Watermarks "An Emerald and a Fox": An Analysis of Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders by Ashley Wexler

Some of my worst Comrades [...] having gone out of the world by the Step and the String as I often expect to go, knew me by the name Moll Flanders [...] give me leave to speak of myself under that name till I dare own who I have been, as well as who I am. (Defoe 7)

Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders is an immoral, self-serving, and hypocritical character, but her courage, recourse, and tenacity are marvelous; these inconsistencies in her personality are the life's blood of Defoe's novel. Defoe creates Moll as his erring heroine in the midst of the tremendous corruption of eighteenth-century English society. Even Moll's maternal contradictions, when she abandons and then embraces her children, do not compromise her role as heroine, but rather they enhance it. While many critics claim that Defoe's craft, his character's conflicts of interest, the forgotten or loose threads of the narrative, and the apparent irony of the preface weaken the novel, I hold that, instead, these elements play a distinct role in the creation of Moll's heroism. I will demonstrate that the essence of Moll's experience throughout the novel, her maternal conflicts, her monetary manipulations, her social degeneration, and her imprisonment are integral parts of her heroism. For I hold that Defoe encourages us to see that there exists a pattern of circumstance that shapes Moll's experience and allows her to remain the heroine beyond any social and moral contradictions. This pattern operates in conjunction with the psychological progression of the novel, in which Moll functions as the leading female in Defoe's social critique of the corruption of eighteenth-century England.

After running away from a band of gypsies at age three, Moll learns early that her survival depends upon her ability to take control of her situation. Moll states, "As for my money I gave it all to my Mistress [...] and told her she should have all I got for myself when I was a Gentlewoman" (12). Moll depends entirely upon her hard work and her wits to deal with each situation as it arises. Her hard work brings her into the home of a family living in the Colchester in Essex, only to be seduced by one brother and coerced into marrying the other. G. A. Starr emphasizes that the "array of motives and pressures that contribute to Moll's seduction" (422) must be analyzed in order to transfer the emphasis from the summary of her actions to the emotions that are crucial to sympathizing with her. In the case of this first seduction, Moll admits that she had "no room, as well as no power, to say no" (20), and presents herself with overwhelming emotions. The transfer of this ethical dilemma into an emotional dilemma, including the decision to abandon her children, is Defoe's technique for clarifying Moll's behavior as a circumstantial course of action and not an immoral one. In this way, Defoe allows us to possess some sympathy for Moll as an erring heroine.

The casuistry that shapes Moll's experience can be defined as "the part of ethics which resolves cases of conscience applying the general rules of religion and morality to particular instances in which 'circumstances alter cases,' or in which there appears to be a conflict of duties" (OED 6544). From the beginning of Moll's life, she endured a social reality that placed survival at the center of her moral code. Moll proclaims, "I had been left a poor desolate Girl without Friends, without Cloaths, without Help or a Helper in the World [...] I was not only expos'd to very great Distresses, even before I was capable if either Understanding my case, or how to Amend it" (7). Defoe expresses his judgment of the corruption in English society which left orphaned children without any provisions for care. Defoe expresses this harsh reality of Moll's early years as a battle in which Moll must fight for her self to prove she has a right to existence. The novel does not merely pose the question of right or wrong. Defoe focuses on the complexities of a redefining ethics, in which circumstances dictate what is right and what is wrong, not absolute moral judgment.

Michael Shinegal, who portrays Moll's motherhood as a maternal paradox, does not, however, analyze the pressures and circumstances of Moll's absence in the lives of her children. Shinegal's "maternal paradox" defines Moll's character through the maternal theme and "analyzes the interrelation between Defoe's craft and the enigmatic character of his heroine" (405). Shinegal examines the enigma of Moll's first husband's children and asserts, "Moll is happy to 'fob' off the care and cost of her two children on her in-laws and run off with a small fortune" (Shinegal 406). Moll states, "My two children were indeed taken happily off my hands by my husband's father and mother, and that was all they got of Mrs. Betty" (47). According to Shinegal, "Moll's language is indicative of her values; in this case she feels she has gotten the best of a bad bargain" (406). Although Shinegal criticizes Moll's loose bargaining with the family at Colchester, he does not address circumstantial realities that riddled Moll's life, influencing the abandonment of her children. Shinegal's opinion of Moll's callous motherhood could be mitigated by the recognition of her poverty-stricken youth and the continual abuse that she receives from the brother of her first husband at Colchester.

