How Do Defoe and Flaubert Create a Criminal Protagonist in Madame Bovary and Moll Flanders - Research Paper Example

Creation of Criminal Protagonist in Moll Flanders and Madame Bovary Introduction The 18 and 19th centuries is an era remembered for the literal and art creations as depicted in the Daniel Defoe’s The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders of 1722 and Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary of 1856. The two pieces are Novels exploring the lives of heroines Moll Flanders and Emma Bovary respectively. Likewise to other pieces of increasing critical thinking such as law and philosophy at the time, the two novels were based on societal changes underpinned by radical shifts of human responsibility and criminalization of women. Defoe follows a penitence approach while Flaubert follows a realistic approach to illustrate the literature authenticity reflected in their characteristics and resultant thematic concerns. By writing about the portraits of female characters in the European context, both Defoe and Flaubert attack the public morals and feminist values of a woman in the mainstream European society. Brief Plot Summaries i. The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders The story is an intimate life of a woman trickster, Molls, who later changes her name to Molls Flanders. She is depicted as a pretty woman who uses the prettiness to trick men into relationships, all in the name of raising her financial status. Born in England while her mother was in prison, Moll is brought up by foster parents. At this point of her age, she is prompted by the servitude of her life and decides to work in a household. She attaches herself from husband to husband under circumstances orchestrated by death, poverty and dissatisfaction. This makes her to shift from her motherland to America only to find her mother but later returns to England to satisfy her lifestyle. In her old age, she realizes that her life is slow-paced with her conviction in prison. In a bid to revert her life, she repents and spends her penal servitude with her Lancashire husband in England. ii. Madame Bovary The novel introduces the audience to Charles Bovary life. He is married off to a rich woman, Heloise by his mother, but upon her death, he meets and falls in love with Emma. Charles and Emma have a perfect family that bears, Berthe, their first daughter. The motherly instinct does not make Emma adhere to family life; instead it rejuvenates her inner sexism. She engages in extra-marital affairs with two men, Lyon and Rodolphe. She is neither bound by age nor affluence. However, her life graduates to one of luxury, and leads her into heavy debts. Her lovers fail to assist. Pride makes her to commit suicide, and Charles takes over the debt. He sells off his possessions, but stumbles upon the love letters from Leon and Rodolphe. Charles eventually dies, leaving Berthe under the care of her aunt. From the two novels, it is obvious that the two women create a female protagonist based on the wrong traits a heroine should depict. There are reasons as to why both authors created a setting of depicting the criminal protagonist role of Emma and Molls as discussed below; i. Poverty The plots of both Madame Bovary and Moll Flanders present a similar style in which both writers create a criminal protagonist. Defoe and Flaubert create their main character from the conspiracy of poverty and the need to satisfy self desires. Poverty acts as the mother to crime in the aim of living a comfortable life. In Madame Bovary, Emma plays the protagonist role in which she lives an unsatisfied and discomfort life. This is portrayed by her struggle to satisfy romantic needs as the commits infidelity and misuse family resources. This aspect poses a hefty load on the husband as he also struggles to support his family with a strenuous job. Emma’s life in crime begins with her marriage to Charles. This is due to the idea that Emma fails to meet her romantic expectations from Charles which was entangled in her dream as a young girl. In Flaubert’s novel ‘Madame Bovary’ poverty is the route to crime as Charles begins a life of his own as a poor man after acquiring little inheritance from her mother. This meant that he had to struggle with his second class medical degree in order to attain a normal living. As a result, he got entangled to a woman who also came from a similar background but with a different expectation in life. Charles’s state of poverty confirms him to work thus paying little attention the romantic affairs of his marriage to Emma. Due to this notion, Emma engages in infidelity as she focuses on satisfying her childhood romantic dreams with other men aside from the husband (Flaubert, 74). In a similar format, the theme of poverty plays a major role in the creation of a criminal protagonist in Defoe’s book ‘Moll Flanders’. Moll Flanders is born in a state of poverty as her mother is sentenced to life imprisonment. However, she grows up with the dream of becoming successful and knowing her place in the society (Defoe, 148). This aspect causes her to get married at an early age. Unfortunately, life turns out to be unexpected and she is forced to set aside her moral values in order to survive. She is accompanied by misfortunes in marriage thus encountering several divorces that sums to a total of five marriages in her lifetime. She also ends in jail to serve a life sentence which is reduced to eight years (Defoe, 504). Eventually, she attains both freedom and wealth but regrets