LUCIA FOLENA
On Robinson Crusoe
► Defoe’s novel dates from 1719, when great changes were taking place in English politics,
society and economy. The Puritan revolution and the Commonwealth (1642-1660) had left
very important traces despite the apparent return to the previous state of things effected by
the Restoration. From an ideological point of view, those years had witnessed a reversal of the
traditional world view and a drastic denial of the central role of both monarchy and aristocracy
in society. The Restoration, which marginalized or even persecuted Puritans and republicans,
endeavoured to re-create an absolutist system hegemonized by the Court and the nobility; but
the attempt was only partly successful, and less than 20 years later the Glorious Revolution
(1688) marked the beginning of a new era. The monarchy of course survived (no longer with
the Stuarts, though) but instead of representing itself as deriving from divine right (i.e., from
above) it implicitly became authorized by popular consent and by Parliament (i.e., from
below) and Parliament itself gradually evolved into a fundamental institution, as did the
government—which became almost completely autonomous with regard to the king, with a
consequent rise in the importance of the figure of the Prime Minister. Political life became very
active, and two parties began to form and to compete for power and premiership—the Tories
and the Whigs.
The Tories essentially represented the traditional dominant classes
(aristocracy, gentry, Anglican bishops, etc.), while the Whigs were linked with the new
economy of the middle class, based on business, trade, manufacture and finance.
Progressively, old aristocratic values such as “leisure”—i.e., the fact of not having to work for a
living: an exclusive privilege of the upper classes—began to lose their positive connotations
and were replaced by their opposites (in this case the value of work), so that in the space of a
few decades a new middle-class ideology took up the central position in society which had
previously been occupied by the aristocratic one. Thus by the mid- or late-18th century the
whole of society (including the nobility) tended to identify with the ideals, ethos, ways of life
and behaviours of its bourgeoisie, in the same way in which it had identified with its
aristocracy during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.
examples of
ARISTOCRATIC VALUES
▪ leisure
▪ exteriority
examples of
MIDDLE-CLASS VALUES
VS
▪ work
▪ interiority
(display – theatricality – exhibitionism)
▪ excess
▪ temperance, parsimony
(in expense, food, drink, etc.)
▪ honour
▪ coming from a great family
▪ respectability
▪ creating one’s own fortune
(having inherited one’s name and wealth)
(starting from an unfavourable
condition and rising in the world)
etc.
etc.
► According to many critics, Robinson Crusoe is the first English novel.1 In the same way in
which earlier literary genres—in particular the romance, but also the epic and the tragedy—
tended to idealize and celebrate the aristocracy, this new narrative genre is directly linked with
the rise of the middle class and promotes its way of life and its values. The initial pages of
RC are very explicit about this. When Robinson tells his father about his desire to leave home
and know the world, Mr Kreutznaer-Crusoe—who wants him to study law and become a
See for instance Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel. This of course does not mean that elements of what was to
characterize the novel were not present in texts written slightly earlier, especially in some 17th-century romances such
as Behn’s Oroonoko, but also in other forms of narratives such as Milton’s Paradise Lost (a verse epic) and Bunyan’s
Pilgrim’s Progress (an allegorical fiction). For a detailed discussion of differences between the romance and the novel
see Lennard Davies, Factual Fictions.
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respectable member of the community—represents to him the advantages and the happiness
enjoyed by those who, like the Crusoes, belong to what he calls the «middle state, or what
might be called the upper station of low life, which he had found by experience was the best
state in the world» (p. 18).2 He goes on to say
that the middle station of life was calculated for all kinds of vertues and all kinds of
enjoyments; that peace and plenty were the hand-maids of a middle fortune; that
temperance, moderation, quietness, health, society [= social life and friendships], all
agreeable diversions, and all desirable pleasures, were the blessings attending the middle
station of life [ . . . ] (18).
This «middle state» or «middle station» is precisely the living condition of the middle class (or
of its large majority); whose main occupation should be that of increasing its «fortune by
application and industry» (17). Adventures and rambling lives, on the contrary, are for the
very high or the very low on the social scale (18). Having refused to follow his father’s advice,
Robinson is later “condemned” to discover its truth—forced to “reconstruct” precisely this way
of life and to re-embrace the corresponding values during his long stay on the island.
► Besides celebrating the middle class, the novel makes it possible for readers belonging to
this part of society to see themselves reflected in protagonists who, differently from what
happens in romances, are middle-class (or at times even lower-class) men or women
themselves. Another remarkable feature of the novel is precisely the frequent presence of
women protagonists in it (cf e.g. Defoe’s Moll Flanders and Lady Roxana, or Richardson’s
Pamela and Clarissa), and the related phenomenon of the enormous expansion of the female
readership over the 18th century.
