Just as Daniel Defoe draws a parallel between poverty and morality in Moll Flanders, he likewise implies that Moll’s circumstances and subsequent life of crime are closely related to her gender. As a woman in 17th-century England, Moll has very few options in life. She does not enjoy the same freedoms and privileges as men, such as access to education or the right to own personal property. A woman’s choices are limited to “going to Service” (working as a servant or maid) or marriage, and Moll quickly learns that marrying for love is another luxury she can’t afford. For Moll, marriage is simply a business arrangement—a way for her to secure social standing and wealth—and she is married five times throughout the course of novel. Moll’s marriages are mostly are a series of disasters, and after they fail to secure her wealth or status, she turns to a life of crime. With his portrayal of gender and society in Moll Flanders, Defoe highlights the sexist nature of 17th-century English society and ultimately argues that women, especially women of the lower class, have few options for social mobility.
From a very young age, it is expected that Moll will eventually “go to Service,” which underscores the limited opportunities available to women of her socioeconomic status. Moll spends much of her childhood under the care of a nurse, who is funded by the church to keep orphans like Moll until “a certain Age, in which it might be suppos’d they might go to Service, or get their own Bread.” When Moll is just eight years old, the courts order her into Service. At such a young age, Moll can do little but run errands “and be a Drudge to some Cook-Maid,” so she begs her nurse to keep her. Moll promises to work instead for her nurse, and “Work very hard,” which she indeed does, giving the nurse every penny from her needlework and sewing. No matter what, it is expected that as a girl, Moll will be in the “Service” of another. Moll dreams of being a “Gentlewoman,” which to her means working for herself and earning enough to keep herself out of Service. “Poor child,” the nurse says, “you may soon be such a Gentlewoman as that, for she is a Person of ill Fame, and has had two or three Bastards.” A “Gentlewoman” turns out to be a polite term for a prostitute, and, the nurse thus implies, prostitution is the only way in which Moll will ever be able to work for herself.
As Moll has a “thorough Aversion to going to Service,” her only other (legal) option is marriage, which further highlights her limited choices as a woman. Moll quickly learns that marriages are “the Consequences of politick Schemes for forming Interests, and carrying on Business, and that LOVE had no Share, or but very little in the Matter.” In short, marriage (especially for women) is not about love; marriage is about securing the best possible social and financial status. After the death of Moll’s first husband, Robin—a man she didn’t love but was forced to marry to keep from becoming homeless—she is “resolv’d now to be Married or Nothing, and to be well Married or not at all.” In other words, Moll has accepted the fact that she must get married, but she will only marry a wealthy man. Moll is married a total of five times and gives birth to 12 children, but she is never able to secure herself any real wealth or social status through marriage, and she secures even less love and happiness. It is only after marriage that Moll takes her “Estate in [her] own Hands” and supports herself, but she must do so through dishonest means.
Moll does eventually manage to find financial security—and some happiness and love—and she even does it without marriage or breaking the law, but that security comes about through pure chance. After Moll’s biological mother dies, she leaves Moll a modest fortune, which allows Moll to live happily with her ex-husband James—Moll’s fourth and favorite husband, whom she only left because he didn’t have any money. Without the chance fate of her inheritance, Moll would be stuck in a cycle of loveless marriage, petty theft, and prostitution, which highlights the restrictions women face in 17th-centruy England; most women, Defoe implies, have little chance for such a happy outcome.
Related Themes from Other Texts
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Gender and Society Quotes in Moll Flanders
The Pen employ’d in finishing her Story, and making it what you now see it to be, has had no little difficulty to put it into a Dress fit to be seen, and to make it speak Language fit to be read: When a Woman debauch’d from her Youth, nay, even being the Off-spring of Debauchery and Vice, comes to give an Account of all her vicious Practises, and even to descend to the particular Occasions and Circumstances by which she first became wicked, and of all the progression of Crime which she run through in threescore Year, an Author must be hard put to it to wrap it up so clean, as not to give room, especially for vicious Readers to turn it to his Disadvantage.
It is enough to tell you, that as some of my worst Comrades, who are out of the Way of doing me Harm, having gone out of the World by the Steps and the String, as I often expected to go, knew me by the Name of Moll Flanders; so you may give me leave to speak of myself under that Name till I dare own who I have been, as well as who I am.
Had this been the Custom in our Country, I had not been left a poor desolate Girl without Friends, without Cloaths, without Help or Helper in the World, as was my Fate; and by which, I was not only expos’d to very great Distresses, even before I was capable either of Understanding my Case, or how to Amend it, nor brought into a Course of Life, which was not only scandalous in itself, but which in its ordinary Course, tended to the swift Destruction both of Soul and Body.
I wonder at you Brother, says the Sister; Betty wants but one Thing, but she had as good want every Thing, for the Market is against our Sex just now; and if a young Woman have Beauty, Birth, Breeding, Wit, Sense, Manners, Modesty, and all these to an Extream; yet if she have not Money, she’s no Body, she had as good want them all, for nothing but Money now recommends a Woman […].
My Colour came and went, at the Sight of the Purse, and with the fire of his Proposal together; so that I could not say a Word, and he easily perceiv’d it; so putting the Purse into my Bosom, I made no more Resistance to him, but let him do just what he pleas’d; and as often as he pleas’d; and thus I finish’d my own Destruction at once, for from this Day, being forsaken of my Virtue, and my Modesty, I had nothing of Value left to recommend me, either to God’s Blessing, or Man’s Assistance.
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, as the Rate of Men now goes; In short, 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.
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; I confess at the same time I was heartily frighted at his Thoughts of putting me into a Mad-House, which would at once have destroy’d all the possibility of breaking the Truth out, whatever the occasion might be; for that then, no one would have given Credit to a word of it.
