriptions of Gulliver’s weakness are pervasive in the second voyage and all these
descriptions are important in the way of traumatizing or problematizing Gulliver ’s
identity. When the farmer who found Gulliver in his farm takes Gulliver home and
shows him to his wife, this poor women “screamed and ran back as Women in
England do at the Sight of a Toad or a Spider” (Swift 75, original emphasis). Besides,
the farmer was advised by his neighbor to “shew [Gulliver] as a Sight upon a
Market-Day in the next town” (Swift 80) and this advice proved to be profitable
because “People were ready to break down the Doors to come in” (Swift 82) to see
Gulliver. Proved to be a profitable creature, Gulliver is taken by the farmer to other
cities, including the capital Lorbrulgrud, to give his performance to bring
considerable fortune for the farmer and this is how Gulliver has the chance to enter
the court. The sight of Gulliver surprises not only the farmer’s wife and other
Brobdingnagans but also the King. When the Queen showed Gulliver to the King, the
King “asked the Queen after a cold Manner, how long it was since she grew fond of a
Splacnuck,” an animal in the farm in Brobdingnag, and when the King “observed
[Gulliver ’s] Shape exactly, and saw [him] walk erect, before [Gulliver] began to speak,
conceived [Gulliver] might be a piece of Clock-work [… ] contrived by some
ingenious Artist” (Swift 85-6). Even though the King is astonished to know that
Chueh 53
Gulliver is a “regular and rational” (Swift 86) creature after he heard Gulliver voice,
Gulliver is always in a depersonalized situation, including his other unfortunate
adventures with Queen’s dwarf or other gigantic animals, during his stay in
Brobdingnag. This depersonalization is a great challenge to Gulliver ’s identity
because it not only marginalizes Gulliver as a cultural other to Borbdingnagans but
also makes him become nothing more than a toy to be watched and played with. In
other words, he is being dehumanized. As a depersonalized creature Gulliver is
always “thinking on poor England” (Swift 97, original emphasis) because
home-coming seems to be the last hope to retrieve his lost identity. Although
Gulliver’s home-coming at the end of his second voyage gets him away from the
depersonalized situation in Brobdingnag, he has to face an after-effect after his long
living in Brobdingnag. When Gulliver ’s box, which was Gulliver’s home in
Brobdingnag, is found by other ship, he told the man to “let one of the Crew put his
Finger into the Ring, and take the Box out of the Sea into the Ship, and so into the
Captain’s Cabin” but the crew on the ship thought Gulliver “was mad” and “laughed”
when they heard this because these people were of Gulliver’s “own Stature and
Strength” (Swift 120). Gulliver ’s confusion about the size is further elaborated in the
scene of his way home.
As I was on the Road, observing the Littleness of the Houses, the Trees,
the Cattle and the People, I began to think my self in Lilliput. I was afraid of
trampling on every Traveller I met, and often called aloud to have them
stand out of the way, so that I had like to have gotten one or two broken
Heads for my Impertinence (Swift 124, original emphasis).
If depersonalization and dehumanization are the two threats to Gulliver ’s identity
during his stay in Brobdingnag, his optic side-effect causes his incompatibility to
England and this incompatibility problematizes his identity by collapsing this home
Chueh 54
image after his way home.
Gulliver’s identity crisis is a consequence not only of his physical weakness but
also his ambivalent position in defending his mother country in the conversation with
the King. When the King enquires after the manners, religion, law, government and
learning of Europe, Gulliver gives him the best account he can and he even confesses
that he was “a little to copious in talking of [his] beloved Country” (Swift 89). After
Gulliver’s talks, the King
could not forbear taking me up in his right Hand, and stroaking [Gulliver]
gently with the other, after an hearty Fit of laughing, asked me whether [he]
were a Whig or a Tory [and] observed how contemptible a Thing was human
Grandeur, which could be mimicked by such diminutive Insects as I: And
yet, said [the King], I dare engage, these Creature have their Titles and
Distinctions of Honour, they contrive little Nests and Burrows, that they call
Houses and Cities; they make a Figure in Dress and Equipage; they love,
they fight, they dispute, they betray (Swift 89).
Although Gulliver ’s “Colour came and went several times, with Indignation to hear
[his] noble Country [… ] so contemp tuously treated” at first, he “was not in a
condition to resent Injuries, so, upon mature Thoughts, [Gulliver] began to doubt
whether [he was] injured or no ” (Swift 89). In the later chapter, Gulliver confessed
that he “would hide the Frailties and Deformities of [his] Political Mother, and place
her Virtues and Beauties in the most advantageous Light” (Swift 111). Gulliver’s
ambivalent position in his first conversation with the King and his confession in the
later chapter are great impacts to his identity since the sense of citizenship is the basis
for building identity. These impacts question Gulliver’s identity by reminding him of
a story that happened in his beloved country.
[… ] I have seen the Moral of my own Behaviour very frequent in England
Chueh 55
since my Return, where a little contemptible Varlet, without the least Title to
Birth, Person, Wit, or common Sense, shall presume to look with
Importance, and put himself upon a foot with the greatest Persons of the
Kingdom (Swift 103, original emphasis).
This story symbolizes that Gulliver ’s beloved country is not as lovely as he believes
in the light of inequality in the country. As an Englishman, Gulliver is proud of his
country at the beginning, but this pride is questioned by the Brobdingnagan King in
his conversation concerning the social ambiance and political system of England.
When Gulliver experiences his inability to defend his country and further to question
England himself, he questions and problematizes his identity at the same time.
In conclusion, Gulliver’s identity crisis and cultural otherness at this second
stage come from both his physical defect and his dilemmatic position regarding
England. Gulliver ’s physical defect is an extension of his experience in Lilliput but in
a different way. In Lilliput, Gulliver is a Man-Mountain but he is being called
“Grildrig,” manikin in English, in Brobdingnag. In fact, Swift’s optic tricks
successfully entrap Gulliver to be in the position of being a cultural other to
Lilliputians in his first voyage and both to Brobdingnagans and England in his second
voyage in the light of the physical size. As for Gulliver ’s identity crisis, it becomes
problematic after Gulliver senses his dilemmatic position in defending the follies of
England in his second voyage. In short, Gulliver ’s second voyage, like his first
voyage to Lilliput, makes him become aware of his cultural otherness and
problematizes his identity by questioning the social and political systems in England.
The Third Stage: Voyage to Laputa, Balnibarbi, Glubbdubdrib, Luggnagg, and
Japan
In the previous two voyages, Gulliver plays the role as a cultural other in the
Chueh 56
light of his physical strength. In this third voyage to Laputa, Gulliver ’s cultural
otherness is another story to tell in terms of his deficient studies in music and
mathematics. When Gulliver ascended to Laputa, which is an “Island in the Air ”
(Swift 132), he found that Laputians “appeared altogether unmoved by the Sight of
[his] Foreign Habit and Countenance, and by the Shouts of the Vulga r, whose
Thoughts and Minds were more disengaged” (Swift 134). Gulliver explains
Laputians’disengagement by saying that “the Minds of these People are so taken up
with intense Speculations, that they neither can speak, nor attend to Discourses of
others, without being rouzed by some external Taction upon the Organs of Speech and
Hearing” (Swift 134). Reading Gulliver ’s description, we may consider that these
Laputians are like the philosophers, who are always in intense speculations
concerning the ways to improve the human life but this conjecture is proved to be
invalid at the end after Gulliver involves himself deeper in Laputian culture.
After Gulliver has acquired a great degree of knowledge in the Laputian
language, he finds that Laputians’ “Ideas are perpetually conversant in Lines and
Figures” (Swift 137) because Laputians’ are deeply fond of nothing more than the
studies of music and mathematics. Laputians’ infatuation for the studies of music and
mathematics influences their life in a different way compared with Brobdingnagans.
The learning of Brobdingnagans is wedded with “Morality, History, Poetry and
Mathematicks, where in they must be allowed to excel” but “the last of these is
wholly applied to what may be useful in Life, to the Improvement of Agriculture and
all mechanical Arts” (Swift 113). Up to this point, Brobdingnags’ confined studies
bear the intention to improve their life as their first priority. By the same argument,
Gulliver said that Laputians were “indeed excellent in two Science for which” he had
great esteem but at the same time they were “so abstracted and involved in
Speculation that [he] never met with such disagreeable Companions” (Swift 146).
Chueh 57
Laputians’confined studies are deficient in two ways. First, Laputians’ studies bring
no benefits to their ordinary lives and this can be explained according to Gulliver ’s
observations in the country. When the King ordered his tailor to take Gulliver’s
measure to make him clothes, Gulliver found that the clothes were “very ill made, and
quite out of shape, by happening to mistake a Figure in the Calculation. But
[Gulliver ’s] Comfort was, that [he] observed such Accidents very frequent and little
regarded” (Swift 136). Another of Gulliver ’s observation about Laputian houses also
verifies that their studies are too confined to be good to their life:
Their Houses are very ill built, the Walls Bevil, without one Right Angle
in any Apartment, and this defect ariseth from the Contempt they bear to
practical Geometry; which they despise as Vulgar and Mechanick, those
Instructions they give being too refined for the Intellectuals of their
Workmen, which occasions perpetual mistakes. [… ] I have not seen a more
clumsy, awkward, and unhappy People, nor slow and perplexed in their
Conceptions upon all other Subjects, except those of Mathematicks and
Musick (Swift 137).
