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Female roles in early British literature
Role of women in English literature
Female roles in early British literature
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Radical Views of Defoe Exposed in Moll Flanders
Daniel Defoe is a proponent of the unorthodox in his novel Moll Flanders in which he shapes many aspects of Moll's life after those of his own. The concepts he puts forth in the work are radically different from beliefs customary to seventeenth century England. Appealing to and championing the common man, Defoe constructs an iconoclastic piece that praises a common woman.
In spite of gender differences, Moll mirrors Defoe's life. Defoe draws on his past, when he served time in debtors' prison after his business as a merchant failed. He traveled to cities where he would become free from his creditors (Monarch Notes). It is from these experiences that he begins Moll's adventure to survive. After Moll's second husband, like Defoe, is arrested, Moll takes refuge in the Mint, for if the commissioners were to have been informed where [she] was, [she] should have been fetched up and all [she] had saved be taken away (Defoe 44).
Defoe uses his beliefs on morality, unusual for a man of his time, as a m...
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Moliere wrote Tartuffe during the beginning of the Age of Enlightenment. One of the main characteristics of the Age of Enlightenment was a push towards using reason over emotions to make decisions. The leaders of the enlightenment truly believed that the world could be made a better place if people did this. In Tartuffe, when the characters use their emotions to make their decisions they find themselves in undesirable situations. While those who let their emotions rule them find their lives spinning out of control, there are other characters in the play who try to approach them with reason and logic. Out of these characters the lady’s maid Dorine stands out as the voice of reason.
Defoe indicates that younger sons who have careers in law and trade are the backbone of the English Nation. The uneducated eldest son is an insult to the word gentleman: he is a man of no use to himself or to others.[2][2] He thinks that trade is more important than land. We can find this attitude in Roxana. Roxana says, ¡°a true bred Merchant is the best Gentleman in the Nation; that in Knowledge, in Manners, in Judgement of things, the Merchant out-did many of the Nobility¡± (Roxana 170, The page numbers of further references from Roxana will be put in parentheses in the text). She also says ¡°That an Estate is a Pond; but that a Trade was a Spring¡±(170). The Dutch merchant also says that ¡°the Tradesmen in London, speaking of the better sort of Trades, cou¡¯d spend more Money in their Families, and yet give better Fortunes to their Children, than, generally speaking, the Gentry of England from a 1000 l¡±(170). We can know that Roxana has a very positive view to a merchant from this. She thinks that a merchant is better than gentry.
17th Century France was spearheaded and administrated by kings owing to its kind of government: absolute monarchy, wherein the king has total control and the power to assign his advisors and other officials that will help him rule the nation. Like most of the countries in Europe on that era, France, with its monarchial regime, was filled with nobilities and aristocrats. The French are rapidly progressing and strengthening their foundation as a nation and due to this fact, they are slowly gaining power and influence all over the world. This era was primed by the utilization of arts and talents, including visual arts, theatre, dance and many literary works. Considering this, France stepped into the age of inspiration and greatness. In fact, this era served as their Golden Age in Literature. Kings and the general public of 17th Century France loved and admired such arts and even patronized and supported it. Salons and academies of literature and arts are now starting to become evident in the French society, by this, literary authors and other artists are prioritized and are given much importance. The expression of philosophies and ideas about arts and knowledge in life are manifest in such salons, in which speakers and actors put an enjoyable and entertaining spice on what they are trying to imply to increase the audience’s interest.
military, and in recent years, seeds genetically engineered to contain and endure immense amounts of Monsanto herbicides and pesticides. Monsanto has been recognized as being synonymous with the corporatization and industrialization of global food supply. Their astonishing rise to dominate global food supply is fueled by its technology in order to achieve laudable aims such as providing adequate food production, responding to the adversity of global warming, and minimizing agriculture’s adverse effects on the environment. Yet, Monsanto’s expansion has been accountable for controversial cases, such as not allowing private research on their products and influencing policy makers. As Monsanto expands, some of its business practices are considered unethical and are paving a path full of consequences for the environment and
Act III Scene V - This is a very important scene. Select and comment on
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)
... twists, and objects to scrutinize the morals of Victorian society. Nevertheless, he refrains from noticeably injecting his own philosophical point of view to pollute the overall quality of his work.
