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The Younger Brother/Robin
Moll’s mother was a convict in Newgate Prison at the time of Moll’s birth. Mother is sentenced to death for stealing a few pieces of fabric, but because she is pregnant, her sentence is commuted to transportation to the Colonies. When Moll is six months old, Mother is deported to Virginia, where she is sold as an indentured servant. Mother later marries her master, who is a good man and gives her a good life. They have two children, the plantation owner and Moll’s sister, and operate a successful plantation. After her husband dies and the plantation owner marries Moll, Moll comes to live on Mother’s plantation, not knowing that they’re at all related. Mother tells Moll stories of her early life, at which time Moll discovers she is Mother’s daughter and has married her own half-brother. When Moll tells Mother the truth, Mother suggests Moll keep her secret and live as man and wife with the plantation owner. Mother stands to lose just as much as Moll if their secret gets out, as the scandal of their incestuous family is sure to ruin everyone’s reputation. Mother supports Moll when she decides to tell the truth anyway, and she promises to leave Moll money in her will. Mother helps Moll return to England and later dies an old woman on her plantation. In her will, Mother leaves her plantation to Moll, which allows Moll to live a very comfortable and happy life with James.
Moll’s Mother Quotes in Moll Flanders
The Moll Flanders quotes below are all either spoken by Moll’s Mother or refer to Moll’s Mother. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
The Preface
Quotes
The Pen employ’d in finishing her Story, and making it what you now see it to be, has had no little difficulty to put it into a Dress fit to be seen, and to make it speak Language fit to be read: When a Woman debauch’d from her Youth, nay, even being the Off-spring of Debauchery and Vice, comes to give an Account of all her vicious Practises, and even to descend to the particular Occasions and Circumstances by which she first became wicked, and of all the progression of Crime which she run through in threescore Year, an Author must be hard put to it to wrap it up so clean, as not to give room, especially for vicious Readers to turn it to his Disadvantage.
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Moll’s Childhood
Quotes
Had this been the Custom in our Country, I had not been left a poor desolate Girl without Friends, without Cloaths, without Help or Helper in the World, as was my Fate; and by which, I was not only expos’d to very great Distresses, even before I was capable either of Understanding my Case, or how to Amend it, nor brought into a Course of Life, which was not only scandalous in itself, but which in its ordinary Course, tended to the swift Destruction both of Soul and Body.
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Moll’s Mother Quotes in Moll Flanders
The Moll Flanders quotes below are all either spoken by Moll’s Mother or refer to Moll’s Mother. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
The Preface
Quotes
The Pen employ’d in finishing her Story, and making it what you now see it to be, has had no little difficulty to put it into a Dress fit to be seen, and to make it speak Language fit to be read: When a Woman debauch’d from her Youth, nay, even being the Off-spring of Debauchery and Vice, comes to give an Account of all her vicious Practises, and even to descend to the particular Occasions and Circumstances by which she first became wicked, and of all the progression of Crime which she run through in threescore Year, an Author must be hard put to it to wrap it up so clean, as not to give room, especially for vicious Readers to turn it to his Disadvantage.
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Moll’s Childhood
Quotes
Had this been the Custom in our Country, I had not been left a poor desolate Girl without Friends, without Cloaths, without Help or Helper in the World, as was my Fate; and by which, I was not only expos’d to very great Distresses, even before I was capable either of Understanding my Case, or how to Amend it, nor brought into a Course of Life, which was not only scandalous in itself, but which in its ordinary Course, tended to the swift Destruction both of Soul and Body.
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