KHUDIRAM BOSE CENTRAL COLLEGE

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH

By Depicting The Utopian Environment, Defoe Criticizes the

Political and Economic Environment of England. Comment

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of The Requirement of B.A.

(Honours, Semester-IV) Under the University of Calcutta

Registration No.- 222-1211-0133-19

Roll No.- 192222-11-0060

Name of The Supervisor:

Rajdeep Mandal

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS:-

TOPIC NAME PAGE NO.

• Acknowledgement 3

• Abstract & Keywords 4

• Project Topic Name 5

• Introduction 6

• How Defoe criticizes

Political and economic
Environment of England 7 - 10
By depicting the utopian
Environment in his novel
Robinson Crusoe

• Conclusion 11

• Reference 12

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 • ACKNOWLEDGEMENT:-

I would like to thank the faculty members specially my project

supervisor Rajdeep Mandal whose valuable guidance has been the ones that helped me
patch this project and make it full proof success. His suggestions and instructions have
served as the major contribution towards the completion of the project.

Then I would like to thank my parents who have helped me with

Their valuable suggestions and guidance have been helpful in various phases of the completion
Of the project.

Last but not the least I would like to thank my classmates who
Have helped me a lot.

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• ABSTRACT:-

The present paper deals with the political and economic environment
Of England that Defoe criticizes by depicting the utopian environment in his novel
Robinson Crusoe. This paper discusses the colonial aspects of Robinson Crusoe where
An English man asserts and reasserts his Christian moral and British superiority in
order to consider his sense of identity and it also shows how subjugation, domination
profit and power are reflected. Through the character of Robinson Crusoe, we see the
representation of Defoe’s Political and Economic philosophy.

• KEYWORDS:-

Robinson Crusoe, Political, Economic, Utopian.

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 BY DEPICTING THE

UTOPIAN ENVIRONMENT, DEFOE CRITICIZES THE

POLITICAL

&

ECONOMIC

ENVIRONMENT OF ENGLAND

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 • INTRODUCTION:-

“ We do not usually think of Robinson Crusoe as a novel. Defoe’s firstfull-

length work of fiction seems to fall more naturally into place with Faust, Don Juan,

and Don Quixote, the great myths of our civilization.”

Ian Watt. “Robinson Crusoe as a myth.”

Robinson Crusoe has undoubtedly attained the status of a myth, and continuous to live outside
its original context, time and culture. Few literary works have as strong claim as Robinson
Crusoe or to use its original title of 1719, The life and strange surprising adventures of
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe is not a simple adventure book. Defoe uses the tale of a
shipwrecked soldier to criticize the society. The main idea behind adventure tales is that they
always serve the masculinist way of looking at culture, politics and literature. In support of
this view, Green draws a parallel between these terms by stating that:

“The core of adventure belongs to men (and vice versa) for the profoundest of reason
adventure is the name for experience beyond the law, or on the very frontier of
civilization. At least, adventure is the high-spirited way of naming that experience
and suggests the feeling of power that can go with it.”

Despite the novel is based on a true story, which happened to a scottish sailor named
Alexander Selkirk, Defoe uses this story only as a mean to pass his thoughts to the readers.
The story is full of irony and it uncovers social vices in easy and simple manner, which
makes the book appealing for different sorts of readers.

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 The novel Robinson Crusoe dared to challenge the political, social and
economic status quo of that time. By depicting the utopian environment in which was created
in the absence of society, Defoe criticizes the political and economic aspect of England’s
society, but it also able to show the narrator’s relationship with nature in a vivid account of
the personal growth and development that took place while stranded in solitude. Crusoe
becomes:

“the universal representative, the person, for whom every reader could substitute
himself.” (Coleridge 2318)

Many writers on economic and politics had located their utopia on an island isolated from
Western civilization to begin his with a single man.

A common theme that is usually portrayed in literature is the

person versus society. In the beginning of Robinson Crusoe, the narrator deals with not
Society but his family’s view. Robinson Crusoe is in a conflict with his family because he
did not meet their high expectations and did not get high social standing. As he states
himself about his relationship with his parents:

“My father… gave me serious and excellent counsel against what he foresaw was my
design.”

In the novel parents become incarnation of the entire social and political system, which
irritated Defoe so much. This way the tale about the shipwreck of one ordinary man become
a perfect mean to criticize British Society.

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 Defoe’s travel narrative represents a utopia. The protagonist of the
novel, who finds himself along on the desert island after shipwreck, creates a utopian society.
A.L. Morton implies that:

“Daniel Defoe is the characteristic writer and Robinson Crusoe is the characteristic utopia of
the early Eighteenth Century.” (Morton, 2003)

The colonial utopia in Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe is built on the idea that the author depicts a
utopian experience which starts as an individualistic utopia and develops into a community
utopia. The most significant theme is the role of the island as a location for the utopian
experiment, its links with the theme of isolation, the shift from the isolation to social contract
the relationship between possession and power, and the creation of the political and social
schemes of the island. For the critic, Robinson Crusoe can be classified in the same category
of texts such as Gulliver’s Travels, “because they both put forward a hero with dominant
political and economic endeavors.” (Morton, 2003) and proclaims that the success of the
bourgeois hero has transformed the mode of utopian writing at the time.

