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(1)Chen 1 Introduction. This thesis aims to explore the function of disguise in Moll Flanders. Disguise is a central concern in the novel on three levels. First of all, there is the physical disguise that Moll uses as a tool to mark or mask her identity.. Secondly, disguise works on the level of Moll’s spiritual life.. Her often-professed penitence does have features of a mask.. Thirdly,. there is a disguise that Defoe attempts to impose on Moll’s criminal autobiography by masking it as a moral tale. This authorial disguise can be characterized as a meta-narrative one, because it concerns a dispute between author and character about the nature of the narrative presented to the reader. The thesis is composed of four chapters. In the first chapter, I will first discuss the general functions of clothes. Then, with Terry Castle’s study on eighteenth-century masquerade as an inspiration for my study, I will concentrate on the particular function of costume as disguise. Furthermore, I will in my discussion on Moll Flanders connect the notion of play with masquerade disguise. Though Castle seems to ignore Moll Flanders in her studies, Moll Flanders does echo the spirit of transgression by means of disguise in carnival and masquerades. In the second chapter, I will focus on the physical disguise that Moll employs to mask her identity in the husband hunting and especially in the thievery episodes. This physical disguise gives access to the spirit of transgression. In the rigid hierarchical society of England in the eighteenth century, clothes can be regarded as the signifier for one’s class and gender. We can find that while others believe that the.

(2) Chen 2 signifier always points to the signified, Moll seems to be the only one in the novel that notices the tricky problem underlying this system of signification. Clothes can make a person, therefore the socially accepted code in dressing becomes a useful device for Moll to mask her identity or mark her as one she is not. The most remarkable example is Moll’s cross-dressing disguise as a man. By manipulating clothes to disguise her identity, Moll is not only manipulating this system of signification, but also transgressing the boundary of class and gender. In fact, Moll has, in Bakhtin’s words, “decrowned all hierarchical positions people might hold, and played with these positions” (PDP 158). As a decrowner of hierarchical positions, Moll is like a player striving for her space in the game of the world. She enjoys the freedom and mobility of being any one in the social hierarchy, and to be other sex in the gender division. In Chapter Three, I will transfer my attention to the spiritual disguise with respect to the problem of Moll Flanders’ penitence. This disguise is directed at the readers of the tale. Many readers like me find the part of repentance and confession attached to every sexual or thievery adventure unconvincing, especially because it is always followed by Moll’s ambition and plans for money-hunting. Furthermore, the final “true” penitence in Newgate prison seems abrupt. I will question the sincerity and legitimacy of Moll’s penitence in relation to her attitude toward money to prove that it is another instance of her self-fashioning, i.e. her choice of a pose that she believes will go over well with her reading public. In Chapter Four, I will deal with the authorial disguise that Defoe has imposed on the criminal autobiography to make the novel sound with the.

(3) Chen 3 tune of a true moral tale. The Editor’s Preface will be the main source of my examination and the issue of Chapter Three will be brought up again. Defoe admits in the Editor’s Preface that Moll’s story is refashioned for public consumption. In fact, he also tries to mask Moll’s identity as a criminal. It seems not too far-fetched to regard the part of penitence we have discussed in Chapter Three as the result of Defoe’s obsession with masking the criminal autobiography as a moral tale. I will argue that Defoe has conducted the authorial disguise by language in the novel. With the character and the author performing their tricks of disguise at the same time in the same novel, we can feel the competition between the two of them. The story fueled by Moll’s physical disguise—the criminal biography—competes with Defoe’s plans with his heroine: a moral repentance. I will argue that Defoe unsuccessfully attempts to make the story a moral tale, and that Moll’s discourse of physical disguise eventually hijacks Defoe’s novel and defeats his disguise. Moll as a character encroaches upon authorial power and transgresses the territory that the author prescribes for her, his character..

(4) Chen 4 Chapter I Masquerade, Disguise, Play. Perhaps there is no other character in eighteenth-century literature that is as protean as Moll Flanders. Opening the title page, we find a cluster of identities attached to her. She is a whore, a wife, a thief, a transported felon, and a penitent, not to mention those personas she plays during her thievery life such as a beggar, a rich woman and even a man. Moll plays many roles in her life by simply putting on new clothes or costumes. (Of course, she also changes her behavior, inspired by the costume she wears.) Therefore, I want to begin with a discussion of the functions of clothes. In primitive times, people used animal skin to cover their bodies and protect them from the cold. In modern times, people put on coats to keep their bodies warm. Animal skins and coats both are clothes that serve the same function of covering people’s bodies and protecting them from cold. Clothes, seen from this perspective, stand merely for something that people wear. Beside this practical and basic function, do clothes have other functions? Virginia Woolf writes, in Orlando, “clothes have...more offices than merely to keep us warm. They change our view of the world and the world’s view of us” (79). Imagine that walking on the street, you see a group of people in uniform marching toward you. You might draw the conclusion that maybe they are studying at the same school, or working in the same company. Their clothes convey the message to you that they have something in common. They might have the same.

(5) Chen 5 occupation. Therefore, clothes have the function of indicating the occupation of the wearers. If you turn to look at the people walking in front of you, without seeing their faces, you might judge from the clothes they wear that those who wear skirts must be females. Thus, clothes have the function of indicating gender differences. Clothes have the function of indicating wealth, too. It often happens in Taiwan that walking into a fashion division of a department store wearing just a T-shirt and pants, you do not get service from the sales assistant because he or she has already passed judgment on your economic status by the clothes you wear. She or he does not think that you can afford buying any of their clothes. The clothes one wears indicate one’s wealth. Clothes can indicate the wearer’s social status as well. The social status of the wearer is often closely related to the other functions of clothes.. Many times, an indication of wealth in clothes is an indication. of social status of the wearer. The indications of gender and occupation shown in the clothes people wear contribute to the social rank of the wearer, too. Bogatyrev in “Costume as a Sign” points out that “costume is sometimes an object, sometimes a sign” (80). Clothes can also be seen as objects with their practical function of keeping people warm. But they also are signs or indicators of social status of their wearers--their occupation, gender, wealth, and rank. When Chanel does not stand for a brand of clothes only, but signals the wealth and privilege of its wearer, it has become a carrier of meaning in a sign.

(6) Chen 6 system. In fact, clothes are then regarded as a sign. It is a sign system that does not require formal instruction for consciously or unconsciously people have already entered into this sign system in their daily life. It becomes a shared belief and intuition to people. Once it becomes an institution or norm, people have to adapt themselves to it. Transgression is not permitted. That is, people wear certain clothes as other people do according to their occupation, hierarchy and gender divisions. That is why we can assume that the one in a skirt is a female. Both in encoding and decoding the message of costume, people rely on a shared sartorial code, with inscriptions of class, gender, and other social aspects of the wearer. Clothes become a carrier of meaning and are like a language that speaks. Language too has the function of indicating a speaker’s social position. But, when we regard costume or clothes as a language, we must realize that language is not a transparent carrier of meaning. The path from addresser to addressee is never a smooth one. Any human interference might cause a turning of direction. The relation between signifier and signified discussed in semiotics can be used as an illuminating point to understand the functioning of sign. 1 Certain signifiers point to the signified through a pre-established connection.. That is how. the world functions. That is how we can guess that the one who wears a skirt is a female. That is how the sales-assistant can assume that the one in a T-shirt has no ability to buy expensive clothes. The sign system of clothes seems a rigid structure. Certainly, clothes serving as a signifier point to the wearer’s social positions. But, are those in uniforms really students? Is the one dressed in a skirt.

