Overview
'Wonderful...concise, witty, effortlessly learned.' Sunday Times
How does Magwitch swim to shore with a great iron on his leg? Where does Fanny Hill keep her contraceptives? Whose side is Hawkeye on? And how does Clarissa Dalloway get home so quickly?
In this new edition sequel to the enormously successful Is Heathcliff a Murderer?, John Sutherland plays literary detective and investigates 32 literary conundrums, ranging from Daniel Defoe to Virginia Woolf.
As in its universally loved predecessor, the questions and answers are ingenious and convincing, and return the reader with new respect to the great novels that inspire them.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781785783029 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Icon Books, Ltd. UK |
| Publication date: | 11/02/2017 |
| Sold by: | Bookwire |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 208 |
| Sales rank: | 846,827 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
Daniel Defoe · Robinson Crusoe
* * *
Why the 'Single Print of a Foot'?
* * *
J. Donald Crowley is amusingly exasperated about Defoe's many narrative delinquencies in Robinson Crusoe. 'Perhaps the most glaring lapse', Crowley says in his edition of the novel,
occurs when Defoe, having announced that Crusoe had pulled off all his clothes to swim out to the shipwreck, has him stuff his pockets with biscuit some twenty lines later. Likewise, for the purpose of creating a realistic effect, he arranges for Crusoe to give up tallying his daily journal because his ink supply is dangerously low; but there is ink aplenty, when, almost twenty-seven years later, Crusoe wants to draw up a contract ... Having tried to suggest that Crusoe suffers hardship because he lacks salt, he later grants Crusoe the salt in order to illustrate his patient efforts to teach Friday to eat salted meat. Crusoe pens a kid identified as a young male only to have it turn into a female when he hits upon the notion of breeding more of the animals. (p. xiii)
Such inconsistencies convince Crowley that 'Defoe wrote too hastily to control his materials completely'. His was a careless genius.
Haste and carelessness could well account for some baffling features in the famous 'discovery of the footprint' scene. It occurs fifteen years into Robinson's occupation of his now thoroughly colonized and (as he fondly thinks) desert island. At this belated point the hero is made to describe his outdoor garb. He has long since worn out the European clothes which survived the wreck. Now his coverings are home-made:
I had a short Jacket of Goat-Skin, the Skirts coming down to about the middle of my Thighs; and a Pair of open-knee'd Breeches of the same, the Breeches were made of the Skin of an old He-goat, whose Hair hung down such a Length on either Side, that like Pantaloons it reach'd to the middle of my Legs; Stockings and Shoes I had none, but had made me a Pair of somethings, I scarce know what to call them, like Buskins to flap over my Legs, and lace on either Side like Spatter-dashes; but of a most barbarous Shape, as indeed were all the rest of my Cloaths. (p. 149)
This sartorial inventory has been gratefully seized on by the novel's many illustrators, from 1719 onwards (see fig. 1). The salient feature is that Robinson goes barefoot. And it is to rivet this detail ('Shoes I had none') in our mind that at this point Defoe describes Crusoe's wardrobe. In the preceding narrative, if it crosses the reader's mind, we assume that Crusoe has some protection for the soles of his feet (the island is a rough place). Oddly, Robinson seems not to have taken a supply of footwear from the ship's store nor any cobbling materials with which to make laced moccasins from goatskin. Shortly after being marooned he found 'two shoes' washed up on the strand, but they 'were not fellows', and were of no use to him. Much later, during his 'last year on the Island', Robinson scavenges a couple of pairs of shoes from the bodies of drowned sailors in the wreck of the Spanish boat. But, when he sees the naked footprint on the sand, Crusoe is barefoot.
The footprint is epochal, 'a new Scene of my Life', as Crusoe calls it. He has several habitations on the island (his 'estate', as he likes to think it) and the discovery comes as he walks from one of his inland residences to the place on the shore where he has beached his 'boat' (in fact, a primitive canoe):
It happen'd one Day about Noon going towards my Boat, I was exceedingly surpriz'd with the Print of a Man's naked Foot on the Shore, which was very plain to be seen in the Sand: I stood like one Thunder-struck, or as if I had seen an Apparition; I listen'd, I look'd round me, I could hear nothing, nor see any Thing. I went up to a rising Ground to look farther, I went up the Shore and down the Shore, but it was all one, I could see no other Impression but that one, I went to it again to see if there were any more, and observe if it might not be my Fancy; but there was no Room for that, for there was exactly the very Print of a Foot, Toes, Heel, and every Part of a Foot; how it came thither, I knew not, nor could in the least imagine. (pp. 153-4)
Two big questions hang over this episode. The first, most urgent for Robinson, is 'Who made this footprint?' The second, most perplexing for the reader, is 'why is there only one footprint?' In the above passage, and later, Crusoe is emphatic on the point. We are not much helped by illustrations of the scene, such as that above by Lynton Lamb to an early World's Classics edition, which shows the footprint, on a flat expanse of beach, with nothing else for yards around. (It's a lovely picture; but Lamb has erroneously given Crusoe a pair of Scholl sandals.)
