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Moll Flanders Literary Context: -Spiritual and criminal autobiography -Not a picaresque novel -Consolidated the rising genre

of novel -Denial of fictionality: Fact against fiction -Change of narrative paradigms Historical Context: -Economic problems -Migration from towns to crowded cities: Increase of crime -Social inequalities/violence/alcoholism/broken families -Defoes concern for injustices: Representation of female dificulties for independence. Themes Criminality: -Public interest on criminal histories (criminal biography) -Breakdown of moral rules -Readers suspection about criminal biography autenticity -Moral&eduatiobnal role of the criminal biography -Moll Flanders does not pretend to be literal, readers are left to make conclusions. Religious aspects: -Abandonment of religion causes crime -Devils seduction make criminal sucumb on tentation. -Moral outlook: Defoes Puritanist influence. -Conflict of duties: the heroine provokes compassion and calls for moral judgement -Opossition to classical morality: Circumstances change causes. -Poverty, lack of education, predestination and heredity as main causes of misfortune. Treatment of woman: -Equal in abilities to men -Empathy with unprotected woman -Skills in surviving and making money Mercantilism: -Making a living in an inhospitable world -Marriage as a bussines: Profite&economic safeguard -Husband did not make her really independent and prospere. -Information about investments restricted for woman, -Skills for transportation success. Dedication+inherence=prosperity Narrative:

- Narrator intern to the story and involved in the events -1st person narrative (direct&personal) -Spiritual & criminal autobiography -Narrator=Main character, absence of an external narrator to provide a judgement,then, is the character sincere? -Adoption of a female point of view by a male narrator (narrative travestism) Characters -Moll Flanders: -Complex character -Ambiguity due to moral and didactic reasons:The heroine has to be sided and reformed at the same time. -Criminality due to circumstances (Romance element) -From the beggining is an heroin, material&emotional quest. -Two heroines can be distinguished: One concerned in morals and other who tends to practical matters. -Mercantilist mind: Role playing is the center of her being. -Feminism: Defoe believed on self-made women, shows the limits for females in a society that wastes the profits of their talent and wit, since no option is given to them but marrying or thieving. -Independency ambition moulds her behaviour. Female Characters: -Moll turns to them for advice -Main ones: Colchester family mother/The nurse/Mother midnight: Motherly characters. -Feminine characters shows the role of woman in 18th society, Male dependence, socially restricted, objects of marriage bussines: Solvency (and not skills) is required to be in the market of marriage, however, no possibility is given to obtain it by themselves. Male characters: -Moll turns to them for security. -Vanish, foolish (drapper), weak (banker) and coward. -Husbands only provided benefits in a short therm, not a real protection. -All are compared (implicit or explicitly) with Molls struggle. *Elder Colchester brother: Search for security (main inheritor) *Younger C.Bro: Good humoured man *Jemy: The most similar to Moll, realistic man, he is literally transported by Moll. Minor characters: Recreated Londons underworld. Stucture: -Thigh structure -Moll is the link between episodies -Concatenation of events -Novel was not planned as a whole (Episodic nature of biographical forms) -Plot circularity dominated by fate: Born in Newgate-Colchester-living by sex(mistress or wife),-thieving-living by sex(mistress)-Colchester-Newgate

2nd travel to America= Redemption. Setting: -Realism through description of places -Molls constant mobility -Thieving phase: Space is a determinator and a narrative intensifier. (Anonimity&loneliness) -Perfect setting for crime:Characters take advantage of the metropolitan jungle for their objectives. -Different scenarios=Different clothes. -Commercial nature of the city: Everything is sold&bought, even Moll. -Molls idea of London= Death&violence. Style: -Simple, clear, easy. -Physicality: Realism through description of places&objects -Molls language: Colloquial.Euphemisms&rhetorical phrases -Defoe: Metaphores & biblical language. -Prose: Efective to show Molls conscience. -Rational outlook: Represented through simplicity of language (objects described by primary qualities, Locke)

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