(7) Chen 7 necessarily a female? Is the one in T-shirt and pants really unable to afford designers clothes? Is the one wearing Chanel really a rich person? Does the one begging for money on the street really have no money? When we, according to the cultural code of clothing, believe that one signifier points to its signified with unerring certainty, we conclude that the one who dresses in a skirt is definitely a female. But, just take a look at one of Defoe’s other novels, Roxana, and see if there is another possibility. In the masquerade scene, Roxana dresses herself as a lady in Turkish costume and welcomes her guests, including the one in a king’s dress. She realizes the potential of clothes and language as useful signifiers to disguise: I had not only learn’d to dress like a QUAKER, but so us’d myself to THEE and THOU, that I talk’d like a QUAKER too, as readily and naturally QUAKER among all People that did not know me; I went but little Abroad, but I had been so us’d to a Coach, that I knew not how well to go without one; besides, I thought it woul’d be a farther Disguise to me,…(213) Moreover, though she knows that dressing herself like a Turkish lady, she has, in fact, nothing to do with anything Turkish. Yet, she seems to regard the one in the king’s costume as the real king. He may be a king as Roxana thinks him to be or may just be a beggar. Nobody knows except for himself. With only costume as a reference, the identity of the wearer is still indeterminate to the perceiver. Then how can we exclude the possibility that the one who wears a skirt is a male? In fact, costume as used in masquerades and in Moll Flanders.

(8) Chen 8 defeats the illusion that costume does carry the inscription of the wearer’s real social place. It becomes an instrument to display certain aspects of the wearer. I use “display” because clothes always have the tendency and purpose to show the wearer to a certain audience. What we wear at home is often different from what we wear in a ceremony. We might wear a T-shirt and short pants at home. But, to attend a ceremony or meeting, we might wear something formal. Of course, people wear clothes with certain purposes in mind. One might want to feel comfortable therefore one chooses to wear casual clothes. But, changing from casual wear to formal costume, one knows that the material function of clothes recedes into the background: the clothes worn do not mainly serve the material function anymore. Clothes become signs for other people to decipher. Therefore, clothes become a means to display the wearer. When costume becomes a means, it can be manipulated. This further suggests that the messages conveyed through displaying can be only a show, and not necessarily a “customary “ reference to the real identity of the displayer. Therefore, I want to add that costume has a particular function that seems contradictory to the general usage of clothes we have discussed above—to disguise. The popularity of the English masquerade in the eighteenth century can best exemplify this additional function. It is interesting to note that as an eighteenth-century novel, Moll Flanders has its setting in the seventeenth century. But, as a seventeenth-century figure, Moll shares the spirit of the eighteenth century. Moll’s tactic of appearing as another person through manipulation of clothes turns out to be a common practice in the.

(9) Chen 9 eighteenth century England. As Terry Castle observes: eighteenth-century culture as a whole might also be termed, without exaggeration, a culture of travesty....manipulation of appearances was both a private strategy and a social institution.. (Female Thermometer 83). The culture of manipulating appearance prevails in eighteenth-century England. When Castle points out that it is a “private strategy” employed by individuals, I believe that people in eighteenth-century England are quite aware of the function of clothes as a disguise. The social institution here refers to masquerades. Attending masquerades is not only a popular social phenomenon at that time, but also a common scene in many eighteenth century novels: With the spectacular rise of carnivalesque activity in England in the second and third decades of the eighteenth century—marked by the institutionalization of the public, or subscription, masquerade—the novel took a cue from popular culture: the carnival set piece, or masquerade scene, became a standard, though highly problematic, fictional topos. To the degree that writers incorporated the novel institution of the masquerade into an existing world of representation, the masquerade became an institution of the novel, making it multifarious body of eighteenth-century English fiction a “secret history of a carnival” indeed. (The Female Thermometer 101) Eighteenth-century English masquerades, according to Terry Castle, have “an ineluctable charm in the notion of disguising oneself in a fanciful costume and moving through a crowd of masked strangers”.

(10) Chen 10 (Masquerade and Civilization vii). Moll practices the tactic of disguising herself on the street, in the crowd, as participants in masquerades do. Though Castle in her discussion of the masquerade scenes in eighteenth-century literature does not include Moll Flanders, she does mention Moll as a “shape-shifter” in another article (Female Thermometer 82). There is no possibility for Moll to indulge in the eighteenth-century culture of travesty, but she does share the spirit of “manipulation of appearances” in masquerades. We can see clearly that Moll too disguises herself in clothes and moves through a crowd of strangers. If there is any connection between masquerade and Moll Flanders, the novel, it should be the notion of disguise. To disguise oneself in a costume and appear as another person is the essential practice in carnival too. As Castle observes: It is impossible to speak of the masquerade without reference to the carnival and the Carnivalesque....The classic features of the masquerade—sartorial exchange, masking, collective verbal and physical license—were traditional carnival motifs. (Masquerade and Civilization 11) The employment of masking, and exchanging clothes is the common characteristic of masquerades and carnival. Therefore, I would like to discuss the employment of disguise in masquerades as a starting point for further discussion on disguise in Moll Flanders. To make an assembly a masquerade, the chief rule is that the participants have to put on a mask or disguise to conceal their real identities in real life. To mask one’s identity by a simple change of clothes and to be seen as someone one isn’t is where the fun and.

(11) Chen 11 pleasure of the carnival and masquerade lie. Therefore, clothes play an important role in masquerades. In masquerades, people take off their usual clothes and put on new ones of their own choice. Changing clothes is a common practice in life, but the significance of this is quite different in masquerades. The participants practice the sartorial system with specific intentions in mind. A change of clothes becomes a change out of character. That is, the need to adapt oneself to his environment in clothes and speech is temporarily suspended: Costume (like speech) satisfies not only the practical needs and personal taste of the wearer, but serves to indicate his environment, and to satisfy the norms of the environment. And everyone, in his speech and in his costume, adapts to his milieu” (Bogatyrev 85). By putting on costume out of free choice, masqueraders enjoy certain freedoms that are not allowed in ordinary life. That is, in masquerades the necessity to adapt oneself to one’s expected and known identity is lifted, and one can surprise and perplex the others. One can choose whatever one wants to wear in a masquerade. Of course, this is subject to limits of imagination, availability, and economic possibility. One does not have to take into consideration the gender and hierarchical norms or restrictions imposed on one in real life. A woman can wear a man’s costume. A peasant can dress as a duke. But, we must note that by putting on a duke’s dress, the peasant is practicing the established law of costume with two attitudes toward it. First of all, he follows the social conventions. Secondly, he disobeys.

(12) Chen 12 them.. On the one hand, by employing the established law that confirms. that duke’s dress does carry the inscription of class, the peasant seems to consolidate the sign system of costume as a revelation of the wearer. The dress of a duke is equal to the class of a duke. The peasant dressing as a duke believes that the signifier can reach the signified. But, on the other hand, by putting on the duke’s dress, the peasant, in his audiences’ eyes, becomes one whom he is not. We can notice here that the pre-established system does not reveal but conceal the wearer. Thus, the division between people based on the costume they wear is a line easily blurred. Costume becomes a disguise when it fulfills the function of concealing the real identity of its wearer and displaying the wearer in a new identity. The conviction people build on the sartorial code turns out to expose its own arbitrariness. Disguise enables the disguiser to experience the reversal of social and gender hierarchy. In the ordinary hierarchical world, the servant never has the chance to be the master. But, through disguise in masquerade combined with skill in play-acting and a certain plausibility of circumstances, one can be anyone one wants to be. A servant can disguise himself as a king and enjoy the admiration of the others. To borrow Bakhtin’s term, the world presented in masquerade is a “topsy-turvy” world. 2 It is where “the inversion of bipolar opposites” exists. (Ivanov 11) Different classes are juxtaposed, man and woman as binary opposites can be combined into a single figure. The very possibility of turning the world upside-down is telling: that a peasant can pass for a duke points out that the line dividing them is not so rigid that it can not be blurred. That is, the smooth system, which insures social or.

