Criminal literature and the rise of the novel

1 FACULTAD DE FILOLOGÍA DEPARTAMENTO DE LITERATURA INGLESA Y NORTEAMERICANA Universidad de Sevilla TESIS DOCTORAL CRIMINAL LITERATURE AND THE RISE OF THE NOVEL PILAR DE LOS ÁNGELES PEÑA GIL DIRECTORA: DRA. DÑA. MERCEDES SALVADOR BELLO Sevilla, Octubre de 2015 2 3 To the very many who gave me oxygen when I was breathless. With a special thanks to Mercedes and Oisín for their unconditional support. 4 Contents Conventions 6 Introduction 7 Theoretical Aspects 15 1. Defining the Novel …………...………………………………..…………………………………………….. 15 2. The Rise of the English Novel Reconsidered……….…................................................ 28 2.1. The Romance and the Novel. From Clara Reeve to Michael McKeon ……………. 30 2.2. The Eighteenth Century and the Sociological Changes Giving Way to the Rise of the Novel. Ian Watt……………………...……………………………………………………………………..37 2.3. Innovation through Tradition. John Richetti and Lennard Davis. Northrop Frye and the Theory of the Modes …………………………………………………………………………….. 45 2.4. Theories Relating the Rise of the Novel with Criminality and the Broadside Tradition ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………... 50 3. Criminal Literature, a Historical Perspective…..…………………………………………………… 53 3.1. Criminal Writings in the Middle Ages…………………………….….………………………….57 3.2. Robin Hood and the Criminal as a Sympathetic Character………..……………………60 3.3. Chapbooks and Jest-books…………………………………………………………………………….63 3.4. Spanish Picaresque Narrative and Rogue Literature……………………………………...71 3.5. The Rise of a Native Criminal Genre ……………………………………………………...........79 3.5.1. Conny-cathing Pamphlets ………………………………………………………………….80 3.5.2. The Domestic Tragedy………………………………………………………………………..87 3.5.2.1. Drama and Executions……………………………….……………………………………..94 5 3.6. Early Criminal Biographies……………………………………………………………………………101 4. The Eighteenth Century and the Rise of Crime………………………………………………….107 5. The Female Criminal ……………………………………………………………………………………….…115 Text Analysis 122 1. Proto-journalistic and Legal Writings ………………………………….…….........................123 1.1. Ballads and Broadsides …………………..…………………………………….…………….………124 1.2. The pamphlet………………………………………………………………………………………………138 1.3. Old Bailey Session Papers and the Ordinary’s Accounts……………………………..…145 2. From the Gallows to the Stage. Dramatic Works..................................................163 2.1. The Tragedy of Master Arden of Faversham………………………………………………...166 2.2. The Roaring Girl…………………………………………………………………………………………...196 3. Criminal Biographies……………………………………………………………………………………..…213 3.1 Long Meg of Westminster…………………………………………………………………………...213 3.2 Multiple Versions of a Life. The German Princess ………………….……………………222 4. The Fair Jilt……………………………………………………..…………….…….……………………………234 5. Moll Flanders……………………………………………………………………………………………………256 Conclusions 277 Works Cited 288 6 Conventions Due to the length of most of the primary sources titles, they have been named as such in footnotes the first time they are mentioned. In order to avoid an excess of footnotes, the parenthetical citation has been preferred for in-text citation. For a number of reasons—variety of texts, several works by the same author, similarity of some of the titles—the year of the quoted work has been included so as to add clarity. In dramatic works, however, the year has not been incorporated to reduce the length of the in-text citation. For electronic sources, only the URL has been written down in footnotes, since most of the quoted texts belong to two online collections, the Word on the Street, from the National Library of Scotland, and the Proceedings of the Old Bailey. Their references have not been repeated in the Works Cited section. 7 Introduction This project arises after the consideration that in the twenty first century there is still no definite theory on the origins of the English novel in spite of the many attempts that have been carried out to trace them. Such a complex subject has given rise to many studies, with no conclusive hypothesis so far. After comprehensive reading and analysis, I have realised that it is not possible to establish the origins of the English novel as such, since it stemmed from a complex mesh of genres and subgenres. For this reason, the present thesis is going to focus on a particular subgenre of the novel: the one that offers a criminal as a protagonist, which has been given here the name of the criminal novel. There has been necessary to apply a new term to works prior to the rise of crime fiction with Edgar Allan Poe’s "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841), since the novels by Daniel Defoe or Henry Fielding which narrate the story of an offender do not fit into the category of crime fiction. They are precursors, but, at the same time, they are inherently different. The main protagonist is a criminal, who is neither purely a hero nor a villain, but a figure whose main aim is to teach the readership a moral lesson. This subgenre of the early novel presents very limited specimens—mainly limited to the production of Defoe—yet it has a huge repercussion in present day literature and culture in the English language. Since it is a relatively new concept, my first goal is to try to delimit the object of analysis and propose a valid theory of its origins. In order to confirm my theory, I will establish a logical connection between the sociology, history and literature of a crucial time for the development of the novel, the period encompassed between the end of the sixteenth century and the first half of the eighteenth century. Thus, I will try to 8 prove that the criminal novel derives from a native oral and written literature which, even though it was influenced by picaresque narrative, it relies mostly in a longtradition of criminals’ adventures that permeated the popular British culture. This dissertation intends to shed some light in how such a widely read genre nowadays as it is crime fiction might have unfolded from criminal narrative, from the relationship between criminality and its representation in literature. I have taken Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders as the first instance of this type of novel and drawn a line back as to establish the corpus of works as well as the circumstances which exercised an influence on the writer to create such a work. As it will be explained further on, this type of novel is mostly derivative of early forms of journalism, represented by broadsides, pamphlets and other similar documents that spread the news prior to the emergence of the newspaper in the eighteenth century. Nevertheless, fact and fiction are difficult to discern in both novels and their nonliterary ancestors as writers’ imagination permeated these proto-journalistic 1 documents. Ernest Bernbaum writes that “in the field of journalism, in that of literature, and in the twilight zone between them, we find from the days of Elizabeth 1 Journalism as such does not take place until the eighteenth century. However, it is obvious that before the emergence of the newspaper with the format that we nowadays attribute to it, there were other ways of spreading written information. Even if it is not proper journalism according to today’s standards, it will be referred as such, as proto-journalism or pseudo-journalism. Nevertheless, none of the three terms are really accurate, since the writers did not consider themselves journalists. Besides, the aim was both to inform and entertain at the same time, leaving as much space for true facts as for invented additions. In any case, the different types of documents had to be delimited. To distinguish legal or administrative writings from the ones complying with a more informative nature, the second ones will be referred to as “proto-journalistic” writings. 9 to those of the Georges the flourishing of imposture” (1914: 79). 2 Therefore, the fact that Defoe’s production encompasses both news and novels, facts and fiction, is not haphazard. Just as nowadays authors combine their contributions to newspapers with the production of their own fictions, some of the early novelists were hybrid writers, half way between journalists and novelists. Defoe made a very intelligent move, masking his invention as reality. In a world overpopulated by imagined fabrications that claimed to be authentic, it was difficult to sell a “true historie” as a real one. But Defoe managed to succeed with his Moll Flanders, probably because journalistic writings were as tainted of falsehood as his novel was of truth. Thus, the origins of journalism are tightly linked to the origins of the English criminal novel. Therefore, the hypothesis here proposed is that criminal novels sprang from a non-literary source which gradually moved into the literary sphere. These proto-journalistic documents were mostly broadsides, but there were also other types of news and crime-related papers, such as ballads, pamphlets, sermons and court proceedings. Before any novel sprang from their influence, they had already been adapted into literature in a variety of forms, from conny-catching pamphlets to dramatic works, with tragedies and comedies that had a criminal as the main character. For that reason, even if this dissertation is concerned with the origins of the criminal novel, a wide range of texts need to be examined in order to establish a sound theory. But before text analysis is carried out, it is necessary to devote some pages to theoretical aspects, the main one being the attempt to define what a novel is. Thus, 2 Ernest Bernbaum, The Mary Carleton Narratives. 1663-1673. A Missing Chapter in the History of the English Novel. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1914. 16 the characteristics that apply to the early novel—or solely to the criminal novel as a specific type—cannot be extended to other forms of the novel. In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries the term “novel” was used to designate a wide range of prose writings. Aware of the need of novelty in the book market, writers tried to provide their public with something new, hence the term “novel”. As the label “novel” was usually associated with popular narratives, it became attached to a wide range of prose writings; romances, popular tales and short fiction in general were also called “novels” in order to be included in this new trend. Delarivier Manley, for instance, in the preface to the first part of her Secret Stories, establishes the difference between “a True History” and the writing of an author who “composes a History of his Fancy”. She establishes the main differences between the romance and the novel in the following terms: These little Pieces which have banish´d Romances are much more agreeable to the Brisk and Impetuous Humour of the English, who have naturally no Taste for longwinded Performances, for they have no sooner begun a Book but they desire to see the End of it: The Prodigious Length of Ancient Romances, the Mixture of so many Extraordinary Adventures, and the great Number of Actors that appear on the Stage, and the Likeness which is so little managed, all which has given a Distaste to Persons of good Sense, and has made Romances so much cry’d down, as we find ‘em at present. (Williams 2010: 33) 10 Curiously, the type of fiction she was writing was closer to romances than to the socalled “true histories” but she nevertheless wanted to dissociate her literary productions from the romance tradition as these pieces were no longer fashionable 10 Ioan Williams, Novel and Romance 1700-1800. A Documentary Record. London: Routledge Revivals, 2010. 17 and conveyed an idea of being second-rate literature from both the reading public and the authors themselves. To the difficulty in delimiting the object of study, we have to add the great variety of former studies on the origins of the English novel together with a lack of unified opinion when it comes to defining what a novel is. As early as 1785, Clara Reeve attempted to set boundaries to the novel as a genre by establishing what it was not. Her main aim was to distinguish it as a separate genre from the romance. Reeve published a study of this topic under the title The Progress of Romance, through Times, Countries, and Manners; with Remarks on the good and bad Effects of it, on them respectively; in a Course of Evening Conversations. 11 In this work she explains that from the moment novels made their appearance, the first scholarly efforts to determine their nature quickly spread, too. Nevertheless, the novel did not spring out ex nihilo. Reeve herself wrote Gothic novels, which are clearly derivative from the romance tradition. There is an obvious correlation between former fiction and the novel since, as J. P. Hunter notes, “no single word or phrase distinguishes the novel from romance or from anything else, and to settle for ‘realism’ or ‘individualism’ or ‘character’ as the defining characteristic diminishes the very idea of the novel and trivializes the conception of a literary species” (1990: 22-3). Certainly, the novel arises within the context of continuity from previous genres but there have to be certain characteristics that make it different from other types of literature. Hunter explains that if the novel had developed from romance, it would share most of its characteristics, when in fact it does not. However, 11 Clara Reeve, The Progress of Romance, through Times, Countries, and Manners; with Remarks on the good and bad Effects of it, on them respectively; in a Course of Evening Conversations. Colchester: W. Keymer, 1785. 18 this affirmation needs to be clarified, as there are novels indeed which derive from romances. The question of the definition of the novel retakes the idea that it is not possible to limit the concept of the novel in general. What is true for some of them does not apply to others. Probably, because of this, there is still no unity of criterion on the rise of the English novel despite the attempts to produce a unified theory. Likewise, there is not just one definition of novel, although for the purpose of this dissertation Hunter’s ideas are the most accurate because they apply to the object of this analysis, the novel with a criminal as a protagonist. Hunter lists nine essential features that any novel must comply with. 12 These are contemporaneity, credibility and probability, familiarity, rejection of traditional plots, tradition-free language, individualism and subjectivity, empathy and vicariousness, coherence and unity of design, and finally, inclusivity, digressiveness and fragmentation, or what he calls, “the ability to parenthesize” (1990: 24). Hunter’s characteristics will help to separate the so-considered novels from earlier tradition, as in the case of novellas. They will be referred to now so as to define the object of analysis of this dissertation, i.e. the criminal novel. Also, they will be brought to this analysis later on in order to highlight the differences between Behn’s The Fair Jilt and Defoe’s Moll Flanders. The great innovation of the novel was the contemporaneity of its events. It used the discourse of facts characteristic of journalistic writings and made it its own, 12 Most of Hunter’s characteristics would not apply to present-time subgenres. For instance, nowadays crime narrative is subdivided into crime fiction and true crime, and few of Hunter’s features would apply to science-fiction. Hence, the definition of a novel or a criminal novel makes reference to what was considered a novel at the turn of the eighteenth century. 19 reducing the time and space distance between the novel and its readership. Unlike romances or even former novellas—which were short fictions but usually referred to as novels by some critics—, the novel was not set in distant places but most commonly in Britain or with British characters. By using a familiar location or a familiar character, the fictional story was made credible and probable. In fact, most of the early novels assured readers that they were examples of factual events that had been transcribed by an editorial hand. The characters moved in recognisable spaces, the narration even added specific details about them, such as street names, so that readers could easily visualise where the actions took place. Hunter adds an important note regarding this requirement: “credibility seems the essential quality for readers to experience in entering a novel and probability the essential quality once they are inside the fictional world” (1990: 23). In the case of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Lemuel Gulliver travels through lands that are very similar to his own country in many aspects. This way the reader is familiarised with the types of societies that he is reading about even if there are talking horses in them. The reading audience knew of merchants and travellers who encountered different cultures and people alien to their own. Seen in this light, Gulliver’s Travels did not seem shocking when it was first published. The first novelists soon understood the importance of creating a realistic atmosphere. If they wanted to engage readers, they had to make their narration so familiar to them that it could be perceived as part of their actual lives. Gulliver’s Travels was taken as a real account. At a time when all accounts were considered truthful, the most unbelievable descriptions were taken as real. Imaginary worlds had been left behind with the romance tradition and the reading public believed that there was no place for fictional events. Hence the usual insistence of writers on the idea that their works were based 20 on facts that had happened to someone they knew personally or even to themselves. Imagination and the taste for it revived again with the romantic writers, who rejected the principles proclaimed by the Enlightenment. But the early eighteenth century was the time of rationalism; everything could be explained, even if from our contemporary view it seems nonsensical to believe that there was a land in which horses were more intelligent than human beings. The first novelists took great advantage of people’s eagerness to read real events. At a time when it was difficult to separate fact from fiction even in the news, the line between the two was thinned. The general need to believe in real narratives led journalists and novelists to insert false pieces of news and events. There were publications that described extraordinary creatures that had been born or discovered. When they could be suspected of being an editorial invention, the trick to make the stories credible was just to place them in a familiar environment. If extraordinary characters or events were given a location and a temporal setting contemporaneous to the readers, the fraudulent piece of news was usually taken as real. For instance, as late as the nineteenth century, there appeared in the news that a woman with a pig’s head—the “Pig-Faced Lady, of Manchester-Square”—was one of the neighbours of London. She was not someone living in a distant place but in the well-known Manchester Square. Credibility also benefited from false testimonies, as the headlines illustrate: “Drawn from the information of a female who attended on her” (Shepard 1973: 183). 13 If someone could approve of the veracity of the events, then it was assumed to be real. Because of this, every early novel began with the statement that 13 Leslie Shepard, The Broadside Ballad. A Study in the Origins and Meaning. London: Herbert Jenkins, 1962. 21 the writer knew or met someone who was acquaintance with the characters in the story. The novelists’ word was taken for truthful without questioning the veracity of the narration the same way that the journalist’s pig lady had to be real; otherwise it would not appear in a piece of news. Leslie Shepard affirms that “the printing of false news of murder or scandal at a time when genuine news was scarce” was common (1962: 81). The reading public wanted news, and the more extraordinary and morbid, the better. They did not bother to question that of all the men in Britain Moll Flanders met and fell in love with her brother. The extraordinary was part of the ordinary and this allowed writers and journalists to insert figments of their imagination in their narratives as long as they seemed plausible. Romances and early fictions described all kinds of fantastic happenings, but these were usually discredited for not being real. The boundary between earlier fiction and the novel was established by the introduction of the known element. Aphra Behn’s prose works have been argued to be proper novels. However, Hunter’s characteristics of familiarity, probability and credibility are not met in these works. The Fair Jilt, which will be subject of analysis in this dissertation, is set in Antwerp and involves a series of characters that belong to the nobility and royalty. Even if Antwerp could be known amongst its readers, the characters, Miranda and Prince Tarquin, were foreign in terms of culture and social status. They did not belong to the common readers’ microcosm represented by nearby streets. The Fair Jilt might have engaged numerous readers, but not as many as the stories with familiar locations and characters could attract. Whereas Moll Flanders is a character born and raised in the streets, moving freely in the London underground, Miranda contrives her 22 Machiavellian plans within her palace walls in a spatial setting that most common people could not place—even if it were across the channel. Behn’s work is close enough to being a novel, but its far-away location and its high-class characters make it distant from Hunter’s principles with which I agree. 14 Accordingly, Behn’s work should rather be called “novellas” instead of novels although, as stated above, this is still subject of discussion for some critics. In the present thesis, Behn’s prose works are conveniently regarded as novellas, being simply shorter than a novel and not meeting all the characteristics that here have been observed in early novels. 15 The novel arises at a moment of rupture of conventions. The big city began to emerge, physically and as a concept. Mass migration from the countryside to the cities made an impact in the conception of the individual and his or her need to progress. The society that was emerging at the end of the seventeenth century was significantly different from that of the preceding period. Whereas a minority of wealthy citizens had questioned their lives and futures in previous times, towards the end of the seventeenth century, a mass of villagers pushed to find their place in society, fighting for a spot in the better accommodated classes. Their need for social and economic improvement could only be satisfied by the rise of the bourgeoisie, an emerging class not just restricted to merchants and traders but extended to the whole household who came along with them. Maids such as Moll Flanders not only became aware of their situation in society but also that their position was movable. They felt the need of 14 The distant locations and idealised characters reappear again in the nineteenth century novel, but it is worth reminding that it is the early novel that is herein discussed. 15 The OED defines a novella in the following terms: “Originally, a short fictitious narrative. Now (usually): a short novel, a long short story”. It quotes from Aphra Behn’s Rover (1677) as the first time that the word is recorded with that meaning: “If the Play of the Novella were as well worth remembring as Thomaso, they might have as well said, I took it from thence”. 23 educating themselves in order to find a better life prospects. There are many instances of young maids who were in the same situation as Moll Flanders. Many of them belonged to a rural environment or to the lower classes. They moved to the urban sphere in search for an alternative way of life. Writers were well aware of this new type of society. The population needed a literature that could be representative of their time, one in which they found themselves mirrored by stories of similar individuals with understandable queries, needs and expectations. The social evolution went hand in hand with the emergence of highly individualised characters in literature. They were no longer types, representing human nature as a whole, with their virtues and vices; they were unique. They could be similar to the readers, but they were distinctive enough not to be taken as types. They spoke for themselves without any need of a narrator that intruded their thoughts and their speeches. They overtook the writers’ centrality becoming first-person narrators and choosing themselves what to tell and what to leave aside. Authors moved to the background after a brief introduction to the characters and the circumstances in which they encountered them or their story. This personal perspective of events created empathy for the first-person narrator, which also narrowed the distance between narrative and readers. The reading public became so close to the narrator in these works that they could easily identify with them, even if they were rogues or criminals who would have acted against their own interests. The novel allowed a dialogue between reader and character, in which the former was made a confident of his or her confessor’s best kept secrets. In criminal literature, the offenders disclosed their crimes in a way that it resembled the confession made to the priest, so that after writing their story they could achieve a common pardon by the reading audience. They 24 became admired anti-heroes that would fulfil the readers’ most dark desires of freedom and fearless actions. Yet the characters’ version of the story was, of course, completely subjective. It was their own vision of the world that was transmitted to the readers, who had no need to know to what an extent the characters’ stories were true or false. But there was a need to believe that the events were true; otherwise the magic of the narration would have disappeared by that suspension of disbelief. The first-person narrator removes objectivity from the story but it enriches it with numerous personal perspectives. The language was equally modified as to become personal. An important advance in characterisation comes from the characters’ distinctive way of expressing themselves. Rough maids, such as Moll Flanders do not speak in the same way as the innocent Pamela. In criminal literature, many canting terms 16 or criminals’ slang were introduced. Canting dictionaries sprang to meet the needs of a reading public that was not familiarised with the numerous underground terms that were used in their favourite readings. New topics, narrative perspective, language, and a renewed relationship between reader and characters were all introduced as indicative of a new genre. The novel arising at the beginning of the eighteenth century marked a past and 16 In Middleton and Dekker’s Roaring Girl, for instance, there are passages in which the underworld characters speak in canting terms with translation provided by Moll Cutpurse, who acts as the mediator between the criminals and the gentlemen. In this play, canting serves as a way of unmasking Trapdoor. If he could cant it meant that he was related to pickpockets and other offenders. Likewise, in the accusation pamphlet that John Carleton writes against his wife, Mary Carleton, the German Princess, he says that “she, with Crocodile teares, and in a canting style, began to recollect her Adventure” (1663: 5). He is implying in this description, that apart from being false, she is also a criminal. Canting had those connotations and the seventeenth century readership knew it. 25 a future in the world literature. An accurate presentation of imaginary reality that fused with reality itself in an imitation of everyday life and with an emphasis on the individual became trademarks of a tradition that has developed until the present time. The novel provided eighteenth century literature with a new discourse of narration. In the case of criminal literature, former stories were episodic and fragmented whereas the novel preferred a “unity of design”, as Hunter calls it. Moll Flanders seems episodic, resulting in a succession of events in the story of a criminal. However, there are references to previous events and characters. As her life progresses, she meets characters that she had known at an earlier stage. There are allusions to the past and to the future that makes this work differ from previous fragmented stories. Yet, that early novels are more unitary than previous forms does not mean that they had achieved that unity of plot that is observed in nineteenthcentury novels. Stories are still fragmented and there are many digressions within the main plot, with loops that go backwards and forwards, as if the narrators were interrupting themselves to add personal comments or had forgotten elements that were essential to the main story line. This narrative device is remnant of the oral and popular literature, which used such formulae in order to engage the audience and remind them of events that had formerly taken place. These parentheses, nevertheless, were sometimes aimed at, thus adding freshness and improvisation to the narration. As stated above, the proximity between reader and narrative ensured the success of this type of writing. The fact that first-person characters introduced digressions in their discourse made the readers feel as if they were being addressed. Digressions were used profusely during the early stages of the novel. Delarivier Manley harshly criticises them in the preface to her Histories: 32 reached Britain in translation were too adorned. 