Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe

First published: 1722, as The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders, Who Was Born in Newgate, and During a Life of Continued Variety, for Threescore Years, Besides Her Childhood, Was Twelve Years a Whore, Five Times a Wife (Thereof Once to Her Own Brother), Twelve Years a Thief, Eight Years a Transported Felon in Virginia, at Last Grew Rich, Lived Honest, and Died a Penitent. Written from Her Own Memorandums

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Picaresque

Time of plot: Seventeenth century

Locale: England and the American colonies

Principal Characters

• Moll Flanders, a rogue
• Robin, her first husband
• A Sea Captain, Moll’s half brother and husband
• Jemmy E., a rogue

The Story

When her mother is transported to the American colonies as a felon, eighteen-month-old Moll Flanders is left without family or friends to care for her. For a time, she is befriended by a band of gypsies, who desert her in Colchester. There the child is a charge of the parish. Becoming a favorite of the wife and daughters of the mayor, Moll receives gentle treatment and much attention and flattery.

At the age of fourteen, Moll Flanders is again left without a home. When her indulgent instructor dies, she is taken in service by a kindly woman of means, and she receives instruction along with the daughters of the family. Moll is superior to these daughters in all but wealth. During her residence there, she loses her virtue to the oldest son of the family and secretly becomes his mistress. Later, Robin, the youngest son, makes her a proposal of marriage, and she accepts him. Five years later, Robin dies. Soon afterward, Moll marries a spendthrift draper who quickly depletes her savings and is imprisoned. In the meantime, Moll takes lodgings at the Mint. Passing as a widow, she calls herself Mrs. Flanders.

Her next venture in matrimony is with a sea captain, with whom she sails to the Virginia colony. There she discovers to her extreme embarrassment that she is married to her own half brother. After eight years in Virginia, she returns to England to take up residence at Bath. In due time, she becomes acquainted with a gentleman whose wife is demented. Moll helpfully nurses him through a serious illness and later becomes his mistress. During the six years in which they live together, she gives birth to three children and saves enough money to support herself after the gentleman has regretted his indiscretions and left her.

Next, the ambitious Moll meets a banker with whom she carries on a mild flirtation, but she leaves him to marry an Irishman named Jemmy E., supposedly a very wealthy gentleman of Lancashire. Moll has allowed him to believe that she has means, and she soon learns that her new husband is penniless. He has played the same trick on her that she has used on him. Moll and Jemmy E. are both rogues and therefore make a congenial couple, but eventually they decide to separate; he follows his unlawful profession of highway robbery, and she returns to the city. After Jemmy has left her, Moll finds that she is again to become a mother. She gives birth to a healthy boy who is quickly boarded out.

In the meantime, Moll has been receiving letters from her admirer, the bank clerk. They meet at an inn and are married there. On the day after the ceremony, she sees her Lancashire husband, the highwayman, in the courtyard of the inn, and she is able to save him from arrest. For five years, until his death, Moll lives with the banker in great happiness. After his death, she sells her property and takes lodgings. Forty-eight years old and with children to support, she is prompted by the devil to steal a bundle from an apothecary shop. Next, she steals a necklace from a pretty little girl on her way home from dancing school. With these acts Moll Flanders embarks on a twelve-year period as a thief. Sometimes she disguises herself in men’s clothing; her favorite disguise is that of a beggar woman. After a period of apprenticeship, Moll becomes the richest thief in all England. During her years as a thief, a chance encounter with a gentleman at Bartholomew Fair results in an affair, which the two carry on for some time.

Finally, Moll is seized while trying to steal two pieces of silk brocade and is locked up in Newgate prison. There she again sees her former husband the highwayman, who has been committed at Newgate for a robbery on Hounslow Heath. Before going up for trial and sentence, Moll repents of her sins; nevertheless, she is sentenced to death by the court. Through the kind offices of a minister, however, the truly repentant Moll is given a reprieve. The next day, she watches her fellow prisoners being carried away in carts to meet the fate that she has been spared. She is finally sentenced to transportation to America.

The highwayman, with whom she has become reconciled, is awarded a like sentence, and the pair embark for Virginia in the same ship. They have made all arrangements for a comfortable journey and have stocked themselves with the tools and materials necessary for running a plantation in the new world. Forty-two days after leaving an Irish port, they arrive in Virginia. Once ashore, Moll learns that her mother has died. Her half brother, to whom she had once been married, and her son are still living near the spot where she had disembarked years before.

Not yet wishing to meet her relatives and not desiring to be known as a transported criminal in America, she arranges for transportation to the Carolina colony. After crossing Chesapeake Bay, she and the highwayman find the ship already overloaded. They decide to stay in Maryland and set up a plantation there. With two servants and fifty acres of land under cultivation, they soon prosper. Then Moll arranges an interview with her son in Virginia, across the bay.

In due course, Moll learns that her mother has willed her a plantation on the York River, a plantation complete with stock and servants. She presents her son with one of the stolen watches she has brought from London. After five weeks, she returns to Maryland, where she and her husband become wealthy and prosperous planters of good repute throughout all the colonies. This prosperity is augmented by the arrival of a second cargo of goods from England, for which Moll had arranged before she sailed. In the meantime, the man who was both brother and husband to Moll dies, and she is now able to see her son without any embarrassment.

At the age of seventy years, Moll returns to England. Her husband soon joins her there, and they resolve to spend the rest of their lives in repentance for their numerous sins.

Bibliography

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Defoe, Daniel. Moll Flanders: An Authoritative Text, Contexts, Criticism. Ed. Albert J. Rivero. New York: Norton, 2004. Print.

Ganz, Melissa J. "'Moll Flanders' and English Marriage Law." Eighteenth Century Fiction 17.2 (2005): 157–82. Print.

Lund, Roger D., ed. Critical Essays on Daniel Defoe. New York: Hall, 1997. Print.

Mowry, Melissa. "Women, Work, Rearguard Politics, and Defoe's Moll Flanders." Eighteenth Century: Theory & Interpretation 49.2 (2008): 97–116. Print.

Murray, John C. "Refocusing the Gendered Gaze: Role-Playing, Performance, and Multiple-Identity in Defoe's Moll Flanders." Anachronist 15 (2010): 43–59. Print.

Novak, Maximillian E. Daniel Defoe: Master of Fictions—His Life and Ideas. New York: Oxford UP, 2001. Print.

Novak, Maximillian E. Realism, Myth, and History in Defoe’s Fiction. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1983. Print.

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