Trying to Understand Moll

One of the things that I noticed most about Moll as the story progressed is mentioned in prompt four when Moll sees her son in Virginia; the fact that Moll seems to become more attached as she grows older. As Daniel mentioned, there is a distinct difference between the way Moll responds to her son in Virginia and the way she writes about her first children that she gave away and the next child who in a single sentence we are told was born and died. However, this is not a complete jump from A to Z. As the story progressed you could see Moll begin to form these attachments with her children and with others.

She truly does struggle with the idea to put her child with the Lancashire husband up for adoption. She ultimately does it because she cannot have the child and still snag her next man, but she does seem to legitimately suffer over the decision and wishes she could keep the child. This is a marked difference from the way she writes about leaving the first two children with her in-laws.

Likewise, one can also see this sense of attachment seem to grow with each progressive husband. She is sorry she has to leave her husband/brother. She seems to feel real remorse for the fact that she believes she ruined her Lancashire husband. Furthermore, she clearly has a real emotional bond with her governess and other people she meets later in life.

Moll is kind of a tricky character. First of all, she always has a motive and rarely lets her emotions get in front of her end goal. Furthermore, only a fool would not notice how much she justifies her actions and manipulates the people in her life and not realize she is just as capable of the same manipulation in writing to us, her reader. Even in the end, after she has repented, much of the interaction with her son deals with her simply trying to get her property which, despite still feeling real emotions, she still manipulates and lies her way through the process. In other words, I think it is kind of next to impossible to really understand Moll and her actions. She can lie to herself as easily as she lies to others.

That being said, it is clear that as the story progresses she does allow herself to form more emotional attachments than the younger Moll Flanders. As Moll ages she learns more and more ways to benefit herself. In the end, while I don’t mean to paint the bleakest picture of Moll, I think that to an extent her emotional attachments are an extension of this fact. She has learned that she needs other people in her life, and so, she has allowed herself to be more open to these emotional attachments.