International Journal of Education

Moll Franders is another masterpiece written by Daniel Defoe, the founder of English realistic novel. The novel takes Moll Franders, a female in the underclass and marginal society, as the protagonist. By using the artistic techniques of tramp novels, this novel describes the heroines growing up process, social experiences and adventure experiences, revealing the darkness under the prosperity of the civilized British capitalism society. Dark social reality was hidden in three dualistic relationships between the edges and the center which include women and men, underclass and upper-class, England and its colony. The three dualities have something in common, that is, the prosperity of the latter is based on the oppression and exploitation of the former. This paper intends to analyze the relationship between the three dualistic opposites in the novel and attempts to elucidate the social roots of the inequality in the Enlightenment period of England and the role of margins in the deconstruction of centers.

Class; Gender; Colonization; Duality