illustration of a man standing on an island and looking out at the ocean with the title Robison Crusoe written in the sky

Robinson Crusoe

by Daniel Defoe

Start Free Trial

Religion and Allegory

Download PDF PDF Page Citation Cite Share Link Share

SOURCE: "Religion and Allegory," in Robinson Crusoe, George Allen & Unwin, 1979, pp. 51-72.

[In the following excerpt, Rogers outlines various positions that critics have taken in interpreting Robinson Crusoe and discusses Defoe's religious background and the novel's treatment of sin.]

The Puritan Inheritance

The most striking single development in our recent understanding of the novel has lain in the rediscovery of a pervasive spiritual motif. In the nineteenth century Crusoe had been treated mainly as an adventure-story, characterised by intense 'realism' of presentation. Robinson himself had been viewed as an upright and manly Englishman, whose Broad Church piety did not get in the way of his real mission—survival and ultimate prosperity. Even as lately as the 1950s it was usual to dismiss Crusoe's religious reflections as not much more than appliqué on the surface of the narrative. In the 1860s Karl Marx wrote: 'Of his prayers and the like we take no account, since they are a source of pleasure to him, and he looks upon them as so much recreation.'1 Almost a hundred years later Ian Watt was inclined to agree:

Both Marx and Gildon were right in drawing attention to the discontinuity between the religious aspects of the book and its action: but their explanations do Defoe some injustice. His spiritual intentions were probably quite sincere, but they have the weakness of all 'Sunday religion' and manifest themselves in somewhat unconvincing periodical tributes to the transcendental at times when a respite from real action and practical intellectual effort is allowed or enforced.

Watt went on to assert that Defoe's 'religious upbringing forced him from time to time to hand over a brilliant piece of narrative by a star-reporter to a distant colleague on the religious page who could be relied on to supply suitable spiritual commentaries quickly out of stock. Puritanism made the editorial policy unalterable; but it was usually satisfied by a purely formal adherence.'2

These sentiments now have an extraordinarily dated look, because of the rapid transformation in our reading habits. Partly this is explicable by reason of a more sympathetic attitude towards the Puritan mind. Watt's book had its intellectual genesis at a time when R. H. Tawney and Max Weber dominated the general response to religious history. They are quoted comparatively infrequently by Watt, but it would not be straining the evidence to detect in his book a subterranean current of ideas deriving from this source. A representative passage in Tawney sums up the outlook:

The distinctive note of Puritan teaching … was individual responsibility, not social obligation. Training its pupils to the mastery of others through the mastery of self, it prized as a crown of glory the qualities which arm the spiritual athlete for his solitary contest with a hostile world, and dismissed concern with the social order as the prop of weaklings and the Capua of the soul.3

Subsequent writers have criticised Tawney's general thesis, and have adopted a less jaundiced attitude towards the individualist ethic. It would not now be so readily taken for granted that 'concern with the social order' is always a more desirable or positive element in intellectual life than a concern for private spiritual values.

However, it was the appearance of two critical studies in the 1960s which dramatically reversed the position. Building on other explorations of the Puritan mind, and following up work on Milton and Bunyan in particular, these books set Crusoe in a wholly new light. George A. Starr published Defoe and Spiritual Autobiography in 1965. He argued that a well-marked cycle of sin and regeneration underlay Crusoe's experiences throughout the novel. There is, indeed, 'a conventional progression in sin' and an equally conventional pattern of redemption. Starr applied the same schemata to other novels (Moll and Roxana), but Robinson Crusoe is granted most space and proves the most amenable to this treatment. Another feature of the reading is the importance given to Crusoe's conversion of Friday, formerly regarded as marginal or even impertinent.4

Though the detailed emphases of J. Paul Hunter's The Reluctant Pilgrim (1966) are different, the main drift of the argument is remarkably similar. Hunter confines himself to Crusoe and examines a number of 'Puritan subliterary traditions' relevant to its making. (Where Starr had tended to stress general religious background, citing Anglican as well as Puritan sources, Hunter prefers to work from the dissenting models.) In his view the external narrative of travel and adventure has been allowed too prominent a place in our assessment of Crusoe. Typical of his argument are passages like this:

What Defoe distills from desert island experience is not an 'agreeable Relation' at all, but rather a rigorous multilevel moral examination of life…. Unlike its [adventure-story] analogues, Robinson Crusoe derives dramatic power from its understanding of man's struggle against nature as both physical and metaphysical…. [It] embodies the Puritan view of man on a most profound level; it … portrays, through the struggles of one man, the rebellion and punishment, repentance and deliverance, of all men, as they sojourn in a hostile world.

Or this:

Throughout Robinson Crusoe physical events reflect Crusoe's spiritual state, for Crusoe is concerned with accommodating himself to his world spiritually and physically at the same time, and his efforts to come to terms with his physical environment parallel his efforts to find a proper relationship with his God. Ultimately, his physical activities become a metaphor for his spiritual aspirations.

What is most important here is the attempt to see Crusoe as a coherent and formally sophisticated narrative. Hunter, like Starr, divides the plot into clear-cut phases: rebellion and punishment, repentance and deliverance. He, too, pays attention to the 'saving' of Friday. But he goes further than Starr in detecting overall 'emblematic' or allegorical structure, using standard metaphors, parables and symbols to create a moral pilgrimage rather than a bare escape-story. He places particular stress on the biblical and typological allusions, looking for events with a meaning consecrated by their appearance (in identical or closely related terms) in scripture.5

Both these approaches show Crusoe as dependent on widely known techniques of popular devotional or didactic literature. They make it easier to relate the work to Defoe's vein of pious conduct-books, such as The Family Instructor. Moreover, they have in common a desire to emphasise the 'thematic' content of Crusoe, as opposed to the fictional rendering of exciting events. It is possible to feel that both critics overstate their case a little, and Hunter in particular is led by his thesis to play down every aspect of the work other than those which fit his case. Nevertheless, these readings have enriched our understanding to a remarkable degree, and in suggesting a new generic context for Crusoe they have provided an artistic justification for features and episodes which previously seemed hard to explain. Seen as a Puritan fable of spiritual life, the novel appears not only different but also, in crucial ways, a better book: more deeply imagined and more cunningly wrought.

