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Moll Flanders

Published 1722

INTRODUCTION

Daniel Defoe published Moll Flanders in 1722 after a long career of writing nonfiction. Many critics have speculated that Defoe’s story of a beautiful and greedy woman who turns to crime is not a novel in the true sense but a work combining biography and fiction. Defoe (and others) wrote numerous accounts of various women in early eighteenth-century London named Moll who made their fame as thieves and pickpockets, and the criminal records of that period in London reveal the accounts of women who were arrested for stealing. Many critics and historians argue that a woman named Elizabeth Atkins, a notorious thief who died in prison in 1723, was one of Defoe’s inspirations for the character of Moll Flanders.

Whatever the sources of Defoe’s popular work may have been, the novel has endured nearly three hundred years of changing tastes and mores and has secured its author’s position as one of the most well-respected English writers and, some say, as the father of the novel form.

DANIEL DEFOE

Looking over the full life of Daniel Defoe, there seems to be little that the Englishman did not attempt or experience. He was a trainee for the ministry, a poet, a businessman, a shopkeeper, a historian, an investor, a soldier, and a writer of fictional works as well as political and social tracts. Many of his business dealings put him on the brink of financial failure, and a number of his writings landed him in jail. His political writings, though, were ultimately so well-regarded and widely quoted that, according to Paula R. Backscheider in The Dictionary of Literary Biography, “echoes of them exist in, for instance, the United States Constitution.” In spite of this, Defoe is currently best known for his works of fiction, including Moll Flanders.

Defoe is believed to have been born around 1660 to James and Alice Foe in London, England. While the family was solidly middle-class, Defoe grew up in hardship, primarily because of his father's religious views. James Foe was a Nonconformist, a Protestant who refused to conform to the tenets of the restored Church of England (Anglican). Because of this, his son could not attend Oxford or Cambridge but was able to attend one of the many dissenting academies set up in England, to be trained for the ministry.

Defoe decided in the early 1680s that he was much more interested in business than in religion. He first became a hosiery merchant, then he invested in a variety of ventures, including the diving bell, civet cats, international shipping, and property. In 1691, he went bankrupt but was able to settle with his creditors, and soon thereafter he started a brick business.

Amid all of these efforts, Defoe found time to fight with the Duke of Monmouth in an unsuccessful attempt to establish a Protestant monarchy in England. In 1700, he published a poem entitled “A True-Born Englishman,” a satire on those who mocked King William because he was Dutch. According to Backscheider, this became the most popular poem of the early eighteenth century.

Defoe eventually began writing for a variety of publications and enjoyed a career writing on almost every conceivable topic. In 1702, he published a pamphlet entitled The Shortest Way with the Dissenters, angering nearly everyone and landing him in jail for seditious libel. He wrote successfully for an assortment of political and religious causes—some diametrically opposed to each other—and both in support of and against the current government and ruler. He is reputed to be one of the most prolific writers of nonfiction in the English language to this day.

In 1719, Defoe published Robinson Crusoe, supposedly based on the adventures of Alexander Selkirk (a Scottish sailor and castaway). Defoe used a style of writing in which he took supposedly true events and fictionalized them in an attempt to appeal to a broad audience. In 1722, he published Moll Flanders, purportedly taken from the exploits of an infamous female pickpocket of the day.

Although historians disagree as to the exact number of books, articles, pamphlets, poems, and other pieces attributable to Defoe, more than five hundred works have been credited to him. Defoe continued writing almost up to his death, at the approximate age of seventy, on April 26, 1731, in London.

III

PLOT SUMMARY

The Preface

Defoe’s narrator opens Moll Flanders as the person who has edited Moll’s first-person story of her life. He implores the novel’s readers to learn something from his story of a woman drawn to crime and to pay attention less to the fabulous tales of misdeeds and felonies and more to the moral of the story.

Section One

Moll Flanders relates the circumstances of her birth at London’s Newgate Prison to a woman imprisoned for stealing cloth. She is reared by gypsies until she is three years old when she is transferred to a home run by a woman she refers to as the nurse, who schools Moll in needlework and manners.

By the time Moll is eight, she knows that she does not intend to become a servant, even though that is what is expected of her by the town authorities, given her lack of financial means. She decides, instead, to become a “gentlewoman,” like a neighbor who seems to earn her living by needlework but is actually a prostitute. Moll’s innocence and energy amuse the nurse, and she decides to keep Moll around as her assistant.

