Wednesday, November 24, 1999

The Sounds of Silence: The Voice of the Other in Coetzee's Foe

When looking at civilization, or indeed any notion of humanity whether collective or individual, one naturally presupposes language to be fundamental to its structure and development. Such assumptions are not without validity, as communication does principally create civilization on its many levels. Arguably, culture is itself the superstructure above this act of communication within a society. Within this context it is possible to observe how culture and language are determined by the social structures within a society; those that are in positions of power regulate both the medium and the content of culture. Throughout Foe, J. M. Coetzee consistently demonstrates the implications of power structures on language and the ability to communicate. The protagonist herself struggles to convey her story despite cultural limitations, as she begins to understand that though she cannot tell her own story, using another author removes her voice. Foe consequently uses his cultural dominance to dictate the constituency of a proper story, yet throughout the text Susan pursues her own narrative, and indeed the nature of her own position within that story. Most prominent however is the portrayal of the mute slave Friday, whose subservience is so thorough that he can barely understand or respond to others. Susan herself attempts to engage in a dialogue with him, but he remains mute to her. One cannot disavow Friday an element of his own agency however, as Susan’s pursuit of his story despite his silence largely precipitates the story that Coetzee presents to the reader. Indeed, taken as a whole the premise of Foe is that of the agency of the subservient. It is when the repressed become aware of their mutual relationship with authoritative voices and subsequently engage with them that a measure of independence and freedom is gained.

The first section of Foe is a direct narrative of Susan’s life on Crusoe’s island told from her own perspective. As such it must of course be analysed in light of the narrator’s biases – in particular, that Susan does not have access to the ‘truth’ behind the events of their stay on the island as either Crusoe or Friday perceive it – yet that is precisely one of the main themes of the novel as a whole. Upon her return to England, she attempts to bring her experiences into a cohesive narrative to be shared with the reading public and endeavour to remain as ‘factual’ as possible. It is important for the narrative to be her own, and she commences in a similar manner as other tales of maritime adventure. The beginnings of both the first section and her story-within-a-story description of events to Crusoe are routine for such narratives: “At last I could row no further” (p. 5); and then speaking, like Ishmael, to Crusoe, “My name is Susan Barton ... I was cast adrift by the crew of the ship yonder” (p. 9). Each instance stresses the importance of Susan as an individual within the narrative, and there is no doubt that this is her story. Yet such conventions originate in masculine adventure narratives, and Susan quickly learns that she cannot incorporate all the elements that she wants into this framework. Her desire to include accounts from both Crusoe and Friday to complete her narrative is frustrated when she discovers that she cannot do so. There is no possibility of Friday revealing his story to her, neither can the recently dead Crusoe, for “who but Crusoe, who is no more, could truly tell you Crusoe’s story?” (p. 51). While she does attempt to engage Friday in order to reveal his story, which will be further discussed below, it becomes apparent that regardless of its validity, his story – or indeed that of any of the characters from the island – is largely irrelevant for readers. Such becomes manifest during her supposed collaboration with Foe, who subsumes Susan’s account into his own narrative. She felt that she could not write the text herself, for she cannot truly find her own voice within the silence of both Friday and Crusoe. She does not feel that it is her right to speak for them, although others, namely Foe himself, do not hesitate to speak for her.