The major forms lying behind such a version would be these:

(a) Spiritual autobiography. The best-known example today is Bunyan's Grace Abounding (1666). The keeping of a diary of one's own progress towards salvation was not, as Starr emphasises, confined to dissenting sects, although its most extreme manifestations are found there. The habit inculcated in pious individuals was to scrutinise their own life for signs of advancement or backsliding. In Starr's words, 'Since every man is responsible for the well-being of his own soul, he must mark with care each event or stage in its development. As his own spiritual physician, he must duly note every symptom of progress or relapse.' Another impetus to the composition of spiritual autobiography lay in the belief that 'there are universal and recurrent elements in human affairs, particularly in vicissitudes of the soul. History repeats itself… in the spiritual life of individuals.' This in turn connects with the habit of searching the Bible for parallels and portents, to find what were called 'Scripture Similitudes'. Certain biblical images came to have special meanings accredited to them; in this area of moral exegesis Defoe would have the example of innumerable sermons but also formal handbooks such as the Tropologia (1681) by a London Baptist preacher, Benjamin Keach (1640-1704), which gathers together many 'express' allegories found in the Bible. Key metaphors included those of pilgrimage, of seafaring, and warfare. Though surrounded in his youth by spiritual autobiographers, Defoe did not attempt the form himself; it is true, however, that his tributes to his family pastor, Dr Annesley (see below, p. 59), and his life of Daniel Williams (1718) have been seen as related to the tradition.6

Starr, as indicated, discerns a standard 'rhythm' of conversion. From his 'original sin' in running away to sea, through his early wanderings to his shipwreck and gradual restoration on the island, a direct allusion to this pattern can be traced. (For example, the early travels reflect estrangement and alienation from God.) Then on the island come stock episodes such as dreams and earthquakes. God's interposition finally brings Crusoe to a recognition of his errors, and his regeneration reaches a climax in his conversion of Friday—zeal in this direction was a well-understood mark of spiritual advancement. In spiritual biography 'the purposeful pattern of the subject's life is superimposed over the chronological record of events'; Crusoe has first to discover this purpose and then shape his narrative to show its accomplishment.7

(b) The guide tradition. This is a branch of popular homiletic literature concerned with warning the reader against the perils of moral existence, and designed to offer a ready-to-hand hortatory or consolatory body of instruction. There were many general guides, but also specialised manuals directed towards a group or calling (seamen, tradesmen, farmers, etc.). A major subdivision was that of the guide to young persons, in which Timothy Cruso (see below, p. 60) was a practitioner. Perhaps the best-known of all works in this genre were Arthur Dent's Plain Mans Pathway to Heaven (1601) and Lewis Bayly's Practice of Piety (1613); the equally popular Whole Duty of Man (1658) has its roots in this tradition. Tracts and sermons not specifically organised as a 'guide' drew upon the same habit of advice. Even as late a work as William Law's A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life (1728) shows some impress; the penultimate chapter, for instance, is set out very much on the 'guide' formula: 'Of evening prayer. Of the nature and necessity of examination. How we are to be particular in the confession of all our sins. How we are to fill our minds with a just horror and of all sin.' Law, of course, was a High Churchman. But Defoe the dissenter would be exposed to many such manuals on practical living, conceived from a religious standpoint. Indeed, his own conduct-books, from The Family Instructor through to Compleat English Gentleman, are secularised or dramatised variants of the guide. Hunter is surely justified in saying that Crusoe deals 'with the problems which the guide tradition had previously faced'—the nature of a calling, filial obedience, resistance to temptation. As Hunter goes on to remark, 'Robinson Crusoe ultimately is much more complex than any of the traditions which nourish it, but the complexity should not obscure the ancestry'.8

(c) The 'Providence' tradition. This is Hunter's term for a widely employed technique (found in sermons, guides, biographies and elsewhere), showing the intervention of God in the affairs of man. All the forms discussed here were likely to interpret natural phenomena as marks of divine approval or disapproval, as reward for merit or punishment for evil. The specific tradition relates to explicit or extended use of this notion, especially the recital of extraordinary events which are carefully explicated in the light of their providential bearings. A prominent and still highly readable example is the work of an Anglican clergyman, William Turner (1653-1701); it is called A Compleat History of the Most Remarkable Providences, Both of Judgment and Mercy, Which have Hapned in this Present Age (1697). Bitty and uneven though it is, this book provides one of the clearest introductions we have to the mental world in which Robinson Crusoe came to birth. In a way it is literature of the 'Strange News from …' variety; but for contemporaries the overriding interest undoubtedly lay in the interpretations rather than the events themselves—Turner divides his stories into categories, each illustrating particular modes of divine judgement. It should be added that the pamphlet version of Selkirk's story, Providence Displayed (see above, p. 49), is in essentials a reworking of Woodes Rogers towards providential ends.9