Moll, because she is pretty and clever, becomes a favorite of the wealthy ladies in town, and they enjoy visiting with her and giving her money for her living expenses. Her needlework earns her money as well.

When Moll is fourteen, the nurse dies, and Moll is taken in by one of the wealthy women. The two brothers in the new family begin to take notice of her because she is becoming a woman. The elder brother, through flattery, succeeds in getting Moll to sleep with him. He offers to keep her as his mistress and to eventually marry her. They must keep their relationship a secret.

Meanwhile, the younger brother, Robin, makes it clear that he finds Moll very attractive and wishes to marry her. Moll expresses her concern to the elder brother, who says she must accept Robin’s attentions. Moll eventually realizes that she is in a bad situation and that to protect her own and the elder brother’s reputations, she must marry Robin. The family approves of the match because they are impressed that Moll is reluctant to marry Robin, meaning that she is not a fortune hunter. Moll and Robin live together for five years and have two children. Robin dies, and the children go to his parents. Moll is “left loose upon the world” and acts the part of the beautiful, young widow, attending parties and living a wild life.

Section Two

Eventually Moll finds a new husband, the draper, who is a rake and is arrested for his debts. He breaks out of prison and escapes to France. Moll finds herself in a tight situation again, gives herself the name of Mrs. Flanders, and changes her address.

She moves in with a woman (a captain’s widow) who gets married soon after, leaving Moll on her own again. Moll, with the help of her former roommate, devises a scheme in which rumors are spread that Moll has a huge fortune. She receives quite a few suitors and is able to choose one based upon how much he loves her. After they are married, she reveals that she does not have quite as much money as was rumored, but she is not to blame because she herself never said anything about her finances. Her suitor confesses that his finances aren’t quite what he had suggested either and says that, to save money, they must live at his plantation in Virginia.

Moll and her new husband live together for a number of years in Virginia and have three children. Eventually, through discussions with her mother-in-law, Moll comes to the horrible realization that the woman is her mother, thus making her husband her brother. Moll’s mother urges her to cover up the entire affair, but Moll insists that she cannot. The mother promises Moll that she will secretly leave an inheritance for her, separate from her brother/husband’s if she buries this problem and stays in Virginia, but Moll decides to break the news to him. He attempts suicide and becomes ill at the news but agrees that she should leave.

Section Three

When Moll arrives in England, she realizes that her cargo has been destroyed and that she is beginning life again with very little money and few possessions. She goes to Bath, thinking that the fashionable resort will be a good place to find a new husband, but the men there only want mistresses. Moll spends platonic time with the gentleman in Bath, a wealthy man whose wife is mentally ill, and eventually accepts money from him.

The gentleman becomes quite ill while on a trip away from Bath and asks Moll to come and nurse him back to health, which she does. They stay together for two years in a platonic relationship until a night of much wine, after which Moll becomes his mistress for six years. All is well until the gentleman becomes ill again. He escapes death but ends their relationship.

Section Four

Moll is now 42 years old, no longer a young woman. She is interested in finding a husband again. Moll goes to Lancashire and meets with a north-country woman who claims that her brother, Jemy, is wealthy and interested in marriage. Jemy and Moll marry, but they soon discover that, though they do sincerely love one another, neither has any fortune to bring to the marriage. Moll also discovers that Jemy and the north-country woman are former lovers and had planned this scheme to claim Moll’s supposed fortune. Jemy leaves, but he and Moll promise that they will someday meet up again.

Moll returns to London where she discovers that she is again pregnant. She moves to a house run by a midwife of questionable background. In the meantime, her bank clerk friend is pressuring her through letters to marry him and offering status reports on his efforts at securing a divorce.

After she has her baby and finds a home for it, Moll marries the bank clerk. They live a comfortable life for about five years. But the bank clerk dies from grief when he loses most of their money. Moll is again out on the street with little money and two children.

Section Five

Moll begins stealing to make a living. She does not know where or how to sell the things she steals, so she visits her old friend, the midwife, whom she also calls the governess. The governess is impressed with Moll’s thieving skills and talks her into stealing full-time.

