When I was a teenager, I read Robinson Crusoe several times and I really liked it. So when I was in Brighton in 1994 to study English, I picked up several books in a cheap Wordsworth edition. One of these was Moll Flanders, and although it sounded good, I mostly picked it up because of Defoe being the author. And let me just say, right off the bat, this is nothing like Robinson Crusoe. And not just because of the obvious differences in the stories. No, I thought Crusoe was a really great story – and well, I’m just not quite sure how I feel about Moll Flanders. (Sidenote to myself: I need to reread Robinson Crusoe soon!)From the get-go I want to make it perfectly clear that, when reading this book, you never doubt that you are reading the work of a very skillful writer. You can feel the talent on every page and even though I at times felt that things ought to feel repetitive (page after page after page about Moll’s criminal career), they just never did. This material in the hands of a less skilled writer would have been a complete disaster. As it is now, I’m basing most of my 3-stars rating on the skills of the writer and thereby the inherent quality of the book, not the story itself – although one could have hoped that he could have made a better novel out of his material.The story itself is rather simple. In the shape of an autobiographical memoir of the main protagonist Moll Flanders, we follow her life from childhood to she is in her 70s. The entire book is actually summarized perfectly in it’s subtitle: ‘Who was born in Newgate, and during a life of continued Variety for Threescores Years, besides her Childhood, was Twelve Year a Whore, five times a Wife (whereof once to her own brother) Twelve Year a Thief, Eight Year a Transported Felon in Virginia, at last grew Rich, liv’d Honest and died a Penitent.’ And yes – that’s exactly what this book’s about. And doesn’t it sound exciting and thrilling? Why yes, it does. Unfortunately, it doesn’t quite read that way.I think the main reason for my lack of enthusiasm for this book, is it’s main character. Moll Flanders, as she calls herself, is all in all not very likable. I lost count of how many children she had through the book but in the end, she only seemed to remember having one. She leaves several children on several occasions – never to speak of or think about them again, it seems. Even though I know she’s forced into a lot of the mischief, she freely admits that she a lot of the time only repents if she gets caught – and then she only repents of the fact that she got caught. I do get that all her bad luck comes in part from making one bad decision when very young and then having some bad circumstances thrown upon her and because she lives in a time where women didn’t have a lot of options – but still, she does come across as a woman so focused on securing her own hide that she tramples whatever gets in her way. It may be that that was the only way for her – but when reading her story, you don’t get a lot of sympathy for her character and since this novel is completely focused on her, she needs to be interesting enough to carry this. And she’s not.I’m not sure if I’m damaged by reading John Cleland’s Fanny Hill, or Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (1748) and Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa (also 1748) but I’m a bit tired of reading these 18th century books about ‘fallen women’, roughly put. It may be a bit unfair towards Moll Flanders since this is the first published of these three, but the best thing about Moll is that she is much more a get-goer than both Clarissa and Fanny. I rated Fanny 2 stars back when I read it in 2009 and even though I’m not done reading Clarissa yet, I’m so far planning on rating it 3 stars. So these are definitely not books I really love. Both Fanny Hill and Clarissa are rather repetitive and I think the only reason Moll Flanders doesn’t feel the same way is that Defoe is the better writer.If you choose to see these three books in the context of the emancipation of women and see these books as showing the situation of women and how their dependence on men sometimes placed them in bad situations, forcing them to make choices like prostitution and theft, they do become more interesting. I have only a very cursory knowledge of the suffragette movement and feminism or the roots of each of these but I think books like this paved the way for the equality between men and women – and of course, that owns them a lot of favor. And in that line of thought, it’s interesting that all three books are told from the point of view of a woman – but written by men. Even more so because I think the female voice feels true in all three.I do feel that there’s an interesting field of study here – the role of women in these 18th century novels as well as the portrayal of women as whores – and not whores as immoral beings who get punished but rather as women down on their luck who end up better than they started, and often better off because of their immorality. I think it could be interesting to read Daniel Defoe’s other novel Roxana (which seem rather similar to Moll Flanders) as well as Samuel Richardson’s Pamela (although I need to finish Clarissa first and have a long breather before committing to another of Richardson’s works) and also Justine (1740) by Marquis de Sade which, however, doesn’t seem to be in favor of women’s right in spite of it having the same seemingly morale as the Defoe, Cleland and Richardson novels – immorality pays and the moral ones suffer, again roughly put.Without having much literary scholarship to base it on, I feel that Charles Dickens is carrying the social indignation’s torch, lit by Defoe, into the 19th century. He too focused on those down on their luck and just like Defoe, his huge knowledge of the world he was living in and, especially, how the lower classes lived, is the main inspiration for the novels.Now all these three books are on the 1001 books you must read before you die list – and my feeling about all three of them is that they are included because of their context and social importance, more than their literary merits even though the editors of the book argue otherwise …! They must find some worth in them since all three have survived all three editions of the list – and they are worth reading, definitely. I just don’t think I will read either of them again.So after writing a review mostly focusing on the social context and literary history, I have to come out and state plainly that although I somewhat enjoyed Moll Flanders, it’s not a novel I see myself returning to and it’s more the context it was written in and the implications it might have had, that interests me, not so much the novel itself.(And finally – don’t you just love when the books you read, compliment each other so you can have talks and discussions with them and yourself about their meaning, value, importance and so much more???)