Defoe's awareness of this tradition is quite unmistakable. Even if he had not used as his theme delivery from shipwreck (and, incidentally, escape from Barbary)—standard providential material—and even if he had not stated in his preface (RC1, p. 1) that his aim was 'to justify and honour the Wisdom of Providence in all the Variety of our Circumstances', we should still have external evidence. In RC3 a chapter is devoted to the subject of 'Listening to the Voice of Providence'. In this Defoe offers a definition of Providence ('the operation of the power, wisdom, justice, and goodness of God by which He influences, governs, and directs not only the means, but the events, of all things which concern us in this world', p. 187). He has Crusoe explain that 'by listening to the voice of Providence, I mean to study its meaning in every circumstance of life'; this should be 'our business and our interest' (p. 189). Crusoe's habit of noting dates, coincidences and significant conjunctions is illuminated by his observation here, 'The concurrence of events is a light to their causes, and the methods of Heaven, in some things, are a happy guide to us to make a judgment in others; he that is deaf to these things shuts his ears to instruction, and, like Solomon's fool, hates knowledge' (p. 195). And at the end of this section:

To listen to the voice of Providence, is to take strict notice of all the remarkable steps of Providence which relate to us in particular, to observe if there is nothing in them instructing to our conduct, no warning to us for avoiding some danger, no direction for the taking some particular steps for our safety or advantage, no hint to remind of such and such things omitted, no conviction of something committed, no vindictive step, by way of retaliation, marking out the crime in the punishment, (p. 213)

It would be exceedingly rash to assume that this is simply an importunate moral thrust on the self-sufficient narrative, an ex post facto signal by Defoe behind the back of his creation Robinson. All the signs are that Defoe, from the very beginning, meant his novel to bear these monitory functions.

A significant clue here lies in a book published fifteen years earlier. All his life Defoe was fascinated by natural disasters, whether volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, fires, or epidemics. One of his most characteristic early works is The Storm (1704), assembling reports on the great 'dreadful Tempest' which had struck Britain on 26-27 November 1703. At least 8,000 people are believed to have perished in the savage wind and floods: Eddystone lighthouse was destroyed, men-of-war lost while at anchor, the Bishop of Bath and Wells killed with his wife as they lay in bed. Defoe's compilation is, following the practice of the time, a rambling affair: it moves from Ralph Bohen's theories on the causes of wind through earlier hurricanes to the present storm, with a pastoral elegy sent in by an unnamed contributor. The main part of the book is taken up with eye-witness accounts from all over southern Britain. In his preface Defoe spells out the providential implications, and challenges freethinkers to examine their position: 'I cannot believe any Man so rooted in Atheistical Opinions, as not to find some Cause whether he was not in the Wrong, and a little to apprehend the Possibility of a Supreme Being, when he felt the terrible blasts of this Tempest.' Indeed, Defoe had originally intended to supply an account of 'some unthinking Wretches, who pass'd over this dreadful Judgment with Banter, Scoffing, and Contempt'; but he decided it would be charitable to omit this.10

A sceptic might ask whether Defoe would have had one of his early books strongly present in his mind when some 330 items separate this from Crusoe in the Checklist. But there is separate evidence that The Storm had a part to play in the genesis of the novel. As Secord demonstrated at length,11 the account of the storm off Yarmouth roads (RC1, pp. 10-14) has strong affinities with various parts of The Storm, besides a connection with a passage on the Norfolk coast published in the Tour (1724).12 The most direct parallel concerns the very last report inserted in The Storm, which carries the dateline, 'From on board the John and Mary, riding in Yarmouth Roads during the great Storm, but now in the River of Thames'.13 Secord itemised a number of closely similar features in the two books, showing a correspondence both in the materials of the description and in their ordering. Some aspects of the account in Crusoe, however, find their parallels in other reports included in The Storm. In addition, Secord briefly indicated a possible link between the Yarmouth narrative of 1704 and Crusoe's final shipwreck, that is, the one in the mouth of the Orinoco which results in his island captivity. There are occasional verbal parallels: 'the Sea went too high for any Boat to live' (Storm, pp. 268-9), 'the Sea went so high, that the Boat could not live' (RC1, p. 43). In both narratives a boat 'staves' to pieces when dashed against the ship; and other expressions recur ('abate', 'drive', as well as technical terms such as 'cable'). The resemblances are certainly greater than one would expect from two accounts of a storm chosen at random; and, while it would be going too far to list the 1704 description as an immediate 'source' of the 1719 wreck, some imaginative continuity may well be present. We do not know if Defoe himself wrote the relations of 'strange Deliverances' in The Storm—he may very easily have done so. In any case, the material stayed in his head for the rest of his life. There are several allusions to this national disaster in his Tour (1724-6): it rivals the Plague and the South Sea Bubble as an emblem of catastrophe.

It is probably unnecessary to emphasise here the fact that one of Defoe's later fictions, A Journal of the Plague Year, where the narrator refers to the plague as 'a particular Season of Divine Vengeance', is centrally concerned with natural events as a sign of God's wrath. H.F. sees the plague as occurring by 'the Appointment and Direction of Providence';14 as usual Defoe makes it plain that divine will is expressed through second causes and only exceptionally through direct intervention outside the ordinary processes of nature. Robinson Crusoe is shot through with the same inclination to read providential meanings into occurrences both remarkable and humdrum. This proceeds from no eccentric or radical enthusiasm; it was a way of interpreting events and a way of telling stories thoroughly acceptable to readers of the day, whatever their particular shade of religious belief.

(d) Other contexts. Hunter describes a more generalised form, that is, the 'pilgrim' allegory present in Bunyan's masterpiece and sketched less memorably in a thousand sermons or tracts. The abstract scheme is set out by Hunter in these terms:

A man first sails away from the Home appointed for him (instead of proceeding toward it) and then becomes isolated from God as a result of discontent and selfish pride. Ultimately, however, God intervenes to deliver him from destruction, and the direction of his life is altered to a course pleasing to God and leading at last to the man's ultimate Home. The man, however, still must undergo numerous battles with evil before he can rest content at the end of the journey.

