The lives of women being commonly domestick, the occurrences of them are generally pretty nearly of the same kind; whilst those of men, frequently more vagrant, subject them often to experience greater vicissitudes, many times wonderful and strange. Though a woman, it has been my lot to have experienced much of the latter [â¦].2
That said, such examples fell far short of fully exploring the subversive potential inherent in the female Robinsonade, whereby an isolated woman or a group of women not only leave the âdomestickâ space, as Unca Eliza recognises, but also survive and conquer both the island and what are conventionally perceived to be the limitations of the female body. In this, these eighteenth-century texts differ from more recent examples, which have gone beyond âwonderful and strangeâ adventures. Ian Kinane, discussing twentieth- and twenty-first-century developments in the genre, claims that âthe increase in female writers adopting
In this relatively rich tradition of Robinsonades featuring women castaways,7 the eighteenth-century text that has garnered considerable critical attention in the last two decades is The Female American, which sees half-âIndianâ and half-English Unca Eliza marooned on an American island as punishment for not being willing to sign a marriage contract with the captainâs son. She survives following the written advice that she discovers, produced by her solitary predecessor on the island, a hermit whose life in isolation, as well as his âfolliesâ and âvicesâ before the shipwreck (80), reveal at least several parallels with the life of Longuevilleâs protagonist. Indeed, Unca mentions âread[ing] of hermitsâ (66), and while The English Hermit was not the only narrative of this type available at the time, according to the English Short Title Catalogue the 1750s and 1760s saw the publication of several new editions of this novel after two decades of relative obscurity, so it is possible that the anonymous author of The Female American was elaborating on this model.
The Female American met with moderate interest upon publication and was not held in high regard. A short summary in the Monthly Review considers it âa sort of second Robinson Crusoe; full of wondersâ, while the reader for The Critical Review is not amused and wishes the author would have âsaved us six hours very disagreeable employmentâ.8 The novel was not reissued until 1800, when an illustrated edition appeared in Newburyport, Massachusetts, thereby confirming the suggestion made by The Critical Reviewâs commentator that the novel would have been more successful and popular with readers in America. Things have changed, and in the last two decades The Female American has received substantial scholarly attention, realising the hope expressed by Michelle Burnham and James Freitas (who prepared the 2014 Broadview edition) that the novel should become âa more widely read and studied textâ.9 One indicator of this textâs newfound critical status is that in 2016 a special issue of Womenâs Studies was entirely dedicated to it, addressing a wide array of topics including âgenre convention, the role of the domestic sphere, identity construction, religious conversion, and social justiceâ.10 Building on this critical work, and adding to existing discussions of the novelâs indebtedness to the traditional imperial message despite its seemingly progressive agenda,11 this
The myth has been seen as central from the perspective of feminist literary theory. Despite its possible origin as a male-created story warning against the threat of dangerous âbad girlsâ, it has been appropriated from this misogynist imagery and recontextualised as a myth of female strength and independence.12 As Abby Wettan Kleinbaum explains, the Amazon has been viewed as a feminist model of âpolitical power, of military prowess, and [â¦] autonomy and hence dignityâ.13 The myth, however, is rarely invoked in studies of the eighteenth-century Robinsonade, despite some fine work on the Amazon in eighteenth-century fiction more broadly.14 Julie Wheelwright identifies more than one hundred âfemale warriorsâ in early eighteenth-century literary texts,15 and Laura Brown shows the persistence of the representation of âthe strutting Amazonian Whoreâ from Juvenalâs sixth satire, as translated by John Dryden.16 Notable fictions featuring Amazons in the period include Alexander Popeâs The Rape of the Lock (1712â17), Defoeâs The Fortunate Mistress (1724) or The Female Soldier; Or, The Surprising Life and Adventures of Hannah Snell (1750), by an anonymous author. For some reason, despite the possible Defoevian allusion in the title of the last of these works, the form of the Robinsonade was not considered the appropriate background for the staging of an Amazon. Quite tellingly, when Owen refers to the myth in her discussion of âfemale Crusoesâ in the eighteenth century, the text under scrutiny is The Fortunate Mistress by virtue of Roxanaâs affinities with Defoeâs castaway.17
