When reading through Defoe’s Moll Flanders, one thing that struck me as a reader was the complete disregard Moll had for all of the children to which she gave birth over the course of the novel. While Moll takes pains at every turn to account for her stock of money and goods, she doesn’t botherContinue reading “The Children of Moll Flanders: Infanticide Run Rampant”
Tag Archives: 1700s
“A wife’s like a guinea in gold”: The Commodification of Women in “The Beggar’s Opera”
In The Beggar’s Opera, we find the inversions of many societal norms for comedic effect. As is true of all satires, these purposeful reversals of positions and definitions, while at one moment the cause for hilarity, also serve to expose the dark truths behind institutions and ideas society accepts as natural. One of the institutionsContinue reading ““A wife’s like a guinea in gold”: The Commodification of Women in “The Beggar’s Opera””
Robin Jeffrey 