In a moment of foreshadowing, when Moll is just a child, she tells the nurse who has adopted her that she wants to be a “gentlewoman”:
Poor Child, says my good old Nurse, you may soon be such a Gentlewoman as that, for she is a Person of ill Fame, and has had two or three Bastards.
I did not understand any thing of that; but I answer’d, I am sure they call her Madam, and she does not go to Service nor do House-Work, and therefore I insisted that she was a Gentlewoman, and I would be such a Gentlewoman as that.
This passage is an example of foreshadowing because, as the nurse explains to Moll, referring to someone as a “gentlewoman” is a way of signaling that she is a “person of ill fame” (or prostitute) and, as the story progresses, Moll does go on to become a prostitute of “ill fame.” She also ends up with “bastard” children (derogatory language for children born outside of marriage), as the nurse prophetically says she might.
It is notable that the reason young Moll says she wants to become a “gentlewoman” is because gentlewomen do not “go to Service nor do House-work.” In other words, Moll wants a future where she doesn’t have to fulfill the expectations laid out for her as a woman in 17th century England while making barely enough to survive in the process. This is one of the reasons she ultimately becomes a prostitute—after failing to find a wealthy husband, she decides she would rather earn a living by selling her body for sex than by becoming a servant and performing domestic tasks.
