| This dissertation examines the Crusoe topos as a construct of manhood in United States culture, 1846--1885. Young men who took their reading of Robinson Crusoe to heart became alienated in a world that failed to manifest their inherent talents and heroic qualities. As they moved out of the home, young men sought out fraternal societies for the fellowship of the Crusoe fantasy and idealized the frontier as an ungoverned space in which to prove their mastery of self and the world. Yet within these locales, Robinson Crusoe often broke down as an animating model of manhood.; When young men confronted the freedoms of liberal individualism or the deceptions and half-truths of the self-made man, Robinson Crusoe came to represent an archaic construction of manhood out of step with free market capitalism and the imperialist ambitions of a nation no longer beholden to an ethos of toilsome labor and religious piety. Nineteenth-century popular literature attests to the multiple meanings "playing Crusoe" held in America. The Crusoe topos becomes a major element in the novels of Herman Melville, Frederick Douglass, Elizabeth Stoddard, James Fenimore Cooper, and George Payson. These writers exploit the ubiquity of the iconic image of Robinson Crusoe to dramatize the anxious effort of young men in Jacksonian America to make their fortunes in the competitive marketplace and yet preserve their connection to the sentimental family. |
