The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders
1722
The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders
1722
Born in Newgate Prison to a convicted thief, Moll Flanders spends her life clawing her way toward gentility in a world that offers a poor woman no honest means of escape. Over sixty years, she marries five times (once her own brother), turns to thievery for twelve years, and is transported to Virginia. Yet Defoe's 1722 masterpiece is no simple morality tale. It is a radical act of empathy: a portrait of a woman who refuses to accept the limited role society assigns her, who lies and steals and loves with an energy that borders on exhilaration. The novel operates on two levels simultaneously, a propulsive picaresque adventure and a pointed examination of how thoroughly society fails those born without privilege. Moll is no saint, but she is impossible to look away from. She is, in many ways, the first modern heroine: flawed, ambitious, and unapologetically alive.
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“I saw the Cloud, though I did not foresee the Storm.””
— Daniel Defoe
“I am giving an account of what was, not of what ought or ought not to be.””
— Daniel Defoe
“I had been tricked once by that Cheat called love, but the Game was over...””
— Daniel Defoe
“He look'd a little disorder'd, when he said this, but I did not apprehend any thing from it at that time, believing as it us'd to be said, that they who do those things never talk of them; or that they who talk of such things never do them.””
— Daniel Defoe
“If a young women once thinks herself handsome, she never doubts the truth of any man that tells her he is in love with her; for if she believes herself charming charming enough to captive him, 'tis natural to expect the effects of it.””
— Daniel Defoe
“Diligence and Application have their due Encouragement, even in the remotest Parts of the World, and that no Case can be so low, so despicable, or so empty of Prospect, but that an unwearied Industry will go a great way to deliver us from it, will in time raise the meanest Creature to appear again in the World, and give him a new Case for his Life.””
— Daniel Defoe
“I rather wished for their ruin, than studied to avoid it.””
— Daniel Defoe
“She is always Married too soon, who gets a bad Husband, and she is never Married too late, who gets a good one.””
— Daniel Defoe
“Where love is the case, the doctor's an ass””
— Daniel Defoe
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Defoe, Daniel. The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders. Lex, lex-books.com/book/the-fortunes-and-misfortunes-of-the-famous-moll-flanders-494fc764-47bf-4104-9919-7a726c56093b.Defoe, D. (1722). The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-fortunes-and-misfortunes-of-the-famous-moll-flanders-494fc764-47bf-4104-9919-7a726c56093bDefoe, Daniel. The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-fortunes-and-misfortunes-of-the-famous-moll-flanders-494fc764-47bf-4104-9919-7a726c56093b.
