“The Passage into Another State”: The Representation of the Colonial Space in Moll Flanders and Colonel Jack

Abstract

Throughout the course of the eighteenth century the penal culture of England evolved into more “modern” and recognizable forms. One of the most important moments of this evolution came in the form of the Transportation Act of 1718 which regularized the system of convict transportation from England to the convict colonies, especially to Virginia and Maryland. In this paper I propose to examine two of Daniel Defoe’s criminal narratives—both published in 1722-- Moll Flanders and Colonel Jack, which portray the colonial space of these settlements in great detail. In the course of the paper, I argue that Defoe’s presentation of the colonial space in these two texts is nuanced and complex, depicting it simultaneously as a place of opportunity and of punishment. The criminal subjects of Defoe’s text lose and gain power in the convict colonies and pardon is used as a political strategy to effectively retain power over criminal/colonial subjects. The colonial space in the form of the convict colonies fold within itself the paradoxical allurement as well as repulsion exercised by any colonial entity on the colonized. This paradoxical quality of this space exerts a narratorial pressure on the texts bifurcating them into two halves and making the protagonists undertake two journeys to Virginia.