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Daniel Defoe: the Family Instructor Daniel Defoe: The Family Instructor Diana Jean Brooke Goldsmiths, University of London Dept of English and Comparative Literature PhD Submission 1 I hereby declare that this thesis is my own work and effort and that it has not been submitted anywhere for any award. Where other sources of information have been used, they have been acknowledged. Diana Jean Brooke Date: 20th January 2016 2 Acknowledgements I should like to thank the following: Joanna Gondris, my MA tutor, for her faith in my ability to go on to work towards a PhD; David Nokes, my first Supervisor, whose unexpected death led to my move to Goldsmiths. To all at Kings, for smoothing my way to Goldsmiths. At Kings, Clare Brant who helped me to try to re-focus, and Elizabeth Eger, who saw me on the path to Defoe before I left, and Clemens Sedmak who listened when I tried to change tack. Also to Catherine Wallace, at The Institute of Education, for technical advice and help. To Michael Simpson, Tim Parnell and Charlotte Scott at Goldsmiths. Mostly my thanks go to Alan Downie for endless support and advice, for his patience and skill, especially his insistence that I should ―enjoy‖ studying; but above all, thanks to Paul for his enduring encouragement. 3 Abstract The focus of this thesis is The Family Instructor by Daniel Defoe. There are two books: Volume I, first published in 1715, and Volume II, published in 1718. In both cases I have used the Pickering and Chatto edition, published in 2006 and edited by P.N. Furbank. The thesis examines The Family Instructor, in the contexts of family, religion and of its style, to argue that, although usually classed as a conduct book, it is not easily categorised, reflecting as it does Defoe‘s transitional status between ancient and modern times. The Introduction gives my argument. After the opening chapter, which contains critical remarks on Defoe‘s work, Chapter Two considers The Family Instructor in the context of contemporary representations of the family. The older, patriarchal model is examined. In this the husband/ and father is responsible for the entire household, whereas the modern, ―nuclear‖, version, which is also examined, relies less on status and more on contractual and emotional relationships. Chapter Three looks at religion, beginning with an overview of the many sects which are significant for an understanding of The Family Instructor. The chapter argues that although Defoe is at times close to the Latitudinarian position and despite his claim that the work is designed to apply both to Anglicans and Dissenters, his overall position is that of a Dissenter. Chapter Four examines the conduct book genre and goes on to compare the style of The Family Instructor with that of Robinson Crusoe in particular, arguing that the former does not qualify as a ―conduct book‖ and that many of the devices which Defoe uses in his first long narrative are present in The Family Instructor. The Conclusion draws together the arguments of the preceding chapters. 4 Daniel Defoe: The Family Instructor Diana Jean Brooke Acknowledgements page 3 Abstract 4 Abbreviations 6 Introduction 9 Chapter I: An overview of Defoe‘s work 14 Chapter 2: The Family: values and relationships 58 Chapter 3: Religion 107 Chapter 4: The Structure and Style of The Family Instructor 151 Conclusion 201 Bibliography 214 5 ABBREVIATIONS The following abbreviations are used throughout the thesis. Allestree, Duty Richard Allestree (attrib.), The Whole Duty of Man (London, 1659) Backscheider Paula R. Backscheider, Daniel Defoe: His Life (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989) Bayly Lewis Bayly, The Practice of Piety (London, 1630) Coward, Stuart Age Barry Coward, The Stuart Age: England 1603-1714, 2nd edn (London and New York: Longman, 1994) Christian Dictionary Cross, F.L. and E.A. Livingstone, eds The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997) Hunter, Companion J. Paul Hunter, ‗The novel and social/cultural history‘ in The Cambridge Companion to the Eighteenth-century Novel, ed. John J. Richetti (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) Hunter, Novels J. Paul Hunter, Before Novels: the Cultural Contexts of Eighteenth- Century English Fiction (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1990) Hunter, Pilgrim J. Paul Hunter, The Reluctant Pilgrim: Defoe‟s Emblematic Method and Quest for Form in Robinson Crusoe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996) Novak, Companion Maximillian E. Novak, ‗Defoe as an innovator of fictional form‘ in The Cambridge Companion to the Eighteenth-Century Novel ed. John J. Richetti (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) 6 Novak, Defoe Companion Maximillian E. Novak, ‗Defoe‘s political and religious journalism‘ in The Cambridge Companion to Daniel Defoe, ed. John J. Richetti (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008) Novak, Economics Maximillian E. Novak, Economicss and the Fiction of Daniel Defoe (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963) Novak, Master of Fictions Maximillian E. Novak, Daniel