When Terry Castle discussed the masquerade as a potential utopia of female sovereignty, she showed how it âengendered an âAmazonian raceââ, a society of âwomen unmarked by patriarchyâ.18 The utopian or heterotopic implications of the Robinsonade and its islands could have provided a perfect framework
In The Female American, in turn, the idea of a âfemale Crusoeâ is much more than a curiosity, and the heroineâs Amazonian potential bears its original mythical significance, being both explored and abandoned as such. Unca Elizaâs hybrid body is a space inscribed by conflicted discourses that the novel juxtaposes, creating an ideological double voice reminiscent of the other body-centred narratives discussed in this book. Following Owenâs idea of the eighteenth-century female Robinsonade as a space of ideological ambiguity, I will complicate too-optimistic readings of The Female Americanâs progressivism, which interpret the novel as âan irresistible antidoteâ to the âmasculine individualism and female domesticityâ that dominated eighteenth-century fiction,21 and which have read the heroineâs âambiguously racialised and gendered bodily and cultural selfâ as an assertion of âthe flexibly gendered, multiracial, multicultural, multilingual, and pan-Atlantic (or regional) woman [â¦] capable of influencing outcomes among civilisationsâ.22 While such sentiments are clearly part of the novelâs message,23 and are suggestively embodied
My tawny complexion, and the oddity of my dress, attracted every oneâs attention, for my mother used to dress me in a kind of mixed habit, neither perfectly in the Indian, nor yet in the European taste, either of fine white linen, or a rich silk. I never wore a cap; but my lank black hair was adorned with diamonds and flowers. In the winter I wore a kind of loose mantle or cloak, which I used occasionally to wear on one shoulder, or to cast it behind me in folds, tied in the middle with a ribband, which gave it a pleasing kind of romantic air. My arms were also adorned with strings of diamonds, and one of the same kind surrounded my waist. I frequently diverted myself with wearing the bow and arrow the queen my aunt left me, and was so dexterous a shooter, that, when very young, I could shoot a bird on the wing. (58)
Thus, after suggesting a complex gender identity at the beginning of her account, when she highlights the âmasculineâ character of her adventures, Unca now underlines her racial and cultural hybridity, represented by her âtawny complexionâ â which, let us recall, was termed âuglyâ in Defoeâs sketch of Friday â and her âmixed habitâ. The typical Amazonian props â the bow and arrows â gain in significance not only as a memento of her indigenous origin but also as an indicator of matrilineal ancestry, as Scarlett Bowen has demonstrated,25 and which is central to the challenge that she poses to the patriarchal system: âI would never marry any man who could not use a bow and arrow as well as I couldâ (60). The bow and arrows that she inherited from her late aunt indicate her Amazonian dignity, but also the inherent âsavageryâ of female anger: the aunt, in love with Uncaâs father, at one point attempted
The paradox underpinning the narrative, which decides the failure of Uncaâs Amazonian potential, is that the heroineâs re-enactment of the myth is largely confined to domestic and familiar spaces, where her difference as a racial and cultural hybrid and the shadowy presence of her aunt become sources of empowerment. She âdivertsâ herself with using her bow in a ruthless manner (âI could shoot a bird on the wingâ [58]), but she enjoys being treated âin a degree little inferior to that of a princessâ (58), declining proposals of marriage and entertaining herself at her admirersâ expense (59) â including her cousin, whose courtship meets with laughter and retorts âin the Indian language, of which he was entirely ignorantâ (60). Uncaâs defiance of patriarchal rule eventually puts her life at risk when she staunchly refuses to sign a marriage contract with the son of her own shipâs captain, resulting in her being marooned on a desert island where the villain hopes she will be âa prey to wild beastsâ (63).
The beginning of the island section looks promising: Unca urges the captain to let her keep the bow and arrows, thus reasserting her identity as defined at the outset of the novel. Allowing the heroine conveniently to keep the Amazonian weapon has obvious narrative consequences as far as the readerâs expectations are concerned: the bow and arrows will both protect and sustain the castaway. The frontispiece to the 1800 edition (Figure 13), depicting Unca Eliza in line with how she is represented in the character sketch quoted above, fuels these expectations. It shows the protagonist against a natural backdrop, in her âmixed habitâ and using her bow, which suggests that it is showing the castaway struggling for her survival, in a manner reminiscent of the other Robinsonade frontispieces discussed in this book. But the scene visualised features Unca âdivertingâ herself in the homely context, perhaps by targeting birds (also depicted); it does not belong to the narrative of her âextraordinary adventuresâ (as the subtitle of this edition has it).
