This work, published in 1722 and attributed to Daniel Defoe but set in 1600s England with interludes in Virginia, is a fictional first-person account of the life of the narrator, “Moll Flanders” (not her real name), the daughter of a Newgate prisoner. Although she is penniless as a child, she manages to give herself the appearance of a gentlewoman. Her fortunes and her identity pass through a number of transformations during the course of her life, which is marred by a series of deceptions and misdeeds, which she eventually comes to repent of.
Wikipedia says this novel, like Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (which I enjoyed very much), is an example of “spiritual autobiography.”
See below for what I thought. (I am not a fan.)
Not a fan of Moll Flanders
Overall, I feel baffled. I don’t really see what the point of the novel was.
I could understand if it were a prim and overtly didactic cautionary tale (like, I dunno, Pilgrim’s Progress)—but Moll explicitly refuses to moralize or preach, presenting the events of her life almost without comment and leaving interpretation as an exercise for the reader.
I could also understand if the novel were (like the penny dreadfuls) sensationalized to provide readers with the thrill of vicarious sinfulness, perhaps mixed with promptings to charitable action (and maybe that’s what I was expecting)—but Moll’s accounts are lacking in both salaciousness and pitiable debasement.
I could also understand if the novel were a social critique, about the difficulties of women or orphaned children or poor people or thieves sentenced to death or transportation to the colonies as indentured servants—but there’s not really a focus on the injustice of any of these aspects of Moll’s situation, and she manages pretty well, considering her circumstances, albeit generally by using dishonest means.
I could even understand if the novel were a straightforward account of an unusual woman’s life, told for the sake of suspense and iconoclastic novelty—but the after-the-fact framing of the story gives us a sedate and mature narrator who has already survived everything she describes and seems bored with the duty of describing it, and moreover, sorry that any of it, regardless of how potentially entertaining it was, ever took place.
So I guess it’s all of these things mixed together, thus to my way of thinking, it falls between four stools, or chases four rabbits and catches none. YMMV.
When and Why I Read Moll Flanders
Another famous book by the author of Robinson Crusoe, which I enjoyed.
Genre: English literature
Date started / date finished: 09-Jun-25 to 15-Jun-25
Length: 307 pages
Originally published in: 1722/1995/2023
Source link: Moll Flanders
