"Drew lots among them" — illustration for Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe" (1891)

Drew lots among them. (See p. 268), signed by Wal Paget, bottom right. Paget has described the return of the three exiled mutineers, and now deals with preparations to face another invasion. One-half of page 269, vignetted: 9 cm high by 12.8 cm wide. Running head: "Marriage a Lottery!" (page 269).

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The Passage Illustrated

But the wonder of the story was, how five such refractory, ill-matched fellows should agree about these women, and that some two of them should not choose the same woman, especially seeing two or three of them were, without comparison, more agreeable than the others; but they took a good way enough to prevent quarrelling among themselves, for they set the five women by themselves in one of their huts, and they went all into the other hut, and drew lots among them who should choose first.

Him that drew to choose first went away by himself to the hut where the poor naked creatures were, and fetched out her he chose; and it was worth observing, that he that chose first took her that was reckoned the homeliest and oldest of the five, which made mirth enough amongst the rest; and even the Spaniards laughed at it; but the fellow considered better than any of them, that it was application and business they were to expect assistance in, as much as in anything else; and she proved the best wife of all the parcel. [Chapter IV, "Renewed Invasion of the Savages,"page 268]

Commentary

Will Atkins is the colonist to the right, readily identifiable by his feathered hat. The five English colonists are apparently drawing short slips of paper from a book — an innovation of Paget himself, since the text facing the illustration only explains that the subject of their lottery is the "marriage" of the five aboriginal women recently handed over to the ex-mutineers as a gift from their neighbours, the cannibals. Paget might have added at least a suggestion of the women's feelings about the issue, but has chosen to depict the lottery rather than its disagreeable preliminaries (in which the cannibals expected the Englishmen to eat the captives). He might also have illustrated the subsequent scene, in which Friday's father, acting as translator, explains to the women "that the five men, who were to fetch them out one by one, had chosen them for their wives" (p. 268), a procedure in which they have had no say whatsoever. The scenario may well reflect Defoe's practical views of marriage which he articulated in A treatise concerning the use and abuse of the marriage bed (1727), but it smacks both of slavery and prostitution. In terms of illustration, at least, all previous editions have avoided the lottery entirely as an utterly unsavoury chapter in the history of Crusoe's colony.

Related Material

Reference

Defoe, Daniel. The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner. As Related by Himself. With upwards of One Hundred and Twenty Original Illustrations by Walter Paget. London, Paris, and Melbourne: Cassell, 1891.

Last modified 6 April 2018