Moll Flanders: Gender and Irony Study Notes

Moll Flanders as an Early Feminist Novel: A Balanced Claim

  • Proto-feminist Definition: The novel is considered proto-feminist because it exposes the significant influence of gender on an individual's legal and socio-economic choices. It grants the female protagonist, Moll, a level of autonomy and agency that was practically non-existent for women during the time the novel was set.
  • Arguments Against Full Feminism:
    • Male Authorship: Moll’s autonomy is ultimately framed by Daniel Defoe, a male author. Defoe gives Moll a narrative voice but simultaneously cautions the reader against holding her in too high a regard.
    • Moral Framing: Moll’s actions are often framed through social distaste or the necessity of survival; she must confess and repent for sins like theft and sexual transgression to remain a viable "moral lesson."
    • Defoe's Introduction (2024: 5-6): "When a Woman debauch’d from her Youth, nay, even being the Off-spring of Debauchery and Vice, comes to give an Account of all her vicious Practises […] an Author must be hard put to it to wrap it up so clean, as not to give room, especially for vicious Readers to turn it to his Disadvantage."

Socio-Historical Context and 17th-Century Gender Constraints

  • Chronological Setting: The novel was written in the 18th century but is situated in the 17th century. Despite the onset of the Industrial Revolution, men continued to dominate society (Liu and Ma 178).
  • First-Wave Feminism: This movement thrived between the 18th century and the early 20th century (Angela 125).
  • Rejection of Passivity: Moll actively rejects the traditional passive role for women in the 17th century by calculating, negotiating, scheming, earning, and narrating her experiences.
  • Rebellion Against Legal Limits: Her actions represent a rebellion against the lack of rights women had regarding property and education.
  • Patriarchal Inequality: In patriarchal society, men and women were unequal in both marital and social life (Erikson 1986: 89). Moll's social and financial security was fundamentally rooted in marital dependency, a system she found men often misused at their whim.
  • Moll on Gender Inequality:
    • "The Disadvantages of the Women, is a terrible Scandal upon the Men, and it lies here, and here only" (Defoe 2024: 74).
    • "In a Word, there is no Woman, Deformity, or lost Reputation excepted, but if she marriages well, may be married safely one time or other" (Defoe 2024: 76).
  • Limits of Authorship: Defoe withheld his name from early publications. While he grants Moll narrative power and agency, this power is portrayed as morally suspicious and filtered through a male-authored moral lesson where transgression must serve as a warning. There is no path for womanhood improvements beyond self-education and ‘learning abilities’ (Liu and Ma 2015: 179).
  • Bias Against Successful Women: The novel reinforces a bias that female success is unnatural or requires deception. Moll’s upward mobility is intrinsically linked to sex, theft, and the marriage market.

Moll: A Fallen Woman

  • Definition of the ‘Fall’: Moll’s fall is signaled early through her name appearing in the "Records, or Registers at Newgate" (Defoe 2024: 9).
  • Levels of Transgression:
    • Sexual Transgression: Includes acting as a whore, a mistress, and engaging in incest. Her fall begins with sexual exploitation by an older brother, which Murray (2010: 48) describes as a "historical symptom of repressed feminine sexuality and exploitation."
    • Social Transgression: Being an orphan with no name or family.
    • Economic Transgression: Poverty is the root cause of her fall (Pollak 1989: 11).
    • Criminal Transgression: Becoming a thief and being imprisoned in Newgate.
  • Incest as a Peak: Breaking the incest taboo and gendered social norms simultaneously (Pollak 1989: 4). Moll breaks off the marriage immediately upon realizing she has unknowingly married her brother.
  • Poverty vs. Industrial Productivity: In Moll's economy, the value of a woman's sexuality exceeds her industrial productivity. Her attempt to support herself through needlework proves economically impossible, pushing her toward structural transgression (Pollak 1989: 11).
  • Self-Description as "Loose" and "Unguided":
    • "Loose": Morally suspect, often implying sexual independence.
    • "Unguided": Lacking a proper social or familial structure (Defoe 2024: 103).
  • Criminal Progression: Moll blames poverty for her initial crimes ("Give me not Poverty lest I Steal" - Defoe 2004: 151). She claims the ‘Devil’ led her into crime, but ‘avarice’ kept her there until she could acquire 400400 or 500500 pounds (Defoe 2004: 160).