Through situations such as Moll's desertion of her children, Defoe emphasizes that the reader must reevaluate the conventional assumptions of the heroine. According to Starr, "What draws us to sympathize with the more patently 'wicked' Moll--is in large part Defoe's casuistical emphasis on intention and qualifying circumstances" (422). Defoe gives us every reason to condemn Moll, yet he also enjoins us to reassert our own view of the heroine through the circumstances that shape her experience. When Moll learns that Robin, who is the brother of her first seducer, wishes to propose marraige, she exclaims, "I had no great Scruples of Conscience as I have said to struggle with, yet I could not think of being a Whore to one Brother, and a Wife to the other" (26). Here, Defoe discourages the reader from judging Moll by any standard system of values, yet he emphasizes that the reader must reconstruct a new view of morality to retain compassion for the atypical heroine. Defoe's new definition of morality allows the circumstances, motives, and sanctions to dictate the rightness of the situation.

Defoe further emphasizes compassion for the atypical heroine in his preface by suggesting that the moral fable of the story is subject to the reader's viewpoint. Yet the "Preface" to the novel stands as a veil for the social critique that Defoe imposes as the essence of the novel. In it Defoe states,

It is suggested that there cannot be the same Life, the same Brightness and Beauty, in relating the penitent part, as is in the criminal Part: If there is any truth in that suggestion, I must be allow'd to say, 'tis because there is not the same taste and relish in the Reading and indeed it is too true that the difference lyes not in the real worth of the subject so much as the Gust and Palate of the Reader. (4)

But, as we have seen, Moll Flanders is no simple allegory of redemption. Defoe constructs Moll's criminal behavior as an effort to expose the system of corruption that shapes it. Defoe's "Preface" may, therefore, be read as ironic because he apparently condemns criminal behavior, then creates a criminal character with whom he expects the reader to identify. The irony of Defoe's "Preface," then, emphasizes that identification with Moll means either that the reader is immoral or Moll's sins are circumstantial. According to Lionel Trilling, the traditional English novel is "the literary form to which the emotions of understanding and forgiveness were indigenous, as if by definition of the form itself" (qtd. in Shinegal 215). Moll Flanders, through this standard, is not to be considered a traditional English novel, for in it Defoe provokes the reader to condemn the heroine and then leaves room for her acquittal. Reaffirming these sympathetic emotions helps to illuminate the part that casuistry plays in eliciting them and presents a compassionate understanding for the heroine beyond any social and moral contradictions.

The novel's craft also reveals the important effects of casuistry. The consistency of Moll's dilemma breaks down into a succession of events, each somewhat isolated from the last. For example, Moll describes a happy life with her banker husband, yet she fails to follow through with the fate of her children. She mentions that her children have survived by announcing, "I kept no company, and made no visits; minded my family, and obliged my husband" (147). Yet by the time she has gone from being a widow to a thief, her children are completely forgotten. Shinegal claims, "We can interpret Moll's failure to mention the fate of her two children as a flaw in Defoe's narrative technique, as simply one of those 'stray threads'" (408). Yet Watt argues, "Defoe's casuistical sense of life's intrinsic discontinuities probably contributed to the same effect" (qtd. in Shinegal 408). In light of Defoe's consistent concern for Moll's situations, it seems the forgotten children are not merely flaws in Defoe's craft; they are integral to Moll's heroism. The forgotten children reaffirm Defoe's prevailing sense of the corrupted system of which Moll was born. These apparent "inconsistencies" in Defoe's craft, then, can be seen as a casuistical method, organized internally, to reflect the constant shuffling of motives, sanctions, and circumstances that give us an alternative calculus for judging Moll's behavior.

