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Daniel Defoe - Moll Flanders (Virginia Leishman, 1996)

English writer Daniel Defoe's novel "Moll Flanders" (1722) tells of a poor girl who was born in Newgate prison and over six decades of her diverse life (not counting the children's age) was kept woman for twelve years, five times married (one of them with her brother), twelve years a thief, eight years of exile in Virginia, but in the end became rich, was to live honestly and died in repentance.

Moll's mother is a convict in Newgate prison who is given a reprieve by "pleading her belly", a reference to the custom of staying the executions of pregnant criminals. Her mother is eventually transported to America and Moll Flanders (which is not her birth name, she emphasises, and never reveals it) is raised until adolescence by a good foster mother, and then gets attached to a household as a servant where she is loved by both sons. The elder son convinces her to "act like they were married" in bed, but eventually unwilling to marry her he convinces Moll to marry the younger brother. She then is widowed, leaves her children to the care of in-laws, and begins honing the skill of passing herself off as a fortuned widow to attract a man who will marry her and provide her with security.

The first time she does this, her husband goes bankrupt and flees to the Continent leaving her on her own with his blessing to do the best she can and forget him. The second time, she makes a match that leads her to Virginia with a kind and good man who introduces her to his mother. After two children, Moll learns that her mother-in-law is actually her biological mother, which means her husband is her half-brother. She dissolves their marriage and travels back to England, leaving her two children behind, and goes to live in Bath to seek a new husband.

Again she returns to her con skills and develops a relationship with a man in Bath whose wife is elsewhere confined due to insanity. Their friendship is at first platonic but eventually develops into Moll becoming something of a 'kept woman' in Hammersmith, London. These two truly fall in love and have a son, but after a severe illness he repents, breaks off the arrangement and commits to his wife.

Moll, now 42, resorts to another beau, a banker, who is still married to an adulterous wife (a “whore”) but proposes to her after she entrusts her with her money. While waiting for the banker to divorce his wife Moll pretends to have a great fortune in order to attract another wealthy husband. She becomes involved with some Roman Catholics in Lancashire that try to convert her and she marries one of them, supposedly a rich man. She soon realises he expected to receive a great dowry which she denies having, which leads him to admit that he has cheated her into marriage, lying about having money, which he does not possess. He is in fact a ruined gentleman and discharges her from the marriage but still says she should inherit any money he might ver get (finally, she mentions his name). Although now pregnant again, Moll lets the banker believe she is available, hoping her husband returns. She gives birth and the midwife gives a three-partite scale of the costs of bearing a child, with one value level per social class.

Moll's boy is born when the banker's wife commits suicide following the divorce, and she leaves it in the hand of a countrywoman for the sum of £5 a year. Moll marries the banker now, but realises: “what an abominable creature am I! and how is this innocent gentleman going to be abused by me!” She also dislikes being married in an inn at night by the landlord who is also a minister, an hour after she agreed to marry at all. But he dies in financial ruin after five years, when Moll had two more children by him.

Truly desperate now, she begins a career of artful thievery, which, by employing her wits, beauty, charm, and feminity, as well as hard-heartedness and wickedness, brings her the financial security she always sought. Only here, she takes the name of Moll Flanders and is known by it. On the downside, she is even robbing a family in their burning house, then a lover she becomes a mistress to, and is later sent to Newgate Prison (like the book's author twenty years before).

Here, she is led to her repentance. At the same time, she reunites with her soul-mate, her "Lancashire husband", who is also jailed for his robberies (before and after they first met, he acknowledges). She is found guilty of felony, but not burglary, the second accusation; still, the sentence is death anyway. But she convinces a minister of her repentance, and with her Lancashire husband is sent to the Colonies to avoid hanging, and happily are together. (She even talks the captain into not being with the convicts sold upon arrival, but in the captain's quarters.) Once in the colonies, she learns her mother has left her a plantation and her own son (she had by her brother) is alive, as is her brother (husband).

She carefully introduces herself to her brother and their son, in disguise. With the help of a Quaker, the two found a farm with 50 servants in Maryland. She reveals herself now to her son in Virginia and he gives her her mothers’ inheritance, a farm he will now be her steward for, providing £100 a year for her. In turn, she makes him her heir and gives him a (stolen) golden watch.

At last, her life of conniving and desperation seems to be over. She tells her (Lancashire) husband when her (brother) husband is dead, the entire story, and he is “perfectly easy on that account”. “For, said he, it was no fault of yours, nor of his; it was a mistake impossible to be prevented”. Aged 69 (in 1683), they return to England to live “in sincere penitence for the wicked lives we have lived”.

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