A Study Of Puritan Ethical Ideology In Defoe’s Novels

Generally held as one of the pioneers of the English novels, Daniel Defoe occupies an important position in the world literary history. Defoe lives in the eighteenth century England and witnesses the rapid transformation in the era’s cultural and ethical values, an era marked by the rise of middle-class ideology and the concomitant culture and by the declining of the old aristocratic cultural values. Situated as they are in that transitional period, Defoe’s representative works, Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders, not only capture the protagonists’strong sense of Puritan ethical values, but also forcefully represent the way they are fashioned by the shaping power of the times.On the one hand, predestination and Calling, as the two basic Puritan tenets, preach that one’s fate is predestined, and to gain salvation, one needs to make achievements in the Calling to contribute to the glory of God. The fates of Crusoe and Moll are imbued with the sense of predestination. Like most believers, they are initially reluctant to accept the predestined life and struggle against it, but only end up in being punished constantly by God. Both are driven to gain God’s forgiveness and salvation through hard work and sincere repentance. Both strive to better fulfil their own duty and live a life of asceticism under the guidance of rational secularism. Crusoe and Moll thus take economic interests as the measure of all behavior, treat people according to their values, control their own emotions in the process of pursuing economic interests, and live a life of diligence and thrift. On the other hand, the Puritan ethic of relative freedom of the individual economy and its concomitant establishment of social contracts give rise to consciousness of individuality and the pursuit for the actualization of self values. Such pursuit for materialism and individuality greatly weakens the traditional sense of family ties and throws people into abyss of solitude and alienation, leaving them torn as they are between the pursuit of earthly life and adherence to spiritual beliefs. Puritan ideology not only influences the shaping power of ethical values in Defoe’s characters, but also leads them into the spiritual angst.Drawing from the insights of previous researches and from an in-depth analysis of the Puritan history and the social melieu that situate Defoe’s writings, this thesis analyzes Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders from the perspectives of Puritan ethical values. In illustrating the way the writing of both novels is mediated by the cultural discourse of Puritanism, it underscores the importance of ethical values to social development and argues for the establishment of an ethical value based on the characteristics of contemporary society so as to ensure the harmony of social development.