Novel & Short Stories

As discussed between the group members, we  agreed on choosing the subject  ENGL 2515 : Novel and Short Story as the main theme and the work that will be analyzed is Moll Flanders. This course is a requisite for Bachelor of English Language and Literature undergraduates. This blog thus will mainly discuss about morality and how it is portrayed  in the story and how it is contrasting between the values  in our society. A novel is a well-known word, and it refers to a type or genre in literature. It is made up of a long story or narrative written in prose. It describes works of fiction. Novel is much longer than the short story, so we find that novels can take their time with description and development of character, description of the background and setting, and exploration into the main message or central theme. Novels are interesting to read because you can really get into the story and be carried away by the writer's description of the hero's adventures. Novel can be about any subject too. In learning Novel and Short Stories, students are exposed to many types of stories which contain many issues, mainly social issues. Our group will examine mankind's unending quest for multidimensional morality in classic work of English writer, Daniel Defoe, which is Moll Flanders.

Why do we choose Moll Flanders?

 

Some background information about Moll Flanders is it was banned as it discussed issues that it is taboo during that time : prostitution, oppression, against church and mischievous deeds.

Quotations from the novel:

"I'm not going to fear any man of flesh and blood, no matter what costume he wears" 

" I kept kissing frogs looking for a prince" 

" I always thought I had to be rich to own the stars"

"We experienced a delirious, timeless peace"

Literary theory regards Moll Flanders as the first English novel .The novel is about the realistic experiences of a woman in the underworld of 18th century London. She is anonymous, Moll Flanders being an assumed name which she adopts when she needs an alternative identity for her criminal life. 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. He writes accurate social history in a fictional form.

The point of view is in first person but I think the problems with the narrative lies in the fact that Defoe, a man, tries to write so familiarly about a woman's point of view. Defoe doesn't do well writing this from a woman's point of view. At times Moll talks about her tender feelings as a mother, yet she lets her children go easily without the reader hearing about them again. All too often the story is narrated as if she were an observer rather than a participant. Also, most of the tale is glossed over. Occasionally she stops and gives more, but usually the book is an overview of the social conditions of Moll's life.

"Realism" is expressed by a rejection of traditional plot, by particularity, emphasis on the personality of the character, a consciousness of duration of time and space and its expression in style. The rejection of traditional plot is in the novel expressed by the choice of biography as the method of presenting the story, because the aim is to attract the reader's attention with stories as authentic as possible

Defoe seems to have intended Moll to affect the reader in many ways:

• as an object lesson 
• as a satirist on herself and her world 
• as an experienced thief who tries to teach her readers to guard themselves against the tricks of pickpockets and shoplifters 
• as a young (partly) innocent girl, always in danger from the attentions of unscrupulous men 
• as a cynic about love and marriage 
• as a woman struggling against an indifferent society

The novel is also adapted to a film:

About the Author - Daniel Defoe

Born: 1660
London, England
Died: April 24, 1731
London, England
English writer, journalist, and poet 

 

Daniel Defoe was the first of the great eighteenth-century English novelists. He wrote more than five hundred books, pamphlets, articles, and poems.

Education, Marriage, and Early Career.

Little is known about the birth and early childhood of Daniel Defoe, as no baptism record exists for him. It is likely that he was born in London, England, in 1660. James Foe, his father, was a butcher by trade and also a Protestant Presbyterian (considered to be a person who thought differently and did not believe in or belong to the Church of England). (Daniel Defoe added the De to his original last name Foe when he was forty.) He had a sister, Elizabeth, who was born a year earlier. When he was ten, his mother died. He had early thoughts of becoming a Presbyterian minister, and in the 1670s he attended the Reverend Charles Morton's famous academy near London.

In 1684 Defoe married Mary Tuffley, who brought him the handsome dowry of 3,700 pounds. They had seven children. Defoe participated briefly in the Monmouth Rebellion of 1685, a Protestant uprising, but escaped capture and punishment. From 1685 through 1692 he engaged in trade in London as a wholesale hosiery agent, an importer of wine and tobacco, and part owner and insurer of ships.

