Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders And Thomas Hardy’s Tess Of The D’Urbervilles

Daniel Defoe (1661-1731) and Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) are both famous writers in the British literary history. What is worth mentioning is that, there are some similarities between their respective novels Moll Flanders (1722) and Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891). Both of the two novels are centered around a fallen woman, but the writers hold that they are not born evil, and that they just have to make those choices under the extreme oppression of the capitalist patriarchal society.Ethical literary criticism is a new literary critical theory, which aims to criticize the literary works with ethical concern. The main content of feminist ethics of care is criticizing the traditional ethical theories and moral practices that degrade or despise women while advocating an ethical idea of rational compassion and care. Therefore, this thesis will be based on ethical literary criticism, focus on the perspective of feminist ethics of care and make a critical study of the two novels through textual analysis.Through the textual analysis of Moll’s and Tess’s tragic fate as well as their experiences of self-redemption, we can see that the two writers show their compassion and care to the heriones and criticize the law, economy and marriage systems of the patriarchal society at their own time. They also express their wish to purify the patriarchal social opinion through their works, that is, to arouse public understanding, compassion and care to these fallen women rather than blind contempt and indifference.