Analysis Of Moll Flanders And The Rape Of The Lock In Terms Of Gender And Sexual Reaffirmation Or Reinvention By Theblackbiro
theblackbiro
Both The Rape of the Lock and Moll Flanders can easily be analyzed through sexual and gendered readings; the protagonists in both texts are female characters portrayed by male authors, who, through their representations of their heroes, can be viewed as misogynist or – though the term did not exist back then – feminist. The arguments, however, are indeterminate. Pope (1688-1744), for instance – who became known for his feminization of the mock-epic poem through his well-known work The Rape of the Lock – is a writer who is continuously debated upon. According to Carol Fabricant, Pope has in equal measure been acclaimed by critics for alleged exceptional kinship with the female sensibility, and been seen by a growing amount of feminist critics as “the voice of phallic authority, as a symbol of the oppressive power of patriarchy”.1 Opinion about him range from Maynard Mack claiming
Pope “had always a special sympathy for the lot of women”, to Ruth Salvaggio asserting quite forcefully that “[Pope‟s poetry] imprisoned women within representational categories created by men”2.
On the other hand, from the late seventeenth century, when the middle-class began to rise and a significant incentive to educate women surfaced – notably the creation of the concept of marriage as companionship and the successive need for a wife with whom one may have an intelligent conversation with – Daniel Defoe (1660-1731), one of the most influential writers of his time, was a firm activist for women‟s education. The reason for this may have been because, as one of the first novelists, he realised that women were increasingly part of his readership, but his participation helped transform society and made a key impact on women‟s standing3, altering their gendered identity. This dissertation studying the texts from both authors will firstly verify if the representations are regressive or progressive, and secondly will attempt to determine whether an objective conclusion about these
Both The Rape of the Lock and Moll Flanders can easily be analyzed through sexual and gendered readings; the protagonists in both texts are female characters portrayed by male authors, who, through their representations of their heroes, can be viewed as misogynist or – though the term did not exist back then – feminist. The arguments, however, are indeterminate. Pope (1688-1744), for instance – who became known for his feminization of the mock-epic poem through his well-known work The Rape of the Lock – is a writer who is continuously debated upon. According to Carol Fabricant, Pope has in equal measure been acclaimed by critics for alleged exceptional kinship with the female sensibility, and been seen by a growing amount of feminist critics as “the voice of phallic authority, as a symbol of the oppressive power of patriarchy”.1 Opinion about him range from Maynard Mack claiming
Pope “had always a special sympathy for the lot of women”, to Ruth Salvaggio asserting quite forcefully that “[Pope‟s poetry] imprisoned women within representational categories created by men”2.
On the other hand, from the late seventeenth century, when the middle-class began to rise and a significant incentive to educate women surfaced – notably the creation of the concept of marriage as companionship and the successive need for a wife with whom one may have an intelligent conversation with – Daniel Defoe (1660-1731), one of the most influential writers of his time, was a firm activist for women‟s education. The reason for this may have been because, as one of the first novelists, he realised that women were increasingly part of his readership, but his participation helped transform society and made a key impact on women‟s standing3, altering their gendered identity. This dissertation studying the texts from both authors will firstly verify if the representations are regressive or progressive, and secondly will attempt to determine whether an objective conclusion about these
Bibliography: Primary Sources Defoe Daniel, Moll Flanders, Penguin Classics, 2007 Pope Alexander, The Rape of the Lock, Vintage Classics, 2007. Print. Secondary Sources Anonymous, „The lawes resolution of women‟s rights, London, 1632, fol Holland Jack, „A Brief History of Misogyny: The World‟s Oldest Prejudice‟, Hachette UK, 2006 Kahn Madeleine, Narrative Transvestism: Rhetoric and Gender in the Eighteenth-century English Novel, Cornell University Press, 1991