(13) Chen 13 gender immobility becomes a tool for social and gender mobility in the hands of masqueraders or disguisers. The system, in turn, provides social transgression and inversion. To Castle and Bakhtin, masquerades embodies the spirit of carnival of offering a channel through which to transgress pre-established boundaries. Other critics, like Booker, Stallybrass and Allon adopt a similar but broader notion of carnival transgression, which involves: a violation of the rules of hierarchies in any of a number of areas, including literary genres and conventions, psychic forms, the human body, geographical space, and social order. (Booker 13) In a word, masquerades embody a disruptive or subversive power, which offers temporary liberty from the decorum and fixity of class and gender boundaries. But, it is this “temporality” that many other scholars see as a point for criticism. Craft-Fairchild in Masquerade and Gender disagrees with Bakhtin’s and Castle’s idea that masquerades are liberating and subversive activities. She points out that Bakhtin has acknowledged that the carnival is “tolerated and even legalized...All of it was consecrated by tradition and, to a certain extent, tolerated by the Church” (Rabelais 9, 14). She thinks that: Castle emphasizes its power to disrupt but neglects to stress that, to the extent that masquerade assemblies were tolerated, they had to conform in some ways to the dominant culture. (Masquerade and Gender 2) Critics like Craft-Fairchild think that the masquerade or carnival participants do not change the rules of the game in daily life. Out of the space and time that carnival and masquerade occupy, everything goes.

(14) Chen 14 back to its normal position; the disguisers, after leaving the carnival, have to go by the rules of others. Costume disguise enables the disguisers a temporary liberation and transgression that would bring no change at all to the real hierarchical world. Terry Castle’s discussion on the change of plot development in “The Carnivalazation of eighteenth-Century English Narrative” seems to have answered the above question in some way. She observes that to many critics, the masquerade scenes in many eighteenth-century novels seem like a digression to the whole narrative, contributing nothing to the development of the narrative. But, she discovers that something unusual happens in the novels after each masquerade episode. A change occurs to the masquerade attendant after the episode. Usually, the participant has experienced a new way to look at life itself after experiencing the activity. And what is new in the character’s outlook is, first and foremost, his or her ability to see through social conventions as something that is constructed and arbitrary. The participant becomes a new person in some sense, and this is reflected in a new development in the narrative plot after the masquerade scene. Therefore, the masquerade scene is not a mere digression. In my point of view, the liberty enjoyed in carnival and masquerade comes in fact, through the employment of disguise. Therefore, I won’t deny that the temporal liberation in carnival carries the notion of passive submission. I would like to look at the issue of masquerade transgression and submission from another perspective, and answer it with the notion of play. Castle does not mention play as an essential element in.

(15) Chen 15 masquerades, nor does Bakhtin in the concept of carnival. But, Bakhtin does mentions that: [b]ecause of their obvious sensuous character and their strong element of play, carnival images closely resemble certain artistic forms, namely the spectacle....The basic carnival nucleus of this culture is...life itself, but shaped according to a certain pattern of play. (Rabelais and His World 7) One of the characteristics of masquerades and carnival is the notion of “play.” And “pleasure is the primary characteristic of play” (Winnicutt 59). Little children play house for fun. People play sports for the pleasure in the process of play. The participants attend a masquerade for “the pleasure of dressing as a false persona.” Without pleasure, it is not play at all. To enjoy playing a game, one has to go by the rules, no matter those are other’s rules, or shared regulations. There is a joke about a Chinese government official who was invited to watch a basketball game. It is a new game in China, most of the people have never heard of it. During the game, the official seems very puzzled. Everyone can see a big question mark on his face. When the game finally ends, he cannot wait to ask others a question: why don’t we give every player a ball to prevent them from snatching it from one another? To give everyone a ball is to spoil the game. The player in a game must follow certain rules to make a game proceed. Attending a carnival or a masquerade is like playing a game. It has its own set of rules to be followed. To conceal one’s real identity through disguise is essential. That is the ticket to the game..

(16) Chen 16 But, playing by the rule does not mean to be tied up by the rules. The player seems to be dominated by the rules. Rules seem confinements for the players from excessive behaviors, but on the other hand, the player can manipulate the rules for his own ends by obeying the rules. The rules of the game can be very simple at the beginning. But as players find out the loopholes of the rules, they can turn them to their advantage. Many rules are amended and modified under the pressure of the players’ challenge. To borrow Bakhtin’s use of the terms centripetal and centrifugal forces, if the rules of the game are the centralizing, centripetal force, players can be seen as the de-centralizing, centrifugal force. It is important to note that the centralizing force aiming to dominate the players through the modification of the rules will make apparent that the players are not dominating the game. There is some freedom to be enjoyed in the confinement or frame of the rules. The transgression, when enjoyed within the frame of rules, has its potential to subvert. The power is not strong enough to subvert the dominant hierarchy and convention, but this centrifugal force is still threatening. It may not change reality at once, but it has its potential. One might think that there is a frame imposed on the players that makes their challenge trivial. But, don’t forget that sometimes the loopholes just cannot be amended; they just exist. What I want to emphasize is that when the rules that aim to prescribe the players’ range of freedom undergo amendment, this then means that the potential and ability of the player have been noticed and have threatened the rules. The player may not be able to overthrow the rules, but the threatening force is never a submission..

(17) Chen 17 Let’s go back to our discussion of masquerade submission. Disguisers in masquerades are, in fact, players in the game of social conventions and hierarchies. After the players in the masquerade have had the chance to manipulate the social conventions as their toys, they do not actually bring a reversal of hierarchy to their ordinary lives at once. But, the disguisers in masquerade do not come out of it with their hands empty. The players carry back home the experience of manipulating social conventions through disguise or manipulation of costume. They will look at their world with a new perspective. Both the world in masquerade and that of the real life are composed of signs, which can be manipulated, which is to say that real life can be seen as a masquerade or game, in which the living are the players. As Winnicott observes, “play is a creative activity” (60). Disguisers are aware that they do not have to be played or constricted by rules. They can be players, too, able to “deal with reality creatively,...to see the world creatively, and in consequence [not to be] thrown back on compliance and a sense of futility...” (Winnicott 60). Therefore, disguise in masquerade does bring a useful awareness of life’s possibilities. When we are giving credit to the players’ playing or transgressing the established orders, hierarchies and conventions, it seems that we are saying that players are the masters of play. But, as Gadamer points out in Truth and Method, players in play are played, too, either by the game or by other players (101-109). This is the consequence of the indeterminacy or the “unpredictability” that characterizes the playing of games (Weinsheimer 104). Even a great player like Michael Jordan himself, a “master” of the game, can never guarantee that the Chicago.

