Revisiting Disrupted Maternity in Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders and Roxana: A New Historicist Reading

This study revisits the ways Moll Flanders and Roxana, two fictional character created by Daniel Defoe problematize the conventions of the eighteenth century maternity viewed from a New Historicist perspective. In the eighteenth century the term maternity was associated with the development of an ideology of motherhood that promoted the notions that women are born to be mothers and naturally inclined toward childcare and domesticity. This paper discusses Maternity, as central to the narratives, is certainly the result of a nuanced reading. Mothers in both novels do not ‘mother’ to any extent, and Moll and Roxana’s maternities are certainly secondary to their adventures. Yet, Defoe makes maternity an issue of importance, most obviously by making both heroines incredibly fertile. Moll and Roxana produce over twenty children between them, and although several die in infancy, both women demonstrate robust maternal health and experience little trouble in giving birth to living babies.

Keywords:

Defore. maternity , New Historicism , money , love social equilibrium , ۱۸ th eEngland