25 In his opinion, they had little left of the eleventh century ones which still preserved the spirit of the “jongleur oral narrative” (1911: 2). He believes that “the influence of the Crusades, and the development of early feudal manners into the richly decorative chivalry of the later Middle Ages, transformed and elaborated the romances before they became English” (1911: 3). In France, oral narrative and written elaborate epics had in common their folk origins, thus enabling the lower classes to maintain the sense of belonging in the romance. Contrastingly, in Britain the sources were different. When they reached Britain, romances were no longer part of the oral but written tradition. They were the so-called “French heroic romance.” They had love adventures as an essential element so they were translated, imitated and adopted by the British during the Elizabethan period. Famous and very influential romances for the future development of the English novel were Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia (c. 1580)—The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia in its full title—and Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queen (1590, 1596). These long narratives made them selective in terms of readership. They could only be purchased and read by the upper classes. The realities they described were distant; their characters, detached. Due to these associations and prejudices, authors who wanted to write popular literature in Britain moved away from the romance model. Technology also helped to set a definite line between romances and the novel. The popularisation of printed texts marked the difference between medieval romances and the emerging genre. Although romances were still published well into the eighteenth 25 Raleigh, Walter. The English Novel. A Short Sketch of its History from the Earliest Times to the Appearance of Waverley. London: John Murray, 1911. 33 century, an air of ancient genre was pinned to them. They were associated to manuscripts and knighthood; they belonged to old times, to an old-fashioned tradition. At the same time, the rejection of the romance came along with the search for a new form of literature as the exploration for the new self that needs to materialise an abstract conception. The new—the novel or, the modern—, was the original, the innovative and the creative. Novel o nouvelle 26 became the key term for a new concept of literature that could represent the individual and the enlightened taste of the era. The same way, novel came to be the magic word for writers to gain new readers. William Congreve, for instance, includes in the title of his Incognita: Or Love and Duty Reconcil’d the clarification that it is “A Novel”. He considers important to clarify the differences between the romance and novel, so in his Preface, he describes them in the following terms: Romances are generally composed of the Constant Loes and invincible Courages of Hero’s, Heroins, Kings and Queens, Mortals of the first Rank, and so forth; where lofty Language, miraculous Contingencies and impossible Performances, elevate and surprize the Reader into a giddy Delight, which leaves him flat upon the Ground whenever he gives of, and vexes him to think how he has suffer’d himself to be pleased and transported, concern’s and afflicted at the several Passages which he has Read, viz. these Knights Success to their Damosels Misfortunes, and such like, when he is forced to be very well convinced that ‘tis all a lye. Novels are of a more familiar nature; Come near us, and represent to us Intrigues in practice, delight us with Accidents and odd Events, but not such as are wholly unusual or unpresidented [sic.], such which not being so distant from our 26 Nowadays, “nouvelle” is associated to a short narrative, but in its origins, the three terms, novella, novel and nouvelle were used interchangeably. 34 Belief bring also the pleasure nearer us. Romances give more of Wonder, Novels more Delight. (1922: 5-6) 27 Congreve extends this distinction by comparing romance and the novel with tragedy and comedy, being both dramatic forms but significantly different. He equates romances to “lye*s+” because their narrations are difficult to believe, whereas novels’ intrigues are closer to the readers’ knowledge of the world, even if some of them are unusual (1922: 6). But this change in taste had already been experienced by the romance itself. During the seventeenth century, both European and British romances appealed to vraisemblance which, according to McKeon, was associated to the “quasi-Aristotelian probability” (1988: 54). He claims that the writers of the time “were able to overlook the incompatibility of Aristotelian probability and the claim to historicity as much as they did because they tended to read the Poetics through the spectacles of empirical epistemology” (1988: 54). In any case, the romance inherited many of the characteristics of classical literature. They were in vogue until the readers’ tastes changed and more truthful stories prevailed. The French heroic romance was thus substituted by the nouvelle, a melange of memoirs, secret histories, romans à clef, and chroniques scandaleuses, which claimed that the facts they narrated responded to the truth. Delarivière Manley, for instance, states in the title page of her Secret History of Queen Zarah and the Zarazians that the story was “Faithfully Translated from the Italian Copy now lodg’d in the Vatican at Rome.” 28 The novellas written by Manley and 27 William Congreve, Incognita: Or Love and Duty Reconcil’d. A Novel. H. F. B. Brett-Smith, ed. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1922. 28 Delarivière Manley, The secret history of Queen Zarah, and the Zarazians; Being a Looking-Glass for --- ------- -------------- In the Kingdom of Albigion Containing the true reasons of the necessity of the 35 other seventeenth-century authors were indebted, without any doubt, to the romance and its tradition despite their paradoxical scorn for it. The distant scenarios and characters remained while the chivalric adventures moved from the outer world to the inner self, a feature that was already present in the French heroic romance, whose reading was dual as its heroes were always the object of physical and psychological battles. The theory of how the romance purposely shifted to present more current topics and how from there the novella, nouvelle and the novel sprang has been disputed. While McKeon justifies the link between the novel and the romance, Davis is a strong detractor of the idea of the inherited characteristics from the romance in the novel. The latter scholar believes that “the writer of nouvelles saw himself as primarily a historian and not a poet” while the writer of romances saw his art not “as technique or realism but as a censoring device which stands in opposition to factuality and truthfulness” (1991: 33). There is but an objection to be made to this affirmation. Most of the writers of nouvelles knew that what they were writing was fiction and their mastery was to disguise it as truth. At a time when the labels were confusing and the promise of real stories opened each narrative’s preface, writers who wanted to develop a more realistic tradition found it very difficult. Defoe himself, in his preface to Moll Flanders complains that “The World is so taken up of late with Novels and Romances, that it will be hard for a private History to be taken for Genuine” (1971: 1). 29 He tries to separate his “true story” from romances, but also from former novels, Revolution that lately happen'd in the kingdom of Albigion. Faithfully translated from the Italian Copy now lodg’d in the Vatican at Rome, and never before Printed in any Language. Albigion, 1705. 29 The edition of Moll Flanders which has been used as primary text and from which all quotations have been extracted corresponds to the Oxford edition, edited by G. A. Starr, 1998. 36 which had proven for over fifty years that they did not differ as much from their ancestors, after all. It is not until the eighteenth century with the publication of Moll Flanders that the veil of the ideal world is supplanted by a purposefully ugly truth, with its faults and imperfections. It is then that the novel, as opposed to the nouvelle or the novella, arises. The influence of the romance in the English novel therefore entails the consideration of the type of novel. The European romance, which had evolved from oral narrative, came to imprint an influence on the European novel and certain types of English novels derivative from continental models. Samuel Richardson’s Pamela, for instance, is clearly indebted to the romance. 30 In the family tree of the novel, the romance is just but a branch, one of the traditions to which the novel is indebted. The native oral literature in Britain, mostly represented by traditional ballads, developed into a variety of novel-like subgenres, the criminal novel amongst them. Novelists who chose this more popular line of literature wisely decided to continue a way of writing that had proved successful with a high number of readers. It is no coincidence that the first crime novelists wrote in a similar fashion to ballads, broadsides and other nonliterary writings. They copied the style in them in order to attract the readers of those mass-sold genres. By continuing with a long-standing tradition, success was almost guaranteed. Yet criminal narrative and its precursors will be the object of analysis in the next chapter. Before it, other significant theories in the origins of the English novel will be discussed. 30 In fact, the protagonist’s name is a reference to Sidney’s Pamela in the Arcadia. 37 2.2. THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY AND THE SOCIOLOGICAL CHANGES GIVING WAY TO THE RISE OF THE NOVEL. IAN WATT There are no records of the reading population in the late seventeenth-century Britain, but what is certain is that there was an increasing interest in reading. However, there is no agreement in the growth of literacy during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Alan Downie, for instance, claims that more books were sold before the late seventeenth century and after the early eighteenth century, that is, before and after what is considered the period of the emergence of the novel. McKeon, on the other hand, believes that the invention of the press and the cheaper manufacture of books that it brought along favoured the educational revolution that raised the levels of literacy to unknown standards. It is nevertheless difficult to measure the extent of growth because most studies are based on the number of signatures and the fact that a person could sign does not necessary mean he or she could read and actually read regularly (McKeon 1988: 50-51). In any case, the sales of books undoubtedly increased as regards to the preceding century. Consequently, there had to be considerably more readers by the mid-eighteenth century than in the early seventeenth century. The popularisation of the printed material allowed books to be published at a more reasonable price, thus enabling the rise of extended long fictions. Their publication by chapters also made them more affordable. Even if their printing became cheaper, it was yet expensive for the majority of the readership to acquire a whole book. With a growing reading public and a distribution of printed material, the novel found its perfect conditions to appear. Also the passing or abolition of certain laws, such as the protectionist printing legislation, helped to encourage the emergence of the novel. Circulating libraries made their appearance in the mid-eighteenth century 38 with the first one established in Edinburgh in 1725, followed by others in Bristol, Bath and London. They were a response of the middle classes and their eagerness to read books without having to invest vast amounts of money. Their main users were women, who had more leisure time and for whom reading became a very fashionable activity. The significant reduction in the costs of reading did not only popularise it, but also allowed reading to stop being a group activity to move into the private sphere. Circulating libraries helped reading in becoming a personal experience, changing thus the concept of literature, but also the way of narrative, which became an intimate dialogue between the reader and the writer. Yet circulating libraries were much criticised precisely because of the accessibility that women had to books, especially novellas and romances. In Richard B. Sheridan’s The Rivals (1725), Sir Anthony exclaims that “a circulating library in a town is as an evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge! It blossoms through the year!” (I. ii, 225-27). 31 This character, in his conversation with Mrs. Malaprop, exemplifies the general opinion in the eighteenth century that women were corrupted by these readings which made them think about romantic relationships when marriage was an economic contract between families. Even if the stories of scandalous and complicated love affairs were popular, as the eighteenth century progressed, readers demanded material related to contemporary affairs; they were interested in analysing the implications of the social change they were experimenting. The novel suited perfectly this purpose. As crime was one of the main concerns of the age, extensive fiction and non-fiction works were 31 Richard Brinsley Sheridan, The Rivals. Tiffany Stern, ed. London: Bloomsbury, 2004. 39 written on this basis. 32 There was a huge demand in criminals’ lives, which pushed the genre up as the favourite reading of the public. Lincoln B. Faller, in his work Crime and Defoe 33 defends this idea, as it can be observed in the in the following extract: In situating Defoe’s pseudo-criminal biographies within and against the forms and conventions that governed the writing and (presumably, too) the reading of actual criminals’ lives, I will speculate on what, or rather how, they may have meant to their original audience—an audience whose needs, values, concerns, and habits of reading (for readers, too, play a role in the creation of literary genres) encouraged the “rise” of what we’ve come to call the novel. (1993: xiii) Faller explores the reasons why criminal biographies became so popular in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. He argues that the narratives show “a powerful array of social, political, religious and moral concerns” (1993: xiii) that suited perfectly the reading public of the time. The provision of a new kind of narrative was due to the demands of the readers, but before that, to the anticipation of writers, who sensed the kernel of a new type of society. The rise of the bourgeoisie has frequently been associated with the rise of the novel. However, this new social class as well as the relevance that they were acquiring in daily life has also been questioned by J. Alan Downie. 34 This scholar separates the emergence of this “middle class” from the appearance of the novel arguing that the English society in the seventeenth century remained hierarchical. He adds that it was 32 Henry Fielding published his An Enquiry into the Causes of the Late Increase of Robbers and Related Writings in 1751 as a response to an increasing worry at the numerous thefts in the country. For further reading, see Malvin R. Zirker’s An Enquiry in The Wesleyan Edition of the Works of Henry Fielding, Oxord: O.U.P., 1988. 33 Lincoln B. Faller. Crime and Defoe. A New Kind of Writing. Cambridge: C.U.P., 1993. 34 Alan J. Downie, “The Making of the English Novel”. Eighteenth Century Fiction. Vol.9.3. April, 1997, p. 249-266. 40 in the eighteenth century when the conception of a new rising class started. Yet, Downie acknowledges that a new kind of professional individuals had already appeared towards the late seventeenth century. However, he does not consider this group of professionals as a unified class due to their lack of common purposes and institutions (1997: 250). Nevertheless, even if this emerging middle class did not have in mind that they were something alien to an already established society—even if they lacked the common aim and institutions which Downie mentions—this group of people was certainly different and new. Whether they are called bourgeoisie, middle class or any other given label, they were a significant group which changed the social structure in England, as well as the development of the country’s culture. The literary taste changed. This readership demanded a new kind of literature. They wanted to read about affairs that were of their interest, and they found in broadsides and accounts of criminal lives something of uttermost importance. The current class was formed, amongst other professions, by merchants, tailors, lawyers, bankers, magistrates, clerks, tradesmen, and their respective wives—who were to play an important role in the rise of the novel. The new professions were, because of their trade, most interested in the affairs that were taking place around them, especially those that had to do with crime. Middle-class wives, found themselves in a confortable socioeconomic situation and with plenty of time to devote to the popular activity of reading. In Moll Flanders, there are numerous examples which indicate that the majority of Defoe’s readers belonged to this emerging middle class. Conscious of this, the author addresses them continuously. Moll gives advice to the readers about many aspects of city life and how to avoid being the victim of criminals. For instance, she 41 explains how to prevent being robbed by pickpockets in shops or by burglars in their homes. She also comments that it is easy to rob in a recently opened shop: “It was always reckoned a safe job when we heard of a new shop, and especially when the people were such as were not bred to shops” (1721: 228). 35 She adds as well that now readers know this and those who have shops “will be visited once or twice at their beginning, and they must be very sharp indeed if they can prevent it” (1994: 228). She gives some advice that might be of detrimental to her colleagues is the world of crime but she considers that the readers need to know: “not of the kindest sort to the fraternity, 'tis certainly a key to the clue of a pickpocket's motions, and whoever can follow it will as certainly catch the thief as he will be sure to miss if he does not” (1971: 233). Thus, in spite of not making a favour to her old comrades, Moll helps the reader to avoid theft. She explains that had the woman whose watch Molls steals, “as soon as she felt the pull, not screamed out as she did, but turned immediately round and seized the next body that was behind her, she had infallibly taken [her]” (1971: 233). The purpose of this comment is to give hints on how to catch a pickpocket and to elude robbery. These quotations from Moll Flanders illustrate that Defoe knew that most of his readers belonged to the middle classes. As Faller notes, “Defoe’s novels have been read as relatively simple indices to the concerns and problems of the “rising” middle classes in the early eighteenth-century England, as vehicles for an emerging, particularly “bourgeois” ideology (1993: xiii). All in all, it could be said that Defoe had a clear audience in mind, people who may have been interested in his writings and who 35 All quotations from Moll Flanders have been extracted from G. A. Starr’s edition. Oxford: O. U. P., 1998. 48 recent happening. He follows Foucault’s theories, envisioning the novel as a discourse. In his own words, The novel, as such, is seen not as a biological entity, nor a convergent phenomenon, but as discourse—that is, in Foucault’s usage, the ensemble of written texts that constitute the novel (and in so doing define, limit, and describe it). This ensemble by no means includes only novels and literary criticism, but may include parliamentary statutes, newspapers, advertisements, printer’s records, handbills, letters, and so on. In opening the field in this way, it is possible to trace a discourse which may be considerably wider, with different limits and rules than our modern conceptions of fiction and the novel would allow us to apply to the eighteenth century. (1991: 7) Davis’s idea of the origins of the novel represents a revolutionary stance, since by attending to the discourse there is a wider field to trace the possible influences that contributed to the rise of the novel. It is Davis’s train of thought that has been taken as a starting point for this dissertation. His idea that the discourse of fiction and the discourse of fact were purposely fused generated the hypothesis that Defoe’s Moll Flanders must derive from a non-fictional tradition rather than picaresque fiction, as it has been traditionally assumed. The same can be said of the other first novels, which claimed to be real facts that had been edited for the purpose of sharing with the reading public some kind of moral or an unbelievable event. Travel narratives fitted perfectly in an era of exploration and discoveries. Nevertheless, the literary precursors of all of them are not the same. For instance, travel narratives are still indebted to the romance. Consequently, for the purpose of this study, only criminal narratives have been selected. In Factual Fictions, Davis also points to the disengagement between the continental novel and the British novel in its origins. Again, I can only partially agree to 49 this. Depending on the type of novel, continental influence significantly varies. His statement holds true for the criminal novel, though, which finds no direct connection with continental models. It seems to be linked to Spanish and French picaresque but, as it will be explained in section 3.4, this resemblance is but superficial. Finally, Northrop Frye’s ideas should be taken into consideration in this chapter, since they can shed light on this discussion. In one of his essays, “Historical criticism: theory of modes”, Frye analyses and classifies the different literary genres by going back to the classics and the traditional Aristotelian division. He also examines the types of characters corresponding to the different literary modes. These modes do not correspond exclusively to a particular kind of genre, but they are shared by prose, poetry and drama alike. For instance, the high mimetic mode equally corresponds to “drama, particularly tragedy, and national epic” whereas “a new kind of middle-class culture introduces the low mimetic, which predominates in English literature from Defoe’s time to the end of the nineteenth century” (2000: 34). In the low mimetic mode, corresponding to comedy and realistic fiction, “the hero is one of us: we respond to a sense of his common humanity and demand from the poet the same canons of probability that we find in our own experience” (2000: 34). Frye’s ideas have been used here to compare the domestic tragedy to ballads and the early criminal novel. Tradition considers three different genres—drama, poetry and prose—but Frye’s theory of the mixture of genres makes perfect sense. They are not separate from each other but they exercise an influence on one another. The early criminal novel is not just derivative from criminal ballads, but it has more affinities to domestic tragedy than to the picaresque. 50 All in all, previous criticism, in a larger or smaller scale, has contributed to set the foundations for this research. Just as Davis’s theory relies on Michel Foucault’s notion of discourse of fact and discourse of fiction, this investigation stems from Davis’s idea that the novel is generated from a mixture—or even an intended confusion—of facts and fiction, news and novels. Davis, like Richetti, notes the importance that chapbooks, broadsides and pamphlets had for the development of the novel. Yet, these authors devote but a few pages to study the relationship between criminality and the novel. My approach will take a step further from them, since it acknowledges their contribution but goes beyond them so as to establish a solid hypothesis on the origins of the English criminal novel. On the other hand, this thesis offers a broader approach than these scholars’ previous analysis, since the time span considered here comprises over two centuries and the texts examined are not only narrative but also drama and lyric. It can be said that, unlike previous studies, it tries to determine the origins of a specific type of novel, studying in depth all the possible influences that might have contributed to its appearance and evolution. 2.4. THEORIES RELATING THE RISE OF THE NOVEL WITH CRIMINALITY AND THE BROADSIDE TRADITION The connection between crime and the novel has already been pointed out by several critics, who have examined broadsides and other proto-journalistic materials as possible precursors of the English novel. To begin with, Lincoln B. Faller contributes to this field of study with a comprehensive analysis on the relationship between crime and Moll Flanders with two different books that have been very helpful for this 51 research, Crime and Defoe and Turned to Account. 