(18) Chen 18 Bulls will always beat the other NBA teams. To stop the opponent from scoring by fouling or enticing the opponent to foul is to play the game. But, to be fouled out is to be played by the game. No player in play can fully master the game, and it is this indeterminacy in the rule-bound frame that makes something a game. In fact, “no game whatever lets one do just what one wants” (Weinsheimer 104). This kind of indeterminacy predominates in the game of masquerade, too: masquerade is a play of disguise, with the indeterminacy centered on the matter of the player’s identity. Masquerades are practiced on special occasions and the occasion determines the audience’s interpretation of the sartorial code. The participants in the festivals of disguise that masquerades are all aware of the tricky problem of the relation between signifier and signified problematized by this disguise. Their disguises may not be serious attempts at deception, but participants in a masquerade all know that the function of disguise is to mask and mark. Masqueraders always knowingly contribute to an atmosphere of vagueness and obscureness prevailing over their identities. Though masqueraders assume that other participants, like themselves, are in disguise, there still is always the fancy and imagination that some participants attend the masquerades in their real identity. Take Roxana as an example. When Roxana disguises herself as a Lady and sees a masquerader dressed as a king, she still has the tendency to believe that the man dressed as a king is a real king. Taking each other at face value rather than trying to see through a disguise is the principal rule of the game because nobody knows whether other people’s costumes truly present.

(19) Chen 19 or only disguise them. Disguisers in masquerades intend to “play” others, but, sometimes, it is, rather, they who are played. They are the players but, sometimes the played. When people put on a disguise, they have their audience in mind. The spectator or perceiver is the determiner of the success of their disguise. Here I disagree with Castle’s and Bakhtin’s claims that the participants do not attend masquerades for some privileged audience or beholders: There was no audience, no privileged group of beholders. All participated, and all shared in an equal verbal and gestural freedom.. (Masquerade and Gender 20). In carnival where disguise is employed, Bakhtin thinks that there are still no spectators. Bakhtin says in Rabelais and his World: In fact, carnival does not know footlights, in the sense that it does not acknowledge any distinction between actors and spectators. (7) Morson and Emerson in Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics further explain the difference between carnival and theater: What distinguishes carnival from literary genres per se is its lack of a readershi p or audience; everyone participates in it. If there are viewers who do not participate, there can be no true carnival; instead, we have a performance. Carnival is not a form of theater...carnival allows for no “footlights.” (459) When carnival or masquerade is compared to theater, we should make a distinction.. Theater is designed especially for an audience. Therefore,. there is a distinction between the actors on stage and the spectators off.

(20) Chen 20 stage. The spectators do not participate in the performance. For those spectators, the distance separating them from the actors on stage reminds them of the artificiality of the disguise of the actors. They would not confuse the one in disguise with his or her disguise. They realize that there is another face behind the mask. But, when people attend carnival and masquerades, they come for “the pleasure of dressing as a false personage” (Masquerade and Civilization 13). They know that what others appear to be is not what they really are. Still, taking others at face value is essential in carnival and masquerades. When the distance between the actor and spectators diminishes, there is no mark to differentiate who is the actor and who is the spectator. Bakhtin and Castle differentiate carnival and masquerades from theater in terms of the relationship between actors and spectators. But, I would say that the participants themselves in carnival are the spectators. Carnival and masquerade both carry the air of display before some audience. The disguisers are not dressing as a false persona in front of a mirror in their room; they are representing themselves in front of an audience. The disguisers want others to take them as what they appear to be in a masquerade. They participate and enjoy beholding the spectacle of themselves and others in costume and disguises. There are surely spectators in masquerade and carnival. At least, the participants of masquerade and carnivals are themselves spectators of themselves and others. But, what is worth noticing is that there are spectators in carnival and masquerades who do not participate. They play without being carried away. While others are indulging in the pleasure of appearing.

(21) Chen 21 as a “false personage,” there are some others attending masquerades for some special purposes of their own: Certain disreputable members of the lower orders — thieves, sharpers, and prostitutes—were thought particularly apt to infiltrate the ‘Midnight Masque’ in order to ply their trades under the cover of secrecy. As for prostitutes, their presence is ubiquitously acknowledged….That, as here, prostitutes disguised themselves as ‘women of quality’ and went about entrapping unsuspecting men was a common place….like Defoe’s Roxana with an eye to the main chance. (M and C 31-32) Those thieves and prostitutes attend the masquerades mainly for prey rather than for play. They are the spectators of the carnival and masquerades who do not indulge in and get carried away in the playful mood of the festival. But, it is never easy to figure out who are not participating in masquerades and carnival, especially because those who are not participating will be playing at being participators. And because the rule of the masquerade is that it is face value that counts, masquerades are vulnerable to deception: in fact this very possibility constitutes part of the thrill of a masquerade. Every one in masquerade is like a text, which needs deciphering. But, in carnival and masquerades the sign is unreliable. The only marker that attributes to one’s identity again falls back to the disguise that conceal one’s identity. One might appear as one really is or as someone’s opposite. The essential practice of taking others at face value in masquerades becomes a convenient tool for the spectators who do not actually.

(22) Chen 22 participate. When other participants take the spectators at face value, the participants have become the prey of the spectator’s especially-designed masquerade. Borrowing the idea of carnival and masquerade disguise, I have to make further distinctions between masquerade and the situation of Moll’s practice of disguise. The masquerade tends to emphasize the characteristics of a collective or group activity, and so does carnival. There are other masqueraders wearing disguises and masks to conceal their real identities, but, in Moll Flanders, we seem to see Moll’s one-person-masquerade. Secondly, while masquerade and carnival take place at certain legalized places and times, Moll’s masquerade is practiced in real life. Moll is not doing a theatrical performance on stage, either. Therefore, she does not invite footlights on her. As a matter of fact, she does not want to make a spectacle of herself. Spectacle would destroy her one-person-masquerade. Critics such as Craft-Fairchild negate the claim of carnival and masquerade transgression by pointing out the “licensed” freedom of masquerade and carnival. But, when the masquerade disguise is practiced in real life and does not take place under the consent of any institution, can it not be interpreted as a much more outrageous act than one of temporal liberation from social and gender constraint? In the next chapter, I will explore Moll’s physical disguise to see how Moll survives as a player and masquerader in the game of real life..

(23) Chen 23 Notes 1. See the section on “semiotics”, signifier/signified/signification in. Encyclopedia of Contemporary Literary Theory: Approaches, Scholars, Terms, edited by Irena R. Makaryk. 2. Topsy-turvy world is the term used by Bakhtin in the discussion of carnival. Castle also explores the topsy-turvy world in her discussion on masquerade..

(24) Chen 24 Chapter 2 Physical Disguise. Before exploring Moll’s disguise in the novel, first I would like to differentiate what the following terms mean in masquerade context: masquerade, disguise, costume. Then, I would like to combine the terms with Goffman’s idea of “impression management” to use Goffman’s term in a broader sense in my discussion on Moll in daily life and further on the Editor’s meta-narrative disguise in chapter 4. According to Terry Castle, “[t]he idea of the masquerade” carries the “the notion of disguising oneself in a fanciful costume and moving through a crowd of masked strangers” (Masquerade and Civilization vii). In other words, masquerade means a masked assembly or “’promiscuous Gathering,’” (M & C 2) in which people disguise themselves or conceal their real identities and appear as another person through the help of costume, the type of clothes or accessories worn by masqueraders in order to appear like the type of persona one wants to be. The masquerade disguise at first glance seems incongruous to my discussion of Moll’s disguise in daily life for we do not see any masquerade scene in Moll Flanders. This is true and that is why in Terry Castle’s discussion on the popularity of masquerade in the eighteenth-century England, Moll Flanders is left out. But, does masquerade only take place on special occasions? Don’t people employ the strategy of disguise in daily life? In fact, Terry Castle notes that the practice of disguise in.