Laputians’defective studies not only degrade their life but also marginalize Gulliver
as a cultural other by making him feel “too much neglected” and resolve to “leave it
with the first Opportunity” (Swift 146). In other words, Gulliver’s role as a cultural
other in Laputa is in the sense of his deficient knowledge in music and mathematics
but Gulliver ’s cultural otherness is similar with the one in Lilliput because he stands
in a superior position compared to Lilliputians in terms of his physical strength and
Laputians in the light of his various interests and studies in different fields. However,
this sense of intellectual superiority is challenged in Gulliver’s last voyage to the
country of the Houyhnhnms.
Gulliver’s identity is problematized at this stage because his beliefs are
Chueh 58
questioned. After his leaving from Laputa, Gulliver is conveyed to Balnibarbi. During
his stay in Balnibarbi, Gulliver meets and converses with Lord Munodi and found that
Lord Munodi “was content to go on in the old Forms, to live in the Houses his
Ancestors had built, and act as they did in every part of Life without Innovation. That,
some few other Persons of Quality and Gentry had done the same, but were looked on
with an Eye of Contempt and Ill Will, as Enemies to Art, ignorant and ill
Commonwealths- men, preferring their own Ease and Sloth before the general
Improvement of their Country” (Swift 150). Gulliver, from this perspective, is attuned
to Lord Munodi because they all believe that past experiences are valuable and
creditable since modern innovation in Laputa is a great failure. However, this belief is
challenged when Gulliver makes his journey to Luggnagg where immortal people
live.
When Gulliver visits Luggnagg and hears about the anecdote about the immortal
breed of Struldbrugg, he cries out in a rapture to say that
Happy Nation where every Child hath at least a chance for being immortal!
Happy People who enjoy so many living Examples of antient Virtue, and
have Masters ready to instruct them in the Wisdom of all former Ages!
(Swift 176)
Gulliver admires these immortal Struldbruggans because they could be possibly
exempt from the follies because of their collection of past experiences. Gulliver
himself even wanted to “be a living Treasury of Knowledge and Wisdom, and [should]
certainly become the Oracle of the Nation” (Swift 177) if he was as immortal as these
Struldbruggans. However, Gulliver’s plans is repudiated by his Luggnuggian
companio ns by explaining that Gulliver’s plan “supposed a Perpetuity of Youth,
Health, and Vigour, which no Man could be so foolish to hope, however extravagant
he may be in his Wishes” and the said Struldbruggans “commonly acted like Mortals,
Chueh 59
till about thirty Years old, after which by degrees they grew melancholy and dejected,
encreasing in both till they came to four-score. When they came to four-score Years,
they had not only all the Follies and Infirmities of other old Man, but many more
which arose from the dreadful Prospects of never dying” (Swift 179-80). This
repudiation questions the validity of the past experiences. From the first part of the
discussion, we can know that the construction of identity is connected with the
imprints of history, namely past experiences. In that case, when people can no longer
trust those past experiences as they do before since they are invalid in terms of the
frailty of memory, their identities are problematized in due course. However, what’s
more in this repudiation is the problem of the possibility of the promising future.
Struldbruggan immortality is a dream “of perfectibility” and this dream, “whether
vested in utopias of the future of golden ages of the past, [is] just that – dream”
(DePorte 145). In short, Gulliver ’s identity is problematized at this third stage in two
but interlocking ways. First, Gulliver’s beliefs concerning the validity of the past are
challenged and since the past is a basis for the construction of identity, his identity is
vexed if those past experiences are not trustworthy any more. Second, the future is
also problematic because the dream, which is based on the wisdom of the past, of a
perfect future is nothing more than a dream. In other words, Gulliver ’s identity crisis
arises from his uncertainty of what to believe and what to hope for.
In conclusion, at this third stage, Gulliver ’s cultural otherness and identity crisis
are mainly not related to his physical condition but his mental or intellectual beliefs.
In fact, Gulliver ’s experience of cultural otherness and identity crisis at this stage is
only a precondition for his last voyage to the country of the Houyhnhnms. It is his last
voyage that problematizes Gulliver’s identity to the greatest extent.
Chueh 60
The Fourth Stage: Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms
Gulliver’s last voyage to the country of the Houyhnhnms is important in two
ways. First, Gulliver’s cultural otherness comes mainly from his mental parts. Besides,
Gulliver’s cultural otherness perplexes him not only during his stay in the country of
the Houyhnhnms but also after his way back to England. Second, compared with his
previous voyages, Gulliver’s identity along with his cultural otherness is
problematized to the greatest extent.
To start with his physical difference, Gulliver ’s cultural otherness to
Houyhnhnms is not relevant to his physical strength as it is in Lilliput or in
Brobdingnag but his physical shape. When Gulliver was brought home by his later
master, his “Master Horse ordered a Sorrel Nag, one of his Servants, to untie the
largest of these Animals, and take him into the Yard. The Beast and [Gulliver] were
brought together; and [their] Countenances diligently compared, both by Master and
Servant, who thereupon repeated several times the word Yahoo” (Swift 194-5). At this
moment, Yahoo was a new term to Gulliver but he was in touch with this creature
when he “beheld several Animals in a Field. [… ] Their Shape was very singular, and
deformed, which a little discomposed” (Swift 189) him. Upon the whole, Gulliver
“never beheld in all [his] Travels so disagreeable an Animal, nor one against which
[he] naturally conceived so strong an Antipathy” (Swift 189-90). Obviously,
Gulliver’s physical shape is similar to that of Yahoos in the eyes of Houyhnhnms.
However, Gulliver’s physical shape is not the main reason to make him a cultural
other to the Houyhnhnms. Gulliver ’s cultural otherness, in the words of his master, is
about “those Appearances of Reason” (Swift 198). Gulliver ’s master “was extremely
curious to know from what Part of the Country [he] came, and how [he] was taught to
imitate a rational Creature, because Yahoos, (whom he saw [Gulliver] exactly
resembled in [his] Head, Hands and Face, that were only visible,) with some
Chueh 61
appearance of Cunning, and the strongest Disposition to Mischief, were observed to
be the most unteachable of all Brutes” (Swift 199). At the first sight of this
conversation, Gulliver’s horse master appears to approve that since Gulliver acts in a
reasonable way, the places where he belongs to should be the one ruled by reason as
the first principle. However, Gulliver ’s home, England, is the target that Swift wants
to ridicule at this stage because with the breakdown of home image, Gulliver’s
identity crisis is irrevocable as its consequence.
There is one scene which exemplifies Gulliver ’s function as a cultural other that
is particularly worth considering. When the horse master’s neighbors hear the
anecdote about Gulliver, several “Horses and Mares of Quality in the Neighborhood
came often to [master’s] House upon the Report spread of a wonderful Yahoo, that
could speak like a Houyhnhnm, and seem in his Words and Actions to discover some
Glimmerings of Reason” (Swift 199). In the eyes of these Houyhnhnms, Gulliver ’s
cultural otherness is an interesting scene and the scene itself differentiates from the
one, which is a bad experience to Gulliver, in Brobdingnag. In Brobdingnag,
Gulliver’s physical defect is the main and only reason for him to be an entertaining
scene. In the country of the Ho uyhnhnms, Gulliver is still physically defective since
there is a remarkable resemblance between him and Yahoos. Still, Gulliver ’s cultural
otherness, for Houyhnhnms ’sake, concerns his reasonable behaviors. By means of
learning the Houyhnhnms’ language, Gulliver impresses these Houyhnhms by acting
and speaking like a “gentle Yahoo” (Swift 238). The function of this
language- learning is not only privileged to Gulliver in the sense of being regarded as a
reasonable creature but also to Houyhnhnms in the light of assimilating Gulliver, the
cultural other, into their culture.
Unlike the “barbarous English,” the language of the Houyhnhnms “doth not
abound in Variety of Words, because their Wants and Passions are fewer than” other
Chueh 62
countrymen (Swift 207, 204, original emphasis). Another important feature of
Houyhnhnms’language is that they believe the use of language is to make people
“understand one another, and to receive Information of Facts; now if any one said the
Thing which was not, these Ends were defeated” (Swift 202, original emphasis).
These two features of Houyhnhnms’ language testify that Houyhnhnms comport
themselves virtuously. Besides, many “Virtues of those excellent Quadrupeds placed
in opposite View to human Corruptions, had so far opened my Eyes and enlarged my
Understanding, that [Gulliver] began to view the Actions and Passions of Man in a
very different light, and to think the Honour of [his] own Kind not worth managing”
(Swift 217-8). Starting from this moment, Gulliver gradually becomes a misanthropic
figure which is a great change in relation to his identity. Gulliver’s misanthropy was
so strong that he “entered on a firm Resolution never to return to human Kind, but to
pass” the rest of his life in the country of the Houyhnhnms “in the Contemplation and
Practice of every Virtue ” (Swift 218). In fact, Houyhnhnms ’ grand maxims, viz. virtue,
reason, benevolence, a few of the chief, are not the only reasons to bring out
Gulliver’s misanthropic attitude because the whole extent of his misant hropy will not
be complete without Yahoos.
In Gulliver ’s eyes, Yahoos’debauchery is the reflection of his countrymen. That
is, Gulliver sees debauched human nature on Yahoos. These Yahoos are greedy in
terms of their violently fondness for “shining St ones of several Colours” and “another
kind of [juicy] Root ” (Swift 220,221). Yahoos are lustful because they copulate
without abstinence. Gulliver himself experienced this when he was “embraced after a
most fulsome manner” by a female Yahoo whose desire was enflamed when she saw
Gulliver strip himself “stark naked and went down softly into the Stream” (Swift 225).
With the deep contempt of Yahoos, when Gulliver:
[… ] thought of [his] Family, [his] Friends, [his] Countrymen, or Human
Chueh 63
Race in general, [he] considered them as they really were, Yahoos in Shape
and Disposition, only a little more civilized, and qualified with the Gift of
Speech, but making no other use of Reason, than to improve and multiply
those Vices, where of their Brethren in this Country had only share that
Nature allotted them (Swift 234).