This scenario would also fit many spiritual biographies. The fact that Crusoe emerges with much more concrete life and individuality than the scheme allows for does not make the correspondences wholly irrelevant.15

In a separate article Hunter draws attention to the many seventeenth-century accounts of missions among the American Indians. The missionaries were largely supported by New England Puritans, like Defoe's early tutor, Charles Morton. In fact a major collection of such accounts, A Brief Narrative of the Success [of the] Gospel among the Indians in New-England (1694), was dedicated by its compiler, Matthew Mayhew, to Morton amongst others. Hunter's main purpose on this occasion is to show how the descriptions of native converts square with Defoe's picture of Friday; but his article indicates another kind of work, straddling devotional and 'discovery' themes, which must have lain at the back of the novelist's mind.16 So, of course, did innumerable sermons and religious tracts; their influence may not be directly felt at any given point in Crusoe, but they were abroad in the general imagination as surely as the images of popular television programmes inhabit our consciousness today. In 1719 no living Englishman (or woman) could have escaped the power of the religious word; it was the stuff of his culture.

Education in Dissent

The last comment would apply to any contemporary. But Defoe was marked off by the fact that he had been intended for the nonconformist ministry. His formative years were spent in a highly purposive environment, with a distinct aim in view. He grew up conscious of a special destiny in store and, although he relinquished the calling, he retained the sense of a personal fate. Whether or not Crusoe can be read as an allegory of his private experience, he had a vein of self-pity which commonly expressed itself in laments at the 'afflictions' he was forced to endure. In the nearest he came to an autobiography, An Appeal to Honour and Justice (1715), he claimed that he alone had been 'silent under the infinite Clamours and Reproaches, causeless Curses, unusual Threatnings, and the most unjust and injurious Treatment in the World'.17 Defoe had a profound consciousness of having been cheated somewhere along the line. Whether it was his abandoned career in the ministry, his failed business ventures, his allegiance to fallen ministers, the loss of his royal patron, William III, or a combination of these things—he felt he had not had his deserts. Crusoe and his other highly successful heroes and heroines may involve a compensatory fantasy.

Young Daniel Foe was only 2 years old when the Act of Uniformity passed through Parliament.18 It meant that ministers were obliged to accept the new Book of Common Prayer, drawn up by a High Church convocation in 1661. In addition they had to submit to episcopal ordination. The vicar of St Giles, Cripplegate (the parish church, one might say, of Grub Street) was Samuel Annesley (?1620-96). He refused the new tests and was duly ejected. He took with him into the Presbyterian Church many parishioners; among these was the tallow-chandler of Fore Street, James Foe, together with his wife Alice and three children. In 1665, during the Plague, the Oxford Parliament passed the so-called Five Mile Act which strengthened the test and drove Annesley farther afield. After the Declaration of Indulgence in 1672 he was licensed to preach again, in Little St Helen's, off the lower end of Bishopsgate, opposite Gresham College. There he remained until his death in 1696, an event prompting Defoe to produce a verse elegy on his character—this stresses Annesley's loyalty to his parents, his piety from childhood on, and his qualities of calm, patience and fortitude in adversity.19 Another strong link with nonconformity to come was forged by the marriage of his daughter to Samuel Wesley, the father of Charles and John. Moore is justified in saying that, through his association with Annesley, Defoe 'grew up near the center of Presbyterian worship in London'.20

Around 1668 Daniel lost his mother, and he was sent to a boarding school for dissenters near Dorking in Surrey. The master, James Fisher, was another ejected minister, although a man of lesser stature than Annesley. He was a Congregationalist, that is, a member of a less tightly organised sect than the Presbyterians. Defoe left school about 1674, and that should have been the end of his formal education. But instead he went on to study under yet another ejected minister, Charles Morton, at the famous Newington Green academy. This indicates that he was by now a candidate for the ministry. Much has been written about Morton (1627-98) and his possible influence upon Defoe. The basic facts are, first, that he, too, was a Congregationalist; secondly, that he was a widely cultivated man, a graduate of Oxford who had been incorporated at Cambridge and who was ultimately to become Vice-President of Harvard; thirdly, that his special interests were scientific and mathematical (thus reinforcing the bias towards practical subjects which dissenting academies developed in reaction against the obscurantist pedantry—as they saw it—of the universities). Defoe was proud of his association with the man and with the school, and at the end of his life was still propagating the values he had imbibed during this period. It should be added that Morton taught through the medium of English—an act of rebellion in itself—and his own spare prose may possibly have influenced his pupil's style.

A pupil of the academy at just about the same time was a young man some four years senior to Defoe. This was Timothy Cruso (?1656-97), who went on to become a Presbyterian minister and well-known preacher. He wrote some of the popular 'guides', including God the Guide of Youth (1695); but he would probably not be associated with Defoe today but for his surname. Since the nineteenth century biographers have speculated on the possibility that this is where the curious name derives. (Other theories would relate it to a Caribbean island, Curaçao, where pirates gathered; or to a Cruso family in King's Lynn; or to German words such as kreutzen, 'to cross or cruise', and Kreutz, 'a cross'.) Recently Hunter has revived the Timothy Cruso connection, arguing that Defoe employs an allusive mode to alert readers familiar with the career of this dissenting teacher. It is not a matter on which a definitive answer is likely to emerge.21

In any case Defoe left the academy about 1679. He made transcripts of sermons delivered by a former Congregationalist, John Collins (?1632-87), who also had Harvard connections. Collins, like Timothy Cruso later, was chosen as Merchant's Lecturer at Pinner's Hall (a major centre of dissent, in Broad Street, halfway between St Giles's and Little St Helen's). Defoe composed at this time some verse meditations which were first published in 1946. They have been described as 'confessional' poetry, but they do not really explain why Defoe should, very soon afterwards, turn his back on the ministry and enter trade. We are left with a long preparation for the role of a pastor; a boyhood and youth spent under the influence of enlightened dissenters like Annesley, Fisher and Morton; and then the sudden volte-face. Many 'personal' readings of literature are unconvincing, not least the highly biographic interpretations of Crusoe itself. But if it is accepted that Robinson Crusoe is haunted throughout by an early misjudgement, then the possibility that Defoe's switch of career has some deep-level connection with the issue cannot be regarded as implausible.

