Daniel Defoe: His Life by Paula R. Backscheider (review)

92Rocky Mountain Review PAULA R. BACKSCHEIDER. Daniel Defoe: His Life. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989. 671 p. Paula Backscheider claims "one ofthe noblest purposes ofbiography is to show how people have overcome the difficulties and griefs inherent in human life" (539). For that purpose, Defoe is a superb example of one who overcame tremendous adversity in many cases inspired by his own writing. While Defoe was persecuted, imprisoned, and publicly embarrassed in pillory, Backscheider argues he always sprang back with energy, resolve, and public-spirited ideals. James Sutherland's 1937 biography, Defoe, described him as a "true-born Englishman" who accepted compromise as a habit of self-preservation, but Backscheider's Defoe is far more high-principled and driven to exact change. Defoe fought for what he believed in, such as the Duke ofMonmouth's rebellion against James II. Backscheider focuses on Defoe as the morally centered, serious Christian man deeply committed to individual freedoms and institutional reform. In his various roles as journalist, businessman, rebel pamphleteer, and novelist, Defoe managed to offend almost everyone. During the reign ofQueen Anne, Defoe deliberately tried out a spectrum of political positions ranging from the most opposed Whig to the most moderate Tory. Defoe's enemies attacked him for his Non-Conformist ideas, calling him a "mercenary prostitute" and "a foul-mouthed mongrel." The most invigorating section of the book is chapter 16, "A Penetrating Eye," in which the author documents Defoe's experimentation with new narrative voices that would culminate in his novels Robinson Crusoe, Roxana, and Moll Flanders. Especially with Robinson Crusoe, Backscheider argues that Defoe wrote an allegory of his own life. Defoe demonstrated through Crusoe that he had learned to trust divine purposes and benevolence, and the novel in fact explains how people teach themselves about the nature ofGod's universe through suffering, contemplation, and triumph. What Defoe reveals through Crusoe is "the secret ofhis [own] resiliency. He had the power to make himself happy, and ifRobinson Crusoe shows transforming imagination, it is because Defoe had a transforming will" (427). At its best, Backscheider's analysis shows this kind of penetration and eloquence. She throws new light on crucial texts with this comprehensive study, and her integration of ideas at times exceeds the accumulation of facts to reach such poetic moments of insight. However, I cannot recommend this book unconditionally despite its many obvious strengths. The author has a thorough appreciation for the nuances of late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century politics, but she too easily loses the narrative thread. Defoe frequently gets lost in the forest of detail and surrounding topical controversies. Backscheider fails to capture the drama of arguments expressed during the debate that erupted over The Shortest Way with the Dissenters. Backscheider's book would be a useful source for the period specialist or British historian, but she attempts to digest too much circumstantial detail for the general reader. For example, ideas behind Scotland's opposition to the Treaty ofUnion and minutia about Defoe's sordid financial blunders detract from the exciting story Backscheider has to tell. The book sometimes handles in a dull and mechanical way a fascinating life. Book Reviews93 Ultimately Backscheider's encyclopedic energy renders the book too much an information-dump for the nonscholar. The book does contain excellent sections devoted to Defoe's involvement with the South Sea Company, his experiments with the "secret history" genre, his disagreements with Swift, and his connection with the fall ofRobert Harley. Moreover, to her credit Backscheider does not uniformly praise everything Defoe wrote. She willingly acknowledges flaws in pamphlets describing King George I as a stable, competent administrator. I confess my admiration for Backscheider's attempt at chronicling the life of a man who believed in the tactic of "being all things to all people." The sheer productivity of Defoe prompted J. A. Downie to remark that "he was a team of government writers by himself (314). This new biography completely supports that idea. JONATHAN L. THORNDIKE Rocky Mountain College FRANCES BARTKOWSKI. Feminist Utopias. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989. 198 p. This study ofutopian and dystopian writingby feminists covers a lot ofground in its relatively modest length. The ten novels Bartkowski has...