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Show U· n· re Idealism, Unrequited Love, and Glorious Understanding 83 lications as well as teaching English and literature. That the quality of her teaching was on a par with that in other colleges and universities is suggested by her lecture on Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, which was originally published in 1719. She took the position that the students, by reading an edited ver sion, may have missed the central theme of that first English novel. Most people, she pointed out, had read the abridged Robinson Crusoe in an edition that transformed the novel as first published from an adult story of a man's discovery of him self, civilization, and God, into a boy's adventure tale. Crusoe, in the original text, is a man who is shipwrecked on an island. He survives by his own ingenuity, suffers anxiety because of his solitude, discovers a footprint in the sand belonging to Friday, who becomes his associate, and is finally rescued. Madelyn, who read the original unexpurgated edition, explained that Crusoe is the story of a self-willed, arrogant young man who ran away to sea and was shipwrecked on an Atlantic island. that he was the Recognizing agent of his own misfortune, he to bowed in God, prayed reverence, and commenced a life of Bible reading and holiness. God blessed him, for he was in a flourishing Garden of Eden. Crusoe built himself a chair and table, planted a field, domesticated a herd of goats, and became "Lord of all this country," thus reproducing the achievements of society's rise to civilization by resourcefulness and obedience to God. With Friday's appearance, the process is expanded. Robinson shares with the native the making of fire, baking of bread, and the improvement of life, all the while giving credit to God, whose name seldom appears in the abridged adventure book. As did Alexander Selkirk, who may have been the novel's model, Robinson eventually returned to Europe, a wealthy man honored for his helpfulness and piety. It is the story of an ado lescent's spiritual conversion and a guide to a good life that vin dicated the ways of God to man. Unfortunately, as Madelyn pointed out, most of the religion had been removed in the mod ern publishers' conversion of the book into a boy's adventure. Madelyn suggested that the publisher's handling of Robinson Crusoe was similar to much of contemporary life, in which laws, customs, culture, and literature were gradually cleansed |
