Gender and Society Theme Analysis

Just as Daniel Defoe draws a parallel between poverty and morality in Moll Flanders, he likewise implies that Moll’s circumstances and subsequent life of crime are closely related to her gender. As a woman in 17th-century England, Moll has very few options in life. She does not enjoy the same freedoms and privileges as men, such as access to education or the right to own personal property. A woman’s choices are limited to “going to Service” (working as a servant or maid) or marriage, and Moll quickly learns that marrying for love is another luxury she can’t afford. For Moll, marriage is simply a business arrangement—a way for her to secure social standing and wealth—and she is married five times throughout the course of novel. Moll’s marriages are mostly are a series of disasters, and after they fail to secure her wealth or status, she turns to a life of crime. With his portrayal of gender and society in Moll Flanders, Defoe highlights the sexist nature of 17th-century English society and ultimately argues that women, especially women of the lower class, have few options for social mobility.

From a very young age, it is expected that Moll will eventually “go to Service,” which underscores the limited opportunities available to women of her socioeconomic status. Moll spends much of her childhood under the care of a nurse, who is funded by the church to keep orphans like Moll until “a certain Age, in which it might be suppos’d they might go to Service, or get their own Bread.” When Moll is just eight years old, the courts order her into Service. At such a young age, Moll can do little but run errands “and be a Drudge to some Cook-Maid,” so she begs her nurse to keep her. Moll promises to work instead for her nurse, and “Work very hard,” which she indeed does, giving the nurse every penny from her needlework and sewing. No matter what, it is expected that as a girl, Moll will be in the “Service” of another. Moll dreams of being a “Gentlewoman,” which to her means working for herself and earning enough to keep herself out of Service. “Poor child,” the nurse says, “you may soon be such a Gentlewoman as that, for she is a Person of ill Fame, and has had two or three Bastards.” A “Gentlewoman” turns out to be a polite term for a prostitute, and, the nurse thus implies, prostitution is the only way in which Moll will ever be able to work for herself.

As Moll has a “thorough Aversion to going to Service,” her only other (legal) option is marriage, which further highlights her limited choices as a woman. Moll quickly learns that marriages are “the Consequences of politick Schemes for forming Interests, and carrying on Business, and that LOVE had no Share, or but very little in the Matter.” In short, marriage (especially for women) is not about love; marriage is about securing the best possible social and financial status. After the death of Moll’s first husband, Robin—a man she didn’t love but was forced to marry to keep from becoming homeless—she is “resolv’d now to be Married or Nothing, and to be well Married or not at all.” In other words, Moll has accepted the fact that she must get married, but she will only marry a wealthy man. Moll is married a total of five times and gives birth to 12 children, but she is never able to secure herself any real wealth or social status through marriage, and she secures even less love and happiness. It is only after marriage that Moll takes her “Estate in [her] own Hands” and supports herself, but she must do so through dishonest means. 

Moll does eventually manage to find financial security—and some happiness and love—and she even does it without marriage or breaking the law, but that security comes about through pure chance. After Moll’s biological mother dies, she leaves Moll a modest fortune, which allows Moll to live happily with her ex-husband James—Moll’s fourth and favorite husband, whom she only left because he didn’t have any money. Without the chance fate of her inheritance, Moll would be stuck in a cycle of loveless marriage, petty theft, and prostitution, which highlights the restrictions women face in 17th-centruy England; most women, Defoe implies, have little chance for such a happy outcome.