The Representation of Women in Eighteenth-Century Literature - Essay Example

?Assess the Representation of Women in Eighteenth-Century Literature In both of these texts, although in somewhat different ways, the reader is able to see the effects of and reactions to some of the revolutionary changes of the eighteenth century. It has even been suggested that the texts evince a feminist, or at least proto-feminist, edge. Moll Flanders, ‘Bold beautiful and brilliantly resourceful’, has been described as ‘one of the most remarkable figures in English literature’ (Lacey, p.1). Men in Moll Flanders are often weak and indecisive, while Virginia Woolf notably commented that Moll is ‘a person rather than a woman’ (p.4). We might take issue with this, but it is easy to see why the novel has been such a keen topic for feminist criticism. In Sense and Sensibility, Austen draws on her own experiences as a young woman to understand the position of women deprived of economic means. It is of course notable that Austen was herself a rarity at the time – an independent female writer, and Sense and Sensibility, her first published novel, was originally published under the pseudonym, ‘A Lady’. Defoe’s Moll Flanders, like several of his other novels, is presented in the form of an autobiography. The character, in this case Moll, is looking back on her life and, as Pollak suggests, is ‘attempting to make sense of it through the act of writing’ (p.139). There is some question over the position of Defoe in presenting the immorality and deprivation of Moll’s past life. Through writing, is he attempting to discourage such immorality by exposing it to the light of day and public criticism, or is he taking advantage of the excitement readers feel for the forbidden, the lowlife, and the illicit. The latter is surely the case to some extent. There is even some question as to the sincerity of Moll’s conversion from immorality. Defoe writes that she is no longer ‘so extraordinary a Penitent, as she was at first’ (p.5). Defoe adopts a female voice in both Moll Flanders and Roxana, and the two share some striking similarities. Notably, Defoe distances himself from the narrative by putting his story into the mouth of its female protagonist, and adopts instead the position of editor of this narrative. While this is partly a tool to make the story appear more genuine and authentic for readers, it is possible that Defoe is leaving room for doubt as to his own opinions on women and the position they are given in the society of his novels. As Pollak writes, this ploy ‘works subtly and perhaps surprisingly to unsettle the very truths about gender that his plots seem to affirm’ (p.141). At this juncture, it is worth recalling the terms in which Defoe, writing as the editor of Moll’s racy account, describes the severe difficulty faced in his task. He has had “no little difficult to put it [Moll’s account] into a Dress fit to be seen, and to make it speak language fit to be read. When a Woman debauch’d from her Youth, nay, even being the Off-spring of Debauchery and Vice, comes to give an Account of all her vicious Practices...an Author must be hard put to wrap it up so clean’ (p.1). There is an air here of Moll being a fallen woman, and being tainted by all that she has engaged in. In this comment by the editor, there is an even a sense of his distaste at handling such material. However, as noted above, at many points Defoe continues to be ambiguous about his own opinion of Moll and her failings. We are left with the fundamental question: is she an immoral soul, or a woman forced by the circumstances of her gender to stoop to low acts in order to seek independence. Defoe adopts a similarly ambiguous position in his presentation of the prescribed roles for women in contemporary society. Moll recounts, in the course of her account, being mocked as a child for believing that she could one day become a gentlewoman by working for an honest livelihood. In this instance, we must ask, as does Pollak, ‘Is the older, more experienced Moll simply exposing her earlier childish ignorance or social codes and prevailing gender asymmetries? Or is she commenting on the callousness of those who laugh at her expense?’ (p.140). In different terms, is Defoe affirming received wisdom on what makes a gentlewoman, and how women should behave, or is he criticising those who criticise Moll, and suggesting that there is something inherently wrong in the treatment of women, and their dreams. As a woman, Moll is forbidden the kind of legitimate economic independence that men enjoy throughout the novel. The reader can easily come away from the novel blaming the misfortunes that befall her and the criminal and morally questionable activities she engages in as being a direct result of this. She is forced to try and survive in a world where she is excluded from having the means to support herself. While an increasing emphasis was being put on economic individualism in the 18th century, women were still expected to be subordinate to men, and attached to men, either as daughters or as wives, sexual objects, and mothers of children. It is expected that if Moll is ever to gain wealth, she should do so through marriage to a wealthy man, rather than being economically productive in her own right. As Julie Mitchell wrote, Moll is ‘a small-time capitalist in the making, she is the pilgrim progressing to what, as a sharp-witted child and clear-headed woman, she rightly takes to be the capitalist definition of a gentlewoman – the wife of a prosperous businessman or a self-made woman in her own right’ (p.218). The daughter of a thief, she is born in inauspicious circumstances in Newgate prison, and is left parentless when her mother is transported to America. As a woman on her own, she is fated to endure a series of misfortunes in life, and a chronic lack of stability. However, she is ultimately able to live as a rich plantation owner. We might conclude, therefore, that Defoe is championing the cause of disenfranchised woman. Indeed, when Moll does finally gain lasting economic independence, she does so through acquiring property through an incestuous marriage, the last in a long series. In Sense and Sensibility, as in Moll Flanders, there are female characters who are forced to rely on ‘coquetry and intrigue (considered vulgar in post- Revolutionary society) for social advancement’ (enotes.com). The Steele sisters are perhaps the most prominent example. As Brownstein commented, ‘big-mouthed Nancy and small-eyed Lucy Steele, who mean to marry as well as possible, and polite Lady Middleton and inappropriate Mrs. Palmer, who already have’ (p.45) do not provide an especially strong basis for a feminist message. Furthermore, the resolution of this novel seems to establish conventional feminine virtues as triumphant and supreme. In the aftermath of the French Revolution, writers in England were concerned to reassert traditional values as a means of reinforcing