Foe: A Postmodernist and Post Colonial Retelling of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe
J. M. Coetzee's novel Foe is a postmodernist and postcolonial retelling of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. Coetzee keeps some the main characters in Robinson Crusoe's novel- Cruso and an African named Friday, but makes two very important additions: the two authors of the novel are Susan Barton, a white woman who is shipwrecked on the island, and Mr. Foe, whose name is an obvious allusion to Daniel Defoe. The two new characters radically change the meanings inscribed in the book: first of all, Coetzee introduces a feminine figure in the man-centered, exclusivist world of Robinson Crusoe. With the presence of Susan Barton Coetzee also revises the image of the fallen woman as represented in the other two novels by Defoe: Moll Flanders and Roxana. Coetzee's revision of these other two books works as a feminist reading of Moll Flanders and Roxana, but as of Robinson Crusoe as well. Also, the presence of the author of Robinson Crusoe in the novel makes Coetzee's book into a postmodernist and deconstructive retelling of Defoe's book. Essentially, Foe is a story about writing, being and representation, about otherness and difference. The multiple authors in the story are a tribute to the postmodernist idea that all the voices in a sto
Return to me the substance I have lost, Mr. The construction of both Moll Flanders and Roxana is typical of the traditional representation of the woman as sinner or prostitute. This too I reject' (Coetzee, 121) Susan refuses the role that Foe is trying to impose on her, and she very suggestively tells her daughter that she has no mother, but only a father, thus rejecting the traditional role of the mother which is always imposed on the woman through representation: "You are father-born. I thought I was myself and this girl a creature from another order speaking words you made up for her. Both of them are victims of colonialism: that form of colonialism which is realized through writing and representation. Now you propose to reduce the island it an episode in the history of a woman in search of a lost daughter. Moll Flanders reproaches her lover for having caused her to fall and for deceiving her as to his intentions of marriage "[. The main achievement of Coetzee's book is thus to rewrite all three novels by Defoe, Robinson Crusoe, Moll Flanders and Roxana and to tackle the main problems and faults of traditional authorship, that effaces the multiple voices in the single voice of the author. These I would not accept because they were not the truth. Coetzee rewrites this way of looking at woman and her place in society, by given Susan her own voice in the story, replacing the thus the representations made by man alone. This is obvious in Foe as all the characters are more like figures or phantoms than actual people. By such means do I still endeavor to be father to my story.
Common topics in this essay:
Flanders Roxana,
Susan Barton,
Daniel Defoe,
Moll Flanders,
Chance FOOL,
Mind Reflection,
Cruso Foe,
Robinson Crusoe,
Nevertheless Defoe's,
Essentially Foe,
moll flanders,
moll flanders roxana,
flanders roxana,
robinson crusoe,
susan barton,
quest daughter,
novels defoe,
coetzee's book,
substance truth,
foe trying,
tell story,
robinson crusoe presence,
capture substance truth,
foe trying impose,
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Acceptance Essays