Crusoe's Original Sin

In the middle of RC1, Crusoe reflects on his condition in the period between his discovery of the Spanish wreck and his meeting with Friday—he has spent some twenty-three years on the island:

I have been in all my Circumstances a Memento to those who are touch'd with the general Plague of Mankind, whence, for ought I know, one half of their Miseries flow; I mean, that of not being satisfy'd with the Station wherein God and Nature has plac'd them; for not to look back upon my primitive Condition, and the excellent Advice of my Father, the Opposition to which, was, as I may call it, my ORIGINAL SIN; my subsequent Mistakes of the same kind had been the Means of my coming into this miserable Condition; for had that Providence, which so happily had seated me at the Brasils, as a Planter, bless'd me with confin'd Desires, and I could have been contented to have gone on gradually, I might have been by this Time; I mean, in the Time of my being in this Island, one of the most considerable Planters in the Brasils….

Nor do the self-reproaches stop there:

But as this is ordinarily the Fate of young Heads, so Reflection upon the Folly of it, is as ordinarily the Exercise of more Years, or of the dear bought Experience of Time; and so it was with me now; and yet so deep had the Mistake taken root in my Temper, that I could not satisfy myself in my Station, but was continually poring upon the Means, and Possibility of my Escape from this Place…. (pp. 194-5)

What precisely was this original sin? As the passage makes clear, it refers to Crusoe's first act of disobedience in leaving home to follow a seafaring life, rather than the legal career marked out for him. But this is only to shift the question back one stage. What kind of error does the 19-year-old Robinson commit? And is the root of his disobedience to be explained in religious, moral or psychological terms? No issue has more exercised recent commentators.

One remarkably clear-cut solution was proposed by Ian Watt. In his view, 'the argument between [Crusoe's] parents and himself is a debate, not about filial duty or religion, but about whether going or staying is likely to be the most advantageous course materially…. And, of course, Crusoe actually gains by his "original sin", and becomes richer than his father was.' Consequently, on this showing, 'Crusoe's "original sin" is really the dynamic tendency of capitalism itself, whose aim is never merely to maintain the status quo, but to transform it incessantly. Leaving home, improving on the lot one was born to, is a vital feature of the individualist pattern of life'.22 Watt's verdict has been repeated by some later critics, including John J. Richetti, who locates Crusoe's urges still more precisely within the 'dangerously dynamic aspect of capitalist ideology which must in the context of the early eighteenth century be denied and suppressed'. Richetti suggests that Crusoe has to do more than merely repudiate his father: 'The destruction of the father … seems to be what lies behind Crusoe's desire to go to sea, that is, to become rich above his father's station. To surpass him economically is in a real sense to destroy him.' There is at the start 'a dance among various sorts of explanations—social, moral, and psychoreligious—for Crusoe's desire to roam'. An implied emphasis on 'mysterious internal impulse' is at odds with Crusoe's calculating nature.23

A modified and more elaborate version of the economic case was made by Maximillian E. Novak. The central proposition is announced with admirable directness: 'I suggest that Crusoe's sin is his refusal to follow the "calling" chosen for him by his father, and that the rationale for this action may be found in Crusoe's personal characteristics: his lack of economic prudence, his inability to follow a steady profession, his indifference to a calm bourgeois life, and his love of travel.' To buttress this argument Novak brings a variety of evidence. He reviews Crusoe's personal traits, observing that 'When he created the character of Crusoe, Defoe certainly had more empathy with the concept of the colonist than with that of the capitalist'. (Novak has in mind contemporaneous works like the life of Ralegh; see above, p. 27.) Defoe 'admired the merchant, but not the capitalist or even the tradesman who made excessive profits'. An 'excellent sketch' of Crusoe's own character is quoted from RC2 (p. 216), where the narrator refers to himself as 'a mad rambling Boy'. Crusoe is 'a prototype of Shaw's Bluntschli—the hero raised as a tradesman but with a romantic temperament'. Novak then investigates the concept of 'calling', as evolving from Luther and modified by subsequent Protestant theology. Weber and Tawney again come much into the argument. Perceptively Novak remarks that 'Defoe's hero is not a hermit by nature; he survives his solitude, but he does not enjoy it'—this in itself throws some light on the thesis of Watt and Richetti. The conclusion is that 'Crusoe does not disobey his parents in the name of free enterprise or economic freedom, but for a strangely adventurous, romantic, and unprofitable desire to see foreign lands. If any economic moral can be drawn from Crusoe's narrative, it is a conservative warning that Englishmen about to embark on the economic disaster of the South Sea Bubble should mind their callings and stick to the sure road of trade.'24

