Artful lander mod1/1/2024 While waiting for the banker to divorce, Moll pretends to have a great fortune to attract another wealthy husband in Lancashire, assisted by a new female acquaintance who attests to Moll's (fictitious) social standing. Moll, now 42, resorts to another beau, a bank clerk, who while still married to an adulterous wife (a "whore"), proposes to Moll after she entrusts him with her financial holdings. However, he assures Moll that their son will be well cared for, so she leaves yet another child behind. They have three children (one lives), but after a severe illness he repents, breaks off the arrangement, and commits to his wife. ![]() Their relationship is at first platonic, but eventually develops into Moll becoming something of a " kept woman" in Hammersmith, London. She dissolves their marriage and after continuing to live with her brother for three years, travels back to England, leaving her two children behind, and goes to live in Bath to seek a new husband.Īgain she returns to her con skills and develops a relationship with a man in Bath whose wife is elsewhere confined due to insanity. After three children (one dies), Moll learns that her mother-in-law is actually her biological mother, which makes her husband her half-brother. (They had one child together, but "it was buried.") The second time, she makes a match that leads her to Virginia Colony with a kindly man who introduces her to his mother. The first time she does this, her "gentleman-tradesman" spendthrift husband goes bankrupt and flees to mainland Europe, leaving her on her own with his blessing to do the best she can to forget him. ![]() ![]() After five years of marriage, she then is widowed, leaves her children in 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. Unwilling to marry her, he persuades her to marry his younger brother. Thereafter she gets attached to a household as a servant where she is loved by both sons, the elder of whom convinces her to "act like they were married" in bed. Her mother is eventually transported to British America, and Moll Flanders (not her birth name, she emphasises, taking care not to reveal it) is raised from the age of three until adolescence by a kindly foster mother. Moll's mother is a convict in Newgate Prison in London who is given a reprieve by " pleading her belly," a reference to the custom of postponing the executions of pregnant criminals. Plot Illustration of an 18th-century chapbook. Historically, the book was occasionally the subject of police censorship. The novel is based partially on the life of Moll King, a London criminal whom Defoe met while visiting Newgate Prison. The attribution of Moll Flanders to Defoe was made by bookseller Francis Noble in 1770, after Defoe's death in 1731. However, the original printing did not have an author, as it was an apparent autobiography. ![]() It is usually assumed that the novel was written by Daniel Defoe, and his name is commonly given as the author in modern printings of the novel. Defoe's Whig views are nevertheless evident in the story of Moll, and the novel's full title gives some insight into this and the outline of the plot. His political work was tapering off at this point, due to the fall of both Whig and Tory party leaders with whom he had been associated Robert Walpole was beginning his rise, and Defoe was never fully at home with Walpole's group. It purports to be the true account of the life of the eponymous Moll, detailing her exploits from birth until old age.īy 1721, Defoe had become a recognised novelist, with the success of Robinson Crusoe in 1719. Moll Flanders is a novel by Daniel Defoe, first published in 1722. The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders at Wikisource
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