Moll Flanders

Moll Flanders

Have you ever wondered how people survived living back in the 1600’s?   This occurred to me while reading a book called “Moll Flanders” by Daniel Defoe. It was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1930. This book told me about one woman named Moll Flanders and how she made it in life even though she started with almost nothing, and finished with everything she always wanted. Whatever she came across, she would always push it aside and move on with her life. She was born in jail and had to make it in life as an orphan. Moll had made a living by doing anything she could to survive and one of those things was being a whore for twelve years. I never really got why they called her a whore because she never knew what she was getting herself into and she was doing all this because Moll had no place to go. She was just used by every man she met. For example, Moll had been accepted by the Mayor’s family to help out with their house and while living there she had met this man who used her. Moll had found this out when Robin told her that he could not consent for them to marry anymore, that it would burden him if he did so. Robin did not want to lose any pride or honor so he thought this would be the right thing to do. “So certainly does interest banish all manner of affection , and so naturally do men give up honor and justice, humanity, and Christianity, to secure themselves”, page 59. Moll Flanders never expected men to ever do this to her but as years past she just let things be the way they were and just did the things she did for the money they gave her. She was a wife five times including one time she had married her own brother. She only found out about her brother when her mom told her. What a small world she had lived in and nothing good was happening to her. What Mrs. Flanders had learned about marriages over the years is that, “Marriages were here the consequences of politic schemes for forming interests, and carrying on business, and the Love had no...