The Fortunes & Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c.Who was Born in Newgate, and during a Life of continu'd Variety for Threescore Years, besides her Childhood, was Twelve Year a Whore, five times a Wife (whereof once to her own Brother), Twelve Year a Thief, Eight Year a Transported Felon in Virginia, at last grew Rich, liv'd Honest, and dies a Penitent. Written from her own Memorandums . . .Original title page for Moll FlandersThe character of Moll Flanders has traditionally baffled critics.Is she an ironic character? Is she truly penitent? How may her inconsistencies be justified? Critics have asserted there is irony in Moll Flanders but it is not in the book; that is, we--as readers--may appreciate irony in Moll's character but Defoe does not provide it. What may be easier to demonstrate, then, is that "Defoe's attitude toward Moll is consistent, even if Moll herself, ironically or otherwise, is not" (James 203). Whatever the critics propose, for readers, Moll emerges as irascible, vibrant, and wonderfully complex. Moll also shows the limited choices for a woman of her time. Moll Flanders, as the description from Defoe's original title page suggests, is a novel written in the confessional mode. As readers of this type of work, our role is akin to that of a priest: we listen to the confessions and tacitly provide understanding or forgiveness. To elicit our sympathy, Defoe places Moll in an environment not only hostile but enticing, a world, he would have us believe, that tempts and lures an otherwise virtuous individual into a life of crime. Moll’s world, ostensibly mimetic, is really portrayed with great selectivity. Many characters—even those as important as her first lover—are not even named; settings are often depicted as just “a house” or “the street.” What does loom large on Moll’s horizon is money. Again and again, Moll focuses on money and the material; early on, she defines herself in terms of her net worth.Moll’s indoctrination into a materialistic world starts in childhood. Orphaned, Moll is raised by an elderly woman who feels amused pity for Moll’s desires to become a “gentlewoman” and let Molls live with her rather than go into service. The ladies of the town, curious about the “little gentlewoman,” visit her and soon begin to give Moll gifts of money and fine clothes. When Moll’s elderly guardian dies, one of the families that had shown an interest in Moll takes her into their home. Though poor, Moll describes how she receives an education equivalent to that of a gentlewoman. By a twist in circumstances, Moll gets an early “taste of genteel living” (9) far above her actual station. Although Moll describes herself initially as “very sober, modest, and virtuous” (12), she is led into a liaison with the eldest brother in the household. His dominance soon takes hold, and Moll describes his tactics in terms of lures: “he began with that unhappy snare to all women, viz. taking notice upon all occasions how pretty I was” or “After he had thus baited his hook” (13). Though Moll admits her strong passion for the elder brother, her stronger passion soon becomes clear. After an initial episode of kissing, the brother gives Moll money. Moll’s reaction is telling: “I was more confused with the money than I was before with the love, and began to be so elevated that I scarce knew the ground I stood on” (17). On a subsequent occasion, he gives Moll a “handful of gold” (18), and its glittering reality becomes the dominant image in Moll’s landscape: “As for the gold, I spent whole hours in looking upon it; I told [and yes, this is the right word:] the guineas over and over a thousand times a day” (19). To gain Moll’s complete surrender, the brother offers her a silk purse with a hundred guineas in it and the promise of one hundred guineas annually until he marries