► The novel places a strong emphasis on the individual: the protagonist is not (merely) a
“type” or the representative of a category, but a specific person with a well-defined identity.
The beginning of RC is particularly significant in this connection. The very first word of the
novel is the personal pronoun «I», and the following lines give the reader detailed indications
about the time, place, social position and national origin which constitute the framework of the
speaking subject’s existence and adventures: «I was born in the year 1632, in the city of York,
of a good family, tho’ not of that country, my father being a foreigner of Bremen, who [ . . . ]
got a good estate by merchandise [ . . . ]» (17). The emphasis on the individual in the novel
is often signalled by the title coinciding with, or containing, the name of its protagonist (e.g.,
RC, Moll Flanders, Humphry Clinker, Tom Jones, Tristram Shandy, Jane Eyre, David
Copperfield, etc.).
► The novel, differently from the romance, is characterized by its realism. The romance
gives large space to magic, the supernatural, the extraordinary, whereas the novel represents
people and events that—however mostly imaginary or transfigured by imagination—are “like”
those of the real world. It is this (not coincidence but) similarity or contiguity with the real
world that is known as realism.
► Realism also implies a different relationship with time. In the romance time is essentially
“circular”, in the sense that there is little or no linear development in the characters, who tend
to remain very much the same at the end of their adventures as they were at the beginning.
The little evolution that takes place in them basically consists in the full manifestation of traits
or elements which previously existed only on the level of potentialities. Contrariwise, the novel
tends to structure itself on the basis of a linear notion of time where the character actually
changes on account of his/her experiences and interactions with what comes into contact with
him/her. A good example of this visible evolution is provided by the so-called Bildungsroman,
which follows the physical but especially mental, moral and spiritual growth of a very young
protagonist, generally a child or adolescent (RC is partly relatable to this genre, since Robinson
is initially very young—probably in his late teens—as well as immature and rebellious).
► As is typical of Defoe’s narratives in general, RC is written in the form of a fictional
autobiography, with a first-person narrator and a past-tense narration. The subject or “I”
2
Quotations refer to RC, ed. by Angus Ross, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1988.
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who is writing this story is (supposed to be) an elderly man who reflects on the whole of his
past life from the moment he left home. This, characteristically, implies that the “I” is split
into two—the present narrator who is ideally contemporary with his reader, and the
protagonist who starts his adventures several decades earlier. The distance between narrator
and protagonist is most of the times imperceptible, since the two are one and the same person
at two different stages in his existence, but it occasionally becomes visible when the older man
comments on the younger one’s inexperience, sinfulness or tendency to error. Within this
autobiographical framework Defoe inserts a section entitled “The Journal” (87-117) which is
presented as a faithful reproduction of the diary written by Robinson in the initial phase of his
stay on the island. The principal difference between a journal and an autobiography is that the
former presupposes very little if no distance between narrator and protagonist, and therefore
resembles more closely the epistolary form.3 The writing subject of a journal or of a series of
letters writes a story which is still in the making—a story of which he/she does not know the
future developments, much less the end, and which therefore appears as fragmentary and
hard to interpret before the end of the story itself. The writing subject of an autobiography, on
the other hand, knows the whole story and its “form” before he/she starts writing it, and is
therefore able to make his/her narration into a continuous whole without fractures, selecting
relevant facts, discarding those unrelated to the general evolution of the protagonist’s life and
incorporating elements of interpretation or moralizing.
► This aspect of interpretation or moralizing by the writing “I” appears clearly in RC, and is
very much related to religion. The narrator seems to see his past life as a sort of modernized
recapitulation of the Biblical story of Adam, as is indicated for instance by his recurrently
referring to his initial rebellion to his father’s will as «my original sin», and by the implication
that the «middle state» which the father himself had described to him in enormously positive
terms was a sort of paradise on earth. This initial rebellion is in sum a rebellion against God
and divine providence, even though Robinson always remains formally a Christian. Having lost
his original Eden, the protagonist spends his life trying to re-create it. However, it is only after
his “conversion” to a more interior and deeply-felt form of Christianity, when he submits to
God’s will and begins a dialogue with him in his heart that, through work, prayer and day-today commitment, he (partly) succeeds in generating a surrogate Eden on the island.