In other words, Gulliver considers his previous beloved families and countrymen as
nothing more than brute Yahoos after his three years’stay in the country of the
Houyhnhnms. Gulliver ’s repudiation of human nature and inclination for Houyhnhms’
life cut out his connection with his previous world where his identity is built. Without
this connection, Gulliver ’s identity is problematized. However, Gulliver ’s problematic
identity will not be so serious a problem to him if he can stay with these virtuous
Houyhnhnms for the rest of his life and this is where the problem lies. Gulliver ’s
horse master is exhorted either to “employ [Gulliver] like the rest of [his] Species,
[namely, Yahoos], or command [him] to swim back to the Place” from where Gulliver
comes because of his master’s “keeping a Yahoo in the Family more like a
Houyhnhnm, than a Brute Animal” (Swift 235) was not agreeable to Reason or Nature.
The Houyhnhnms’ decision is easy to understand if we consider Gulliver ’s role as a
cultural other to the country. Even though Gulliver appears and acts like a gentle and
reasonable cultural other, his gentleness and reasons cannot change the fact that he is
a cultural other. With this reason, Gulliver will be sent back to his country and this
will make him become a cultural other in his own country.
When Gulliver is found by a Portuguese ship and the seamen asks him who his
was, he says “I was a poor Yahoo, banished from the Houyhnhnms” (Swift 240).
When Gulliver is finally home, his wife and family receive him with great surprise
and joy but Gulliver says that “the sight of them filled me with Hatred, Disgust and
Contempt, and the more by reflecting on the near Alliance I had to them” (Swift 244).
Chueh 64
Besides, the first money Gulliver laid out “was to buy two young Stone-Horses which
[he] keeps in a good Stable, and next to them the Groom is [his] greatest Favourite;
for [he] feels [his] Spirit revived by the Smell he contracts in the Stable ” (Swift 244).
Gulliver no t only breeds horses but also converses “with them at least Four Hours
every Day” and these horses are “Strangers to Bridle or Saddle, they live in great
Amity with” Gulliver, and “Friendship to each other” (Swift 244). All these prove that
Gulliver is now a cultural other and is incompatible with his mother country because
he practices the life styles and credos he learns in Houyhnhnms. Furthermore, when
Gulliver becomes a cultural other, it is impossible for his identity to be exempt from
being problematized since he has to learn how to fit into a community with new sets
of rules.
At this stage, Gulliver is a “living paradox” (Seidel, Strange Disposition, 81)
because his identity is always challenged by another culture and his status as a
cultural other no matter he is in the land of the Houyhnhnms or in England at this
stage and it is his double-problematized identity causes Gulliver ’s final madness.
Gulliver’s madness is relevant to his satiric travel, which is “schizophrenic, and [it
makes] Gulliver lose formal integrity when his spatial and proportionate insecurity
befuddles his home image” (Seidel 84). Besides, Gulliver ’s “final madness is the
satiric concentration of displacement in the homeless body and soul of the traveller”
(Seidel 84) since his identity is always in a problematic condition. However, this
conclusion can hardly be applied to another famous traveler in eighteenth century,
Robinson Crusoe.
Conclusion
In his four voyages, Gulliver experiences different ways to problematize his
identity by being marginalized as a cultural other. As a matter of fact, no matter
Chueh 65
whether Gulliver ’s cultural otherness comes from his physical, intellectual, or
spiritual superiority or inferiority, the basic reason to cause Gulliver ’s identity crisis is
that there is always a kind of impetus, which pushes and assimilates Gulliver to the
culture he faces. In short, Gulliver’s identity crisis is a result of the process of cultural
assimilation. When Gulliver can hardly find a way to get in or when he is forced to
get out of that culture, his identity is problematized. Gulliver’s collapse of identity
after his last voyage to the country of the Houyhnhnms is the best example to explain
the whole process of his identity crisis. However, there is one thing more that we can
find from Gulliver’s return to England in his last voyage. As I said, the main reason
for Gulliver’s identity crisis is his inability to get in and his unwillingness to get out of
the culture. In his last voyage, Gulliver is unwilling to leave the country of the
Houyhnhnms because he believes that their social systems and lives are the most
humane ways that he has ever seen or experienced before. Thus, when Gulliver is
forced to sail back and finds out that all those ways he admires so much can be hardly
practiced in England because all his countrymen are nothing more than savage yahoos,
he becomes a misanthrope and practices all those things he learns from the
Houyhnhnms’ solely. The reason why Gulliver lives in such a desperate condition is
that he thinks that his countrymen are not capable of becoming as virtuous as the
Houyhnhnms. Thus, the collapse of Gulliver ’s identity symbolizes that he wants to
improve the debauched life in England by introducing the life of the Houyhnhnms to
his countrymen even though he knows well that it cannot be successful because they
are all yahoos. In short, this book tells its readers not only the different stages of
Gulliver’s identity crisis but also Gulliver’s ultimate mission, to reform English
society, in his voyages even though this mission is failed in the end.
Chueh 66
Chapter IV:
A Middle-State King: Double Identities in Robinson Crusoe
Where are your monuments, your battles, martyrs?
Where is your tribal memory? Sirs,
in that grey vault. The sea. The sea
has locked them up. The sea is History
(Walcott, The Sea is History, 1-4).
The sea image in Robinson Crusoe is of substance because it symbolizes not
only a history but also a future to Robinson Crusoe. Besides, the sea image also
symbolizes the fluctuations of Crusoe’s life both in England and on the island. Crusoe
lives his life with double identities at the three stages of his memoir.
Stage I: Crusoe’s Life in England and His Solitary Exile on the Island
Being the third Son of the Family, and not bred to any Trade, my Head
began to be filled very early with rambling Thoughts. [… ] I would be
satisfied with nothing but going to Sea (Defoe 3, my emphasis) 10 .
At the very beginning of the novel, Crusoe made his desire to go to sea known to
his readers. Crusoe’s desire was contrary to his father’s wish to make him live in a
middle state life, which “was calculated for all kind of Vertues and all kinds of
Enjoyment; that Peace and Plenty were the Hand- maids of a middle Fortune; that
Temperance, Moderation, Quietness, Health, Society, all agreeable Diversions, and all
desirable Pleasures, were the Blessings attending” (Defoe 5). Acknowledging his
son’s aversion to the middle-state life and propensity for the sea, Crusoe’s father said
that “That Boy might be happy if he would stay at home, but if he goes abroad he will
be the miserablest Wretch that was ever born” (Defoe 7). Crusoe’s disregard for his
father’s advice and his insistence on going to sea are significant in two ways. First,
Chueh 67
Crusoe’s disregard and insistence are a kind of rebellion against “collective and
familial discipline, and declare[es] [his] need for [his] own time or space” (Rider 32).
Crusoe’s rebellion cuts him “off from the great ‘chain’of the world ” and it “creates
the illusion of egocentricity and individualism which poisons human and social
relations, as well as the split between subjects and object which condemns the
individual to misery” (Rider 31). Crusoe’s rebellion brings his individuality in his
society but it also disharmonizes the relationship between Crusoe and English society,
which brings about Crusoe’s exile to the island as the consequence. Nevertheless, this
idea of individualism will not come into being until we understand Crusoe’s reason,
which is the second significance of his disregard and insistence, for his infatuation
with going to the sea. The second significance is made explicit in the words of Homer
O. Brown by saying:
Throughout his life, even after his conversion, Robinson will feel the
compulsion to leave behind the pre- formed, the already-given world of law,
and face the unknown and undifferentiated, full of menace for the self and
simultaneously full of promise. Unable to accept the given definition of
himself, the will and legacy of his father, the world of law, Robinson
experiences himself as incomplete and searches mistakenly for completion
in the world outside. He does not posses himself but is scattered among a
world of things. He must externalize himself in the world. He must create a
self out of the formless sea of pure possibility, out of surrounding,
anonymous wilderness. The world is for him to make something of – his
own (570).
The first part of Brown’s words corresponds to Rider ’s in the sense of regarding
Crusoe’s sea voyage as a way of challenging or rebelling against the old world but
Brown further explains that Crusoe’s insatiable desire to go to sea comes from a
Chueh 68
feeling of incompleteness, which brings out his compulsion to leave the old world to
find those lost parts in his own personality. Crusoe’s experience of incompleteness
certifies that he is facing an ambivalent identity at this moment and it is this
ambivalent identity that leads to Crusoe’s final exile to the desolate island. After the
failure of his first voyage, Crusoe contemplated and said that “I know not what to call
this, nor will I urge, that it is a secret over-ruling Decree that hurries us to be the
Instrument of our own Destruction, even tho’ it be before us, and that we rush upon it
with our Eyes open” (Defoe 14). Besides, the father of Crusoe’s comrade also told
him that “Young Man, you ought never to go to Sea any more, you ought to take this
for a plain and visible Token that you are not to be a Seafaring Man” (Defoe 15,
original emphasis). Not only Crusoe’s private contemplation but also the advice from
his comrade’s father is equal to a kind of apocalypse of Crusoe’s miserable future but
the force of the feeling of incompleteness does not abate because Crusoe is haunted
and disturbed by means of his sundered identity. However, Crusoe gradually becomes
aware that his journey to unify his identity is an oblique way to answer to his father’s
wish in the light of being a middle-state person, namely a merchant. Another thing we
can see through Crusoe’s journey is the presentation of his individuality. The whole
process will not be illuminated until the two key words, power and other, come to the
fore. At the first sight, power and other may seem to be contrary to each other, but the
situation is rather the reverse in Crusoe’s case in terms of his double identities and
individuality at different stages.