This reading was quickly challenged by G. A. Starr, who contended that it demanded a 'more individualized portrait than Defoe actually gives us at [the start] of the book'. Starr cites The Family Instructor amongst other works to indicate the orthodoxy of Defoe's ideas at this point: 'That man is naturally subject to rebellious impulse is a principle he frequently asserts, and it would appear to provide a sufficient "rationale" for Crusoe's behavior on this occasion. Indeed the episode seems to rest on an orthodox Calvinistic conception of man's innate waywardness and obstinacy.' What we have is simply 'a generalized portrait of the young man'. Starr's counter-suggestion is that 'implicit in Defoe's treatment of the episode is a conventional identification of family, social and divine order, all of which are flouted by Crusoe's deed'. In a sense, Crusoe's act of disobedience 'is merely the first overt expression of a more fundamental source of trouble: the natural waywardness of every unregenerate man'. Its function is to 'initiate a pattern of wrongdoing'. The parallel with the story of Jonah mentioned by Crusoe's shipmate on his first voyage from Hull (RC1, p. 15) is seen as a close one: in both episodes the narrative provides 'a kind of "objective correlative" for the hero's turbulent, unruly spirit'. (The story of Jonah, located neither by Starr nor the OEN editor, is found, of course, in the book of Jonah, 1-2; it may be added that Hunter shows it to be a common emblem in providential works.) For Starr, who emphasises the 'special fondness' shown by Providence for the middle station, Crusoe 'like the Prodigal Son before him' displays not just a lack of economic prudence but 'a radical perversity and impiety'.25

All these readings have points of interest in them. If Starr seems to me the most convincing overall, this is chiefly on two counts. First, his view of the episode fits more snugly into a general sense of the way the book works: the opening episode contributes to the total pattern without altogether controlling later developments. Secondly, he gives to the phrase 'original sin' the primary acceptation it must have had for most readers, and not only those with a Calvinist background, in Defoe's time. By metaphor the phrase could no doubt be extended to social or economic areas of life, but its prime theological cast could never be dispelled. When we find Crusoe making explicit reference to St Luke's parable of the prodigal (RC1, pp. 8, 14) as well as to the Jonah story—the standard types of rebellion and disobedience in Puritan homiletics—we are pushed closer to the underlying allegory of the Fall itself, for so long the crucial datum in man's understanding of his own spiritual condition. As Hunter suggests, Crusoe's rejection of his parents 'takes its ultimate mythic dimension' from this source.26 No interpretation of the opening of Robinson Crusoe which ignores this dimension of meaning will disclose the point of this episode in the full trajectory of Crusoe's career.

On the other hand it is possible to make the correspondences too strict and to drown the text in scriptural allusions of doubtful relevance. Robert W. Ayers's typological reading does not altogether avoid this pitfall; building upon the fundamental analogical identity of Crusoe's father as God and the hero himself as Adam, he discovers emblems of all known temptations within the text. A new etymology for the name 'Crusoe' relates it to crusader. Ayers sees a metaphysical overtone in the phrase 'middle State' (RC1, p. 4), which makes the father's speech a proleptic hint of Pope's lines in the Essay on Man:

Plac'd on this isthmus of a middle state,
A being darkly wise, and rudely great.
(Epistle II, pp. 3-4)

Ayers finds sacramental symbols thickly strewn about the island (caves, grapes, etc.), and is even able to identify the boy Xury as a Christ figure 'to some degree'.27 It is not very obvious how one can be Christ to some degree.

But this is at worst an overstatement of genuine elements in the book. Whether we can discern the things detected by Watt and Richetti is a matter of taste and judgement: in general, those who dislike capitalism as a historical phenomenon are the readiest to suppose that Defoe sensed by intuition failings in its effects on the human spirit and that he chose to dramatise these through Crusoe. One of the difficulties in seeing the novel as a work which 'drew attention to the … need of building up a network of personal relationships on a new and conscious pattern' is that it neglects a key aspect of the plot: Crusoe achieves salvation, and overcomes his existential isolation, without any 'network of personal relationships'—Friday comes late on the scene and is a dependant rather than a friend. This is apart from the awkward fact that Defoe shows Crusoe's 'Island of Despair' as a Godless, not a manless, world; he is reconciled to his condition by solitary devotions (which go on while his capital is accreting), not by healthy interpersonal contacts.28 True, many modern critics dislike Crusoe even at the end, and find something suspect (if not downright disreputable) in his accumulative habits; but it is far from clear that Defoe meant us to share this disapproval. As for Richetti, he requires us to believe that Crusoe destroys his father, not just symbolically but 'in a real sense'.29 In that case Defoe badly mismanaged things, for we have no idea how and when the father died. Crusoe simply learns on his return that his parents are dead and almost 'all the Family extinct' (RC1, p. 278). I hope it is not being too literal-minded to observe that he has been away from Yorkshire for nearly thirty-six years; his father was described as 'very ancient' when Crusoe was growing up—he had retired even before marrying. In such circumstances the hero's direct responsibility for his parent's demise looks a little blurred.

The fact is that Crusoe is allotted 'something fatal in that Propension of Nature tending directly to the Life of Misery which was to befal me' (RC1, p. 3). At the heart of this stands the 'meer wandering Inclination' (p. 4) rightly emphasised by Novak; but it transcends the simple ambition to travel as it does the mere pursuit of monetary gain. He is not deflected by his experiences in the storm off Yarmouth, though the portents are clear enough to him; nor by his captivity at Sallee, though he again recalls his father's 'prophetick Discourse' (p. 19); nor by his early struggles in Brazil, where he sees himself as 'just like a Man cast away upon some desolate Island' (p. 35); nor by his later prosperity there:

Had I continued in the Station I was now in, I had room for all the happy things to have yet befallen me, for which my Father so earnestly recommended a quiet retired Life, and of which he had so sensibly describ'd the middle Station of Life to be full of; but other things attended me, and I was still to be the wilful Agent of all my own Miseries; and particularly to encrease my Fault and double the Reflections upon my self, which in my future Sorrows I should have leisure to make; all these Miscarriages were procured by my apparent obstinate adhering to my foolish inclination of wandring abroad and pursuing that Inclination, in contradiction to the clearest Views of doing my self good in a fair and plain pursuit of those Prospects and those measures of Life, which Nature and Providence concurred to present me with, and to make my Duty. (p. 38)

Crusoe does indeed have abundant leisure on his island to reflect upon his past mistakes. Filial disobedience was followed by blind obstinacy—a refusal to learn from the past which is not just imprudent but against nature, perverse and, as it were, self-renewing.