Meanwhile, what initially appeared to him as a horrid place—a «dismal unfortunate island,
which I called the Island of Despair», as he says at the beginning of the Journal (87)—not very
long later has already become in his eyes a beautiful garden which only needs some cultivation
in order to turn into an actual paradise:
[ . . . ] the country appeared so fresh, so green, so flourishing, every thing being in a
constant verdure or flourish of spring, that it looked like a planted garden. I descended a
little on the side of that delicious vale, surveying it with a secret kind of pleasure [ . . . ] to
think that this was all my own, that I was king and lord of all this country [ . . . ] (113-14).
But of course Robinson does not find his “real” paradise until he is delivered from his
«captivity» (as he calls it) on the island and enabled to go back to his country and to an
existence which is essentially a repetition of his father’s «middle state» at the beginning of the
novel.
► Secularization. The pervasive presence of religion in RC reflects Defoe’s own view. He
was a Dissenter or Non-conformist, i.e., one of those who in the previous century were
identified as Puritans (essentially, a non-Anglican Protestant). In the space of a few decades,
however, even Puritans had changed like the rest of society, and in Defoe’s time most of them
tended to be more moderate in politics (no longer strict republicans as they had been before)
and less fundamentalist in their attitude towards the role of religion in human life. RC is
significant in this regard, too. Despite the declared depth of the religious feelings expressed
by Robinson (after his “conversion”), a reader cannot avoid the impression that his religiosity
is strongly secularized and aimed at reaching success and happiness in this world rather than
postponing the enjoyment of bliss to the afterlife. In the past Puritans had represented human
existence as a mere preparation for what really mattered—salvation of the soul and ingression
The epistolary novel was also very popular in the 18th century; two of the best-known examples are S. Richardson’s
Pamela and Clarissa.
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into eternity. Defoe on the contrary seems to place great value in the here and now, to the
point where, in RC as well as in his other novels, he makes worldly achievements and wealth
into direct counterparts and proofs of divine benevolence and, implicitly, into tokens of eternal
salvation.
►
This new “materialism” is in sharp contrast with the negative view of material
possessions, money and the accumulation of capitals expressed by great Puritan writers such
as John Milton (Paradise Lost) and John Bunyan (The Pilgrim’s Progress) in the 1660s and
1670s, along a line inaugurated by a Catholic humanist like Thomas More in his description of
the treatment of gold and silver by the Utopians. When Robinson discovers a certain sum of
money and gold and silver coins on the ship from which he is recovering all the tools and
objects he may need for his life on the island, his initial reaction seems to be the traditional
Puritan one:
I smiled to my self at the sight of this money. “O drug!” said I aloud, “what are 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” (75).
A large part of his contempt is of course due to the fact that, being alone on the island, he
really has no use for money. The life to which he is condemned forces him to move away from
the concept of exchange-value, dominant in European societies, where the value of things is
essentially determined by the amount of money that one receives in exchange for them, to
that of use-value, on the basis of which value is determined only by the usefulness of things.
In spite of all these considerations, Robinson’s final decision is typical of his mercantile and
acquisitive attitude: «However, upon second thoughts, I took it away with me».
► A similarly utilitarian attitude seems to govern his relationships with human beings. This is
particularly visible in connection with the problem of slavery. Historically, the enslavement of
large numbers of Africans who were then transferred to English, Spanish and Portuguese
colonies in the New World in order to be employed in cotton or sugar-cane plantations had
become increasingly frequent during the 17th and early 18th centuries, and was legitimized by
international treaties and licences (asientos). Most Europeans apparently saw the slave-trade
as an acceptable practice, and it was only in the second half of the 18th century that numerous
intellectuals, under the influence of the new ideals of freedom, equality and fraternity
introduced by the Enlightenment,
began protesting against this inhuman oppression
(Lawrence Sterne and Samuel Johnson are two illustrious English examples of the new antislavery mentality). Defoe, writing in the 1710s and ’20s, seems to have shared his own
contemporaries’ lack of concern for this problem; a fact which at first sight would appear all
the more paradoxical in consideration of his peculiar gift for sympathy and of his
perceptiveness in understanding and representing the points of view of the marginal, the
suffering and the weakest members of society. The first time Robinson comes into direct
contact with the world of slavery is when he is captured by a Turkish ship and kept by the
commander as his personal slave in a town on the Atlantic coast of Morocco (40 ff.); after
some two years, having manages to escape with the Moorish boy, Xury, who has so far been
his fellow-slave, he is eventually rescued by a Portuguese ship on its way to Brazil and asked
by the captain to sell him Xury:
he offered me also 60 pieces of eight more for my boy Xury, which I was loath to take, not
that I was not willing to let the captain have him, but I was very loath to sell the poor boy’s
liberty, who had assisted me so faithfully in procuring my own. However, when I let him
know my reason, he owned it to be just, and offered me this medium, that he would give the
boy an obligation to set him free in ten years, if he turned Christian; upon this, and Xury
saying he was willing to go to him, I let the captain have him. (54)
It is as if the simple fact of being on board a European ship has reconstructed a Eurocentric
perspective, where human beings from other parts of the world are inferior and may
legitimately be treated as properties, bought and sold without problems, especially when their
owners treat them well and promise to eventually set them free if they convert to the only
“true” faith. Also striking is the fact that Robinson does not even consider the possibility of
letting Xury have the money he obtains in exchange for him but pockets it as if he had every
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right to keep it. If he later observes «I had done wrong in parting with my boy Xury» (55),
this is not due to moral qualms but to the fact that he is in need of more slaves for his
plantation in Brazil. Precisely on account of this need he later turns into an occasional slavetrader himself (on behalf of his fellow-planters as well) and embarks on a slaving ship to the
African coast, which he never reaches because he is shipwrecked on the island.
