A review by readingoverbreathing
Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe

4.0

". . . she that will be a whore, will be a whore."

Moll Flanders honestly surprised me. It's incredibly rare to find an eighteenth century novel so openly discussing sex, especially a woman being so open about her sex life.
Defoe, in characterizing Moll, never degrades her for her sex, as many other writers of his time would have. She is a strong, independent character who supports herself, however illegally, has a lot sex, with and without men she is married to, and uses her own cleverness to her advantage without ever been shamed as a wicked or loose woman, which would have been much more common for the time period. She's a woman far ahead of her time, and her matter-of-fact narrative clearly expresses that.

The issues I did have with this novel were mostly technical. Firstly, almost none of the characters had names. Besides Moll, maybe two others ever had names, and rarely were they referred to by those names, which made for a somewhat confusing read. Characters were often referred to as things such as "my husband" or "the lady" which are not very distinguishing at all, especially when Moll had about five husbands, including three at certain given times.
There were also no chapters or breaking points of any kind in this novel. There was the split for the second volume and that was it, allowing the narrative to go on for hundreds of pages without ceasing, which also made for some confusion.
Also, what the hell happened to all of Moll's children? She had at least one or two kids by most of her husbands, but by the end of the novel,

Spoiler

her grown son in Virginia she refers to numerous times as her "only son." Like sweetie, I've been here for over two hundred pages, I know you have at least five other kids.

This plot hole has bothered me quite a bit.

All in all, I was impressed. This was a rare read, different from any book I've read before. I look forward to exploring more Defoe in the future.