Dimensions of Female Agency

  • Economic Agency: Moll acts as a self-made capitalist, treating herself as her greatest asset. She subverts traditional roles through emotional detachment and careful money management (Damewood 2013: 1). She seeks to be a "Gentlewoman" as she understands the word, avoiding domestic service.
  • Existential Agency: Moll constructs her own identity and affirms her freedom in a world where women are relegated to the background. Kamenov (2024: 166) argues she should be judged as a free, existentially authentic individual rather than just morally good or bad.
  • Moral Agency: She remains conscious of her choices and accounts for her actions. She claims she had an "unbounded Stock of Vanity and Pride, and but a very little Stock of Virtue" (Defoe 2004: 23).
  • Narrative Agency: This is Moll’s most powerful tool. She uses retrospective first-person narration (autodiegetic narration) to shape her image and control how the reader perceives her. She strategically reveals and withholds information to mask her true name from Newgate records and present her life as a "storehouse of useful warning."
  • Constraints on Agency: Her agency is never total. She is limited by a system that views women as objects of exchange.
    • "The Market is against our Sex just now […] if she have not Money, she's no Body" (Defoe 2004: 19-20).
    • Her narrative agency is ultimately curbed by a fictional ‘editor’ who claims to have cleaned up her language for the preface.

Moll’s Gender Roles and Identities

  • Women as ‘The Other’: Society views women as subsidiaries of men or threats when independent (Wang 1246).
  • Specific Identities Negotiated (Ganz 2005 / Butler 1990):
    • Girl and Wife: Compliance with gender norms.
    • Widow: Gains socially acceptable economic and mobility autonomy.
    • Single Woman: Re-enters the marriage market.
    • Wealthy Gentlewoman: A disguise used to attract husbands.
    • Fictional Personas: Invented names like "Lady Cleave" or "Moll Flanders."
  • Gender-Fluidity: To survive, Moll crosses gender boundaries by dressing as a man. Her own partner "never suspected she was not a Man" (Wang 1247).
  • Masculine Mindset: Her survivalist attitude is described as considerably masculine: "The ‘value’ is money […] Life is a matter first of survival and thereafter of competition" (Donoghue 1963: 297).
  • Maternal Failure: Motherhood is a state Moll cannot sustain. She abandons her children (e.g., her tenth child) due to economic pressure. She only finds advantage in motherhood late in life when a reunion with a son facilitates her inheritance.

Irony in Moll Flanders: Forms and Levels

  • General Definition: Irony expresses an awareness of contradictions and incongruities, creating susceptibility to contradictory interpretations (Watt / Novak).
  • The Target of Irony:
    • Moll as Target: Irony exists in the gap between her pursuit of respectability and the criminal means she uses to achieve it. Her life comes "full circle," born in Newgate as a criminal and returning to Newgate to be "reborn" as a penitent.
    • Society as Target: The novel attacks social hypocrisy where supposedly "respectable" men (like the Elder Brother) behave less morally than condemned women. Prostitution is shown as a moral corruption produced by male behavior.
  • Specific Forms of Irony:
    • Dramatic Irony: Young Moll dreams of being a gentlewoman to avoid "service," while the reader knows from the preface her fate as a "fallen woman" and the impossibility of her dream in a class-based society.
    • Situational Irony: One of Moll’s most genuine relationships (with Jemy) is built on mutual deception; both thought the other was wealthy. Marriage is depicted as an economic compromise rather than a romantic union (Novak 1964: 201).
    • Cyclical Irony: Moll’s trajectory repeatedly returns to patterns of deception. Her transportation to Virginia, intended as punishment, becomes an opportunity for economic success and reinvention.
  • Interpretive Uncertainty: Readers are left wondering whether to laugh "at or with Moll Flanders" (Watt 1967: 121). She interprets her life through Christian repentance but is actually governed by natural law and self-preservation.
  • Conclusion on Gender and Irony: Moll Flanders is both a critique of the patriarchy and a product of it. It exposes inequality but remains entangled in moral judgment. Moll is only accepted by society again when she has attained the wealth necessary to conform to traditional gender roles at the end of her life.