41 Nevertheless, Faller’s research is limited to the figure of Defoe and his fiction. Hal Gladfelder, however, provides a more general study on the relationship between criminality and narrative. In his study, he seek[s] to explain the connections between criminality and an emerging narrative congeries—the various extended fictions that came retrospectively to be seen as making up the early novel—which over the course of the century moved into a position of cultural centrality despite the frequent marginality and lowness of its subjects. (2001, xi) 42 Apart from providing an insightful research of criminal affairs, Gladfelder focuses on Defoe and Fielding as writers who made of crime the subject of their writings, incorporating ballads, last words and sermons to their novels. This scholar acknowledges the importance that proto-journalistic writings had for the development of the novel, disassociating picaresque from any of the native writings on criminals, considering them different types of literature. In the field of picaresque studies, the work of Frank W. Chandler has been very influential. His Literature of Roguery, 43 although more than a century old, has had an important impact on current investigations. Chandler provides a very comprehensive analysis of the literature with criminals as protagonists. His study initiates with the very first writings found in the English language and extends to what he calls “roguery in recent fiction” (1907: 469). Taking into account that The Literature of Roguery dates 41 Lincoln B. Faller, Turned to Account. The Forms and Functions of Criminal Biography in Late Seventeenth- and Early Eighteenth-century England. Cambridge: C.U.P., 1987. 42 Hal Gladfelder, Criminality and narrative in Eighteenth Century England. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2001. 43 Frank W. Chandler. The Literature of Roguery. 2 Vols. London: Archivald Constable & Co., 1907. 52 from 1907, “recent fiction” is not that recent, though. Chandler links picaresque to the early novel. He studies Moll Flanders, Colonel Jack or Roxana within the picaresque tradition. As it is argued in this dissertation, these novels are not purely picaresque. Rogue literature uses comic characters and situations to entertain the reader. The socalled picaresque “novels” are episodic and there is no definite ending, which contributed to creating sequels in many of them, even by different authors. Also, the rogue is not a criminal. There are no major crimes in picaresque and there is never a moralising purpose. But all these ideas will be dealt at length properly in a separate epigraph. Even though his proposal has been left behind by more modern approaches, Chandler’s work is still a crucial reference in studies which analyse novels with criminals as protagonists, such as the present one. In sociological and historical matters related to criminality, the publications of J. A. Sharpe have been of great help to this investigation. 44 This scholar examines crime in Britain in different periods, offering monographic studies on the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries. He pays special attention to the changes that took place in society in that period, looking into the main reasons for an increase in crime at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Sharpe also illustrates the topic with selected reprints from the British Museum in his Crime and the Law in English Satirical Prints 1600 – 1832 (1986). These are satiric plates which accompanied crime stories. Sharpe’s 44 J. A. Sharpe. Crime and the Law in English Satirical Prints 1600 – 1832. Cambridge: Chadwyck-Healey, 1986. J. A. Sharpe, “Crime and Punishment”. A Companion to Eighteenth-Century Britain. H. T. Dickinson, ed. Malden: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2002. Pp. 358- 365. -----. Crime in Early Modern England 1550-1750. Harlow: Longman, 1984. -----. Crime in Seventeenth-century England. Cambridge: C.U.P., 1983. -----. Early Modern England. A Social History 1550-1760. London: Arnold, 1987. 53 conclusions are fundamental to understand crime and its punishment in the periods predating the rise of the English novel and contemporaneous to its early years, when the novels with a criminal as a protagonist proliferated. Even if the relationship between criminality and the origins of the English novel has been extensively studied, these scholarly works mainly focus on separate aspects of the topic; they do not offer an overall idea of how the process of the rise of criminal fiction took place. Because of the lack of a definite theory, this dissertation considers the relationship between criminality and literature in order to take a step further from former analyses, intending to offer a unified perspective in a sole work. Besides, it focuses mainly on the female criminal, since most studies have considered male and female characters alike. Apart from delimiting the object of research, the prominence given to the female outlaw responds to the fact that her relevant role in this literary subgenre has not been sufficiently studied. 3. CRIMINAL LITERATURE, A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE The choice of criminal narrative for this investigation responds to the genuine English element that is found in this subgenre. Few countries other than the English speaking ones show such an interest for felons and their offences. 45 Criminal writings are a keystone for the development of the English novel as well as for the building up of one of its most popular reading categories nowadays: crime fiction. Ever since the popularisation of the detective novel in the nineteenth century, the British world has 45 There are later novels with a criminal as a protagonist, such as the classic Crime and Punishment (1866) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. However, the difference in publications between the English-speaking literature and the rest is impressive. The detective novel, which originates from the criminal novel, is likewise originally an English narrative. 54 been primarily producer and consumer of crime stories. It is a very old cultural heritage, too. Criminal literature in Britain is such a traditional and ancient genre only to be matched by legends and folktales. As the crime fiction writer Mary Higgins Clark stated in an interview, crime is in human beings’ essence ever since Adam and Eve, whose progeny’s crime was the first one in the history of Christian people. 46 Very early in history, criminals transcended their real individualities to become pseudo-fictionalised characters, being granted the sympathy of the reading public that their personae had been neglected. The case of Robin Hood is a famous but ambiguous illustration of this phenomenon due to the lack of proof of his real existence. However, there were many other true criminals that became literary characters. In the sixteenth century, conny-catching pamphlets described the way citizens were robbed or tricked by a wide variety of professionals of crime that proliferated in cities and rural areas. In 1592 Robert Greene published The Defence of Conny-Catching, a compilation of the most frequently used tricks to steal in London. It was meant to be a helpful warning against roguery. However, it started a tradition of conny-catching pamphlets in which the deeds of a criminal were narrated. Around the same period, the domestic tragedy—a purely British product not to be paralleled anywhere else in Europe— staged true murders which had taken place in the preceding years, recreating the circumstances in a similar way in which nowadays television series entertain the masses with true-based crime accounts. 46 This interview is published in the Spanish newspaper El Mundo, “El crimen es nuestra esencia desde Adán y Eva” which translates as “Crime is our essence since Adam and Eve”, accessed on the 10th of November, 2013. http://www.elmundo.es/cultura/2013/11/08/527d378a63fd3d423c8b4570.html. In this interview, Clark also affirms that in order to write crime stories she reads the news, looking for real cases that might inspire her to write fiction. Almost four centuries after the relationship between protojournalistic accounts and literature started, the same connection remains. 55 Criminal literature in Britain comprises both literary and non-literary works, such as ballads, tales, biographies but also criminal records, laws, court proceedings, sermons or last-dying speeches. These texts were broadly read although they have customarily been undervalued, as they were traditionally labelled as low literature for the masses. However, the relevance of criminal literature, as other popular genres, needs to be assessed not only for its long-term permanence but also for its contribution to the English language literary corpus. A genuinely English genre, criminal literature inspired the rise of popular literary works, such as bandits’ accounts, criminals’ pseudo-biographies or native original plays. As criminals jumped out of administrative papers into more literary pieces of writing they acquired a different status. They became sympathetic anti-heroes that ventured to steal and cheat in order to provide readers with laughter and adventures. In a society where the poorest classes were neglected the benefits that the upper ranks enjoyed, someone that stole from or even killed a landowner was acclaimed amongst the crowds. Prominent criminals turned into celebrities either for their “restorative” actions or their gruesome crimes, which were widely censored but avidly read. These stories, trials and executions were closely followed by a large amount of the population who even accompanied them on their last ordeal towards death. Capital punishments gathered thousands of witnesses who also were the readership of criminal ballads and pamphlets in which the felons’ speech was transcribed. The morbid audience saw executions as festive occasions, celebrating the death of criminals when these involved famous outlaws. It is not uncommon then that a correspondence between executions and theatrical performances was developed in the early eighteenth century. The ritual way in which executions took place, with a procession from prison to the gallows, a 56 speech on the scaffold and the pre-established roles of the executioner, parson and felon made the act resemble a play on the stage. It is a striking but effective comparison, taking into account that the authorities aimed at indoctrinating a citizenship that was becoming too keen on crime. However, the effect that the authorities achieved was quite the contrary, as public executions and the literary repertoire related to them became more and more popular. As it has been pointed out above, criminal accounts granted their protagonists sympathy, devotion and, most importantly, the benefit of long-lasting communal memory. Whereas the protagonists of proto-journalistic or legal accounts were quickly forgotten, the lives and deeds of those offenders who became part of the literary corpus were remembered hundreds of years after their deaths. Some of these malefactors became the protagonists of new works, their stories being remade so many times that they eventually acquired the status of icons or myths. Criminal stories are so tightly associated to British culture that the history of a particular village, town or city cannot be understood without them. But criminal literature did not remain a British phenomenon, as it transcended the initial geographic limits with the colonization phenomenon. Transportation became an alternative punishment for offenders; many felons were taken to New England and with them, criminal literature crossed the ocean, too. In the hands of a predominantly Puritan population, texts related to criminals became the perfect instrument to control and indoctrinate scattered people on the new wild territories of the British Empire. Court proceedings such as the Salem witch trials still have an echo nowadays. 57 All in all, criminals, executions, and the literature generated around them— whether facts or fiction, narrative or drama—had an impact on British culture and its popular expression: the novel. Hal Gladfelder has analysed the connections between criminality and what he calls “emerging narrative congeries”, which were “the various extended fictions that came retrospectively to be seen as making up the early novel” (2001: xi). All the writings that will be dealt with in this chapter—even if they are dramatic texts—made a contribution to the rise of the novel with a criminal as a protagonist. It is no coincidence that in the preceding decades to the rise of the English novel these texts, which had been viewed as low literature for so long, “moved into a position of cultural centrality despite the frequent marginality and lowness of its subjects” (Gladfelder, 2001: xi). Therefore, the present chapter is an attempt to shed light on the history of criminal writings and its evolution from the Middle Ages up to the eighteenth century in order to see the direct connection between criminality and literature, between edicts against vagabonds and the criminal novel. This section analyses the figure of Robin Hood as the first sympathetic character, but also the first instance of a mixture between fact and fiction. Also, chapbooks, jest-books and picaresque narrative illustrate the influence that continental models have had for the criminal subgenre until a native tendency emerges with Robert Greene’s Conny- Catching Pamphlets and the domestic tragedy Arden of Faversham, both dating from 1592. 3.1. CRIMINAL WRITINGS IN THE MIDDLE AGES The earliest records we have of criminals in documents date back to the seventh century. These are legal writings on the restriction of wandering chapmen, beggars or 64 genre. He collected ballads and chap-books, which were edited and later on published in compilations. His work made the preservation of this part of English folk literature possible. Some chap-books and jest-books made of criminals their main characters. Numerous stories circulated around prominent criminal figures such as Robert the Devil or Friar Bacon. Robert the Devil was a truly evil character of French origin. The legend has it that Robert, duke of Normandy, who was born after his mother promised his soul to the devil if she could beget a child. From his early years Robert proved a bloody assassin, his first victim being his school master. After becoming the leader of thieves and killers, he repented of his behaviour and travelled to Rome in order to ask the Pope for salvation. He became an exemplary knight, defending the Romans and Christianity from heathen Saracens. In the end, he was redeemed of his sins and he married the Emperor’s daughter. First recorded in a thirteenth century romance, this story became very popular in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries crossing borders and being adapted in diverse ways. It became the source for later romances, prose narratives, novels and even an operetta by W. S. Gilbert which has little to do with the original legend. The importance of Robert the Devil remains in the establishment of a pattern that will be later on followed in novels with a criminal as a protagonist: salvation through repentance. This became a favourite ending for criminals in literary fiction, even if, as in Robert’s case, their crimes were usually atrocious. Friar Bacon was a less bloody character. His story is very similar to that of Doctor Faustus, in which the main protagonist seeks knowledge through the dark arts. Friar Bacon is reminiscent of the Doctor Faustus tales that circulated in Germany in the fifteenth century. However, unlike the German character, his legend does not seem to 65 be grounded on real events. Introduced in England by Christopher Marlowe’s play Dr. Faustus, the character of the scholar related to black magic became very popular during the sixteenth century. Nevertheless, Friar Bacon’s story cannot be said to develop under Marlowe’s influence, since it is known to have been circulating during the early Elizabethan period, prior to Marlowe’s play (Lavin 1969: xvi). 52 Probably both of them had an English common source, deriving from the German stories. Unfortunately, this is just an assumption as there is no trace of such a common origin. There exist later compiled ballads and romances on the legend of Friar Bacon. Yet earlier ones have been lost. The most popular version is probably Henry Morley’s. 53 He reprinted a version of the romance, together with that of Robert the Devil. Also, Robert Greene popularised the story in his play Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (1627). The figures and narratives of Robert the Devil and Friar Bacon are just two examples of the widespread repertoire of criminal stories that circulated in Europe during the Middle Ages. In fact, most of this rogue literature is not native to the British Isles. The majority of the stories that narrated the fortunes and misfortunes of travelling rogues were of continental origin. Till Eulenspiegel, in German literature— known as Howleglass in the English version—, and Lazarillo de Tormes, from the Spanish tradition, were taken as models of rascals to develop in the Isles. Jest-books, the humourous version of chapbooks, were also of European background tradition, deriving from Latin works, such as Poggio Bracciolini’s Liber Facetiarum. Despite the significant continental influence—most of them were actually translations from French, Flemish and Latin—, there is a jest-book which is for the 52 J. A. Lavin, ed., Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay. London: New Mermaids, 1969. 53 Henry Morley, ed. Early prose romances. Reynard the fox. Friar Bacon. Robert the devil. Guy of Warwick. Virgilius. History of Hamlet. Friar Bush. London, 1889. 66 most part original and exclusive to the British Isles: A Hundred Merry Tales. Printed in 1526 by John Rastell, it seems to have been compiled from folk oral stories that circulated mainly through Britain. P. M. Zall sees it as “the closest thing we have to a distinctively native English jestbook. It is relatively untouched by alien influences and seems to be attempting for a colloquial English style” (1963: 8). 54 Zall defends that A Hundred Merry Tales is significantly different from European jest-books, especially in what concerns the realism of some anecdotes. Some other jest-books were mere translations, such as Thomas Deloney’s Mirrour of Mirth (1583), a translation from Bonaventure Des Periers’ Nouvelles Recreations et Joyeux Devis (1558). The original is a collection of stories and fables that became very popular in France and other European countries. Deloney even keeps the French air in the title, although he takes a step further from the jest-book format by making it closer to prose fiction. He seems concerned with the artistic form of the tales that makes Mirrour of Myrth more self-conscious as a literary piece of work. There are not many of these jest-books that feature women as protagonists. Yet there are enough of them to establish that women who broke the rules and behaved in a manner that did not correspond to their gender caused an added humorous effect to the narrations. The most notorious female characters were the widow Edith, Mother Bunch and Long Meg of Westminster. Westward for Smelts (1620), by Kinde Kit of Kingstone, 55 does not have a woman as a protagonist but a 54 P. M. ZALL, A Hundred Merry Tales and Other English Jestbooks of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1963. 55 The complete title of the book is Westward for Smelts, or, The Water-Man’s fare of mad merry Western wenches whose tongues, albeit like Belt-clappers they neuer leaue ringing, yet their tales are sweet, and will much content you. London: Printed for John Trundle, 1620. 67 group of them. It is a compilation of short stories along the lines of the Canterbury Tales but whose tales are told by high-spirited women. The narrator and author, a soldier in “the waterman’s garrison of Queen-hive” (1620: 6) meets a group of “Westerne fishwives, who, having made a good market, with their heads full of wine, and their purses full of coine were desirous to go homeward” (1620: 7). The narrator introduces each fishwife with a description in verse, followed by their tales in prose. The main topic is marriage and the wives’ supremacy over their husbands, who are usually outwitted by the former. The fishwife of Richmond summarises the overall idea that this group of women have of their female counterparts. In her tale, she compares the woman in her narration with Amazons, “who out of a brave minde cut their husbands throates, and so made themselves rulers of themselves” (1620: 46). Even the soldier who is taking them to Smelts, has to accept these women’s supremacy over him. Towards the end he mentions: “hearing her speaking but reason, agreed to be ruled by her, and therefore gave her the name of Captaine” (1620: 63). There is obviously a note of mockery in calling her “Captaine”, but he has to admit her authority because what she was right in her arguments. Westward for Smelts is of the interest for this thesis for another reason: the intended confusion of fact and fiction in the figure of the author. Below the title, it appears “Written by Kinde Kit of Kingstone”. It is not known if Kinde was a real person or if it responds to a fictional name. Westward for Smelts is the only work he produced and there are no further records of him. It seems more plausible that this author is an invention. He defines himself as an unemployed soldier: “I being in the waterman’s garrison of Queen-hive (wherof I am a souldier) and having no emploiment” (1620: 6). He speaks ironically about his doing in Queen-Hive. He spends his time and his money 68 in the Red Knight, an inn where he is offered the job of taking the fishwives to Kingstone. But he speaks of this inn as a “valiant and hardy champion”, as the reader only knows the Red Knight is a tavern because of a footnote. He compares the inn and the alcoholic beverage found there as the most powerful knight, who has never been defeated: if they yeeld to him in the right of his conquest, he taketh from them a certaine summe of money, according to the time that they have held out: but if they scorned to yeeld, hee not onely taketh from them their goods, but likewise with his sore blowes he taketh from them their sences, making them often to fall at his castle gate for dead, voiding at the mouth abundance of filth caused by his strokes. (1620: 6-7) In a Quixotic manner, the tavern turns into a castle and the wine or ale into the knight, which will always defeat everyone who challenges it. Because of this metaphor and the intended confusion that it generates, it is unclear if the author and narrator is in fact a soldier or just a boatman. In the Prologue, he addresses the reader, stating that he has written the work with the aim of entertaining: “for thy pleasure have I (this once) left my oare and stretcher, and stretched my wit, to set downe the honest mirth of my merry fare fishwives” (1620: 2). If he is to be believed, he must have stopped his rowing to become a writer, changing his oar for “freshwater poetry” (1620:2). Walter Smith’s XII. mery Jests, of the wyddow Edyth (1525), 56 tells the story of the widow Edith, a precursor of the female rogue. She is a very early example of the traveller who makes a living out of tricking the greedy and incautious. Her favourite 56 Carew W. Hazlitt, ed., Shakespeare Jest-books; Comprising Merie Tales of the Mad Men of Gotham. XII Mery Jests of Widow Edyth. Pasquils Jests, with Mother Bunches Merriments. The Pleasant Conceits of Old Hobson. Certayne Concepts and Jeasts. Taylors Wit and Mirth. Conceits, Clinches, Flashes and Whimzies. London: Willis and Sotheran, 1864. 69 victims are the servants of those rich men who want to marry her thinking her of fortune, too. The widow Edith initiates a tradition of women who use female charms together with their ability for disguise in order to seduce men and obtain their fortunes through marriage. There are reminiscences of the widow Edith in the stories that circulated about Mary Carleton, the German Princess, who became famous after a well-known lawsuit for making her husband believe she was rich; and Moll Flanders, who used the same technique to survive in life. Even if widow Edyth derives from picaresque stories, she presents a difference with these. This character constitutes an innovation in literature since, even if she is modelled on the German Howleglas, “the text is not serial but cumulative” (Munro 2006: 8). 57 Also, in this work there are instances of real people that had been fictionalised. Walter Smith was Thomas More’s servant. He took advantage of the notoriety of his master to describe the different members of More’s household, “blurring the line between historia and fabula” (Munro 2006: xviii). The stories need not be necessarily true, but by including More in them, Smithe added a reality component to them. Besides, it started a tendency that it will be determinant in the rise of the English novel: the factual component. Pasqvils Iest: With the Merriments of Mother Bunch (1635) 58 is another miscellaneous collection of stories and anecdotes. There are several editions and jestbooks with independent stories of Mother Bunch, which indicates that she was a 57 Ian Munro, ed., “A womans answer is neuer to seke”: Early Modern Jestbooks, 1526-1635.” Vol. 8, in Betty S. Travitsky and and Anne Lake Prescott, eds. The Early Modern Englishwoman: A Facsimile Library of Essential Works. Series III. Essential Works for the Study of Early Modern Women: Part 2. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 2006. 58 In Hazlitt, 1864. 70 popular character. According to Owen Davies, she was “a well-known London alehouse hostess” (1999: 133). 59 The earliest edition with stories of her own is the 1685 Mother Bunch Closet’s Newly Broke Open. Her narratives present her as an old woman, giving advice to young girls, particularly as regards the search of a husband or how to behave with them. She is some sort of bawd, who mixes her experience of old woman that has married three men with minor witchcraft for the fulfilment of her aims. Davies classifies Mother Bunch Closet’s as a fortune-teller chapbook (1999: 312). In a way, it is. Maybe it was so successful because it gave remedies and recipes for the search of love. Also, the protagonist was perceived as a local character that lived in the readership’s immediacies, so she was to be trusted. Finally, The Life of Long Meg of Vvestminster (1635) recounts the exploits of this female rogue on her arrival in London. It is composed of eighteen stories, each of them independent from the others. Meg was a well-known figure in seventeenth century London, but her fame spread when her exploits started to be written down. Narrations of her tricks appear well into the eighteenth century. According to Munro “a ballad about Long Meg was licensed in 1590 and a Long Meg play was apparently performed in 1594 by the Lord Admiral’s Men, but neither has survived” (2006: xxvi). Had they been preserved, it would have been extremely useful to prove the relationship between ballads, narrative and drama. Unfortunately, as it is usual with many of these compositions, they have not come down to us. Long Meg of Westminster will be discussed in depth in the text-analysis section, as its protagonist has proved to be very influential in the development of the character of Moll Flanders as well as for her part in the development of the criminal novel. 59 Owen Davies, Witchcraft and Popular Literature. 1736-1951. Manchester: Manchester U. P., 1999. 