The frontispiece to the 1800 edition of The Female American (Newburyport: Angier March)
COURTESY OF BEINECKE RARE BOOK AND MANUSCRIPT LIBRARY, YALE UNIVERSITY
In fact, the island narrative in The Female American makes absolutely no mention of Uncaâs use of her weapon; indeed, the next time it is referred to is when it serves a merely decorative function, when she anticipates meeting the locals she has manipulated, âwith [her] bow and arrows hung over [her] shouldersâ (122). Instead, from the moment she is cast away, Unca Eliza is redefined within the patriarchal frames of conventional femininity: âThus disconsolate, and alone, I sat on the sea-shore. My grief was too great for my
As such, the weak and hysterical female castaway, who has somehow forgotten about her agency and empowerment as symbolised by the Amazonian bow and arrows, manages to survive not thanks to her own ingenuity and prowess but by following the advice of her predecessor on the island. It is telling that in the paradigmatic monarch-of-all-I-survey scene, which takes place shortly after Unca is left on the island, the heroine does not marvel at the environs nor fantasise about her dominance, but instead notices remnants of a hermitâs dwelling, âthe ruins of a buildingâ (66), which imply, in a sense, that the land has already been taken. Inside, Unca discovers a manuscript book written by the hermit conveying advice: âHow you may subsist, you may learn from the history of my lifeâ (67). Fulfilling, as it were, Philip Quarllâs prophecies about an inheritor to âhisâ island, Unca Eliza is situated here in a paternal line of succession, contrasting the maternal line of her Amazonian aunt, and her survival is accordingly made possible by âdoing as she is toldâ.
I sat dissolved in sighs and tears, and indulged my melancholy, till the night drew on, when I laid me down, but not to rest; and so greatly was my mind afflicted, that it brought on a violent fever, attended with a delirium. I raved, I cried, I laughed by turns. I soon became so weak, that I was scarce able to crawl from my bed to get some water [â¦]. (74)
[I]t was always my custom to imagine to myself that my uncle was speaking to me; this I thought, as it were, inspired me, and gave an energy to my words, strength to my arguments, and commanded my attention. I have sometimes indulged this reverie to such a degree that I have really imagined, at last, that my uncle was speaking to me. (77)
Having reasserted her identity as her uncleâs disciple, rather than her auntâs warrior â and indeed, the name âUncaâ does not seem to be only accidentally reminiscent of âuncleâ â the castaway is finally confronted with her other father figure, the old hermit, who â contrary to Uncaâs and the readerâs expectations â has not yet passed away. Thus reinstated in the patriarchal order of succession, Unca begins her missionary work shortly after the hermit finally dies.
The image itself, of gold, greatly exceeded human size: it resembled a man clad in a long robe or vest; which reached quite down to the pedestal-stone or foundation on which it stood, and lay in folds upon it. This image was girt about the waist as with a girdle, and on each breast gathered to a point, fastened as it were, with a button; the neck and bosom quite bear like the manner of women; on the head was a curiously wrought crown, and between the two breasts an image of the sun carved in gold, as was all the rest of it. The right hand supported the figure of a new moon, and the left held a cluster of stars. On the back part of the idol was written in large Indian characters to this purpose, THE ORACLE OF THE SUN. I ascended the steps, and threw a stone at the image, and found it was hollow. (86)
[The stairs] were very narrow and steep; which I soon found, led me up into the image of the sun. At last I got quite into the body of it, and my head within the head of it. There were holes through the mouth, eyes, nose, and ears of it, so that I could distinctly see all over the island before me, of which the height I was at gave me a great command. (88)
Uncaâs metaphorical transformation into an embodiment of patriarchal discourse tellingly alludes to, or perhaps corrects the monarch-of-all-I-survey moment that failed to offer any sense of empowerment at the beginning of the island narrative. Here, the female castaway is given âa great commandâ â yet not as an Amazon, but through incorporating masculine power. And as such, she hardly recognises herself: âI was almost stunned with the sound of my own voiceâ (88).