Susan believes that she requires Foe for precisely the reason that she struggles to find her own voice. As a man involved with and indeed an articulate exponent of British culture, Foe represents the dominant culture from which Susan as a woman was largely excluded. Susan doubts her ability to produce a cohesive narrative within the confines of the patriarchal culture. Literary society – which in the eighteenth century largely restrained women as marginal figures – required a focus for texts, a point to be reached, and one which Susan could not provide: “my stories always have more applications than I intend, so that I must go back and laboriously extract the right application and apologize for the wrong ones and efface them. Some people are born story tellers; I, it would seem, am not” (p. 81). Susan is here fighting with the knowledge that history does not emerge from a single narrative, instead it is much more subjective. The very existence of the text of Foe proves the disparity that Susan feels between what she should say according to social convention and what she believes needs to be said. It is this struggle which provides thematic and narrative continuity to Coetzee’s text and proves, to modern readers at least, that Susan would indeed have been an able storyteller. She believes that storytelling is a live medium better suited to oral transmission since “a liveliness is lost in the writing down which must be supplied by art” (p. 40), and therefore any story will contain more of the soul of the author than elements of truth. Stories are living entities informed by the teller, they are products of a creative process akin to eroticism, and therefore requires the participation of the author within the narrative. Susan continually refers to physical love as the basis for narratives, saying that the “tongue is like the heart” (p. 85) and that “without desire how is it possible to make a story?” (p. 88). Certainly there was some level of desire on the island, foremost was obviously Susan’s desire to escape back to England, but also her sexual feelings shared with Crusoe were important. Regardless, such themes would be ill-suited to the phallocentric British society, which would inscribe its own voice on her narrative for “he has the last word who disposes over the greatest force” (p. 124), which of course if not necessarily Susan herself.

Perhaps most important to finding her own voice is Susan’s desire to engage others in a dialogue to conjoin her own narrative. It is in this sense that a sense of ‘truth’ would emerge from a multiplicity of voices. Yet such simultaneous narration is deemed too divided by contemporary literary culture, as personified by Foe in the text. Susan wants the truth of the events that occurred on the island to liberate her, in a fashion, from the dominance of others. Her story would demonstrate that a woman is just as independent a creature as a man. Thematically and practically the island was her freedom, as it was there that she was agent to her own emancipation. Yet upon her return to England she finds that she cannot convey her story as she lacks both the publishing credentials of someone like Foe and the ability to write as a woman within British culture of the time. It is because of her internalization of the cultural norms which exclude her that she feels that she must apologize for her “wrong applications”. She therefore denies the validity of her own voice and instead believes herself to be as a Muse to Foe while he writes her story. However, she quickly learns that she will not achieve freedom by his pen. Foe’s writing is not any real account of her life on the island but instead a more elaborate account which she ultimately rejects: “You know how dull our life was, in truth. We faced no perils, no ravenous beasts, not even serpents. Food was plentiful, the sun was mild. No pirates landed on our shores, no freebooters, no cannibals” (p. 81). Susan does not gain the liberation of free communication through Foe, quite contrarily his writing literally imprisons Susan and Friday within his house. Foe wants Susan to be secondary to his narrative, and indeed his writing leads to the creation of a second Susan, a character who believes she in fact is Susan Barton. He begins to contradict her, and attempts to convince her to accept this second Susan and presuppose a narrative which she is trying to reject:

Foe smiled. ‘Tell me more of Bahia,’ he said.
‘There is much to be said of Bahia. Bahia is a world in itself. But why? Bahia
is not the island. Bahia was but a stepping stone on my way.’
‘That may not be so,’ replied Foe cautiously. ‘Rehearse your story and you will see.”
(p. 116)

Foe then proceeds to create his own narrative, effectively removing Susan from her own story; to him a sequential narrative is more important. Only one hero is required for Foe, and other narratives – namely those of Friday, Crusoe, and in effect Susan herself – would only be distracting and more importantly it would be outside of the literary tradition. Despite being aided by numerous assistants, Odysseus, Jason of the Argonauts, Aeneas, and Crusoe in Defoe’s original text – all effectively stood alone during their travels. Foe in fact creates her story as if it were his own, as though he had himself been a castaway, and more importantly it becomes a story which adheres perfectly with the patriarchal society in which they live, with “five parts in all ... it is thus that we make up a book” (p. 117).

