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begin with my arrival, and the story of us together to end on the island too (Foe 34). Susan claims to be the owner of the story of Cruso’s island and wants Foe to write a book based on her, Susan’s story, because she is not able to manage it herself. She only produced a list of important events and a title: The Female Castaway. Being a True Account of a Year Spent on a Desert Island. With Many Strange Circumstances Never Hitherto Related (Foe 67). After Susan’s book title, Coetzee reminds us of Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe: How long before I am driven to invent new and stranger circumstances: the salvage of tools and muskets from Cruso's ship; the building of a boat, or at least a skiff, and a venture to sail to the mainland; a landing by cannibals on the island, followed by a skirmish and many bloody deaths; and, at last, the coming of a golden-haired stranger with a sack of corn, and the planting of the terraces? Alas, will the day ever arrive when we can make a story without strange circumstances? (Foe 67). The new and stranger circumstances refer to Defoe’s book. This book must be unknown to Susan and we can see this reference as an ironic intertextuality and maybe as an incitement of Coetzee to read Defoe’s book.

In a discussion with Foe, Susan says, the story I desire to be known by is the story of the island. You call it an episode, but I call it a story in its own right (Foe 121). Foe wants to use her story for his own interest. His book should have five parts in all but Susan dislikes his plot: All the joy I had felt in finding my way to Foe fled me (Foe 117). Susan accepts that she needs somebody else to write down her story; I was intended not to be the mother of my story, but to beget it. It is not I who am the intended, but you (Foe 126). Due to Foe’s frustrating and postponing actions, the book will never be published.

Susan observes that some people are born storytellers: I, it would seem, am not (Foe 81). Ac-cording to Probyn, Coetzee’s adoption of the feminine narrative voice constitutes both a strategic evasion of a lack of an adequate vantage point from which to speak and a strategic encoding of that lack of authority in the figure of the white woman. The white women’s possession of the word is unstable, unauthorised and also outside recognised literary forms ⁴ .

Susan’s way of telling the story informs us incidentally on the narrative process she uses: it is an oral story in which she simply reports the events as she has seen and experienced them and thus the first section shows us an abundant use of quotation marks. The reader has a feeling that she tells her story exclusively to him, since there are many sentences such as “I have told you”, “as you shall hear” showing an interactive situation of Susan as storyteller and a

⁴ Probyn, §3

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listener. However, during the reading it becomes clear that she is telling her story to the au-thor Foe. Let me tell you my story (Foe 10) and there is more, much more, I could tell you about the life we lived (…) (Foe 26) points to the transactional drift of her narration. Susan is offering something of value to a potential buyer: an interesting tale, a unique business product in the shape of a desirable novel story for a broad public, which could make Susan and Foe rich. It was Captain Smith who led her to the idea that her story could be a commodity, which could be marketable: It is a story you should set down in writing and offer to the booksellers, (…) There has never before, to my knowledge, been a female castaway of our nation. It will cause a great stir. (…) the bookseller will hire a man to set your story to rights, and put in a dash of colour too, here and there (Foe 40).

Another interesting example of her narrative process is the comparison of the two descriptions of her arrival on the island. Telling the incident to Foe to whom Susan must relate her story as interestingly as possible, she chooses a sort of literary style: At last I could row no further. My hands were blistered, my back burned, my body ached. With a sigh, making barely a splash, I slipped overboard. With slow strokes, long hair floating about me, like a flower of the sea, like an anemone, like a jellyfish of the kind you see in the waters of Brazil, I swam towards the strange island, for a while swimming as I had rowed, against the current, then all at once free of its grip, carried by the waves into the bay and to the beach (Foe 5). To Cruso, Susan is only obliged to explain her presence on his island, there is no need to embellish her story: Then at last I could row no further. My hands were raw, my back was burned, my body ached. With a sigh, making barely a splash, I slipped overboard and began to swim towards your island. The waves took me and bore me on to the beach. The rest you know (Foe 11). Obviously, the situation and the purpose of the story determine the style or manner of telling. In the first quote, Susan is in the business of facilitating the making of literature, through extensive details and metaphors, to impress Foe and to mark the story as an interesting commodity. Susan thinks that the story is hers, because she means to be Cruso’s heiress. It has become an object, which is to her disposal to exchange it for money and fame. The second section consists of a series of letters from Susan to Foe, dated and composed carefully, concerning the subject of producing a novel of her story. This section makes the reader think of an epistolary novel ⁵ . In the third section, Susan is in interaction with Foe, Friday, her supposed daughter and some subordinate characters. Apart from her cares and worries for

⁵ Klarer, P. 41

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Friday and her daughter, all her actions are useless attempts to control Foe in his interpretation of her story.

