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3.21 AVERAGE
3.21 AVERAGE
What the Hell happened to her two youngest children!?
The misfortunes of mrs.flanders can be at times utterly boring but it's the stories that will make you laugh out loud, the ones you hold onto until the end, that make this such a great book. For all that she goes through, she still comes out on top and there is nothing more hopeful for the rest of us than that.
emotional
medium-paced
Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe – Another reread via Audible for this week! I read it the first time in college, and the discussions revealed more about our own opinions of morality than Mr. Defoe’s. Happy Reading!
Despite the book being a single big chapter, it still made me laugh lots
Moll Flanders is beautiful. She is also dirt poor in the squalid, miserable streets of 1700s London. With no family and no options, Moll pulls herself up by her bootstraps and takes on the hazardous, uphill climb to a place of financial stability, but every time it seems as though she has reached the summit and things finally start to look good for her, something knocks her back to the bottom again. "Moll Flanders" tells the story of our plucky little heroine as she attempts to make an advantageous match (or five), falls into a life of crime, and eventually cleans up her act. This novel takes the scrappy, dirty little nobodies that sit in the periphery of other novels and places them center stage in the form of a tough, adaptable, and ambitious titular character.
Moll Flanders is a fascinating character. On the surface, she presents herself to the world as modest, honest, and virtuous, but underneath it all she is the farthest thing from it. For most of the novel, Moll is an unrepentant liar. She seamlessly flows from con to con, manipulation to manipulation, and secures herself a rather cushy life through doing so. Even her name is a lie, an alias made up to shelter herself from the consequences of her deceit. Despite all of that, though, she is a sympathetic character. We understand why she does what she does, even when she doesn't need to do it.
As I read, I couldn't make up my mind if Moll was the luckiest person in the world, or the least. On one hand, she finds people nearly everywhere she goes that are willing to help her out. On the other, she is constantly getting knocked down by dying husbands, unexpected losses, and unplanned pregnancies. All throughout the novel she yo-yos from happiness to misery and back again. Her life is chaos, and the only tools she has to create some semblance of stability are her looks, her charisma, and her wit. In the beginning, she relies mostly on her looks and charisma, wooing, seducing, and outright manipulating men into providing for her. As she grows older, and her looks begin to fade, she is forced to instead rely on her wit and charisma, devising means of stealing what she can't earn and talking her way out of trouble.
Moll's story is a genuinely good one, but writing from the 1700s is an acquired taste. If you aren't used to reading classics, the massive difference between what constitutes a good book now and what constituted a good book back then might be a little jarring. There is very little poetry in the work of Daniel Defoe. The facts are presented in a straight forward way, and there is very little in the way of description and atmosphere. I don't recall even one paragraph that described what Moll looked like, other than to be pretty, and certainly nothing of the other characters. Many of the characters don't even have names, described only by their roles in Moll's life. The story, while a worthwhile one, reads as "this happened, then this happened, then this happened," without much focus on thoughts or feelings or descriptions. It can be tedious, especially toward the end when the action has slowed to a crawl and Moll's only further adventure is to wrap things up.
At the end of the day, "Moll Flanders" is worth the read. It provides a unique insight into the desperation of poverty in 18th century Britain, and showcases one of the most unique and memorable heroines of classic literature. With five husbands, a handful of lovers, and an astounding NINE!!! children, I imagine a modern day Moll Flanders as your tattooed, blue haired grandmother who shares her pot with you and is always telling you inappropriate stories about guys she hooked up with in the 60s. In fact, I would love to see a modern day adaptation of "Moll Flanders" that amounts to just that!
Moll Flanders is a fascinating character. On the surface, she presents herself to the world as modest, honest, and virtuous, but underneath it all she is the farthest thing from it. For most of the novel, Moll is an unrepentant liar. She seamlessly flows from con to con, manipulation to manipulation, and secures herself a rather cushy life through doing so. Even her name is a lie, an alias made up to shelter herself from the consequences of her deceit. Despite all of that, though, she is a sympathetic character. We understand why she does what she does, even when she doesn't need to do it.
As I read, I couldn't make up my mind if Moll was the luckiest person in the world, or the least. On one hand, she finds people nearly everywhere she goes that are willing to help her out. On the other, she is constantly getting knocked down by dying husbands, unexpected losses, and unplanned pregnancies. All throughout the novel she yo-yos from happiness to misery and back again. Her life is chaos, and the only tools she has to create some semblance of stability are her looks, her charisma, and her wit. In the beginning, she relies mostly on her looks and charisma, wooing, seducing, and outright manipulating men into providing for her. As she grows older, and her looks begin to fade, she is forced to instead rely on her wit and charisma, devising means of stealing what she can't earn and talking her way out of trouble.
