Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe fits no one literary genre but, as J. Paul Hunter argues, “rises… above all the Puritan subliterary traditions,” while still dependent on “those traditions.”[1] The question of genre proves a debate in itself. However, this paper accepts the complexity of Robinson Crusoe’s literary heritage, presumes its indebtedness to the Puritan literary tradition, and leaves the generic debates for others.[2] This paper argues that Defoe teaches in Robinson Crusoe not that the “middle station” of life is always best, but that a life of Christian contentment is best, regardless of the type of life God ordains for a person. This paper will demonstrate this by tracing how Crusoe discusses his father’s advice as he recounts the story of his life, by considering how Crusoe’s life compares to this advice, and by examining, in light of the rest of the book, how the account of Crusoe’s life ends.
In the first pages of Robinson Crusoe, Crusoe’s father recommends to him what he calls the middle station of life, one marked by “Ease and Pleasure.” It entails many blessings, in contrast to the other ways of life which naturally bring poor consequences.[3] Crusoe spurns his advice, but quickly remembers it after he first goes to sea and faces a squall. He remembers his father’s words and sees the storm as “the Judgment of Heaven.”[4] But, he shortly discards his resolution to return home. Later, a more serious storm comes, but he decides against going home yet again. He then successfully voyages once before his success quickly ends.[5] His second voyage leads to slavery, and he again recalls his father’s words.[6]
Eventually, Crusoe escapes slavery and finds himself “coming into the very Middle Station… which [his] Father advised [him] to before.”[7] He reasons that he could have grown quite wealthy in the Brasils, if he continued in that life.[8] This perhaps suggests he may have moved from the Middle Station into the Upper Station. His wealth does begin to increase substantially. But, he set his mind on “Projects and Undertakings” that were beyond him.[9] In this, Crusoe seems to experience some of what his father described as the downfalls of the Upper Station, namely “Pride” and “Ambition.”[10]Yet, Crusoe also says, “Had I continued in the Station I was now in, I had room for all the happy things… for which my Father so earnestly recommended a quiet and retired Life, and of which he had so sensibly describ’d the middle Station of Life to be full of.”[11] Thus, it seems that Crusoe thinks he could have had a life full of the “happy things” in an upper station of life if he had contented himself with staying where he was and growing his wealth. But, Crusoe again pursues an inclination to wander, instead of pursuing what “Nature and Providence concurred to present [him] with, and to make [his] Duty.” By this he indicates that God placed him at his Plantation and he should have been content with it. It seems Crusoe could have had the happy things his father thought the Middle Station would provide in even an upper station—the key was contentment. But, Crusoe makes the same mistake again.[12]
This, of course, leads to his shipwreck on the island. When he finally turns to Christ he is able to say, “As for my solitary Life it was nothing,” so much better was deliverance from his sins than any physical deliverance could be.[13] He comes to see that life on the island, though miserable for want of company, was far happier than the evil life he lived before.[14]Moreover, he eventually resolves that he could be “more happy in this forsaken Solitary Condition, than it was probable [he] should ever have been in any other Particular State in the World.”[15] He comes to this conclusion after reading in his Bible that God would never leave or forsake him. He reasons that if he had all the world could offer and yet not have God, “there wou’d be no Comparison in the Loss.” Crusoe seems to think that being on the island with God is far better than having anything else without God, and if he had never come to the island he could not have gained this happiness. Thus, the happiness Crusoe experiences with God overshadows any worldly happiness of the Middle Way which his father seemed to recommend.
While it appears Crusoe rejects the strict framework of his father’s three stations of life, he still calls his father’s advice “excellent.”[16] Furthermore, Crusoe clarifies why the advice was excellent. He says he became occupied with thinking how he might get off the island and calls himself “a Memento to” all who are affected by “the general Plague of Mankind.” This plague, he says, is “not being satisfy’d with the Station wherein God and Nature has plac’d” a person. It is here that he calls the rejection of his father’s advice his initial sin, and says that his “miserable Condition” on the island is because of his “subsequent Mistakes of the same Kind.”[17] Given the context, this mistake is clearly discontentment with the station God appoints. A closer examination of what his father says at the outset of the book shows that he does indeed advise Crusoe to stay in the station God put him in.
Crusoe’s father told him “that [his] was the middle State.” He counseled Crusoe not to enter a life involving miseries when “Nature and the Station of Life [he] was born in” did not seem to put him in such a position.[18] While his father does recommend the Middle Way to Crusoe as the best way, he does so in light of it being the station set before Crusoe by God. It is this less noticeable thrust of his father’s advice that Crusoe primarily deems excellent. However, Crusoe speaks of finding more happiness, knowing God would not leave him, than if he had never come to the island and been truly converted.[19] So far, this does not seem to necessarily contradict his father’s notion of the Middle Station as “the best State in the world” if his father considered it the best state with God.[20] However, Crusoe’s father does not seem to emphasis anything like this to Crusoe.[21] Regardless, his father’s words cannot constitue a universal rule to Crusoe because of other factors that become evident, particularly later in the novel. Perhaps the most significant of these is the great happiness Crusoe enjoys after Friday joins him on the island.