Moll becomes quite accomplished at stealing and is well-known around town for her exploits. She and her partners concoct various schemes, including using a house fire to distract the owners from their property and striking a deal with a customs official over some illegal Flemish lace. Moll always comes out safe, but her accomplices are usually caught and sent to prison or executed. Moll protects her identity, even from her partners, by disguises and also by changing her name and where she lives. The governess continues encouraging her to steal and is sharing in the plunder.

Moll goes to a fair and meets the baron, who has been drinking too much. They end up sleeping together, and Moll steals from him after he passes out. The governess knows the man and develops a scheme whereby he pays for the return of his stolen goods in exchange for her keeping quiet about how they came to be stolen. Moll becomes his mistress for a year during which time Moll does not steal.

After this relationship ends, Moll begins stealing again. She becomes very wealthy, thanks to her thievery, but she does not want to stop. She is proud that she is so well-known and successful. This is her undoing; she is caught trying to remove some valuable cloth from a home and is sent to Newgate Prison.

Section Six

While Moll is at Newgate Prison, she hears that Jemy has been brought in for being a highwayman. Moll is tried and sentenced to death. Both she and the governess repent of their sins.

Moll’s minister somehow secures a reprieve of her death sentence, and Moll is condemned to “transportation”; she must board a ship to America and become a slave for five years. She contrives a way to meet with Jemy. He reluctantly agrees that going to America may be better than death and plans to seek a transport sentence as well.

The governess, through various dealings with the ship’s captain and others, arranges to have Moll and Jemy sent to America but released from their obligations once there. Moll arranges to have tools and other supplies shipped with them so that she and Jemy can set themselves up as plantation owners.

Section Seven

Once in America, Moll discovers that her brother/husband and son are still living nearby. She desires to see them and also to see if her now-dead mother has left her any inheritance, but she does not want Jemy to know anything about her past life. She and Jemy end up buying a piece of land in southern Maryland.

Moll goes to see her brother/husband and her son in Virginia. She and her son have a joyous reunion, but she learns that her brother/husband is ill and nearly deaf. Moll discovers that her mother did leave her a small plantation that produces a yearly income. Moll does not tell her son of Jemy and does not give Jemy the entire truth of what she has been doing in Virginia.

A year later, Moll returns to Virginia to collect the income on her inherited land, whereupon she learns from her son that her brother/husband is dead. She mentions to her son that she may now want to marry again. Ultimately, she lets her son know about Jemy and gives Jemy all of the background on her previous life in Virginia. Jemy is not disturbed, and they continue to live well and prosper, returning to England “to spend the remainder of our years in sincere penitence for the wicked lives we have lived.”

CHARACTERS

The Bank Clerk

Moll meets the bank clerk just before she is about to go to Lancashire and feels that she needs someone to hold her money in London while she is away. He almost immediately expresses romantic interest in her, telling Moll that his wife is a whore. Moll likes him, noting that he is a stable man, but she puts off his advances for some time, until he is able to divorce his wife. They eventually marry, have children, and live happily until the bank clerk dies from grief over losing most of the family’s money.

The Draper

The draper is Moll’s second husband. During her marriage to him, Moll says she “had the pleasure of seeing a great deal of my money spent upon myself.” The draper ends up in prison for failing to pay his debts but escapes and flees to France, leaving Moll with “a husband, and no husband.” Because of the draper’s bad credit, Moll changes her name to Mrs. Flanders and moves to the Mint, a neighborhood where debtors find legal sanctuary.

The Elder Brother

The elder brother is Moll’s first love, a handsome but tricky young man. His mother and sisters find Moll clever and ask her to live with them after the woman who originally took in Moll dies. The elder brother flatters Moll and eventually gets her into his bed with promises of marriage and gifts. But he considers Moll his mistress and has no intentions of marrying her. Eventually, he tires of Moll and creates a series of deceptions, putting Moll into a position where she must marry his brother, Robin. On Robin and Moll’s wedding night, the elder brother gets Robin drunk so that he will not know that Moll is not a virgin.

Moll Flanders

Moll Flanders, the heroine and first-person narrator of the novel, was born in Newgate Prison to a thief who would have been hung had she not been pregnant with Moll. While Moll is still an infant, her mother is sentenced to “transportation” and sent to America to work on a plantation, making Moll an orphan. Moll spends her childhood living first with gypsies, then with a woman who takes in orphans, and finally with a family who enjoys her company.

