The Life and Works of Daniel Defoe

Daniel Defoe (1659-1731) was an English novelist, pamphleteer and journalist, who became widely known for his novel Robinson Crusoe. He is considered to be one of the founders of the English novel. Defoe produced more than five hundred books, pamphlets and journals on various topics (such as politics, crime, psychology, marriage, etc.). After The Oxford Companion to English Literature, “He was a master of plain prose and powerful narrative, with a journalist’s curiosity and love of realistic detail; his peculiar gifts made him of the greatest reporters of his time, as well as a great imaginative writer who in Robinson Crusoe created one of the most familiar and resonant myths of modern literature.” (Drabble, 1985, 263). Defoe was born in the middle class family — the Foes, who were Presbyterian dissenters – Protestants that do not belong to the Anglican Church. Later he added the aristocratic sounding "De" to his name and occasionally claimed descent from the family of De Beau Faux. He studied at Charles Morton’s Academy in London. After finishing his studies Defoe decided to go into trade and politics. His career was versatile since he ventured into several trade and business projects; however, almost all of them were unsuccessful. In 1683 Defoe married Mary Tuffley, with whom he had eight children, six of whom survived. Daniel Defoe died in 1731 and was buried in Bunhill Fields, London. Among his contemporaries Defoe was more known as a journalist and pamphleteer than a novelist and only after the publication of Robinson Crusoe he had begun the career as a fiction writer. However, all his works disclose the aims that were basic for Defoe, i.e. to present the life of sinners and other extreme and to correct and stabilize the English language. Defoe’s first significant signed work was An Essay upon Projects (1697), which was importantly public spirited. He also wrote Enquiry into Occasional Conformity of Dissenters (1698); Legion’s Memorial to the House of Commons (1701), written when he entered the House of Commons; The True-Born Englishman (1701), published in twelve books; The Shortest Way with the Dissenters (1702); Hymn to Pillory; the journal The Review of the Affairs of France (1704-1713); a satirical attack on divine right Jure Divano (1706); the pamphlet Giving Alms to Charity; a vivid report of a current ghost story True Relation of the Apparition of one Mrs. Veal (1706); A Tour thro’ the whole Island of Great Britain (1724-1727), published in three volumes; and some others. The True-Born Englishman (1701) was the first really important work of Defoe and it is considered to be probably one of the most influential English satires written in verse. According to A Literary History of England, “The True-Born Englishman defended William III against the prejudices of such subjects who disliked the King’s Dutch origin or Dutch advisers.” (Baugh, 1967, 851). The satire supported the king and approached the English people for discriminating against foreigners, when so many of the things they regarded as peculiarly "English" were in fact of foreign origin. However, here the poetic limitations of Defoe’s are clearly seen by critics. Nevertheless, since he himself was from the middle class, he wrote for plain middle class people, who saw no disadvantages of Defoe’s verse. The next work of Defoe was a pamphlet The Shortest Way with the Dissenters (1702). In this pamphlet he presents a satire of the Anglican Tory attitude towards the nonconformists. In this pamphlet Defoe ironically suggests to the Tories to take severe measures of persecutions towards the dissenters. However, both the Tories and the dissenters understood Defoe’s irony literary. This led to the attack of the writer, to his imprisonment and to his punishment of going into the pillory, the result of which appeared Defoe’s poem Hymn to Pillory. Since Defoe was an extremely successful pamphleteer, one of his major contributions in the art of English literature is The Review of the Affairs of France (1704-1713). It had a serious importance since at that time England was at war with France. This Review was a political and economic pamphlet that appeared in nine volumes. According to A Literary History of England, this Review was “an almost unparalled feat in the journalism of that day” (ibid, 852). However, when the Tories came into the power in 1710, Defoe stopped writing The Review for their political opponents, the Whigs, and started publishing a new trade journal Mercator, or Commerce Retriev’d (1713-1704), which was designed for the ruling party. The Review was an important part of journalism written by Defoe, who was both interested in business and in literature. Defoe preferred writing things of the political, economic, social and moral aspects rather than create pure literary novels. He produced them only because of the taste of the public, who were particularly fascinated with such kind of writing after the publication of Robinson Crusoe. Defoe is considered to be the creator of the complete narrative realism which is closely connected with his long journalist’s career. Since he wrote articles in the way he understood it should be written, he used the same style of writing while creating his novels. It can be guessed that it was Defoe’s intention to write in such a manner because he sought readers to think his fiction to be true. After Boris Ford, “Defoe never admitted that he wrote fiction” (Ford, 1968, 206). One of the most influential works of Defoe ― Robinson Crusoe is also said to be rather a true story than a work of fiction. Robinson Crusoe, published in 1719, when Defoe was sixty years old, was based partly on the memories of Alexander Selkirk, a castaway, who spent four years and four months on an uninhabited island. It is possible that as a journalist Defoe must have heard his story and possibly interviewed him. Not surprisingly, this story could have inspired Defoe to write a book based partially on these adventures. Robinson Crusoe is a mariner who runs away to the sea at the age of 19 despite the