Even in RC2, after he has grown rich, Crusoe finds the same 'distemper of wandering' (p. 8) overtaking him: he persuades himself 'it would be a kind of resisting Providence' if he were to reject his nephew's offer of a new journey (p. 11). This is not the calculating language of a self-aggrandising manipulator: it has the air of someone possessed by an obscure private fantasy. At the very end of the second part, Crusoe tells us he is finally stifling the demon within:

And here resolving to harass myself no more, I am preparing for a longer journey than all these, having lived seventy-two years a life of infinite variety, and learnt sufficiently to know the value of retirement, and the blessing of ending our days in peace, (p. 323)

An unconvincing litany to go out upon, some would think; but in my view a truly organic conclusion. The restlessness which drives Crusoe is the very spirit of his being. It will be extirpated not by the end of his actual travels, or by the accomplishment of any economic goal; it is part of man's fallen nature, and will survive until he achieves salvation in death. Christian was freed of his burden of guilt at the foot of the Cross, although it was not until he crossed the River of Death that he put off his mortal garments.30 For Crusoe the act of conversion brings insight, joy and a reanimated energy born of self-acceptance; but full release from the innate contradictions of his nature will come only with the 'longer journey' out of mortal existence….

Notes

1 Quoted in CH, pp. 166-7.

2 Watt, p. 84. The argument that Defoe's secularised Puritanism produced 'the relative impotence of religion' in his novels (pp. 83-5) contains many provocative observations, but it also leaves many handles for rejoinder. For example, the statement that Crusoe must 'make his own way along a path no longer clearly illumined by God's particular providences' seems contradictory in view of Crusoe's own statements after his conversion. See for instance RC1, pp. 175-6, on the 'secret Intimations of Providence'. Similarly Crusoe speaks of 'a special Providence' that he was cast away on the side of the island (as he then supposed) where savages did not come (p. 164).

3 R. H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (London, 1926; Harmondsworth, 1938), p. 212.

4 Starr, pp. 74-125. For another view of these matters, see Martin J. Grief, 'The conversion of Crusoe', SEL, Vol. VI (1966), pp. 551-74. Greif sees the book as 'the record of a notable spiritual pilgrimage across the sea of life, from a lawless course of living to true Christian repentance: a symbolic voyage from sin and folly to the gift of God's grace attained through sincere belief in Jesus Christ' (pp. 551-2). He sets out the 'Protestant scheme of salvation', stressing two primary motives to repentance—love of God and fear of His wrath. Like Hunter, Greif detects a number of 'Christian metaphors pervasively present in homiletic literature' (p. 555), mostly concerned with the sea and storms. He identifies caves as (typologically) the home of thieves and robbers (p. 567) and sheep as symbols of sanctification (p. 574). Less persuasive in detail than Starr or Hunter, Grief presents a sound overall case in harmony with theirs.

5 Hunter, passim (quotations from pp. 126, 189). For the conversion of Friday to Christianity, see pp. 184-6.

6 Starr, pp. 3-50; Hunter, pp. 76-92.

7 Starr, pp. 81-125; Hunter, pp. 88, 185.

8 ibid., pp 23-50.

9 ibid., pp. 51-75. The Presbyterian minister John Flavell (?1630-91) contributed both to the guide and the Providence traditions, as defined by Hunter; his Seaman 's Companion is a good example of the guide aimed specifically at mariners.

10The Storm (London, 1704), sig. A6r, p. 271.

11 Secord, pp. 78-85.

12Tour, Vol. I, pp. 69-72.

13The Storm, pp. 266-70.

14 See the comments of Louis A. Landa in the OEN edn (London, 1969), p. xxiii.

15 Hunter, pp. 105-24 (quotation from p. 123).

16 J. Paul Hunter, 'Friday as a convert', RES, Vol. XIV (1963), pp. 243-8.

17Daniel Defoe, ed. J. T. Boulton (London, 1965), p. 166.

18 This and the following paragraphs draw on Sutherland, pp. 1-25; Citizen, pp. 1-43; and Shinagel, pp. 1-22. See also Lew Girdler, 'Defoe's education at Newington Green', SP, Vol. L (1953), pp. 573-91; and J. R. Moore, 'Defoe's religious sect', RES, Vol. XVII (1941), pp. 461-7.

19A True Collection of the Writings of the Author of the True Born English-man (2nd edn, London, 1705), pp. 110-18.

20Citizen, p. 19.

21 ibid., pp. 224-5; Hunter, pp. 47-9, 204-7.

22 Watt, pp. 67-8.

23 J. J. Richetti, Defoe's Narratives (Oxford, 1975), pp. 26-7.

24 Novak, Economics, pp. 32-48. Defoe was certainly deeply affected by the Bubble, as his later works show (it may even be a concealed metaphor in A Journal of the Plague Year); but to speak of the nation 'embarking' on the Bubble makes it a strangely purposeful brand of catastrophe.

25 Starr, pp. 74-81. For the Jonah emblem, see Hunter, p. 68; for a brief consideration of the 'original sin', ibid., pp. 128-33.

