Essay on Social Position Reflected in Roxana and Emma :: Roxana and Emma Essays

Social Position Reflected in Roxana and Emma in that location were severe conflicts between the City party and the Country party in 18th century Britain. The Country party, mainly composed of gentry, was based on landed interest and the City party made money by dint of trade and was based on moneyed interest. The Country party passed the set down Property Qualification Act to maintain their power. However, this act merely further more(prenominal) men of wealth to buy country estate, in legion(predicate) cases displacing old landed families who truly represented the landed interest.11 We can distinguish this changing of power through these two works, Roxana and Emma. Daniel Defoe was born in London, so he naturally engaged in City party. Roxanas solid ground is mainly city while that of Emma is the little country society called Highbury. As we can see the difference of the background of two works, we can besides find some different attitude toward City and Country in these t wo works. I will write about these differences in target of the conception of gentleman, rank and different attitude to City lives. Defoe indicates that younger sons who buzz off careers in law and trade are the backbone of the English Nation. The uninformed eldest son is an insult to the word gentleman he is a man of no use to himself or to others.22 He thinks that trade is more important than land. We can find this attitude in Roxana. Roxana says, a align bred Merchant is the best Gentleman in the Nation that in Knowledge, in Manners, in Judgement of things, the Merchant out-did many of the Nobility (Roxana 170, The page numbers game of further references from Roxana will be put in parentheses in the text). She as well as says That an Estate is a Pond but that a Trade was a Spring(170). The Dutch merchant also says that the Tradesmen in London, speaking of the mitigate sort of Trades, coud spend more Money in their Families, and thus far give better Fortunes to their Chil dren, than, generally speaking, the Gentry of England from a 1000 l(170). We can know that Roxana has a really positive view to a merchant from this. She thinks that a merchant is better than gentry. However, it is viewed differently, as shown in Emma. When Emma talks about the father of Mrs. Elton, she says like this a Bristol ? merchant, of course, he must be called but, as the whole of the profits of his mercantile life appeared so actually moderate, it was not unfair to guess the dignity of his live of trade had been very moderate also(Emma, 164).