Near the beginning of the novel, when the older brother of the family Moll is raised in successfully convinces Moll to marry his younger brother Robin (despite the fact that she and the Older Brother have had a sexual relationship), she uses a simile to capture her unfortunate fate:
It was easie to see I should go to Church, like a Bear to the Stake; I had some little Apprehensions about me too, lest my new Spouse, who by the way, I had not the least Affection for, should be skilful enough to Challenge me on another Account, upon our first coming to Bed together.
In comparing herself to “a Bear to the Stake,” Moll is communicating how reluctant and trapped she feels, and how much she is at the mercy of others. This simile is an expression that emerged from “bear-baiting,” a form of entertainment popular in England at the time that featured a bear chained to a stake and forced to fight dogs or other animals.
Here Moll is being chained to a metaphorical "stake" by the Older Brother, forced to stave off Robin who she fears will “challenge” her by wanting to sleep together after they are married. Moll does not want to be intimate with Robin because she “ha[s] not the least Affection” for him, yet knows she will ultimately have to since, in the rules of their sexist society, that is what a wife must do for her husband. This is just the start of Moll being forced to offer her body to men in order to survive in a society that prioritizes the desires of men over the needs of women.
During one of the moments in the novel in which Moll critiques sexist aspects of her society, she calls for women to ask questions of a man’s character and fortune before agreeing to marry him (something that was frowned upon in her day). While sharing this advice, she uses a hyperbole and simile:
No Man of common Sense will value a Woman the less for not giving up herself at the first Attack, or for not accepting his Proposal without enquiring into his Person or Character; on the contrary, he must think her the weakest of all Creatures in the World […] he must have a very contemptible Opinion of her Capacities, nay, even of her Understanding, that having but one Cast for her Life, shall cast that Life away at once, and make Matrimony like Death, be a Leap in the Dark.
Moll uses a hyperbole here to capture how she believes men should view women who don’t inquire about their affairs before saying yes to a marriage proposal—“the weakest of all Creatures in the world.” She then furthers her figurative language, describing how women who aren’t certain that their fiancées can provide them with financial stability “make Matrimony like Death” or “a Leap in the Dark.” This simile captures the genuine stakes for women who marry men who can’t provide for them—powerlessness and death.
Moll’s words of warning here take on a new meaning when readers come to the end of the novel and realize how many times Moll married men who lied to her about their access to wealth (such as the Linen-Draper and James). This passage also highlights Moll’s resilience as she does what she has to do, between financially advantageous marriages, to survive—she refuses time and again to let matrimony be “like death" to her.
After Moll realizes that her husband the Plantation Owner is actually her half-brother, she does not tell him (for fear of losing the financial stability of their marriage) but creates distance in their relationship. Here Moll describes the Plantation Owner’s frustration with her behavior, using a pair of similes in the process:
He told me I did not Treat him as if he was my Husband, or talk of my Children as if I was a Mother; and in short, that I did not deserve to be us’d as a Wife: That he had us’d all the fair Means possible with me; that he had Argu’d with all the kindness and calmness that a Husband or a Christian ought to do, and that I made him such a vile return, that I Treated him rather like a Dog than a Man, and rather like the most contemptible Stranger than a Husband.
The similes that the Plantation Owner uses—saying that Moll treated him more “like a Dog than a Man” and more “like the most contemptible Stranger than a Husband”—capture the extreme nature of Moll’s change in behavior. Despite the fact that Moll is withholding her revelation about their shared parentage, her husband can still feel that something is weighing on her.
While readers may be tempted to be on the Plantation Owner’s side—Moll is withholding the truth from him and treating him poorly in the process—Defoe makes sure to show how Moll is only doing so because she does not want to be thrown out of her family and lose her financial stability (which she ultimately goes on to experience after revealing the truth to him).
When the Gentleman ends his years-long affair with Moll, she is once again left without consistent income. At this point in the novel, Moll takes a moment to reflect on women’s status in her society, using a simile in the process:
When a woman is thus left desolate and void of counsel, she is just like a bag of money or a jewel dropped on the highway, which is a prey to the next comer; if a man of virtue and upright principles happens to find it, he will have it cried, and the owner may come to hear of it again; but how many times shall such a thing fall into hands that will make no scruple of seizing it for their own, to once that it shall come into good hands?
Here Moll uses a simile to compare women in her society to “a bag of money or a jewel dropped on the highway” that any man can take and use however he wants. This comparison is evocative—Moll is naming how women are treated as inanimate objects who exist only to give value to men and can be tossed aside and taken up by whomever wants them. This has proven to be true in her life as she moves from husband to husband and affair to affair. She does not want this life for herself, yet, because of her sexist society, she has no other choice.
Moll’s frustration with her society comes across when she asks, “How many times shall such a thing fall into hands that will make no scruple of seizing it for their own?” Unfortunately for Moll, she will have many more experiences with unscrupulous men before her story is over.
When Moll is living in Virginia for the second time, she sends a letter to her ex-husband (and half-brother) the Plantation Owner, telling him she would like to have a relationship with their son Humphry again. Humphry ends up intercepting the letter and comes to meet Moll himself. Moll describes Humphry’s reaction to finally seeing her again via a simile:
The Messenger said, there she is Sir, at which he comes directly up to me, kisses me, took me in his Arms, and embrac’d me with so much Passion, that he could not speak, but I could feel his Breast heave and throb like a Child that Cries, but Sobs, and cannot cry it out.
Here Moll captures Humphry’s immense emotional reaction to seeing her again by comparing him to “a Child that Cries, but Sobs, and cannot cry it out.” Humphry, of course, is no longer a child—Moll has been gone for decades, during which Humphry has grown into an adult. In this way, the simile effectively communicates how, in a vulnerable moment like this, Moll experiences Humphry as the vulnerable child she once knew him to be.
This moment is significant because, over the course of the novel, Moll has abandoned all 12 children to whom she gave birth. It is only at this late point in the novel, when she has found financial stability with a loving husband (James), that she has the capacity to finally be the mother she always wanted to be. In other words, she did not abandon her children due to apathy or cruelty, but because she did not even have the means to care for herself in those moments. Here Defoe shows how, when people are no longer living in poverty, they can make the moral choices they were not able to before.