(25) Chen 25 masquerade or “the manipulation of appearances was both a private strategy and a social institution” (Female Thermometer 83). That is, the strategy of disguise is not only used on special occasions as in masquerades, but also applied to daily life. Goffman’s Presentation of Self in Everyday Life offers us a perspective to explore the possibility of disguise and masquerade in daily life through his study on impression management. Goffman argues that people socially constructing reality have much in common with actors performing on a stage. Goffman termed his approach “dramaturgical analysis”-- to study social interaction in terms of theatrical performance. For Goffman, to see daily life as a theatrical performance is a perspective through which to penetrate daily human interaction. He studies: the way in which the individual in ordinary work situations presents himself and his activity to others, the ways in which he guides and controls the impression they form of him, and the kinds of things he may and may not do while sustaining his performance before them” (Goffman xi). There are key elements in his “dramaturgical” analysis. In the first place, impression management is the effort of presenting an image that the individual tries hard to maintain or sustain when appearing in front of others. In any setting or context of our daily life, each of us plays a role, like an actor, and each of us is also part of the audience. Goffman calls this intricate interaction that makes up everyday life the presentation of self. In these ways individuals, in various settings or contexts, try to create specific impressions in the minds of others. This process is.

(26) Chen 26 termed “impression management.” First of all, as we present ourselves to others, we try to convey information—consciously and unconsciously—about how we wish to be understood. Goffman calls these efforts, taken together, a performance: When an individual enters the presence of others, they commonly seek to acquire information about him or to bring into play information about him already possessed. (Goffman 1) In a performance, there are several important elements and “many sources of information become accessible and many carriers (or “sign-vehicles”) become available for conveying th[e] information” (Goffman 1). For example, dress or clothes (as costume on stage or in masquerades), the objects people carry with them (props on stage and accessories in masquerades), and our tone of voice and gestures (manner) are all part of a performance. “’Appearance’ may be taken to refer to those stimuli which function at the time to tell us of the performer’s social statuses” (Goffman 24). In nonverbal communication, we use our body language to convey information to others. Facial expressions form the most significant element of nonverbal communication.. Eye contact is another. important element of nonverbal communication. Generally, we use eye contact to initiate social interaction. Hands, too speak for us. That is, nonverbal elements can supplement spoken words. Thus, Individuals can deliberately “give” nonverbal messages.. “They can rely on what. the individual says about himself or on documentary evidence he provides as to who and what he is” (Goffman 1). And through carriers.

(27) Chen 27 or sign-vehicles, “observers can glean clues from his conduct and appearance which allow them to apply their previous experience with individuals roughly similar to the one before them or, more important, to apply untested stereotypes to him” (Goffman 1). Even so, Goffman suggests, performances tend to idealize our intentions. That is, we try to convince others that what we do reflects ideal cultural standards rather than less virtuous motives. woven into the fabric of everyday life in countless ways.. Idealization is For example,. we sometimes force ourselves to smile and make polite remarks to people we do not like. It is in this idealization that Moll finds a dwelling for practice of disguise. As I already indicated, Goffman observes that people present themselves in front of people in two ways. As Goffman points out: The expressiveness of the individual (and therefore his capacity to give impressions) appears to involve two radically different kinds of sign activity: the expression that he gives, and the expression that he gives off. (2) First of all, they can “give” some information directly through what they say: The first involves verbal symbols or their substitutes which he uses admittedly and solely to convey the information that he and the others are known to attach to these symbols. (2) The other way is to “give off” what you are through your clothes and your behavior, the way of speaking, acting...ect: The second one involves a wide range of action that others can treat as symptomatic of the actor, the expectation being that the.

(28) Chen 28 action was performed for reasons other than the information conveyed in this way. (2) Goffman points out an important aspect of the sign activity: The individual does of course intentionally convey misinformation by means of both these types of communication , the first involving deceit, the second feigning. (2) This is exactly what Moll’s strategy of disguise is. Consider, for example, how Moll guides social interaction through manipulation of appearance and conveys the information she wants her audience to have by ways of “giving” and “giving off.” Hence Moll in the husband hunting episodes and in thievery episodes on the street employs a wide range of clothes or costume, accessories or props to reinforce the other’s impression for her self-conscious purpose. Through her conduct, Moll offers a great deal of information about herself to anyone caring to observe her. Notice that she does so without uttering a single word. This illustrates the process of nonverbal communication, communication using body movements, gestures, and facial expressions rather than speech. Moll’s appearance and manner convey still more information. The usual costume of a lady may have the practical function of keeping her warm, but its primary function is that of display--to let others know her status at a glance. Moll is supremely aware of this, and her disguise is a manipulation of display. She knows what a watch in hand or scarf around the neck suggests. She knows that particular expression or terminology emphasizes the status of the speaker. Moll’s use of the title “Lady ” also underscores her dominant position.. The overall purpose of Moll’s performance is clear: to disguise.

(29) Chen 29 herself and appear as someone more that she is. Moll is good at “impression management” when she is little. When she is eight years old, she has become aware of the coming crisis of going into service. She has “a thorough Aversion to going to Service” (9). To avoid being a servant, Moll talks to her nurse “almost every Day of Working hard; And in short I did nothing but Work and Cry all Day, which griev’d the good kind woman so much, that at last she began to be concern’d for me” (9). In fact, Moll notices that the nurse sets herself “on purpose to observe [her], and see [her] work” (9). Also, she finds that crying is a very good strategy to use on a soft-hearted woman like the nurse. Therefore, she cries again till she cannot speak. She even cries “heartily” till she “roars out.” With “a poor petitioning Tone,” Moll finds that she “made the poor Womans Heart yearn to [her]” (10). In this way, she tries to form in the nurse’s mind an image of her as a poor, innocent and helpless hardworking girl in order to turn crisis into advantage. Though Moll explains that “it was all Nature” and she had no design in all this, she does admits that her performance “was joyn’d with so much Innocence, and so much Passion, That in short, it set the good Motherly Creature a weeping too” (11). In a word, she successfully secures herself from going into service by disguising herself as a poor, innocent girl to evoke the compassion of the nurse. Maybe the first physical disguise is the one that Moll takes up when she is involved with the elder bother. When she goes out for a date with the elder brother, she has no dress, but “a Hood, a Mask, a Fan and a pair of Gloves” in her pocket (23). On the one hand, the hood and mask seem to serve as the protection from wind and sun. But, on the.

