Reading Order
Moll FlandersMoll Flanders Reading Order
Moll Flanders (1722) by Daniel Defoe is one of the earliest English novels and the first major novel about a female protagonist — a first-person account of Moll Flanders's career from her birth in Newgate Prison to her eventual prosperity in Virginia, covering a childhood in poverty, five marriages (one of them to her own brother, which she does not discover until after years of marriage), a career as a thief in London, transportation to Virginia as a convicted felon, and a final prosperous old age as a reformed character. Defoe's Moll is a radically pragmatic survivor — she adapts to every situation she finds herself in, uses every advantage available to her, and assesses her situation with a calculating clarity unusual for a female character in any period of English fiction. The novel's moral framing (Moll's story is presented as a cautionary tale) is in constant tension with the pleasures of her resourcefulness and the vitality of her narrative voice.
Where to start
Moll Flanders (1722)
Complete Moll Flanders Book List
- 1Buy
Moll Flanders
Daniel Defoe·1722
Moll Flanders — Frequently Asked Questions
Is Moll Flanders actually repentant at the end of the novel?
This is one of the central questions in Defoe criticism. Moll claims, in her framing preface and in the novel's conclusion, to be a reformed penitent who is presenting her story as a warning. But the narrative voice through most of the novel is vigorous, calculating, and not notably remorseful — she describes her thefts and her marriages with the same pragmatic energy, and her repentance in Newgate Prison seems more strategic than spiritual. Most modern readers read the tension between Moll's claimed repentance and her narrative energy as deliberate on Defoe's part: the novel is about how difficult genuine repentance is, and how a person's narrative of their past life is shaped by what they need that past to have been.
What other novels did Defoe write?
Defoe was enormously productive as a journalist and pamphleteer before and alongside his novels; his journalism includes the famous account of the Great Storm of 1703 and the scandal sheet The Review. His other major novels are Robinson Crusoe (1719), A Journal of the Plague Year (1722 — presented as an eyewitness account of the 1665 plague in London, written as if by a narrator who was there), Roxana (1724), and Captain Singleton (1720). Moll Flanders and Robinson Crusoe are the most widely read; A Journal of the Plague Year is the most admired by critics for its documentary ambition and its handling of collective experience.
How does Moll Flanders deal with female independence?
Moll's situation defines the terms of the novel's implicit argument about female independence in early eighteenth-century England: a woman without money has no security, and the only legal ways for a woman to acquire money are to marry it or inherit it. Moll marries five times, always with an eye to financial security; when marriages fail or husbands die, she finds herself without income and turns to theft. Her thieving career is the novel's way of showing what happens when female resourcefulness has no legal outlet — she is good at making money, and the novel takes considerable pleasure in watching her succeed, but the form that success takes is illegal because the legal forms are unavailable to her.
Is Moll Flanders based on a real person?
Defoe presented Moll Flanders as a real person's memoir (with names changed) — the standard fictional framing of the period, used to give his fiction the credibility of journalism. There was a real Mary Frith (known as Moll Cutpurse), a cross-dressing thief and fence in seventeenth-century London, who may have contributed some elements, but Moll Flanders is not a biographical portrait of a specific individual. Like Robinson Crusoe, the novel's realism is a literary achievement rather than a documentary record: the specific details are invented with enough internal consistency and credibility to produce the effect of truth.
Monthly Newsletter
Never miss a big release
Get the most anticipated upcoming books delivered to your inbox once a month — no spam, no filler.
Monthly only. Unsubscribe anytime.
Book links are Amazon affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, BookReleaseRadar earns from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you.