Defoe evidently did business with King William III (1650–1702). He suffered losses from underwriting marine insurance for the king and was forced to declare bankruptcy in 1692. Although he settled with the people to whom he owed money in 1693, he faced the threat of bankruptcy throughout his life and faced imprisonment for debt and libel (the crime of writing or publishing untrue statements that harm other people) seven times. 

His nonfiction - Essays, Poems

Defoe published hundreds of political and social documents between 1704 and 1719. His interests and activities reflect the major social, political, economic, and literary trends of his age. He supported the policies of William III and Mary after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and 1689, and analyzed England's growth as the major sea and mercantile (having to do with merchandise and trade) power in the Western world. He pleaded for sympathy for debtors and defended the rights of Protestant dissenters (people who opposed the beliefs of the Church of England). He used newspapers and journals to make his points.

His first major work, An Essay upon Projects (1697), proposed ways of providing better roads, insurance, and education to be supported by "a Tax upon Learning, to be paid by the Authors of Books." Many of these topics reappeared in his later works.

In 1701 Defoe published The True-Born Englishman, the most widely sold poem in English up to that time. He estimated that more than eighty thousand copies of this defense of William III against the attacks of John Tutchin were sold. Although Defoe's The Shortest Way with the Dissenters (1702), which ridiculed the harshness of the Church of England, led to his arrest, the popularity of his Hymn to the Pillory (1703) indicated the favor that he had found with the London public.

Summary of Moll Flanders

Daniel Defoe's melodrama Moll Flanders is published in 1722 and it is about a journey of Moll, living on charity in her childhood; going through a series of both fortunate and unfortunate events; her social climbing and shrinking; and finally when she reaches the final point of repentance. The full title tells the life of Moll, of her marriages and affairs, and being groomed to be a professional pickpocket and finally her repentance.


Moll Flanders is born to a mother who has been convicted of a felony and who is transported to America soon after her birth. As an infant, Moll lives on public charity, under the care of a kind widow who teaches her manners and needlework. She grows into a beautiful teenager and is seduced at an early age. Abandoned by her first lover, she is compelled to marry his younger brother. He dies after a few years, and she marries a draper who soon fleece the country as a fugitive from the law. She marries yet again and moves to America, only to find out that her husband is actually her half-brother. She leaves him in disgust and returns to England, where she becomes the mistress of a man whose wife has gone insane. He renounces his affair with Moll after a religious experience.


Moll's next marriage offer is from a banker whose wife has been cheating on him. Moll agrees to marry him if he can obtain a divorce, and meanwhile she travels to the country and marries a rich gentleman in Lancashire. This man turns out to be a fraud - he is as poor as she is. And they part ways to seek their fortunes separately. Moll returns to marry the banker, who by this time has succeeded in divorcing his wife. He dies soon after, however, and Moll is thrown back upon her own resources once again. She lives in poverty for several years and then begins stealing. She is quite talented at this new "trade" and soon becomes an expert thief and a local legend. Eventually she is caught, imprisoned, and sentenced to death. In prison in Newgate, she reunites with her Lancashire husband, who has also been arrested. They both manage to have their sentences reduced, and they are transported to the colonies, where they begin a new life as plantation owners. In America, Moll rediscovers her brother and her son and claims the inheritance her mother has left her. Prosperous and repentant, she returns with her husband to England at the age of seventy.

Moll Flanders

Islamization of Knowledge - Question on Morality in Moll Flanders

The world has gone through great evolution. Since the evolution of man, we strive to live and survive. Civilization comes with a great deal of both developed technology and humanity. In keeping up with technological advancement, men are always in need of a code of conduct, a guidance to ensure a dynamic and healthy society. This need is shared by all human being, it cuts across geographical, linguistic and cultural and time boundaries. As much as men are driven to develop new technology they are also in a great search for answers to the concept of morality, and this quest is somehow encapsulated in literature from the ancient times to the contemporary work.

