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Cass's Reviews > Moll Flanders
Moll Flanders
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I finally finished reading Moll Flanders, and I loved it.
I have heard such negative reviews about this book. I have heard it said that the heroine is not likeable. She is painted as a whore and a thief. I came away with an entirely different view.
Her character hooked me from the start. A beautiful and skillful woman, she is intelligent but unworldly. She meets with great success in the beginning of the book due to her own personal accomplishments, aspirations, and personality. She takes what little she has and uses it as best she can. She keeps running into bad luck which she works hard to overcome. I just adored her.
I love everything about the book. This isn't pulp fiction. I was recently inspired listening to a cambridge professor on the radio commenting on the idea of reading for fun. He criticised the idea that we read pulp fiction for fun, and suggested that we should read good novels for fun, he suggested Anna Karenina etc. The idea struck home with me, these are well written and highly enjoyable pieces of literature, why are they often considered too hard. I read Anne Karenina recently and found it fabulous, it blew me away.
I have heard such negative reviews about this book. I have heard it said that the heroine is not likeable. She is painted as a whore and a thief. I came away with an entirely different view.
Her character hooked me from the start. A beautiful and skillful woman, she is intelligent but unworldly. She meets with great success in the beginning of the book due to her own personal accomplishments, aspirations, and personality. She takes what little she has and uses it as best she can. She keeps running into bad luck which she works hard to overcome. I just adored her.
I love everything about the book. This isn't pulp fiction. I was recently inspired listening to a cambridge professor on the radio commenting on the idea of reading for fun. He criticised the idea that we read pulp fiction for fun, and suggested that we should read good novels for fun, he suggested Anna Karenina etc. The idea struck home with me, these are well written and highly enjoyable pieces of literature, why are they often considered too hard. I read Anne Karenina recently and found it fabulous, it blew me away.
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Reading Progress
June 25, 2010
–
Started Reading
June 25, 2010
– Shelved
November 7, 2012
–
Finished Reading
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yeh.I loved when she really fell in love for the first time, they live in a great place, her mother-in-law is awesome... and then it crumbles away and she is reduced to nothing again... it sucks for her.
More false starts than the Olympics.Imagine trying to trace someone like her if she was your ancestor.
I'm considering reading Roxana by him shortly. Will let you know if it's as good.
He also wrote Robinson Crusoe didn't he? That is my next one by him.
I did actually find Moll likeable through much of the book. Oddly enough, the time when I found her most unlikeable was towards the end. Throughout the whole book with her stealing and permiscuousness, she at least admitted that she was doing wrong. After she was turned over a new leaf, she continued to lie and kept all the stuff that she stole and went on about how virtuous she was now being. Huh?
encouraging to see less negative perspectives on this novel, i am impressed with the writing style and the story is certainly interesting, i'm half way through and moll flanders is handling her situations better than i would have imagined
I really don't understand why others can't see how cool a chick she is.I wonder if the negative perceptions are a hang-over from a more prudish era?
Totally agree. I saw a comment here which made a similar point, something about being surprised at how readable a classic was that had just been read. I didn't say anything but I wanted to post something like 'why are you so surprised? Classics survived and are usually loved because they are 'great' books. People loved them at the time and it should be no surprise that people love them now.And I'm re-reading Moll Flanders now. I agree with you - I love her, she is one gutsy lady!
Gutsy, courageous, smart, skillful, all true. However, it’s interesting that none of these comments took on the fact that Defoe had Moll birth upwards of twelve children, many of them presumably survived to the end of the tale, and yet we only know Moll to have faced one of them - the one who benefitted her the most, financially. Seems to me that Defoe paints Moll as hopelessly narcissistic and sociopathic. And it’s interesting to read some hold her up as a “gutsy lady” as if to excuse her chosen path of crime and manipulation.
The BBC production is pretty faithful.