The Theme Of Morality In Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders

The Theme of Morality in Moll Flanders
Daniel Defoe’s novel, The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders is a story about the life of a beautiful woman who was born in Newgate Prison. Moll was determined to rise from the lower class she was born into, therefore she used marriage several times in order to obtain financial security. In the story, she was willing to sacrifice moral principles in order to gain prosperity. Her fear of poverty led her to commit many crimes, including theft. However, I think it is a rather interesting question, whether Moll ever really became a hardened criminal.We have seen that she was motivated by greed, but there are certain aspects of her personality, which we cannot ignore. In the novel we can see that she became a “hardened” criminal step-bystep. After stealing the bundle she started to cry, and realized what she have done and that she could have been taken to Newgate Prison:“All the while I was opening these things I was under such dreadful impressions of fear, and I such terror of mind, though I was perfectly safe, that I cannot express the manner of it. I sat me down, and cried most vehemently. 'Lord,' said I, 'what am I now? a thief! Why, I shall be taken next time, and be carried to Newgate and be tried for my life!'”. At first she regretted her crime, but the longer she thought about her own condition and circumstances, the harder her heart became. Yet, in my opinion Defoe wanted us to sympathize with Moll. He often portrays her as moralizer with the use …show more content…
On one hand she was a criminal, on the other hand, Defoe tried to depict her as a sympathetic one, by using irony ingeniously to describe her thoughts, during her various crimes. Therefore it is a really hard task to define if she was a hardened criminal or not. Considering her actions (especially when she stole from the Child) and the way Defoe portrays her, I think we can say that she was a criminal with