Before Crusoe comes to his island of despair, his journey to it was punctuated by
an accident in which he was attacked by the Moors and captured and treated like a
slave in the Captain’s house. Crusoe was perfectly overwhelmed at “this surprising
Change of [his] Circumstances form a Merchant to a miserable Slave ” and he looked
upon his “Father ’s Prophetick Discourse” that he “should be miserable [… ] that now
Chueh 69
the Hand of Heaven had overtaken [him] and [he] was undone without Redemption”
(Defoe 19). At this moment, Crusoe seems to repent of his follies, which makes him a
miserable wretch, for disobeying his father ’s words. However, what Crusoe really has
in mind is to meditate “nothing but [his] Escape” (Defoe 19). That is, Crusoe is not
prostrate with grief in this situation of being a submissive other but always tries to
find a way to retrieve his power. His words are important in the way of proving that
Crusoe is tied up with his past experience all the time especially when he is in distress.
After Crusoe finally makes his escape, he is again in power. However, the
performance of Crusoe’s power is always at the expense of marginalizing others as his
subordinates. The reason why Crusoe needs to marginalize others is to secure his
individuality in the way of putting his individual desire as the first priority. After his
escape, Crusoe remarks:
I could ha’ been content to ha’taken this Moor with me, and ha’drown’d
the Boy, but the re was no venturing to trust him: When he was gone I turn’d
to the Boy, who they call’d Xury, and said to him, Xury, if you will be
faithful to me I’ll make you a great Man, but if you will not stroak your
Face to be true to me, that is, swear by Mahomet and his Father’s Beard, I
must throw you into the Sea too (Defoe 23, original emphasis).
Obviously, when Crusoe is in power, he forces Xury to make an oath to be obedient
always in the following journey by threatening the latter’s life. Oaths, either in oral or
written form, have currency in Crusoe’s mind because they promise him the power
not to be turned into an other and this is an important issue throughout the novel. This,
again, certifies that Crusoe’s individuality is the main concern in the novel. The
relationship between Crusoe and Xury also attests to Crusoe’s merchant mind in
several scenes. When Crusoe and Xury try to get some fresh water, they catch sight of
a “dreadful Monster” that “lay on the Side of the Shoar” (Defoe 27). Crusoe orders,
Chueh 70
“Xury, you shall go on Shoar and kill him” (Defoe 27, original emphasis). In this
scene, Crusoe imposes his power on Xury by ordering him to kill the monster with the
intention to profit from this hunting. In other words, Xury’s value to Crusoe lies in his
ability bringing him benefits and this can be certified in another scene. After an
European ship saved the lives of Crusoe and Xury and sailed them to Brazil, the
captain offers “60 Pieces of Eight more for [Crusoe’s] Xury” (Defoe 33, original
emphasis) but after Crusoe settles down in Brazil with his plantation, he soon
becomes remorseful about his previous decision by saying “I had done wrong in
parting with my boy Xury” (Defoe 35, original emphasis). Crusoe’s remorse is a
reflection of his merchant mind because he views Xury as valuable merchandise in
the light of the possibility of helping him with his plantation. This tells us one thing
that Crusoe see things in the way of its value to him and the definition of the term
value is in relation to Crusoe’s individual desire or individuality. After all, Crusoe was
“coming into the very Middle Station, or upper Degree of low Life, which [his]
Father” advised him to before (Defoe 35). Hitherto, Crusoe may seem to be willing to
step down from his previous aversion to the middle-state life to the acceptance of it
and this willingness is a possible full stop of the whole story. However, Crusoe’s
obsession with this merchant mind is the main reason for his exile.
Settled in Brazil, Crusoe gets accustomed to the life there and remarks:
Had I continued in the Station I was now in, I had room for all the happy
things to have yet befallen me [… ] but other things attended me, and I was
still to be the willful Agent of all my own Miseries; [… ] all these
Miscarriages were procured by my apparent obstinate adhering to my
foolish inclination of wandering abroad and pursuing that Inclination, in
contradiction to the clearest Views of doing my self good (Defoe 38).
Again, the first part of Crusoe’s words is in tune with his father’s belief to see
Chueh 71
middle-state life as the most suitable life style to Crusoe but his inclination made him
turn away from this happiness. Here, Crusoe’s inclination refers of course to his desire
to go to sea but what is behind this is his desire to “bring Negroes on Shoar privately,
and divide them among” (Defoe 39, original emphasis) Crusoe and his neighbors’
plantations. Since Crusoe is the only one who has the experience of visiting the coast
of Guinea, his neighbors offer him that he “should have [his] equal Share of Negroes
without providing any Part of the Stock” (Defoe 39, original emphasis). Compared
with his very first desire to go to sea to see the world, Crusoe’s seafaring desire, at
this moment, is a mercenary one. Ironically, it is this mercenary seafaring desire but
not his first naïve desire to see the world that urges Crusoe to confront his ambivalent
identity, i.e., to become what he wants to be or to become what he is wanted to be.
This time, Crusoe’s journey is a cursed one because he went “on Board in an evil
Hour, the [first] of [September], [1659], being the same Day eight Year that [he] went
from [his] Father and Mother at Hull” (Defoe 40, original emphasis). The boarding
time of this journey functions as a kind of apocalypse like the very word of Crusoe’s
comrade’s father in his previous voyage. The journey proves to be a doomed one
ending in shipwreck and Crusoe’s banishment to the desolate island. Apart from a
solitary castaway, Crusoe finds him a cultural other as well, in both physical and
intellectual way. Crusoe’s physical cultural otherness comes from his “fear of being
swallow’d up alive” (Defoe 82) by wild animals and the possibility of falling “into the
Hands of Savages” (Defoe 124) since he hardly knows every corner of the island after
his first time or even after his few years’ stay on the island. As for Crusoe’s
intellectual cultural otherness, it is about his impotence in the face of problems
concerning weather, food, farming seasons, to name but a few. Like Gulliver, Crusoe’s
cultural otherness questions his identity in the light of his resolutions to adjust his life
style in order to be compatible with the insular environment.
Chueh 72
Whatever Crusoe’s “inclination might be (merchant, explorer, adventurer, tamer
of a continent) he is forced by circumstances to be what is now called a
“home-maker” (Rogers 375). While Crusoe is on the island, home- making is crucial
and a first urge to Crusoe in the sense of securing, first, his physical safety and,
second, his mental stability. During the process of securing his physical safety and
mental stability, Crusoe finds a way to become compatible with the environment.
Nevertheless, this compatibility is a way to problematize his identity since
compatibility itself comports with the system of the old world. This connection
confounds Crusoe in the sense of making him believe that it is possible to develop his
individuality but, meanwhile, it is impracticable since Crusoe is like a caged bird,
which is always in thrall to the system of the old world. Crusoe’s physical insecurity,
as I said before, is from his unfamiliarity with the country. Thus, after he salvaged the
goods from the ship, Crusoe’s “next Work was to view the Country, and seek a proper
Place for [his] Habitation, and where to stow [his] Goods to secure them from
whatever might happen” (Defoe 52). Besides, since Crusoe knew not what to do with
himself at night “nor indeed where to rest;” for he “was afraid to lie down on the
Ground, not knowing but some wild Beast might devo ur” him, so, as well as he could,
he “barricado’d [himself] round with the Chests and Boards that [he] brought on
Shore, and made a Kind of a Hut for that Night’s Lodging” (Defoe 53). In fact, what
Crusoe is doing here is to civilize the island, which is the issue I shall return to
momentarily. After he settles his “household Stuff and Habitation,” Crusoe begins to
“keep [his] Journal” (Defoe 68, 69). Crusoe’s writing of the journal is “the result of
the composition of his mind” and “releases [him] from the pain and confusion”
(Brown 586, original emphasis) of his experiences on the island. In other words,
Crusoe’s physical safety is the precondition of his mental stability lying in his writing
to compose his mind but this sense of safety and stability is always ambivalent in
Chueh 73
relation to Crusoe’s oscillating positions. No matter which position Crusoe chooses, it
must be the one advantageous to his situation. Thus, all the positions are made
regarding Crusoe’s individuality.
Crusoe’s mental stability on the island is in the making with not only his physical
safety but also his religious conversion. Before his being cast on the island, Crusoe
“had very few Notions of Religion in [his] Head, or had entertain’d any Sense of any
Thing that had befallen [him], otherwise than as a Chance, or, what pleases God”
(Defoe 78). Indeed, Crusoe never was a pious Christian before he came to the island
and he prays to God only when he is in distress. For example, in his first voyage,
Crusoe “made many Vows and Resolutions if it would please God here to spare”
(Defoe 8) his life when a fierce storm attacked Crusoe’s ship but once Crusoe had
safely made it through storm, all these religious prayers were out of his head in no
time. As Crusoe remarks himself, his impious belief remains unchanged at the
beginning of his exile on the island: “[w]hen again I was shipwreck’d, ruin’d, and in
Danger of drowning on this Island, I was as far from Remorse, or looking on it as a
Judgment; I only said to my self often, that I was an unfortunate Dog, and born to be
always miserable” (Defoe 89, original emphasis). In fact, Crusoe’s religious
conversion does not come until the time he finds “a Cure, both for Soul and Body”
(Defoe 93) in the chest and made his first prayer “with a sense of [his] Condition, and
with a true Scripture View of Hope on the Encouragement of the Word of God”
(Defoe 96) after he recovered from his sickness. Crusoe’s religious conversion
“reasserts the equation between identity and social coercion because it reintroduces
the family metaphor that eventually forces him to regard his life in terms of
transmission, intercourse and legacy” (Flint 394). To rephrase Flint’s words, Crusoe’s
religious conversion is to imitate or to convey the systems from the old world to his
desolate island and the intention to do this is for Crusoe’s own good. This imitation or
Chueh 74
conveyance problematizes Crusoe’s identity in terms of propagating the values of the
old world to confuse Crusoe about his position regarding his original desire to go to
sea. Even though this propaganda may confuse Crusoe in certain ways, the very basic
assumption of this propaganda is to present Crusoe’s individual desire in relation to
his individuality by showing us what may possibly be the best ways for Crusoe to do
while he is on the island. Except religion conversion, Crusoe’s desire to have a
companion is also the legacy of the old world and this desire could be seen in several
scenes.
