LITR / CRCL 5734: Colonial & Postcolonial Literature

Student Text-Dialogue Presentation, 2003

Individualism as a Function of Modernity
A Dialogue between Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Kincaid’s Lucy  

Presenter:  Dendy Farrar
Respondent:  Kayla Logan
Recorder:  Mindi Swenson

I define Individualism as the refusal to accept your present “lot in life” and any present proffered roles – you carve your own space in the world without the help of any intermediary force and at the opposition of external forces like parents, instruction, etc.

Both Lucy and Robinson Crusoe flee home and become “exiles” without the express permission or blessings from their families.  Kasi Hlavaty asserted in her 2001 dialogue that Crusoe would not conform to his father’s wishes, and Lucy, refused to conform, period”

Robinson Crusoe leaves home against his parents’ wishes and abandons his proffered role in the “middle station of life” in order to fulfill his own needs.

Lucy leaves her home not from a “middle station of life” in order to experience an adventure, but in order to improve her condition.

While both characters make individual decisions to make their own way in their lives and determine their own futures, they are, nonetheless, haunted by their families and their pasts.

In Robinson Crusoe, this discomfort with the past surfaces as past sins, wickedness of past life, and misspent life, and God’s punishment for sinning.

This discomfort begins with his decision to flee home and rebel against his parents on page 60:

“But I that was born to be my own destroyer, could no more resist the offer than I could restrain my first rambling designs, when my father’s good counsel was lost upon me.  In a word, I told them I would go with all my heart …”

On page 103, we see that Crusoe’s individual religion begins to take shape in the form of a reflection on his own ways:

“I had never had so much as one thought of it being the hand of God, or that it was a just punishment for my sin; my rebellious behaviour against my father, or my present sins which were great; or so much as a punishment for the general course of my wicked life.”

This is at the beginning of his spiritual journey, but he is already being haunted by his family.

On page 105, once he becomes sick, he begins his self-reflection:

“I began to reproach my self with my past life, in which I had so evidently, by uncommon wickedness, provoked the justice of God to lay me under uncommon strokes, and to deal with me in so vindictive a manner.”

The last paragraph on this same page, 105, reads:

“In this interval, the good advice of my father came to my mind, and presently his prediction which I mentioned at the beginning to this story, viz. that if I did take this foolish step, God would not bless me, and I would have leisure hereafter to reflect upon having neglected His counsel, when there might be not to assist in my recovery”

Here we see that, unlike the first quotation where Crusoe claimed that he never worried about being punished for rebelling against his father, that in fact, he is haunted by family.

Lastly, because this story is a religious allegory – remember we are told this in the preface, its emphasis is on the virtues of independence, self-examination, and hard work – these are major tenants of Individualism.

As I said before, Lucy decides to leave home in order to improve her condition.  At the bottom of page 63 to 64 we see the reason why she left home, the last line on 63 reads:

“My mother would never come to see that perhaps my needs were more important than her wishes”

And on page 90, we see possibly why the memory of her mother haunts her so, in the first full paragraph on page 90

            “My past was my mother:  I could hear her voice”

skip down about seven lines

“I was not like my mother—I was my mother.  And I could see now why, to the few feeble attempts I made to draw a line between us, her reply always was “You can run away, but you cannot escape the fact that I am your mother, my blood runs in you, I carried you for nine months inside me.”  How else was I to take such a statement but as a sentence for life in a prison whose bars were stronger than any iron imaginable?”

So, at the challenge of her mother, Lucy leaves home, despite her mother’s efforts to control her.

Lucy may have left home because of her mother’s challenge, but she chooses her own future, regardless of other people’s input. 

We see this on page 21:

“I thought, On the one hand there was a girl being beaten by a man she could not see; on the other there was a girl getting her throat cut by a man she could see.  In this great big world, why should my life be reduced to these two possibilities?”

Here, Lucy is given the invitation to choose between self-torment at home and violence of an alien metropolis and she refuses to accept these are the only two choices.