(30) Chen 30 other hand, isn’t it a useful disguise to conceal Moll’s identity. After the affair with the elder brother, Moll secures a marriage for herself with a disguise as a modest and virtuous woman. Not only does the affair go unexposed, but also the secret of Moll’s not being a virgin goes unrevealed. Moll describes her husband as “so Fuddled when he came to Bed, that he could not remember in the Morning, whether he had had any conversation with me or no, and I was oblig’d to tell him he had, tho’ in reality he had not” (46). Moll disguises herself so well that the younger brother dies without knowing that he has married a whore, as Moll terms herself. But, without the maintenance of a husband, Moll has to work out her own way. Disguise is Moll’s capital in her husband hunting. She is seeking an ideal husband, which, to her, is with a combination of a tradesman and a gentleman. That is, a man with money and social status. She is quite aware of what clothes or other accessories can disguise one’s identity: when my Husband had a mind to carry me to the Court, or to the Play, he might become a Sword, and look as like a Gentleman, as another Man; and not be one that had the mark of his Apron-strings upon his Coat, or the mark of his Hat upon his Perriwig; that should look as if he was set on to his Sword, when his Sword was put on to him, and that carried his Trade in his Countenance.. (48). In the merry journey with her husband, Moll has a picture of what the life of the upper classes should look like. Moll has the chance to “Travel like a Dutchess,” and has “a rich Coach, very good Horses, a Coachman,.

(31) Chen 31 Postilion and two Footmen in very good Liveries; a Gentleman on Horseback, and a Page with a Feather in his Hat upon another Horse; The Servants all call’d him my Lord,…and I was her Honour, the Countess” (49). Though the marriage with the Linen-Draper proves to be a disaster in the end, the experience teaches her to disguise herself with confidence like a Lady, and add an important persona to her repertoire of disguises. In the episode of snaring husbands for the captain’s widow and for herself, Moll begins to employs clothes and story-telling as disguise to engage herself in the game of marriage.. After the Linen-Draper. episode, the first thing Moll does is to go where she was unknown and where the region was new to her and “go by another Name: This I did effectually, for I went into the Mint too, took Lodgings in a very private Place, drest me up in the Habit of a Widow, and Call myself Mrs. Flanders” (51). She conceals herself by giving herself a new name, and dresses in new shape. Moll analyzes the marriage market at the Mint and came to two conclusions. The situation still proves that money does recommend a woman as the Mayoress’s daughter says: Betty wants but one Thing, but she had as good what every Thing, for the Market is against our Sex just now; and if a young Woman have Beauty, Birth, Breeding, Wit, Sense, Manners, Modesty, and all these to an Extream; yet if she have not Money, she’s no Body, she had as good want them all, for nothing but Money now recommends a Woman; the Men play the Game all into their own Hands. (17) Moreover, whether the men have a good business or not, they all want to.

(32) Chen 32 marry women with a fortune and “the money was the thing” (54). To disrupt the discourse of marriage, and to promote herself and the captain’s wife, Moll and the widow disguise themselves as widows with a fortune. Men are not necessarily the hunters and women, prey. Moll wants to turn the tables on men, ”playing back upon him his own Game” (58). How does Moll successfully, with disguise, make the Captain’s widow and herself the choosers in the marriage market? Besides taking up a new name and dressing like a widow, it is indispensable to set up the image of a widow with a fortune. The first step is to spread the rumor in the neighborhood. Moll relies on the man’s supposition that she “was the very Rich, tho’ [she] never told him a Word of it ” herself (62). The man never knows that the woman herself is “the raiser of all those Reports herself” (57). She then tells the man that she has no money, which of course the man does not believe. She even leads the man to say, “Be mine, with all your Poverty” (63). At last, when the man finds out that Moll is not what she appeared to be, he seems to have no position to say anything. Just as Moll says: “I had him fast both ways; and tho’ he might say afterwards he was cheated, yet he could never say that I had cheated hem” (64). Moll rejoices that she has made the marriage of her choice. She “took care to make the World take [her] for something more than [she] was” (69). She has “Deceived the Deceiver” (61). The reversal of the power of choice in the marriage market is achieved through the use of disguise. Thus, Moll “got over the Fraud of passing for a Fortune without money, and cheating a Man into Marrying [her] on pretence of a Fortune” (67). We can notice the carnival effect of the world upside.

(33) Chen 33 down takes places here. The rules of the marriage game have been altered by the use of disguise. Men are played and women are players. That men who are always the hunters seems to be parodied and ridiculed here. Through the use of disguise, Moll questions the validity of men’s assumed advantageous position in the game of marriage. It is not necessarily “the Men play the Game all into their own Hands” (17). It is possible for women to earn themselves an advantageous position to play the game into women’s hands. In the following episode with the bank clerk, again Moll masters the game of marriage. She appears to be “a Woman of Fortune” (109). When the banker promises to divorce his wife to marry Moll, Moll’s response is “[m]y heart said yes to this offer at first Word, but it was necessary to Play the Hypocrite a little more with him” (109). Therefore, on the surface, Moll is declining his offer, but deep in her heart, she is rejoicing at the coming fortune, which she regards as her own already. Moll is acting like a hunter teasing her prey, or as an angler playing with her trout, to borrow Moll’s own words: I play’d with this Lover as an Angeler does with a Trout: I found I had him fast on the Hook so I jested with this new Proposal and put him off: I told him he knew little of me, and bade him enquire about me. (110) At the end, Moll did not marry the banker, but went for another “richer” man recommended by her landlady. Moll’s discarding her prey suggests to us Moll’s confidence in manipulating the system of the marriage game. Moll is able to suspend the force of the whole system.

(34) Chen 34 of marriage, by manipulating the relations between signifiers and signified in that system. The episode of Moll and the highway man is another instance of the function of disguise. After the last marriage, Moll, returned home to England from Virginia, and decides to pose as a lady of means in order to entrap a husband with fortune. First of all, she “give” or lets out some information about herself through talking with her landlady: I told her that …for I that was a Widow, tho’ I had sufficient to live on, yet had no way of encreasing it;…that I found I could not live here under a Hundred Pound a Year, unless I kept no Company, no servant, made no Appearance, and buried myself in Privacy, as if I was oblig’d to it by Necessity. (102) Moll’s talking about herself being a widow with money, the need to keep servants and her appearance soon entices the landlady to believe that Moll is the someone who she says she is. Therefore, the lady is “made to believe, as every Body else was, that I was a great Fortune, or at least that I had Three or Four Thousand Pounds, if not more, and all in my own Hands;…” (102). The discourse of language is like the discourse of clothing. It is a system of signs. Though different costumes carry different meanings, there is no guarantee that the signifier will reach the signified. In fact, in a carnival and a masquerade, the discourse of clothing is manipulable, like the discourse of language. The transparency of sartorial signs is a myth. That is how people play on the instability of sartorial signs of everyday life in the masquerade and carnival. And that is exactly how Moll exploits the system through verbal disguise here to achieve her own.

(35) Chen 35 good. Moll’s disguise is so successful that when she is introduced to Jemy, the landlady sees no need for Moll to “furnish herself” with better clothes. She and her brother have believed her disguise from the hearsay Moll raises. As Moll observes, “in short, they entertain’d me not like what I was, but like what they thought I had been, Namely, a Widow Lady of a great Fortune” (111). And while all the others took Moll’s disguise as genuine, Moll herself was dazzled by who Jemy appears to be and what he appears to possess. Moll pictures Jemy the embodiment of both gentility and wealth, for Jemy has: the Appearance of an extraordinary fine Gentleman; he was Tall, well Shap’d, and had an extraordinary Address; talk’d as naturally of his Park and his Stables, of his Horses, his Game-Keepers, his Woods, his Tenants, and his Servants, as if we had been in the Mansion-House, and I had seen them all about me. (112) From his talking, Moll forms in her mind an impression of a perfect gentleman with fortune that Jemy tries to convey through his disguise. Thus, they “are married here upon the foot of a double Fraud;…” (116). Sadly, she falls for an adventurer who himself is pretending to be a man of wealth in order to secure the funds to bail out his bankrupt estate. Jemy’s disguise is like a show on stage, that Moll cannot resist but to believe. Moll is familiar with the trick of the disguise to deceive.. The. only difference is that this time she is at first a deceiver believing that she has others played, but later finds out that she is, in fact, also the one who is deceived and played, indulging herself in the illusion Jemy has.

