Moll Flanders

This section focuses on the themes of Marriage as a Capitalist Imperative and The Interplay of Circumstance, Opportunity, and Morality. For women like Moll who lack familial status or wealth, marriage is the best route to social and economic security. Moll’s first marriage accustoms her to the trappings of the emerging middle class, but in the first signal that even marriage cannot provide permanent safety, her husband dies and leaves to fend for herself again. Resolved not to return to her impecunious circumstances, Moll relies on both her determination and her vanity; she decides to use her beauty to land the most advantageous second marriage she can find: “I was resolved to be married or nothing, and to be well married or not at all” (77). While she has numerous men clamoring after her, she will not consent to be any man’s mistress; neither will she marry someone without wealth. Moll’s actions are both admirable suspect: she identifies her strengths and opportunities and leverages them to her advantage; but, on the other hand, she does so by manipulating other people’s desires and emotions for her own financial gain. The business of marriage in Moll’s world is, indeed, a business—and a mercenary one.

Moll does, however, make a mistake in choosing her second husband, who squanders Moll’s inheritance and then flees to France, leaving her only with a few valuables to pawn. This experience teaches Moll that women must practice some degree of deceit to protect their interests. Subsequently, Moll counsels other women in approaching marriage as a business proposition in which concealment is an important piece of negotiation. She helps a young lady ensnare a suitor who is reluctant to reveal the true state of his fortunes while counseling the woman to keep her own financial circumstances secret. Moll dissembles on the young lady’s behalf to provide her with the best leverage over her future husband. Moll then lectures her readers about the dangers of cementing a union too quickly: “She is always married too soon who gets a bad husband, and she is never married too late who gets a good one” (91). She encourages women to be prudent in their marriage proceedings. Without access to political power or consistent economic security, women must marry well and keep their own counsel—and hidden stash. The experiences of Moll and other women in these chapters demonstrate that behaviors often marked as immoral, such as lying, are often necessary for women to protect themselves.

Nevertheless, Moll’s habit of reducing the people around her to the amount of money they can give her complicates the question of when and to what degree her manipulation and deceit can be excused. Money itself is at the heart of the book. There are long passages that consist of an accounting of how much money a person possesses, or how much money goods cost. The preoccupation with money consumes the narrator. It engulfs all other concerns, including her own conscience: “I say, all those would not do without the dross, which was now become more valuable than virtue itself” (91). Moll believes that all her estimable qualities—her charm, beauty, and intelligence—are worth nothing in a matrimonial negotiation; the only thing that matters is money. Her personal virtue is not valuable to her because it is not valuable monetarily.

Moll’s third husband puts a number of her beliefs and boundaries to the test. It also develops the theme of The Role of Providence Versus Luck. Moll claims that she and her third husband are “very happily married” (96), only to undercut this statement by acknowledging he was not as financially secure as she believed and admitting that she had deceived him about her relative lack of wealth. She likes this husband a lot as a person, but her personal affinity for him is challenged by his lack of money, which is the most important trait for her in a husband. There is also another problem with her marriage to her third husband: he turns out to be her half-brother. Moll cannot bear the thought of remaining his wife; this proves to be the moral line she is unwilling to cross. This discovery, years after they are married and as she is pregnant with his third child, approaches the level of Greek tragedy. Still, despite her anguish, she will not end her incestuous relationship until she is financially secure. Her hesitation to leave such an extreme situation until she has the money she needs underscores the way money forms the center of Moll’s decision-making. Furthermore, the fact that her money-driven approach to marriage leads her into accidental incest points to the tension between “providence” and luck that runs through the novel. From a secular point of view, her third marriage could simply be an example of bad luck—a set of unfortunate but random circumstances. From a religious point of view, however, the fact that a marriage Moll contracts through greed and deceit proves to be incestuous could be a divine signal that she has sinned and needs to mend her ways. The fact that the novel is presented as a cautionary tale from a reformed sinner supports the latter interpretation, but Moll’s lack of sincere remorse and the fact that things end well for her despite her sins supports the former.

One of the most interesting elements in Moll’s third marriage is the appearance of the North American colonies and their plantations in her narrative. These episodes in the colonies make Moll Flanders a minor part of the imperial discourse. Ironically, Moll accompanies her husband to the colonies because their collective fortunes are too small for them to live well in London, the metropolitan center. However, living expenses can be cheaper in the colonized territories due to cheaper goods and enslaved and indentured labor. Moll Flanders is engaged in the wealth-building enterprise of empire. The fact that she winds up engaged in that enterprise as a result of her deceit and criminality points to the ambiguous moral status of colonization in early 18th-century English culture.