Though Crusoe did find much contentment before Friday came, he still wrestled with a natural and inevitable discontentment largely, if not exclusively, because it truly is not good for man to be alone (Genesis 2:18).[22] With Friday, he found that “the Conversation” he enjoyed with him “made the three Years which [they] liv’d there together perfectly and compleatly happy, if any such Thing as compleat Happiness can be form’d in a sublunary State.” In other words, if perfect happiness is even possible in this life, they had it. When Crusoe spoke of his happiness and thankfulness to God before, he could not bring himself to thank God specifically for bringing him to the island.[23] Only in the company of Friday does Crusoe rejoice that God brought him to the island, and that he does “frequently.”[24] At this point in the story, Crusoe’s station is rather unclear if one tries to fit it into the way his father framed the different stations of life. At times he reckons himself a sort of king, and yet he must still labor to provide for himself. However, Crusoe’s happiness is not contingent on his manner of living as regards work and wealth. Rather, Crusoe’s happiness comes in his relationship with God and his fellowship with Friday. Only once Crusoe has found contentment in Christ does he enjoy true fellowship with a person; before the island he never had a relationship like the one he enjoyed with Friday. The fact that it was Christian fellowship likely enabled that happiness to come to “perfection.” Clearly, Crusoe was able to find this complete happiness outside of his father’s Middle Way. The final pages of Robinson Crusoe further show the rejection of the strict Middle Way of Crusoe’s father.
First, as he closes his account, Crusoe reveals that he embarks on more voyages and adventures. He remarks that most would think he would be done with that life. But, circumstances aligned for him to go to sea again, and he “was inur’d to a wandring Life.”[25] That is, he is used to a wandering lifestyle. While Crusoe says he is rich, and in that sense he is in the upper station of life, yet this “wandring Life” seems like it very well may be called the “station” God has put him in. It is, in fact, the lifestyle he tends toward throughout the book, and seems content to maintain at its close. Before he ever details his shipwreck on the island, he even says the Middle Station was “directly contrary to the Life [he] delighted in.”[26] And what do his “inclinations,” which he references throughout the book, so often draw him to besides this wandering life of adventure? At the very end of his account, he visits his island and he seems to want to hear of their “Adventures” there. He wants to hear “the whole Story of their Lives, and of the Villains [he] left there.”[27] While he seems to blame his inclination to wander as his doom earlier in the book, after his conversion and contentment in Christ, the inclination remains and he follows it when he has leave to do so.[28] So, it seems his delight in this way of life never leaves him. Just like Crusoe’s happy life on the island, this sort of wandering life does not fit nicely into his father’s framework.[29]
Defoe teaches in Robinson Crusoe that one ought to seek contentment in whatever situation God puts him, not necessarily in some “middle station.” Defoe demonstrates this in how Crusoe discusses his father’s advice as he recounts his story, in how Crusoe’s life actually unfolds, and in the close of Crusoe’s account, taken in light of the rest of the book. Crusoe finds that a person can find the greatest happiness in whatever situation God gives him as long as he is content in relationship with God. It seems this God-given situation may be comprised of both one’s (non-sinful) inclinations and desires, tangible circumstances, and the opportunities one has. Crusoe takes what is good of his father’s advice about different stations in life but rejects what seems to be a fairly strict framework. Though the modern reader knows that Robinson Crusoe never did live such a “Life of Providence’s Checquer-Work” since Crusoe never lived at all, Defoe still teaches a lesson just as vital for a Christian today as it was then.[30] With this lesson the Apostle Paul agrees: “Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him. This is my rule in all the churches” (1 Corinthians 7:17).[31]
[1] J. Paul Hunter, “The ‘Providence’ Tradition,” The Reluctant Pilgrim, (John Hopkins University Press:
[2] ), reprinted in Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe: Second Norton Critical Edition, ed. Michael Shinagel (New York, NY: Norton & Company, 1994), p. 251. Hunter helpfully writes on Defoe in relation to various Puritan literary genres. See also Hunter’s other writings on Robinson Crusoe reprinted in the Second Norton Critical Edition: “The ‘Guide’ Tradition,” “Spiritual Biography,” and “The ‘Occasion’ of Robinson Crusoe,” all excerpted from Hunter’s The Reluctant Pilgrim.