(36) Chen 36 created: [T]he glittering show of a great Estate, and of fine Things, which the deceived Creature that was now my Deciever represented every Hour to my Imagination, hurried me away,…” (113). Both Moll and Jemy take care to get across the impression by “giving” and “giving off” the particular information needed.. Their verbal and. physical disguises appeal to each other’s imagination. In their process of interaction, each of them is shaping the reality according to the clues given by each other’s disguise. But, at the end, their subjective realities fail them when they come to know the truth under the disguise. Each of them with different purpose, interests, and hidden identity is seeking a reality somewhat different from their imagination. They both succeed and fail at the same time. As a performer, Moll is successful in fostering the impression she intends, and further “calls forth a desired response” from her audience, Jemy (Goffman 1). That is, through disguise, her audience takes seriously what she tries to convey.. But, as audience, she takes seriously the impression Jimmy. creates and fails to see through his disguise. Her disguise takes in Jemy’s, but at the same, his takes in hers too. The ones trying to play others are played at the same time. This time, the world upside down effect is again taking place, but with the difference that women and men become the players and the played at the same time in the double fraud. Both men and women can have the game in their own hands, believing that they can turn the table round for their own purpose. The game turns out to be in the hands of neither side. Her new spouse, Jemy, turns out to be a highway man and as big.

(37) Chen 37 an impostor as herself. After the husband hunting comes to an end, Moll still employs disguise in her thievery business. To make an impression through appearance is Moll’s first and foremost concern. Moll in the pickpocket adventures, points out the importance of disguise through clothes and other accessories: for you are to observe, that on these Adventures we always went very well Dress’d, and I had very good cloaths on, and a Gold Watch by my Side, as like a Lady as other Folks. (165) In order to steal without being noticed, Moll takes great care to disguise herself like a lady. Therefore, “’Appearance’ may be taken to refer to those stimuli which function at the time to tell us of the performer’s social statuses” (Goffman 24). There are two more impressive disguise scenes in the novel that are worth our attention. We again see how Moll is familiar with the game of sign activity, and reverses the power hierarchy through her disguise and further achieves a world-upside-down effect in the novel. The first one is when Moll disguises herself as a man.. After. several adventures, Moll has become “the greatest Artist” in her business as she calls herself (167). She takes up a man’s clothes as her new disguise and works with a male-partner. The first thing she takes care of is to go out at night lest her complexion betray her because she notices that she is “too smooth fac’d for a Man;…” (167). Then she grows intimate with her partner, but she never forgets to put on her disguise: As my Governess had disguis’d me like a Man, so she jon’d me.

(38) Chen 38 with a Man, …And as we kept always together, so we grew very intimate, yet he never knew that I was not a Man; nay, tho’ I several times went home with him to his Lodgings,…and four or five times lay with him all Night:…it was absolutely necessary to me to conceal my Sex from him…and as it was I effectually conceal’d my self.. (167-8). Later, when Moll and her partner are chased by people in a warehouse catching them stealing, Moll saves herself by discarding the disguise as a man: He run like Lightning, and I too, but the pursuit was hotter after him because he had the Goods, than after me;…I run for it and got into my Governesses House, wither some quick-eyed People follow’d me so warmly as to fix me there; they did not immediately knock at he Door, by which I got time to throw off my Disguise, and dress me in my own Cloths;…(168) Then, she soon puts on the disguise of an innocent woman by “giving” some verbal messages and “giving off” some necessary nonverbal ones: I had a little Girl with me,…and I bade her open the Door, and there sat I at work with a great litter of things about me, as if I had been at Work all Day, being my self quite undress’d, with only Night cloaths on my Head, and a loose Morning Gown wrapt about me:…I sat still and bid them search the Room if they pleas’d…I did not understand what they look’d for. (169) The impression of an innocent woman is fostered in the chasers’ mind that they finally give up and even apologize for their rudeness: Every thing look’d so innocent and so honest about me, that.

(39) Chen 39 they treated me cilviller than I expected,…they ask’d my Pardon for troubling me, and went down. (169) In these series of disguise, Moll successfully manipulates the sign system of gender and survives with the help of her disguise. Another impressive disguise scene is the episode of Moll’s disguising herself as a widow intending to steal, but is mistaken as a thief before she has time to lay her hands on her target. On the verge of being caught, she makes up a story of herself being a stranger in London and takes out the old silver spoon in her pocket as props to facilitate her disguise. The Alderman further suspects Moll’s disguise. He questions her ability to buy the silver spoon by asking her to buy the match, which she claims to look for in the store. With the prop or the money she always carries with her, she ends up buying a spoon when she intends to steal a plate, but again Moll has others fooled and reverses the truth and the whole situation: After a full Hearing, the Alderman gave it as his Opinion, that his Neighbour was under a mistake, and that I was Innocent, and the Goldsmith acquiesc’d in it too, and his Wife, and so I was dismiss’d; (212) From the above episodes, we can notice that whenever Moll takes up a disguise, she seems to create some world-upside-down effect or transgress certain boundaries that we discussed in chapter 1. And in many other Moll’s adventures, for example when she almost gets caught in stealing a gentlewoman’s watch in a crowd, she does comment on the lady and calls her “a Fool” (165). To the reader, through disguise, Moll makes the ladies, her superiors in social status, becomes the victims of.

(40) Chen 40 herself, a lower class woman. The up-side-down effect is achieved. Does Moll have the intention to subvert the social hierarchy or gender boundary? Or does she have something else in mind? The episode of Moll’s disguise as a man can provide us with an answer. When Moll puts on man’s clothes, she does not feel comfortable: but It was a long time before I could behave in my new Cloths; I mean, as to my Craft; it was impossible to be so Nimble, so Ready, so Dexterous at these things, in a Dress so contrary to Nature;…. (167). Moll does not intend with a subversive purpose to transgress the fixed institutions of society. Moll is in some way accepts the world as it is, and goes about her business trying to survive in it. As Moll says after Jemy leaves her, "I'd lost the love of my life, but the world goes on." She is more than a survivor and opportunist, though. She is a masterful disguiser and conniver. What else does disguise do for Moll? When taking up a disguise, Moll is, in fact, playing a role, some for a short duration and others for a longer one. Of course, human behavior is never as rigidly scripted as a stage performance. In a lifetime, though, each individual does assume many roles in many ways. As Robert Ezra Park describes in Race and Culture: It is probably no mere historical accident that the word person, in its first meaning, is a mask. It is rather a recognition of the fact that everyone is always and everywhere, more or less consciously, playing a role…It is in these roles that we know each other; it is in these roles that we know ourselves. (qtd. in.

