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Allusions
Moll Marries the Plantation Owner
Explanation and Analysis—Moll's Dialect:
Moll’s lower-class 17th century English dialect is apparent in her narration throughout the novel. The following passage—which occurs after Moll realizes her husband the Plantation Owner is her half-brother and stops being intimate with him—demonstrates several different aspects of her dialect:
He took my Carriage very ill, and indeed he might well do so, for at last I refus’d to Bed with him, and carrying on the Breach upon all occasions to extremity he told me once he thought I was Mad, and if I did not alter my Conduct, he would put me under Cure; that is to say, into a Madhouse: I told him he should find I was far enough from Mad, and that it was not in his power, or any other Villains to Murther me.
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