DANIEL DEFOE: MOLL FLANDERS
“At the nadir of her misfortunes, Moll undergoes a spiritual awakening, a
rebirth of the soul that leads to her repentance.”
Daniel Defoe’s novel Moll Flanders brings a story of a woman, who after a long criminal career, repents and leads a decent, respectable life. The aim of this essay is to examine what was the crucial moment in Moll’s life that brought her to repentence and what the object of her repentance was. This paper also deals with the question whether the act of repentence is a turning point of the whole novel in terms of moral values. Religious aspect of her repentence will be considered as well.
In the first part of the novel, i.e. before Moll gets to Newgate, Moll’s values are those of mercantile society which means primarily a respectable social status, acquired either by noble origin or by having money. A turning point comes when Moll is imprisoned and she repents and decides to change her life. But very soon it appears that she wants to change her life without changing her value system. In these terms the only difference from her previous life, is that she does not want better social position at all costs.
The scheme of the novel seems to be departure from the mercantile values to the Christian values. In the novel Moll’s repentence is represented in religious terms. Although one of the first motives was her compassion with her Lancashire husband: “How many poor people have I made miserable? How many desperate wretches have I sent to the devil; This Gentleman’s misfortunes I plac’d all to my own account..“, (Defoe, 356-7). This is the only place in the Newgate scene where Moll considers that she has hurt other people and repents for doing harm to others. The main impulse for contrition is given by the Minister, the representative of the church. Moll repents, prays to God and hopes for forgiveness and mercy promised to true penitents. She contemplates in terms of Christian deliverance and salvation. “I was covered with shame and tears for things past, and yet had at the same time a secret, surprizing joy at the prospect of being a true penitent, and obtaining the comfort of a penitent, I mean the hope of being forgiven." But all this religious devotion ends with her new life in America where she again pursues her old values of acquiring property and with that a respectable position in the society. Moll does not want to be a good Christian at the first place any more.
A question arises whether religion caused Moll to change her life or whether the stimulus was of a different kind. It was primarily the society that showed Moll that her behaviour is unacceptable by sending her to the worst prison, Newgate, and by the threat of death penalty. First the laws of the society stopped Moll from trespassing them, not the laws of her conscience. The churchman – his sermon was only the last straw. It worked only when she was at the nadir of her life, that it had any effect upon her. And it is again the society that offers Moll new chance for living, for earning money in an honest way. In addition to that, it is the society which she considers the judge of her behaviour, she wishes to be recognised and admired by the society, not by the God. This is a huge discrepancy in the novel – in spite of the fact that her repentence is described in religious terms, it is not truly Christian because she is not willing to become a true Christian with disinterested love and compassion for all people. The turning point of Moll’s life does not consist of Christian repentence but of social correction (rectification).
It is clear that as Moll might be perceived as the victim of the society, the very same society gave her opportunity to improve herself although not within the same country. Virginia was the right place for her to prove that she wanted to lead an honest life, to make her living in a decent way. The novel is very much about forgiveness, both in religious and social terms. It is forgiveness that allows the major character of this novel to go through the spiritual awakening and mainly that it allows her to put it into practice. This great, generous forgiveness of the society must be based on the idea that man is good in his nature and is worth being given a new chance even after “all the progression of Crime which she run through in threescore year”. (Defoe, 38)
Throughout the course of Moll’s life it becomes evident that she is going down, morally falling and that she is not able to find the source for repentance in her own soul without any help. She turned to the vices and crimes out of necessity, but her wicked behaviour does not cease with her need for money. She needs an impulse from the outer world. She needs the most urgent warning possible, the most dreadful and imaginable warning in the form of death sentence, or at least the threat of it, to be able to repent. This shows how very much corrupt her conduct was, how much she was involved in the sinful behaviour that only as a last resort, that is under the heaviest sentence, she is able to recover her soul, to admit that her way of life is not tolerable.
The conclusion of these somewhat complicated and fractional ideas is that Moll’s legal punishment was in fact her salvation. It was the only effective and forceful enough impulse to make her repent and change her life. Moll’s contrition is conditioned by falling to the very bottom of life. Forgiveness, she finds both from the society and the promised one from God, has its accomplishment in her voyage to America. This is the mercy she obtains. In the act of transportation, the society appears to be highly Christian and humane. This is exactly the point where Christianity and social organization unite. There we see the parallel of God’s forgiveness with the forgiveness of the society.
Behind all this, there is the idea that every human being is worth giving a new chance, no matter how bad his sins have been. One thing, however, remains unanswered by the author Daniel Defoe and that is whether this rule is not valid only to a certain extent, that extent being limited by what is usually considered the worst sin of all, namely murder. It is emphasized more times in the novel, that Moll has committed all sins she has been capable of as a woman, except for murder. Does it mean that murder is unpardonable? Is murder the only exception among all the sins? Because the writer left this issue open, it will remain open in this essay as well.
The novel Moll Flanders does not cast doubt upon the values of mercantile society of the eighteenth century. It only suggests how difficult it might be for a low-born person to achieve them. Consequently, America is contrasted with the English society, it is shown as a more liberal environment.
Defoe, Daniel. Moll Flanders. Penguin Classics. London, 1989.