English Language and Literature Commons^™

The Anti-Hero And The Wallflower Heroine: Moll Flanders And Mansfield Park In Dialogue, Alex Valin

Oglethorpe Journal of Undergraduate Research

Daniel Defoe’s 1722 novel Moll Flanders and Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, published ninety years later, retain many narrative similarities. The protagonists of both novels find themselves born poor, symbolically adopted by a well-to-do family, whom they are Othered from to a certain degree, and eventually marry one of the sons of said family. However, no reader of literature could say that Moll Flanders and Fanny Price are the same character. Rather, the differences in their characters come from the amount of agency afforded to them by the respective novel. Ultimately, these two characters form prototypes of characters to be ingrained …