In our daily lives, we come across countless food products that have been grown by farmers. For large scale farmers, they need a source of seeds to plant and replant. It sounds simple enough, but there are huge controversies around one of the biggest seed distributors, the Monsanto Corporation. They’re most famous for being ridiculed over their genetic
Monsanto started out as a company that created an artificial sweetener for a well-known company called Coca-Cola. Throughout the last century with the use of new types of innovation the corporation has set out to change the world and has set a specific goal to change the way food is grown. Through the agriculture industry Monsanto has created new technology that enables farmers to grow food faster and with less land area. Although the results seem to be positive, there are also critics of this new way of agriculture and health implications are unknown for now. Business Ethics states, “In 1981 Monsanto leaders determined that biotechnology would be the company’s new strategic focus” (Farrell, Fraedrich, Ferrell, pg. 383).
Throughout this semester, and the multiple readings covered, a number of different prison scenes have been encountered. In many cases the prisons function as a location that restricts certain kinds of movements and actions while enabling others. Overall, one underlying message of the prison encounters through the texts is that prison can help people reach some sort of realization. Some texts enable a realization of self, while other texts enable a realization of a society as a whole, but regardless some sort of realization is met. Some texts in particular that successfully do this are De Profundis, Moll Flanders, and “The Ballad of Reading Gaol”.
David Blewett, “Changing Attitudes toward Marriage in the Time of Defoe: The case of Moll Flanders”
In regards to Flanders having sex with her own brother it would be difficult to argue that this was a predetermined event considering she truly did not know her husband was of her own flesh and blood. If, indeed, she was aware of the relation and then chose to proceed then one could discus it further in the context of freewill. As for being a whore there is no question that Flanders, especially later in her life, involved herself with such happenings, but for me it was the thievery that seemed to capture the essence of Flanders continual undoing and constant need for penitence. There is no better part of Defoe's work to capture the feelings of utter despondency then when Moll is going to steal for the first time from the apothecary's shop. Defoe prefaces the scene with a few paragraphs where Moll explains her absolute "desolate state". The crime is then set in what James Sutherland explains, "...Moll's first theft he sets the scene with such careful attention to detail that he fixes it in our minds, and gives to it that air of authenticity which, for Defoe, is almost justification of fiction". This is where Defoe's journalistic stylings shine. The reader is indeed in the apothecary and sees Moll's gaffe unfolding before him.
A common theme often portrayed in literature is the individual vs. society. In the beginning of Robinson Crusoe , the narrator deals with, not society, but his family's views on how he was bound to fail in life if his parents' expectations of him taking the family business were not met. However, Defoe's novel was somewhat autobiographical. "What Defoe wrote was intimately connected with the sort of life he led, with the friends and enemies he made, and with the interests of natural to a merchant and a Dissenter" (Sutherland 2). These similarities are seen throughout the novel. "My father...gave me serious and excellent counsel against what he foresaw was my design," says Crusoe (Defoe 8-9) . Like Crusoe, Defoe also rebelled against his parents. Unlike Crusoe, however, Defoe printed many essays and papers that rebelled against the government and society, just as Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World, did in England by depicting society languishing in social malaise (Marowski 231). It were these writings that eventually got Defoe charged with libel and imprisoned (DIScovering Authors). In Defoe's life it was the ministry that his father wanted him to pursue (Sutherland 2), but, instead, Defoe chose to become a tradesman (DIScovering Biography). The depth of the relationship between Crusoe and his parents in the book was specifically not elaborated upon because his parent's become symbolic not only of all parents, but of society. In keeping this ambiguous relationship, Defoe is able to make Crusoe's abrupt exodus much more believable and, thus, more humane.
Moll Flanders is a woman of great knowledge and drive, which she attempts to utilize to further herself in society and wealth. In the 18th century, there was a vast divide in the role that men and women have to play in society, both trying to gain advantages for themselves in their lives. Moll runs into the problem of marriage throughout her whole life, especially when it comes to her reflecting on society after her marriage to the linen draper who went bankrupt. In this scene, Moll depicts men as all-powerful to suggest that women are dependent to society's standards in order to have an opportunity to obtain wealth and status through marriage. Through Moll, Defoe examines marriage as an economic exchange between men and women, yet the unequal
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).