When the expected morning came, I awoke by day-break, drest myself in white, and, over all, put on the high-priestâs vestments [â¦]. These were a kind of cassock, or vest, formed of gold wire, or rather of small narrow plated gold, curiously folded, or twisted together, line net-work, which buttoned close with diamonds. Over this I put on, formed of the same materials, and in the same manner, a gown, sprinkled all over with precious stones, and here and there a large diamond. On my head I placed a crown of most exquisite make, richly beset with precious stones of various sizes and colours; one on the top particularly large, which emitted from all parts of it a light greater than that of either of my lamps. In my right hand I held a golden staff, or rod, with a small image of the sun on the top of it. On one of my fingers I wore the ring, and on each arm a rich bracelet, all which I found at the same time I discovered all these other things. (121)
While Uncaâs âmixed habitâ in England was, in a sense, an internalised aspect of her hybrid identity, indispensably connected with her âtawny complexionâ and
the sailors it seems heard the musick from the statue, as the wind blew directly off from the island; this together with my tawny complexion, and strange dress, so terrified them, that they [â¦] would come no nearer. (137)
I had now the great pleasure of once more enjoying all the ordinances of the church, and the constant company of a religious and sensible companion, to whom, through his constant importunity, I was at last obliged to give my hand. (148)
I groped my way as well as I could to the stairs, which led up to the trapdoor, which, having reached, I endeavoured to unbolt; but as the bolts were large and very rusty, they gave me a great deal of trouble and much pain, forced the skin off my hands, and made them very sore and bloody. (96)
The warning, realised through bodily pain, materialises at the end of the novel, when she is metaphorically buried alive through her incorporation of the male
The Female American sacrifices its Amazon at the altar of the founding myth of America: unlike in Peter Wilkins, the myth of origin here does not support the hero myth; conversely, it requires an abandonment of (Amazonian and matrilineal) heroism for the sake of fatherly collectivism. Uncaâs colony, established through a peaceful evangelical mission, is a metaphor for subjugated America, and the biracial heroine becomes its embodiment. As Wigston Smith points out, Uncaâs âmixed habitâ is reminiscent of visual allegories of the ânewâ continent in the period â especially those combining âdomesticatedâ indigenous objects (dress, bow and arrow) with Europeanness (classical iconography).35 The iconographic form of these allegories was codified by Cesare Ripaâs influential Iconologia, first published in 1593 but regularly reprinted. Uncaâs allegorisation in The Female American becomes manifest when her early character sketch is juxtaposed with the later account of how she revealed herself before the native people: the indicators of racial and cultural difference (tawny skin, dress) and mentions of her bow skills, constructing a character of flesh and bone, give way to a simulacrum. Unca becomes an idea that is largely disembodied in as much as her authentic bodily difference
In sum, while in comparison with the other examples studied in this book Uncaâs hybrid, Amazonian body seems to offer the most subversive potential to challenge the ideal of imperial masculinity, in the end the protagonist is little more than a failed Amazon, who preserves her bodily and cultural difference and at times displays it, but who is unable to empower herself through it beyond theatrical stratagems that cohere with the larger picture of cultural dominance. As Brown has noted, the myth of the Amazon in literature often has a spectral dimension, being a shadowy presence, not necessarily realised: âAmazons haunt the frontiers of the representation of women at various levels and in various modes of discourseâ.36 This is the case for Unca: in The Female American, her physical hybridity eventually remains little more than a textualised emblem of a peaceful interracial and intercultural encounter, part of a colonial fantasy into which the narrative transforms. Nevertheless, taking up Brownâs idea of haunting presence, the castaway Amazon remains a powerful concept subverting the conventional distribution of roles in eighteenth-century Robinsonades. This concept is given an alluring embodiment in The Female American, and while Unca eventually fails as an Amazon, perhaps in part due to the formal and ideological requirements of the eighteenth-century castaway narrative as a genre, she stands out as the most memorable âfemale Crusoeâ in the period, a point of reference for more recent revisions of the Crusoe story, such as Coetzeeâs Foe, offering, as we shall see, a more consistent application of the Amazonian myth.
C. M. Owen, The Female Crusoe: Hybridity, Trade and the Eighteenth-Century Individual (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2010).
The Female American; Or, The Adventures of Unca Eliza Winkfield, ed. Michelle Burnham and James Freitas (Peterborough: Broadview, 2014), p. 45. Further references to The Female American will be parenthetical.
Ian Kinane, âIntroduction: The Robinsonade Genre an the Didactic Impulseâ, Didactics and the Modern Robinsonade, ed. Ian Kinane (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2019), p. 35.
Amy Hicks, âRomance, the Robinsonade, and the Cultivation of Adolescent Female Desire in Libba Brayâs Beauty Queensâ, Didactics and the Modern Robinsonade, ed. Ian Kinane (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2019), pp. 185â186.
Libba Bray, Beauty Queens (Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin, 2011), pp. 1, 173.
An extremely useful bibliographic tool to research the female Robinsonades is the database compiled by Anne Birgitte Rønning, which includes international examples from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (2011â2020). https://www2.hf.uio.no/tjenester/bibliografi/Robinsonades.
See Appendix E: Reviews of The Female American, The Female American, p. 249.
Michelle Burnham and James Freitas, âA Note on the Textâ, The Female American, p. 40.
Jesslyn Collins-Frohlich and Denise Mary MacNeil, âIntroduction.â Womenâs Studies 45:7 (2016): 612.
