Moll Flanders in Vampires, Weres and Fae!

Aug 28, 2022 Anastasiaadamov rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: orilium, dnf

DNF
Writing style is just too exhausting for me at this time.
Thematically it is annoying with the fact that it is a male writer form 18th century describing the life from a female protagonist point of view.
The proprietary viewpoint of the times both in religious and moral and societal norms is beyond frustrating for me.
This book is just more than I want to handle right now for my free reading time.
Might get back to it sometime further in the future because I own my own physical copy but not for ...more

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Jan 17, 2024 Keli rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: enjoyed-quite-a-bit, oooh-that-is-a-good-character, fun-and-engaging-main-character, 4-5-rounded-to-5, what-a-story, classics, feminist

Writing style -3 of 5
Pacing - 5 of 5
Characters - 5 of 5
World building - 5 of 5
Story/Plot - 3.75 of 5
Overall - 4.35 of 5

I loved this book. The 18th-century prose is a little
wordy, but they were formal and overly wordy back then. It's not Defoe's fault, but it's still meh. However, that is the only fault I found with this book. I, a staunch atheist, am even overlooking all the religious malarkey this book is riddled with because it's that good. You can compare it to my future review of Harriet Bee Writing style -3 of 5
Pacing - 5 of 5
Characters - 5 of 5
World building - 5 of 5
Story/Plot - 3.75 of 5
Overall - 4.35 of 5

I loved this book. The 18th-century prose is a little
wordy, but they were formal and overly wordy back then. It's not Defoe's fault, but it's still meh. However, that is the only fault I found with this book. I, a staunch atheist, am even overlooking all the religious malarkey this book is riddled with because it's that good. You can compare it to my future review of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom’s Cabin. As soon as I finish the book and write the review anyway. For I can not overlook the god-bothering in that. Just like Ms Stowe's book, Moll Flanders is a social commentary highlighted by the travails of its eponymous character. Moll goes through it, from birth! She's up. She's down. She's mostly down, but through it all she survives. She surmounts every obstacle a woman of the late 1600s has to face, and they are myriad, and thrives. She is a true heroine. But what about her children? I hear you scream. Moll was a terrible mother, you say. Yes, by our fortunate modern standards, Moll would be the poster child for government sterilisation programs. But imagine Moll's case if she had had access to secondary education or the right to work any job or had any other family around or access to daycare or the right to manage her finances or the right to operate in a world without fear of tarnishing a reputation. If any one of these obstacles were removed, it would have made her life profoundly better. But the reality is that if you couldn't afford to feed your children, they died from starvation. There were no workhouses (19th century), or centralised state welfare (20th century), or food banks (21st century). I know that these existed in a form before the periods in parentheses, but they were few and only became the standard form of poor relief in the periods listed. So if you were unlucky enough to be born poor or worse, a poor woman, you were screwed. We'd like to think we'd do "anything" to feed our children. But consider the stiff penalties for thievery and the soul crushing horror of prostitution and what options are left to a woman. A mother's love won't fill bellies. So you give them to your in-law relatives. People too shitty to help the kids' mother, btw. And when you have more unplanned children, because birth control wasn't a thing back then, you give them away, like modern times. She had a trail of abandoned children, but I can't fault her for it. She did the best by them. Nature has made some of us mothers, but society informs what kind of mother we will be. So, let's not judge her too harshly.

I liked Moll, but what I really loved about this book was that a man wrote it. I, a staunch feminist, have to give props where due. Defoe published this in 1722. Women's sufferage wasn't for another 100 years, and the last women to be hanged for witchcraft was 1716. He was writing this during the Enlightenment period, but look how stupid people were back then. They still believed in witches! They actually truly believed that some women communed with the devil, suckled imps from moles, and cursed their neighbours' pigs. This is what he was up against, the lingering remains of the crazy Puritans. I know nothing about his life and what impacts the women and clearly progressive men in his life had upon him. But from this work alone, I can see that he has empathy and a sense of equality that was not the norm. He was a proponent of feminism before it became a thing.
Also he uses the word negro to describe Black people. And he wrote when slavery still existed. It wouldn't end for another 80 years in the UK. Do you know how many of these old ass books I've read lately and they can't help but use the n-word. In books like Heart of Darkness or Uncle Tom’s Cabin, it makes sense. They're books about slavers and colonisers, characters that make money off of the degradation of others. It's fitting and wouldn't have been honest if they didn't use that word in those books. But Hemingway and Woolf just casually toss that word into their works that had zero to do with slavery or colonisation. Clearly, the word negro existed, here's Defoe using it in 1722, but these two 20th century writers throw offense out like a regular old descriptor. And even back then it was offensive. So again props where due.
Honestly, I think this should be required reading in high school. I don't know what most high schools are like, but at my school in Austin we read a Shakespeare play 3 out of 4 years. The only time we didn't read it was during the year of American literature. Why not toss out a Shakespeare and bring is Moll. Let's remind the generations of how shit things were and how shit they could be again.

This book is awesome on so many levels. Five fabulous ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ - Devoured the book, couldn't put it down.
⭐⭐⭐⭐ - Really liked it, consumed within days
⭐⭐⭐ - Enjoyed a fair bit, better than average
⭐⭐ - Meh
⭐ - Absolute drivel ...more

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