[3] Defoe’s background in Puritan tradition is particularly important to this paper’s argument because this paper argues that Defoe is actually trying to teach a specific thing (though the paper does not argue this is the only thing he tries to teach). It must, of course, be acknowledged that Robinson Crusoe is also travel literature. However, Hunter contends well against the idea that it is merely travel literature (see his works from The Reluctant Pilgrim, cited in the above footnote). Identifying all the contributing genres reaches beyond this paper’s scope. While Defoe states at the beginning of the book that religious application will be made, knowing now that the work is fictitious gives more support to the fact that Defoe designed the story for religious application. Crusoe did not write a real account of his life and add religious application as he tells it. Rather, Defoe designs the very account with its various elements himself, and thus does so with some purpose.
[4] Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe: Second Norton Critical Edition, ed. Michael Shinagel (New York, NY: Norton & Company, 1994), pp. 4–5. Throughout this paper, quotations maintain the spelling and capitlization as printed in the Second Norton Critical Edition.
[5] Ibid., p. 7.
[6] Ibid., p. 14.
[7] Ibid., p. 15.
[8] Ibid., p. 27.
[9] Ibid., p. 28.
[10] Ibid., p. 29.
[11] Ibid., p. 5.
[12] Ibid., p. 29.
[13] Ibid., p. 29.
[14] Ibid., p. 71.
[15] Ibid., p. 82.
[16] Ibid., p. 83.
[17] Ibid., p. 141.
[18] Ibid., p. 140–141.
[19] Ibid., p. 5.
[20] Ibid., p. 83. Emphasis added. It is worth noting that at a different point in the novel, Crusoe seems to suggest that his parents did not want him engaging in the seafaring life, at least one reason being that it was characteristically a wicked one. He seemed to think they instructed him well. Did they want him to be content in his station and hoped he would turn to God there, and was more likely to do so? If this is the case, Defoe certainly does not make it clear in the novel. He seems to emphasis, rather, a worldly rendering of the Middle Way.
[21] Ibid., p. 5.
[22] For sake of word count, I only include this further critique of the position Crusoe’s father takes in this footnote: His father references Proverbs 30:8, saying, “the wise Man gave his Testimony to [the Middle Station] as the just Standard of true Felicity” (Ibid., 5). But, his interpretation of the Proverb misses a vital piece of context, namely the next verse. Proverbs 30:8 describes something quite like the middle station, but the reason the writer desires it is not simply happiness. Proverbs 30:9 reveals the reason: “lest I be full and deny you and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’ or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God.” It is not the mere state of the middle station that is the standard of happiness. If anything, it is a right relationship with God. (The biblical quotation is from the English Standard Version. Text Edition: 2016. Crossway Bibles, 2001.)
[23] Though not vital to this paper’s argument, the possible biblical allusion seems noteworthy. In the Genesis account of creation, God says it is not good for man to be alone, puts Adam into a deep sleep, creates Eve, and then brings her to Adam. Similarly, it is as if Crusoe is put into a deep sleep, and just a page later he begins to recount how God brought him Friday. This resolves the one great problem of the island: that Crusoe was alone, which truly is not good for the Christian life.
[24] Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe: Second Norton Critical Edition, ed. Michael Shinagel (New York, NY: Norton & Company, 1994), p. 83.
[25] Ibid., p. 159. Emphasis original.
[26] Ibid., p. 219.
[27] Ibid., p. 27. Emphasis added.
[28] Ibid., p. 219.
[29] Ibid. Note how Crusoe says he would have been done with this life “if other Circumstances had concurr’d.” Also, he found himself with “no Family, not many Relations,” and with few acquaintances. Providence worked things so that his desire and situation allowed him to follow his inclination. It was not discontentment in the same way. His first major discontentment was mixed with rebellion against his father. His second major discontentment (while in the Brasils) was mixed with high ambitions for his business. This, at least, seems the most plausible explanation to account for how Crusoe treats his father’s framework throughout the story and particularly how he ends the book.
[30] For brevity’s sake, this additional argument is confined to a footnote: A further proof that any station of life can be commendable lies at the end of Crusoe’s account, and that in how he handles his nephews. He receives two of his nephews into his care and directs them into two different ways of life. One he “bred up as a Gentleman, and gave him a Settlement of some Addition to his Estate.” As for the other nephew, Crusoe sent him to sea, exactly the thing his father warned him against (see page 219). Crusoe’s father had learned, in his life, that the middle station was best. Crusoe had learned, in his life, that this was not always true.
[31] Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe: Second Norton Critical Edition, ed. Michael Shinagel (New York, NY: Norton & Company, 1994), p. 219.
[32] Quoted from the English Standard Version. Text Edition: 2016. (Crossway Bibles, 2001).
