Reading 1001 discussion

Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe; I finished the story, still need to read the different opinions. But I did like the story, Moll was both the luckiest and unluckiest person but mostly lucky. I think the book really shows how hard it was to be a woman during this time period. I will likely add more to the review when I have time to think about it. But, while I can say this was difficult times and Moll was resourceful, she also was a immoral woman and she certainly did not have the heart of a mother. She had babies and left them left and right and didn’t seem to spare them a thought. I look forward to reading what others like Virginia Woolf have to say about this book. The audible was very well narrated.

Rating: 3.45 stars

This was surprising very readable considering the time period. While I did enjoy it, I found aspects of it to be too far-fetched, in favor of the heroine. There's no way she would've had that many lucky breaks. In reality, she probably wouldn't have had any at all, being a female of low birth in the 17th century.

Moll wasn't the most likable of characters, and was not characteristic of women of her time and station. She was vain, self-centered, dishonest, "gold-digging", a bad mother, and used people to her advantage. However, I did like her persistent nature and her resourcefulness when it came to solutions to get out of her predicaments. To her credit, she did realize that she had committed many a misdeed and did harbor some remorse.

Overall, I did like it. It falls short when compared to modern fiction, but it is very good for fiction of that time period (17th century).

How to take this character and story - is Defoe in earnest about this as a moralizing tale or is it satire - strikes me as partly anachronism (we can hardly imaging ourselves moralizing as it starts out) and partly to be explained because Defoe in fact loves her so well, he can hardly moralize himself, though he knows he should be and does so now and then. It is this genuine sympathy and concordance with Moll, her open voice and unapologetic self-knowledge, that makes this story so wonderful. My version has an introduction by Virginia Woolf and she captures Moll's irrepressible character so finely:

He makes us understand that Moll Flanders was a woman on her own account and not only material for a succession of adventures ... like all Defoe's women, she is a person of robust understanding. Since she makes no scruple of telling lies when they serve her purpose, there is something undeniable about her truth when she speaks it. She has a spirit that loves to breast the storm. She delights in the exercise of her own powers. Heartless she is not, nor can any one charge her with levity; but life delights her and a heroine who lives has us all in tow.

I am convinced that Defoe does not consider most of the sexual adventures as all that terrible, although he makes them as shocking as he can. He seems to have an "all fair in love and war" attitude towards the lying and pretending to get into a good marriage, since that is really the only way for a woman to make good in the world. Moll has a long soliloque on the topic when she recounts helping a young woman of fortune play hard to get and secure her position.

Tis nothing but lack of Courage, the fear of not being Marry'd at all, and of that frightful State of Life, call'd and old Maid. This I say is the Woman's Snare; but would the Ladies once but get above that Fear, and manage rightly, they would more certainly about it by standing their Ground than by exposing themselves as they do; and if they did not Marry so soon .. they would make themselves amends by Marrying safer; is is always Marry'd too soon who gets a bad Husband and she is never marry'd too late who gets a good one.

Later, the life of thieving is condemned more, but this unfolds in a very interesting manner - the initial desperation of poverty while acknowledging this is not the right way to solve her problems, yet Moll Flanders counts this as forgivable weakness in a time of great stress. Where she starts to view herself as behaving unforgivably is when she begins to enjoy it as a lifestyle - the adrenaline rush of being successful, the thrill of accumulating riches, the pride in her skills of evasion and invention. Ultimately she does repent of this, but only once she sees herself as the cause of ruin in someone she loves. And she is again perceptive and interesting on this point - noting that her initial impulses to repentance are selfish still "I seem'd not to Mourn that I had committed such Crimes, and for the Fact as it was an Offence against God ... but I mourn'd that I was to be punish'd for it; I was a Penitent as I thought, not that I had sinn'd but that I was to suffer."

Her true repentance is rewarded with a reprieve, a reunion with the person she is lawfully wedded to, and thus in a position cleansed of sin she is free to use her wiles again to manipulate people (including her son) and bring off the accumulation of a large fortune. It bothers Defoe not a wit that this involves again those half-truths and flirtations that charm people in her orbit into raising her up. That charisma is the reason to write about the incomparable Moll Flanders.

A delightful read that has a surprisingly modern tone to it, in that Moll has the wiles and the wit to overcome her poverty and her lower class station and rise to being able to look at her past and wish to make some small amends. Moll, although she breaks her own principles regularly, nevertheless is shown as someone with some real guts and intuitive manipulative expertise which I really appreciated and I am sure the Defoe meant me to appreciate. It takes a certain deft hand to make a whore and a thief and a person who gives up her children overall charming and someone you want to read about.
The critique of the English social system of the time with its class structures and its legal and religious institutions that only supported those class structures was presented in a lively way. The episode of theft after theft which read as warning to others who may have something worth stealing was also surprisingly modern as was the sexual teasing and intrigue.
I now know why Moll Flanders has survived the ages.

My rating is in consideration of the novel being 300 years old. I think it was very remarkable for its time and probably did a lot to advance English novel writing. The main character being a woman and the author a man was also unusual. Defoe had published Robinson Crusoe just a couple of years earlier, a quite different novel. I have read Crusoe, and now forty years later a second Defoe. If I continue at this pace I don't think I'll be reading another.
The story bogs down at times with excessive detail, but at other times moves along well. Overall, I enjoyed reading it. I listened to the audiobook and the reader, a woman (the novel is written first-person), was very good. Ms Flanders was hardly a woman to admire in some respects but was admirably strong and resourceful.

I first read this a few years ago but I remember very little so I re-read it for BOTM. Here's my original review with a few new thoughts...

It reminded me a bit of a 1930s gangster film. Pages upon pages of vice and sin and lawbreaking -- fun! Shockingly frank about sexuality for the time it was written. But then the moralizing [eyeroll]. DaFoe does warn the reader that he is only telling this story for the lesson it can impart. But that lesson falls a bit flat when the main character never really repents, nor is she really punished. Yes, she gets a bit of a scare in Newgate prison, but she rides off into the sunset, a happy and wealthy woman.

⭐⭐ 1/2

*** 1/2

Well, Moll Flanders was pretty badass in her era, but Defoe made her the possibly first literary example of a woman achieving redemption despite committing almost every possible sin. That redemption itself is still debatable, as it might not have been fully deserved and, perhaps, fully sincere. While reading this novel, I kept recollecting my thoughts when I read Justine from Sade, written 70 years after Defoe's novel; the latter book revolved around the question of whether only good things can come from a life of virtue or only bad things would arise from a life of vice; here, the parallel should be made between Madame de Lorsange and Moll Flanders, having both enjoyed a life of vice, benefiting from it and enjoying some form of (not-fully-deserved) redemption at the end. Neverthless, this picaresque raises all sorts of these questions in light of the English society of the early 18th century in an enjoyable style that is more readable than other examples of the era.