71 Towards the middle of the seventeenth century, jest-books stopped being popular; they became less original and started mirroring the most successful picaresque stories, which, like jest-books, were either translations or imitations of Spanish or French titles. In a way, jest-books did not stop their publication, they just blended with the more modern tendencies which were picaresque stories or rogue fiction. They were to become a great European success, making of rogues and picaros the central figures of their narrations. 3.4. SPANISH PICARESQUE NARRATIVE AND ROGUE LITERATURE The term “rogue” alludes to the anti-heroic protagonist in picaresque novels. Picaresque—from the Spanish “picaresca”—or rogue literature has been pointed out as the most direct ancestor of the novel, especially the novel which is the object of study in this thesis, the one which has a criminal as main protagonist. There is a long tradition that supports argument. Sir Walter Scott was one of the first scholars to pinpoint the connection between the English novel and picaresque and still nowadays there are many critics that have acknowledged a direct relationship between the two narrative genres. The picaresque novel has been given especial attention in this dissertation in order to prove that, even though it might have influenced the English novel in its early stages, the latter does not derive from the former. Many critics still see an evolution from picaresque novels into modern novels, though. Richard Bjornson, for instance, affirms that “Daniel Defoe was writing in a 72 tradition which translations and imitations of Spanish picaresque novels had helped to establish” (1979: 188). 60 Also, Margaret Schlauch states that to find the major channel of fiction reaching to our own age we have to follow the sequels of the jest-book tradition. Having received fresh nourishment from Spanish realism, especially the picaresque, that tradition was able to flower in English works to which the term realism may be applied, at least in a limited sense. (1963: 246) 61 Schlauch is right in affirming the strong indebtedness of the English novel to jestbooks. Nevertheless, the influence from picaresque literature was not as transcendental as it is traditionally believed. As this dissertation claims, the English criminal novel inherited elements from different traditions, picaresque being just one of them but not the most significant one. In my view, the criminal subgenre rather derives from non-literary sources. Being verisimilitude with real-life criminals and accounts a major feature with an evident moral purpose, this type of novel is closer to non-literary than to literary narratives. However, because of the long-standing view that picaresque was the predecessor of the criminal novel, it is necessary to provide an analysis of the affinities and differences between rogue fiction and the criminal novel. Likewise, in this chapter, several female rogues are going to be discussed comparing them to Moll Flanders with the aim of establishing a distinction between picaresque literature and the criminal subgenre. There are few studies of picaresque as exhaustive as Chandler’s Literature of Roguery (1907). He analyses the literature of roguery from its early beginnings up to 60 Richard Bjornson. The Picaresque Hero in European Fiction. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1979. 61 Margaret Schlauch. Antecedents of the English Novel. 1400-1600 (from Chaucer to Deloney). Oxford: O. U. P., 1963. 73 the early twentieth century, when he published his work. He there defines the picaresque novel in the following terms: as conceived in Spain and matured in France, the picaresque novel is the comic biography (or more often the autobiography) of an anti-hero, who makes his way in the world through the service of masters, satirizing their personal faults, as well as their trades and professions. (1907: 5) Just as jest-books, picaresque stories aimed at prompting the readers’ laughter at the expense of the rogues’ tricks. In England, these were grafted onto jest-books and mixed with different subtypes, such as the Italian novella and the traveller’s tale, as well as the criminal biography. In Walter L. Reed’s view, “the *English+ picaresque novels were generally treated as more comic versions of the popular criminal biographies or as more circumstantial versions of the Elizabethan jest-books and conny-catching pamphlets” (1984: 95). Consequently, humour is an indissoluble element when discussing picaresque. Because of its link with jest-books, it was likewise viewed as a kind of sub-literary form opposed to the more formal and serious narratives, represented, mostly, by the romance. 62 However, there is little native picaresque narrative in the British Islands. The Spanish picaresque began to make an impact on English literature by the third quarter of the sixteenth century, when the anonymous Lazarillo de Tormes (1554) was published in English. It was translated into English just twenty-two years after its publication in Spanish by David Rowland of Anglesey and it was very influential for the 62 The romance has also been claimed to be the origin of the novel. However, as this dissertation analyses the criminal novel, romances have to be left out of the discussion. Apart from those narrating the stories of Robert the Devil or Friar Bacon, there is no other romances worth of mention since their characters were rarely criminals or low class rogues. The values they defended were completely opposite to the ones exposed by the anti-heroes that some rogues became. 80 that readers could easily recognise in their mental maps. Jest-books and chap-books had already initiated this tradition. In Kit’s Westward for Smelts, for instance, as the characters move along the Thames, some of the nearby locations, such as Devonshire, Lambeth, or Hampton, are mentioned. Their final destination is Kingston. The tales that the Fishwives tell happen in their—and the readers’—vicinity. In the case of the Fishwife of Twitnam, she tells the story of a king, not a foreign king but Oswald, who was king of Northumbria during the seventh century. He founded the Lindisfarne Monastery and was canonised. Thus, the story of a native local and king is probably more engaging than if he had been a foreigner. The year 1592 marks this change in literature, as the publication of Robert Greene’s Conny-catching Pamphlets coincided with the entry of the anonymous play Arden of Faversham’s in the Stationers’ Register. Both works are pioneers in making of Britain the setting of their stories. Also, they are determinant in the rise of the English criminal novel as they added two of its most important elements: the mimesis of reality in literature and the double purpose of teaching and entertaining at the same time. 3.5.1. CONNY-CATHING PAMPHLETS Towards the end of the sixteenth century, conny-catching pamphlets were published and immediately became a complete literary success. In Chandler’s words, a “conny, cony, conie, or coney was the cant term applied to the silly victim of London rogues” (1907: 95). Conny-catching pamphlets were then the accounts of citizens that had been fooled by pickpockets and tricksters. In 1592 Robert Greene collected some 81 of the stories and published The Defence of Conny-Catchingl to make the respectable citizens aware of the most common tricks used by thieves in order to fool their victims. It was an unprecedented publication in terms of its realism and practicality, since in origin it aimed at purely unmasking the frauds of tricksters in order to prevent them. A continental antecedent was the German Liber Vagatorum, a compilation of stories of different wandering people and the tricks they had to perform in order to survive, had been published around 1510. However, the German tales are closer to the picaresque tradition than to the conny pamphlets. In this collection, only two of the stories are known to be true. Greene’s pamphlets, on the contrary, were based on authentic anecdotes that had as a main purpose to warn conies of the dangers in the big city. Greene described the tricks but he also provided specific terminology for the crimes and people involved, becoming a forerunner of the later eighteenth-century canting dictionaries. The following example is found in The Second Part of Conny- Catching: In Lifting Law. He that first stealeth, the Lift. He that receiues it, the Markar. He that standeth without and carries it away, the Santar. The goods gotten, Garbage. (Greene 1591: 17) 68 The terms that Greene explains might have been unknown for readers, who did not normally belong to the underworld since, as said above, Greene’s target audience was the victims and the common people. Therefore, he needed to explain the tricksters’ 68 Robert Greene, Second part of Conny-Catching. Containing the discovery of certaine wondrous Coosenages, either superficiallie past ouer, or vtterlie vntoucht in the first. London: 1591. The numbering is my own one because the document is not enumerated. Only the first and second pages are marked with 3 and 4. 82 ways but also their language. In a sense, his work resembles that of a journalist who mingles in the underworld in order to describe the atmosphere, the people and their argot. Greene’s Conny-Catching Pamphlets are a very early instance of the relationship between journalism and literature, which seems to have emerged hand in hand with crime and developed with it. Nevertheless, there are critics such as G. R. Hibbard, who believe that Greene’s main goal was not “to warn or to teach, but to entertain” (1951: 34). 69 Certainly, Conny-catching Pamphlets were not merely objective descriptions but Greene added anecdotes that prompted a smile on the readers’ face. This same didactic purpose was claimed by the first novelists, too; they did not wish to entertain their reading public, but to instruct them. Therefore, for the first time in the history of criminal writings, we find a relevant literary ancestor of the early novels. The accurate reflection of reality, describing real people in specific locations, which Greene used to warn his readers, was also a distinctive element in the early novels. The Defence of Conny-Catching was a success in terms of readers but, most importantly, its relevance lies in the initiation of a genre that would develop into criminal pamphlets and broadsides. With the compilation of oral stories in this book, Greene went beyond the mere writing down of facts; he moved on from “an account of rogues's tricks to the more interesting business of using rogues as anti-heroes in fiction” (Chandler 1907: 98). From the very beginning, Greene shows himself very critical towards this type of characters: They glut themselves as Vipers vpon the most lothsome, and detestable sinnes, seeking after folly with greedinesse, neuer doing any thing that is good, till they be trust vp at Tiburn: and then is a most wholsome Mithridate made of them, 69 G. R. Hibbard, ed, Three Elizabethan Pamphlets. London: George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd., 1951. 83 for by their deaths others are forewarned for falling into the like enormities. (1591: 4-5) Yet another contradicting aspect in Greene is that despite his stated disgust towards criminals exposed in the introduction, a certain note of sympathy—and even admiration for their cunning—is appreciated. In the Third Part of Conny-Catching, one of the stories deals with the robbery of a horse. Greene described how the “priggar,” the person who stole the horse, made some changes on the horse’s appearance, such as adding marks or a star on its forehead, and managed to resell this same horse to its previous owner. His story goes beyond the description of the trickery as he continues explaining how the priggar sent a letter to the horse’s owner to explain to him how he had been fooled: “*he+ sent the Gentleman word that he had his horse againe that he lost, onely he had given him a mark or two, and for that he was well rewarded, hauing twentie marke for his labour” (Greene 1591: 11). This anecdote seems very unlikely to have happened in reality, but it gives Greene the chance to make a simple connycatching story into a more elaborate narrative. It adds humour but it also helps to develop the story as the priggar is finally sent to the gallows because the letter acted as a proof of his doings. Greene showed a more explicit sympathy towards the robbers in a tale in The Second Part of Conny-Catching. In the story entitled “Of one that came to buy a knife and made first proof of his trade on him that sold it,” 70 Greene narrates how a cutler 70 The story of the cutler also appears in A Notable Discovery of Cozenage, but Greene thought it should be amended. He thus published that the same anecdote again in his Second Part of Conny-Catching, stating that This tale, because it was somewhat misreported before, upon talk had with the poor cutler himself, is set down now in true form and manner how it was done; therefore is 84 was commissioned to make a knife and to deliver it to his customer, who would pay him dearly for the service. However, in the end, it turned out that the customer was a cutpurse who severed the cutler’s purse with his own-made knife. There is, again, use of humour and irony from the title of the story until its conclusion. When the cutler boasted of his highly-priced work in front of his neighbours he realised that his purse had disappeared. Greene concludes with the following sentence: “Let the poor cutler’s mishap be the example others, that they brag not over-hastily of gain easily gotten, lest they chance to pay now as dearly for it as he did” (Hibbard 1951: 56). In this last sentence it can be inferred that Greene takes sides with the nip since, in a way, the cutler deserved punishment for his excess of boasting. H. Hibbard believes that the reason why Greene sympathised with criminals was because they aimed mostly at merchants and their goods. The newly born middle-class arose unaffectionate feelings amongst those who, like Greene or Nashe could not enjoy the wealthy status of merchants despite being in possession of a university degree (1951: 16). Finally, Greene added such realistic details to the stories that he made them not only very close to his readers, but also very vivid. He described the movements of his characters in detail, as in the following account: there no offence offered, when by better consideration, an thing may be enlarged or amended, or at least the note be better confirmed. (Hibbard 1951: 56) Greene justifies this repetition by promising that the new version is a more comprehensive and accurate one than the one included in the first publication. It might have been the case that the cutler complained of the lack of accuracy that the tale presented. Pretending that the victim is offended by the unfaithful retelling of the story could be a resource that Greene uses to add veracity to his work. However, as this is the only instance, it is most probably true that the cutler claimed a rectification in the tale. His story, even if they are inventions derived from the oral transmission, has most certainly a real basis. 85 going down Paul’s Chain, left the gentleman made a cony going up towards Fleet Street, sorry for his new counsellor and friend and wishing him good luck in the fight; which indeed was with nothing but wine pots, for joy of their late gotten booty. Near to St Dunstan’s Church the gentleman remembered himself and feeling his pocket so light had suddenly more grief at his heart than ever happen to him or any man again. (Hibbard, 1951: 63) Just as Defoe does with Moll Flanders and her wandering around the streets of London, Greene describes the itinerary that conies and nips take. In fact, some of the main characteristics that the criminal novel develops are already noticeable in Greene’s work. Consequently, Greene’s Conny-Catching Pamphlets can be confirmed to be the first relevant predecessor of the novel with a criminal as a protagonist. Greene’s work became so successful that it inspired new publications on this subject. Thomas Deloney moved a step forward. He was a ballad writer and compiler who expanded the genre into longer narrative accounts. He published works such as A proper new Ballad, breefely declaring the Death and Execution of 14 most wicked Traitors, who suffered death in Lincolnes Inne feelde neere London: the 20 and 21. of September. 1586. This ballad relates the execution of fourteen people accused of high treason against the Queen. He focuses just on the execution day, describing how they were punished. Although Deloney was highly regarded as a writer of execution ballads, his most famous creation was literary. His most famous piece, The Plesant Historie of Iohn Winchcomb, in His yovnger yeares called Iack of Newbery (1596), 71 had more than fifteen editions during the seventeenth century. 71 The consulted edition corresponds to a later reprint: The Plesant Historie of Iohn Winchcomb, in His yovnger yeares called Iack of Newbery, the famous and worthy Clothier of England: declaring his life and loue, together with his charitable deeds of great hospitality; and how he set continually fiue hundred 86 Deloney’s work narrates the life of John Winchcomb, a tailor who gets married to his lady, a widow who falls in love with him, discerning better suitors such as the parson, or the tanner. John’s modesty and acknowledgement of his lower social status makes his narration very similar to Samuel Richardson’s Pamela. As in Pamela’s situation, John does not want to marry his lady and she ends up tricking him into church. Chandler compares Iohn Winchcomb with Croce's Vita di Bertoldo. He praises Deloney’s use of realism, “for Delony gives his reader pictures of actual weavers and cobblers and their merry or heroic doings where the Italian had been content with rehabilitating fabliaux” (1907: 71). Deloney describes the society of the moment in a very accurate way. He focuses on the marital transaction between John and his widow lady, and then between John and his own maid. For this study, it is a relevant narrative due to the realistic features it displays and because it illustrates the transition of a ballad writer into a fiction writer. Yet thematically it is not related to criminality and therefore it will not be subject of further discussion. In any case, Deloney and Greene marked the beginning of two very important aspects for the rise of the English criminal novel: the relationship between facts and fiction and the characterisation of real people in literature. With the following instance, the domestic tragedy, this transition is consolidated when well-known criminals’ lives are represented on the stage in order to re-enact their crimes for the entertainment of the masses. poore people at worke, to the great benefit of the Common-wealth: worthy to be read and regarded. London, 1619. 87 3.5.2. THE DOMESTIC TRAGEDY The same year that Robert Greene published The Defence of Conny-Catching (1592), a play based on a famous murder, The Tragedy of Master Arden of Faversham, was inscribed in the Stationers’ Register. As anticipated at the beginning of this dissertation, the analysis of the domestic tragedy responds to the fact that it is a native and unique subgenre. Its main topic is the recreation of authentic crimes committed in the domestic environment. The domestic tragedy illustrates how crime made its way into literature for the first time, thus paving the path for criminal fiction. The domestic tragedy presented crimes directly drawn from ballads and pamphlets, recreating real cases of murder in the household. They marked the beginning of a realistic era due to the veracity of the cases exposed. On the other hand, the domestic tragedy also exemplifies Northrop Frye’s theory of the modes in which realistic fiction and this type of drama are interconnected because both represent the low mimetic mode. The domestic tragedy is relevant, as well, to establish a parallelism between theatre performances and executions, since this association was intended and exploited by both playwrights and the authorities. Frye separates domestic tragedy from the traditional tragedy as ascribes specific characteristics to this subgenre. He calls it low mimetic tragedy and states that in this subtype pathos is substituted by sensationalism. In his words, in low mimetic tragedy, pity and fear are neither purged nor absorbed into pleasures, but are communicated externally, as sensations. In fact the word “sensational” could have a more useful meaning in criticism if it were not merely an adverse value-judgement. (2000: 38) 88 Indeed, these tragedies are sensational or sensationalist because they look to move the audience’s feelings by reproducing a crime in which, normally, the main character is the victim. Frye speaks of heroes in tragedy and our compassion for them based on pathos. He writes that “pathos presents its hero as isolated by a weakness which appeals to our sympathy because it is on our own level of experience”. He further explains that the central figure of pathos is normally identified with a woman: “we have a whole procession of pathetic female sacrifices in English low mimetic fiction from Clarissa Harlowe to Hardy’s Tess and James’ Daisy Miller” (2000: 38). This is usually the case in literature from classical tradition until the Naturalism movement, in which the woman acts as hero but also as victim. However, protagonists of criminal narratives that I have selected for this study are not victims. Moll Flanders is definitely not a victim. She is portrayed as a real hero who, despite her adverse circumstances and her wrong choices, is able to amend her doings and move away from the fatal destiny of a criminal. She is a strong, determined confident woman who pursues her goals to achieve happiness. From her early years, she was resolute to turn into a gentlewoman and a gentlewoman she becomes in the end. Likewise, the woman selected as representative of the domestic tragedy is not a victim but a criminal. Alice Arden is another example of a self-assured woman who is able to kill to reach her purpose. The characters in domestic tragedies are thus unsympathetic; they are no longer rogues but proper criminals who commit outrageous murders in their home context. Therefore, Arden of Faversham has been preferred over the other tragedies for two main reasons: it is the oldest of the domestic tragedies and, unlike the others, the woman is the criminal. 89 As in the instance of bandits’ legends, ballads, jest-books, and the popular literature analysed so far, many domestic tragedies have been lost because they were likewise believed to be a low genre, suitable for the lower classes and not worth keeping for future readers. Those remaining are controversial in terms of classification because this categorisation varies. Although there are diverse taxonomies, most critics agree that the following can be categorised as domestic tragedies: the anonymous Arden of Faversham (1592) and Warning for Fair Women (1599), Robert Yarington’s Two Lamentable Tragedies (1601), Thomas Heywood’s A Woman Killed with Kindness, George Wilkins’s The Miseries of Enforced Marriage (1606) and A Yorkshire Tragedy (1608). L. C. Orlin, for instance, includes the anonymous Fair Maid of Bristow (1605) whereas H. H. Adams considers Rowley’s, Dekker’s and Ford’s The Witch of Edmonton (1621) as the last instance of such a subgenre. He also includes John Ford’s ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore (1633) and Thomas Middleton’s Women Beware Women (1657) as part of the genre, although he acknowledges that in the case of the latter two, they have elements of romantic tragedy. 72 Apart from the plays listed above, there were other domestic tragedies which have been lost. Numerous titles were recorded in the Stationers’ Register, some of which could have been fallen under this subgenre of Elizabethan drama. 73 Yet, despite a heterogeneous classification and the loss of many works, certain characteristics can be established from the surviving ones. The main feature that defines a domestic tragedy is the closeness with which they follow the accounts described in the ballads and sermons from which they were extracted. As H. H. Adams notes, “the typical domestic tragedy followed a pattern, the 72 For this dissertation, they fall out of the classification of domestic tragedies as both of them are set in Italy and their tragedies happen within a noble household. 73 For further reference, see Adams, pp. 193-203. 96 holidays, 81 prisoners were transported on an open cart in a sort of procession from Newgate to Edgware Road, where Tyburn gallows were located. They were allowed to stop at any of the bars on the road to have a last pint before dying. 82 At their arrival at the gallows, outlaws were welcomed by thousands of viewers. Open galleries were built there for those who could afford to be sitting during the “show,” which proves that the audience responded to a variety of classes. Felons were presented to the masses so that they could recognise those who up to that moment were mostly known in writings and oral stories. Offenders were booed or cheered; they were also thrown rotten vegetables on their way to the gallows and at the place itself. 83 Information about their lives and crimes was distributed prior to the executions’ day in order to gather the most numerous audience as possible. Normally, court proceedings were published after the trials took place and, at the day appointed for their death, a broadside or pamphlet was issued, to remind the audience who these criminals were. At an average of twenty executions per day, the citizenship could lose track of whose turn it was or what crimes were charged to them. Execution parades resembled the pageants on which morality or mystery plays were represented, with actors on top of carts followed by the audience in a symbolic 81 The bank holidays being established on Mondays can be related to the sense of festivity that Mondays had in Great Britain. 82 This tradition might be the origin of the popular saying “one for the road. Executions permeated the culture of the British Isles to the extent that even nowadays there is a big emphasis about them. There is no single historic tour in Edinburgh that does not take you to the main places of execution, as there were the pillory, the gallows and the jail. In fact, a famous pub located next to the old gallows is called “The Last Drop”, an intended pun to the last drink that prisoners were allowed to but also their last fall. 83 It seems that this tradition originated in the punishment context and was transferred to the theatrical stage, and not the other way around. 97 representation of an itinerary in a person’s life. Likewise, convicts sentenced to death would leave the prison heading towards the scaffold in a meaningful journey towards the end of their lives. They were accompanied, by thousands of people that would witness their final hours. According to V. A. C. Gatrell: Scaffold gatherings could be very substantial. After each Old Bailey sessions the routine strangulation of footpads, burglars, and horsethieves would attract 'several thousand' to Tyburn or Newgate. But when murderers, traitors, famous thieves, or rich men hanged, the numbers compared with the 100,000 or so who over several days attended Bartholomew Fair. They matched or exceeded those attending famous political meetings. (1994: 56) As Gatrell mentions, some of them were so famous that they gathered thousands of people who went to see the parade or the execution act because these criminals were considered celebrities. In John Amy Bird Bell’s execution, 84 in 1831, “there were not fewer than eight thousand persons present” (Pelham 1841). 