In fact this indifference to the horrors of slavery which Robinson seems to share with his
creator, Defoe—who here projects a large part of his own beliefs and world view onto his
protagonist—may be ascribed to a combination of the general Eurocentric attitude
characteristic of his age with the mercantilist mentality typical of his class. It is possible to
find an indirect proof of this by comparing RC with a narrative written about 30 years earlier—
Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko (1688). Here the outlook on slavery is far more negative, which is at
least in part explainable with this woman writer’s Tory ideology and attachment to the
traditional aristocratic and absolutist ideology: her opposition to the commerce of human
beings, rather than from a humanitarian ideal, derives precisely from her hostility to the
mercantilist mindset of the rising middle class, which (in her perspective) saw everything,
including people, in terms of their monetary value.
When Friday comes to share Robinson’s existence on the island, he is never treated as a slave,
even if his social and cultural inferiority with regard to the protagonist is made clear. The term
“slave” is not used in reference to him in the text, where he is generally referred to as «my
servant F.» or «my man [= servant] F.». The difference between a servant and a slave was
(and is) a very significant one. A servant becomes such by choice (though he/she may be
compelled by poverty), whereas slavery is the fruit of coercion. F. immediately declares his
intention to be Robinson’s servant for life in gratitude for having had his life saved.
He
gradually also becomes a friend and a son to him, without ever losing his original subordinate
status.
Another indication of Robinson’s Eurocentric stance comes in the “naming-scene”: «I made
him know his name should be Friday, which was the day I saved his life; [ . . . ] I likewise
taught him to say, Master, and then let him know that was to be my name» (209). The
protagonist does not even consider the possibility of asking the newcomer his real name, but
directly imposes a new one on him—moreover, one that is not a person’s name—and
exchanges his own with a title used to denote a relationship. Likewise, he enforces on him his
Protestant religion as well as his traditions, world view, values and practical knowledge without
ever bothering to find out whether F. has anything interesting to teach him.
Also: see Robinson’s reflections on cannibalism and cultural differences after he sees the
footprint on the shore; compare the idea of slavery in RC to those in Utopia and The Tempest.
► On the island Robinson initially falls back into the «state of nature», as he says repeatedly,
using an expression which had only recently been introduced—one of its first appearances had
been in Thomas Hobbes’ 1651 Leviathan—to indicate what was believed to have been the
original, primitive and savage condition of humankind before the development of civilization, or
“culture” in the anthropological sense: He spends the years that follow in the largely
successful attempt to “evolve” into civilization, by enclosing, building, cultivating, creating
tools and useful objects and so forth. Thus he recapitulates in himself, and in a space of less
than thirty years, the whole history of human progress from wildness to civilization (from the
point of view of 18th –century pre-anthropology).
Also: it would be interesting to reflect on the intrinsic contradiction present in RC between this
new pre-anthropological model and the traditional Biblical one (the original human state of
happiness and perfection in the garden of Eden; see above).
► Robinson’s evolution from the «state of nature» is made harder by the fact that, as he
stresses repeatedly, at first he possesses no practical skills nor knows anything about manual
work, so that he has to teach himself all trough a process of trial-and-error. At the beginning
he is a tabula rasa, a “blank page”, to use a metaphor employed by another philosopher, John
Locke, in describing the original state of the mind before experiences “write” themselves on it
(An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 1700). Likewise, the space of the island is to
him, initially, also a tabula rasa, on which he gradually “writes”, by dividing and delimiting
areas and investing them with different “meanings” (the main residence, the summer
residence, the grove, the cultivated fields, etc.).
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