ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the roles of children in the contexts of the respective novels of Daniel Defoe, all of them, incidentally, first-person narratives: Moll Flanders, Colonel Jack and Roxana. Moll’s irresponsible behaviour towards her children can be explained by her traumatic childhood. Roxana illustrates both the benefits and limits of approaching Defoe’s treatment of children in his novels by way of The Family Instructor. With his last novel, Defoe attempts a radical revision of the relationship between a mother and her children. The rigid moral formula of The Family Instructor, appropriate and useful when trying to understand the children of the first four novels, in particular Colonel Jack, has given way to a more flexible construction, which allows an extension of educational ideas into a new direction. The opportunities provided by the form of the novel, especially that of first-person narration, have enabled Defoe to introduce more sophisticated character portrayals than those of his earlier works, including The Family Instructor.
