Realism and credibility in mol
Realism and credibility in molRealism and Credibility in Moll Flanders and Oroonoko
In the Dictionary of Literary Terms, Harry Shaw states, "In effective narrative literature, fictional persons, through characterization, become so credible that they exist for the reader as real people." Looking at Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders and Aphra Behn's Oroonoko the reader will find it difficult to make this definition conform to Moll and Behn's narrator. This doesn't mean that Defoe's and Behn's work is 'ineffective', but there is indeed a difficulty: it is the claim of truth. Defoe in his preface states, "The Author is here suppos'd to be writing her own History." (Defoe, 1) and Behn claims, "I was myself an eye-witness to a great part, of what you will find here set down, and what I could not be witness of, I received from the mouth of the chief actor in this history, the hero
himself, ..." (Behn, 75).
Although both authors claim their stories are true, and thereby that their characters are realistic, there seems to be a gap between the authors' claims and the "reality" of the characterization. This question is closely connected to the fact that both novels belong to the earliest English novels. There was no fixed tradition that the authors
worked in; instead the novel was in the process of being established. The question arises whether the two works lack a certain roundness in their narrators.
In Aphra Behn's work there is both a rejection and an acceptance of traditional plots: the Surinam episodes are far from established plots. The story is innovative, for example, inasmuch as the hero is black and enslaved. Behn actually was among the first
to contribute to the image of the 'noble savage' in literature, seventy years before Rousseau did. It is now commonly accepted that Behn probably experienced this part of the plot herself. The first part which takes place in Africa, on the other hand, is very
traditional: it follows patterns of the typical oriental tale like “Arabian Nights” or narratives in the romance tradition narration.
Moll Flanders is indebted to the tradition of the picaresque. It is the fact that Moll's life is ordinary and her story is presented in episodes which make it life-like. Thus,
the rejection of traditional plots is in both novels expressed by the choice of biography as the method of presenting the story, because the aim is to attract the reader's attention with
stories as authentic as possible.
It is difficult to decide whether the narrator in Oroonoko is specific or rather a universal type. She is only a minor character in contrast to Moll. Oroonoko, however, is specific: he is described minutely and doesn't fit into any stereotype. He is a prince and in the style of a romance finds his great love, but at the same time he is a black slave. In the description of the background as well we find an immense love for detail. Yet the narrator's character doesn't seem...
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