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noa_swennen's review against another edition
1.0
I hated every second, every word of it! It took me almost two months to finish this book.
I mean the story is okay-ish, but oh my... The language... It's just awfully written, sentences with more than three sub-clauses should be prohibited!
I mean the story is okay-ish, but oh my... The language... It's just awfully written, sentences with more than three sub-clauses should be prohibited!
d_saff's review against another edition
3.0
Review posted here: https://55booksin52weeks.wordpress.com/2017/09/26/review-moll-flanders/
missjudge's review against another edition
2.0
La colpe più grandi di Moll Flanders non sono di aver rubato, essersi prostituita, aver imbrogliato, aver sposato il fratello, aver abbandonato diversi figli ecc ecc... ma esse sono, nell'ordine:
- Essere protagonista di un libro scritto senza capitoli o pause. Insomma... la vita id una persona dalla nascita all'età di 77 anni (e che vita!) non può essere scritta tutta d'un fiato, mi ha stremata!
- Essere scritta in prima persona (sapendo che chi l'ha scritto è un uomo). Defoe, seppure imita alla perfezione lo stile di una donna dell'estrazione sociale di Moll Flanders, mi cade sempre nel moralismo e regolarmente deve trarre una massima dalle vicende. E poi è alquanto comico che la massima è dell'autore, ma a pronunciarla è lei. Lei che ha rubato e ha fatto qualsiasi cosa tranne uccidere (spesso non per necessità e senza nemmeno mai del tutto pentirsene nemmeno quando viene condannata a morte)alla fine viene a dire che quello che "sta scrivendo" è un libro che "ha lo scopo di mettere in luce la giusta morale contenuta in ciascuna sua parte, di essere d'insegnamento e di monito alla prudenza e al miglioramento di se stessi per ogni lettore". In realtà è più un libro su come "farla franca in ogni occasione, fregandosene degli altri e finendo i propri giorni in ricchezza e prosperità, con l'aggiunta di qualche massima morale da un autore che non vuole essere al passo con i propri tempi".
- Essere infinitamente noiosa nel finale (la fase della redenzione e del pentimento... che redenzione e pentimento proprio non è)e farti sentire in colpa perchè ogni due frasi, ti ricorda: "lo so che questa parte non è divertente come quella delle colpe, ma non posso ometterla". Ah lo sai che è insopportabile e ripetitiva? Allora non dirmelo, fa qualcosa in proposito!
I meriti sono pochi, uno è senza dubbio avere una buona descrizione delle condizioni di vita del popolo alla fine del 1600 (1683 per essere esatti). Come funzionano processi, deportazioni in America, lasciti (quanto costa e quanto era vitale LA BIANCHERIA)... ma come, soprattutto, la gente si fidasse di chiunque. Alcune truffe ordite da Moll sono francamente assurde, quindi o erano tutti più tonti all'epoca, oppure a Moll è andata bene anche sotto questo punto di vista.
Altro merito è quello di descrivere la vita di una donna forte, che, sola al mondo (ed è una cosa che ci ricorda ogni due parole), riesce non solo a sopravvivere, ma a vivere. A costo di dannarsi l'anima, a scapito delle vite degli altri, ma arrangiandosi e facendosi largo con le unghie e con i denti a differenza degli uomini che incontra sulla sua strada che, dal suo primo seduttore al suo ultimo marito, sono non solo imbroglioni e truffatori, ma deboli, viziosi e incapaci.
- Essere protagonista di un libro scritto senza capitoli o pause. Insomma... la vita id una persona dalla nascita all'età di 77 anni (e che vita!) non può essere scritta tutta d'un fiato, mi ha stremata!
- Essere scritta in prima persona (sapendo che chi l'ha scritto è un uomo). Defoe, seppure imita alla perfezione lo stile di una donna dell'estrazione sociale di Moll Flanders, mi cade sempre nel moralismo e regolarmente deve trarre una massima dalle vicende. E poi è alquanto comico che la massima è dell'autore, ma a pronunciarla è lei. Lei che ha rubato e ha fatto qualsiasi cosa tranne uccidere (spesso non per necessità e senza nemmeno mai del tutto pentirsene nemmeno quando viene condannata a morte)alla fine viene a dire che quello che "sta scrivendo" è un libro che "ha lo scopo di mettere in luce la giusta morale contenuta in ciascuna sua parte, di essere d'insegnamento e di monito alla prudenza e al miglioramento di se stessi per ogni lettore". In realtà è più un libro su come "farla franca in ogni occasione, fregandosene degli altri e finendo i propri giorni in ricchezza e prosperità, con l'aggiunta di qualche massima morale da un autore che non vuole essere al passo con i propri tempi".
- Essere infinitamente noiosa nel finale (la fase della redenzione e del pentimento... che redenzione e pentimento proprio non è)e farti sentire in colpa perchè ogni due frasi, ti ricorda: "lo so che questa parte non è divertente come quella delle colpe, ma non posso ometterla". Ah lo sai che è insopportabile e ripetitiva? Allora non dirmelo, fa qualcosa in proposito!
