In discussion last class the idea was brought up that the failure of the social system in order to care for Molly during her first years and subsequently after was what resulted in her naivety of the real world and her place inside of that system. I thought that was surprisingly accurate, such as the fact that Molly was born to two parishes and therefore could not get help from either establishment and pertained to our own social system such as the inability of organizations such as WIC and Social Services to provide adequate help to families who are in desperate need but either don’t meet certain requirement or are in some way not considered “bad” enough by the system to warrant help even if the need for care, financially, emotionally, or spiritually is clearly there for all to see. The failure to provide any type of true service to Molly is the foundation for the way her life has turned out, the failure of the women who raised her in not truly preparing her for life and how harsh the world could be set Molly up to be taken advantage of and the way the higher class of society treated her as a pet instead of explaining to her how the social structure in this time period worked encouraged her behavior to act outrageously and get into trouble. This is pretty realistic for how social services and programs work in that they might provide services to help a problem they very seldom try to stop the problem from occurring again, and pawn the problem on somebody else because it’s too hard. The social system though at fault was not responsible for Molly’s actions however and the resulting problem of trusting someone and willfully being shortsighted did nothing to help the situation nor put circumstances in Molly’s favor.
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
Molly Flanders: A System Failure
In discussion last class the idea was brought up that the failure of the social system in order to care for Molly during her first years and subsequently after was what resulted in her naivety of the real world and her place inside of that system. I thought that was surprisingly accurate, such as the fact that Molly was born to two parishes and therefore could not get help from either establishment and pertained to our own social system such as the inability of organizations such as WIC and Social Services to provide adequate help to families who are in desperate need but either don’t meet certain requirement or are in some way not considered “bad” enough by the system to warrant help even if the need for care, financially, emotionally, or spiritually is clearly there for all to see. The failure to provide any type of true service to Molly is the foundation for the way her life has turned out, the failure of the women who raised her in not truly preparing her for life and how harsh the world could be set Molly up to be taken advantage of and the way the higher class of society treated her as a pet instead of explaining to her how the social structure in this time period worked encouraged her behavior to act outrageously and get into trouble. This is pretty realistic for how social services and programs work in that they might provide services to help a problem they very seldom try to stop the problem from occurring again, and pawn the problem on somebody else because it’s too hard. The social system though at fault was not responsible for Molly’s actions however and the resulting problem of trusting someone and willfully being shortsighted did nothing to help the situation nor put circumstances in Molly’s favor.
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Interesting post: so, over the course of the novel, Moll learns to do without all the things someone better born has. She also does without the "social services" you mention. This makes her a realist who abandons ideals for survival and financial success. Politically, I wonder, does that make Defoe's book ultimately conservative? That is, does the book imply no one really needs these luxuries in life? If not, then we'd have to take a really harsh view of Moll and totally condemn her. Curious problem.
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