Moll is a beautiful woman. She uses her beauty and cleverness to avoid servitude and poverty. She is forever seeking a rich husband and thinking up ways to acquire money. When she reaches middle-age and realizes that her beauty has faded, she finds herself in dire financial straights. Her solution is to turn to stealing to support herself. While she states throughout the book that she is sorry for the crimes she has committed, she blames others for forcing her to choose such a life. Despite her dangerous life, she seems always to be the lucky one: while her partners-in-crime often meet violent ends and her husbands either die or run into trouble, Moll is always left standing.

Moll is married a total of five times and has many lovers. Her first husband, Robin, is not her choice, but she has a contented, five-year marriage with him, producing two children before he dies. Her second husband is a draper by trade and careless with money. He is forced to leave England after escaping from debtors’ prison. Theoretically, Moll continues to be married to this man throughout the book.

Moll’s third husband ends up being her brother, whom she leaves after discovering this unsavory fact. She and her fourth husband, a highwayman, agree to separate when they find out they have lied to each other about their individual wealth. Her fifth husband is a bank clerk who dies after losing all of the family’s money. After his death, Moll is destitute and turns to picking pockets and other crimes to survive.

Moll eventually ends up in her birthplace, Newgate Prison, after she is caught stealing expensive cloth from a home. Her luck never seems to leave her, however, and her death sentence is commuted to “transportation,” as her mother’s had been. She connects up with her fourth husband, Jemy, and they move to Virginia to start a plantation together. She finishes the novel a prosperous woman in her sixties, still living with Jemy.

Moll reports that she changes her name a number of times (but does not indicate to what name), usually to protect her identity. She is known as Mrs. Flanders when living in the Mint neighborhood and, when she is living with the rich matron who takes her in after the nurse dies, she is called Mrs. Betty, or Betty. This term was used in the eighteenth century to indicate both a servant and female promiscuity.

The Gentleman in Bath

Moll meets the gentleman after returning, nearly destitute, to England from Virginia. The gentleman is married but claims his wife is crazy. He meets Moll in the fashionable resort town of Bath where he becomes quite enamored of her and wishes to help her financially. She refuses at first, but in time she does accept money from him as a gift. He leaves Bath, becomes ill, and asks Moll to nurse him back to health. She does, and they stay together for two years in a platonic relationship. One night, after drinking too much wine, Moll becomes his mistress. She has a child by him, and he provides for their care with an apartment and other necessities. Moll remains his mistress for about six years until the gentleman gets sick again, almost dies, and, in a moment of remorsefulness, ends his affair with Moll.

The Governess

The governess serves as Moll’s midwife when she is pregnant (probably with Jemy’s child). The governess runs a shady establishment, mostly catering to whores who need a place to stay during their pregnancies.

Later in the novel, Moll returns to the governess after Moll performs her first few thefts, unsure how to sell the items she has stolen. As it turns out, the governess is a pawnbroker and, seeing that Moll is an especially talented thief, encourages her to continue her crimes. She and Moll work together until Moll is caught and sent to Newgate Prison. This so unsettles the governess that she becomes remorseful about her life and sends a minister to Moll in prison to help her recognize the evil of her ways. But the governess also tries to bribe prison officials to help Moll and works a few deals to get Moll and Jemy’s legal situation smoothed out.

Humphrey

Humphrey is Moll’s son, born to Moll and her brother in Virginia. When Moll returns to Virginia with Jemy, she contacts her family there, and Humphrey responds to her letter. Their reunion is joyous, and Humphrey heaps gifts and money upon Moll. He arranges to help manage the land Moll’s mother has left her, and Moll visits him whenever she returns to her brother’s plantation to pick up her annual income from the land.

James

See Jemy

Jemy

Jemy is Moll’s fourth husband, and she often refers to him as her “Lancashire husband.” A north-country woman claiming to be Jemy’s sister introduces them to each other, representing Jemy as a gentleman with land and money and believing rumors that Moll is also fabulously wealthy. Moll and Jemy marry but soon discover the truth—neither of them has any money. Moll also finds out that this arrangement was unsavory from the start; the woman who claimed to be his sister is actually his former lover and was to have received a fee for the match.