Was the single footprint made by some monstrous hopping cannibal? Perhaps Long John Silver passed by, from Treasure Island, with just the one foot and a peg leg? Has someone played a prank on Robinson Crusoe by raking over the sand as one does in a long-jump pit, leaving just the one ominous mark? More seriously, one might surmise that the ground is stony with only a few patches of sand between to receive an occasional footprint. This is the interpretation of G. H. Thomas in the next version of this scene (note the shoes, again). The objection to the thesis of this illustration is that Crusoe would scarcely choose such a rocky inlet as a convenient place to beach his boat.
Robinson has no time for investigation of the footprint. He retreats in hurried panic to his 'Castle', not emerging for three days. Is it the mark of the Devil, he wonders, as he cowers inside his dark cave? That would explain the supernatural singularity of the footprint, since the devil can fly. In his fever vision, years before, Robinson saw the Evil One 'descend from a great black Cloud, in a bright Flame of Fire, and light upon the Ground' (p. 87)—presumably leaving an enigmatic footprint in the process, if anyone dared look. But if the mark in the sand is the devil's work it would seem lacking in infernal cunning or even clear purpose: 'the Devil might have found an abundance of other Ways to have terrify'd me than this of the single Print of a Foot', Robinson concludes. Similar arguments weigh against the footprint's being a sign from the Almighty. It is more plausible, Robinson finally concludes, 'that it must be some of the Savages of the main Land over-against me, who had wander'd out to Sea in their Canoes'. Will they now come back in force, to 'devour' him?
Fear banishes 'all my religious Hope' for a while. But gradually Crusoe's faith in Providence returns, as does his trust in rational explanation. 'I began to perswade my self it was all a Delusion; that it was nothing else but ... the Print of my own foot' (p. 158). He emerges from his hole and, stopping only to milk the distended teats of his goats, he returns to examine the print more carefully. In three days and nights one might expect it to have been covered over by the wind, but it is still there, clear as ever. Crusoe's rational explanation proves to be wrong: 'When I came to measure the Mark with my own Foot, I found my Foot not so large by a great deal.' Panic once more.
We are never specifically told who left the print, nor why it was just the one. But the experience changes Robinson Crusoe's way of life. No longer supposing himself alone, he adopts a more defensive ('prudent') way of life. He is right to be prudent. Some two years later, on the other side of the island, he sees a boat out at sea. That far coast, he now realizes, is frequently visited—unlike his own: 'I was presently convinc'd, that the seeing the Print of a Man's Foot, was not such a strange Thing in the Island as I imagin'd.' Providence, he is grateful to realize, has cast him 'upon the Side of the Island, where the Savages never came' (p. 164). Never? Who left the print then—friendly Providence, as a warning that there were savages about?
Gradually Crusoe comes, by prudent anthropological observation, to know more about the Savages—a process that culminates ten years after the footprint episode with the acquisition of his most valuable piece of property, Man Friday. The savages are, as Robinson observes, opportunist raiders of the sea—black pirates with a taste for human flesh. When they find some luckless wrecked mariner, or defenceless fellow native in his craft, the savages bring their prey to shore to cook and eat them. Then they leave. In their grisly visits they never penetrate beyond the sandy beach to the interior of the island (perhaps, as in Golding's Lord of the Flies, there are legends of a terrible giant, dressed in animal skins, with a magical tube which spurts thunder). It is likely that the footprint must have been left by some scouting savage making a rare foray to the far side of the island. He noticed Crusoe's boat, concluded on close inspection that it was flotsam, and went off again. Luckily the hero's residences, livestock, and plantations were some way distant and could not be seen from this section of the shore.
But why the single footprint? Before attempting an answer one needs to make the point that although careless in accidental details (such as the trousers and the biscuits), Defoe usually handles substantial twists of plot very neatly. A good example is the corn which Crusoe first thinks is providential manna but which later proves to have a rational origin. Defoe sets this episode up by mentioning, on page 50, that Robinson brought back some barley seed from his wrecked ship, 'but to my great Disappointment, I found afterwards that the Rats had eaten or spoil'd it all'. He threw it away in disgust. Then, twenty-eight pages later, the seed sprouts. Robinson at first believes the growing barley to be a miracle. Then he puts two and two together and realizes it is the result of his thoughtlessly shaking out the bags of spoiled chicken-feed some months earlier. It is an accomplished piece of narrative.
A few pages before the episode of the footprint Defoe has Crusoe describe, in great detail, the tides which wash the island and their intricate ebbs and flows. Many readers will skip over this technical and unexciting digression. Ostensibly, Crusoe's meditation on the 'Sets of the Tides' has to do with navigation problems. But the ulterior motive, we may assume, is to imprint in the reader's mind the fact that the island does have tides and that they are forever lapping at its shoreline.
