A Study Of Dilemmas In Moll Flanders From The Perspective Of Mobility

Daniel Defoe’s famous novel Moll Flanders is one of the most attractive realistic works in the early 18 th century in Britain.Moll,the protagonist in the novel is a marginalized lowly woman who tries to conquer the existential crisis through mobility.Moll constantly changes her living environments,reflecting the geographical mobility,which implies the social mobility brought by changing social status and class.With the help of John Urry’s theory of mobility,this thesis focuses on the protagonist’s horizontal and vertical mobilities and the multiple dilemmas she has been through in a money-oriented society.The thesis argues that mobility provides both opportunities and challenges for Moll,as although mobility enables her to get out of survival dilemma eventually,it does put her in moral and emotional sufferings from time to time,revealing the hard life of lowly women under harsh survival pressure.The thesis is composed of the introduction,body and conclusion.The introduction includes introduction to Defoe and Moll Flanders,literature review,introduction to mobility theory,as well as the thesis statement and the layout of the thesis.The main body of this thesis is divided into three sections: chapter one analyzes the horizontal mobility of the protagonist Moll,pointing out that horizontal mobility brings both opportunities and freedom to women who come from the bottom of society,but makes them isolated from social relations and often face survival difficulties.The second chapter analyzes the downward social mobility of the protagonist,pointing out that the protagonist is a typical representative of economic individualism in the 18 th century of England,who takes self-interest as her final goal and ignores the plight of others,so she becomes a criminal because of moral degradation.The third chapter analyzes the upward social mobility of the protagonist,pointing out that social relationship and mobility are intertwined,and that reciprocal social relationship could help Moll move upward,but the instability of mobility also forces the protagonist sacrifice kinship and love for fortune,so she spent the first half of her life alone,with no one to rely on and no one to consult.Finally,mobility makes her return to the traditional family relationship.The conclusion summarizes the previous arguments,pointing out that marriage,money and relationships were important to women of the lower class in the early eighteenth century,and that mobility brought opportunities to the poor,but also distorted human relationships,resulting in moral degradation and the absence of normal family relationships.