In Moll Flanders, three different characters are sent to the American colonies in place of being hanged for criminal acts, forming a motif. The novel opens with Moll’s mother facing deportation to the colonies for her crime of stealing fabric. She ends up leaving young Moll in England before being sent to the colonies. Later, Moll also faces exile after being convicted of stealing fabric. Her husband James is similarly sent to the “New World.”
In the minds of many convicts (including James), being sent to the colonies was worse than death—"the Woods and Wildernesses of America,” as James called them, were scary and unknown. In the 17th century, settler-colonialists were just starting to map the terrain. Additionally, criminals sent to the colonies had no money to their name and were often forced to become indentured servants.
That said, all three characters who are sent to the colonies for their crimes end up becoming financially prosperous and living comfortable lives as plantation-owners in Virginia. In this way, Defoe is furthering the idea that moving to the American colonies offered people in England a chance at a fresh start. At the same time, as evidenced by Moll accidentally marrying her half-brother in Virginia, Defoe is highlighting that it is hard to fully escape one’s past.
That Moll and James end up moving back to England even after developing comfortable lives for themselves in Virginia shows how, despite Moll’s constantly shifting identity, she still sees herself as an Englishwoman and considers her country of origin her true home.
Over the course of the novel, Moll has 12 different children with six different men and abandons (almost) all of them, forming a motif. Her first two children are with her first husband Robin, and she leaves them with her in-laws after Robin dies in the hopes that being childless will help her find a new husband. Moll then has one child with the Linen-Draper but he does not live for long, before having three more children with the Plantation-Owner, only to abandon them upon realizing that he is her half-brother.
Moll’s first children born outside of marriage are with the Gentleman, who ends up promising to raise their surviving child with his wife. She then has one child with James (whom she gives to the midwife, asking her to find the child a new family) and two with the Banker. Though Defoe does not mention what happens to the Banker's children, it is clear that Moll abandons them as well, as she ends up being sent to the American colonies after being convicted of thievery.
Defoe’s decision to have Moll repeatedly abandon her children is related to his intention of showing how women without financial stability in Moll’s time did what they had to do to survive. In other words, he is subtly arguing, Moll is not a monster, she is just unable to consider raising children when she has no guarantee that she herself will be able to survive in the world.
When Moll states that "my two children were, indeed, taken happily off of my hands by my husband's father and mother” (in reference to her first two children), she is “happy” because she knows her children will be taken care of by her wealthy in-laws, not because she doesn’t care about them. As Defoe is hoping to get across, Moll cannot afford to care about her children the way that well-off mothers can. This becomes especially clear when Moll meets Humphry—one of her children with the Plantation-Owner—when he is an adult and, because of her newfound financial stability, is able to provide him with maternal care and support.
