Book Review: Moll Flanders
In “Moll Flanders,” Daniel Defoe aimed to pen a tale of a heroine who faced a life of poverty, perversion, and penitence. The book about a woman who was five times a wife and twelve year a thief only succeeded in the perversion part. The title character was an unlikeable heroine with surprisingly few empathetic qualities. The love story was joyless and the characters mired in shame and guilt while also obsessed with blame. And Moll did not achieve her creator’s goal of penitent. She instead had a negative character arc.
In his seminal work, “Save the Cat,” Blake Snyder shows how empathy can be attained for the protagonist through a good deed like rescuing a cat from a tree. The type of action is less important than the intention behind activity. Two other ways I've found to demonstrate empathy, or saving a proverbial feline, is to have a hero with extraordinary qualities or place an ordinary Jane in an extraordinary world.
Moll was born an orphan due to the fact that her mother was a convict sentenced to be transported to the colonies after her child’s birth. Modern readers have a fondness for orphans like Annie, Anne of Green Gables, Luke Skywalker and Harry Potter. Annie saved a dog in the opening scene of her story. Anne Shirley, who desperately wanted a family, arrived at Green Gables, but was the wrong sex –and didn’t we all feel sorry for her (empathy!). Luke and Harry both venture to extraordinary worlds where they find that they have superpowers –and who doesn’t want to be just like them.
For a few pages, I felt sympathy for poor, little orphan Moll. Until she started to use her tears for manipulation. Moll cried to the orphanage matron because she didn’t want to do service work, and she got out of it for a while. She cried her pretty tears to the wealthy ladies because she wanted to be a gentlewoman, and eventually they hired her as a lady’s maid. For the entire novel, Moll manipulates with abandon. She does not save a single cat. In fact, she abandons each of her children. Except the one child who controls her inheritance.
Modern romances require certain scenes to facilitate reader satisfaction. Those scenes include a Meet Cute, an Adhesion point where it’s clear that the lovers will have to stay together for the duration of the story, a Dark Moment where the lovers either break up or forces tear them apart temporarily, and a Happily Ever After or Happy For Now. The most important scene is the final happy one which ensures the promise of the premise of a romance. That promise is joy. Reading a romance brings readers joy. It’s why romance readers come to the page. Despite Moll’s five marriages and short stints as a mistress, this book was mired in shame and guilt.
In her first affair with her employer’s son, blame a guilt are bandied back and forth between the two consenting adults. In her third marriage, which is to her “own” brother, when the two learn they’ve mislead one another in terms of their fortunes, Moll once again aims to be blameless. This behavior continues with the character who I assumed was the love of her life. Once again, when the truth is about to come out, Moll gives a speech to hold herself blameless in the lies she contrived to begin with.
“I am afraid...that you have a very great abuse put upon you and an injury done on you never to be repaired in your marrying me, which however, as I have had no hand in it, I desire I may be fairly acquitted of it and that the blame may lie where it ought to lie and nowhere else for I wash my hands of every part of it.”
The words “crime” and “wicked” were used a lot to describe love and sex in this novel. Though a few of the heroes were archetypes enjoyed in today’s romances like the Alpha male of the elder brother who seduced a young Moll and the gentleman rake who married for money like her “own” brother and her Lancaster husband, these heroes were cast as poor imitations. With no joy, an abundance of shame and guilt, and a continual game of pass the blame, there was very little for a modern romance reader, or any woman of any time period, to feel good about or swoon over in this book.
Modern romance novels, whether they take place in a contemporary big city or small town, in a carriage or on a spaceship, all have the same requirement. That requirement is a happy ending. If the lovers do not end up together in the final pages, then readers will not consider the work a romance. The reviews and book club forums will call it a fraud. This happy ending typically ensures a positive character arc where the lovers change for the better. Or, in some circumstances, there may be a flat character arc where one or more protagonist does not change. Defoe’s title character has a negative character arc.
As stated earlier, Moll was a manipulator from birth when her mother plead her belly in Newgate prison. Moll quickly learned to manipulate with tears, then to manipulate with her body. She lied, cheated and stole for her own selfish desires. If she had performed any of these dastardly deeds for her children, that would have been understandable. Empathetic, even. Instead, she abandoned each and every child she birthed. In fact, she forgot about a few of them. The children she had with her fifth husband, the financial advisor, were born and never mentioned again. She even gave up the child of her Lancaster husband, who was the love of her life. But she never told him about the child on the page.
Her children aside, Moll was married five times. In three of those marriages, she ran the exact same con; that of being wealthy when she wasn’t. When her looks failed her and she became a thief for twelve years, even after she made enough money to stop and have a comfortable life, she wouldn’t give it up. She kept fattening her purse until her actions caught up with her and she ended up where she was born in Newgate prison.
For a time, I thought maybe there would be a flat arc for Moll, but no. She reached a new low at the end of her tale. Once in Newgate, there was a brief few pages of repentance. In fact, these few paragraphs earned Moll a reduced sentence. Instead of being put to death, a preacher helps her to gain transportation to the colonies. What does Moll do once she gets to the colonies? She schemes to lie and deceive her nephew-son to give her the inheritance left by her mother. Moll keeps secrets from both her Lancaster husband, who it should be noted lived the same life of depravity and deception as she did and met the same fate in Newgate, as well as the son she had with her brother. Instead of coming clean, which might jeopardize her inheritance, she choses to withhold the truth from both of these men until she gets what she wants; which is the money and land left by her husband.
Defoe’s “Moll Flanders” was added to my reading list as an example of a classic romance. The love story that lasted was forged by two undeserving, unlikeable individuals. There wasn’t a single character archetype to identify with; neither with the heroine or any of her multiple heroes. This book lacked joy and any tangible lesson to reflect on to live a better life or bring the reader any kind of happiness.
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