The greatest book ever written about homemaking – in the physical and metaphysical sense of the word – was not written by a woman and has no women characters. This seems a grave injustice. The subject of why men say some things better than women and why they possess more genius is fascinating.

But, we will leave that subject for another day. The important thing about this book is that it got written.

This may offend the men and boys who consider The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe to be a tale of masculine adventure. It’s true it is a masculine adventure and for this reason will probably never be embraced by women’s book clubs. But, it is only partly an adventure story and more importantly the strange and surprising story of making a home in a hostile world.

Most everyone knows the story of Daniel Defoe’s immortal novel, first published in 1719. Knowledge of Crusoe is carried in the genes. Defoe himself is a fascinating character: novelist, journalist, politician, secret agent and failed businessmen. He wrote other famous novels and popular nonfiction, including Conjugal Lewdness (A Treatise concerning the Use and Abuse of the Marriage Bed) and The Political History of the Devil. Much can be said about Defoe, but Crusoe is our man.

The story is simple, although there are many tedious plot twists. Crusoe is a young man from York, England on the threshold of adulthood when, against the sage advice of his father, he takes up the life of a sailor. The first sentence of the book has sent millions of  high school students scrambling for Cliff Notes:

    I was born in the Year 1632, in the City of York, of a good Family, tho’ not of that Country, my father being a Foreigner of Bremen, who settled first at Hull: He got a good Estate of Merchandise, and leaving off his trade, lived afterward at York, from whence he had married my Mother, whose relations were named Robinson, a very good family in that Country, and from whom I was called Robinson Kreutznaer, but by the usual corruptions of words in England, we are now called, nay, we call ourselves, and write our name Crusoe, and so my companions always call’d me.

 
Crusoe immediately encounters difficulties and is soon kidnapped by Muslim pirates and made a slave. He manages to escape and is picked up by a Portuguese trading vessel which transports him to Brazil. After several years as a successful plantation owner, he decides to head for Africa to pick up a ship load of slaves. Crusoe was a man of his time and, more importantly, he was the last to claim he was perfect.

The ship encounters a storm not far from Trinidad and is lost. Crusoe manages to escape and swim to an island. Here he spends 28 years as a shipwreck, most of that time alone.

Crusoe exhibits many charming qualities during these years. His resourcefulness and zeal for competently feeding, clothing and sheltering himself are chief among these. He never considers poor supplies an excuse for sloth or resignation, making him the frugal homemaker par excellence. It is not drudgery to make his own bread and tend goats. These are works of  demanding and vital creativity.  Crusoe discovers the hidden ingenuity that lies behind ordinary subsistence.

To be a homemaker in the world today, despite ample supplies and technological wonders, requires similar acts of discovery. From every side one is told that the ordinary tasks of survival are insignificant and unworthy of our full attention. These tasks are considered so insignificant that a woman receives very little training in them until one day she finds herself on a domestic island with no choice but to figure it all out on her own and no time to do it.

But, it is not in this practical sense alone that Crusoe must create a home for himself. He must create the spiritual conditions of home as well. And, for this, like many a contemporary homemaker, he finds himself ill-equipped. It takes Crusoe long years to discover his own metaphysical needs and to recreate the spiritual conditions of civilization on his island. He has no help from the world at large and, in a decadent and materialistic age, the homemaker does not either.

Let me revise that. It’s not true that Crusoe has no help from the world at large. Among the supplies he retrieves from the ship before it sinks is a Bible. He begins to read it and slowly but painfully realizes just how shallow and ungrateful he is. Many things transpire in this regard.

It’s also not true that the homemaker has no help. The riches of her culture and of past ages are there for the taking. The home may seem an island, but it is not. The universe comes knocking at the front door.  It is only for her to let it in.

Defoe prophesied an age of radical individualism. And the people of his time understood what he was saying. That’s why the book was enormously popular though many readers wouldn’t have expressed it that way. They intuitively knew the great changes that were upon them and that before long every man would inhabit his own island.

If you have never read this immortal tale, I suggest you persevere through the book’s long-winded and boring sections. Crusoe will enter your psyche and one day when you are engaged in the vital and life-giving tasks of creating your own habitat, the image of a bearded man sitting on a beach weaving a basket will appear on your mental horizon. Crusoe, c’est toi!