Moll and Jemy truly love each other and do not really want to separate. Jemy believes the parting is necessary but tells Moll he will try to make some money farming in Ireland and then will contact her. She tries to convince him to go with her to Virginia to start a plantation, but he is not interested. They part, promising to keep in touch.

Moll briefly sees Jemy again later in the novel, and saves his life by convincing a mob that he is not the highwayman they suspect him to be. She ultimately connects up with him for good toward the end of the book when he is brought to Newgate Prison for highway robbery. She successfully persuades him to get his sentence commuted to transportation, like hers, so they can leave together for Virginia and start a plantation. In America, they become quite prosperous and return to England to live out their days together.

Moll’s Brother/Husband

After planting gossip to make Moll’s suitors believe that she is wealthy, Moll and a friend successfully attract a man of means. This man becomes Moll’s third husband and, upon discovering that Moll has no wealth, he insists they move to Virginia to live more cheaply. There, after bearing him three children, Moll discovers that she is her husband’s sister through conversations with his mother.

Eventually, against the wishes of her mother-in-law, Moll tells her brother what she has learned. He agrees that she must return to England. Moll sees him again when she returns to Virginia in her sixties. He is ill and nearly blind and does not recognize her.

Moll’s Mother

Moll’s mother appears twice in the book. Early in the novel, she is mentioned as being in Newgate Prison, where she gives birth to Moll. Soon after Moll’s birth, she is sent to Virginia as punishment for her thieving.

In Virginia, Moll’s mother serves first as a slave, then eventually marries her master and bears him two children—one of whom becomes Moll’s third husband. Later in the novel, when Moll moves to Virginia with this husband, she discovers his mother is also her mother. Moll keeps this information secret for a few years but finally tells her mother what she knows. Moll's mother, like Moll, is horrified, but begs Moll to cover up the secret and continue living with her son as his wife, for the sake of the family. She promises Moll that she will leave her an inheritance apart from what she leaves her son, which she does.

The Nurse

The nurse takes in Moll when she is a young orphan and promises the town authorities that she will be responsible for her. At her home, the nurse educates orphans and teaches them useful skills, in preparation for their lives as servants. She prevents Moll from having to become a servant by keeping her in the house as her assistant. The nurse dies when Moll is about fourteen years old.

Robin

Robin is Moll’s first husband, a man who truly loves and respects her. Moll is not interested in marrying him but has no choice, thanks to the scheming of his elder brother. Robin and Moll have a solid marriage, despite the fact that she does not find him attractive, and she bears him two children. After being married only five years, Robin dies, and his parents take the children from Moll.

THEMES

Money

Truly, in Moll Flanders, money makes the world go around. Hardly a page goes by in the novel without a mention of money. Moll’s money worries begin at the age of eight when Moll must figure out a way to avoid being placed in servitude. To do this, she tells the nurse who has taken her in that she can work, and that eventually she will earn her own way in the world. When the nurse expresses doubt that Moll can really earn her keep, Moll responds, “I will work harder, says I, and you shall have it all.”

Though Moll is easily flattered by men commenting on her beauty, she is even more flattered at their attentions if the men are wealthy. When she and the elder brother are discussing their future, he shows her a purse full of coins that he claims he will give her every year until they are married, in essence for remaining his mistress. Moll’s “colour came and went, at the sight of the purse,” and at the thought of the money he had promised her.

Moll complains after the death of her first husband that no one in the city appreciates a beautiful, well-mannered woman and that the only thing a man is looking for in a wife is her ability to bring money into the relationship. She notes that “money only made a woman agreeable” when she wanted to become a wife and that only whores and mistresses are chosen because of their personal and physical qualities—and, of course, these relationships are built upon money, as well.

Ultimately, most of Moll’s actions are precipitated by the need or desire for money. She searches for husbands who have money and usually tries to give them the mistaken impression that she is wealthy. She plots and schemes because she believes that all that matters in life is the acquisition of wealth. Even when she becomes the richest thief in all of England and her fame threatens her ability to continue stealing, she cannot stop her hunt for more money. Her greed is ultimately her downfall, for she gets sloppy and is caught stealing from a house where she cannot pretend to have been shopping.