I meriti sono pochi, uno è senza dubbio avere una buona descrizione delle condizioni di vita del popolo alla fine del 1600 (1683 per essere esatti). Come funzionano processi, deportazioni in America, lasciti (quanto costa e quanto era vitale LA BIANCHERIA)... ma come, soprattutto, la gente si fidasse di chiunque. Alcune truffe ordite da Moll sono francamente assurde, quindi o erano tutti più tonti all'epoca, oppure a Moll è andata bene anche sotto questo punto di vista.
Altro merito è quello di descrivere la vita di una donna forte, che, sola al mondo (ed è una cosa che ci ricorda ogni due parole), riesce non solo a sopravvivere, ma a vivere. A costo di dannarsi l'anima, a scapito delle vite degli altri, ma arrangiandosi e facendosi largo con le unghie e con i denti a differenza degli uomini che incontra sulla sua strada che, dal suo primo seduttore al suo ultimo marito, sono non solo imbroglioni e truffatori, ma deboli, viziosi e incapaci.
lunaseassecondaccount's review against another edition
2.0
I really struggled with this book, particularly the language. I wanted to enjoy it, as the plot itself is all types of over the top dramatic, but the Ye Olde Time Language threw me. In saying that, I'm also trying to avoid reading books that I dislike, so after roughing it for half the book, I finally laid it aside. I'm sure I missed out on a lot of fun plot and events, but... well, no need to deal with unpleasantness, yeah?
goneabroad71's review against another edition
4.0
I expected this book to be a bit of a slog. What a pleasant surprise it turned out to be! Moll is so full of vitality and optimism that I couldn't help but smile through her adventures. She lives by her wits and knows how to seize an opportunity. My only quibble with this book is that it had no chapters. That format makes sense and fits the style of the prose, so I can't even fault it too greatly for that. A great read!
izzadorah's review against another edition
slow-paced
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
I appreciated seeing the hardships a woman could have in the 17th century, but it did drag with how many troublesome adventures were included. We watch Moll Flanders constantly in danger during her thieving years, I think cutting the examples to a third or less would've still given the same effect, they felt very repetitive. An interesting read, just not super great.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Abandonment and Incest
Minor: Child death, Death, and Death of parent
elcaineelc's review
3.0
An detailed and interesting account of the life of Moll Flanders which presents a somewhat radical, pragmatic approach to ideas of marriage, money, poverty and being a woman in seventeenth century England. Defoe examines the relationship between relationships and money, the meaning of marriage in his society and the lack of social mobility and opportunities for many people in society, specifically women and those of the lower classes. At times it seemed somewhat convoluted and repetitive but by the end of the book I felt that the detail was justified because Defoe presents us with a consistent psychological study which does more than entertain - it questions and comments on some of the biggest issues of the time faced by women and I was continually surprised at the perceptiveness of the male author in writing about a female's position.
generalheff's review
1.0
I read and review a lot of books so I feel positively dirty for reviewing a book I have not finished! However, I trained as an epidemiologist and am all too aware of the fact that simply ignoring individuals who drop out of clinical trials early (right-censored data) will, obviously, bias your results. Indeed it is most likely to flatter the drug or intervention in question (people who drop out may have suffered hideous side effects for example). So pharma, so publishing: if all the people who dislike a book so strongly 'drop out' of reading it - and by reasons of conscience also opt not to review it - we will again end up in a situation where the average score is flattered and key evidence against the book is lost. This at least is the overly intellectual way I'm justifying reviewing this book (a similar process led me to score the terrible film Friday on Letterboxd recently despite quitting out halfway through).
What makes this book so awful (at least the first thirty odd pages): the introduction makes clear that the writing style will be stilted and tortuous. Defoe introduces the pseudonymous Moll Flanders (the author seeing fit to "conceal her true name" for the sake of propriety) and justifies telling such a licentious story for the sake of teaching the good how to live virtuously. It appears to me simply a means of selling the book to a more-easily titillated 17th century public while at the same time achieving Defoe's apparent aim to satirise serious moralising books of his day. The problem is, read today, discussions of virtue don't really register the same, making whatever this introduction might have meant to Defoe's audience hard to discern for the casual (read: not a university student) audience today.
Once the book proper begins, we switch to Moll's perspective. The writing style is the same: tortuous 17th century prose that is tiring to parse. The approach to the narrative compounds the tedium, as the rhythm is essentially 'I did this then this happened to me then I went there'. Even where we have dialogue between characters it is cast in a peculiar format. In early scenes where Moll reports the conversations between a brother and sister, instead of 'the sister said such and such' it is rendered as 'such and such, says the sister'. And then "Her younger brother cried this or that". There is something bizarrely stilted about all these interactions that pulls the reader right out of any sense of action or activity and constantly reminds us we are reading a rendition of events à la biography rather than à la novel.
