Disposable (Textual) BodiesPopular Prostitute Narratives and the Composite Novel

Abstract

The present article compares two coeval authors, Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) and Jane Barker (1652–1732), who stand on opposite sides of the political and religious spectrum, to analyse the ways in which they engage with popular prostitute stories in Moll Flanders (1722) and the Patch-Work narratives (1723, 1726), respectively. This contribution, then, offers novel insights into these writers’ work, exploring the ways in which Defoe rewrites this form of popular fiction to conform to his middle-class fantasy of personal development, and how Barker responds both to Defoe’s tales of prostitute ascent and the general taste for this fiction from her own ideological perspective. It will also expose their similarities, as they construct composite literary bodies of many different prostitute narratives, and emphasize the need to understand the novel as an assemblage of voices, genres and sociomaterial aspects.