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Moll: the novel’s most mysterious woman
It’s the 300th anniversary this year of the publication of the bawdy and picaresque tale of Moll Flanders, written by Daniel Defoe, a work full of linguistic paradoxes extending even to the protagonist’s true identity which, significantly, is kept from the reader
When Jem, taken aback, asks ‘What is the meaning of all this?’ as Moll’s impressive cargo from England arrives in Maryland at the culmination of her story, he might well be raising the main question concerning Daniel Defoe’s The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders (1722).
By 1721, notably following the success of Robinson Crusoe (1719), regarded as the first English novel, Defoe was a recognised author, although he was not credited on the original edition of Moll Flanders, which purported to be an autobiography and, on occasion, came to be the subject of censorship. The story was based partly on the life of the London criminal Moll King, whom Defoe met when visiting Newgate Prison.
If I can be permitted a little literary theory to establish my perspective: a reading of Moll Flanders shows the falsity of the claim by the ‘New Critics’, in the middle of the last century, who suggested…
