Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders: Searching for the Truth
Also left upon the shoulders of the reader is the opportunity to find useful morality between the covers of Moll Flanders. It is the nature of the Preface author Daniel Defoe extends, the tone of the Narrator, and the language of Moll Flanders that reveals the faults in Defoe’s Moll Flanders sincerity as a Penitent.
In the Preface, Defoe directs his readers upon how to use the story of this “wicked life repented” (Defoe 3). Defoe says he intends for the ” honest” reader to learn from the context how to not be vulnerable to the crimes committed by people like Moll (Defoe 5). Ian A. Bell believes “the Preface serves to get the necessary moral flummery out of the way, by allowing it much importance, but leaving it in the hands of the reader. The reader is being alerted to the moralizing potential…but…offered a text with little actual moral content” (119).
The standards set by Defoe in the Preface denote the repentance of the heroine and claims to have every evil action condemned, every villain “brought to an unhappy end ” and every virtuous thing rewarded (5). “In the Preface, the book is presented as though it were consistently moral or pious, when in fact it is no such thing” (Bell 118). A good example of this inconsistency is the event of the fire, which is called “a rare opportunity” (Defoe 178).
Even after Moll claims the “inhumanity of this action” and her having a “sense of its being cruel and inhuman” she does not “make any restitution” and continues on to say that because of her selfishness rather than need she “had no more thoughts of coming to a timely alteration of life” (180). It is true that the Novel’s Preface falsely presents the subject matter.
The narrator is not consistent and often does not seem to be in repentance. In fact, the story is often told in a tone of fond remembrance and self-satisfaction. In Virginia Ogden Birdsall’s Defoe’s Perpetual Seekers, Birdsall says the narrative “amounts to the sort of ‘stocktaking’ she is forever doing at the end of every ‘adventure’ – – a kind of adding up of assets” (90).
This point conflicts with the so called editor and his intentions of the book, although he and the true creator of this tale or synonymous, the narrating persona’s intentions may have varied from the “teaching a lesson” theme carried by Defoe with the masked persona excusing him in this. It is true, however, that when “Moll recounts her past life, she does not evince shame; she reveals glee, gusto and verve” (Bell 121).
In the Preface Defoe describes Flanders as “not so extraordinary a penitent as…first;…she always spoke with abhorrence of her former life, and every part of it” (7). This statement does two things: first, it delivers the “possibilities of doubt” concerning the nature of Moll’s sincerity and second, it makes Defoe unreliable because it is a clear contradiction with tone and language in the text (Bell 121).
This statement in the Preface is only amplified when read after the statement made on the first page of the Preface containing the word “pretends” in regards to the “penitent and humble” Moll (3). Further more, the reference to Moll being humble is false because in reality she is quiet vain and she says so herself many times.
To delve deep in to a character of literature and hypothesize on the true nature of that character requires a close look at the actions and reactions of the character in regards to his/her acquaintances and the easiest way to do this with Moll Flanders is by examining her language. Ian Watt easily explains that “although there are some two hundred characters in Moll Flanders, no one of them knows the heroine for more than a fraction of her career” and due to the autobiographic nature of the book the accounts of the other characters towards Moll are “only given to us if and how she wishes” (112). Through the language which Moll uses to refer to those around her, some insight to her true nature can be discovered.
It seems that Moll is consistently hateful in addressing some of her acquaintances. Regarding her own brother as a husband , Moll says “I mortally hated him” (86). Can a person who has claimed repentance hate in such a strong way? She does not , at that point, show the slightest bit of forgiveness towards her brother when the act of their marriage was not preventable by him. And later, she refers to him as an “old wretch” upon finding out about his death (296)!
These, to me are not the words of a penitent, and to be spoken so close to the end of the novel where she claims to reform makes them even more appalling. Also, she “is never wholly honest and disinterested in her dealings” (Watt 112). In fact, concerning her son she “let him believe” something that was not true (296). And so loosely uses the term “lusty wenches” to describe her maids (295). An argument of Moll’s so called repentance could be countered solely by the mode of her conversation.
The Preface of Moll Flanders shoul play an important part in the initial understanding of this story. It is both confusing and disappointing when Defoe does not illustrate Flanders’ repentance convincingly through her tone and language. And it seems to me that perhaps Defoe could have elaborated more on the details of the “wicked life repented” mentioned on page 3 of the Preface (my italics).
The manner Defoe’s prose poses many difficulties in distinguishing the true from the deceiving concerning Moll. It is true that Defoe wrote quickly and in enormous quantities, perhaps the quality of consistency was sacrificed in this process. Also, the medium of the Novel was fairly new and as a critical reader today, I survey the pages searching for the coherence and techniques used in the modern Novel.
Bell, Ian A. Defoe’s Fiction.
London: Croom Helm, 1985.
Birdsall, Virginia Ogden. Defoe’s Perpetual Seekers: A Study of the Fiction.
Lewisburg: Bucknell University,1985.
Defoe, Daniel. Moll Flanders. Ed. James Sutherland.
Boston:The Riverside Press Cambridge, 1959.
Watt, Ian. The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding.
Berkeley: California UP, 1971.