warnings of his parents. He suffers a number of misfortunes at the hands of Barbary pirates and some others hardships. Finally Crusoe is shipwrecked off South America. With needful things from the ship, including the Bible, Crusoe manages to survive in the island. He stays in the island twenty eight years, two months and nineteen days. Using his behavior as an enterpriser, Crusoe adapts into the unfriendly environment. After several years he sees a strange footprint in the sand. Crusoe meets later the frightened native, christens him by the name ‘Friday’ and teaches him English. Later when an English ship arrives, Crusoe rescues the captain and crew from the hands of mutineers and is brought back to England. Although it is obvious that the story is more likely to be the invention of Defoe, the details, in which the story is presented, are so alive that as B. Ford maintains, “we do not think of the book as fiction but accord it at least a semi-historical status.” (ibid, 206). It goes without saying that Defoe writes in style that is used to stick close to the consciousness of the narrator. He puts the efforts to clarify his situation to himself and to the readers. The plain style of Defoe has the features of the primary qualities, introduced by Locke: the simple language presenting solidity, extension and number. A very important aspect of Robinson Crusoe is the theme of Christianity, presented in the novel. Since Defoe came from the family of dissenters, the obvious Puritanism can be observed in the novel. The main character – Crusoe, is trying to see the reason for everything that has happened to him and to find out what is the intention of God, who has send him all those hardships. Nevertheless, many critics share the opinion that Crusoe is not a very convincing Christian, because it appears that his religious intentions are rather accidental and can easily be destroyed. According to Christopher Gillie, “That Crusoe appears much less religious than Defoe means him to is also often remarked; on the other hand, if there is a principle of unity in the long, episodic narrative, it is the function of God as the basic Providence, subjecting chaos so that man may use his constructing virtues for the building of an orderly world.” (Gillie, 1972, 751). Still after the modern critics, Crusoe is concerned more with economic virtues than with pure religion. Crusoe is the symbol of economic man, who creates a single business in his island by colonizing it. According to David Daiches, “Crusoe is not an adventurer who goes to sea of excitement, but a sober and prudent merchant engaged in a business enterprise.” (Daiches, 1968, 600). The economic individualism is an important trait of character Crusoe possesses, since he acts accordingly when selling the Moorish boy Xury, who has saved his life, and later treating Friday not as a friend but as a slave. This way Defoe discloses the crucial social and economic processes of his time and is honest in presenting their impact on human behaviour. It can be stated that Robinson Crusoe does not only speak about and emphasize the material victory of modern civilization and present the strength of rationality which conquer the environment. After Ronald Carter and John Mc Rae, “Crusoe having survived twenty-eight years on his desert island, sees his investments made him rich, and sees his island colonized, without any sympathy for Friday whom he views as the simple native, improved by his master and by his conversion to Christianity. Alternatively, Friday can be seen as the victim of colonialisation whose territory and beliefs are usurped by the colonizer.” (Carter, Mc Rae, 1997, 171). Taking this into account, the novel presents the spiritual loneliness and social alienation of the individual in the society of the eighteenth century. Since the Puritans thought the worldly activities do not fit the real spiritual purpose of a man, a person, like Robinson Crusoe, who is mostly interested in the material affairs, is forced to endure all the hardships to be redeemed. What is more, Defoe grew up in the surroundings full of Puritanism and its spirit was closely connected with his writing style ― literary realism. He did not enjoy writing mere fiction, that is why, he created pieces of literature in rather simple, unadorned style, suitable for writing articles. Since Defoe came from the middle class, Robinson Crusoe is a work, where a specific middle class view of the relations between the society and the nature is presented. The life of Crusoe in the island possesses many features of the life of this social layer. This becomes clearly seen through the religion, which is based on the gratitude to God for His grace and the thought that Lord will aid those who will take care of themselves. After D. Daiches, “Prudence rather than heroism is the key to his actions; he is in fact the first significant example in English literature of the prudential hero.” (Daiches, 1968, 600). The common sense of Crusoe is presented with great respect by Defoe as a wonderful example for his contemporaries. Encouraged by the success of Robinson Crusoe, Defoe wrote two sequels of this novel: The Father Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719), in which Crusoe revisits the island and loses Friday in an attack by savages, and The Serious Reflections of Robinson Crusoe (1729), which did not gain wide recognition. Despite this, the latter is of particular importance since here moral essays are presented and Defoe speaks of them as an allegory of his own life. After B. Ford, “In an eloquent chapter, ‘Of Solitude’, which begins the Serious Reflections, he coverts Crusoe’s island existence into an image of the perpetual aloneness of man which springs from his basic egocentricity: ‘…it seems to me that life in general is, or ought to be, but one universal act of solitude. Everything revolves in our minds by innumerable circular motions, all centering in ourselves… we love, we hate, we covet, we enjoy, all in privacy and solitude.’ (Ford, 1968, 209-210). The unexpected success of Robinson Crusoe led Defoe to the creation of the other works of fiction, such as the historical romance The Memoirs of a Cavalier (1720), Captain Singleton (1720), Moll Flanders (1722), Colonel Jack (1722), Roxana: The Fortunated Mistress (1724) and Captain George Carlton (1728). Next to these novels in 1722 he also published The Journal of the Plague Year, which is considered to be a very realistic account of the Great Plague (1655) of London. Moll Flanders (1722) is an extremely interesting work, since it discloses the feelings of the characters more vividly than Robinson Crusoe. This novel is a first-person narration of the fall and eventual redemption of a lonely woman in England of seventeenth century. She appears to be a whore, libertine and thief, commits adultery and incest, yet manages to keep the reader's sympathy. Both this novel and Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress (1724) are examples of the noticeable way in which Defoe seems to give life his fictional characters, not least in that they are women. The theme of Moll Flanders is disclosed more successfully since as it is stated in A Literary History of England, “the theme is concerned, not with a fight against nature [as in Robinson Crusoe], but with something more typical of the novel, the individual’s struggle against society.” (Baugh, 1967, 211). However, the main character – Moll, is presented as a materialist since a deep and constant sense of money can be observed throughout the whole novel. It is obvious that Defoe is strongly fascinated with the materiality both in Robinson Crusoe and in Moll Flanders. Defoe sought to reduce the literature, he wrote, to journalistic style and to present invented things as if they were true. However, he was a novelist despite the fact that he tried to write his pieces of literature in different manner. After D. Daiches, “His eye for detail, his fascination with material things and with the surface of human behavior, and his deep roots in the English middle class, combined to make his best fiction both historically important and intrinsically interesting.” (Daiches, 1968, 601). Nonetheless, he could not perceive the true source of human behavior. For instance, Moll Flanders cannot be described as a real completely developed person, although her speech presented in the novel, is extremely keen. Taking this into consideration, Defoe can be said to lack creative imagination and a feeling of structure. Still, he has his own imagination, which enables him to create lies that assemble truth. The style, in which Moll Flanders is written, is a typical Defoe’s reporting style, since the biggest part of this work consists simply of presenting the main character’s love affairs and stealing. However, according to Literary History of England, “narrative mastery is already much: no novelist can succeed unless he is a good reporter, and there is a long and honourable tradition in the novel which makes the depiction of social reality its main aim.” (Baugh, 1967, 212). Defoe was extremely successful in using his talent and experience as a journalist while creating a special atmosphere and characters in his novels. The majority of the critics consider Moll Flanders to be more valuable work than a well-known Robinson Crusoe. Moll Flanders assembles more a usual novel, since in the end of it the core of the presented social group is reunited. Usually novels have the main character that appears in the course of the whole work. Defoe does not create perfectly organized structure of the novels, which is probably the result of his journalistic writing style. Normally he does not introduce chapters in his fiction and the break of thought is also often observable Defoe’s novels while he often introduces a pause in the middle of his works. Colonel Jack (1722) is one more important piece of fictional Defoe’s writing. This novel is considered to be one of the greatest works of the writer taking into regards its writing style. The book presents Defoe’s characteristically vivid reporting style and shows his perfect perception of the social situation of his time society and describes the moral world of a young homeless man. Daniel Defoe has given an important contribution to the literary history of England not only because he is considered to be one of the inventors of the English novel, but also because he introduced a new style of writing, which at his time was unique. His well-known Robinson Crusoe, as well as other novels, discloses the ideas and the themes that were current for the middle class whose power at the time Defoe lived was rising. Yet for his contemporaries Defoe was more known as a talented pamphleteer than a fiction writer and although the misunderstanding of his pamphlets made him a lot of troubles, they also present his perfect ability to disclose things in economic journalism with a great portion of irony. The greatest achievement of Defoe was that he created the stories that were full of brilliant episodes, where characters and events are set with the help of powerful imagination and the whole plot and all the characters of the stories seem to be very realistic. Taking this into regards, Defoe can considered to be a remarkable writer, an amazing man and one of the ablest journalists and pamphleteers of his time, whose genius, which appeared after he was sixty years old, in many aspects have not been superseded until now. REFERENCES Baugh, D. (ed.) (1967). A Literary History of England. New York: Appleton – Century - Crafts Carter, R., McRae, J. (1997). The Routledge History of Literature in English. Britain and Ireland. London, New York: Routledge Daiches, D. (1968). A Critical History of English Literature. Volume III. London: Secker&Warburg Drabble, M. (ed.) (1985). The Oxford Companion to English Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press Ford, B. (1968). The Pelican Guide to English Literature. From Dryden to Johnson. Volume 4. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Gillie, Ch. (1972). Longman Companion to English Literature. London: Longman

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