Twentieth century interpretations of Moll Flanders
Subtitle: a collection of critical essays
By: edited by Robert C. Elliott.
Contributors: Defoe, Daniel, 1661?-1731.
Series: Twentieth century interpretations; A Spectrum book.
Publisher: Prentice-Hall
Published: 1970
Place of publication: Englewood Cliffs, N.J
Language: eng
Number of pages: 113
Subjects: Defoe, Daniel, 1661?-1731
Other titles: Moll Flanders.
Description: Moll's mother is a convict in Newgate Prison in London who is given a reprieve by "pleading her belly," a reference to the custom of postponing the executions of pregnant criminals. Her mother is eventually transported to Colonial United States, and Moll Flanders (not her birth name, she emphasises, taking care not to reveal it) is raised from the age of three until adolescence by a kindly foster mother. Thereafter she gets attached to a household as a servant where she is loved by both sons, the elder of whom convinces her to "act like they were married" in bed. Unwilling to marry her, he persuades her to marry his younger brother. After five years of marriage, she then is widowed, leaves her children in the care of in-laws, and begins honing the skill of passing herself off as a fortuned widow to attract a man who will marry her and provide her with security.
Table of contents: title: Introduction, by R. C. Elliott.; title: Moll Flanders, by R. Whittemore.; title: Defoe, by V. Woolf.; title: Defoe as novelist: Moll Flanders, by I. Watt.; title: On Moll Flanders, by D. V. Ghent.; title: Conscious irony in Moll Flanders: facts and problems, by M. E. Novak.; title: Moll's muddle: Defoe's use of irony in Moll Flanders, by H. L. Koonce.; title: Preface to Moll Flanders, by C. Pavese.; title: A bourgeois picaroon, by R. Alter.; title: Moll Flanders, by G. A. Starr.; title: Between the real and the moral: problems in the structure of Moll Flanders, by L. Edwards.; title: Bibliography (p. 113)