Sexuality

Defoe is not shy about making clear that Moll is fairly free with sexual favors and that they are often tied to receiving money. In fact, on the novel’s original frontispiece, Defoe states that Moll is “twelve year a whore.” She loses her virginity to the elder brother and remains his mistress in return for a promise of marriage and money. Although she and the gentleman she meets in Bath both insist on remaining platonic companions, she eventually initiates sex one night after they have shared a large amount of wine: “Thus the government of our virtue was broken, and I exchang’d the place of friend for that unmusical harsh-sounding title of whore.” They go on to have a long affair, and he supports her financially for a number of years.

One of the more dramatic uses of Moll’s sexuality comes after Moll has had good success as a pickpocket. She goes to a fair to see if she can lift any gold watches and meets up with a baron. They end up in bed together that evening, and because he is so drunk, she is able to relieve him of his money and jewelry. The next day, the governess concocts a scheme in which she and Moll sell back to the baron his own stolen valuables and Moll becomes his mistress for a year. This saves Moll the trouble of having to steal for her living for a while.

Secrets and Lies

Moll’s life is filled with secrets and lies. She is cagey from the beginning as to her real name. She begins her story indicating that she has lived under a variety of names but that the book’s readers should refer to her as Moll Flanders “till I dare own who I have been, as well as who I am.” Nearly every time she moves from one relationship to another, she gives a fabricated name to her latest beau; but oddly enough, she rarely reveals what that new name is in the text of the book.

Moll is also fond of disguises and uses them frequently in her career as a pickpocket. She disguises herself as a widow, as a woman of means, as a man, and as a beggar to confuse those from whom she is stealing. In one humorous instance, she dresses as a widow and comes just short of committing a theft but is nearly taken for the actual thief, who is also dressed as a widow.

Moll is never totally open about her past with any of her lovers. For example, she marries her first husband because she must lie about her relationship with his brother, and she catches her third husband because she and a friend spread gossip around town that she is a wealthy widow. In fact, Moll seems fairly comfortable with presenting herself to nearly every man as someone she is not, excusing her behavior as necessary given the treachery of men in general. She never reveals to husbands three, four, and five that she is still legally married to her second husband. And when she does marry, she usually keeps what money she has a secret. For example, even when she and Jemy, the love of her life, reunite and move to Virginia, she secretly keeps a healthy sum of her wealth back in London, managed by the governess.

Perseverance and Ambition

The story of Moll Flanders is the story of a woman who is nothing if not persistent in her quest to become independent and financially comfortable. From an early age, she sets her sights on becoming something more than just a servant girl, pleading with the nurse to let her learn how to make money as a seamstress. Even though Moll spends much of her time in the book pursuing marriage, she is adamant that women should not have to settle for just any man. “Nothing is more certain than that the ladies always gain of the men by keeping their ground,” she admonishes.

With every fall from fortune Moll suffers, she has a plan that will put her back on her feet. She is able to survey her situation quickly and come up with a solution—although, granted, her solutions are not always legal and ethical, and they usually require a heavy dose of luck. When she is young and living with a wealthy family, she realizes that she must be even more beautiful and talented than the sisters. To that end, she learns French and dancing by listening in on their lessons. When she discovers that she has been married to her brother and has borne his children, she devises a plan whereby she is able to get on a ship for England and make a new start. When Moll, by her own reckoning, is forced into a life of crime, she becomes the best-known and richest thief in England. And even when she is faced with the gallows, somehow she comes out of the situation fine, sailing back to America with her only true love and a cargo hold filled with tools and equipment that will make her a rich plantation owner.

Crime and Remorse

On the whole, Moll Flanders is a book about crime. Moll turns to crime after her affair with the gentleman in Bath leaves her destitute and aimlessly wandering around London. Her looks are gone and, in a daze, she steals a bundle of silver goods. Not knowing how to sell the items, she returns to her old friend, the governess, who, as it happens, is a pawnbroker and encourages Moll to pursue stealing as an occupation.

Moll seems to enjoy her occupation and excels in it. In fact, her vanity about her beauty is transferred to a sort of pride in being a great criminal, and she is always prompted to do more when the governess reminds her of how famous she is. Moll dabbles in a few other areas outside of theft and picking pockets, but she realizes that theft is her strong suit and wisely does not venture far from it.