When Crusoe finds a dog alive on the ship, he says, “I wanted nothing that he
could fetch me, nor any Company that he could make up to me, I only wanted to have
him to talk to me, but that would not do” (Defoe 64). With this same desire to have a
“speaking” creature to accompany him, Crusoe tries to catch a parrot and “taught it to
speak to” (Defoe 109) him. Crusoe’s desire is to have a companion, no matter human
being or animal, who can speak to him. However, Crusoe turns his back on this desire
in the later scene by saying that “I liv’d mighty comfortably, my Mind being entirely
composed by resigning to the Will of God [… ] This made my life better than sociable,
for when I began to regret the want of Conversation, I would ask my self whether thus
conversing mutually with my own Thoughts, and, as I hope I may say, with even God
himself by Ejaculations, was not better than the utmost Enjoyment of humane Society
in the World” (Defoe 135-6). Nevertheless, this solitary conversation with himself and
God was not the final decision regarding this matter for Crusoe because when he finds
a ship wrecked near his island he exclaims, “O that there had been but one or two; nay,
or but one Soul sav’d out of this Ship, to have escap’d to me, that I might but have
had one Companion, one Fellow-Creature to have spoken to me, and to have
convers’d with! ” (Defoe 188). Obviously, Crusoe is fain to have a companion to
converse with but he is aware this desire is hard to realize. Thus, in the interim,
Chueh 75
Crusoe chooses to devote himself to God. In fact, no matter if Crusoe ends in solitude
or with a companion on the island, he is inevitably under the influence of the old
world in his ways of dealing with either.
To some extent, this island is the extension of Crusoe’s old world, England, since
Crusoe is highly connected with it but this does not mean that Crusoe’s very first
desire for the seafaring has failed in this journey. This first desire is still ongoing by
means of his exploration of the island. After having stayed on the island for above ten
months, Crusoe “had a great Desire to make a more perfect Discovery of the Island,
and to see what other Productions [he] might find, which [he] yet knew nothing of”
(Defoe 98). The main purpose of Crusoe’s exploration, as he said, is to find any other
useful products to him and through this capital accumulation, Crusoe “defines himself
by what he possesses, and what he possesses, first and foremost is space” (Varey 150).
This exploration, so to speak, unravels the unknown space of the island for Crusoe.
With further comprehension of the island, Crusoe finds a way to define himself but
what can this definition possibly be? When Crusoe commenced this exploration
journey, he said:
I descended a little on the Side of that delicious Vale, surveying it with a
secret Kind of Pleasure, (tho’mixt with my other afflicting Thoughts) to
think that this was all my own, that I was King and Lord of all this Country
indefeasibly, and had a Right of Possession; and if I could convey it, I might
have it in Inheritance, as completely as any Lord of a Mannor in England
(Defoe 100, my emphasis).
In other words, this desolate island now becomes Crusoe’s “little Kingdom” (Defoe
137) after this exploration. Besides, Crusoe seems to enjoy his kingship even though
he is in solitude because, in solitude, Crusoe “was Lord of the whole Mannor; or if [he]
pleas’d, [he] might call [him] self Kind, or Emperor over the whole Country which
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[he] had Possession of. There were no Rivals. [He] had no Competitor, none to
dispute Sovereignty or Command with” (Defoe 128) him. If Crusoe is content with
his kingship in such a way, then, what is his “afflicting thought” about? One day,
when Crusoe dined with his animal companions, he said:
Then to see how like a King I din’d too all alone, attended by my
Servants, Poll, as if he had been my Favourite, was the only Person
permitted to talk to me. My Dog who was now grown very old and crazy,
and had found no Species to multiply his Kind upon, sat always at my Right
Hand, and two Cats, one on one Side the Table, and one on the other,
expecting now and then a Bit from my Hand, as a Mark of Special Favour
(Defoe 148, original emphasis).
At this moment, the anxiety to have a companion disturbs Crusoe and makes him
melancholy. It is not surprising that Crusoe’s words in two different scenes connotes
two diametrically opposite meanings, enjoyment of solitude and eagerness for
companionship, because Crusoe’s “habit of mind is verbally and metaphorically
binary” (Seidel, Crusoe, 363). Crusoe’s binary mind sets forth his pathetic vacillation
between the positions and his ambivalent identity but the very origin for this binary
mind is Crusoe’s individual desire, which changes all the time and, as I said, his
individual desire is the presentation of his individuality.
At the very beginning of his being cast away on the island, Crusoe justifies his
binary mind by constructing a list with both evil and good parts about this miserable
experience to indicate that:
[… ] there was scarce any Condition in the World so miserable, but there
was something Negative or something Positive to be thankful in it; and let
this stand as a Direction from the Experience of the most miserable of all
Conditions in this World, that we may always find in it something to
Chueh 77
comfort our selves from, and to set in the Description of Good and Evil, on
the Credit Side of the Accompt (Defoe 67, original emphasis).
Crusoe seems to persuade himself that his being cast away is not an extremely
miserable experience since there is always some thing to thank for. However, Crusoe
was totally aware that this persuasion was deceitful and misleading when he said,
“How canst thou be such a Hypocrite, (said I, even audibly) to pretend to be thankful
for a Condition, which however thou may’st endeavour to be contented with, thou
would’st rather pray heartily to be deliver ’d from” (Defoe 114). Up to this point, we
can see that Crusoe is always in a condition to decide whether to accept or to refuse
his miseries. This ambivalent condition applies also to his desire to have a companion.
Crusoe’s desire for a companion is obvious to see but the main purpose of this desire
comes from Crusoe’s “Attempt for an Escape” (Defoe 199) from the island. When
Crusoe sees the shipwreck, he earnestly prays that there would be someone saved
because “though [he] could not help them, it may be they might help” (Defoe 185)
him. In other words, Crusoe’s ambivalent positions on the island are on the basis of
his desire to escape and this desire signifies Crusoe’s ambivalent identity in terms of
his relationship with the old world. However, what we can find behind Crusoe’s
ambivalent positions is that he will not choose a position until he is sure that it will be
advantageous to him. So, Crusoe’s positions are the metaphors of his individual
desires in relation to his individuality.
Being lost on the desolate island, Crusoe “dearly wishes to be idealistically
self-sufficient” but he “is repeatedly confronted with the unsettling sense that he is
connected to the European world” (Donoghue 1). This unsettling sense comes from
two ways: Crusoe’s father ’s words and Crusoe’s life style on the island. During the
time when Crusoe was sick, he said:
[… ] the good Advice of my Father came to my Mind, and presently his
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Prediction which I mention’d at the Beginning of this Story, viz. That if I did
take this foolish Step, God would not bless me, and I would have Leisure
hereafter to reflect upon having neglected his Counsel, when there might be
none to assist in my Recovery. Now, said I aloud, My dear Father’s Words
are come to pass (Defoe 91, original emphasis).
This is not the first time for Crusoe to recall his father’s prophecy for his doomed
miseries but every time when Crusoe does this, it makes us readers believe that the
life on the island is hardly to be the one Crusoe wants to have even though he enjoys
his image as a king to some extent. In that case, Crusoe is never free from his old
world and always being reminded of it by his miseries. Second, Crusoe’s life on the
island is a copy of his previous one in England. At the first sight of his life on the
island, Crusoe is “quintessentially the self- made man” (Jager 333). Jager is right in
saying that Crusoe is a self- made man but Crusoe cannot become this until he
salvages from the wrecked ships. With the salvage, Crusoe finds lots of useful things,
“Bread, Rice, three Dutch Cheeses, five Pieces of dry’d Goat’s Flesh, a little
Remainder of European Corn, [… ] Ammunition and Arms ” (Defoe 50), a few of the
chief, to support Crusoe’s life in the interim of finding his ways to live on the island.
We have to bear in mind that all these things are the legacies from the old world. In
that case, Crusoe’s self-sufficiency on the island can never come to its being without
all those old world legacies. Furthermore, even after Crusoe becomes a self-sufficient
man, he lives life on the island with his knowledge of crafts of old world. For example,
when Crusoe wanted to have baskets, he said that:
It prov’d of excellent Advantage to me now, That when I was a Boy, I used
to take great Delight in standing at a Basketmaker’s to see them make their
Wicker-ware; and being as Boys usually are, very officious to help, and a
great Observer of the Manner how they work’d those Things, and
Chueh 79
sometimes lending a Hand, I had by this Means full Knowledge of the
Methods of it (Defoe 107, original emphasis).
All these prove that Crusoe’s connection with the old world can never be cut off and
this connection problematizes his identity in the way of living in two identities, that is,
to live a new life to impress readers with his individuality but to be haunted with the
shadows from the old world at the same time.