85 The late date indicates that public executions continued to be very popular until they were abolished in 1868. The execution parade is mentioned, for instance, in a sixteenthcentury ballad, The Araigment, and Execution, of a wilfull and obstinate Traitour, named Eueralde Ducket, alias Hauns 86 : 84 John Amy Bird Bell’s story will be later on discussed for being a relevant case in the history of crime, executions and crime literature. He was the last young boy to be executed in Britain, at the age of fourteen years old. 85 Candem Pelham, Chronicles of Crime; OR, The New Newgate Calendar. Being a Series of Memoirs and Anecdoes of Notorious Characters who Have Outraged the Laws of Great Britain from the Earliest Period to the Present Time. London: Printed for Thomas Tegg, 1841. 86 The pamphlet The Araigment, and Execution, of a wilfull and obstinate Traitour, named Eueralde Ducket, alias Hauns: Condemned at the Sessions house for high Treason, on Friday, being the 28. of Iuly, and executed at Tiborne, on Monday after, being the 31, day of the same Moneth. 1581 was gathered by 98 On Monday being the 31. of Iuly, he was brought to Tyborne the appointed place of Execution, being drawen from the prison of Newgate, upon a humble, and godly preachers all the way exhorting him. The preachers could be understood literally, as clergy men normally accompanied the offenders to soothe their fears and hear last hour confessions. However, the writer could be making reference to the attendants, who would be shouting at the convicts. These parades remained popular until the end of public executions. Convicts were well-acclaimed figures, some of them paragon to modern celebrities. Shani D’Cruze and Louise Jackson support this view arguing that “the popular culture of the early eighteenth century, voiced in canting ballads, associated thieves with bravado” (2009: 45). 87 Pieces of their clothes or the rope they had hanged from were kept as tokens. They were examples of people that had overcome life’s adversities by trying to find a way out. They had stolen, extorted or killed for the sake of survival or to improve in a society that denied any sort of privilege to those born among the lower classes. Aphra Behn illustrates this iconic aspect of criminals in The Fair Jilt; or The History of Prince Tarquin and Miranda. When Prince Tarquin is condemned to be beheaded and the executioner blows his scimitar, the sawdust that was covering the scaffold was impregnated with his blood. According to the narrator, the response of the crowd was the following: “murmurs of sighs were heard from the whole multitude, M. S. London: John Charlewood and Edward White in 1581. It is kept in the National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh. 87 Shani D'Cruce and Louise A. Jackson, Women, Crime and Justice in England since 1660. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. 99 who scrambled for some of the bloody Saw-dust, to keep for his memory” (Behn 1886: 46). In this case, simple sawdust is kept as a token of the executed. In other instances, as in the execution of the infamous William Burke, the body-snatcher, “a struggle took place among the officials present for scraps of the rope with which he had been hanged, shavings of his coffin, and other relics of a similar character” (Pelham 1841: 183). 88 There is a coincidental resemblance with saints in the relic keeping but an intended one in the way their deeds were told, since criminals’ stories are derivative of saints’ lives narrative. 89 In many instances, criminals’ are made the subject of pity by telling how their ill fate took them to the wrong path. The fact the gallows were so popular was not only due to the people’s morbidity; the authorities were interested in making these punishments massively attended. Public justice was thought to be effective as a means to discourage future offenders, making them consider the dreadful end for those who took the path of crime. However, far from curbing more crimes, executions were very popular to watch because people enjoyed them; as aforesaid, they were considered festive occasions. In 1868 public executions were abolished since the authorities acknowledged that they were not really a deterrent to other criminals. They continued within the Newgate walls until 1964, when the last of the hangings took place. Executions have been compared with the theatre because the audience was provided with a catharsis similar to that experienced with dramatic performances. The same way that morality plays tried to produce catharsis on the audience through the 88 Burke’s death mask and other memorabilia, such as a wallet made out from his skin are still one of Edinburgh’s Surgeon’s Hall’s attractions. 89 For further information, see McKeon, 1988: 96-113. 100 representation of crime and punishment, executions followed the same pattern of salvation through repentance. Criminals, executioners and parsons were like characters on top of the stage whereas the audience was basically the same that attended popular playhouses. All social classes participated. Criminals normally delivered a speech in which they repented from their crimes and warned from the evil ways that had led them to that situation. These moralising speeches with a moral intention— which were later on compiled as “Last Dying Speeches”—resembled an actor’s monologue at the closing of a play. Ballads and pamphlets, whether narrating criminals’ lives or reproducing last dying speeches, did not only act as publicity and lure of the executions that would take place but also as a reminder that crime always pays. It is difficult for a modern mind to imagine that Early-modern English population enjoyed executions so much and, of course, that an established “performance” and speeches on top of a scaffold were identified as dramatic elements. However, there is no doubt of this intended relationship by the associations between reality and fiction, executions and the theatre; in the audience’s mind a strong connection between the two activities was built. However, there was a striking difference: death was real. To conclude, it has to be highlighted that the connection established between crime, executions, related documents, and the native literature that sprang from them, was an on-going process that lasted for many years. In almost three centuries of criminal records, the literature that executions generated was extensive. Even though the quality of these texts varies, they cannot be considered literary pieces of good quality. In any case, these texts are of extreme importance for the topic of the present 101 dissertation. They were published in numerous quantities, a fact that evidences the morbidity of the reading public in a way that could only be deemed as low-class entertainment. Yet, the truth is that such an impressive amount on sales can only mean that most individuals in the British Isles and its colonies developed a taste for criminal stories. 3.6. EARLY CRIMINAL BIOGRAPHIES As discussed above, the fictionalisation of real events first took place in the theatre because of the similarity prompted by the scaffold and the stage. Although early broadsides related to outlaws and executions, criminal biography can be considered a late subgenre. According to Lincoln B. Faller, “for Defoe and his original audience, criminal biography was a well-established but relatively recent phenomenon, not something of long inheritance” (1993: 4). The earliest illustrations are from the beginning of the seventeenth century, but they cannot be said to be a consolidated genre until the middle of the twentieth century. The staging of crimes and the popularity that domestic tragedies acquired paved the way for longer prose accounts. Probably the Puritan ban on theatres in 1642 pushed the transfer of criminals from one genre to the other. An extremely successful subgenre as it was the domestic tragedy was abruptly abandoned. Yet the readership demanded to know more about the details of certain crimes or to be given further information on their protagonists’ 102 backgrounds and motivations. It is not accidental that the forced decline of the domestic tragedy coincided with the beginning of the extended criminal fiction. 90 These biographies, written in a sermon-like form, had the felon as first-person narrator and pursued a moralising goal. One of the best known of those early biographies was “The Life and Death of Gamaliel Ratsey, a Famous Theefe of England” (1605), probably written by Thomas Pavier. This real-life outlaw is still quite a comic character resembling the ones offered in jest-books or conny-catching pamphlets but he represents a significant step towards a longer and individualised narrative. Criminal biographies only became popular in the mid-seventeenth century when writers and editors realised of the interest of readers in these narratives while acknowledging the difficulties to stage them. They acquired different formats. They could appear as a collection of lives and deeds of the most infamous criminals, or as monographs, if the offender himself or herself was famous enough. That was the case of the texts that will be analysed further on. The German Princess and Long Meg of Westminster were so well-known outlaws that they gave rise to several publications about them. Criminal biography made its way through the literary scene almost at the same time journalism was beginning to dawn. Hence, the beginnings of both phenomena are closely interconnected, since both stem from a common original source, which was the ballad. The second half of the seventeenth century witnessed the outspread of newspapers as we know them today, including several pages, news about important and recent events, and advertisements. They also incorporated criminal biographies within their pages. Daniel A. Cohen believes that “English newspapers had turned to 90 The last of the so-considered domestic tragedies is Rowley’s, Dekker’s and Ford’s The Witch of Edmonton (1621) while the first proper criminal life is Long Meg of Westminster (1635). 103 crime accounts to attract readers as early as the mid-seventeenth century, and the papers that proliferated during the late 1690s and thereafter often provided extensive coverage of crimes, trials, and executions” (2003: 15). 91 That they included crime as an essential element in their editorials is true, but crime was just part of them as it was part of everyday life in Britain. The introduction of gruesome stories corresponded mostly to a reading taste that editors took advantage of in order to increase their sales. With the advent of the British Empire, colonisers rapidly started to spread their culture, taking with them the literature to new territories. North America settlers—and transported felons—brought with them the readings in vogue in the motherland at the time. New England experienced a quick development of the printing industry that rapidly distributed pamphlets and broadsides narrating the lives of criminals. Conversion narratives, trial reports, newspaper stories, crime novels and similar accounts of the deeds of felons could be read all over the colonies. Execution sermons and last dying speeches turned out to be the preferred ones among this kind of writings, although a variety of genres sprouted. According to Daniel A. Cohen, “during the late seventeenth century, when ministers still dominated the local print culture, the first publications served as instruments of religious authority” (2003: ix). Puritans, who had emigrated in vast quantities, became very fond of the so-called “criminal conversion narrative”, in which the criminals underwent a spiritual transformation, repented of their sins and became exemplary Christians. During the eighteenth 91 Daniel A. Cohen, Pillars of Salt, Monuments of Grace. New England Crime Literature and the Origins of American Popular Culture, 1674-1860. Oxford: O.U.P, 2003. 104 century, sermon-like forms suffered a change of perspective, with felons gaining their own voice to tell their stories in the first person. One of the earliest and best known criminal accounts was that of the Salem trials for witchery which took place in Massachusetts in the years 1692 and 1693. Twenty people were executed, but more than two hundred were accused. 92 As Bernard Rosenthal writes, few topics in American culture have received the broad attention received by the Salem witch trials. The subject of scholarly tomes, films, television shows, folklore, and newspaper cartoons, and the vehicle for countless metaphors of oppression and persecution, Salem has had a powerful hold on American imagination. An event that by some European standards of witchcraft persecutions would be relatively minor in its magnitude has achieved an archetypal status in our own country and in others. (1993: 1) 93 As he states, they became very famous not only in the new but also in the old continent, but it was thanks to the literature generated around them. The film and television shows and newspaper cartoons came with the twentieth century, as well as most scholar investigations. Yet the Salem trials trigger such an interest due to their survival in literature through the centuries. 94 This is, precisely, what marks the difference between this case and other witch hunts. Whereas Britain’s greatest witch- 92 For a viewing on the trial transcripts, see the online source “The Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive and Transcription Project: http://salem.lib.virginia.edu/texts/transcripts.html or Bernard Rosenthal’s Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt. Cambridge: C. U. P., 2009. 93 Bernard Rosenthal. Salem Story. Reading the Witch Trials of 1692. Cambridge: C. U. P., 1993. 94 Some of the earliest literary adaptations of this case are John Neal’s Rachel Dyer, the poem “The Weird Gathering” (1831), by John G. Whittier, or the anonymous The Salem Belle: A Tale of 1692, published in 1842. One of the cases most famous literary interpretation is Arthur Miller’s The Crucible (1953), which uses the account as an allegory of Senator Joe McCarthy’s hunt for communists and leftwing sympathisers. 105 trial in North Berwick 95 has almost been forgotten outside of Scotland, the Salem case is known worldwide. Criminal biographies contributed not only to the creation of a new type of fiction but also to the retention of real cases that would have been otherwise lost in time. Gatrell discusses the case of John Amy Bird Bell, who was 14 years old when he was tried and executed in 1831 for murder. His death had barely any coverage in newspapers even when he was an exceptional case, a young victim of the gallows. Gatrell describes the case as follows: The Times's report was only a few inches long; in other papers the case went unnoticed. A penny broadside was published for the London streets, but it used the story to advise readers to 'keep from evil ways'. This scant attention was odd, given the rarity of child-hangings after 1800. Although there were famous hangings of youngsters in the later eighteenth century, none other than Bell's has been attested in the early nineteenth. There should have been some fuss. But were it not for Wakefield's fiction, Bell would have disappeared from history as quietly as he did from life. (Gatrell 1994: 4) It is then thanks to the transformation of a real person into a literary character what ensures Bell’s story acknowledgement in the present time. Edward Gibbon Wakefield, the author of this criminal narration, paradoxically humanises Bell more than journalists did in newspapers just by treating the boy as a character. The step from real person into literary fictional being probably helped readers to detach themselves from such a thorny issue as the execution of a teenager. Thus, the 95 North Berwick Witch Trials have been the most important witchcraft trials in Britain due to the high number of suspects and because this case was commissioned by King James VI himself. A whole chapter will be dedicated to this case as an example of trial report which had a special figure involved, as it was the king himself. 112 from taking that path. At the same time, it persuaded those already on it to repent and abandon their lives of sin. Many of the convicts were hanged, flogged or transported. The legal code was often reformed during the eighteenth century, so as to offer solutions to the crime wave. It became so cruel that during the nineteenth century it earned the nickname of “Bloody Code”. The so-called Black Act was passed in 1723—a year after the publication of Moll Flanders—and it included the most extensive increase in the number of offences classified as capital in that century. The last public hanging took place on the 26th of May, 1868, before The Capital Punishment Amendment Act was passed. Executions continued to be a source of discipline for a variety of crimes but they were confined to prisons until capital punishment was completely abolished in 1998. Yet while punishment was open to the general audience, executions were impregnated with a social sense. They were considered both as a source of entertainment and as a way of social redemption for the criminal. Moreover, they set a clear example of the consequences that crime could bring along. The didactic aim of executions went hand in hand with the purpose of last dying speeches and criminal biographies. According to Faller “at least as far back as the Tudors, public executions in England offered criminals –or could impose upon themthe opportunity to speak to the assembled crowd. By Defoe’s time these speeches had become highly ritualized affairs” (1993, 8). They were meant to act out as a moral example of a life of sin and crime which ended up in repentance but, unfortunately, also on the scaffold. As Sharpe explains, crime had long been a matter of interest to the popular press. Pamphlets describing horrible murder, and other especially newsworthy crimes had been published since the Elizabethan era, and continued to flourish over the eighteenth century. They were joined by more compendious works describing the lives of highwaymen, 113 murderers and other notorious criminals, and, as the century progressed, by a wide range of literary treatments of crime and criminals. (2002: 364) In England there was thus a tradition of criminal accounts as well as a general interest on the part of the audience or reading public. It is no wonder that as crime grew, executions increased and, consequently, the literature generated around them took off. From the late seventeenth century onwards, there appeared more journalistic accounts with the regular printed narratives of the proceedings of the Old Bailey sessions. They served as material for more literary works that would emerge from about 1750. Newspapers also printed frequent stories of criminal accounts that had taken place on the same day. Through the local press, victims tried to broadcast their losses while they alerted the public of the danger encountered on the streets. They provided evidence of many crimes but, as well as nowadays, more crimes were committed than those that were reported. In these accounts it can also be seen the collective hysteria and panic that surrounded the eighteenth century society, who could not understand how such a criminal wave had emerged. As there was a general concern on the abundance of crime during the period, major works were written with the attempt of analysing crime, its causes and its possible remedies. One of the most relevant works of this type may be Henry Fielding’s An Enquiry into the Causes of the Late Increase of Robbers, and some Proposals for Remedying this Growing Evil, published in 1751. Eighteenth century people thought that they were living an unprecedented crime wave and they were eager to know and were curious to read about criminals. A morbid appetite grew among the reading public of the age, which made them devour everyday stories on criminals’ biographies. 114 This diffusion of criminal accounts was made thanks to the development of the printing technology. The popularisation of newspapers and broadsides made the circulation of criminals’ stories quick. The weekly journals increased their coverage of ordinary accounts, pamphlet lives and collections such as Alexander Smith’s A Complete History of the Lives and Robberies of the Most Notorious Highway-Men, Footpads, Shop-Lifts, and Cheats, of Both Sexes, since they were what interested the contemporary readers (Backsheider, 1990: 2). Defoe took into account this eagerness in knowing about criminal lives and began to publish extensively on crime and criminals. Applebbe’s Journal, a paper to which Defoe is thought to have contributed, specialised in the lives and trials of pirates and felons. The fact that such books by Defoe and others sold well shows that the subject matter of Moll Flanders was of real interest to his contemporaries. It should be finally added that crime in the eighteenth century was not a matter of concern only during that time and for Defoe’s contemporaries. Nowadays there are still many theories that try to explain the rise in criminality throughout the eighteenth century. For instance, Gwenda Morgan and P. Rushton have pointed out, that On the causes of crime, theories of the social origins of criminality which stress collective social and economic circumstances such as poverty jostle with doctrines of personal autonomy which emphasise individual responsibility. The presence of large outcast populations–the “underclass” of today is viewed with the same wariness as the wandering poor of earlier centuries—raises the same questions: whether the limits of society’s moral consensus are reached when so many are excluded from normal social life. Such moral diversity was inevitable in a class society. Yet for many poor victims of crime in any century, 115 the poverty of the criminal’s background is not a matter of sympathy: rather, they have always felt a strong need for the law’s protection. (1998: 3) 102 This might explain why the eighteenth century is so fascinating for scholars in multiple disciplines. It was an era of many social, economic and literary changes, among others. Important British cities, as London or Edinburgh, shaped themselves in the way we know them today, with their main architectural innovations but also with their unique character given by the people who populated their streets. A proper understanding of this crucial moment in history leads to a better analysis of our society. Hence, most of our current socio-economic problems are derivative of those generated in the eighteenth century, social exclusion and crime among them. 6. THE FEMALE CRIMINAL Even if there have always existed female criminals, up to the eighteenth century they were not normally as notorious as men. With the rise of crime at the turn of the century there was an increase in the amount of female offenders. They also acquired a new role as professionalised thieves and took part in gangs and associations of pickpockets. Until that moment, the woman who was taken to justice had to respond to accusations of whoring, witchery or infanticide, 103 which were typically female offences in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period. Whoring was normally the first step into criminal activity. When industrialisation happened, many women 102 Gwenda Morgan and P. Rushton. Rogues, Thieves and the Rule of Law. The Problem of Law Enforcement in North-East England, 1718-1800. London: Routledge, 1998. 103 Most of the instances that have been selected from literary texts were women whose first sin was sexual. Once their virtue was ruined they moved into prostitution, thievery or even murder. At the same time, they were called witches because of their wrong doings, even if they were not involved in sorcery and superstition. 116 moved to the city from a rural environment escaping from poverty in search for a better life. They were attracted to the possibilities that the metropolis could offer to them. A large proportion of the women who migrated to the cities started their days as maids who being young and naïve became perfect targets of their masters’ indecent proposals. They were convinced to become their mistresses with the promise of a future marriage and a life together. Once they were abandoned, they easily moved from the arms of a man into the ones of another, seeking for protection. Eventually, once they lost their youth and innocence, they ended up becoming prostitutes. Such is the story that Moll Flanders narrates. But Moll’s pseudo-autobiography is nothing but a reflection of the many cases that took place at the turn of the century. Jails were full of women that had begun their days as naïve mistresses and had ended up as professionalised criminals. Once they entered the prostitution world, it was relatively easy for them to move into thieving from their own customers. Pawnbrokers offered these women the possibility of earning extra cash by selling the stolen items without enquiring their origin. Prostitutes frequently stole from their customers. Through pawnbrokers, who often acted as their advisors, they found a connection to other women and men who worked as well in the underworld. They felt thus part of a community which fulfilled their need of belonging after the sense of alienation left first, when moving from the country into the metropolis, and second, when they were abandoned by their first lovers. They frequently became associated to male thieves through a sentimental relationship, thus moving from whoring and occasional thieving into organised 117 crime. 104 A couple could form a gang, even when they had children, who eventually came to take part in the ‘family business’. Single women and widows could also survive on their own resorting to theft, prostitution and trickery. In young age they used their beauty, while when they aged they had to resort to their intelligence. Many of them used their experience to instruct younger women and help them in the “business”. They frequently moved from active thieves and prostitutes to pawnbrokers or bawds. Prior to the eighteenth century, it is difficult to find women in the Ordinary’s Accounts or proto-journalistic writings. This could respond to the fact that they did not normally commit crimes considered as high offence. Women are not prototypically murderers. They are not strong, so they have to resolve to use either their body or their dexterity and intelligence. Women were more keen to disguise than men. They could not run as fast as a man pursuing them, so they changed their clothes when 104 Jonathan Wild, for instance, worked with a woman, Mary Milliner, who was his partner in love and business. In the Newgate Calendar their relationship is described in the following terms: In this prison was a woman named Mary Milliner, who had long been considered as one of the most abandoned prostitutes and pickpockets in the town. After having escaped the punishment due to the variety of felonies of which she had been guilty, she was put under confinement for debt. An intimacy soon commenced between this woman and Wild, and they had no sooner obtained their freedom than they lived under the denomination of man and wife. By their iniquitous practices they quickly obtained a sum of money, which enabled them to open a little public house in Cock Alley, facing Cripplegate church. Milliner being personally acquainted with most of the depraved characters by whom London and its environs were infested, and perfectly conversant as to the manner of their proceedings, she was considered by Wild as a most useful companion; and indeed very materially contributed towards rendering him one of the most accomplished proficients in the arts of villainy. The Newgate Calendar, in its digital version can be accessed on http://www.exclassics.com/newgate/ng175.htm. 118 committing robberies in order to mislead possible witnesses. They frequently disguised as men. By hiding the fact that they were women they had high chances of not being identified if caught in any of their criminal activities. Also, they normally masked their identity pretending to be high-class customers in order the avoid suspicion in shops. Besides, if they were in search of a husband, an appearance of rich widows brought them a higher success. As Morgan and Rushton state, “statistical overviews of modern female criminality identify gendered patterns of crime in which women’s actions appear less violent and less threatening than those of men” (1998: 95). Women’s crimes, apart from being fewer, are also of a lower relevance and thus published in a lesser degree. However, as the eighteenth century advances, women start to become the protagonists of many of the thefts and burglaries that take place in London and other big towns all around the British Isles. Morgan and Rushton assert that, “although relatively little involved in violent robbery and burglary, women turned up in large numbers, particularly before the lower courts, prosecuted mostly for stealing clothes, household goods, or valuable materials such as cloth” (1998: 208). Sharpe has analysed the amount of thefts committed in Durham and Northumberland during the eighteenth century and he states that “nearly a third of those accused of theft at the assizes and quarter sessions were women” (2002: 360). 