Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe (1722)

Daniel Defoe summarized this whole story in the subtitle he included on the title page, so I will quote him rather than trying to write my own synopsis: "The FORTUNES AND MISFORTUNES of the Famous Moll Flanders, Who was Born in NEWGATE, and during a Life of continu'd Variety for Threescore Years, besides her Childhood, was Twelve Year a Whore, five times a Wife (whereof once to her own Brother), Twelve Year a Thief, Eight Year a Transported Felon in Virginia, at last grew Rich, liv'd Honest, and died a Penitent." (Random use of capitalization is Defoe's.) That's the plot, except that Defoe left out the fact that Moll was many times a mother. (I lost count of how many children she birthed and then left behind.)

I had never read this before because I so thoroughly disliked Defoe's more famous novel Robinson Crusoe. While I found its basic story of a castaway man's struggle for survival interesting, Defoe's incessant sanctimonious moralizing made me want to gag. Now that I have read this book, I find that I dislike it as well.

In his Preface, Defoe wrote that the reader should draw the "just and religious inference" from all the incidents that Moll's life are designed to teach. In the lengthy introduction to the Penguin Classics edition which I read, a learned Defoe scholar acknowledges, "It is not difficult for the modern reader to suppose that Defoe's protestations about the moral utility of his work are really only pious platitudes intended to disarm readers who might be offended by the salacious revelations to follow. Nothing could be further from the truth." The scholar then proceeds at great length to support his viewpoint. So sorry, but this modern reader is not convinced. Defoe spends about 350 pages describing Moll's misdeeds before about 75 pages describing her life as an "honest" woman, which, by the way, is only made possible because she is able to get a new start from the proceeds of prior thefts. I sincerely believe Defoe was being a hypocrite in presenting this work as one of moral instruction. It reads more like an instruction book on how to be a successful con artist and thief, with numerous detailed examples.

This is a very early novel, so I make allowances for it as to unfamiliar wording and grammar and even style. In comparison with other novels from the same general time period, however, I find this much inferior. Try reading some Henry Fielding instead, Tom Jones, for example.