At this first stage, Crusoe’s major job is “to do some further necessary civilizing
work. He parcels out the stock of tools, clothing, guns, and other necessary materials
he’s brought with him, settles in the artisans an craftsman who have come out with
him from England, and, most importantly, does what he can to secure God’s blessing”
(Faller 5-6). In other words, while Crusoe is in his solitary exile on the island, he,
unconsciously, imitates the systems and uses the productions from English world to
construct a new world. This problematizes Crusoe’s identity by means of blurring
Crusoe’s very initial desire to get away from English society in order to see the world
and it is his ambivalent identity that makes Crusoe undergo “a division into two
presences (misery/reason)” (Kavanagh 418). The two presences refer not only to
misery/reason but also to old/new. In short, the doubleness of Crusoe’s identity at this
stage is his oscillation between the old and the new. There is one thing more at this
stage worthy of considering. It is not hard to see that Crusoe’s first desire to go to sea
is blurred because of his connection with the old world. This connection indeed
problematizes and causes Crusoe’s ambivalent identity. However, Crusoe’s
individuality remains impervious because, no matter he is on the island, in Brazil, or
even in England, his decisions concern none but himself. This certifies that Crusoe
puts himself to the first priority all the time and this corresponds to the characteristics
of novel writing.
Chueh 80
Stage II: Crusoe as a Communal King
Crusoe’s desire for a companion is again agitated when he sees cannibals bring
their victims to the island and Crusoe says that “It came now very warmly upon my
Thoughts, and indeed irresistibly, that now was my Time to get me a Servant, and
perhaps a Companion, or Assistant; and that I was call’d plainly by Providence to
save this poor Creature’s Life” (Defoe 202). Being uncertain about what appellations,
servant, companion, and assistant, would be appropriately applied to the poor creature
in front of his eyes, Crusoe is in a perplexed situation to decide his position with
regards to his relationship with this victim but what he can be sure of is that he wants
a companion to form a society on his island. Crusoe’s determination to have a
companion and the appellations for that companion shows that this person stands in a
subordinate status to Crusoe and his function is for Crusoe’s good. Often, Crusoe
comes for nothing but his own individual desire and this desire stands out his
individuality by ignoring others’ needs unless the fulfillment of others’needs may
bring out something profitable to Crusoe. In the later scene, Crusoe’s perplexity was
soon out of his head after he saved the life of the victim and found that “at length he
came close to me, and then he kneel’d down again, kiss’d the Gound, and laid his
Head upon the Ground, and taking me by the Foot, set my Foot upon his Head; this it
seems was in token of swearing to be my Slave for ever” (Defoe 203-4). At this
moment, Crusoe acts like a master by observing this creature and commenting:
He was a comely handsome Fellow, perfectly well made; with straight
strong Limbs, not too large; tall and well shap’d, and as I reckon, about
twenty six Years of Age. He had a very good Countenance, not a fierce and
surly Aspect; but seem’d to have something very manly in his Face, and yet
he had all the Sweetness and Softness of an European in his Countenance
too, especially when he smil’d (Defoe 205, original emphasis).
Chueh 81
This scene is impressive in the sense of portraying Crusoe like a buyer who tries to
find a suitable slave from the slave dealer by observing the physical shape of a
candidate. If the main intention of the slave buyers is to make profit from the slaves,
Crusoe acts in the same way in the later scene. Later on, Crusoe “made him know his
Name should be Friday, which was the Day [Crusoe] sav’d his Life” and Crusoe
likewise taught him to “say Master, and then let him know, that was to be” Crusoe’s
name (Defoe 206, original emphasis). Naming in this scene is crucial in the light of
establishing a hierarchy, which favors Crusoe with a superior status, between Crusoe
and Friday but naming is not the only gesture that secures Crusoe’s superiority.
Crusoe is fully aware that to “teach [Friday] every Thing” was also his business since
teaching “was proper to make [Friday] useful, handy and helpful but especially to
make [Friday] speak, and understand” Crusoe (Defoe 210). The first part of Crusoe’s
teaching is to make Friday physically useful to his daily works and the second part of
it is to make Friday mentally or spiritually useful to Crusoe’s needs of conversation.
Both Friday’s physical and mental usefulness validate his value in the light of its
importance to Crusoe’s needs. Here, we can easily understand that Crusoe stands in a
status superior to Friday’s but the problem is what are the materials that Crusoe uses
to teach Friday? Physically, Crusoe teaches Friday the ways and usage of all the tools
he has or he makes in accordance with the things in England. Spiritually, Crusoe
instructs Friday not only in language but also the “Knowledge of the true God”
(Defoe 216). In order to do this, Crusoe even prays to God by saying that
[… ] he would enable me to instruct savingly this poor Savage, assisting by
his Spirit the Heart of the poor ignorant Creature, to receive the Light of the
Knowledge of God in Christ, reconciling him to himself, and would guide
me to speak so to him from the Word of God, as his Conscience might be
convinc’d, his Eyes opened, and his Soul sav’d (Defoe 219, original
Chueh 82
emphasis).
In fact, Crusoe’s teaching has its beneficial effects not only on Friday but also on
Crusoe because Crusoe “inform’d and instructed [him] self in many Things, that
either [he] did not know, or had not fully consider’d before” when he was “laying
Things open to” (Defoe 220) Friday. In other words, both Crusoe and Friday are
beneficiaries of this teaching process but the only problem is that all these materials
are from the old world, England. Thus, Crusoe’s image in Friday’s eyes may seem to
be a king or a master of this island but Crusoe’s kingship or mastery is the result of his
connection with England.
Crusoe’s kingdom increases in size when more and more people join. When
Crusoe saves a Spaniard and is informed that there were some other white men in
Friday’s motherland, Crusoe bids the saved Spaniard to take his countrymen to
Crusoe’s island with conditions “upon their solemn Oath, That they should be
absolutely under [Crusoe’s] Leading, as their Commander and Captain [… ] and that
he would bring a Contract from them under their Hands for that Purpose” (Defoe 245).
In fact, making oath or signing contract to be obedient to Crusoe’s authority is not
particular in the Spaniard’s case because Crusoe requires the same thing when he
saves an English commander. When Crusoe saved this English commander, he told
him that:
I. That while you stay on this Island with me, you will not pretend to any
Authority here; and if I put Arms into your Hands, you will upon all
Occasions give them up to me, and do no Prejudice to me or mine, upon this
Island, and in the mean time be govern’d by my Orders. [… ] 2. That if the
Ship is, or may be recover’d, you will carry me and my Man to England
Passage free (Defoe 256, original emphasis).
After Crusoe helped the English commander get back his ship, the commander
Chueh 83
“brought [Crusoe] a Case of Bottles full of excellent Cordial Waters, six large Bottles
of Madera Wine; the Bottles held two Quarts a-piece; two Pound of excellent good
Tobacco, twelve good Pieces of the Ship’s Beef, and six Pieces of Pork, with a Bag of
Pease, and about a hundred Weight of Bisket” (Defoe 274, original emphasis). These
goods are like the tribute from the English commander in order to pay his respect to
Crusoe, the king of the island. Crusoe’s image of king is further certified when the
English commander argues about the ways to deal with those mutineers. Crusoe said:
That they were my Prisoners, not his; and that seeing I had offered them so
much Favour, I would be as good as my Word; and that if he did not think
fit to consent to it, I would set them at Liberty, as I found them; and if he
did not like it, he might take them again if he could catch them (Defoe 276).
Up to now, Crusoe is certainly a king, or at least a commander, on the island and his
kingship is impossible until he has the oath or contract from his people. In both the
Spaniard and the English commander’s cases, the oath or contract is not consensual
because both of them are, to some extent, forced to give their consent to it in terms of
their survival on the island. However, for Crusoe, oath and contract play “an
important part in the theoretical development of political individualism” (Watt 70)
namely his kingship. Here, I will further argue that oath and contract help not only the
formation of Crusoe’s political individualism but also his individuality by means of
forcing others to act in the way of answering his needs. The importance of this
English commander is to not only strengthen the idea about Crusoe’s almighty
authority on the island but also restate the relationship between Crusoe and England
by means of empowering Crusoe with the ability and possibility to go back. When
Crusoe and the English commander defeated the mutineers, the latter said to the
former that “My dear Friend and Deliverer, there ’s your Ship, for she is all yours, and
so are we and all that belong to her” (Defoe 272, original emphasis) and the former
Chueh 84
responded to these words in the way of embracing the latter and said that “I look upon
him as a Man sent from Heaven to deliver me” (Defoe 273). Thus, after having been
“thirty and five Years absent” (Defoe 278) from England, Crusoe can finally sail back
to England in this vessel.
At the second stage, Crusoe is no longer in his solitary exile, as he is at the first
stage, with the companions of Friday, Spaniard, and the English commander. Actually,
all these companions are “Other” to Crusoe because their appearance threatens
Crusoe’s almighty authority on the island in certain ways. Nevertheless, Crusoe
“embodies the experience of facing the Other, and finding the familiar in the Other”
(James 8). The familiarity in James’s words refers to Crusoe’s connection with
England or his Englishness, in simple and plain word. In conclusion, even though
Crusoe’s kingship is further strengthened with the appearance of his companions, his
mentality is never away from England in terms of his materials for teaching Friday
and his desperate want to go back to England. So, in fact, he still lives in two
identities, as a king of the island and as a castaway from England, at this second stage.
Besides, no matter which identity Crusoe chooses to live with while he is on the
island, what he does and what others do is always bound to his individual desire. This
tells us that most of the details in the novel are to assert Crusoe’s individuality.
