Poverty as narrative energy in Moll Flanders ; La pauvreté comme énergie narrative chez Moll Flanders

The theme of poverty runs through the novel Moll Flanders (1722), by Daniel Defoe, and serves both as a constraint and as a driving force in the construction of the narrative and the moral portrait of the protagonist in a perspective that distances her from the paradigm of the picaro to the benefit of the image of an independent woman who pulls out of the game despite the difficulties linked to her social status. In The Rise of the Novel (1957), Ian Watt indicates that Moll Flanders can be seen as a heroine who has fully realized one of the ideals of feminism, namely, the refusal of any assign... Mehr ...