and protecting the existing social order against political and social convulsion. As Johnson noted, ‘conservative ideologues met the threat posed by the revolution in France and the voices of reform in England by reasserting the political momentousness of the family’ (p.50). In this novel, a character such as Marianne, often held to represent ‘Sensibility’, who has, for example, been so unconventional as to declare her love for and intimacy with Willoughby in the middle of a ballroom, is brought around to the mostly conventional values of ‘Sense’ by the end, and many critics have seen it as the most antifeminist of Austen’s novels. However, Elinor can be seen as Austen’s creation of a female intellectual, and she is favourable portrayed in comparison to women who stake everything on wealthy marriages. We can also see Austen using the voice of the narrator to criticise the latitude given to inappropriate behaviour by men in 18th-century society, even when such conduct would never be countenanced by women. Once the Dashwoods have been forced to leave their old home, ‘The narrator’s even tone implies it is as certain as death that men merely use dependent women, that virtue goes unrewarded, that ingratitude, caprice, and selfishness prevail, that people to active harm and yet remain respectable’ (Brownstein p.45). Austen comments of John Dashwood ‘He was not an ill-disposed young man, unless to be rather cold-hearted, and rather selfish, is to be ill-disposed’ (p.5), in a way that seems like quite criticism of the position of men and the tolerance of their heartlessness. Indeed, Margaret Oliphant referred to Jane Austen’s ‘fine vein of female cynicism’ about the worldliness around her, and Johnson holds Sense and Sensibility to be ‘the most attuned [of her novels] to progressive social criticism’ (p.49). While it is possible to see Defoe’s presentation of Moll’s stealing, trickery, and many sexual relationships as an indictment of woman and her wickedness, it is just as easy to see in this presentation a woman forced to extreme behaviour by a deeply flawed patriarchal system. Indeed, critics have debated whether Defoe was feting the resourcefulness of a ‘proto-feminist heroine’ or just presenting a compelling tale of female immorality (Pollack, 144). Moll understands from early on that she has agency as a sexual object. She has an affair with men of the household in which she is first a servant, and from then on is aware that as a woman, she has some source of power to exploit. She dreams of what Pollak calls ‘honest self-sufficiency’ (p.149), in a way that could easily be branded proto-feminist, but has to use base means to achieve anything like it. Her ambition is obvious. Having given birth, she wants to make an advantageous marriage elsewhere, and to watch over the welfare of the child from the current relationship. This was unthinkable in the 18th century. While Moll’s governess, the unconventional Mother Midnight, advises that she cannot be ‘Conceal’d and Discover’d both together’ (p.176), she arranges for Moll to do so by making an arrangement with the child’s nurse. While Moll is able to bring about a final marriage to a man who turns out to be her half-brother, and thus becomes economically comfortable, it is at this point that she is ‘most thwarted and defiled’ (Pollak, p.151) by the incestuous relationship. This episode both highlights the huge difficulties in Moll’s struggle for wealth, and the fact that she is not the ruthless and wicked opportunist and schemer that some critics have seen. She would perhaps have lived a more comfortable life had she not told her husband that they were committing incest, as her mother advises. However, she chooses to do the right thing, despite the discomfort it will entail. We must agree with Pollak that ‘Defoe gives fiction a gender by figuratively identifying the seductive and elusive text with an alluring but deceitful and ungovernable female body’ (p.154). While Moll is a strong and self-willed woman, the above quote demonstrates that to call her a feminist icon would be misguided. While she is forced to do so by the circumstances of her time, her methods for seeking independence are nonetheless reprehensible. Furthermore, she ends the novel living off a plantation in Virginia, and having struggled to escape male domination through her whole life, she is now perhaps as bad. She lives in England on money generated by the labour of African slaves. Rather than fighting against the patriarchal and hierarchical nature of her society, does she not end up reinforcing it herself? Certainly Moll is, as Lacey put it, ‘a thoroughly autonomous woman, brimming with agency and enterprise: she has plans and ambitions; she has strategies for pursuing them’ (p.3). However, she ultimately and knowingly lives by depriving others of the same autonomy which is so much a part of herself. While Sense and Sensibility appears, on first glance, to be a novel which reasserts the importance of traditional female modesty, and the traditional role of the family in society, we must agree with Johnson that it is, at a deeper level, ‘unremitting in its cynicism and iconoclasm’ (p.72). The tendencies of patriarchy are examined and quietly criticised by highlighting the misfortunes that are forced upon groups of women like Mrs Dashwood and her daughters, left penniless and homeless after years of giving love to their husband and father. Furthermore, a system which enables women to seek advancement through trickery and intrigue is criticised through the use of the Steele sisters: ‘Provided she appear proper and play the sycophant to wealth and power, a cold-hearted heroine like Lucy Steele finds a place in the world’ (p.50). None of this is made explicit, but is arguably all the more powerful for it. References J. Austen, R.W. Chapman, ed., The Novels of Jane Austen 5 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966). R.M. Brownstein, “Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice” in E. Copeland and M. McMaster, The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). D. Defoe, Moll Flanders (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981). C.L. Johnson, Jane Austen: Women, Politics and the Novel (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988). N. Lacey, Women, Crime and Character: From Moll Flanders to Tess of the D’Urbervilles (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). J. Mitchell, “Moll Flanders, The Rise of Capitalist Woman” in her Women: The Longest Revolution (London: Virago, 1984). E. Pollack, “Gender and Fiction in Moll Flanders and Roxana” in J. Richetti, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Daniel Defoe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). V. Woolf, The Common Reader (New York: Harvest, 1925). “Moll Flanders”. enotes.com. Accessed 20/01/11. “Sense and Sensibility”. sparknotes.com. Accessed 20/01/11. “Sense and Sensibility”. enotes.com. Accessed 20/01/11. Read More