Family Ties

Analytical Essay # 7136

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Family Ties

Daniel Defoe's recurring theme of family relationships in 'Roxana' and 'Moll Flanders'.

2,220 words () | 4 sources | MLA | 2002 United Kingdom

Paper Summary:

This essay explores Defoe's preoccupation with the theme of family relationships which is a recurring motif in much of his work. Contains a particular concentration on his two novels 'Moll Flanders' and 'Roxana'.
The moral of 'Moll Flanders' is that abandoning children has hidden long term consequences, some of which are not only harrowing but life threatening, and that these consequences have an effect not only on the individual, but on society as a whole. The moral of 'Roxana' is If the "unsufferable" behavior of servants is not curbed then the natural order of society will become undermined by the corrupting influence of those "less morally endowed".

From the Paper:

"In Moll Flanders and Roxana, by Daniel Defoe, the theme of family relationships, relationships between parents and children, husbands and wives, and masters and servants, is a recurring motif. This theme is not only a feature of these two novels, it was also a preoccupation of the author's, and is a subject of some his earlier works, in particular his treatise, The Family Instructor (1715), which was published in three parts. It is difficult, if not impossible, to separate Defoe from his themes. But for Defoe the family was of primary importance, as David Blewett asserts in Defoe's Art of Fiction: Moll as Whore and Thief:"