Take a photo of a barcode or cover
ebeeb 's review for:
Moll Flanders
by Daniel Defoe
This was a good read overall. The beginning was gripping, the middle a bit of a slog, and the ending satisfying in that I finally understood that this wasn't as simple a morality tale as I'd supposed as I read it. What's interesting about this book is that it's supposed to represent one of the first novels—and it shows. There are no chapters, but only page headings that tell you what will happen next; most notably "Happy Prospects" and then, on the next page, "Widowed and Helpless." Years go by in a few sentences, and almost all characters are unnamed or referred to generally by a descriptive term only ("my governness," "my Lancashire husband").
The remainder of this review discusses the book in its entirety.
The remainder of this review discusses the book in its entirety.
The story has so many episodes it's hard to summarize. Moll is born effectively orphaned, as her mother is sent to Newgate upon her birth, and she is raised by an old woman paid by the state. She is determined from the beginning not to be demeaned by work and wants to be a "Gentlewoman." She marries 4 times: once to the brother of her first lover, then to her brother by blood (unbeknownst to her) whom she lives with in Virginia, then to her Lancashire husband (who she marries expecting a fortune only to find that he married her for her supposed fortune), and finally to a banker who manages a divorce from his adulterous wife in order to marry Moll. When she gets too old for marriage and her banker husband dies, she turns, for many years, to petty crime, stealing watches, linen, and twice acting as mistress to married men ("whoring"). She becomes one of the most notorious thieves in London, and is finally caught and sent to Newgate, presumably to die. She half-repents there (she reflects that it was not a true repentance because she no longer had any option to steal) and a priest takes pity on her and gets her transported to America instead of hanged. She arranges to go with her Lancashire husband, who she meets with again in Newgate and learns has also been a criminal for 25 years, even before he met her. On her second trip back to America, she meets with the son she had by her brother (her brother is "half-dead" and mostly blind; she does not speak to him) and finds that she has come into an inheritance from her birth mother of an entire plantation. The profits from this, together with the plantation she makes with her husband and the funds from her thieving days, means she retires quite wealthy, penitent, and presumably happy back in England.
Throughout the narrative Moll refers to the reason she has written this narrative: as a warning against vice and a guiding light towards virtue. The introduction to the book talks a lot about how the book is an exercise in reflecting back upon past actions, trying to make sense of them, and how Moll is trying to perhaps make her actions belatedly sympathetic or penitential. But I'd go a step further and argue that what Defoe shows is that Moll is never really penitent. Even at the end, Moll acts just as she always has done: according to necessity. By the end of the book, she has merely put herself in a position where she can no longer or no longer needs to behave in such a way as would necessitate penitence––she is too old to steal, cannot have children, and is rich.
First, the book presents Moll's life as a slow decline into greater and greater vice, until she is reduced to actual criminality and prostitution. But, after all, is there really that much difference between her seeking out men for their money and later being a prostitute? The difference I see is her options: she tries to marry when she's young, and steals when she's older merely because she is no longer beautiful enough to marry. It's true that she continues to steal past the point that she needs to, and Moll claims that she stops because of her penitence for her past actions, but I think she stops because she finally gets caught. Moll puts a nice gloss of guilt and reflection on her actions, but in the end she is mostly reactionary. We can also see this in the way she acts after coming to America with her Lancashire husband. She still lies to everyone as it suits her, including her own son when she does not tell him she has remarried and, most unnecessarily, when she gives him a gold watch that, by the by, is stolen.
She may repent her past life, but she has no qualms about using her dirty money to fund her retirement of virtue. She remembers her son only because she runs into him again––she never even mentions her numerous other children ever again, including the child she gave up to be taken care of in the country and whom, we assume, she funded throughout its childhood. And what about her brother-husband? It's almost like an extreme version of the prodigal son: he who lived a virtuous life (as most of her husbands did, and who otherwise unfailingly died early for all their trouble) went half insane when he found he was in an incestuous marriage, went mostly blind by old age, and, though he raised his son and supported his mother, yet was not given the inheritance (or love!) Moll swooped in and sucked up after an absence of 20 years. All the villains in the story (Moll, the Lancashire Husband, and Moll's governness) end up happy in old age, while their honest compatriots rot in the ground (excepting petty thieves all hanged at Newgate): how's that for a morality tale?
But Moll is a sensitive and reflective person, and it's impossible not to sympathize with her. We are complicit in her adventures by reading them and wanting her to succeed, even when that success is in crime. Moll's conversion is the least compelling part of the story, as she herself acknowledges in the text, and I think that's the point. The text reads surprisingly modern for how old it is, and Moll is one of the more compelling female characters I have ever read.