Stage III: Crusoe as a Middle-Station Mercha nt
After his voyage back home, Crusoe finds that when he “came to England, [he]
was as perfect a Stranger to all the World, as if [he] had never been known there”
(Defoe 278, original emphasis) and he had “nothing to relieve, or assist, and that little
Money [he] had, would not do much” (Defoe 279) for him to settle in England. At this
moment, Crusoe seemed to be a cultural other to England and did not know what to
do to sustain his life but he soon realized that “money” would be the answer to this
Chueh 85
question. Money is a thing without value to Crusoe at the first stage. When Crusoe
serendipitously found “Thirty six Pounds value in Money, some European Coin, some
Brasil, some Pieces of Eight, some Gold, some Silver” on his ship, he said that “O
Drug! What art thou good for, Thou art not worth to me, no not the taking off the
Ground, one of those Knives is worth all this Heap, I have no Manner of use for thee,
e’en remain where thou art, and go to the Bottom as a Creature whose Life is not
worth saving” (Defoe 57, original emphasis). The same thing happened when Crusoe
found money on the shipwreck nearby his island and he said that “for as to the Money,
I had no manner of occasion for it: ‘Twas to me as the Dirt under my Feet; and I
would have given it all for three of four pair of English Shoes and Stockings, which
were Things I greatly wanted” (Defoe 193, original emphasis). In these two scenes,
Crusoe detests money because of its valuelessness to his life on the island at that
moment but, in both scenes, Crusoe “upon Second Thoughts, [he] took [money] away,
and wrapping all this in a Piece of Canvas” and “lugg’d this Money home” (Defoe 57,
193). These two scenes show that Crusoe always sees things with a merchant’s mind
and this merchant’s mind is relevant to his individuality. Also, Crusoe holds the strong
hope that he will have the chance to go back to England. After his way home,
Crusoe’s merchant’s mind recognizes that money is now the most valuable thing to
him. Thus, Crusoe “resolv’d to go to Lisbon, and see if [he] might not come by some
Information of the State of [his] Plantation in the Brasils” (Defoe 279, original
emphasis). When Crusoe “found all [his] Wealth about ” him in Brazil, he said that:
I was now Master, all on a Sudden, of above 5000 l. Sterling in Money,
and had an Estate, as I might well call it, in the Brasils, of above a thousand
Pounds a Year, as sure as an Estate of Lands in England: And in a Word, I
was in a Condition which I scarce knew how to understand, or how to
compose my self, for the Enjoyment of it (Defoe 285, original emphasis).
Chueh 86
Crusoe’s exaltation is a strange thing compared with the beginning of the novel
because Crusoe now is in a status, a middle-station merchant, which he originally had
the least inclination for. However, it is too easy to say that Crusoe is totally satisfied
with his life in England because he “could not resist the strong Inclination [he] had to
see [his] Island ” (Defoe 304).
When Crusoe took his nephew’s ship back to his previous island, he:
[… ] stay’d about 20 Days, left [his people] Supplies, of all necessary things,
and particularly of Arms, Power, Shot, Cloaths, Tools, and two Workmen,
which [he] bought from England. [… ] Besides this, [Crusoe] shar’d the
Island into Parts with ‘em, reserv’d to [him] self the Property of the whole,
but gave them such Parts respectively as they agreed on; and having settled
all things with them, and engaged them not to leave the Place, I left them
there (Defoe 305-6, original emphasis).
The importance of Crusoe’s return to his island lies in his image as a benefactor, to
supply habitants on the island with necessities, and a king, to share his ownership of
land to the people on the island. Obviously, Crusoe’s enjoyment comes from being not
only a successful middle-station merchant in England but also an almighty king on his
island at the third stage. In short, Crusoe still lives with double identities, being a
merchant and a king, at this stage. What we can find behind Crusoe’s double identities
is his individuality. Like the first two stages, Crusoe’s behavior is on the basis of his
individuality. Crusoe returns to his land may, to some extent, seem to suggest that his
concerns are not arbitrary to his individuality only. However, I will prefer to say that
this return to the island aims not mainly to improve the life of people on it but to
portray Crusoe as king who possesses everything on the island. Thus, to take care of
these people is a compulsory duty for our king Crusoe. By practicing this duty,
Crusoe’s individuality can be clear to his readers.
Chueh 87
Conclusion
Crusoe’s exile to the island is a turning point in his life. Crusoe’s exile “derives
its power from serving as a commentary not only on the place to which one is exiled
but also on the place from which one is exiled” (Seidel 364 original emphasis).
Besides, exiled “heroes tend to remain apart from their tainted home until both they
and the powers they represent are ready to retake it. In the interim, exiles removed
from their land spend their time both trying to replace it and trying, paradoxically, to
forget as best they can the trauma that necessitated their original displacement”
(Seidel 364). In other words, Crusoe’s exile to his island is, at first, a way to avoid
being traumatized by his father’s wish, which is to become a middle-state merchant,
but to become a man that he wants to be. However, this exile will come to its end
when Crusoe is powerful and ready or, in other words, to find his individuality to
retake this trauma in Seidel’s words. In fact, it is this trauma that makes Crusoe live
with double identities while he is exiled to the island and this could be seen from his
different roles as a would-be traveler, an eager entrepreneur dealing in slaves and
finally a property-owner of moderate wealth on his island and in England. All these
roles will not appear singularly at each stage. At the first stage, Crusoe is a would-be
traveler but he is also a property-owner of moderate wealth after he knows how to
farm and domesticate animals. At the second stage, Crusoe acts both like a traveler
and an entrepreneur in the sense of his desire to go back to England and his
well-established business on the island. At the third stage, Crusoe is a moderate
property owner in the light of his profitable plantation in Brazil but he is also anxious
to become a traveler to visit his island again. No matter Crusoe at which stage is, he
always lives with double identities in the sense of his relationship between England
and his island. What remains unchanged at three stages is the presentation of Crusoe’s
individuality. Even though Crusoe’s identity may change regarding different situations,
Chueh 88
all these changes symbolize his various needs for the practices of his individuality. In
short, this book not only shows us how Crusoe lives with his double identities but also
tells us how Crusoe carries out his individuality throughout his exile and his return,
which is also the main concern of novel writing.
Compared with Gulliver ’s experience of identity crisis, Crusoe’s identity
problem is not really a kind of crisis because he is aware of his identity at each stage
even though this identity oscillates on different occasions. Meanwhile, Gulliver ’s
identity keeps being problematized by the cultures he confronts and this makes him
become uncertain about his identity. The cause of this difference between the two is
that Gulliver always tries hard to fit in the cultures with an intention to improve
English society as his final mission while Crusoe acts perfectly as an explorer with a
very initial and crucial desire in those voyages to find out and to practice his
individual desires, namely individuality. If Crusoe’s only concern is to practice and to
search for his individuality in his voyages, he cares nothing about the cultures he
confronts but his individual desire instead. Thus, even though both Gulliver and
Crusoe carry out those voyages, no matter willingly or unwillingly, they bear different
thoughts in their mind. The separate purpose is exactly the main reason that makes
Gulliver and Crusoe stand in a respective situation concerning their identity problems.
Chueh 89
Conclusion
New York was an inexhaustible space, a labyrinth of endless steps, and no
matter how far he walked, no matter how well he came to know its
neighbourhoods and streets, it always left him with the feeling of being lost.
Lost, not only in the city, but with himself as well. Each time he took a walk,
he felt as though he were leaving himself behind, and by giving himself up
to the movement of the streets [… ]. The world was outside of him, around
him, before him, and the speed with which it kept changing made it
impossible for him to dwell on any one thing for very long. Motion was the
essence (Auster 3-4, my emphasis).
At the beginning of City of Glass, which is the first episode of Auster ’s The New
York Trilogy, we catch Quinn in his process of becoming a traveler and the risk for
him to become a traveler. Quinn is not the only traveler who needs to face this risk,
which is the feeling of being lost in the place and in the self, but all the travelers carry
it. The risk itself refers both to travelers’physical and mental loss in the space.
Besides, the “mutual penetration and their consequent unfolding” of travelers’
physical and mental loss is “taken as the matrix of culture” (Islam 7). Both Swift’s
Gulliver’s Travels and Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe are books about the traveler ’s
experience of being lost in both their motherland and foreign places. Their experience
of being lost is, as Islam suggests, a matrix of culture in eighteenth-century England.
In so far as the culture of eighteenth-century England is concerned, it is important to
understand how the traveler’s experience of being lost is presented in both books.
Gulliver’s Travels “represents Gulliver ’s wanderings among alternative ways of
life in the guise of voyages to different lands. He has moved away from real voyages
to imaginary ones, from concrete existence to fantasy” (Nichols 1161). It is a brilliant
insight indeed to see that Gulliver’s four voyages are his mental wanderings. However,
Chueh 90
Nichols’s words intend not to deny that Gulliver’s four voyages are physical
wanderings since they are practiced in a physical way even though these islands can
never be physically real. Gulliver ’s mental wandering is his experience of being
mentally lost in his four voyages. Besides, once “the soul that has no fixed goals loses
itself; for as they say, to be everywhere is to be nowhere” (Montaigne 21). Gulliver’s
being physically lost is, so to speak, based on his being mentally lost, which is his
failure of keeping on trying to fit himself into the cultures of different countries in his
four voyages. In his first two voyages to Lilliput and Brobdingnag, Gulliver’s being
mentally lost is ascribed to his physical cultural otherness but his spiritual cultural
otherness turns out to be the main reason for his being mentally lost in his last two
voyages to Laputa and Houyhnhnms. No matter whether Gulliver’s cultural otherness
is in relation to his physical or spiritual superiority or inferiority, he is inevitably a
cultural other in the eyes of those visited peoples and, even, in the eyes of his
countrymen at the end of the book. In short, Gulliver’s physical and mental feelings of
being lost in his four voyages are the results of his cultural otherness.
If Gulliver’s physical and mental feelings of being lost are the results of his
cultural otherness and his cultural otherness comes from his failure to fit into the
various societies, Crusoe’s physical and mental feelings of being lost are about his
double identities, which are incurred in the light of Crusoe’s desire to get away from
the society he lives in at that moment and his inseparable relation with the old world,
namely England, at the three stages. At his first two stages, Crusoe’s unintentional
exile is out of his desire to see the world and to get away from England with the
intention to be free from his father’s wish in which to become a middle-station person.