Whether Moll is a hardened criminal is open for debate. She steals valuables from children and then transfers the blame for her act to their parents, who either should not have dressed them so well or should not have let them out by themselves. Throughout the section in which Moll is stealing, she vacillates from blaming her victim or society for putting her in a position where she must steal to urging the reader to learn something about remorse from her story of sin. Moll claims to be penitent just before her death sentence is commuted to transportation, as does the governess, stricken with grief over Moll’s fate. But soon after Moll realizes that she will not die in prison, she begins to scheme again with the governess to make her sentence a bit easier, although she does not accept the governess’s offer to avoid completely the forced trip to America.

CONSTRUCTION

Picaresque Novel

Moll Flanders is considered an example of a picaresque novel. These novels usually employ a first-person narrator recounting the adventures of a scoundrel or low-class adventurer who moves from place to place and from one social environment to another in an effort to survive. The construction of these novels, like that of Moll Flanders, is typically episodic, and the hero or heroine is a cynical and amoral rascal who lives by his or her wits.

Structure

Defoe did not use chapter or section divisions to break up the work. The action moves chronologically, though, and is divided into close to one hundred different episodes. Defoe covers long periods of time with sweeping statements, as when Moll refers to her first marriage by saying, “It concerns the story in hand very little to enter into the farther particulars of the family, . . . for the five years I liv’d with this husband.”

Defoe begins the novel with a preface in which he claims that the story is more of a “private history” than a novel. He urges the reader to be more interested in the parts where Moll is remorseful about her crimes than in the crimes themselves, and he recommends the book “as a work from every part of which something may be learned.”

Point of View

Defoe wrote the novel in the first person, with Moll telling the story of her life. This form brings Moll close to readers, as if she is speaking directly to them. As well, Moll tells her story from the vantage point of being nearly seventy years old and purportedly repentant. She pauses occasionally in the action to speak from her position as a penitent seventy-year-old woman and cautions about particular behaviors and choices.

Hero/Heroine

Moll is not a typical heroine because she is not someone whose behavior is admirable. Very often her actions are morally reprehensible and open to condemnation. Her integrity, at the very least, is suspect. But she is the heroine of her own story, nonetheless, because she does capture some of the qualities of the traditional heroine: one who is brave in the face of adversity, successfully challenges the status quo, and progresses through the novel with a certain amount of fortitude and purpose. Moll’s life is victorious, in a way, because in the end she both gets what she wants and appears sorry for the damage she has caused.

Romantic Tone

Defoe has written Moll Flanders in an exaggerated fashion, developing a protagonist in Moll who is, for example, not only a good thief but also the richest and most famous thief in the country. She marries not one or two men, but five, one of whom—almost beyond belief—just happens to be her long-lost brother. The novel is written with a romantic tone, meaning that actions are exaggerated and larger than life, not that people fall in love. The novel is almost soap opera-like given the amazing things that happen to Moll.

Foreshadowing

Defoe occasionally uses foreshadowing, a writing technique that creates the expectation of something happening later in the work. When she looks for a husband after the draper leaves her, Moll encounters a group of hard-drinking and hard-living rogues who try to interest her in a bit of fun, but she responds, “I was not wicked enough for such fellows as these yet.” When Jemy and Moll break up because they have no money, she makes it clear that he will show up again later, noting, “But I shall have more to say of him hereafter.”

VII

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

The American Colonies and the English Economy

In the novel, Moll sails to Virginia twice: first as the wife of a plantation owner, and second as a convicted criminal sentenced to serve time as a slave. In the late seventeenth century and early eighteenth century, Virginia was an English colony, evidence of expanding English overseas interests in the name of trade and political power. Settled in the early 1600s, Virginia was a thriving and important complement to England’s economy by the early 1700s.

During this period, wealth came progressively more from merchants’ capital, creating a powerful and prosperous business class. Business was booming in England, fostering an attitude that there was lots of money to be made. England’s major manufactured export product during this period was cloth, which, along with other manufactured goods, was shipped to the American colonies in exchange for an increasingly valuable commodity, tobacco.

The Role of Women

While the philosophy of the eighteenth century Enlightenment period addressed such issues as individual liberties, social welfare, economic liberty, and education, these concerns did not translate into major changes for women between the late 1600s and early 1700s. In fact, there are indications that the status of women declined during this period; in 1600, more than two-thirds of the businesses in London were reported to be owned by women, but by the end of the eighteenth century, that rate had been reduced to only ten percent.

