Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
Moll Flanders was a product of her vanity and pride. She devoted her entire life to achieving some sort of wealth and social status. Her pride encompassed her entire life and affected all of her life decisions. Moll sacrificed many things, including love, religion, self-respect, and peace of mind, in order to attain a sort of affluence. Eventually, Moll achieves her desires and retires a gentlewoman in America, but her journey definitely took a serious toll on her life. In the end, one must ask the question of whether Moll's lifestyle and decisions were the right ones. Did the ends justify the means? Did Moll's chosen path lead to a life of satisfaction or did the pain, paranoia, and emotional trauma that came along the way extract a price that is much greater then the wealth that she eventually achieved? The answer is that the suffering that Moll experienced was not worth the final outcome. Although Moll reached her goals in the end, she would have had a more fulfilling and gratifying life had she suppressed her vanity and price and accepted her role in society and lived accordingly.
Moll began life in the low class. Not much nobility or status was expected of the orphan born in Newgate Prison, and in English society, there was little chance for Moll to escape this class. But Moll had the blessing of the kind "nurse" who raised her, kept her out of the dreaded servitude, and found a high class family for Moll to live and grow up with. Moll was a beautiful girl and thanks to her "nurse" and this family, she was well along the road to truly becoming a gentlewoman. Had events continued flawlessly from here, Moll might have achieved her goal without any pain, suffering, or remorse. Unfortunately, this was not to be the case.
Moll's problems began with her relationship with the eldest brother. Her vanity and egoism allowed her to be seduced thus creating a serious conflict when the youngest brother sought her hand in marriage. Moll soon faced the dilemma of marrying Robin or faring for herself. Opting for financial security, Moll married a man whom she did not love. After Robin's death, Moll once again sought to marry a well to do man. She did just that and lived extravagantly for a few years until her husband was imprisoned for his debts. Once again, Moll was placed in a position of faring for herself or marrying...
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... right, it was still an unnecessary risk. Moll and Jemmy had enough money to survive comfortably on. Was a little extra money worth risking her family and the only man she truly loved? Once again, Molls vanity and pride risked the happy life that she had found.
We have seen how Moll let her vanity and pride shape her life. She found what she wanted in the end, but it took a mighty toll. She suffered through numerous relationships, each one leaving her in a position worse off then before. She had to deal with the constant paranoia and fear that is associated with being a thief. Yet she couldn't give up that lifestyle. She even had to face down her own death when she was sentenced to the gallows because of her actions. Moll made it through all of this and finally seemed to find happiness. But once again she was willing to risk all that she had in order to satisfy her vanity and greed. Moll had several opportunities to suppress her vanity and turn her life in a more positive direction. Doing so would have prevented a lot of pain and trauma. Unfortunately, Moll was never capable of overcoming this pride and thus had to suffer all the ill effects that were associated with it.
The longest-lasting economic downfall in the history of the United States was the Great Depression. The Great Depression generated close after the stock market crash. The stock market crash presented itself on October 1929. The stock market crash pushed Wall Street into hectic terror which eradicated millions of investors. Since the crash of the stock market, over the next numerous years, consumer spending and investment dropped. In consideration of consumer spending and investment dropping it caused steep declines in industrial manufacturing and rising levels of unemployment. Rising unemployment was caused by companies that were failing and laying off workers. When the Great Depression reached its all-time low, before 1933, some thirteen to
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The stock market was going good before the Great Depression. It was so good that many people took loans to buy stocks. When the stock market started to go down a little they all sold. They sold for too cheap and couldn’t pay the bank. So either came up with money or lost their house. This was the main cause of the Great Depression. President Hoover’s response to the Great Depression wasn’t great.
