Moll Flanders

Fülszöveg

A Woman to Remember
Moll Flanders
By DANIEL DEFOE
INTRODUCTION BY G. A. AITKEN
. . the child had a little necklace on of gold beads, and I had my eye upon that, and in the dark of the alley I stooped, pretending to mend the child's clog that was loose, and took off her necklace, and the child never felt it. . . here, the devil put me upon killing the child in the dark alley, that it might not cry, but the very thought frighted me so that I was ready to drop down; but I turned the child about and bade it go back again, for that was not its way home; the child said so she would . . . and I crossed into Field Lane to Holborn Bridge and mixing with the crowd of people usually passing there, it was not possible to have been found out; and thus I made my second sally into the world.'
This trenchant paragraph not only deals with the theft but develops Defoe's most fully realized character—Moll Flanders— who was five times a wife, twelve years a thief, eight years a transported... Tovább

Fülszöveg

A Woman to Remember
Moll Flanders
By DANIEL DEFOE
INTRODUCTION BY G. A. AITKEN
. . the child had a little necklace on of gold beads, and I had my eye upon that, and in the dark of the alley I stooped, pretending to mend the child's clog that was loose, and took off her necklace, and the child never felt it. . . here, the devil put me upon killing the child in the dark alley, that it might not cry, but the very thought frighted me so that I was ready to drop down; but I turned the child about and bade it go back again, for that was not its way home; the child said so she would . . . and I crossed into Field Lane to Holborn Bridge and mixing with the crowd of people usually passing there, it was not possible to have been found out; and thus I made my second sally into the world.'
This trenchant paragraph not only deals with the theft but develops Defoe's most fully realized character—Moll Flanders— who was five times a wife, twelve years a thief, eight years a transported felon and 'at last grew rich and died a penitent'. Defoe knew Newgate at first hand and probably heard Moll's story from a real criminal. But the description of the necklace is only one paragraph from a tightly packed volume of personal observation which absorbs the reader's interest, not only in the events related but also in the personal destiny of one who has the power to pickpocket the reader's affections, for all the expediency by which she lives. She gives us, as Mr E. M. Forster wrote, 'the thrill that proceeds from a living being. She moves us as having height and weight, as breathing and eating, and doing many of the things which are usually left out'.
Cover design by William McLaren Vissza