Chloe Wigston Smith, âThe Empire of Home: Global Domestic Objects and The Female American (1767)â, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 40.1 (2017): 67â87; PrzemysÅaw UÅciÅski, âCastaways and Colonialism: Dislocating Cultural Encounter in The Female American (1767)â, Rewriting Crusoe: The Robinsonade across Languages, Cultures, and Media, ed. Jakub Lipski (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2020), pp. 39â51; Emelia Abbé, âCollecting and Collected: Native American Subjectivity and Transatlantic Transactions in The Female Americanâ, Early American Literature 54.1 (2019): 37â67.
Sigrid King, âAmazonâ, Encyclopedia of Feminist Literary Theory, ed. Elizabeth Kowaleski Wallace (London and New York: Routledge, 2009), pp. 16â17.
Abby Wettan Kleinbaum, The War against the Amazons (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1983), p. 224.
Laura Brown, Ends of Empire: Women and Ideology in Early Eighteenth-Century English Literature (Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 1993); Wahrman, The Making of the Modern Self, pp. 3â29; Laura Linker, Dangerous Women, Libertine Epicures, and the Rise of Sensibility, 1670â1730 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), pp. 115â140.
Julie Wheelwright, Amazons and Military Maids: Women Who Dressed as Men in Pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness (London: Pandora, 1989), p. 8.
Brown, Ends of Empire, p. 138.
Owen, Female Crusoes, pp. 89â93.
Terry Castle, Masquerade and Civilisation: The Carnivalesque in Eighteenth-Century English Culture and Fiction (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986), p. 255.
Charles Dibdin, The Professional Life of Mr. C. Dibdin. Vol. 3 (London: Published by the Author), p. 319.
Charles Dibdin, Hannah Hewit (London: Printed for Charles Dibdin, 1792), p. VI.
Mary Helen McMurran, âRealism and the Unreal in The Female Americanâ, The Eighteenth Century, 52.3/4 (2011), p. 324.
Denise Mary MacNeil, âEmpire and the Pan-Atlantic Self in The Female American; or, The Adventures of Unca Eliza Winkfieldâ, Womenâs Narratives of the Early Americas and the Formation of Empire, ed. Mary McAleer Balkun and Susan C. Imbarrato (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), p. 110.
Alexis McQuigge offers a balanced reading of how the novel reconciles conservative values with progressive âmomentsâ of female empowerment. Alexis McQuigge, ââThat Person Shall be a Womanâ: Matriarchal Authority and the Fantasy of Female Power in The Female Americanâ, Transatlantic Women Travelers, 1688â1843, ed. Misty Krueger (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2021), pp. 131â143.
For a reading of Unca Eliza as a Pocahontas figure, see Betty Joseph, âRe(playing) Crusoe/ Pocahontas: Circum-Atlantic Stagings in The Female Americanâ, Criticism 42.3 (2000): 317â335.
Scarlett Bowen, âVia Media: Transatlantic Anglicanism in The Female Americanâ, The Eighteenth Century 53.2 (2012): 201.
Ildiko Csengei, Sympathy, Sensibility and the Literature of Feeling in the Eighteenth Century (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), p. 143.
Csengei, Sympathy, Sensibility and the Literature of Feeling in the Eighteenth Century, p. 142.
The author of The Female American would have familiarised themselves with the 1708 English translation of Simon Ockley, titled The Improvement of Human Reason: Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan. For a study of its possible influence on Defoe, see Samar Attar, âServing God or Mammon? Echoes from Hayy Ibn Yaqzan and Sinbad the Sailor in Robinson Crusoeâ, Robinson Crusoe: Myths and Metamorphoses, ed. Lieve Spaas and Brian Stimpson (Houndmills: Macmillan, 1996), pp. 78â97.
Matthew Reilly, ââNo eye has seen, or ear heardâ: Arabic Sources for Quaker Subjectivity in Unca Eliza Winkfieldâs The Female Americanâ, Eighteenth-Century Studies 44.2 (2011): 262, 263.
Reilly, âNo eye has seen, or ear heardâ, p. 278.
Ann Beebe, ââI Sent Over These Adventuresâ: Women in The Female American and The Widow Ranterâ, Womenâs Studies 45.7 (2016): 633.
Wigston Smith, âThe Empire of Homeâ, pp. 73â79.
Castle, Masquerade and Civilisation, p. 255.
See Maximillian E. Novak, âCrusoeâs Encounters with the World and the Problem of Justice in The Farther Adventuresâ, Robinson Crusoe after 300 Years, ed. Andreas K. E. Mueller and Glynis Ridley (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2021), p. 178.
Wigston Smith, âThe Empire of Homeâ, pp. 75â77.
Brown, Ends of Empire, 144.