The Centre of all My Enterprises — The Paradox of Families

Defoe wrote his fictional narratives at the same time as his moral treatises. But while the The Family Instructor (1715), Religious Courtship (1722) and Conjugal Lewdness (1727) promoted the virtues of the family, none of his fictional protagonists unambiguously embraced domestic life.1 Robinson Crusoe’s experiences at home after he was rescued from his island, for example, when he spent almost seven years discharging family obligations — he educated two nephews and set one up for a life at sea, he married and fathered three children — takes two paragraphs to tell, in a book that ends on page 389 with a promise of another volume to come that will relate the adventures of the next ten years.2 This first ccount of his travels was book-ended by Crusoe leaving family: he ran away from his parents at the beginning and he farewelled his children at the end. It is thus tempting to see family as simply off-stage in Crusoe’s story: though his feelings are sincere, his family relationships seem to be of little significance.