"And after all, what is a lie? `Tis but
the truth in masquerade"
Lord Byron (1)
Moll Flanders, a potent character of Defoe's, is haunted by her past, and as such, is driven to tell her story. Many literary scholars believe Defoe intentionally mislead readers to believe that Moll Flanders was a real person. Defoe has therefore often been dubbed as a liar.
The dictionary definition of a lie is:
To speak untruthfully with intent to mislead or deceive (2)
Plots in other fictitious works, such as those by Shakespeare, were known as fiction due to their unlikely content, but in Moll Flanders it is harder to distinguish between fact and fiction. The debate begins when attempting to conclude as to why Defoe is a liar. Is it his realistic fiction or, as the dictionary definition suggests, his intent to mislead his audience?
Moll Flanders was written with accurate political, economic and social truths. Such truths are brought to the reader through Defoe's description and attention to detail, creating believable imagery. The very steps of a journey away from Moll's crime is one example:
I crossed the street...I went through into Fenchurch Street...Thames Street, near Billingsgate... (p210)
The purpose of such passages, as mundane as they appear, is to add substance to the realism of the work. Defoe has created Moll to be a real person with experiences and feelings. Generalising and brushing over the surface of her life may not have produced the same effect. This insight offered to us, which differs from the level of insight offered by plays and poems, allows the reader to be as empathetic with Moll's position as Defoe attempted to be. Defoe, through his empathy, reached into the depths of Moll's psyche, ...
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...ary of Quotations. HarperCollins. P418
Bibliography
Primary texts
Chaucer, G. 1996. The Canterbury Tales. Penguin. London
Defoe, D. 1994. Moll Flanders. Penguin. London
Thackeray, W. 2001. Vanity Fair. Penguin. London
Secondary texts
Collins Concise Dictionary. HarperCollins (2000)
Dictionary of Quotations. HarperCollins (2000)
Rice,P. and Waugh,P. 1996. Modern Literary Theory. Oxford University Press: New York. 64-66
Internet resources
http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexrth/cr/7.htm 2004.
http://www.litnotes.co.uk/index.htm 2004.
http://www.firstthings.com/fsissues/ft9906/reviews/zaleski.html 2004.
www.sparknotes.com/lit/mollflanders/ 2004
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Lies play a central part in the play as the story is based around lies
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In the Dictionary of Literary Terms, Harry Shaw states, "In effective narrative literature, fictional persons, through characterization, become so credible that they exist for the reader as real people." (1) Looking at Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders (2) and Aphra Behn's Oroonoko (3) the reader will find it difficult to make this definition conform to Moll and Behn's narrator. This doesn't mean that Defoe's and Behn's work is 'ineffective', but there is indeed a difficulty: it is the claim of truth. Defoe in his preface states, "The Author is here suppos'd to be writing her own History." (Moll Flanders, p. 1) and Behn claims, "I was myself an eye-witness to a great part, of what you will find here set down, and what I could not be witness of, I received from the mouth of the chief actor in this history, the hero himself, (...)" (Oroonoko, 75)
Authors show their purpose in a story to make it interesting, but sometimes the purpose is hidden. This could be the reason that people believe that Shakespeare wrote a satire about King James I, or were the similarities between the real and the fictional king just a coincidence? This is a popular debate topic between many people when they reflect on King Lear. I will be researching to explain why people may feel like it is a satire or not a satire. I will conclude this paper with my own opinion.
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The theme of Appearance versus Reality comes in the form of lies, deception and disguise. From this essay, I realised that people’s characters are affected by events that appear in a way that is untrue.
Daniel Defoe has frequently been considered the father of realism in regards to his novel, Robinson Crusoe. In the preface of the novel, the events are described as being “just history of fact” (Defoe and Richetti ). This sets the tone for the story to be presented as factual, while it is in of itself truly fiction. This is the first time that a narrative fictional novel has been written in a way that the story is represented as the truth. Realistic elements and precise details are presented unprecedented; the events that unfold in the novel resonate with readers of the middle-class in such a way that it seems as if the stories could be written about themselves. Defoe did not write his novel for the learned, he wrote it for the large public of tradesmen, apprentices and shopkeepers (Häusermann 439-456).