What of the story itself? In the pages I read, Moll reports on her childhood (I first lived with the Gypsies, then with a woman in Colchester, everyone laughed when I said I wanted to be a gentlewoman and so on and so on). The formulaic delivery of all this information is compounded by the lack of believably, interesting characters to get a handle on and engage with. The constant harping on about how this or that event echoes in her disastrous future is exhausting ("But that which I was too vain of was my ruin" or "I saw the Cloud, tho' I did not foresee the Storm"). Most of this "ruin" is simply the 'crime' of having sex; I cringed reading Defoe's rendition of how this soon-to-be-fallen woman described her first time. "I made no more Resistance to him, but let him do just what he pleas'd; and as often as he pleas'd; and thus I finish'd my own Destruction at once, for from this Day, being forsaken of my Virtue, and my Modesty, I had nothing of Value left to recommend me, either to God's Blessing, or Man's Assistance.". Of course all this looks ridiculous in 2021 but even attempting to overcome my modern views it all comes across as deeply lazy storytelling.
Moll might be developed eventually as a character, but in the beginning she is just a vessel for society's views. This is, so I'm told, a satire so this may all be by clever design but read today that aspect is lost while the tedious storytelling and dull plot cannot stand on its own. I was reminded in all this of Justine by Sade; that book is infinitely more gruesome and violent than Moll Flanders. But both appear to tell the story of a potentially pure or virtuous woman who is buffeted by fortunes in a world seemingly out to corrupt her. I imagine Moll Flanders becomes a little more of a protagonist in her story than Justine, but I didn't care to find out. She falls into prostitution, provides a little bit of scintillating entertainment for the reader of the time, provides amusement as an apparently satirical take on sententious contemporary books to the more erudite reader, and is ultimately redeemed. Not a bit of which is interesting to read today. My next but one book is Robinson Crusoe. That will be the acid test of whether I dislike Defoe or simply this book. Till then, I will busy myself with a book worth my time.
What makes this book so awful (at least the first thirty odd pages): the introduction makes clear that the writing style will be stilted and tortuous. Defoe introduces the pseudonymous Moll Flanders (the author seeing fit to "conceal her true name" for the sake of propriety) and justifies telling such a licentious story for the sake of teaching the good how to live virtuously. It appears to me simply a means of selling the book to a more-easily titillated 17th century public while at the same time achieving Defoe's apparent aim to satirise serious moralising books of his day. The problem is, read today, discussions of virtue don't really register the same, making whatever this introduction might have meant to Defoe's audience hard to discern for the casual (read: not a university student) audience today.
Once the book proper begins, we switch to Moll's perspective. The writing style is the same: tortuous 17th century prose that is tiring to parse. The approach to the narrative compounds the tedium, as the rhythm is essentially 'I did this then this happened to me then I went there'. Even where we have dialogue between characters it is cast in a peculiar format. In early scenes where Moll reports the conversations between a brother and sister, instead of 'the sister said such and such' it is rendered as 'such and such, says the sister'. And then "Her younger brother cried this or that". There is something bizarrely stilted about all these interactions that pulls the reader right out of any sense of action or activity and constantly reminds us we are reading a rendition of events à la biography rather than à la novel.
What of the story itself? In the pages I read, Moll reports on her childhood (I first lived with the Gypsies, then with a woman in Colchester, everyone laughed when I said I wanted to be a gentlewoman and so on and so on). The formulaic delivery of all this information is compounded by the lack of believably, interesting characters to get a handle on and engage with. The constant harping on about how this or that event echoes in her disastrous future is exhausting ("But that which I was too vain of was my ruin" or "I saw the Cloud, tho' I did not foresee the Storm"). Most of this "ruin" is simply the 'crime' of having sex; I cringed reading Defoe's rendition of how this soon-to-be-fallen woman described her first time. "I made no more Resistance to him, but let him do just what he pleas'd; and as often as he pleas'd; and thus I finish'd my own Destruction at once, for from this Day, being forsaken of my Virtue, and my Modesty, I had nothing of Value left to recommend me, either to God's Blessing, or Man's Assistance.". Of course all this looks ridiculous in 2021 but even attempting to overcome my modern views it all comes across as deeply lazy storytelling.
Moll might be developed eventually as a character, but in the beginning she is just a vessel for society's views. This is, so I'm told, a satire so this may all be by clever design but read today that aspect is lost while the tedious storytelling and dull plot cannot stand on its own. I was reminded in all this of Justine by Sade; that book is infinitely more gruesome and violent than Moll Flanders. But both appear to tell the story of a potentially pure or virtuous woman who is buffeted by fortunes in a world seemingly out to corrupt her. I imagine Moll Flanders becomes a little more of a protagonist in her story than Justine, but I didn't care to find out. She falls into prostitution, provides a little bit of scintillating entertainment for the reader of the time, provides amusement as an apparently satirical take on sententious contemporary books to the more erudite reader, and is ultimately redeemed. Not a bit of which is interesting to read today. My next but one book is Robinson Crusoe. That will be the acid test of whether I dislike Defoe or simply this book. Till then, I will busy myself with a book worth my time.
ophiwrights's review
slow-paced
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
Just... no. Just no. There is only so much child abandonment one can take before chucking a book across a room.
lidia_fraile's review against another edition
4.0
Una lectura muy entretenida y ligera (teniendo en cuenta el contenido del libro). Es como el contrapunto total de Dickens