(41) Chen 41 Goffman 19) In the experience, Moll knows how she is related to the world and the people around her, and the game of the world. And it is in the disguise that she came to know herself better. Therefore, I disagree with Laden’s argument that Moll is “dissolving behind her many masks” (Laden 68) or “[d]isguise and dissimulation are so central to her personality that the mask finally sticks to the face and becomes inseparable from the self” (Laden 67). On the contrary, it is in those roles that Moll plays that she comes to know herself. Instead of fragmenting her sense of self, the many disguises or masks she wears seem to make Moll realize what roles she is striving to live up to and what roles she definitely will not take up again. I will illustrate my point with the episode of Moll’s disguising herself as a beggar. Of all the disguises, she dislikes to take up the costume of a beggar most, not only because the disguise finds her no fortune, but also because she feels uneasy in it: I dress’d myself like a Beggar Woman, in the coarsest and most despicable Rags I could get…I naturally abhorr’d Dirt and Rags; I had been bred up Tite and Cleanly, and could be no other, what ever Condition I was in; so that this was the most uneasie Disguise to me that ever I put on. (197-8) Later In the same adventure, Moll was asked to hold a horse and thus took it home. But, she and the governess for the first time do not know how to deal with the booty. Moll again asserts her abhorrence toward the “Ominous and Threatning” beggar disguise, saying that she “was quite Sick of going out in a Beggar’s dress” (198)..

(42) Chen 42 In Moll’s description of her beggar disguise, she seems to suggest that she runs the risk of actually becoming her disguise, or someone even beneath the level of her chosen disguise. That is the least thing she wants to do. That is why she decides to put an end to this disguise. Disguise is a central concern in the novel. Disguise, on the one hand for Moll, is a means to achieve her goal as an independent gentlewoman. On the other hand, it is pleasure and fun that she enjoys in life. The different opinions toward masquerade disguise converge in Moll. That is, disguise is used as deception to satisfy personal need. It is also pre-arranged fun for Moll to experience temporary exchange of identity. Stripped of the masks, does Moll still exist? Does Moll have an identity? This is a question many critics raised in their study on Moll. Frederick R. Karl claims that Moll’s willingness to take up and leave off her many disguises and assume any identity is indicative of her “lack of center” and “[t]he conflict in her dilemma of seeming and being suggests she lacks self” (Karl 94). I do not agree with Karl’s opinion. And I think that Goffman provides us an answer with his observation: In a sense, and in so far as this mask represents the conception we have formed of ourselves—the role we are striving to live up to—this mask is our truer self, the self we would like to be. In the end, our conception of our role becomes second nature and an integral part of our personality. We come into the world as individuals, achieve character, and become persons. (qtd. in Goffman 20) That is, behind the disguise, Moll’s determination to become a.

(43) Chen 43 “gentlewoman” when she was little has not changed at all. Disguise is the only effective means for her to fulfill her dream. Throughout her entire life, she is dedicating herself to pursue the dream as Goffman suggests: [b]ehind many masks and many characters, each performer tends to wear a single look, a naked unsocialized look, a look of concentration, a look of one who is privately engaged in a difficult, treacherous task. (235) It is not until she manages to get herself transported to American that she seems to achieve her goal. The one embracing her childhood dream does not change at all. The disguise does not stick to her face. Her sense of identity remains. Or as Braudy observes, Moll is undergoing “a search for identity within the confines of the self” (Braudy 111). We all try to keep ourselves hidden in one sense. The practice of masquerade or disguise is not exercised on particular occasions only, and the terms can be used legitimately in a broader sense. The way that people present themselves to other people is in a sense a masquerade. We might not be aware of that. But as Goffman points out: when we appear in front of others, we tend to, consciously or unconsciously, manage to get across and sustain the impression we want others to form of us. That is, we engage in masquerade disguise in our daily life. On first glance, Moll’s disguise and the many eighteenth-century masquerades are far-fetched to us. But I will suggest that Moll is doing what everyone of us practices in daily life--to disguise verbally or physically with purposes of our own. As a matter of.

(44) Chen 44 fact, we are all disguisers in the numerous masquerades of our daily life like Moll..

(45) Chen 45. Chapter 3 Spiritual Disguise. In chapter 2, I have explored how Moll presents herself in everyday life through her physical disguise. In this chapter, I will focus on how the impression of Moll as a penitent is presented through the spiritual disguise. The problem of Moll’s penitence is widely debated. G. A. Starr in Defoe and Spiritual Autobiography argues that Moll Flanders should be read as a spiritual autobiography, which “pursued thematic coherence amid or despite narrative incoherence” (126). The often “abortive repentances” in the novel are simply Defoe’s design “to stress the ironic contrast between Moll’s passing qualms and real repentance” (134). In fact, Moll’s “sentimental repentance” is simply an indication that she “is undergoing the classic process of hardening” (134). Therefore, the inconsistency in the novel as manifested in the hardening process of Moll is intended to bring out the beauty of Moll’s final real repentance. He suggests that “the book’s real coherence seems to lie in the gradual unfolding of these inward states, not in the overt action by which they are revealed” (Starr 133). I agree with him that we should look into the inside world of Moll, instead of the outward appearance she presents through her disguise. But, we will find that the deeper we explore into what Moll is, the more we are confirmed about the absence of any real repentance. Starr draws our attention to “Defoe’s care in distinguishing real.

(46) Chen 46 repentance from false or partial versions” (138). If the “real” repentance is proved to be false or partial, then there is no difference between Moll who “was Twelve Year a Whore, five times a Wife (whereof once to her own Brother) Twelve Year a Thief” and Moll who was “Eight Year a Transported Felon in Virginia, at last grew Rich, liv’d Honest, and died a Penitent.” I will argue that the “real” repentance is simply another disguise to conceal Moll’s real identity from her reader. That is, there is a spiritual disguise at work. But, to say that there is a spiritual disguise is implying that there is a difference between Moll the criminal and Moll the penitent. Therefore, I want to examine whether there is difference between the two Molls and what they worship. First of all, I need to find out whether Moll has developed or changed from a criminal to a penitent and whether the discourses of Moll the criminal and Moll the penitent are different in order to determine the validity and presence of Moll’s real repentance. Secondly, the discarding of deceptive disguise is a good way to decide whether Moll has repented for what she has done or not. In the discussion of epic and novel, Bakhtin has singled out a characteristic that differentiates the novel from the epic. He thinks that the character in the novel is always only a partial fulfillment of an "unrealized surplus of humanness." That is, the character in the novel grows, changes, develops or even matures in response to the historical and social reality that the character finds him or herself in, while the epic hero remains unchanged throughout the events happening to him or her. Time and space will leave traces on the novelistic hero as he or she experiences the events in the novel and thus the reader perceives the.

(47) Chen 47 different presentations of the image of a person in the novel from the epic. But, in the discussion of "Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel," we can see that Bakhtin still gives many examples of characters in the novels that resembles the epic hero who is already a finished product without the ability for further development. While reading the essay of "Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel" in Dialogic Imagination, I have a feeling that Bakhtin seems to base his contrast on nineteenth-century novels in the presentation of characters as capable of change and development, and that he doesn’t have eighteenth-century novels in mind.. As a matter of fact, in Bakhtin's. discussion of Bildungsroman essay in Speech Genres & Other Late Essays, Moll Flanders is classified as one of the “adventure-picaresque novels” which share the characteristic of travel novels as a novel without emergence or lacking character development. In this kind of novel: The image of man in the novel...is quite static...The novel does not recognize human emergence and development. Even if his status changes sharply (in the picaresque novel he changes from beggar to rich man, from homeless wanderer to nobleman), he himself remains unchanged. (11) If what Bakhtin has observed is true that Moll does not grow or develop at all, then Defoe's assertion that Moll has transformed from a criminal to a penitent is invalid. Let's look into what kind of character Moll Flanders is before and after the penitence. Moll's life can be divided into five parts: the life in the orphanage, in.