26 See ibid., pp. 133-43.

27 R. W. Ayers, "Robinson Crusoe: 'allusive allegorick history'", PMLA, Vol. LXXXII (1967), pp. 399-407.

28 Watt, p. 96. Watt's reading of Crusoe's experience as one of spiritual alienation, mirroring the isolated state of capitalist man, would ideally require the hero's misery and loneliness to be coterminous with his sojourn by himself on the island. But, as the narrator repeatedly makes clear, his sense of desolation belonged to his Godless rather than his unaccompanied condition.

29 Richetti, Defoe's Narratives, p. 26.

30 Hunter supplies no direct parallel between Crusoe and The Pilgrim 's Progress, though their comparability lies at the heart of his case. Quite particular links can be discerned, e.g. the pilgrim's imperfect sight of the Celestial City through the shepherd's perspective glass as against Crusoe's vague sight of land to the west of his island (RC1 p. 108). Both perhaps are variants of the typological Pisgah vision….

A Note on the Texts

There is no complete collected edition of Defoe's works; as yet no volumes have appeared in the series to be published by the Southern Illinois University Press. I have therefore adopted this set of priorities in textual matters:

(1) Where a good modern edition exists, such as the Oxford English Novels volumes, I have used this. The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe is quoted from J. Donald Crowley's edition in that series (1972), which is based on the text of the first edition.

(2) Failing this, I have had recourse to an accessible reprint where the text is not hopelessly corrupt. For the second and third parts of Robinson Crusoe, I use The Works of Daniel Defoe, ed. G. H. Maynadier (Boston, Mass., 1903-4), Vols II and III. This is a modernised but reasonably accurate text.

(3) If there is no other available source, I quote from the original edition, or in certain cases from a collected edition published in Defoe's lifetime.

This procedure has one unfortunate consequence, in that my quotations present a mosaic of modern- and old-spelling texts. The alternative was to confine myself to largely inaccessible editions, many of them available only in the great libraries of the Englishspeaking world. I have chosen what seems to me the lesser of two evils.

Abbreviations

The following cue-titles are used for works which are frequently mentioned:

Byrd Max Byrd (ed.), Daniel Defoe: A Collection of Critical Essays (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1976).

CHP. Rogers (ed.), Defoe: The Critical Heritage (London and Boston, Mass., 1972).

Checklist J. R. Moore, A Checklist of the Writings of Daniel Defoe (Bloomington, Ind., 1960; rev. edn. 1971).

Citizen J. R. Moore, Daniel Defoe: Citizen of the Modern World (Chicago, III., 1958).

Earle P. Earle, The World of Defoe (London, 1976).

Ellis F. H. Ellis (ed.), Twentieth Century Interpretations of Robinson Crusoe (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1969).

Gildon Charles Gildon, The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Mr D——De F—— (London, 1719).

History of Pyrates A General History of the Pyrates, ed. M. Schonhom (London, 1972).

Hunter J. P. Hunter, The Reluctant Pilgrim: Defoe's Emblematic Method and Quest for Form in Robinson Crusoe (Baltimore, Md., 1966).

Hutchins H. C. Hutchins, Robinson Crusoe and Its Printing 1719-1731 (New York, 1925).

Lee W. Lee, Daniel Defoe: His Life, and Recently Discovered Writings, 3 vols. (London, 1869; reprinted Hildesheim, 1968).

Letters The Letters of Daniel Defoe, ed. G. H. Healey (Oxford, 1955).

Library Librorum ex Bibliothecis Philippi Farewell, D.D. et Danielis Defoe, Gen. Catalogus (1731).

Little B. Little, Crusoe's Captain (London, 1960).

Novak, Economics M. E. Novak, Economics and the Fiction of Daniel Defoe (Berkeley and Los Angeles, Calif., 1962; reprinted New York, 1976).

Novak, Nature M. E. Novak, Defoe and the Nature of Man (Oxford, 1963).

RC1 The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719). Text and page references follow the edition by J. Donald Crowley (Oxford English Novels, London, 1972).

RC2 The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719). See p. xiii.

RC3 Serious Reflections … of Robinson Crusoe (1720). See p. xiii.

Review Daniel Defoe, The Review, ed. A. W. Secord, 22 vols. (New York, 1938).

Secord A. W. Secord, Studies in the Narrative Method of Defoe (Urbana, III., 1924; reprinted New York, 1963).

Shinagel M. Shinagel, Daniel Defoe and Middle-Class Gentility (Cambridge, Mass., 1968).

Starr G. A. Starr, Defoe and Spiritual Autobiography (Princeton, NJ, 1965).

Sutherland J. Sutherland, Defoe, 2nd edn. (London, 1950).

Tour Daniel Defoe, A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain, ed. G. D. H. Cole (London, 1927; reprinted 1968).

Watt I. Watt, The Rise of the Novel (London, 1957; paperback, Harmondsworth, 1963).

Other Abbreviations

ECS
Eighteenth Century Studies
EIC
Essays in Criticism
ELH ELH:
A Journal of English Literary History
HLQ
Huntington Library Quarterly
JEGP
Journal of English and Germanic Philology
MLN
Modern Language Notes
MLQ
Modern Language Quarterly
MP
Modern Philology
N & Q
Notes and Queries
OED
Oxford English Dictionary
OEN
Oxford English Novels
PBSA
Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America
PMLA PMLA:
Publications of the Modern Language Association of America
PQ
Philological Quarterly
RES
Review of English Studies
SEL
Studies in English Literature 1500-1900
SP
Studies in Philology
TLS
Times Literary Supplement

Get Ahead with eNotes

Start your 48-hour free trial to access everything you need to rise to the top of the class. Enjoy expert answers and study guides ad-free and take your learning to the next level.

Get 48 Hours Free Access
Previous

Robinson Crusoe: Author and Narrator

Next

Crusoe in Exile