The circumstantial dependency of Moll's behavior is further seen in her third marriage with her half brother. After she has had two children and is pregnant with the third, she discovers she is living in incest. Moll reflects, "Let any one judge what must be the Anguish of my Mind, when I came to reflect that this was no more or less than my own Mother, and I had now two Children, and was big with another by my own Brother, and lay with him still every Night" (70). Finally, the burden of truth violently overwhelms her, and she begs for a pardon from her husband so that she can return to England. Moll states, "This provok'd him to the last degree, and he call'd me not only an unkind wife, but an unnatural mother" (72). The circumstances of their relationship are a rare coincidence. After extensive anguish over the dilemma, Moll informs her husband of her secret. Moll states, "My husband's conduct was immediately alter'd, and he was quite another man to me" (79). Throughout the novel, Defoe allows Moll to be judged by the reader but also leaves room for her acquittal due to circumstances of her case. According to Starr, "Details that appear to be introduced for their psychological, social, or economic import or for the sake of narrative realism frequently involve covert appeals to sympathy as well" (422). Starr claims that some of the details of Moll's circumstances are reported to modify our conventional assumptions and moral judgment. Given the outward facts of the case, the circumstantial evidence tends to make us judge more favorably in Moll's defense, and inevitably, because our focus is on what actually happened to Moll, her status as heroine is preserved.

Once again, in the case of Moll's thievery, we are asked to differentiate between Moll's ability to conform to the law and the necessity for her actions. According to Starr, "The narrative seeks to deflect our severity from the doer to the deed, and to retain sympathy" (424). Understanding the need for the deflection of Moll's deeds is very important when she explains the circumstances of her first theft. Moll has just reached the age of forty-eight, and her childbearing years are close to an end. Moll understands that the prospects of using her handsomeness and fertility to procure wealth are quickly fading at this point. She then recounts the details of the poverty-stricken years that lead up to her first theft by stating, "as it were only bleeding to death, without the least hope of prospect from God or Man [...] I began to be desperate, for I grew Poor aspace" (148). Moll's emotional response to poverty is integral to the ethical unraveling of her story. According to Starr, "She often adduces circumstances that serve to palliate if not justify what she has just done or is about to do" (424). To Moll, poverty is a form of "bleeding to death," because the crux of her survival is her ability to overcome any circumstance. She survives because of her ability to shape her own destiny, and, seeing her actions through the lens of casuistry, we separate her from her immoral actions.

Through this separation of Moll's morality from her social circumstances, Defoe imposes his social criticism of the eighteenth-century. This social criticism is heightened by Moll's behavior, especially when she has reflections of remorse for her crimes. Upon being overwhelmed with remorse for stealing a bundle from a poor woman, Moll says,

The prospects of my own Starving, which grew every Day more frightful to me, hardened my heart by degrees [...] now I should be driven by the dreadful necessity of my Circumstances to the Gates of Destruction [...] I fell on my knees, praying to God [...] but I cannot but say my Prayers had no hope in them. (151)

In this close encounter with Newgate prison, Moll yearns for a solution to her thievery, yet she knows that poverty is the only alternative. Defoe's social critique is important here to understanding the internal structure of Moll's position. Moll is portrayed as a product of the corrupt society in which she lives. Moll knows that she must have wealth to survive, and her only recourse to it is through her manipulation and thievery. Yet Moll is portrayed as a heroine because she is stealing from the upper-class. Defoe portrays a very negative picture of the aristocratic characters, because they have allowed such poverty and starvation to exist while they simply attained more and more wealth. For Defoe, the aristocrats are the true criminals and burdens on society.

Defoe's attitude toward the upper class is portrayed through Moll when she steals gold beads from around a little girl's neck and contemplates murdering the girl. In this scene Moll says, "The last Affair left no great Concern upon me, for as I did the Child no harm, I only said to myself, I had given the Parents just Reproof of their Negligence" (152). Through Moll's judgment of the girl's parents, Defoe justifies the behavior of criminals by his emphasis of the negligence of the upper class. In essence, he condemns the social structure that has led Moll down the path of the wicked, rather than condemning Moll herself.

The element of disguise Defoe employs in Moll's life of thievery is also an integral part of the preservation of her as a sympathetic heroine. The two sides of Moll's character are those of a hardened criminal and just woman fighting for her right to existence. This duality functions as an irony, between "the Moll who acts and suffers, and the Moll who perceives and narrates" (Donovan 403). Defoe actually goes so far as to disguise Moll as a man, duchess, or widowed peasant. Moll states,

I dressed myself up as a Beggar Woman, in the coarsest and most despicable Rags [...] and I walk'd about peering and peeping into every Door and Window [...] and indeed I was in such a Plight now, that I knew as ill how to behave in as ever I did in any. (198)

Defoe creates a distinction between Moll's disguise and her true identity in order to distance the heroine from the thief.