105 Women took thus another section of the daily life that up to that point was mostly reserved for men. The reason behind the increase in feminine criminality during the eighteenth century is due to the poor socioeconomic circumstances that they found themselves in. They had much to do with women’s incorporation into organised crime. As it has 105 H. T. Dickinson, ed. “Crime and Punishment”. A Companion to Eighteenth-Century Britain. Malden: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2002. Pp. 358- 365. 119 been pointed out above, female criminality in cities and towns has been associated with migration patterns that resulted in female-dominated urban populations. Women outnumbered men in many urban centres in England as a result of migration from rural areas. When they left the countryside to live in town, they experienced a greater independence from male dominance. The city and the town offered opportunity, diversion and relative freedom from patriarchal constraints. Pat Carlen notes that “a recurrent theme in the relatively few autobiographies and biographies of women criminals is the women's disdain and active dislike for the constricting social roles that have been systematically ascribed to women through the ages” (1988: 18). 106 Women resorted to crime when their other options did not work. The disenchantment of arriving to the metropolis and finding out that there were not so many jobs and possibilities as they thought led them to the path of crime. Ambitious women, such as Moll Flanders wanted more than a poorly paid employment. Therefore, crime was the solution to the needs they have in order to escape the patriarchal system that the found themselves in. It provided them with a way of having the financial and therefore total control of their lives. There was a big difference between men and women offenders. Women had the possibility of being with pregnant, and they used this natural disposition to try to get a pardon from the authorities. It was quite frequent in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries for women found with child to receive some kind of special treatment. As Bell explains, “women might be reprieved of capital offences if they could prove they were pregnant –‘pleading the belly’ as it was known- and they often had their sentences lessened by the ‘pious perjury’ of courts deliberately understating 106 Pat Carlen. Women, Crime and Poverty. Oxford: O. U. P., 1988. 120 the gravity of offences” (1991: 99). Being pregnant did not always save them from the gallows, as many times authorities waited until the child was born and then they were executed. But nonetheless convicts tried their best to get pregnant as their last chance to salvation. Apart from that special deference towards women, they were pretty much treated in a similar way as men. Bell writes that “women who stepped out of the line and were apprehended might be hanged, transported, burnt in the hand, flogged, pilloried and treated with the full severity of the penal code when circumstances dictated, just like men” (1991, 98). Transportation became quite fashionable during Defoe’s time, and he proves to be a defender of this measure, as it can be inferred from his novels. Both Moll Flanders and Colonel Jack repent and recover a life of morality and virtue after being transported. Female criminality—other than whoring and infanticide—was seen as deviant and against women’s nature. Female criminals were thought to be masculine since criminality was not supposed to be a feminine characteristic. 107 This type of women was thought to have some kind of psychological deviance, since to be related to a life of sin was against their motherly instinct. Having a profession, especially, if that profession was in the criminal world, was not thought to be a female activity. According to John Rietz, “the roles of woman and criminal were perceived as mutually exclusive” (1991: 183). 108 From a present-day perspective Carlen and Worral add the following consideration: 107 Moll Cutpurse, above other offenders, became so-well known because of her travestite appearance. She was frequently portrayed smoking a pipe and in men’s apparels. 108 John Rietz. “Criminal Ms-Representation: Moll Flanders and Female Criminal Biography”. Studies in the Novel, 1991 Summer; 23 (2): 183-95. 121 Female criminals have been consistently portrayed down the ages as peculiarly evil and depraved, and as unstable and irrational. Often their irrationality is linked to their biological and their psychological nature. Paradoxically, they have been depicted as unfeminine and hence unnatural (Lombroso and Ferrero 1895) or alltoo-feminine (Pollak 1950). More modern sociologists of deviance were also guilty of making similar assumptions by claiming that female deviance was mainly sexual in nature (Cohen 1955). Yet the overwhelming evidence from the studies under review is that women offenders, whose offences are, for the most part property crimes, are largely economically motivated. (1987: 18) 109 Whether their motivation was economical or purely rebellious, what it remains true is that the dichotomy of woman and criminal made them very attractive to the readership, who saw them as outsiders. They were rare and, therefore, they needed to be analysed and understood. Both fiction and non-fiction writers started giving more protagonism to female offenders, out of personal interest and because they realised that there was a market for it. The following analysis of documents will illustrate this affirmation. 109 Pat Carlen and Ann Worrall. Gender, Crime and Justice. Philadelphia: Milton Keynes, 1987. 128 the monarch, criminality, religion, and the discovery or birth of abnormal people, mainly children that had been born with an interesting deformity. The following example dates from 1637 and is already written in prose: The Two inseparate brothers. OR A true and strange description of a Gentleman (an Italian by birth) about seventeene yeeres of age, who hath an imperfect (yet living) Brother, growing out of his side, having a head, two armes, and one leg, all perfectly to be seen. They were both baptized together; the imperfect is called Iohn Baptist, and the other Lazarus. Admire the Creator in his Creatures. To the tune of The Wandering Iewes. (Shepard, 1973: 17) News about malformations was of special interest, as it can be accounted by the huge number of ballads and broadsides that cover the subject. Criminality arose special expectation, too, proving the morbid taste of an audience that influenced the new publications. In the defence of this eager-for- criminals audience it has to be said that at a time when executions occurred almost on a daily basis, it was normal that criminal accounts draw so much interest. 115 Shepard, in her History of Street Literature (1973), explains to what extent street life, executions and criminal ballads were intrinsically related and played an important part of everyday life during the sixteenth century: Ever since the growth of towns and cities, the street and the market-place have been the great theatre of the people, the stage for comedy and tragedy. In 115 Criminals’ lives could have been for the people at the time what yellow press is for nowadays society. 129 medieval times, the folk passion plays were acted out by strolling players, blending verses from oral tradition with the magic of primitive stage technique. At other times the streets and public places have seen the dimly understood remnants of old folk festivals and processions. For centuries the great real-life dramatic spectacle of the streets was the public execution, staged with a sweating cast of thousands and the horrifying vulgarities of dishonourable death. (1973: 36) Subsequently, it is understandable that if executions were a daily life activity, narrations about those criminals’ lives and deeds were of daily consumption, too. As explained above, there were many sympathetic criminals who, by the time they were punished, had gained both the audience and the writers’ support. This is understandable since many of the hands who contributed to broadsides and pamphlets were so immersed in the underworld that they were almost part of them. Daniel Defoe, for instance, had contact with several criminals while he was imprisoned, becoming fond of them, as he proved by both his writings of their lives and the extended fictions that there were his early novels. Writers such as Defoe did not only think in the criminal as a profitable character, but they truly sympathised with them, as it is perceived in the texts. There was a variety of styles to narrate the lives of those outlaws. As Gatrell expresses it, the tome of these communications was far from uniform. The felon's game death, the ironic approbation of it, the inversion and subversion of the law's rituals, the sentimental tears which sometimes flowed, the execration of but secret wonderment at the murderer, the capacity to assimilate and cope with such horrors and even to approve of them—all these crowd responses had correlatives and sources in street culture. But if there was a dominant tone, it was a sardonic or mocking tone. (1994: 119) 130 The mocking tone gave these writings a sympathetic perspective, but it also made life and death be perceived in a trivial way. Criminals risked their life every day and capital punishment was the end to their adventures for many of them. But it was a way of life that made ordinary people enjoy the reading of offenders’ exploits, so even when the ending was a sad one and there was a moral intention, the sardonic or mocking tone that Gatrell mentions was still present. Even though ballads, broadsides and pamphlets are considered the forerunners of modern newspapers, the concept of ‘news’ was somewhat different to the idea that our modern mind has of the retransmission of information. At the time, news were “either true or fictional events, quotidian or supernatural occurrences, and affairs that may have been recent or several decades old” (Davis, 1997: 50). Even though sometimes the events related were supernatural, they insisted on the veracity and recentness of the facts. In many criminal ballads, the criminals themselves were the ones who told their lives until the moment of their death, which seems quite improbable. The ballad entitled “The Last Words of James MackPherson Murderer”, presents the convict narrating his live and sins until the very moment he is going to be hanged. Than wontonly and ratingly I am resolv’d to die And with undaunted Courage I Shall mount this faull Tree. 116 As it can be appreciated by his last his words, the convict seems to have finished writing his ballad just before climbing to the scaffold, which seems quite improbable. 116 Broadside ballad entitled ‘The Last Words of James MackPherson Murderer’, from the NLS digital collection, http://digital.nls.uk/broadsides/broadside.cfm/id/14482. 131 But to solve the problem of the readers’ distrust at this mixture of facts and fiction, readers were prompted to visit the publisher’s office where they could have a look at the original documents on which the narrated accounts were based. Or that is, at least, what they were promised. In order to illustrate this not very trustworthy aspect of ballads, the following example is provided. This ballad is found on the edited edition of Samuel Pepy’s: A Monstrous Shape. Or a shapeless Monster. A Description of a female creature borne in Holland, compleat in every part, save only a head like a swine, who hath travailed into many parts, and is now to be seene in LONDON, Shees loving, courteous, and effeminate, and nere as yet could find a loving mate. (Rollins 1922: 449) 117 This piece of news is interesting in more than one aspect. First of all, to show how any abnormality was considered “news” and not just events of extreme importance, as it would be the association that nowadays correspond to the same term. It seems more like a circus or a freak show advertisement rather than a piece of news, but this proves that “news” had the sense of “novelty”, something extraordinary in the sense that it was outside the ordinary events. Besides, it also certifies how doubtful the veracity of the contents included in ballads could be. There is no need to check on the truth of such an announcement; even if this woman had a monstrous head, it is impossible that it was a pig’s head. The ballad is illustrated with a woman holding a fan in her hand and a pig’s head, an image more suitable of a comic book than of a newspaper illustration. Nevertheless, it seems that the readers may have believed these deformities to be true because in 1815 there is another broadside published with the title “Fairburn (Senior’s) 117 H. Rollins, ed. A Pepysian Garland. Black-Letter Broadside Ballads of the Years 1595-1639. Chiefly from the Collection of Samuel Pepys. Cambridge: C. U. P., 1922. 132 Portrait of the Pig-Faced Lady, of Manchester-Square. Drawn from the information of a female who attended on her.” And it must have been a popular one, since the reprint is the “Second edition, with additions” (Shepard: 1973, 183). Many of these ballads included accompanying woodcut illustrations, a few of them depicting the reader observing the events, thus decreasing the distance between reader and text. They acted as a device to attract readers, who would pay attention to the illustration before reading the usual long titles. 118 However, most of these woodcuts were not original; they were expensive and therefore used to illustrate ballads, pamphlets, broadsides or even books. They tended to comply with a general topic and they reproduced the image of it, as an easy way to classify the type of ballads or the content included in them. The woodcut in a ballad called “Damnable Practices” is representative of how illustrations worked. This ballad, which tells the story of Doctor Lamb and his witchcraft practices, uses as illustration the famous Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus print of the scholar encircled in a set of inscriptions and a book in his hand while the devil appears from the floor next to him. 119 “The Tragedy of Doctor Lamb” dates back to 1628, the year when Doctor Lamb was killed by the street mob for his supposed practices. Marlowe’s play is from 1620, 120 from which it can be assumed that the illustration served as an intended parallelism between both characters. Taking 118 There is a very interesting collection of illustrations depicting crimes in ballads in J. A. Sharpe’s Crime and the Law in English Satirical Prints 1600 – 1832, extracted from the Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires Preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum. 119 This ballad belongs to the Pepys’s collection and it is reprinted in H. E. Rollins’s A Pepysian Garland (1922: 276-282). 120 Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus was first published in 1604 but the famous print is from the frontispiece of a 1620 edition. 133 advantage of the well-known Doctor Faustus, popularised by Marlowe’s play, the printer’s intention was probably that of attracting buyers and making obvious from the start what kind of tragedy it was. Ballads normally used a first-person narrator, which was quite innovative at the time, although in some instances, such as in “A monstrous shape”, which describes the woman with a pig’s head, the narration is in the third person. In this case, the narrative voice was probably changed in order to give veracity to the fact that such an extraordinary creature existed. This intended need of separation between reader and writer is presumably the reason behind third person narration in romances, for instance. The characters that are depicted in epics did clearly belong to a different reality than the readers that followed their adventures. However, in ballads, the first person narrator gave readers the impression of inclusion, of belonging. This way, readers felt closer to the narration and, hence, more identified. It is the same technique used in illustrations with the reader represented in them; the reassurance that what is being told is part of the audience’s reality. The turning of the reader into the story’s direct addressee was a step that definitely changed the narrative perspective, being later on adopted by the early novels because of the same sense of closeness and immediacy that provided to ballads. Ballads expanded into broadsides by a spatial need. Folded in four parts, they enabled the possibility of publishing longer ballads or several narrations at once. Most of them were written in prose, published to be read rather than to be listened to. They were cheap, so they were still affordable by the lower classes. Sold in the streets for a penny—20 pence in today’s money—their headlines were cried out by hawkers, 134 chapmen and street criers. As in the case of single-sheet ballads, broadside stories which reported dark and abominable crimes were the most popular ones. Because broadsides had more space than single-sheet ballads, they tended to include longer titles. A typical broadside would start with the title followed by the subtitle, which was in fact a summary of the accounts narrated in a very attractive manner in order to engage the interest of the readers. They were frequently very sensationalist, appealing to the readers’ morbidity to catch their eye. This can be observed in the following extract, belonging to the case of Thomas Sherwood and Elizabeth Evans, published in 1635: Murder upon Murder, Committed by Thomas Sherwood, alias, Countrey Tom: and Elizabeth Evans, alias, Canbrye Besse: The first upon M. Loe, The 2. Of M. George Holt of Windzor, whom inhumanely they kild neare Islington on the 22. day of January 1635. The last upon M. Thomas Claxton of London, whom mercilessly they murdered upon the second day of Aprill last past, neare unto Lambs Conduit on the back-side of Lolborne, with many other robberies and mischiefs by them committed from time to time since Midsomer last past, now revealed and contest by them, and now according to Judgement he is hangd neare to Lambs Conduit this 14 or Aprill, 1635. To the terror of all such offenders. (Rollins, 1922: 431) The subtitle ends with a quite striking sentence: “to the terror of all such offenders”. Hence, this piece of news complies with different purposes: to tell of the future hanging of Thomas Sherwood, to inform of the crimes committed, and to warn similar criminals of the punishment that awaited them. The early novel also adopted this way of advancing a summary of the plot in the title page, which not only included the title, but as well, a subtitle as in the above examples. 135 The virtue, or rather, the loss of virtue, is a recurrent topic in ballads, broadsides, criminals’ lives and stories that have a woman as a protagonist. There were many instances of women who were seduced by gentlemen with the prospect of a better life. From that moment onwards their lives were ruined. Most of them ended as prostitutes; some of them moved into thieving and even murder when finding themselves in extreme situations. One crime led them to another one, until they met punishment. The majority of these women did not reach old age, dying victims of the gallows or venereal diseases. The broadside “Life, Sufferings, and Death of Janet Fleming”, 121 for instance, tells the very representative case of a young woman who is seduced and driven into prostitution: Daughter of a respectable Farmer near Dunse who was seduced by a profligate young Nobleman - brought to Edinburgh, and kept in the greatestep'cndour or some time and then cruelly deserted and thrown upon the town where, after passing through the numrous vicissitudes of a wicked life she at last fell a victim to disease and died in a noted house in James's Square. With a copy of an Interesting Letter she wrote to her aged parent, a few days before her death an account of their Visit to her miserable abode, and a copy of Verses found under her pilow after her decease. Janet Fleming, as the subtitle of the broadside explains, did not die by execution, but of an illness, probably a venereal one as it can be understood by the following reference: “*she underwent+ all the pains of loath some disease, which persons seldom escape whose lives are spent in acts of debauchery. At last, worn out by the fatigues of a wicked and vicious life, she lay down on that fatal bed from which she would never 121 Broadside entitled “Life, Sufferings and Death of Janet Fleming”, from the NLS digital collection, http://digital.nls.uk/broadsides/broadside.cfm/id/15461. 136 rise in life”. Her punishment, in this case, is divine one, a response and a moral lesson to young women that could find themselves in the same situation. The letter and the verses she writes to her parents are but a commonplace strategy that the editor uses as a warning to young ladies. A woman's honour is a woman's all You're lost for ever if perchance you fall; In this, wit, fortune, beauty, form, and mind, You give like atoms to the whistling wind. All worth, all pleasure, is with honour lost, A truth which thousands witness to their cost; The fate of women deeply we deplore. They fall like stars that set to rise no more. The broadside ends thus with that striking reminder of the importance of honour. These final verses are reminiscent of the ballad tradition. The rhyming couplets make it easier to the reader to remember what the writer has as a teaching goal, that everything of value “is with honour lost”. 122 Apart from those women who lost their virtue and ended their days in the gallows, there was another type of female criminal who were not that innocent or repentant. “The Crafty Maid’s Policy”, for instance, tells the story of a highway woman who tricked a gentleman in order to get his horse. Come listen awhile and I'll sing you a song Of three merry gentlemen riding along. 122 Janet’s case will be further on deeply analysed and compared to Moll Flanders’ because of the many parallelisms that their lives present. 137 They met a fair maid, unto her did say, “We'll afraid this cold morning we'll do you some harm.” “Oh no, kind sir,“ said the maid, “You're mistaken To think this cold morning will do me some harm There's one thing I crave that lies twixt your legs If you give me that, it will keep me warm.” “Then since you do crave it, my dear, you shall have it, If you'll come with me to yonder green tree. Then since you do crave it, my dear, you shall have it, I'll make these two gentlemen witness to be.” So the gentlemen lighted and straightway she mounted, And looking the gentlemen hard in the face, Saying, “You knew not my meaning, you wrong understood me.” And along she went galloping down the long lane. “Oh gentlemen, lend me one of your horses, That I may ride after her down the long lane. If I overtake her, I'll warrant I'll make her Return unto me my own horse again.” But soon as this fair maid she saw him a-coming, She instantly then took a pistol in hand, Saying, “Doubt not my skill but you I would kill, I'll have you stand back or you were a dead man.” “Oh, why do you spend your time here in talking? Oh, why do you spend your time here in vain? Come give her a guinea it's what she deserves And I'll warrant they'll give you your horse back again.” “Oh no, kind sir, you're vastly mistaken, If it is his loss, well, it is my gain. And you were a witness that he give it to me.” 144 most cruell torment also” (1591: 8), Dr Fian, after several torments, “lastly he was put to the most seuere and cruell paine in the world, called the bootes” (1591: 18), at which point he confessed. However, when he escaped and is recaptured, they punish him even harder. The writer seems to be taking pleasure in relating the torture: hee was commaunded to haue a most straunge torment which was done in this manner following. His nailes vpon all his fingers were riuen and pulled off with an instrument called in Scottish a Turkas, which in England wee call a payre of pincers, and vnder euerie nayle there was thrust in two needels ouer euen up to the heads. (1591: 27) Each of the described torments is announced to be “a greeuous torture”, “the most cruell torment”, “the most seuere and cruell paine in the world” or “a most straunge torment”. However, the most morbid description of the punishment is given in the doctor’s final torture: his legges were crushte and beaten togeather as small as might bee, and the bones and flesh so brused, that the bloud and marrowe spouted forth in great abundance, whereby they were made unseruiceable for euer. (1591: 28) It is difficult to believe that there is any need in such a detailed description of the instruments and the way of torture. It can only be concluded that it was due to an interest both on the writer and on the audience’s side. King James’s pamphlet on the North Berwick witches and their bloody trials have been relevant up to the present time. It has generated around it numerous legends in East Lothian. In 2012, Agnes Sampson became the protagonist of ghost stories in the 145 Edinburgh Dungeons during the Halloween celebration. Her name and doings are still remembered. Shakespeare’s witches in Macbeth had to be placed in Scotland 127 as part of this witchcraft tradition that continues up to the present day, permeating the written and spoken culture. Nowadays, there are many ghost tours in Edinburgh which retell the North Berwick witch trials, together with the lives, deaths and crimes of other local criminals. Once more, a real fact becomes part of literature; in this case, King James’s pamphlet is a very current example of how a piece of legal literature has developed into oral narrative with reminiscences of popular culture. After all, a ghost tour guide surrounded by a group of tourists does not differ very much from a hawker engaging the crowds with the latest news. 1.3. OLD BAILEY SESSION PAPERS AND THE ORDINARY’S ACCOUNTS King James pamphlet is a very famous instance of a trial report, or more specifically, the summary report of several trials, since they extended in time as some of the said witches incriminated more people. Trial reports, session papers and the Ordinary’s Account all refer to a corpus of legal writings. This type of documents, despite the formality that surrounded them, had a similar moral purpose than protojournalistic documents. They originated as a popular reading genre when, in 1670s, executions and the process leading to them brought along an impressive interest in the 127 In Scotland the witchery tradition is a very important one. It was not until 1951 that the 1735 Witchcraft Act was finally repealed. The last person to be prosecuted for witchery was Helen Duncan in 1944. In a similar account to that of the North Berwick coven, Duncan was accused of having conjured the ghost of a dead sailor who perished at the HMS Barham during World War II, whose sinking was a military secret. She was condemned to 9 months of imprisonment as she was considered dangerous and potentially too knowledgeable while the allies were planning the D-Day landings. 