Section three ends with Friday’s promising possibility of entering into language through writing. This however is not the end of the novel. The fourth section stands alone; it has a contemplating character and shows us a completely different space. Coetzee shows us two possible endings. An unidentified narrator (Coetzee?) ⁶ visits Foe’s house (which appears to be the house of Daniel Defoe, Author and find the bodies of Foe, Susan and Friday. In a box, he finds a written leaf: Dear Mr Foe, At last I could row no further (Foe 155). The Narrator hears the sound of the island issued from Friday’s mouth: the roar of waves in a seashell; (...) the whine of the wind and the cry of a bird (Foe 154). In the second ending, the narrator finds Friday in a wrecked ship marked by Friday's petals. The drowned bodies Friday, Susan and Foe lay down in the wreck. He only speaks to Friday’s body: Friday, (...) what is this ship? (…) But this is a place where bodies are their own signs. It is the home of Friday (Foe 157). The last word is for Friday. The water imagery serves to represent his history, words, voice, as unattainable, silent, absent and yet ‘present’ at the margin ⁷ : His mouth opens. From inside him comes a slow stream, without breath, without interruption. In flows up through his body and out upon me; it passes through the cabin, through the wreck (…) soft and cold, dark and unending it beats against my eyelids, against the skin of my face (Foe 157). Friday’s home is his body: his existence is a facticity that simply asserts its own priorities. The trials of marginal authorship are irrelevant to Friday. Foe ends with an image in which the absolute limits of its own powers of authorization and signification are defined ⁸ . Coetzee revises the history, as we know it and dissolves the narration in an act of authorial renunciation. Throughout the novel, Friday’s silent and enigmatic presence gains in power until it overwhelm the narrator at the end. The novel clearly participates in postmodernism's favoring of the signifier over the signified ⁹ .

Foe predicts Friday important position and the possible endings of the narrator in section four in a conversation with Susan: Till we have spoken the unspoken we have not come to the heart of the story. (…) I said the heart of the story (…) but I should have said the eye, the eye of the story. Friday rows his log of wood across the dark pupil (…) of an eye staring up at him from

⁶ Sheila Roberts argues that the unnamed narrator is “Coetzee, using his own I/eye”, cited in Probyn §33

⁷ Probyn, §38

⁸ Attwell, P. 106/7

⁹ Attwell, P. 104

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the floor of the sea. He rows across it and is safe. To us he leaves the task of descending into that eye.

Friday walks his lonely road and starts learning to write under Foe’s supervision, the man seated at the table (…) was Friday. (…) Let him be (…). He is accustoming himself to his tools, it is part of learning to write (Foe 151).

It is one of the few occasions, Friday acts independently. Should he be aware that the art of writing gives him the possibility to write the story of his own life? Anyhow, Foe controls everybody; he is the spider in the web and he determines what is and what is not acceptable. The ability of writing down a story, interesting for a broader public appears a means of gaining power over other people. Susan sees no alternative she fully depends on Foe.

Friday shows a certain independency and we may query Susan’s remark Therefore the silence of Friday is a helpless silence (Foe 122). Friday’s position in daily life in 18 ^th century Eng-land is, without Foe’s protection indeed rather hopeless, but in the novel is the meaning of his silence significant and important. It gives him the opportunity to escape from the control of all the other characters, though they all seem to car for him and to control him. Susan cannot reach Friday: Friday will not learn (…). If there is a portal to his faculties, it is closed, or I cannot find it, but Foe is aware of the meaning of Friday’s silence. He answers Susan: Do not be downcast, (…) if you have planted a seed, that is progress enough, for the time being. Let us persevere: Friday may yet surprise us (Foe 147). Susan watches Friday filling a slate. He is drawing rows of open eyes, set upon a human foot: walking eyes. Obviously, for Friday the eye stands for the omnivorous means of communication, since he is not able to speak and does not understand enough English. Susan reached out to take the slate, but Friday held it tight to him. Upon Susan’s command to give her the slate, Friday put three fingers into his mouth and wet them with spittle and rubbed the slate clean (Foe 147). Again, it is Foe, who recognises the special meaning of Friday’s muteness: (…) you say you are the ass and Friday the rider, you may be sure that if Friday had his tongue back he would claim the contrary (Foe 148). The foot is Friday's trademark, of course; it is the footprint of Robinson Crusoe and every Robinsonade; in this case, however, the body of Friday and Friday's silent gaze are conjoined ¹⁰ .

¹⁰ Attwell, P. 114