However, this unintentional exile does not get Crusoe too far away from his father ’s
wish or his motherland in two perspectives: Crusoe’s original desire to go to sea and
his ways of life on the island. Crusoe’s desire to see the world is the reason to bring
Chueh 91
about his first time misfortune to become a slave to a Moor and this desire tells us
Crusoe’s eagerness to try not to be in thrall to his father’s wish and the pressure from
the old world. However, Crusoe’s second misfortune on the sea is because of his
mercenary mind. On the behest of his Brazilian neighbors, Crusoe leads the ship with
the intention to take some slaves to help his and his neighbor’s plantations and it is
this mercenary intention causes Crusoe’s exile to the island. In other words, Crusoe’s
first desire to see the world is problematized by his merchant ’s mind also. Crusoe’s
ways of life on the island are the practices of a middle-station merchant in the ways of
salvaging the goods on the wrecked ship and using them to maintain his subsistence
on the island. The salvage of the ship not only enables Crusoe to live on the island but
also wins him a chance to go back to England by saving the life of the English captain,
who is the victim of the mutineers on his ship. These two, problematized desire and
ways of life on the island, explain Crusoe’s physical and mental feelings of being lost
by means of his physical exile to an unfamiliar place and his mental
pseudo-estrangement from the old world. At the last stage, Crusoe becomes a
well-to-do middle-station person but he can not take his island out of his head and he
finally carries out this inclination by sailing with his nephew back to his island.
Crusoe’s inclination to go back to his exiled island is a reflection of his being
mentally lost because it signifies his personal individuality, which is not quite the
same as his father’s wish. However, throughout his exile and return both to England
and his island, his individuality is always the main concern in the book. No matter
what Crusoe does, everything is done on the basis of his individual desire, namely, his
individuality. In short, Crusoe’s physical and mental feelings of being lost are
different stories compared with Gulliver ’s case but their experiences can be read as a
way to interpret the culture of eighteenth-century England.
Eighteenth-century England, as I have said in chapter one, is a time of
Chueh 92
ambivalence. This ambivalence is about the possibility to change. That is, the chance
for social mobility. However, this possibility and chance promise no success or failure
but a way for people to demonstrate their individuality. In Gulliver’s Travels and
Robinson Crusoe, both Gulliver and Crusoe have their free will to express and
practice their individuality in the appropriate time by claiming that they have
particular predilection to see the world. Gulliver and Crusoe are typical
eighteenth-century Englishmen because they are in a condition of making themselves
be heard by others. However, even though Gulliver and Crusoe indeed can have their
own voices to articulate their individual desires, their stories have a diametrically
opposite ending. In Gulliver’s Travels, Gulliver ends up with a tragic situation as a
misanthrope since he can not really fit him into any societies and, especially, find a
way to improve the English society with the knowledge he learns from the
Houyhnhnms after his four voyages. This tragic ending is predictable because of its
genre, satire. Satire is a genre which purposes to ridicule the follies and to improve
the communal welfare rather than to fulfill individual desires. In Gulliver Travels, the
first three voyages tell us the contradiction between Gulliver ’s individuality and other
cultures. Here, Gulliver’s individuality is about his nature, Englishness. Thus, when
we say Gulliver can hardly fit in other cultures, we mean that his Englishness not his
individual desire cannot find a place in that different culture. As for the last voyage to
the Houyhnhnms, Gulliver’s nature is challenged with the intention to let his readers
understand that England is not as good as they believe and there must be something
they can do to improve the social systems of England. In short, Gulliver ’s story is a
satire in the sense of ridiculing the follies in other cultures and England and proposing
a better life to the readers. Unlike Gulliver, Crusoe’s story has a happy ending because
he lives in a self-content middle-station life even though this kind of life is partially
incomplete regarding the entanglement of individuality and society. The individuality
Chueh 93
here refers not to the same thing as it is in Gulliver’s Travels. Crusoe’s individuality
largely emphasizes his individual desire and has not much to do with the communal
welfare. This can be seen at each stage of his story because whatever Crusoe or other
people do, everything must be done with Crusoe’s consent. This is also not out of our
surprise since the novel is a genre focusing on individual desire. Thus, reading
through the whole book, we can give a definitive answer to say that Robinson Crusoe
is a novel. Gulliver and Crusoe’s free will and the opposit e ending in the two books
exalt the importance of individuality, which eighteenth-century Englishmen hold dear,
and the presentation of individuality is relevant to their respective genre. More than
this, the two books also represent the social reality in eighteenth-century England that
not everyone can be so fortunate to be successful when they have a chance to change
their life. In other words, the possibility and chance to change enliven
eighteenth-century English society in the way of introducing different kinds of life
styles to its people. People can imitate those life styles according to their individual
propensity and ability. By doing so, social mobility emerges and the rigid class
boundary dissolves.
Another important aspect of the two travel narratives is that the two narratives
single out the importance of travel in eighteenth-century England. Travel in
eighteenth-century England aims to educate and to explore, as I have said in chapter
two, and these two aims are interrelated to one another. In Gulliver’s Travels and
Robinson Crusoe, travel educates protagonists to see the different cultures of other
countries, which functions in the same way as the Grand Tour in chapter one, and to
understand their individuality and their inseparable relationship with England
respectively. To explore, the two travel narratives certify that the improvement in
nautical skills broadens the horizons of eighteenth-century Englishmen and the
possibility to ameliorate the economic predicament of eighteenth-century England
Chueh 94
with the overseas commerce. By means of this overseas commerce,
eighteenth-century Englishmen know more about other countries and see the
differences between them and other countries. With the understanding of differences,
eighteenth-century Englishmen start to think how to improve not only their economic
predicament but also their intellectual inferiority.
In short, at the first sight, Gulliver’s Travels and Robinson Crusoe may seem to
be nothing more than two entertaining travel narratives with different adventures but
both Swift and Defoe mean to say something more than just adventures in their books.
In the two books, we can see the identity crisis of Gulliver and Crusoe and we can
understand that their identity crisis is correlated with eighteenth-century English
society. Moreover, the ways to describe both Gulliver and Crusoe’s identity crisis are
based on their genres. To read these two books is, to some extent, to read a part of
eighteenth-century English history with particular interests in individuality, society,
and travel.
Chueh 95
Notes
1. When I say eighteenth-century English society features equality in a horizontal
view, I have no intentions to mean that people, who sit on the same level of the
social ladder, are equally treated but they are equal in the sense of having the same
opportunities to improve their ranks or titles in a perpendicular or horizontal
direction. The Levenson-Gowers noticed that “they clawed their way up from the
baronage (1730) to being earls (1746), and finally ending up as dukes (1833)”
(Porter 49). In other words, social mobility in eighteenth-century English society
confined its scope not to different classes because it happened to those who were
in the same class but with different titles or ranks.
2. Quoted from Dorothy Marshall, Cowie defined the term “the middling sort” as
“comprising all those families whose income came from some non- manual
occupations but who, by way of their life and attitude of mind, had no claims to be
ranked with the gentry” (23).
3. In early eighteenth-century England, women were muted. Most of them were
constrictive roles such as wives, mothers, housekeepers, subordinate workers,
domestic servants or maiden aunts. There were hardly any campaigns for women’s
equality in the society but some brave individuals fought for themselves. Most of
these brave individuals were the so-called “bluestockings” such as Mrs. Mary
Manley, a satirical playwright at the beginning of the century, and Mary
Wollstonecraft. Not all the bluestockings were passionate advocates for women’s
rights but some of them were involved without question. Except for the espousal
of women’s rights, these bluestockings were great contributors for the cultural
development in eighteenth-century England. I will come back to this issue in the
later part of the discussion.
4. This strategy was effectively carried out to win battles while Britain was strong in
Chueh 96
her naval force. During the American War of Independence (1775-83), Britain
could not use the same strategy to preserve her possession of the thirteen colonies
because of the decline of her naval power. Even though the absence of her
previous superior naval power was not the only reason for Britain to lost the
American war of Independence, her fa ilure in this war proved that Britain was a
country largely dependent on her naval power.
5. City in eighteenth-century Britain was not only a stage for cultural performance
but also an important theme in literary works. I will discuss city’s importance as a
theme in cultural works in the later part of the discussion.
6. In chapter II, the genre of the books and its importance will be further explained.
7. Dunn, is his “The Identity of the History of Ideas,” replaced the word context with
history and text with philosophy. The main argument in Dunn’s paper was that
both the historical specificity and philosophical delicacy would be achieved if
they were pursued together and he further illustrated the cost of abnegation of
either history or philosophy at the stage of investigation.
8. Kumar argued that Plato’s Republic was “not so much the good or just society as
the good or just individual” (39), and this individual-orientated tendency diverted
itself from the main concern of Utopia, the just and good society. Kumar’s starting
point is, Utopia is a “form of social thought” but Plato loses his track to the
“philosophical contemplation” (40). There is no denying that Plato’s Republic is
much more concerned with the individual, but, as Kumar said, since the premise
of the Utopia is, “good individual will only be found in the good society” (40), we
can be sure that the society is good and just when we find people, who live in this
society, are good and just also. That is, to find good and just people is an indirect
to find the ideal land/Utopia. I believe, this indirect way is the basic assumption in
Plato’s Republic.
Chueh 97
9. All subsequent citations of Jonathan Swift’s correspondence, letters, and his
Gulliver’s Travels will be to the Norton edition.
10. All subsequent page references of Robinson Crusoe are keyed to the Oxford
edition.
Chueh 98
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