Beyond Robinson Crusoe: Riches to Rags on a Rocky Island

Greetings, Reader Friend!

If you’ve read Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe’s classic survival novel, or seen the movie, I have a question for you:
Could a female Robinson Crusoe survive, marooned on an island?

Robinson Crusoe is the story of a man shipwrecked on a tropical island who creates a successful life there for twenty-eight years.

Isola, a recent novel by Allegra Goodman, also takes up the theme of an individual abandoned on an island who must survive alone (for at least a substantial portion of the adventure). Both novels are based on the lives of real people.

The novels take very different directions. While Robinson Crusoe shows the triumph of human ingenuity, Isola’s author turns this story theme on its head:
• Marguerite, the protagonist, was a French noblewoman with little practical life experience
• The island wasn’t tropical, but rocky and close to the Arctic Circle
• The vegetation wasn’t lush, and one sour berry bush provided the only edible produce

Isola begins with Marguerite, the daughter of a French noble, living a pampered life in a chateau in Périgord, even though her mother died in childbirth and her father died in battle for his king when Marguerite was three years old.

Over a period of years, her guardian steals her legacy and agency, culminating in her abandonment (along with her husband, Auguste, and her nurse, Damienne) on Isola, a rocky island in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence.

Marguerite’s years on that island represent her greatest challenges, as well as the most exciting part of the novel for me.
I needed to find out if and how Marguerite would survive!

 

Marguerite de la Rocque: The protagonist and narrator, her character becomes more sympathetic as she loses her protection from life’s challenges

Jean-François de Roberval: Marguerite’s cousin and villainous guardian

Damienne: Marguerite’s lifelong nurse, who devotes herself to her motherless charge

Auguste Dupré: (Male) secretary to Jean-François de Roberval; he and Marguerite fall in love

Claire D’Artois: Marguerite’s close friend; the daughter of one of Marguerite’s teachers

Queen Marguerite of Navarre: The sister of King Francis I, she writes a book about illustrious women, including Marguerite de la Rocque (although her depiction of Marguerite isn’t accurate)

This riches-to-rags story offers a unique slice of life in 16th-century France, with many settings and fascinating details.

Early sections set during Marguerite’s childhood offered a slow start, and could have been condensed.

Violence of humans vs. nature, several scenes involve cruelty or physical intimacy

If you enjoy a sweeping, decade-spanning story from centuries ago that reveals the protagonist’s character growth through many years of challenges and adventures, Isola will thrill you. I especially enjoyed the adventure scenes and the novel’s denouement.

Reader, can you recommend a novel set in bygone times in which a character is abandoned and has to fend for him or herself in an isolated location?