Timothy Assel

Colonial and Post-Colonial Dialogue: Defoe and Kincaid

To bring colonial and post-colonial literature into a dialogue allows a reader to see historical events from different perspectives. Defoe’s classic colonial novel, Robinson Crusoe, might read very differently if viewed from a post-colonial perspective. For example, Crusoe’s utopian society is dependent on Friday’s unquestioning loyalty and devotion to his master. What if Friday’s feelings towards Crusoe were the same feelings expressed in Kincaid’s “A Small Place?” Crusoe would have been in a very precarious position had Friday harbored any rebellious or insubordinate intent. If Friday had discarded the yoke of slavery and abandoned Crusoe, Crusoe’s dreams of governing a prosperous island community would have been dashed to pieces like ship-wreckage in a raging storm.

Dialogue between Defoe’s novel and Kincaid’s novel also allows a reader to consider issues of post-colonial society. What would happen to Crusoe’s island paradise if the children of mixed settler and native ancestry shared Lucy’s hatred and distrust of English colonizers? Race would certainly affect the dynamics of society and politics on Crusoe’s island for future generations. As the community increases in population with each successive generation, majority and minority groups will emerge and groups with similar ancestry will likely band together to gain more power and control over the island. The advantages that descendants of English settlers will have in trade and business with other English colonies would cause animosity between them and the rest of the island because the non-English population will feel they are being treated unfairly.

The third wave of transnational migrants can also be found by reading the works of Defoe and Kincaid as a dialogue. For example, Jamaica Kincaid’s “A Small Place” reads like a form of protest literature against colonial perspectives represented by Defoe. Kincaid’s protest literature is an active form of dialogue which personalizes cultural opposition by using slander and ridicule against descendants of colonizers. In “A Small Place,” the narrator speaks out against the colonizers, but the colonizers are not given a voice with which to respond. However, Kincaid’s novel, Lucy, provides intertextual protest because American descendants of colonizers are given a voice through Dinah and Mariah. These two characters represent views held by many European-Americans; Dinah is demeaning, while Mariah is patronizing. Lucy voices her protests against Dinah and Mariah, which creates a dialogue between master and servant that is not expressed in Crusoe’s conversations with Friday.