Foe Thesis

Coetzee’s “Foe” reinvents the story of Daniel DeFoe’s classic novel, “Robinson Crusoe”. Though the classic is recreated to include a woman, the myth that is “Robinson Crusoe” seems to be merely a setting as the novel revolves around the narrator and her experiences. The book is narrated by Susan Barton, a “newcomer”, cast away on the same island as “Cruso” and Friday. Through Susan’s interactions with fellow castaways, and later with the former author, Foe, himself and her daughter, “Susan” we see a pattern emerge. It is one that speaks of her struggle and a journey to claim her own identity and ultimately her voice amidst oppressive male-dominated European colonialist society. This becomes especially apparent as Susan’s obsession to uncover Friday’s truth reflects her own feelings of inadequacy and eventually helps to reveal her authenticity by awakening her ability to speak.
Susan Barton, born to an English mother and a French father, has a daughter by the same name. The daughter is abducted by an Englishman ''and conveyed to the New World.'' [pg. 10] Susan searches for her in Brazil, but in Bahia the trail goes cold. She remains there, searching for her daughter for two years, then sails for Lisbon. During the voyage, a mutiny ensues, the sailors kill the captain and abandon Susan, setting her adrift in a small boat. She is cast ashore on an island, where she is found by Friday and brought to his master, Cruso.
Cruso, an Englishman in his mid-sixties, isn’t the eager colonizer he once was in Robinson Crusoe, but seems resolved to the island and its isolation. As Susan attempts to learn more about him, she is met by curt responses, her suggestions to ease daily life on the island, go unheard by Cruso. Her frustration evident, it clearly denotes the problem as it emphasizes Susan’s struggle with having her voice heard amongst men. “When I reflect on my story I seem to exist only as the one who came, the one who witnessed, the one who longed to be gone: a being without substance, a ghost beside the true body of Cruso. Is that the fate of all storytellers? Yet I was as much a body as Cruso. I ate and drank, I woke and slept, I longed. The island was Cruso’s, (yet by what right? By the law of islands? Is there such a law?), but I lived there too, I was no bird of passage, no gannet or albatross, to circle the island once and dip a wing and then fly on over the boundless ocean . Return to me the substance I have lost, Mr Foe: that is my entreaty.”[51]
Friday, an African slave, who has had his tongue cut out, is incapable of speech and becomes the object of Susan’s interest. She yearns to know him, as she yearns to know herself, to hear him speak and offer his truth. Her obsession with Friday is her own. Her truths are mirrored in Friday “You err most tellingly in failing to distinguish between my silences and the silences of a being such as Friday. Friday has no command of words and therefore no defence against being re-shaped day by day in conformity with the desires of others. I say he is a cannibal and he becomes a cannibal; I say he is a laundryman and he becomes a laundryman. What is the truth of Friday? You will respond: he is neither cannibal nor laundryman, these are mere names, they do not touch his essence, he is a substantial body, he is himself, Friday is Friday. But that is not so. … what he is to the world is what I make of him. Therefore the silence of Friday is a helpless silence. He is the child of his silence, a child unborn, a child waiting to be born …” [pg. 121 & 122]
After a year on the island, the three are rescued by an English ship under Captain Smith, but on the voyage back, Cruso dies, pining for his island and is buried at sea, leaving Susan and Friday to make their own way in England. After their arrival, Susan begins to draft a memoir of her time on the island as a means of survival. She seeks out author Daniel Foe to serve as ghostwriter and publisher. “Do you know the story of the Muse, Mr Foe? …. The Muse is both goddess and begetter. I was intended not to be the mother of my story, but to beget it. It is not I who am the intended, but you.”
Though Susan wishes to write about her experiences as a castaway on the island, Foe seems hesitant and seeks information instead about her travels in Bahia...here again we see reference of Susan’s voice being undermined.
Now destitute, Susan and Friday take up residence in Foe's house, where Susan writes a series of letters addressed to Foe, many of which do not reach him because he is evading creditors.
Susan is later reunited with her long lost daughter, also named Susan Barton who appears one day out of the blue. Coetzee’s analogic purpose for the younger Susan is that of an alter ego. She is meant to allow Susan’s voice to be heard, to unearth her frustrations at not being able to speak her own mind in a male dominated world. This is clearly surmised in the passage; “You are father-born, you have no mother. The pain you feel is the pain of lack not the pain of loss. What you hope to regain in my person you have in truth never had”.[91] Father-born meaning that the younger Susan is Foe’s creation, not her own. The references therefore between Coetzee’s Susan and Defoe’s Roxana are apt. Not only has DeFoe “fathered” Roxana by creating her, by speaking his “voice”, but both also experience poverty and are limited in their worlds, as women of the “New World” era. Susan Barton’s meeting with her daughter also suggests a dream-like transition in her life, “What do I mean by it, father-born? I wake in the grey of a London dawn with the world still faintly in my ears. The street is empty, I observe from the window. Is the girl gone forever? Have I expelled her, banished her, lost her at last in the forest? Will she sit by the oak tree till the falling leaves cover her, her and her basket, and nothing is left to meet the eye but a field of browns and golds?” [pg 91 & 92]
To reemphasize the turning point, the previous passage is immediately followed by Friday dancing and spinning in Foe’s robe and wig suggesting a letting go, a freedom of sorts, “From downstairs to upstairs, from house to island, from the girl to Friday: it seems necessary only to establish the poles, the here and the there, the now and the then – after the words of themselves do the journeying. I had not guessed it was so easy to be an author.” ...Susan’s voice is getting louder.
It is when Susan and Friday later play their flutes together, when they are finally communicating, that we can at last see the light at the end of the tunnel for Susan. She is transformed. Her acceptance of her circumstances only allows her peace and opens the door to proceed with her voice, “so it is with music: we cannot forever play the same tune and be content...thus at last I could not restrain myself from varying the tune, first making one note into two-half notes, then changing two of the notes entirely, turning it into a new tune and a pretty one too.” [pg. 97]
In conclusion, Coetzee’s Foe speaks to all generation, women and men alike. We all have our own journeys to take, our own fears to face, and our own challenges to overcome. It is our responsibility, and ours alone to find our own voice and use it with vigor.