On page 23, we see that Lucy is attempting to take control of her past now that she is in control of her future:

“It was my past, so to speak, my first real past – a past that was my own and over which I had the final word.  I had just lived through a bleak and cold time, and it is not to the weather outside that I refer.”

But Lucy does not take control of her past.  She is continuously haunted by her family and her past.

On page 47, we see that she still struggles with this.

“Whenever he heard me speak of my family with bitterness, he said that I spoke about them in that way because I really missed them.”

But despite, this wrestling with the past in a quest for a new future, Lucy realizes that she must focus on herself and reinvent herself.

On page 134, we see this self-realization:

“I understood that I was inventing myself, and that I was doing this more in the way of a painter than in the way of a scientist.  I could not count on precision or calculation; I could only count on intuition.  I did not have anything exactly in mind, but when the picture was complete I would know.  I did not have position, I did not have money at my disposal.  I had memory, I had anger, I had despair.”

Lucy cannot say what exactly will come to replace that girl – she only knows that she is following a powerful instinct to find a self that feels authentic.

So, my question is:

How does Robinson Crusoe’s and Lucy’s quest for individuality play out in the novels?  How do these quests reflect Colonialism and Post Colonialism?

Class Discussion:

Kayla:  In terms of self and other, Robinson Crusoe always felt self was good and other was inferior.  Lucy is trying to find herself but she thinks of herself as bad.  Hence, the name Lucifer.  In a postcolonial world she would have an imposed impression of being bad.

Rosalyn:  Lucy lives up to the Lucifer ideal

Jessica:  But she asks her mom about the herbs

Rosalyn:  Robinson Crusoe has the luxury of leaving for adventure but Lucy has to leaver to makes her life better.  Robinson Crusoe has everything by accident

Jessica:  Lucy’s curtains were from her home but here in America, they look vulgar, but everything Robison Crusoe brought fit

Natalie:  Robinson Crusoe sees himself as self but Lucy sees herself as the other as well as the self.  Postcolonial are more evolved.  Lucy is more evolved.

Natalie:  If Robinson Crusoe moved to Mariah’s just think what would happen!

Greg:  The element of sexuality comes up.  Minority women are less threatening than the black male.

White:  Historically, women would learn to operate inside as a domestic and the men would work outside.

Rosalyn:  The duties in a dominant and lesser culture don’t change -- cooking, cleaning, care taking, etc. It just depends on who is doing it.

Kayla:  Domestics can understand what goes on in the house and they can take that to the outside world.

White:  Frederick Douglas moves in with a white mother – the gender variation is inescapable.  All burden is displaced on the minority person – but it could switch around.

White:  Lucy carries the history of color with her, Robinson Crusoe doesn’t.  Lucy will always be her mother’s daughter.  Robinson Crusoe comes from a traditional family.  It seems like an ancient culture in Antigua, but it is not.  If there is a big discrepancy in men to women, inheritance is usually seen as the answer. 

Rosalyn:  Lucy’s father did marry her mother.

Kim:  Lucy’s world was so small.  She rejects her mother and accepts her father.

White:  Robinson Crusoe is to his father what Lucy is to her mother.

Kim:  Political Individuality entails someone who keeps records, like how Crusoe keeps a journal and Lucy throws away her letters – she want to disregard the past.  She is postmodern.

Kayla:  on pg. 154 Lucy recognizes that Peggy sees things differently – perception and individuality.  This shows that Lucy is postmodern, whereas Robinson Crusoe would want everyone to see what he sees.

White:  On page 124 – 125 Lucy’s father’s past is discussed.  We see where he was earlier in his life and how he came to be who he is today.  We see that Lucy’s world is not stable.

We also see the Garden of Eden story in both novels

Dendy:  Crusoe is also mentioned as being the Prodigal Son

White:  Yes, the novel is filled with Biblical language.  Both texts end up with people that are ultimately alone.