For instance, the classic renowned works of fictions in English resonate more or less the same concern a society has with the postcolonial 21st century fictions. This concern boils down to the basic human needs which include the search for upright morality. Daniel Defoe's melodrama Moll Flanders is published in 1722 and it is about a journey of Moll, living on charity in her childhood; going to a series of both fortunate and unfortunate events, her social climbing and shrinking; and finally when she reaches the final point of repentance. The full title tells the life of Moll, of her marriages and affairs, and being groomed to be a professional pickpocket and finally her repentance.

The story of Moll is heavily stuffed with question of morality. It is being put under scrutiny in the storyline. In discussing morality it would be important to note that when it is broken down it grows many small branches that are essentially related to one another. Morality is embedded in the code of conduct, mostly put forward by a society, which makes it multidimensional. In the novel, there are unsettling thoughts of self-righteousness, self-control and wrongful desire in every action, event taken place. In other words, morality in this novel comes in a handful number; Christian morality, social morality, sexual morality, political morality and economic morality. 

In Moll Flanders, it can be seen that the central issue talks about morality. In this novel, the author addresses the character Moll as someone who doesn't hold onto a faith like what Islam has outlined, that is the Islamic view of the Creator (Tawheed). The character Moll is seen as weak and she is easily influenced to commit what are prohibited in Islam, such as adultery, theft, and so on and so forth.

SOCIAL MORALITY

The most prominent issue in Moll Flanders is the social morality. Moll is portrayed as sexually adventurous and socially property offender. Being a female criminal opposing the uptight teaching of Puritanism, Moll represents the fundamental change of faith of the British society in terms of selfhood and social order. As history accounts the fate of the Puritans who goes against the church of England and shipped to America in 1620's the transportation of British convicts to Virginia in the setting of Moll Flanders can be considered as a hope to reform Moll and many others to start a new life.

Furthermore in Moll Flanders, it can be seen that the central issue talks about morality. In this novel, the author addresses the character Moll as someone who doesn't hold onto a faith like what Islam has outlined, that is the Islamic view of the Creator (Tawheed). The character Moll is seen as weak and she is easily influenced to commit what are prohibited in Islam, such as adultery, theft, and so on and so forth. As Muslims, we should always observe our limits and prevent ourselves from committing sins which are prohibited in Islam.


In Islam, it is an obligatory for Muslim to preserve the good behaviour which is mirrored in the Qur'an and Sunnah. Muslim must acquire appropriate religious knowledge either through books or from learned Islamic Scholars. He should abstain from all sins, and if he commits one, he should make sincere efforts for repentance immediately.

ECONOMIC MORALITY
The lesson in morality contained in Moll Flanders is that she is a positive and honorable example of the new pattern of the economic individual that Defoe envisioned as being completely necessary to maintaining the growth of England as a power that was promised by the emerging economic structure of the 18th century.


Moll is also seen as a character who questions the meaning of rank and privilege and the economic workings of her world, as well as interrogating herself about her motives and her understanding of them. She is the personification of economy, good management and industry, but cleverly presented as the exact opposite of these Puritan values. Her thrift is often the result of wrong doing or terrible liaisons, her good management is totally self-centered and her industry is devoted to finding suitably eligible (wealthy) men to keep her in the style she desires. Later the industry is concentrated on becoming the best thief in London. In fact Moll is often perverse and very materialistic and in strict Puritan terms she is lost to God because of her false worship of wealth, power and success.


CHRISTIAN MORALITY
Reading the novel one could see how Christian morality is in general the standard codified by early 18th British Christian society, in which the church would promote upright practices of Christianity as oppose to vices. The first evident of Christian morality being abused in the fact that Moll herself made a confession of how she lacks moral, again and again throughout the novel. Thus this weak spot of her leads her to committing sins. 
Moll is portrayed as sexually adventurous and socially property offender. Being a female criminal opposing the uptight teaching of Puritanism, Moll represents the fundamental change of faith of the British society in terms of selfhood and social order.