Cifuentes 1 Jennifer Professor Brown English 358 2 May, 2017 Scaling the Social Ladder: Sincerity and Accidental Irony in Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders The Fortunes and Misfortunes of Moll Flandersby Daniel Defoe was created when novels had only begun to gain recognition among the people in England.However, despite the popularity of novels, they were still regarded with suspicion and detestation by a government threatened by imagination. After spending a few months in prison on charges of sedition, and facing a crumbling business, Defoe capitalized on a new trend by publishing a fictitious found- manuscript memoir. He also, at a time when women were hardly heroines, introduced Moll Flanders, a swindling, lower class woman desperate to move up the social ladder who later finds peace through her reformation. Written entirely in first person, Defoe offers no insight into any external observations of Moll, allowing a chance for the reader to create his own interpretation, and prompting scholars to argue whether he was sincere or ironic in the creation of his novel. Ian Watt in his essay “The Recent Critical Fortunes ofMoll Flanders” asserts that “[a]ny critical judgement onMoll Flandersas a novel must very largely depend on what view we take of Defoe’s characterization of his heroine” (Watt 111).Defoe was no stranger to irony though, and Moll’s picaresque nature often leads her into seemingly ironic situations; yet, Defoe’s socioeconomic accuracy shows sincerity in his heroine’s attempt to survive life’s obstacles. The
Cifuentes 2 fictitious Moll’s moral and ethical struggles through historically accurate difficulties show that Defoe was sincere in his attempt to convey an objective message in a factual yet entertaining manner which we as readers should interpret as neither solely irony or sincerity, but as a fusion of both. Of course, there is no precise way to measure either levels of sincerity or irony Defoe intended on using. However, in the preface to his novel, he defines the book as “a work from every part of which something may be learned, and some just and religious inference is drawn, by which the reader will have something of instruction if he pleases to make use of it” (Defoe 6). This shows Defoe’s intentions of producing a novel with a lesson that he wants the reader to discover on his own; whatever that lesson may be. Although, with novels not taken too well by the government, it’s easy to assume that this was perhaps a way for Defoe to mask an irony saturated novel as a piece of moral warning. Yet, having spent five months in Newgate (Defoe x), it is doubtful that Defoe would risk going back to prison for crafting a political parody under false moralistic pretenses. Moll’s repeated attempts at upward social mobility, and her eventual success at prosperity and repentance also show that Defoe was in fact supportive of the idea of upward social mobility by lower class individuals. Watt claims that Defoe shows a “qualified approval of Moll Flanders”
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