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Moll Flanders | Introduction

Daniel Defoe published Moll Flanders in 1722 after a long career of writing nonfiction. Many critics have speculated that Defoe’s story of a beautiful and greedy woman who turns to crime is not a novel in the true sense but a work combining biography and fiction. Defoe (and others) wrote numerous accounts of various women in early eighteenth- century London named Moll who made their fame as thieves and pickpockets, and the criminal records of that period in London reveal the accounts of women who were arrested for stealing. Many critics and historians argue that a woman named Elizabeth Atkins, a notorious thief who died in prison in 1723, was one of Defoe’s inspirations for the character of Moll Flanders.

Whatever the sources of Defoe’s popular work may have been, the novel has endured nearly three hundred years of changing tastes and mores and has secured its author’s position as one of the most well-respected English writers and, some say, as the father of the novel form.

Moll Flanders Summary

Summary of the Novel
Moll Flanders tells the story of a beautiful, smart, and self-interested woman who strives to escape the poverty and servitude dictated by the lowly circumstances of her birth. Despite a complete lack of material resources, Moll becomes determined at a very early age to transform herself into a “gentlewoman.” She proceeds to acquire a level of education and refinement far beyond her social station and expertly exploits her skills, as well as her physical charms, to procure a series of husbands. The most shocking of all of Moll’s many misalliances is her relationship with her third husband, with whom she lives with for a brief but happy period in Virginia until she learns that he is actually her brother.

None of Moll’s many marriages fulfills her material ambitions. When her youth and beauty fade, she chooses the only other road to wealth she can discern, a life of crime. She soon becomes an expert in her new career and, as reports of her criminal exploits circulate throughout England, she is nicknamed ‘Moll Flanders’ by her underworld associates. This label understandably irritates her. ‘Moll’ was used to denote a female criminal, while ‘Flanders’ was associated both with Flemish cloth, a favorite target for thieves, and also with Flemish prostitutes,... » Complete Moll Flanders Summary