Vision & veracity : Daniel Defoe : Robinson Crusoe, Moll Flanders, A Journal of the plague year

Abstract

This dissertation seeks to map out the elements which affirm the widely-held notion of Defoe’s novels embodying an authentic representation of the individual’s life experience. By first paying note to the developments within the literary space and the rise of readership within 18th century England, one will note how Defoe’s prose fiction seems to cater towards the growing demands and interests of the reading populace – a tendency towards the “factual” within the fictitious (embodying formal realism). Uniquely, Defoe does this by providing an in-depth viewing of the protagonists’s psyches in relation to their circumstances and, albeit often times radical, misfortunes. Realism is hence achieved through a focus on an individual character’s perception, which is then only further made believable by the recognisability of setting. Character therefore takes priority over circumstance, for it is Defoe’s primary strategy through this very personal viewpoint and method of first-hand retrospection that readers attribute a sense of credibility, relatability and even empathy to these supposedly true stories. It is through their subjective perspectives that reality is moulded and presented to us as objective truth. Adopting the generally fixed setting of non-fantastical spaces (thereby adhering to formal realism), Defoe’s protagonists deal with hardly far-fetched, and quite very relatable issues for 18th century, and to a lesser extent even contemporary, readers – be it that growing need for a sense of individuality, tensions between social classes, or the pursuit of an improvement of one’s social status, to name a few. Both Ian Watt and Eri Shigematsu agree on this point, noting how while characters such as Robinson Crusoe, Moll Flanders, and in a slightly different manner, H. F., are subject to the circumstances imposed upon them, how they react and perceive such circumstances is a measure of their own individual characteristics, thereby inevitably subduing the reality around them and making it their own, so to speak.