Defoe, Master of Fictions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001) Novak, Nature Maximillian E. Novak, Defoe and the Nature of Man (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963) Richetti, Companion John. J. Richetti, ed. The Cambridge Companion to the Eighteenth- Century Novel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) Richetti, Crusoe John J. Richetti, ed. Robinson Crusoe (London: Penguin, 2001, repr 2003) Richetti, Defoe John J. Richetti, Daniel Defoe (Boston, MA: G.K. Hall & Co., 1987) Richetti, Defoe Companion John J. Richetti, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Daniel Defoe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008) Richetti, Life John J. Richetti, The Life of Daniel Defoe (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005) 7 Richetti, Narratives John J. Richetti, Defoe‟s Narratives, Situations and Structures (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975) Watt, Rise Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding (Harmondsworth: Peregrine Penguin, 1963) 8 Introduction Only the most avid Defoe readers know that Defoe wrote The Family Instructor.1 Those who have read it tend not to like it. It is true that The Family Instructor challenges the twenty-first- century reader‘s way of seeing things. As when reading anything written before our time, we need to make certain accommodations. For instance, we need to take a different view of religion and its importance to the writers of conduct books in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. When Defoe was writing religion mattered to all his readers; they saw this life as primarily a preparation for the next, in which humankind would be rewarded or punished. But, although our values are different, the issues raised in the work are timeless. For example, the defiance of their parents by the elder teenagers echoes the behaviour of modern youngsters. The wives who defy their husbands in Volume II would today be granted the right to their own point of view. This perhaps accounts for the popularity of the work in its time, as much as the way in which it was written. In his Introduction to the Pickering & Chatto edition, P.N. Furbank argues that as a result, the modern reader sides with the ―wrong‖ characters and that we should side with the father and share his anxieties about his children‘s souls. Furbank suggests that this results in undermining Defoe‘s purpose (I. 15). But is it not always the case with works written in previous times? To say otherwise is to deny the value of the work for today‘s readers. Considering the role of the reader, Umberto Eco argues that ―any text can be interpreted however the ‗model reader‘ likes.‖ 2 1 Daniel Defoe, The Family Instructor, Volume I (1715) and Volume II (1718); Daniel Defoe, Religious and Didactic Works of Daniel Defoe, gen. eds W.R Owens and P.N. Furbank, 10 vols (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2006), I and II ed. P.N. Furbank. All references are to this latter edition and are given in parenthesis in the text. 2 Umberto Eco, The Role of the Reader (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1979), p. 8. 9 Furthermore, all the techniques which characterise Defoe‘s later ―novels‖ are evident in The Family Instructor: its presentation of experience through the consciousness of the observer, its stress on how reality is perceived, its focus on the family and its preoccupations, its use of dialogue and the struggle between the individual and communal, accepted values. If novels are characterised by interiority, if they allow us into the individual mind, then Defoe‘s interest in the way his protagonists experience their lives is relevant. This quality is obvious in The Family Instructor, which anticipates this development. We can see it in his presentation of the two elder young people in Volume I and of the wives in Volume II. The focus of this thesis is The Family Instructor, Volumes I and II, published in 1715 and 1718 respectively. Defoe‘s A New Family Instructor, published in 1727, is not part of my consideration. First comes the Introduction, which sets out the argument of the whole thesis. The Chapter I gives an overview of attitudes towards Defoe‘s work in general. Chapter Two attempts to contextualise Defoe‘s presentation of the family in The Family Instructor, arguing that this work relies on the earlier form of the family for its effectiveness, despite being written in 1715 and 1718. The third chapter sets out to contextualise religion, arguing that despite Defoe‘s often expressed comment that the work applies equally to Anglicans and Dissenters, who were both charged with the introduction of family worship, his Nonconformist origins get the better of him, and the type of religion he advocates in fact is of the Dissenting variety. Chapter Four examines the style of the work, comparing it in particular with Robinson Crusoe, the first of the long narratives we now call novels, arguing that many of the literary devices Defoe uses in this narrative, written in 1719, are present in The Family Instructor.
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