146 lives, crimes, and fates of the offenders. Criminal biographies were in demand, so printers began to publish accounts of the trials. The earliest and probably the most representative of the trial report genre are the Old Bailey Session Papers, which by 1700 were the best-known and acclaimed of all trial accounts. They narrated strictly the trials taking place at a particular day in the Londoner court of Old Bailey. These reports were so acclaimed that they continued to be printed for more than two hundred years, becoming very profitable for their publishers. There was another type of documents derived from trial report. The so-called Ordinary’s Accounts were reports by the chaplain—also called the ordinary—at Newgate prison in which the last moments and dying words of the convicts hanged at Tyburn were added to the mere legal aspects. These Ordinary’s Accounts had a moral intention. They normally included a sermon that became more prominent as the format proved successful. The Ordinary’s Accounts do not really differ much from the Old Bailey Session Papers; they are longer as they expanded on the criminal’s lives and the sermon. They even included criminals’ documents, such as letters, and added innovations, such as last dying words in the form of a poem. Nevertheless, there is differentiating aspect in both of them: the Old Bailey Session Papers have the criminals and the legal process as the main protagonist whereas in the Ordinary’s Accounts the Ordinary takes relevance and places himself as the main figure. The chaplain’s role becomes more prominent at the same time that the Accounts are expanded and the main focus was on indoctrinating their readers. Although both Session Papers and the Accounts are equally relevant in the rise of the English novel, it is mostly from the last ones that the novel mimics its moralising 147 intention since the first ones are more functional and purely descriptive. Lincoln B. Faller defines them in the following terms: “the session papers list[ed] defendants trial by trial, the substance of their indictments, and the disposal of their cases, and the Ordinary’s Accounts [gave] no more than a paragraph or two to each criminal mentioned” (1993: 4). In the early Session Papers there was barely any information about the felons whereas the Accounts were more complete in terms of additional facts about the convicts. Hence, the Accounts were more attractive for readers, whose interest made these papers more elaborate. Both Session Papers and the Ordinary’s Accounts followed a pre-established structure. Session Papers from 1670s onwards opened by listing the people to be judged, followed by a brief description of the crimes committed and the punishment they would receive. There was a sermon previous to the execution. It accounted for the criminals’ behaviour while they were on the scaffold, emphasising how pious they were and whether they were penitent or not. The Session Papers concluded with the execution and a formula warning the public to take example of those criminals’ final days. This structure can be seen in the following extract, which belongs to the “CONFESSION AND EXECUTION Of the Eight Prisoners suffering at TYBURN On Wednesday the 30 August 1676”, followed by the convicts’ name and the promise of “Giving a full and satisfactory Account of their Crimes, Behaviours, Discourses in Prison and last Words (as neer as could be taken) at the place of Execution”. Within the title page there appeared also a commonplace warning sentence to those that might be related to the underworld: “Published for a Warning to all that read it, to avoid the like 148 wicked Courses, which brought these poor people to this shameful End”. The place, date and printer closed the title sheet. 128 On the first page, it can be read a description of the circumstances under which the execution took place: At the Sessions held for London and Middlesex, August the 23, 1676.there were in all Sixteen persons Condemned to be hang’d for several great and notorious Crimes: And though, for the most part, they were persons that all-along, both at their Apprehension, Imprisonment, and Tryals, carried and behaved themselves with too much Confidence, yet when Sentence of death came to be pronounced upon them (which was done in a most pathetick Oration and a Gravity suiting the solemness of the occasion, by that worthy person whose Charge it was) it could not but much affect the hearts of all present to hear the sad Cries and doleful Lamentations which these miserable Wretches made, begging and importuning the Court of mercy, when their own repeated offences had excluded it, and left room for nothing but Judgment. As it can be appreciated, the discourse was aimed at the readers’ emotions in order to make them share the feelings that the audience at the scaffold could have had. However, according to the writer, they are not to be pitied because of their repetitive crimes, which have “left room for nothing but Judgment”. His point of view is that they have found themselves in that situation because they deserve it, and hence the warning sentence to those that could have been in the same position. In certain proceedings, the criminal could be reprieved. In the above example, eight out of sixteen felons were pardoned. It reads: “Yet so great has been the Clemency of his gracious Majesty (the Fountain of all Terrestrial Mercy as well as of Justice) that Eight of these desperate Malefactors were Reprieved from death”. When 128 From Old Bailey Proceedings Online, Ordinary of Newgate's Account, August 1676 (OA16760830), http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?ref=OA16760830. 149 pardon was granted the convicts’ story ended there. Nothing else was said on their lives or crimes for which they had been tried, unless they were famous offenders. Nevertheless, as in every account some of the condemned prisoners were executed, the structure with the felons’ crimes and the homily at the end remained. 129 The other Eight that suffered their Names and Offences were as followes: Thomas Moore and James Parker, convicted for stealing Goods of a person of Quality at Cue in Surrey; and though they were here only indicted for Felony, because they were taken with the Goods of a person of Quality at Cue in Surrey; and though they were here only indicted for Felony, because they were taken with the Goods, by one that knew them to be Theives, in Aldersgate-street, the same day the Fact was done, yet it appeared to the Court to be a Burglary too in the said County of Surrey. These Two upon their first apprehension, were put into Bridewel, and sent aboard a Ship by their consent, whence they runaway; and being retaken on a new score, were now sound guilty: the latter of them was transported for the like Tricks about five years ago, and by trifling now with the Court before he would plead forced them to commit him to the Press, where, before he would recant his obstinacy, he was very much bruised, so that without further Execution, ‘t was much doubted whether he would have survived. These two prisoners had already been pardoned of capital punishment by being transported, but because they run away and committed further crimes, they found themselves once more facing death. This Paper continues with the description of the other felons, explaining the crimes they had committed and why they had to be executed. A whole page is dedicated then to describe how ministers offered their help to put them into good 129 Of all the Session Papers which have been analysed for this dissertation, there has not been any example in which all the convicts had been pardoned. 150 terms with God, because it was him who they had offended the most: “what they died for was the least of their Transgressions against the Laws of God; having otherwise by multiplied Offences justly provoked the Divine Vengeance against themselves”. The emphasis was normally on religion and how criminals broke earthly but also heavenly rules. The conclusion serves to emphasise the warning effect these documents pursued: And so suffered according to their Sentence: And may their lamentable Examples warnall others that saw the same, or shall here read it truly related, deter them from those wicked Facts and Courses, which brought these unhappy Wretches to this sad, deplorable, and ignominious End. This ending tended to be a cliché, and it is repeated in a similar way in most Session Papers. As the Old Bailey Session Papers proved to be successful publications, their length began to increase. They included more detailed descriptions of the crimes committed as well as a brief biography of each criminal. The Ordinary took prominence, making these reports his own; they always started with the formula: THE ORDINARY of NEWGATE his ACCOUNT and followed a quite repetitive structure. They tended to begin with the criminal’s birth and family background; then, they moved on to the illustration on how the person had fallen into a life of crime, giving an account of the best known or most horrid crimes that he or she had committed. After that, the criminal’s capture was described, putting special emphasis on his or her imprisonment and good behaviour while in prison. Finally, there was an exposition of the main highlights during the trial—speeches included—, the court’s sentence and execution, 151 confession and a plea for God’s mercy. At the end, as previously, there was normally a homily whose intention was moralising. Aside from initial and final warnings to the readers with the aim of preventing future criminals, the Accounts also included a sermon with a strong moralising effect. The sermon, which was placed in the Session Papers towards the end of the document, was moved to the beginning in the Ordinary’s Accounts, thus giving weight to the Ordinary. This chaplain, who had probably been the author of the Session Papers, too, now placed himself at the opening of the pamphlet drawing attention to his work as editor. The following example serves to illustrate the description of the Accounts as well as to point out the difference between the Session Papers and the Ordinary’s Accounts. However, as this extract highlights, there is an emphasis on the Ordinary’s role right from the start: “THE ORDINARY of NEWGATE his ACCOUNT, Of the Behaviour, Confession, and dying Words of the Malefactors who were Executed at Tyburn, on Wednesday the 11th of this Instant, September, 1728”. 130 In the Session Papers and early Accounts, as in “THE CONFESSION AND EXECUTION Of the Eight Prisoners suffering at TYBURN on Wednesday the 30 August 1676” the Ordinary was not such a central figure. In the previous instance, the title was followed by “VIZ” and the name of the eight executed felons. Moreover, in the Session Papers the title page was composed by a very big heading, the names of the criminals, a sentence explaining 130 Old Bailey Proceedings Online, Ordinary of Newgate's Account, September 1728 (OA17280911), http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?ref=OA17280911. 152 the contents, i. e. the “Crimes, Behaviours, Discourses in Prison and last Words”, 131 together with a warning to the audience or readers and the publishing data. Contrastingly, in “THE ORDINARY of NEWGATE his ACCOUNT” of 1728, the criminals are not that prominent. Their names appear only after the constitution of “His Majesty’s Comission of the Peace” is fully explained. The sermon follows, spreading over the first two pages: When under Sentence, they were instructed in the necessity of being holy, as God is holy, and blameless in all manner of Life and Conversation; for he who cometh to God, must believe that He is, and that He is a Rewarder of them who diligently seek him; and without Holiness no Man can see the Lord, Heb. 12, 14. I show’d’em, that it was not sufficient to believe that God made and preserv’d the World, or that Jesus the Son of God vail’d himself with our Nature, and therein suffer’d and died for our Sins; for the Devils believe and tremble, St. Jam. 2, 19. The quotation corresponds to the beginning of the sermon, which concludes with the emphasis on the consequences that breaking the law has, i. e. capital punishment, and even “eternal Death, if Repentance, by the Grace of God, prevent it not”. This idea of salvation through repentance is borrowed by the novel, which expands it into having a life of joy and wealth. Due to their success, the Ordinary’s Accounts began to include advertisements at the end. They could publicise anything, such as remedies, as in the account on the 14th March, 1722, where, after the felon’s poem, “A Water that perfectly cures the Itch, or any Itching Humour, in a few Days, without necessity of Purging, or the dangerous Use 131 Old Bailey Proceedings Online, Ordinary of Newgate's Account, August 1676 (OA16760830), http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?ref=OA16760830. 153 of Mercury” 132 is advertised. Publishers of these accounts took advantage of this attainment including publicity of new publications, amongst them, their own books with compilations of these Accounts. In the following example, the introductory title is followed by a number of criminals listed. The famous Jonathan Wild is among them. After the felons have been named, an attractive description of the forthcoming volumes is included: With a great Number of diverting TRIALS of Whores, for robbing of those that pick’d them up; and several other remarkable ones for the Highway, Rapes, Murders, Burglaries, &c. Both Volumes containing upwards of Five hundred Trials; among which are upwards of seventy Trials for Murder, near Sixty of Whores for privately stealing, upwards of one Hundred for the Highway, about Thirty for Rapes; the rest being for Frauds Forgery, Burglary, Sodomy Bigamy, Shop-lifting, Riots Misdemeanors, Receiving Stollen Goods, Single Felonies &c. &c. &c. N. B. These Trials are not only very necessary for all Lawyers, Justices of the Peace, Clerks of the Indictments, and other Persons concern’d in Prosecutions, &c. but are very useful and entertaining to the Generality of Readers. 133 As it can be noted in the last sentence, the addressees of the volumes are both specialists of the legal system and common readers. The aim responds thus to both an entertaining and descriptive one, as it is commonplace with this type of writings. The following advertisement is a clear example of this double goal. It corresponds to the 132 Old Bailey Proceedings Online, Ordinary of Newgate's Account, March 1722 (OA17220314), http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?ref=OA17220314. 133 Old Bailey Proceedings Online, Ordinary of Newgate's Account, October 1737 (OA17371005), http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?ref=OA17371005. 256 5. MOLL FLANDERS Moll Flanders is one of the best known female criminals that literature has produced. In her, most of the characteristics of previously analysed female offenders are condensed. With Moll, Daniel Defoe offers an insightful exploration of the life of a woman who is driven into criminality by adverse circumstances, scrutinising all the stages through which a female outlaw goes and making her move from one offense to the other. Many discussions about this character focus on the possible fictionalisation of a real woman. For instance, Gerald Howson published an article entitled “Who was Moll Flanders?” 193 in which he proposes Elizabeth Adkins, alias Mary Godson or Goldstone—better known as Moll King—, as the pickpocket on which Defoe based his Moll. 194 The interest this character stirs is precisely due to the treatment Defoe makes of a criminal’s life to build up his novel. From my perspective, the success of Moll Flanders is clearly based on the ordinariness of her case; indeed, she can represent the lives of many female offenders. She has features of real criminals whose lives were found in proto-journalistic accounts as well as previous literary adaptations of their deeds. Moreover, after realizing how biographers and proto-journalists could not be trusted in telling absolutely the whole truth in their accounts, Defoe might have produced the character of Moll Flanders as a construct made up of many real cases, enhanced by Defoe’s imagination. Therefore, instead of whether she was based on just one woman or in several, what is relevant for this analysis is the inference that Defoe used real material to produce his novel, following in the footsteps of a long-standing English literary tradition of fictionalised female offenders. 193 Gerald Howson, “Who was Moll Flanders?” The Times Literary Supplement 18 (1968): 63-64. 194 Howson’s hypothesis is however difficult to prove and, even if it might be relevant for the present study, the scope of this investigation is clearly beyond the limits of this thesis. 257 The present chapter will deal with the process of a woman who becomes a criminal, paying attention to the different stages she goes through. The analysis of Defoe’s Moll Flanders will therefore help to summarise the ideas that have been presented through this thesis by analysing this character in the light of the other female protagonists that have been studied so far. As I intend to show in this chapter, the novelties introduced by Defoe will be spotted so as to confirm that Moll Flanders is in fact the first novel in English language. Moll Flanders has often been associated by scholarship with picaresque narrative, so it is also my purpose to demonstrate this novel’s distinctiveness if contrasted with picaresque tradition, reinforcing by contrast its connection to native literature. All in all, this chapter and the analysis of Moll as an offender who combines several transgressions will be the coda to the study that has been offered in this thesis, thus confirming the premises that were established at the beginning. Many critics before have distinguished two phases in Moll Flanders’s life: “the first containing Moll’s sexual adventures, the second being her life as a thief, her imprisonment and her transportation to America.” 195 These two parts correspond to two kinds of transgressions. According to Elisabeth Détis, “Moll is guilty of a great number of offences ranging from theft to bigamy, all falling into one or the other category of offences, those against manners and morals and those against property” (27). 196 These crimes are stated from the start. The title page serves as a summary and introduction to the many transgressions that she commits. The Fortunes & Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. 195 Douglas Brooks, “Moll Flanders: An Interpretation,” Essays in Criticism 19 (1969): 46. 196 Elisabeth Dètis, ed. Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders (Paris: Didier Érudition, 1997). 258 Who was Born in Newgate, and during a Life of continu'd Variety for Threescore Years, besides her Childhood, was Twelve Year a Whore, five times a Wife (whereof once to her own Brother), Twelve Year a Thief, Eight Year a Transported Felon in Virginia, at last grew Rich, liv'd Honest, and dies a Penitent. Written from her own Memorandums. By Daniel Defoe. 197 In this title page, there is an emphasis on the fact that Moll Flanders was bound to become a criminal, since she was born in Newgate. 198 Apart from her already marked predisposition, Moll complies with the characteristics expected of the female criminal. She leads a life of “continu’d variety.” For many years she was a whore and a husband seeker, having been married for five times, one of them to her own brother. After her period as a prostitute, she turned into a thief. Therefore, Moll Flanders’s offences could be divided into two groups, corresponding to two different moments of her life. Also her crimes can be separated depending on whether she commits them innocently or on purpose. In her early years, Moll behaves as a prostitute, first without much notice, and then in order to survive and depend on a man who can provide her with economic security. She turns to robbery once she realises she cannot escape poverty by depending on any man; she can only trust herself to become a gentlewoman. Before entering the discussion of the type of criminal that Moll is, some other aspects need to be taken into account, such as her name and the circumstances that predisposed her to become an offender. These two elements shape the character and 197 All the references and extracts from the novel are from the 1971 edition, G. A. Starr, ed., The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders (London: Oxford University Press, 1971). 198 Many criminal biographers associated the birth situation of an offender to his or her future relationship with crime. Note, for example, The Life and Death of Mrs. Mary Frith, where the writer insists that she was born under the influence of Mercury, the God of thieves, and Venus, associated to lust and prostitutes. See page 203 of this thesis. 259 the work itself. The shortened title of the novel responds to the pseudonym that she receives. Moll was the most common name for women in the crime industry for centuries. Her surname, Flanders, makes reference to the fabric imported from the County of Flanders, which female pickpockets coveted for its value. She first uses this surname when she pretends to be a widow. Then, interestingly, it is her underworld companions who call her Moll Flanders. She wonders how they have nicknamed her by her previous false surname. These were they that gave me the Name of Moll Flanders: For it was no more of Affinity with my real Name, or with any of the Names I had ever gone by, than black is of Kin to white, except that once, as before I call’d my self in the Mint; but that these Rogues never knew, nor could I ever learn how they came to give me the Name, or what the Ocassion of it was. (1971: 214) Yet he ones who re-named her Moll Flanders are no longer alive by the time she writes her memoirs. They “are out of the Way of doing [her] any Harm, having gone out of the World by the Steps and the String, as *she+ often expected to go” (1971: 7). Since her old companions are dead, it is safe for her to use her alias once more, probably because it is a name which best defines her. Otherwise, she could have chosen a new one. Regarding her predisposition to crime, she constantly emphasises that her circumstances did not leave her with any other option. Moll’s mother abandoned her when she was just a baby. She was helpless as [her mother] left a poor desolate girl without friends, without clothes, without help or helper, as was [her] fate; and by which, [she] was not only exposed to very great distresses, even before [she] was capable of understanding [her] case or how to amend it, but brought into a course of life, scandalous in itself, and which in its ordinary course tended to the swift destruction both of soul and body. (1971: 8) 260 Besides her mother, Moll also blames the British government of her ill fortune. She complaints that in her country, the authorities forced orphans to work when they were too young. Instead, she suggests they could have been provided with a good education and training in trades as it was the case in France (1971: 8). 199 As the author presents it, Moll is a victim of her circumstances. Defoe justifies her ill doings in the following way: “there is not a wicked action in any part of it, but is first or last rendered unhappy and unfortunate” (1971: 3). Hence, as the author sees it and his protagonist defends, it is not completely her fault that she ends up becoming part of the underworld; her fate is due to her ill fortune and the wrongly-chosen companionship. Her surroundings might have determined her crime inclination, yet Moll is also decided to become a gentlewoman at any expense. During the eighteenth century, the most common occupation for a girl without resources was to be at the service of a lady. However, Moll does not want to work as a maid, as she tells the nurse that takes her in Colchester: “I cant’ Work House-Work” (1971: 10). The nurse answers ironically, “pray how will you come a to be a Gentlewoman? What, will you do it by your Fingers Ends?” (10). She is making a reference to Moll’s suggestion of living on the needle, but 199 In instances such as the comparison between the English and the French approach to orphans, the reader can appreciate the criticism that Defoe makes of the social system in Britain as well as the harsh methods to eradicate crime and poverty. He has an insider’s perspective of the underworld and the criminals’ conditions. But he also benefits from an international experience. Hence, he is able to compare the situation in Britain with that of other countries, France, for instance. He uses thus his novel to teach that the wrong paths can take the reader to a life of misery and even to death, but he takes the chance to make the government responsible for the situation that Britain was living during the first decades of the eighteenth century. Defoe was a Puritan but also a very pragmatic person. The “providence” that Moll holds responsible for her course can be both read as divine providence but also as the socioeconomic circumstances that force her into a life of opportunism in order to survive in a callous society. 261 both the author and the readers have in mind her dexterity as a pickpocket, which is actually what finally makes her a gentlewoman. Her idea of nobility is different, though, as she explains: “all I understood by being a Gentlewoman, was to be able to Work for myself, and get enough to keep me without that terrible Bug-bear going to Service” (1971: 13). From an early age, Moll is resolved to be able to sustain herself. In this aspect, she succeeds. Hence, not only the ill circumstances lead her towards crime; her determination to become wealthy and independent contributes to a career of delinquency. Defoe seems to have devised his work as an extended criminal’s ballad or a detailed case in the Old Bailey Session Papers. As was explained previously when discussing Arden of Faversham, most proto-journalistic and legal accounts situated their readers in the circumstances that led the felon to commit the crime. 