October 29, 1929 is the day it all came tumbling down. There were warning signs preceding the Great Crash, which evidently were the causes behind it in the first place. Backtrack to early 1929: the stock market was booming. The rise of easy credit allowed consumers to purchase more than they had before. However, in September of 1929, the stock market began to peak and fall in an uneven way. People sensed that something was wrong and stopped spending. Instead, on October 29, everyone tried to sell their shares, leading to a complete collapse of the stock market. Billions of dollars were lost that day. Due to the laissez-faire free market, the government had no role in helping the stock market. This plummeted America into the Great Depression, leaving nearly everyone affected in some
The Great Depression is often to be known for starting on October 1929 on the day the stock market crashed. In reality that was not the only thing that caused the Great Depression. Although this was a major contribution when the stock market crashed, banks foreclosed and it caused a major panic when people tried to get their money. People in America were not able to get their money because the banks didn’t have it. Many people believe that, “The crash, and its aftermath of unemployment, bank closures, bankruptcies, and homelessness, was caused by fundamental flaws in the prosperity of the 1920s.”(Shindo 295). When the crash happened industrial output began to decrease until it was the same amount of production in 1932 as it was in 1913. Gale stated that, “ By 1929 farmers’ earnings amounted to only one-third of the national average.’’(Gale 82). The Great Depression was a very devastating time in American history.
With all the basic needs are are necessary to life a comfortable life. What she desire and hopes for is impractical. Knowing that she can never obtain the wealthy life she begins to feel sorrowful and sadden by that. Her greed for expensive items has become apart of her daily life and it is something that she can't easily change. With her vital need for these items it is a critical aspect in her because without those things she desires she can never be happy and satisfied with her life. Mathilde Loisel will never experience what is like to not have to depend on a physical object to...
Mathilde Loisel ends up in huge debt for not telling Forestier the truth about the lost necklace. If she would’ve just confessed to Madame Forestier, she wouldn’t have ended up so poor and miserable. When she puts her family in debt, she blames Forestier that she ended up that way. At the end, telling the truth to Forestier was the better option. She was poor, hopeless, and even in the end she ended up with nothing. It really wouldn’t have been such a big deal since the fake necklace was no more than five hundred francs, which was nothing to Madame Forestier. Poor Loisel is she had only given her the
Many of us visit art galleries and wonder what an artist is trying to tell us with his paintings or sculptures. It's never easy to interpret a piece of art as everyone sees it from their own perspective. Many of the master pieces of Salvador Dali have been replicated and volumes have been written about his artwork. Two of those will be compared and analyzed in this essay ; "Apparition of Face and Fruit- dish on a Beach" and "The Persistence of Memory". One is about the inseparable fate of humanity from nature the other is about memories that we create at every step and that come back to us and keep haunting us.
But the misery taught Madame Loisel to accept her situation. She was dressing like commoners; she was doing all the household chores without complaining. She was living a poor woman’s life and she accepted it. Because she knew that she has to pay the debt for the necklace. So this misery lasted for ten years when they finally cleared all the debts. It was a huge relief for them. That little incident has shaken her life; she realizes that it losing it was the reason of her misery. This is where she is wrong, instead of thinking that she should be thinking why she borrowed it at the first
The stock market was one of the leading causes that truly started the Great Depression. It crashed in 1929, when bankers lost millions of dollars, even though the stock market began to regain some of its losses, by the end of 1930, it just was not enough. The drought also caused Americans to go into despair, it is known as the Dust Bowl, effects of the dust bowl include many people not being able to pay their taxes or other debts. They had to sell their farms that brought no advantage, the farmers were forced to let their crops wither away and left people to starve.
In actuality, she was defiant, and ate macaroons secretly when her husband had forbidden her to do so. She was quite wise and resourceful. While her husband was gravely ill she forged her father’s signature and borrowed money without her father or husband’s permission to do so and then boastfully related the story of doing so to her friend, Mrs. Linde. She was proud of the sacrifices she made for her husband, but her perceptions of what her husband truly thought of her would become clear. She had realized that the childlike and submissive role she was playing for her husband was no longer a role she wanted to play. She defied the normal roles of the nineteenth century and chose to find her true self, leaving her husband and children
The stock market crash on October 29, 1929 set in motion many events leading to the Great Depression. Although this day is considered the trigger to the massive economic fallout, the American and global economies had been in turmoil for six months prior to Black Tuesday, and many other factors contributed to what’s known as the worst economic crash in modern history.
We are free to judge whether or not we would take the bundle that so often becomes Moll's pursuit in the future. It is at that instant that we can decide whether Moll was free to do so or controlled by something unavoidable, such as fate. If Moll was acting on freewill it is arguable that she would not repeat the same crime in the future, in fact she would most likely avoid any such acts that resulted in the terrible feelings she experienced during and after the first offense. For she says herself, "It is impossible to express the horror of my soul all the while I did it".