Defoe's social critique of the degradation of the lower class in London is also apparent when Moll, who is stealing to escape poverty, goes out dressed like a common beggar. When Moll is sent out as a beggar, she is "uneasy" and naturally abhorred the "dirt and rags" (Defoe 198). According to Donovan, "Moll is an uneasy beggar because she does not have a firm enough sense of her own identity to remain unaffected by the imposture, and beggary is Moll's veritable hell" (402). Moll's disguise as a beggar is ironic because poverty is the epitome of her fears. She separates her identity from that of her disguise, but not without the influence of an alternative persona, which, in this case, is her natural abhorrence of the filthy rags she wears. According to Donovan the cohesiveness of the novel is a result of "the fundamental irony produced by the reader's continuous and simultaneous awareness of the two sides of Moll's nature" (404). This simultaneous awareness of Moll's dual characterization is important to understanding how Moll preserves her status as a sympathetic heroine. According to Starr, "These are two of Moll's ways of gaining our sympathy: she distinguishes her essential self from her admittedly reprehensible doings, but also lessens the stigma attached to specific acts" (424). By distinguishing herself from her wrongdoings, it is possible to fathom that Moll's true identity is veiled behind her thievery. Thus, the guilt of the crime is shifted from Moll to the socially constructed persona, which is displayed yet again in Defoe's critique of fraudulent English society. Not only can we separate the act from the agent, but we can distinguish between Moll's true identity and the role she plays as thief.

Moll's true character can be distinguished from her persona of a hardened criminal when she suddenly and intensely repents at Newgate Prison. Here Moll faces the gallows with no hope of survival, and for the first time in her life, she is helpless to her own circumstances. Yet she never considers true self a hardened whore or criminal. Moll feels that she is different from all the other inmates in Newgate. Moll may be sinful, yet the motives and circumstances of her sins are excusable, just as the corruption of this society initiated Defoe's judgment of the structure itself more than its agents. Moll assumes the name in which she was coined by society in order to emphasize that it was the society itself that created her. Defoe's social criticism appears in Moll's indictment by society because her sins are excusable through the newly adopted definition of circumstantial immorality.

In Newgate, the true Moll comes out from behind the veil of sin in which she has concealed herself. Moll states, "I fell into a fit of crying involuntarily, and without design, but as a meer Distemper, and yet so violent, it held me so long, that I knew not what course to take [...] no not with all the Strength and Courage I had" (229). Moll, with nothing to conceal or comfort herself, shows her essential self as someone who fears death. According to Donovan, "With all her strength and resourcefulness, Moll is essentially weak. There is no drive in her character except the vegetable tropism that draws her to comfort and security" (401). Moll may be weakened because she has lost control over her destiny, which is the only thing she could possess. It is important here to view her weakness in order to fully understand her strengths. Once Moll realizes she has been pardoned from the gallows, she states, "It was now for the first time that felt real signs of Repentance; I now began to look back on my life with abhorrence, and having a view into the other side of time, the things of time [...] began to look with a different aspect" (225). The layers of Moll's identity, the whore and the thief, have been stripped away, and the essential Moll is finally in view.

Even with this refined vision of Moll that asks us to see her as a product of her society, it is still difficult to reconcile our judgments of her for her maternal contradiction. In this scene, Moll travels with her Lancashire husband to Virginia in order to receive a dowry bestowed upon her rightfully by her mother and start anew in the colonies. Moll's apprehension of her children is evident when she states to her Lancashire husband that she has no "real desire ever to see them [...] any more" and that they "were not legal children" (89). Moll's experience has taught her not to afford the truth about her past. Upon laying eyes on her son, Moll states, "It was a wretched thing for a mother thus to see her own son, a handsome comely young gentleman in flourishing circumstances; and durst not make herself known to him" (252). Moll's maternal instincts are ignited by the wealth her son portrays. Moll states,

When he went from me I stood gazing and trembling, and looking after him as l long as I could see him; then sitting down on the grass, just at a place I had mark'd, I made as if I lay down to rest me, but turn'd from him, and lying on my face wept, and kiss'd the ground that he had set his foot upon. (252)