on the life led in the process. Defoe and Flaubert use the approach of creating a criminal protagonist with the effect of poverty as a theme in both stories. Their main aim is to present a moral lesson on the effects of poverty in the distortion of morality. This is in reflection to the modern society in which women tend to deviate from the norms set by the society in order to satisfy personal desires. Among these desires is the creation of a sustainable form of living. The approach also aims at creating a vivid picture of the harsh environment in which human beings embrace the role of survival for the fittest to attain self comfort. ii. Moral up bring Moral upbringing is another theme approach used to create a criminal protagonist in both stories. Both Emma and Moll Flanders are seen to have missed a normal upbringing during their young ages. The character that they obtain as adults reflect much on their childhood lives. However, Flaubert combines the theme with irony to create a twist while Defoe simply uses the logical aspect of his idea of moral upbringing to create the intended outcome in which the reader gets to meet a criminal protagonist. In this case, he taps the life of Moll Flanders as an adult from the moral environment in which she grow inside. Moll Flanders was born from a convicted mother thus did not have the proper moral guidance of people to emulate. On the other hand, Emma comes from a different set up but grows into the opposite of the expectation of her upbringing. She grew up in a convent where good morals are nurtured in women (Flaubert, 23). This was not the case as her dream for a romantic marriage made her create a different personality from her childhood. Flaubert uses this concept of dramatic twist to create his criminal protagonist thus making the readers to obtain a different logical view of the theme of moral upbringing. As a result, the story creates emotional judgment to the reader. The two stories have a similar ending in which the writers depict the ultimate result of a life in crime. Both protagonist die in regret of the life they lived. Defoe and Flaubert depict the need of creating criminal protagonist as they create a moral lesson with their agonizing end. In this case, they tend to create a criminal protagonist from the character’s self interests in which both protagonists realize their mistakes at the end of the story thus helping the reader to create a moral judgment from the moral lesson. Differences between the Texts One difference between the two texts portray of the protagonists is with the author intentions with Emma and Molls. Defoe uses Moll Flanders to reflect typical female thieves through pretended reality while Flaubert intended Emma to be a creator of social conflict. Defoe uses this proxy to warn against sins and tricks through the propagation of morality. By so doing the audience gets a reduced abhorrence and a lesser consternation of the public. Molls struggles to be the stereotypic feminine heroine in her society. Irrespective of her female characteristics, she blocks deep emotional connection to her partners. Her life is also an enumeration of husbands from different chronological episodes. Through her, the audience is able to identify with ordinary adventures, shop-lifters, and hypocrites (Lacey 2). Flaubert reflects social conflict through depiction of negatives bound with self-inflicted suffering of Emma (Young 1). This is created with the urge of action and growth that drives social conflicts in societies. They comprise of temptations, such that drove Emma to have extra marital affairs. Her upbringing is filled with fantasies and after lack of distractions in her marriage; Flaubert reveals her real conflicting soul, "...her life was as cold as a garret whose dormer-window looks on the north, and ennui, the silent spider, was weaving its web in the darkness in every corner of her heart" (Flaubert, 1856, p. 12) Emma’s marriage is a first encounter with real societal issues and institutions such as family, but this lures her to impressions, a trait she believes she is receptive to. She depicts no restraints or defenses, hurting everyone and everything around her (Young 4). Conclusion As critically assessed, the two literal works are a typical depiction of female criminal protagonists in the European social strata. The two authors have achieved this by highlighting a stage by stage life situation of Emma and Moll to illustrate their vicious activities. As the depicted heroines in the novels, the novels offer numerous character nuances of women; as thieves and creators of social conflicts. Despite the portrayal of women as criminal protagonists, Emma and Molls have performed their role by stepping into the shoes of deeply rooted prejudicial women. Their treatment in the settings of the two novels embeds the understanding and of females and their individual agencies and construes the main building blocks of social order. Works Cited Defoe, Daniel. The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders. London: HarperCollins Publishers Limited 1722. Print. Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovary. Paris: HarperCollins Publishers Limited, 1856. Print Lacey, Nicola. From Moll Flanders to Tess of the D’Urbervilles: Women, Autonomy and Criminal Responsibility in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century England. Law, Society and Education, pp 1-32, 2007. Print. Young, Alexey. A Patristic Reading of Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, pp 1-11. Print. Read More