Moll Flanders

The period during which Defoe wrote Moll Flanders—early 18th-century England—was a time of unprecedented change and upheaval. Though he sets the writing of Moll Flanders in 1683, the book is very much concerned with the changing social mores and economic systems of the decades leading up to the 1720s. The social and economic mobility that Moll achieves would have been unthinkable in the previous century, and it is possible because of the specific political and economic circumstances of early 18th-century England.

In 1714, a new royal dynasty took the British throne. The Hanoverian kings hailed from Germany, and neither George I (reign 1714-27) nor his son, George II (1727-60), spoke much English. George I rarely resided in England, preferring to return home to Hanover as often as he could. As a result, the job of governing England fell to the Prime Minister—an office created during this period—and Parliament. At the same time, England’s economic system grew to rely more and more on trade and private enterprise, particularly the spoils of the growing British empire. This emerging economic system, capitalism, replaced the centuries-old feudal system under which every individual fulfills a particular role socioeconomic niche that is determined by the social rank into which they are born. The concept of social mobility was anathema to feudalism. In addition, the feudal system was supported by strict religious values, which would come into question as the 18th century unfolded due to the rising secular values of the Enlightenment.

Thus, during this tumultuous time, the very foundations of English society were shaken. On one hand, capitalism engendered the ability to move from one social status to another: Moll does not want to be a servant; she wishes to be a gentlewoman, and thanks to the opportunities furnished by colonialism and capitalism, Moll’s desires are within reach. On the other hand, capitalism is a secular system that leaves little moral guidance for those who are navigating it. The individual’s place within a larger society is no longer stable, nor are society’s values universally agreed upon. Deepening the sense of instability, a major stock crisis, the South Seas Bubble of 1720, revealed that new capitalistic modes of wealth could lose value suddenly, making new forms of capitalistic wealth such as financial markets and paper money seem ephemeral and unreliable. The way the characters in the novel rapidly gain and lose fortunes reflects widespread feeling in the early 1720s that the new economic system was unreliable and perhaps immoral.

Finally, with widespread economic instability and without an organized police force to enforce laws and protect property, crimes such as highway robbery and petty theft flourished. This led to the implementation of extremely harsh punishments for robbery such as death or transportation to the colonies. Yet as Moll and her mother demonstrate, transportation could also offer criminals the opportunity to reinvent themselves and build wealth. The way criminality and colonial wealth are interconnected in Moll Flanders reflects the morally ambiguous status of capitalistic wealth and social mobility in early 18th-century society.