In Robinson Crusoe by isolating first his hero and then a small

group of settlers and returning them to a state of nature, Defoe was at tempting to illustrate
some of his most basic economic concepts, which for convenience maybe divided into three
economic principles: a theory of invention, a theory of value and an economic theory of
society. In spite of the obvious relationship between many of Locke’s economic theories and
Robinson Crusoe, any attempt to apply Locke’s concept of the rise of society to Defoe’s work
must encounter considerable difficulties. Locke’s theory in brief, was that labor creates
property, the invention of money fixes property; and property creates society to protect it. But
after Crusoe arrives at the island, before either his extensive enough to have possessed even
a small portion of the island, he refers to himself as the king of his territory. That labor and

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invention create things of use and that the value of things depends on their utility are the
economic themes of Crusoe’s life on his island. Defoe with the fictional machinery--- the
ideal milieu, the man willing to labor and invent, and the tools with which he could transform
his environment---- Defoe was prepared to create his economic utopia.

In his isolation from the rest of the world, Crusoe is able to

create a utopian society that not only he depends on for survival, but it is also dependent on
him. This “Marx-like” economic system which was created proved that a utopian environment
is possible to create, though easier having only one “citizen.” There are no other people to
corrupt or destroy the harmony in which Crusoe is living in with nature:

“It was now that I began sensibly to feel how much more happy this life I now led was
than the wicked, cursed, abominable life I led all the past part of my days.”

As Defoe depicts it, the narrator’s solitary confinement, even though it was an event that
Crusoe viewed as being a punishment from God for his sins in the beginning has really
Caused the narrator to become “enlightened” and has also made him realize that his new
life was by far better than that in England:

“The individual hero, the full-scale bourgeois man, having transformed England, has now
reached the shorts of Utopia…” (Morton,2003)

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In the island perspective, Defoe managed to illustrate what was needed for the formation of
unrealistic society. This impression however, separated from previous writers like Huxley
whose vision is seen as a classic analysis of the modern utopian thinking and values. Crusoe
takes some part of paradise and makes it an independent state. He is the king of Vale, square
of the manor and the lord of the country. While many politicians argue on issues regarding
the best way to come up with a perfect society, Defoe argues that the only way that can
happen is in the presence of all things except people, creating a dilemma irony. This was a
highly controversial topic in England at the time. Many of the people of certain religious and
also citizens were persecuted on the basis of their political beliefs. However, Defoe believed
that religious liberty as well as political liberty was the right that every member in the
society deserved. Therefore, Defoe’s entry into the world of politics was maybe necessary.
Defoe was not content to be part of the impersonal realm for long because he had a
Dangerous perspective of applying his thoughts to persons and also parties.

Along with the criticism of society Defoe is able to give

symbolism to the objects around Crusoe that support the idea of the creation of a utopian
environment. The new grown barley and corn on the island, which Crusoe calls a “prodigy
of nature,” is really symbolic of the spiritual and emotional growth that is taking place
within himself. These grains, however, were also a main source of food for Crusoe. The idea
of the island and Crusoe living with each other and giving to one another in harmony fully
supports the idea of a utopian society. It is at this time in the book that Crusoe realizes that
he can be dependent upon himself in order to survive. This is also the time in which he
realizes that his “misfortune” of becoming stranded on an island is really a blessing for all
of his party was dead.

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 • CONCLUSION:-

In Robinson Crusoe, the narrator develops to form an optimistic outlook

towards an unfortunate situation, and thus, creates a utopia for himself both mentally and
physically. By doing this, he essentially broke through the mold in which both British society
and his parents had set for him when becoming stranded with only his thoughts and fears:

“Crusoe finds the power to overcome a hostile world of hunger and sickness, animal and
Human brutality, even the power to overcome his most dangerous adversary, himself,”
(Hunter)

In doing so, Defoe is really criticizing the society in which he lived saying that the only
truly peaceful and loving society is that which contains one person, though, as in Robinson
Crusoe maybe this is not the society in which humans are capable of living in. Just as
Crusoe eventually saw his situation more optimistically, Defoe is saying that a society which
is less critical of itself is one that is closer to utopia.

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 • REFERENCE:-

Defoe, Daniel, Robinson Crusoe. Penguin Classics, 1719, Print.

Defoe, Daniel, Robinson Crusoe. Oxford World’s Classics, Print.

Critical Analysis of Robinson Crusoe. mural.uv.es. 8th April, 2020.

Person Versus Society in Robinson Crusoe. www.ukessays.com. 10th April, 2020.

Desai, Kaushal. Robinson Crusoe as a statement about materialism.

desaikaushal1315.blogspot.com. 13th April, 2020.

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