Because the English economy at this time was based on the family unit, financial success determined that most people live within a family unit. In such an environment, society looked upon individuals who lived outside of a family unit with suspicion and assumed they were probably criminals, beggars, or prostitutes. Moll, when she finds herself in particularly difficult situations, frequently bemoans the fact that she does not have any family or friends whose household she could join. Essentially, her eternal search for a husband is a search for a family unit of her own.

Working-class women were expected to participate in the labor force as early as their sixth birthday. If a child was an orphan without anyone willing to provide financial support, as Moll’s nurse did for her, the authorities expected the orphan to go into “service”; for young girls this was usually household work. Women could rarely marry without a dowry, an amount of money that went to the husband as a sort of investment in the family economic unit.

Women of laboring families, married or single, worked in low-status jobs. Middle- and upper-class women had more economic options although by the seventeenth century, as a woman’s status increased, her ability to secure productive work diminished as she was not expected to be in a situation where she would have to work.

Many progressive Englishmen of the day believed that education was a paramount requirement for a civilized society; educational opportunities were extended to middle- and upper-class women in addition to men. But existing attitudes dictated that only men receive instruction in the more intellectual subjects, such as philosophy and science, and that women should study subjects that would contribute to their moral development and to their desirability as marriage prospects. These subjects included singing, dancing, and languages, as demonstrated by the young girls in the household of Moll’s first husband, Robin. Moll listens in on these lessons, giving her an edge that most girls in her economic status did not have.

VIII

QUESTIONS

Create a time line showing the major political, religious, social, scientific, and cultural events that occurred during Daniel Defoe's life (the late 1600s through the early 1700s).

Elizabeth Frye was an English prison reform activist who lived from 1780 to 1845. She especially worked to improve conditions for female prisoners at Newgate Prison. Investigate the prison reform movement in England, and find out its history. Were there any prison reformers working during the time Moll Flanders would have been in Newgate? What were the typical conditions at a prison such as Newgate?

Syphilis and other venereal diseases were common in London during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Research the prevalence of these diseases and how it compares to their current prevalence in London and in the United States. Examine how venereal diseases were treated during the time of Moll Flanders and how this compares to current treatments.

Choose an episode from Moll Flanders that you especially like, and write a script for a soap opera featuring the episode. Update the characters, setting, and events as you think appropriate to a present-day story.

COMPARE AND CONTRAST

1700s: London’s population reaches 550,000, up from 450,000 in 1660. Despite losing as many as 100,000 citizens to the Great Plague in 1665, and the destruction of much of the city in 1666 during the three-day Great Fire, London is now the largest city in Europe. Rebuilding London after the Great Fire takes place quickly and haphazardly. Today: London now boasts about seven million people within its six hundred and twenty square miles and is still the largest city in Europe. Major historical buildings, such as the Royal Opera House and the British Museum, are being renovated.

1700s: Middle- and upper-class English women have more economic options than lower-class women; however, women are increasingly excluded from productive work as their social status increases. Opportunities in areas such as teaching are growing, but trade guilds and apprenticeships exclude women in large numbers while some formerly female professions, such as midwifery, are being crowded out by new male health-care professionals. Today: Women make up 45 percent of the workforce in the United Kingdom, and Britain employs more women than any other European country. Not only are women found in positions throughout government, education, medicine, business, and other professions, but they account for about 35 percent of new business ventures.

1700s: Black slaves comprise 24 percent of the Virginia colony’s population in 1715, up from less than 5 percent in 1671. Slavery is not abolished in Virginia until after the United States Civil War. Today: U.S. Census 2000 reports for the state of Virginia show that African Americans comprise about 20 percent of the total population.

Early 1700s: The English criminal Jack Sheppard is famous for his astonishing escapes from custody, particularly his 1724 escape from Newgate Prison. His exploits became the subject of numerous narratives and plays, some attributed to Daniel Defoe, and he is the hero of William Harris Ainsworth’s 1839 novel Jack Sheppard. Today: Newgate Prison was demolished in 1902, and today the front iron doors of the prison can be viewed in the Museum of London.

Khalil Albanna

Saturday, February 25, 2012

Moll Flanders : Full Summary

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