What we may suppose happened is the following. Crusoe has beached his boat, not on the dead-flat expanse which Lamb portrays, but on a steeply inclined beach. The unknown savage came head-on into the beach and pulled his boat on to the sand. He investigated Crusoe's canoe, all the while walking below the high-tide line. Having satisfied himself that Crusoe's vessel had no one in it, he returned to his own craft. Coming or going, one of his feet (as he was knocked by a wave, perhaps, or jumped away from some driftwood) strayed above the high-water mark. This lateral footprint (i.e. not pointing to, or away from, the ocean) was left after the tide had washed all the others away together with the drag marks of the savage's boat.
Robinson Crusoe's discovery of the footprint is, with Oliver Twist's asking for more, one of the best-known episodes in British fiction—familiar even to those who would scarcely recognize the name of Daniel Defoe. It is also one of the English novel's most illustrated scenes—particularly in the myriad boys' editions of Robinson Crusoe. Most illustrations I have seen make one of three errors (as does Lamb above): they put the footprint too far from the waves; they picture Robinson as wearing shoes; they show the beach as too flat. These errors, I think, reflect widespread perplexity at the scene and a fatalistic inclination not to worry too much about its illogical details. But there are, as I have tried to argue, ways of making sense of the single footprint. And at least one illustrator has interpreted the scene as I have. Despite its rather melodramatic mise en scène, the most persuasive pictorial interpretation I have seen is this by George Cruikshank (although he too gives Robinson shoes).
The Oxford World's Classics Robinson Crusoe is edited by J. Donald Crowley.
Excerpted from Can Jane Eyre Be Happy? by JOHN SUTHERLAND. Copyright © 1997 by John Sutherland. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Table of Contents
| Preface and Acknowledgements | ix |
| Why the `Single Print of a Foot'? Daniel Defoe, Robinson | |
| Crusoe, 1719 | 1 |
| Where does Fanny Hill keep her contraceptives? John Cleland, | |
| Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (Fanny Hill), 1749 | 11 |
| Who is Tom Jones's father? Henry Fielding, Tom Jones, 1749 | 19 |
| Slop Slip Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram | |
| Shandy, 1760-7 | 25 |
| Pug: dog or bitch? Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, 1814 | 31 |
| How vulgar is Mrs Elton? Jane Austen, Emma, 1816 | 37 |
| Whose side is Hawk-eye on? James Fenimore Cooper, The Last | |
| of the Mohicans, 1826 | 42 |
| What does Mr Pickwick retire from? Charles Dickens, The | |
| Pickwick Papers, 1837 | 48 |
| Why is Fagin hanged and why isn't Pip prosecuted? Charles | |
| Dickens, Oliver Twist, 1838, and Great Expectations, 1861 | 52 |
| Who gets what in Heathcliff's will? Emily Brontë, | |
| Wuthering Heights, 1847 | 64 |
| Can Jane Eyre be happy? CharlotteBrontë, Jane Eyre, | |
| 1847 | 68 |
| How many pianos has Amelia Sedley? W. M | Thackeray, Vanity |
| Fair, 1848 | 81 |
| Will she ever come back? Charlotte Brontë, Shirley, 1849 | 88 |
| What are the Prynnes doing in Boston? Nathaniel Hawthorne, | |
| The Scarlet Letter, 1850 | 96 |
| What happens to Mrs Woodcourt? Charles Dickens, Bleak House, | |
| 1853 | 102 |
| The Barchester Towers that never was Anthony Trollope, | |
| Barchester Towers, 1857 | 109 |
| Why doesn't the Reverend Irwine speak up for Hetty? George | |
| Eliot, Adam Bede, 1859 | 117 |
| How good an oarswoman is Maggie Tulliver? George Eliot, The | |
| Mill on the Floss, 1860 | 127 |
| How good a swimmer is Magwitch? Charles Dickens, Great | |
| Expectations, 1859; R. M. Ballantyne, The Coral Island | 135 |
| What, precisely, does Miss Gwilt's purple flask contain? | |
| Wilkie Collins, Armadale, 1866 | 143 |
| Lemon or ladle? George Eliot, Felix Holt, the Radical, 1871 | 149 |
| Why `Captain' Newton? Anthony Trollope, Ralph the Heir, 1871 | 156 |
| What is Elfride's rope made of? Thomas Hardy, A Pair of Blue | |
| Eyes, 1873 | 160 |
| Is Daniel Deronda circumcised? George Eliot, Daniel Deronda, | |
| 1876 | 169 |
| Is Black Beauty gelded? Anna Sewell, Black Beauty, 1877 | 177 |
| What does Mrs Charmond say to Grace? Thomas Hardy, The | |
| Woodlanders, 1887 | 181 |
| Who will Angel marry next? Thomas Hardy, Tess of the | |
| d'Urbervilles, 1891 | 188 |
| What cure for the Madwoman in the Attic? Charlotte Perkins | |
| Gilman, The Yellow Wall-Paper, 1892 | 192 |
| Who is George Leach? Jack London, The Sea-Wolf, 1904 | 200 |
| Wanted: deaf-and-dumb dog feeder Arthur Conan Doyle, The | |
| Hound of the Baskervilles, 1902 | 206 |
| Whose daughter is Nancy? Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier, | |
| 1915 | 210 |
| Clarissa's invisible taxi Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway, 1925 | 215 |
| Notes | 225 |