Susan does not allow Foe to be sole narrator of the text, however. Initially she counters Foe’s authoring of a palatable story for the English masses by rejecting his attempts to subserve her life to that narrative as well as the inscriptions that he places upon her:

if I were a mere receptacle ready to accommodate whatever story is
stuffed in me, surely you would dismiss me, surely you would say to your-
self, “This is no woman but a house of words, hollow, without substance”?
‘I am not a story, Mr. Foe.
(pp. 130-1)

Despite what Foe is trying to do to her, Susan firmly believes that she is greater than the story, and indeed, there is more to the character than is presented by Coetzee; her life does not begin with the first paragraph of part I. She learns from her isolation with Friday in Foe’s house that she must more actively involve herself in the story’s creation. To this end she attempts to engage both Friday and Foe himself into the narrative. Susan intends to become a subject for Foe in both senses of the word. His repressive acts do remove her identity to a great extent, yet not to the extreme of her entirely doubting herself or her voice. She never displays any uncertainty concerning the second Susan but remains adamant that she herself is the real Susan, despite Foe’s intentions. Simultaneously however, in many instances she does demonstrate her own agency: when she has a sexual encounter with Foe; the letters of Part II, originally meant for Foe but much more of her own narrative voice to be read by others.

More informative are the initiatives taken with Friday in order to allow his story to emerge. It is from these instances that a voice emerges for Susan. At the same time however, these passages demonstrate the extent to which Friday has himself become a subject to both the colonial power and the narrative itself. He had of course once been a slave, and to the British he will always remain so. Susan’s efforts to ‘free’ him from servitude do not in fact liberate him from colonial rule; indeed, that she inscribes her own values and an identity upon him is made quite evident when she fashions for him a ‘freedom sack’, containing his manumission papers, to be worn around his neck. Many times she mimics Foe in inscribing her own words upon Friday in place of his own voice: “I say he is a cannibal, he becomes a cannibal; I say he is a laundryman and he becomes a laundryman ... what he is to the world is what I make of him” (pp. 121-2). More telling are her attempts to probe Friday for his story, despite his inability to communicate in any but the most basic manner. It is this probing that allows Coetzee’s narrative a continuity and indeed remains the locus for the text. Susan senses something in Friday that she cannot truly fathom until the final part of the text. Throughout her interaction with Friday, there is an agency in his silence and indeed in his slavery on the island of which she becomes aware:

Why, during all those years alone with Crusoe, did you submit to his rule,
when you might easily have slain him, or blinded him and made him into
your slave in turn? Is there something in the condition of slavehood that
invades the heart and makes a slave a slave for life”
(p. 85)

Friday has to a certain degree internalized his own servitude, yet more importantly, he exists within a different medium than either Susan, Crusoe, or Foe, and one in which Susan herself longs to live. Friday is not confined to the slippery signification of identity with which all of the other characters remain burdened, continually exchanging positions of master-slave, self-other, and Subject-subject. Instead he remains outside of such a system; his existence is more pure and untainted by the identity construction which would others inscribe upon him. To a great extent it is his lack of language which allows Friday to be free of such encumbrances of society. The final part of the text suggests that Susan herself has begun to understand the nature of his existence: “This is a place where bodies are their own signs. It is the home of Friday” (p. 137). It is within this context that one can more fully understand the association continually made between writing and sexual desire. By doing so, Susan is endeavouring to unite Friday’s pure world of ‘body-as-sign’ with the literary world of slippery signification, and consequently find a means of communication. Arguably, Susan cannot remove the social constructs which bind her from such a place, however much she longs to join Friday. She is far too much like Foe, and her dependency on language is far too great.

Many texts have examined the impact of social structure on language and communication, and a number of theoretical works have been advanced sharing similar views. The relationships between the dominant and subservient classes are not simple ‘give-and-take’, but instead form a complex of interdependency; each internalizes the supposed roles of the other. Within this context, Susan – a character repressed in many way by her society – must find a voice with which she can create her story. It is her struggle to find this voice, undertaken largely through the voices of others, that forms the locus of Coetzee’s narrative. The final section of the text seems to suggest that she has succeeded in finding such a voice by understanding Friday’s silence, and there is little evidence to doubt her newly discovered communicative freedom.

Bibliography

Coetzee, J.M. Foe. London: Penguin Books, 1986.