Design D . . . for the Law

Sample Close Reading

“Design’d . . . for the Law”: Robinson Crusoe and the Legal Profession

Daniel Defoe’s novel Robinson Crusoe (1719) begins with a retrospective, first-person account of the details of Crusoe’s birth: his birth year, his father’s trade, his mother’s maiden name, and so on. The “I was born” (4) opening places it firmly in the literary tradition of fictional autobiographical narratives. We might expect the first page of the novel, then, to begin to establish that pattern, to provide details that, when repeated or invoked later, begin to reveal essential information about Crusoe’s character. Our knowledge of the basic plot of Defoe’s story suggests, for example, that it is significant that Crusoe immediately tells the reader that he was

“satisfied with nothing but going to Sea” (4). I want to consider the equally significant, but perhaps less pointed, detail that Crusoe’s determination to become a sailor is contrasted from the very beginning to his father’s hope that he would instead enter the legal profession: “My Father, who was very ancient, had given me a competent Share of Learning . . . and design’d me for the

Law” (4). The novel’s first page makes clear that Crusoe’s decision to set sail is explicitly a decision not to become a lawyer. Understanding this detail is fundamental for our consideration of what we might think of as Crusoe’s amateur legal education later in the novel -- most notably, his long, agonizing debate with himself about whether or not cannibalism should count as murder.

Up until the mention of his father’s plan for his profession, Crusoe’s narration is rather impersonal, even though it is entirely about his own life. His brief mention of his two brothers in the novel’s second short paragraph, for example, gives no indication whatsoever of the relationship he had with them and is instead thoroughly detached. By contrast, Crusoe’s 2 references to his father paint a more intimate picture. We know it is intimate because of the comparative level of detail granted to descriptions of Crusoe’s father, as opposed to those of his mother and brothers, including the use of descriptive adjectives such as “ancient,” “wise,” and

“grave” (4). Not only is Crusoe’s father central in this first page, he goes on to loom large over the entire narrative. This is true both because Crusoe repeatedly has cause to regret his defiance of his father, and also because his father seems at times to symbolize authority more generally

(the authority of God, the authority of the state, and even the authority of the author: Defoe himself). Even though he is narrating a decisive moment of disobedience, Crusoe speaks of his father with reverence. Though the word “ancient,” at the time of Defoe’s writing, could simply mean “old,” it also designated someone who had acquired great wisdom through experience

(OED, “ancient,” def. 6, 7). When Crusoe goes on to describe his father as “wise and grave,” he reinforces the idea that, at least in retrospect, he sees his father as having proposed the right path.

In this sense, practicing law becomes the correct path not taken, the alternative life that Crusoe might have lived had he not rebelled.

In contrast to descriptions of his father, Crusoe characterizes his youthful self as stubborn and naïve. Crusoe’s decision to ignore his father’s “serious and excellent Counsel” (4) defines him as an individual who makes choices that are not necessarily in line with accepted familial and social expectations. Of course, Crusoe’s representation of his father’s advice as “serious and excellent” suggests that, while we may sympathize with Crusoe’s desire to escape authority, we are also encouraged to understand that resisting authority brings about serious consequences. We might compare this implication to Lennard Davis’s argument about the ambivalent relationship between the early novel and crime: the novel as a genre represents crime as both alluring and reprehensible. While Crusoe’s narrative is not one of criminality per se, his story is nevertheless 3 framed as both an exciting adventure and as a cautionary tale to avoid. As the narrator, Crusoe distances himself from his initial poor decision, not only by describing his father’s plan in favorable terms, but also by suggesting that he couldn’t help but be compelled to go to sea, that fate had driven him to do the wrong thing: “there seem’d to be something fatal in that Propension of Nature tending directly to the Life of Misery which was to befal me” (4). Crusoe’s implication is that he can’t really be held responsible for his unwise decision, since nature itself gave him the

“Propension” (or propensity, tendency) to act contrary to his father’s authority (OED,

“propension,” def. 1).

Curiously, however, Defoe’s language in this passage seems to suggest that Crusoe was also destined to become a lawyer. His father “design’d” him “for the law.” Design suggests an intention, an expectation, but it also suggests an act of creation, as if Crusoe had been molded from birth to be a certain kind of person (OED, “designed,” def. 7, 15). Law, then, is another compulsion that Crusoe cannot resist. And, indeed, his repeated wrestling with legal and quasi- legal questions (What is murder? What is property? What is sovereignty?) should lead us to consider the possibility that, while he never practices law, Crusoe is nevertheless, in a sense,

“design’d . . . for the Law;” his fate has led him to consider legal issues just as much as it has led him to a solitary life at sea. Crusoe is, then, the product of two, seemingly incompatible designs.

The ambivalence he embodies throughout the novel’s opening pages (at one moment embracing the idea of going to sea, at the next ruing the day he set sail) can be attributed to Crusoe’s doubled fate, his double profession. 4

Works Cited

“ancient, adj.1.” OED Online. June 2011. Oxford University Press. .

David, Lennard J. “Wicked Actions and Feigned Words: Criminals, Criminality, and

the Early English Novel.” Rethinking History: Tim, Myth, and Writing. Spec. issue of

Yale French Studies 59 (1980): 106-118.

Defoe, Daniel. Robinson Crusoe. Ed. Michael Shinagel. New York: Norton, 1994.

“design, v.1.” OED Online. June 2011. Oxford University Press. .

“propension, n.1.” OED Online. June 2011. Oxford University Press. .