Throughout the novel, we have seen that Moll's ability to manipulate the circumstances of her life is essence of her heroism. According to Shinegal, "By this late point in her long career, Moll's eyes are too experienced in the sharp appraisal of "handsome," i.e., expensive and desirable, objects not to respond instinctively and passionately to something in which she hopes shortly to share" (411). Moll kisses the ground instead of kissing Humphry, which represents that she values the land over her child. Moll knows she has finally won the battle over poverty. Defoe reconciles Moll in this maternal contradiction by rewarding her actions. According to Shinegal,

Moll's language and stance betray her, for her son's "flourishing circumstances" attract her eye as does the plantation that she stands on as she symbolically kisses the ground, as does the dwelling house she sees in the distance. Her emotional response is over the wealth that she knows she now owns. (410)

Moll's "language and stance" (410) are indicative of her motivation, which is the crux of her heroism. She handles the situation with a calculated effort to fit into to Humphry's world and take the wealth for her own. Moll once again reveals that casuistry can justify stealing into Humphry's life as she writes her brother a letter, knowing that it will fall into Humphy's hands first. Moll slyly states,

I said some very tender kind things in the letter about his son, which I told him he knew to be my own child, and that as I was guilty of nothing [...] neither of us having then known our being at all related to one another, so I hoped he would allow me the most passionate desire of once seeing my own and only child, and of showing something of the infirmities of a mother in preserving a violent affection for him. (411)

Clearly, we see once again a paradox in Moll's maternal response; as Shinegal would have it, it is materially inspired. She expresses that Humphry is her "one and only" child, which is a sham. Yet this kind of partial truth-telling is Moll's insignia. As it has done throughout the novel, her heroism beams through her ability to manipulate the situation in order to survive. The compassion we feel for Moll is enhanced by Defoe's refusal of a simple notion of morality. Defoe redefines morality as circumstantial and flexible, sustaining Moll as his heroine through any of her maternal and social contradictions.

The manipulation of Humphry is, therefore, the pinnacle of Defoe's social critique. For Defoe, the colonies represent another slice of English society, because the colonies were built through the labor of convicts. Moll knows that what worked in London can work in the colonies. Through this kind of mentality, Defoe compels the reader to examine the system at work around her. Defoe emphasizes that, amidst this corruption, Moll's self-serving nature and manipulation are heroic because she has survived through these things and attained wealth when it seemed impossible.

The gold watch that Moll insists Humphry keep is a symbol of her values. Moll's life has taught her that her worth lies in her wealth, something she learned at the mere age of three. She thrusts the gold watch toward Humphry and tells him to "kiss it every now and then for my sake" (420). The watch is the only way Moll knows she can express her affection. Warm kisses are useless to her; it is cold cash that she has learned to value over affection. Moll is now the product of the social realities that have riddled her life. She is no longer a mere pawn in the social realities of her society; she is the queen of her situation. Defoe's message is that, in a corrupted world, manipulation and contradiction must necessarily become the life blood of survival.

The city scene Defoe depicts in eighteenth-century London is best described when Virginia Woolf says, "The tattered girls with violets in their hands at the street corners, and the old weather beaten women patiently displaying their matches and bootlaces beneath the shelter of arches, seem like characters from Defoe's book" (343). As Woolf revives the image of the poverty-stricken streets of London, Defoe enjoins us as readers to recognize the influences and triumphs in which Moll Flanders has survived. Borrowing from Virginia Woolf's Orlando, I believe that Moll Flanders is two things, "An Emerald and A Fox." While Moll portrays the hand-crafted morality and manipulation of London's eighteenth-century criminal class, she also portrays a precious vitality that allows her role as heroine to be influenced, more than challenged, by her social and moral contradictions.

Defoe, Daniel. Moll Flanders. New York: W.W.Norton & Company, Inc., 1973.

Donovan, Robert Alan. The Shaping Vision: Imagination in the English Novel from Defoe to Dickens. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1966. 21-46.

Martin, Terence. "The Unity of Moll Flanders." Modern Language Quarterly 22.9 (1971):329-330.

Shinagel, Michael. "The Maternal Theme in Moll Flanders: Craft and Character." Cornell Library Journal 7 (1969):3-23.

Starr, G. A. Defoe and Casuistry. Princeton University Press, 1971. 111-116.

Watt, Ian. "Serious Reflections on the Rise of the Novel." Novel 1 (1968):205-218.

Woolf, Virginia. "Defoe." Common Reader, First Series. NewYork: Harcourt, Brace, 1925. 89-97.

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