Essay on Freedom and Fate in Moll Flanders :: Moll Flanders Essays

Freedom and Fate in Moll Flanders   be people who believe in freewill simply ignorant of the reasons of their actions?  In the context of Defoes Moll Flanders, this question may result in appreciable debate. Was Flanders free or was she predetermined to live a wicked and wrong life mired in years of penitence? Did the whorish behavior of Molls pay off predetermine Molls actions? Certainly there is no question that Flanders was a guilty - she was a whore, a thief, and she practiced incest.    In regards to Flanders having sex with her own chum salmon it would be difficult to argue that this was a predetermined event considering she actually did not know her husband was of her own flesh and blood. If, indeed, she was aware of the similarity and then chose to proceed then one could discus it further in the context of freewill. As for being a whore there is no question that Flanders, especially later in her life, involved herself with such happenings, provided fo r me it was the thievery that seemed to capture the essence of Flanders continual undoing and constant indigence for penitence. There is no better part of Defoes work to capture the feelings of extract despondency then when Moll is going to steal for the first clock time from the apothecarys shop. Defoe prefaces the scene with a few paragraphs where Moll explains her absolute desolate read. The crime is then set in what James Sutherland explains, ...Molls first stealing he sets the scene with such careful attention to detail that he fixes it in our minds, and gives to it that air of authenticity which, for Defoe, is almost justification of fiction. This is where Defoes journalistic stylings shine. The reader is indeed in the apothecary and sees Molls gaffe unfolding onward him.   We are free to judge whether or not we would take the tamp down that so often becomes Molls pursuit in the future. It is at that instant that we throw out decide whether Moll was free to do so or controlled by something unavoidable, such as fate. If Moll was acting on freewill it is disputable that she would not repeat the same crime in the future, in incident she would most likely avoid any such acts that resulted in the awesome feelings she experienced during and after the first offense. For she says herself, It is impossible to express the horror of my somebody all the while I did it.