her. With irony intended or unintended, Moll’s passion and greed gain equal footing: “My colour came and went, at the sight of the purse and with the fire of the proposal together” (22), and Moll succumbs to his advances.Significantly, money and attendant material possessions are foregrounded while the rest of Moll’s setting recedes into the background. The elder brother—as we could predict—does not marry Moll and her reluctant marriage to the younger brother, done only out of financial necessity, receives a rapid narration. Molls tells us there is little worth describing, “…I lived with this husband, only to observe that I had two children by him, and that at the end of five years he died” (51). Typically, Moll assesses her present situation in terms of money, a description more graphic and several lines longer, than that of her five years of marriage.Moll’s early adventures set up her pattern of behavior. Despite her professed good intentions, when push comes to shove, Moll consistently acts out of self-interest. Moll’s hostile world tempts her with material gain, she succumbs, eventually has some type of downfall, and then defines her outcome in terms of her current net worth. Moll’s patterned conduct puts the reader in an interesting situation. Moll may momentarily hesitate and try to rationalize a forthcoming seduction or theft, but we never doubt the outcome.However, in a society that would otherwise provide little choice for an unattached woman, Moll’s ability to silence any internal qualms greatly increases her freedom of movement. While we might find her attempts at rationalization or short fits of morality funny, Moll Flanders is a complex character. Ultimately, she is not simply funny nor simply tragic, but fully realized and equipped with powers of resourcefulness and self-preservation that might have been admired in a man.
What do You think about Moll Flanders (1993)?
Did I enjoy this novel? No. In some ways, its story and writing technique are far too rudimentary for a 21st century reader. It certainly didn't grab me the way other books have. But I think if you want to see how the novel got from there to here, you can't pass this by. Because reading Moll Flanders is like watching the grainy footage of a home video of your lover at five years old. You can see the gestures and traits that make up the person today, but only sketched out in infant form. You have to love it because you love the fully formed adult person now, and it's so squee-fascinating to see that some bits have been there since the very beginning. I'm a bit of lit-geek and I loved seeing how you could see the beginnings of the character/realist novel in Moll Flanders. The whole thing is more plot than character. Certainly Moll has far less internal substance and texture than Madame Bovary or Anna Karenina. However, Moll is also the progenitor or one of the progenitors of later heroines like Scarlett O'Hara (Gone with the Wind / Margaret Mitchell) or Emma Harte (A Woman of Substance / Barbara Taylor Bradford): survivalist bad girl who triumphs over everything the author throws at her. And boy does he throw everything at her: "husband" #1 is a seducing cad who marries her off to his brother; husband #2 dies after a few years of marriage; husband #3 turns out to be her brother; husband #4 is a highway man who tricks her into marrying him but eventually lets her go; husband #5 is a decent man who dies after five years of marriage. And in between husbands 3 and 4 is an extended love affair. And so, Moll is also the daughter of the Wife of Bath. Was this a good read? Not in the fun sense of the term, nor in the value-judgement sense either. But I think it certainly belongs in the canon and if that's something that matters to you (and there's zero reason why it should), then it certainly was a good read.
