An Analysis of Moll Flanders Essay -- Moll Flanders Essays

An Analysis of Moll Flanders    The novel is about the realistic experiences of a woman in the underworld of 18th century London. She is anonymous, Moll Flanders being a pseudonym which she adopts when she needs an alternative identity for her criminal life.    She has no family, having been abandoned by her own mother - a transported felon, and her upbringing, education, social position and material well - being are all constantly precarious.    She lives in a hostile, urban world, which allows for no weakness. Social position and wealth are the dominant factors for survival. She has neither and her life is a struggle to achieve both. She is clever and persevering, always alert to opportunity and she survives and becomes rich, although after a life fraught with difficulty, much of it of her own making.    Defoe's novel gives us a clear sense of daily life and the anxieties attendant on economic and social uncertainty and he displays a clear understanding of female specifics, in a criminal world. Defoe himself was an 'outsider'. A Londoner who often had to live by his wits, pursued by creditors and spending time in Newgate prison for debt. His own honesty was at times rather dubious.    He writes accurate social history in a fictional form. The social details in 'Moll Flanders' are very accurate, even those set in Virginia and the novel is also politically and economically structured.    The themes of the novel, in part, are transgression, repentance and redemption, which are to be expected, given Defoe's Dissenting background. Moll's fortunes do not prosper in the 'Babylon' of London, but in Virginia, in the 'New' world. Perhaps Defoe was suggesting, like hi... ...ly innocent, despite her adventures and her chosen lifestyle as a master criminal. Defoe shows us the two sides of her character in constant opposition. On the one hand, she can be thrifty, cold and efficient and on the other, reckless, excited and bold. She is never dull. Again, Defoe makes no moral judgement, but leaves the reader to make his own.    The novel is structured so that we see a series of parodies of tragic situations, which often become almost bizarre in their comic absurdity. Moll sometimes behaves insensitively, or even in a completely callous way, but Defoe's heroine is never contemptible, eagerly thrusting from one experience to the next. The novel has a deep intensity of experience. Moll's emotions, too are mixed and unstable, but she always recognises and articulates them, even if she does not show complete understanding of them.