Moll Flanders, Madame Bovary, & The Joys Of Motherhood Essay -- essays

Moll Flanders, Madame Bovary, & amp The Joys of pregnancy     Daniel Defoes Moll Flanders, Gustave Flauberts Madame Bovary, and Buchi Emechetas The Joys of Motherhood are three novels that portray the life of cleaning lady in many an(prenominal) different ways. They wholly depict the turmoils and strifes that women, in many cultures and time periods, suffer from. In some cases its the cleaning ladys fault, in others its apparently giving luck. In any case, all(prenominal) three novels succeed in their polish of showing what a life of selling oneself short is like through with(predicate) the eyes of a woman.     In Daniel Defoes Moll Flanders, a woman, Moll is exclusively trying to get by and is realisen a wonderful come to the fore because she was born in a prison. Moll Flanders leads a life salutary of crime and prostitution because she feels it is the only way she can survive. She becomes do symbiotic on theft that she steals ev en when she does not need any more(prenominal) luxuries. In Moll Flanders, the reader at times feels bad for the master(prenominal) character because she really has no luck when it comes to husbands or life in general. Yet at other times we resent the fact that she leaves her children and continues theft for no reason.      Moll Flanders is somewhat ambiguous because the reader does not receive whether to feel sorry for Molls disadvantages, or feel hatred for her irresponsibility. Moll is somewhat portrayed as ignorant, in that she does not know that what she does is wrong. E. M. Forster wrote that "A record such as hers cannot for long distinguish between doing wrong and acquiring caught."      Although there are time when the reader feels bad for Moll and feels that she simply does not know better, there are times when Moll assume that she is doing wrong. However, Moll feels no sympathy for the people she steals from. Even aft er she clams stealing for some time, she being again without remorse. "Thus you see having attached a Crime once, is a sad Handle to the committing of it again whereas all the Regret, and Reflections wear off when the Temptation renews itself" (184). Moll understands that the crimes she commits are unjust, but she blames temptaion for her delinquency.      The intimately direct reason that the reader feels sympathy for Moll is because she eventually feels guilt. "I had ... ...py, she was abandoned by them in the end. Still, Nnu Ego did everything in her power to give everything to her children, and "The joy of being a mother was the joy of giving all to you children" (224).     These three previously mentioned novels all consisted of three extremely different woman selling themselves in one way or another to hit some sort of self worth or ultimate happiness. Although the situations and acts of the characters were subst antially different, one must feel some sort of sympathy to these woman. non only did they lower their standards, but they also went to extreme lengths to achieve a happiness that in most cases never came.Works CitedDefoe, Daniel. Moll Flanders. W.W. Norton & Company, bleak York 1973.Emecheta, Buchi. The Joys of Motherhood. Hinemann, Oxford 1979.Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovary. W. W. Norton & Company, New York 1965Forster, E.M. "A novel of Character" from Aspects of the Novel. Harcourt, Brace, New York           1927. Thibaudet, Albert. "Madame Bovary" from chapter 5 of Gustave Flaubert. Gallimard, Paris 1935.