The Story Archive

Moll Flanders

Daniel Defoe · 1722 CE · Novel · English · Enlightenment

Born in Newgate to a mother under sentence of transportation, a woman works through five husbands, a string of assumed names and a career as the most accomplished shoplifter in London, keeping a plain ledger of what each venture brought in. Defoe gives the whole of it in the flat itemising voice of a penitent memoir, so the piety and the bookkeeping never quite settle with each other. Written before the form had rules, it is the first English fiction to make a woman's economic survival its entire subject.

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Attributes

Genre
Crime / NoirPsychological
Theme
SurvivalClass & InequalityWealth & GreedGuilt & ConscienceIdentity & Self
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
Fallen WomanTricksterEveryman
Plot structure
PicaresqueConfessionEpisodic
Symbol / motif
The PrisonGold / TreasureThe Garment
Conflict
vs Societyvs Self
Mode / tone
RealistIronic
Culture / tradition
English

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