—Whitaker
" ... my pride, not my principle, my money, not my virtue, kept me honest... "The copy of Moll Flanders that I read --a Modern Library issue, from 1985-- has the most perfect rendition of the heroine I have seen. A library copy and purely a random chance, but there she is--in wood-cut, in all her disheveled, coarsely hedonistic splendor. One high-buttoned boot hooked up high on the arm of some couch, Moll Flanders, consummate whore. Or hussy, or harlot, or maybe floozy, but it is most often as "whore" that she describes herself in the book. Legs akimbo, petticoats raked up above the knee, torso slunk back into a chaise curtained away from the too-inquisitive glance, there she sits, or slinks. A drink in one hand and the other somewhere south of that, having just wrested up the skirts to focus the mind of the onlooker, a haughty wench. Sensual lips and dreamy, soporific eyelids say indiscriminate promiscuity, abandon. And that brings us to the peculiar nature of the book. Meant in one way to appear as a cautionary tale, that idea clearly got lost in the early going, and the theme exists now as a parable of playing the odds with one's own moral compass. What might have begun as using taboo and shame as a commercial draw for a book (that generally would proceed from lusty jeopardy to regret and repentance, ala Pamela or similar)-- seems to have gone toward something darker, or maybe more concise-- a blithe disregard for moral lines and boundaries. Peculiar also because, well, Defoe was more than 60 when he wrote this, anonymously, and it spares pretty much no category, in an early 18th century sort of way, of female sexual experience, from exploration to solicitation, to childbirth and further complexities. And that's a kind of a weird mindset for a sixty year old male-- an already successful novelist, having penned Robinson Crusoe by then- to want to inhabit. Moll isn't sexy, and she's not even coldly calculating; she is enthusiastically, relentlessly calculating. Any given page stands the chance of having an actual pounds and shillings accounting, for those interested in following the ongoing balance. Speaking of time, for Defoe time is always a flirtation with eternity. Every consideration, every proposition that comes along must be subjected to Defoe's triangulating, dithering, re-litigating scrutiny until the reader wishes that Moll would do anything, rash or considered, just to get out of that paragraph. More than a period affectation, Defoe is really transfixed by his own ability to recant the same situation in every degree possible and then repeat the process. Surely this was written for the penny-dreadful marketplace, but really-- pace must have mattered, even there..? "...being now, as it were, a woman of fortune though I was a woman without a fortune, I expected something or other might happen in my way that might mend my circumstances, as had been my case before... Bath is a place of gallantry enough; expensive and full of snares. I went thither, indeed, in the view of taking anything that might offer, but I must do myself justice, as to protest I knew nothing amiss; I meant nothing but in an honest way, nor had I any thoughts about me at first that looked the way which afterwards I suffered them to be guided. Here I stayed the whole latter season, as it is called there, and contracted some unhappy acquaintances, which rather prompted the follies I fell afterwards into, than fortified me against them..." An interesting aspect of the book is the treatment of criminals being 'transported' for their crimes to the colonies; some unseen true-to-period ironies there. Still, while we're on the quibbles, there is much missing from this picture, detail and atmosphere aren't really served in any substantial sense, perhaps like many pulp efforts. Strangely there are no chapters or breaks in the book, and many many characters go unnamed. Children, husbands, protectors and antagonists must be remembered only as generic cogs in the storyline; this seems way too much the Allegory treatment, considering the flaws in the equation. One more great white lie to be gotten out of the way before we conclude. For some reason Moll Flanders seems to enjoy this 'foundational feminist document' status in literature; not so much for the outcome, or even the wisdom of the proceedings, but for the fact that a female is seen to be exerting some control for once. But Defoe is an odd man, writing an odd book, at once exploitative, presumably profitable, anonymous and free of any responsibility for the outward ripple of feminine blameworthiness and culpability that it certainly narrates. The character of Moll Flanders is devious and mean-spirited; her actions are a carefully crafted disguise of commission and omission always meant to set her at a safe remove from discovery. As readers we are deceived by the nearness of the narration, the page-to-page trial and danger that Moll must endure, in her chosen vocation. Which is to say pickpocket, shakedown artist, confidence-woman, whore and liar. Very much the opposite of the true innocent, the agreeably amiable mistress of the fortuitous bluff or timely wink that she'd like to have us believe in.Defoe's thesis, that life is always brutal, always extracts innocence, forces guile, and proceeds toward cataclysm -- comes down to a simple summation. And that is, basically: getting over, and not getting caught. Even for a penny-dreadful, that's really not much of a resolution. The book lurches directly for disaster, but in the spirit of all such tales, ends on a sunny, happy note. WTF. Moll Flanders, you are no Molly Bloom, girl.
—J.
Ever wondered what the significance of Ned Flander's wife's name on the Simpons?Moll Flanders is about a woman that not only fell on hard times, but is a strong, self asserted woman that uses any possible wiles to survive in a time when women were still nothing more than trinkets. She goes from reputable, to the London street slum, to accidentally marrying her brother, to living a long life with one that she loves.Far beyond its time, Moll Flanders is a classic. Hard to read at times, as is most of the books that came from the 1700s-1800s, just meerly because of the style of writing can get long in the tooth. This isn't a book for someone to pick up that isn't willing to read.
—Pinky
