An Ethical Literary Criticism Of Moll Flanders

Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) is the pioneering writer who promotes the popular tramp stories prevailing in16-17centuries into the modern novels and reflects the moral attitudes of the Bourgeois. Traces of conspicuous picaresque that demonstrate the individualism of the Bourgeois and its pursuit can be found in Moll Flanders. The novel describes a woman in the lower class who struggles to survive in misfortunes and difficulties and becomes mature and reasonable after experiencing some different "ethical knots". It also reveals the relationship between money and happiness, between love, marriage and morals, and tells how to fully understand the complicated relations of people. An analysis is attempted to be given of the heroine’s moral tendency from her choices of love, marriages and way of survival at the different life phases under the special circumstances by decoding the "ethical knots", the heroine’s ethical identities and the ethical lines in accord with the historical context from the perspective of the ethical theories. In a word an exploration as to how Moll is expected to live by—by immoral money marriages or by moral-obeyed living is to be delved. The relation between the heroine’s moral orientations and the living situations is exposed and the writing feature in this novel is also mentioned.Meanwhile, this paper tends to study how the Puritanism affects Defoe’s style in the novel and his contributions to the development of the novel through his influence upon the later writers.