200 However, the structure pointed out by Adams which both the accounts and the domestic tragedy follow is not strictly respected in Moll Flanders. Adams’ sequence of “sin, discovery, repentance, punishment and expectation of divine mercy” is altered as Defoe is mostly interested in the evolution of the character. Moll narrates her feelings and thoughts in a very detailed manner, so that the readership can have a better understanding of how an innocent girl, whose aim in life was to live by herself, could end up considering killing a child to steal her necklace. The textual analysis will focus mostly in the first half of the novel, so as to provide examples of how the female criminal mind develops and evolves in the character of Moll Flanders. Moll is first introduced in law-breaking unconsciously until she becomes a deliberate offender. The first companions she recalls in her life are a group of gypsies. 200 See pages 178-179. 262 With them, Moll is introduced into a life of vagrancy and, probably, petty crime, since these were the associations that gypsies would bring to the minds of eighteenthcentury readers. 201 Moll’s memories of her time with them are vague, though: 202 the first account that I can Recollect, or could ever learn of myself, was, that I had wandred among a Crew of those People they call Gypsies, or Egyptians; but I believe it was but a very little while that I had been among them, for I had not had my Skin discolour’d, or blacken’d, as they do very young to all the Children they carry about with them, nor can I tell how I came among them, or how I got from them. (1971: 9) In the company of gypsies Moll does not become a criminal yet but, as stated above, as in her birth in Newgate, these are events that will determine her future life as an offender. Her corruption begins when she accepts money from the elder Brother in the Colchester family that takes her after her nurse dies. The monetary exchange for allowing him to kiss her and take “freedoms” (1971: 25) makes her a prostitute although she does it quite unwittingly. It is not made clear if she falls in love with him because of his loving words or because of the money, since both rewards are tightly linked from the start: “he got off from the Bed, lifted me up, professing a great deal of Love for me . . . and with that he put five Guineas into my Hand, and went away down 201 Note that gypsies were considered criminals because of the type of life they led. They were vagrants and that reason alone already made them outlaws. There is obviously an intention in introducing her connection to them, even if she does not really recall much from her early years. Defoe knew what his readers would think of an association to the gypsy community, so there was no need for him or Moll to give any further details. She also implies that they were not good company so she decided to leave them in Colchester “I hid myself and wou’d not go any farther with them” (1971: 9). Defoe devotes just a paragraph to mention them, but it is enough for the readers to understand his intention. 202 She mentions that when she arrived in Colchester she was three years old. Hence, she was but a toddler when she lived with the gypsies. The amount of time spent with them is indeterminate, though. 263 Stairs” (1971: 25). As he proceeds to make advances, he raises the quantity of money: “he put almost a Handful of Gold in *her+ Hand” (1971: 25). She starts mentioning the quantities as they are larger, as in the following instance when he pays a hundred guineas: “that you may see that I am not in Jest, says he, here’s an Earnest for you; and with that he pulls out a silk Purse, with a Hundred Guineas in it, and gave it me; and I’ll give you such another, says he, every Year till I Marry you” (1971: 28). Gradually, their exchanges become a routine. Moll does not refuse the money on any occasion. On the contrary, she expects to be paid for allowing him some liberties, even when she is not convinced of his marital intentions: “I had a most unbounded Stock of Vanity and Pride, and but a very little Stock of Vertue; I did indeed cast sometimes with myself what my young Master aim’d at, but thought of nothing, but the fine Words, and the Gold” (1971: 25). In the end, it is money and not love what corrupts her since once she accepts the money, she also has to accept his advances and let him do as he pleases, as she explains: putting the Purse into my Bosom, I made no more Resistance to him, but let him do just what he pleas’d; and thus I finish’d my own Destruction at once, for from this Day, being forsaken of my Vertue, and my Modesty, I had nothing of Value left to recommend me, either to God’s Blessing, or Man’s Assistance. (1971: 28) Thus she progressively begins her career as a prostitute, of which she becomes aware rather soon: I was now in a dreadful Condition indeed, and now I repented heartily my easiness with the eldest Brother, not from any Reflection of Conscience, but from a View of the Happiness I might have enjoy’d, and had now made impossible; for tho’ I had no great Scruples of Conscience as I have said to struggle with, yet I could not think of being a Whore to one Brother, and a Wife to the other. (1971: 31) 264 Moll makes this reflection when the elder brother shows no real interest in marrying her but he decides that she should be his brother’s wife instead. She feels as an object who passes from someone’s hands into someone else’s. As she describes in the previous quotation, she had no scruples of conscience, but the situation of being the wife of a brother and the mistress of the other was not acceptable for her already shaky moral standards: “shall I now give the Lye to all those Arguments, and call myself your Whore, or Mistress, which is the same thing? And will you Transfer me to your Brother? Can you Transfer my Affection?” (1971: 39). Despite the possibility of marriage, which could save her honour, she sticks to the eldest brother because she has feelings for him: “I had much rather, since it is come that unhappy Length, be your Whore than your Brothers Wife” (1971: 40). She might have exchanged sex for money, but this first relationship is still based on affection although its foundations are a monetary intercourse. This relationship is finally ended by a payment that the eldest brother gives Moll in order to convince her to marry his brother: “and to satisfie you that I am Sincere, added he, I here offer you 500 l. in Money, to make you some Amends for the Freedoms I have taken with you, which we shall look upon as some of the Follies of our Lives, which ‘tis hop’d we may Repent of” (1971: 55). Moll accepts the money but it makes her unhappy nonetheless, as she “lov’d him to an Extravagance, not easie to imagine” (1971: 56). In fact, there is much insistence that she loved this man truly and that was the reason of her ruin. 203 203 A parallelism could be set between Aphra Behn’s conception of love in The Fair Jilt and Defoe’s in his Moll Flanders. Behn’s text is very explicit of how blind love can ruin the life of a person, as it is the case of Prince Tarquin. However, in Defoe’s work, the concept of the dangers of love, although still present, is more subtle. The emphasis relies rather in the importance of being economically independent. 265 Once Moll is disappointed with love and with the way men and women relationships work, she does not seek love again but for economic stability. “I kept true to this Notion, that a Woman should never be kept for a Mistress, that had Money to keep herself. Thus, my Pride, not my Principle, my Money, not my Vertue, kept me Honest” (1971: 61). By the time her husband Robin, the younger brother dies, she is older and wiser: “I had been trick’d once by that cheat call’d LOVE, but the game was over” (1971: 60). She knows how life works and what she can expect of it. Therefore, she plays her cards the best she can, proving that she has an authoritative voice to refuse being anybody else’s mistress. It could be said that being in love and naïve probably justifies her initial yield to offer sex for money, as she truly believed that she was going to marry the eldest brother. From being a prostitute in the arms of the eldest brother, Moll turns into a bigamous woman, another form of prostitution, since of her four husbands only Robin, the younger brother, and her last husband, dies. 204 Her next marriages will be discussed briefly in as much as they reflect her lifestyle and how she moves from the arms of a man into the arms of another, looking for stability and economic security. However, in terms of importance, she does not give the other men in her life the same relevance than the eldest brother. Moll does not offer many details of her other affairs and marriages, with the exception of Jemy—the only one who receives a name—and her brother, because of the relevance this event has for the ending of the story. Also, 204 Her second husband, the merchant who gets bankrupted and flees to France does not die, nor her brother or Jemy. Moll could thus have been accused of bigamy at different times, and even of incest, although she does not know that she is marrying her brother when she does. Moll is not prosecuted for these two crimes by the state, but Defoe portrays her as a sinning character, whether by providence or by her own intention of advancing in society. 272 then that she utters her famous sentence: “Give me not Poverty least I Steal” (1971: 191). And so she does. Moll starts her career as a thief by stealing an unattended bundle. If she has previously excused herself of her bigamy because her second husband and Jemy abandoned her, and of incest, because she married her brother without knowing it, once she becomes a thief she is fully aware of her acts against the law. In fact, first she announces that if she comes to be poor she will have to steal and then, she goes for a walk and finds an unattended bundle. Very soon after, she steals the necklace from a child. In this instance, she is even tempted to kill the girl: “the Devil put me upon killing the Child in the dark Alley, that it might not Cry” (1971: 194). She refrains herself from doing so, though, but she starts showing no remorse when she robs: The last Affair left no great Concern upon me, for as I did the poor Child no harm, I only said to my self, I had given the Parents a just Reproof for their Negligence in leaving the poor little Lamb to come home by it self, and it would teach them to take more Care of it another time. (1971: 194) Moll justifies her actions by blaming poverty, the devil or chance. She finds goods on her way and her extreme poverty leads her to take them unlawfully. In these circumstances, she feels the need to make the most of the opportunities that life offers her. Her second act of thievery is a parcel that two thieves drop in their escape. She waits until it is safe for her to pick it, and then she takes it home. She explains her action as follows: “I only robb’d the Thief I made no scruple at taking these Goods, and being very glad of them, too” (1971: 196). Likewise, she sees two rings on a window and does not hesitate to take them since they probably belong to “some thoughtless Lady, that had more Money than Forecast” (1971: 196). Moll thus always finds an excuse for her criminal actions. 273 Initially, her thefts are fortuitous. However, during the time that she lodges with her former governess and midwife, who attended her when she was with Jemy’s child, she becomes a professional thief and she even rejoices in it. She explains to the reader how she learns from a more experienced woman: The Comrade she helped me to deal in three sorts of Craft, (viz.) Shop-lifting, stealing of Shop-Books, and Pocket-Books, and taking off Gold Watches from the Ladies Sides, and this last she did so dexterously that no Woman ever arriv’d to the Perfection of that Art, so as to do it like her: I lik’d the first and the last of these things very well, and I attended her some time in the Practice, just as a Deputy attends a Midwife, without any Pay. (1971: 201) When Moll is ready, her “teacher” allows her to work on her own: “At length she put me to practice. She had shown me her art, and I had several times unhooked a watch from her own side with great dexterity” (1971: 201). From this moment onwards, Moll stops finding abandoned parcels and taking advantage of situations to become a fully professional thief. The relationship with her former midwife is determinant in Moll’s criminal’s career. When Moll meets her again, the old lady has changed her previous job for that of pawnbroker who, in fact, sells stolen goods: I had not been long there, but I discover’d it more plainly than before, for every now and then I saw Hilts of Swords, Spoons, Forks, Tankards, and all such kind of Ware brought in, not to be Pawn’d, but to be sold down right; and she bought every thing that came without asking any Questions, but had very good Bargains as I found her Discourse. (1971: 200) The governess, as Moll calls her, encourages Moll Flanders to bring her what she robs and prompts Moll to commit the crimes. The following instance belongs to a passage in which the governess suggests Moll to go to a house on fire in order to steal what she can: 274 One Night, in the Neighbourhood of my Governess House, they cryed Fire; my Governess look’d out, for we were all up, and cryed immediately that such a Gentlewoman’s House was all Fire a top, and so indeed was: Here she gives me a jog, now, Child, says she, there is a rare opportunity, the Fire being so near that you may go to it before the Street is block’d up with the Crowd; she presently gave me my Cue, go, Child, says she, to the House, and run in and tell the Lady, or any Body you see, that you come to help them, and that you came from such a Gentlewoman (that is one of her Acquaintance farther up the Street); she gave me the like Cue to the next House, naming another, Name that was also an Acquaintance of the Gentlewoman of the House. (1971: 204) At a time when Moll Flanders does not want to continue her incursions in the underworld because her comrade has been recently executed, the governess pushes her to continue with her criminal activity. This becomes the turning point in Moll Flanders’s debut as a professional criminal. Moll’s governess is a central character in the novel. In fact, Defoe situates her appearance in the middle of the work, separating and uniting Moll’s former and later ways of living. From my point of view, the governess represents an instrument for Moll’s transition from one type of crime to another. She fulfils the role of the experienced woman who can give advice to younger ladies, since she has already suffered the same situation in her youth. She was “born a Pick-Pocket” (1971: 213), convicted for her crimes to be transported, but escaped and remained in Ireland until she could go back to England, where she “turn’d Midwife and Procuress” (1971: 213). When Moll Flanders meets the governess, Moll is not a girl, but she is not as old and experienced yet as she becomes by the time when she writes her memoirs. Moll needs guidance, so the midwife represents a motherly figure for her. She comes to be a substitute for Moll’s absent mother who abandons her at birth and does not fully support Moll in her decision of telling her brother about their incestuous relationship. 275 Moreover, the governess is a leading character clearly rooted in traditional literary patterns. She fulfils the traditional role of the old lady who warns young ones about life and men. The motherly wise female figure who draws on her own experience in order to help the younger generations of ladies is no doubt the model on which the characterisation of the governess is based. Literary figures such as Widow Edyth, the Wife of Bath or the fishwives in Westward for Smelts had previously taken a similar position in their narratives. Accordingly, contemporary readership would have associated Moll’s governess with these emblematic women from the English letters. At the same time, in the Ordinary’s Accounts, the ordinary had also held a similar role in his writings. Even if there is no motherly discourse in the broadsides and pamphlets that the ordinaries wrote, there is always a moralising and a protective intention towards their readers. However, the type of advice which the governess offers Moll leads the protagonist of this novel into a life of crime, which accentuates the irony of the whole work, especially when it is the governess who procures her salvation in the end. When Moll is in Newgate, the governess, who has become a penitent, sends Moll a minister who hears her confession and helps her to obtain transportation to Virginia. Moll and Jemy embark in the same ship, starting their quest together. Moll is not that abandoned child or woman anymore, she now has a companion; fate will finally be on her side. The ending of Moll Flanders is a well-known one. She receives her mother’s fortune from the son she has had with her brother and she lives comfortably in Maryland until she returns to England in old age. The governess is thus a keystone in the narrative. She is the provider of Moll’s happy ending. 276 Moreover, there is a rebirth metaphor which emphasises the function of the governess as this maternal figure. Moll’s mother gives birth to her child in Newgate, condemning her thus to a life of misery. The governess grants Moll a second chance by bestowing her the opportunity to start anew. Through repentance and religious beliefs, the governess can change Moll’s fate and make it a favourable one for her. Following the comparison between the governess and the ordinary’s role, the governess leads Moll to salvation as the ordinary did with real life criminals. Defoe seems to be using English literary models blended with proto-journalistic types in order to create expectations in his contemporary readers, who trusted that Moll Flanders was but the extended life of a criminal. Nevertheless, Moll Flanders has been subject to many interpretations. It is not clear if Defoe wanted to write solely a moralising narrative since Moll does not seem to be such a repentant criminal as she claims to be. She writes her story at old age, taking then the role of her governess instructing young ladies on how to act, or rather, not to act. She warns them about the dangers of bad companies and the risks of being beautiful and naïve. Or, at least, that is what she claims to be doing. In fact, Moll continuously justifies her decisions applying either to her poverty, innocence, bad company or bad luck. She acts accordingly, trying to fulfil her aspirations of becoming a gentlewoman and being financially independent; she improvises her responses to life when she finds herself in a difficult situation. Looking for a husband and afterwards robbing were actually the only alternatives that a woman had in the early eighteenth century if she wanted to escape poverty and live her own life. Daniel Defoe’s background as a journalist, together with his experience in prison, helps him to create the perfect criminal. Moll constantly makes allusion to her 277 dexterity, but she is not outstanding just as a pickpocket and a master of disguise. She manages to engage the reader in such a way that even if her acts are against the law, the readership cannot but support her reactions. She convinces her audience that she had no other way out of poverty but prostitution and then, robbery. Moll Flanders deceives everyone the same way that Defoe makes his contemporaries believe that he was publishing the extended account of a repented felon. The key is, as Bernbaum noticed, “not to be veracious but to seem veracious,” (1994: 32). He polishes previous literary characters to make Moll Flanders succeed where others fail. She is the coda to an exploration of female criminality in English letters. She is the beginning of new literary subgenre. Conclusions As sWtated at the beginning of this thesis, the choice of criminal literature and the relevance of the female offender in the rise of the English novel as the subject for this research responds to two main reasons: first, the neglect that criminal writings have suffered from scholars due to its base subject matter, and second, to demonstrate the importance they have had for the literature and culture in English. Stemming from the criminal novel, crime fiction is the most successful narrative subgenre in the English-speaking world. Also, in the development of the English novel, women have attracted attention in recent decades, but critics have either noticed their role as readers or as writers. There are no significant studies related to what the role of the woman as the protagonist of narratives is in the initial stages of the English 278 novel. Given these evident gaps in the history of literary criticism, this thesis, which combines the study of criminal writings with the analysis of female protagonists in criminal literature, has therefore contributed to shed light on the development of the English novel in its embrionary phase in which it was tightly associated with protojournalistic texts. The significance of women in the development of the novel has already been noted by several critics. However, these studies have usually focused on the relevance of female writers without taking into account the prominence of the female character in the early stages of the evolution of the criminal subgenre. As demonstrated in this thesis, the analysis of women in literary works—and in particular, female criminals— open a window into the motives that lead them to commit the crime. As presented in criminal writings, women are more vulnerable due to their circumstances, but they fight against a society that limits their possibilities, becoming thus outcasts. It is arguable if all the female characters that have been analysed in this thesis receive a sympathetic treatment from the authors of the works in which they appear, especially, in the case of Alice Arden. But nonetheless, what becomes clear from the study of a group of selected works is the fact that they were all of interest to the writers who decided to centre their works on the character in order to offer a deep insight into crime. Of all the analysed works, only Aphra Behn’s The Fair Jilt does not explore the motives behind the murderous woman. Behn is, by contrast, more interested in the figure of Prince Tarquin and how his passion towards Miranda leads him to commit a crime. It is interesting, though, to compare how Prince Tarquin is perceived by the audience, as opposed to Miranda or the female felons in the other works that have been studied in this thesis. Prince Tarquin was saved by the spectators who were 279 present at his execution; probably the readership would not have condemned his behaviour, either. He does not seem to be considered as an offender even if he has attempted to murder Alcidiana. His wife is said to have manipulated him. The woman as the evil temptress and instigator of the crime conveys a cliché that is shared by many of the authors, even by Aphra Behn. In Arden of Faversham, the motives for which Alice Arden wants to kill her husband are similar to Prince Tarquin’s. She considers murder to secure love. However, she is compared to a snake and a hydra, thus equating her to a deadly creature. Likewise, Moll Cutpurse is literally called a monster (ii.135). The woman who attempted a rupture of the laws was generally considered a freak and was, therefore, criminalised. However, criminal women conveyed an attractive subject to write about because of the morbid tinge that their actions had. Interestingly, even if there were many more men than women in the world of organised crime, two out of three protagonists in the case of Defoe’s novels are women. As the study offered in chapter 5 of this thesis has showed, Moll Flanders epitomises the figure of the female criminal. If Defoe’s protagonist is compared to the other characters analysed earlier in this thesis, many similar patterns can be identified. In Arden of Faversham, Alice decides to murder her husband in order to be free to marry her lover. She does not have a natural killing impulse, nor she does it for money or vengeance; she just wants to be able to make her own choice. 209 Mary Frith, or Moll Cutpurse, as she was better known, is presented in The Roaring Girl as a woman who 209 Alice and Mosby had a love affair before she married Arden. She was probably unable to marry Mosby because he lacked the social status that was pertaining of a woman of her position. It was probably not her choice but her father’s to make a good match rather than to have a husband that she loved. 280 does not take into account the social conventions of the time. She dresses in man’s clothes, smokes, has a sword and speaks her mind freely to the extent of giving a lesson to reputable characters such as Sir Alexander. Her words and speech are also manly: she expresses herself with propriety and authority. In a way that recalls Moll Flanders’s deceit at making her suitors believe that she was a noblewoman, Mary Carleton, the German Princess, does not only cheat her husband—and many other men—but also confronts him at court. By the same token, she writes The Case of Madam Mary Carleton, becoming the first of this group of female offenders who is the author of her own account. Whether it is Mary Carleton herself who writes The Case or not, she is the one signing it, claiming publicly that it was her work. Miranda in The Fair Jilt is another illustration of a strongly determined woman who can cheat and kill in order to attain her goals. She is probably the character that the readers less empathise with because of her truly evil nature. But she shares Moll Flanders’s determination and obsession. Both characters push their will to extreme limits in order to obtain what they most want. On the other hand, Long Meg of Westminster is probably the figure that has less to do with Moll Flanders and the other female offenders selected for this study. She is presented as a woman who teaches men how to behave making use of her strength. However, the turning point is when she marries and yields to her husband’s will. It is then that she detaches from all the other female protagonists who do not abandon their ideals so easily. In all the texts that have been included in this study, the criminals are portrayed as intelligent powerful women who rule their own lives and do not let men decide for them. Apart from the crimes they commit, the audience might have perceived them as transgressors, a danger for the society of their time because of the rupture of the 281 established norms that they represent. These women cross the line of the correct behaviour as expected from them in society, thus becoming a menace that needs to be punished. However, the authors who created these characters show sympathy for them. Just as Greene condemned the conny-catchers but also admired them, the authors of Arden of Faversham, The Roaring Girl, Long Meg of Westminster, The Counterfeit Lady Unveiled, The Fair Jilt and Moll Flanders show that ambivalent attitude to their protagonists, too. Despite these characters’ wrong acts, these women are portrayed with humanity and even admiration by the authors. In the case of Miranda, however, she is unable to engage the reader to partially agree with her behaviour. She is the flattest of these female offenders. This might be so because Miranda has the least credible personality. She seems to be the only one who is purely fictional while all the other characters have either existed in real life or have been based on human models. Yet, leaving Miranda aside, the female criminals studied in this thesis all present this double-edged quality for both writers and readers. 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