Moll's story is a genuinely good one, but writing from the 1700s is an acquired taste. If you aren't used to reading classics, the massive difference between what constitutes a good book now and what constituted a good book back then might be a little jarring. There is very little poetry in the work of Daniel Defoe. The facts are presented in a straight forward way, and there is very little in the way of description and atmosphere. I don't recall even one paragraph that described what Moll looked like, other than to be pretty, and certainly nothing of the other characters. Many of the characters don't even have names, described only by their roles in Moll's life. The story, while a worthwhile one, reads as "this happened, then this happened, then this happened," without much focus on thoughts or feelings or descriptions. It can be tedious, especially toward the end when the action has slowed to a crawl and Moll's only further adventure is to wrap things up.
At the end of the day, "Moll Flanders" is worth the read. It provides a unique insight into the desperation of poverty in 18th century Britain, and showcases one of the most unique and memorable heroines of classic literature. With five husbands, a handful of lovers, and an astounding NINE!!! children, I imagine a modern day Moll Flanders as your tattooed, blue haired grandmother who shares her pot with you and is always telling you inappropriate stories about guys she hooked up with in the 60s. In fact, I would love to see a modern day adaptation of "Moll Flanders" that amounts to just that!
I was actually surprised by how much I ended up liking this book. The main character is so interesting and she doesn't disturb her narrative with any unnecessary descriptions. I don't think I have ever read a book where the main character gets married so often and who ends up having such agreeable, though poor, husbands. Moll Flanders begins the tale of her life with her humble origins and ends it with a complete reverse in fortune. The first half of the book details her many marriages and how she contrives to be married. And just when you start thinking, "Um, really, the only bad thing you've done is marry half a dozen men...", the second half of the book relates her descent into thievery, which is also very good and very well told. The only thing that pretty much drove me nuts over the course of her life story was, viz. that the author used the word "viz" quite a lot when relating a list of examples pertaining to Moll Flanders' particular circumstances. All in all, I loved that this woman told her story boldly, and though penitent, really made little to no excuses.
I honestly thought the character of Moll was a lot more fleshed out than most are giving her credit for, as well as more sympathetic.
This would have been such a good book if written in modern times
Durante la lettura mi sono dovuta fermare più volte perché è un libro ripetitivo sia negli schemi narrativi che in generale anche nelle descrizioni. Le prime 200 pagine narrano delle esperienze "amorose" di Moll ( tra virgolette perché l'amore non c'entra niente in questo libro, ma solo i soldi e la volontà di cambiare status sociale ) tra 5 mariti e circa 11 figli. Le ultime 200 pagine narrano delle sue scorribande tra furti e prigioni. Come si può intuire vengono affrontati due macro-argomenti ma in maniera ridondante poiché morto un marito ne trova un altro, compiuto un furto ne elabora un altro. Ho considerato Moll Flanders una leader, una donna che sa cosa vuole e non ha paura di andarselo a prendere, e perciò una ispirazione se pensiamo all'anno di pubblicazione di questo libro. Ma Defoe preferiva raccontare delle vicende più che indagare i personaggi, ragion per cui i personaggi in generale sono tutti bidimensionali. Inoltre la lunghezza del libro era proporzionale ai soldi che avrebbe guadagnato, poiché all'epoca si usava pagare così uno scrittore, ed è questa una chance di Defoe di seguire la sua onda scrivendo parole su parole, senza capitoli, senza stacchi, senza che tu possa riprendere fiato chiedendoti se l'autore sappia dove sta andando a parare ( spoiler: più o meno, molti errori di trama sono stati corretti per la seconda edizione). Lo stile di scrittura è un po' rozzo, ci sono salti dal presente al passato, errori e buchi di trama, niente segni di punteggiatura a parte il ";". Però bisogna considerare che è un romanzo del 1722 e che costituisce l'inizio di un genere, perciò perfetto non può essere.
I read this for my Lit course and enjoyed it. Defoe captured the setting and developed a great main character. Moll is an elusive, conniving , gritty, smooth, smart woman who survives a difficult life in England. She can talk her way into and out of anything! She is a great actor. I recommend this book.