Radical Views of Defoe Exposed in Moll Flanders Essay -- Moll Flanders

Radical Views of Defoe Exposed in Moll Flanders Daniel Defoe is a proponent of the unorthodox in his refreshed Moll Flanders in which he shapes many aspects of Molls life after those of his own. The concepts he puts forth in the work are radically different from beliefs customary to seventeenth century England. Appealing to and championing the common man, Defoe constructs an iconoclastic piece that praises a common woman. In spite of gender differences, Moll mirrors Defoes life. Defoe draws on his past, when he served time in debtors prison after his business as a merchant failed. He traveled to cities where he would become free from his creditors (Monarch Notes). It is from these experiences that he begins Molls adventure to survive. After Molls warrant husband, like Defoe, is arrested, Moll takes refuge in the Mint, for if the commissioners were to have been informed where she was, she should have been fetched up and all she had saved be taken away (Defoe 44). Defoe uses h is beliefs on morality, fantastic for a man of his time, as a m...