This is a very dull, tedious book. It has some plot, but it is disorganized and not very compelling. Moll Flanders herself is flat and underdeveloped, and her many marriages and children seem to affect her very minimally, if at all, to a point that makes her seem unrealistic. While my copy of this book was under 300 pages long, it felt 4 times as long. If you have to read this book, take notes and pace yourself, and otherwise there are a lot of better classic novels to choose from. ( )

If you are in the mood for a different type of classic then this is a relatively quick read with a lot going on. I would recommend it to anyone that wants to read the classics because it does belong with that group. ( )

Audiobook on CD. Book written detailing the adventures of Moll Flanders who lives by her wits and her body. Her fortune is made several times by herself, but is lost again, mostly due to her poor choice in men (drunks, womanisers, already married etc). [return][return]Narrative is bawdy, jolly etc. It is both a serious (about a world where a woman can rarely survive on her own and with few rights to even her own money) and not-serious tale (she goes through husbands with almost every chapter). As a result of these dalliances, she has plenty of children, of which little is heard off once they are packed off somewhere else, to ensure that Moll isn't hindered by a flock of children following her. I dont know if a woman would really do this, or whether this is Defoe's "wishful thinking" of fertile women not actually having children in tow. [return][return]Overall an enjoyable lighthearted 18th century romp ( )

Pretty good, except for the moralizing. ( )

It drags a bit, which is a problem I generally have with Defoe, but this book was otherwise enjoyable. ( )

I loved Moll Flanders, the character and the book. They are bawdy, but in that eighteenth century way, that lays everything between the sheets between the lines, and lets you use your own imagination, if you will. Defoe makes this sometimes tragic tale a kind of frolic. There is humor, and you cannot help rooting for the woman who is breaking the law, engaging in indiscriminate sex and sexual manipulations, and robbing people blind, while protesting how sorry she is she had to do it. I confess to not feeling the least sorry for anyone Moll might have harmed, except her children, who were so briefly dealt with that we forget them almost as cavalierly as Moll does.

I suppose Moll is a hardened criminal. She might have had an honest life several times during the course of the novel and she failed to secure it. She gets more opportunities than most women in her situation would have gotten, but she seems destined to find herself in a boiling pot time and again. Marriage being one of the few ways a woman might improve her status, Moll never fails to take advantage of a marriage vow. However, even if you only consider her marriage debacles, which I will not discuss here as that would be a major spoiler, you have to admit fate is very unkind. So, she is a criminal, but she is also a survivor, and it is the survivor in her that wins out for me.

She is a precursor for every strong woman who refuses to accept her fate and makes the most of her talents to survive the unsurvivable. She is Amber St. Clare, Scarlett O’Hara, and Dickens’ Nancy, with a different outcome. She’s a roll in the hay, but with purpose. I totally enjoyed her story. ( )

9781853260735

Wow! that was just... awful, i mean that was shockingly bad :lol. I was pleasantly surprised by Robinson Crusoe so this was doubly disappointing. Its written in such a dull lifeless manner that it kills any sense of emotion or interest it might otherwise have. Its a series of short incidents few of which are interesting, in fact the story only seems to start get going when your 2/3's of the way through. To say it gets interesting from then on, i should clarify that it is only comparatively so, as it certainly couldn't get any duller.
Not only is it dull but the situation is made worse by the most ridiculous coincidences cropping up here and there. I'm at a loss for words to thoroughly describe how pointless this felt to read. I'm seriously tempted to give it one star but its not even interesting enough to be truly bad. A complete waste of time, go read 'Forever Amber' or 'Fanny Hill' or literally ANYTHING else. ( )

Textbook use of the English Language ( )

I have always loved to read, since I was a child. I devour books like hungry people devour food. However, I hated reading so-called "classics" required in school. Words cannot express how much I loathed "The Catcher in the Rye", "Heart of Darkness" and "Grapes of Wrath." It wasn't until I became a senior high school that I finally came across two classics that I enjoyed, A Scarlet Letter and Moll Flanders. Perhaps I just wanted to read about rebellious, independent women?

Moll Flanders has every bit the adventure of Robison Crusoe, just more scandalous for the time since she was a woman. Her journey from orphan, to servant, to prostitute to woman of means is engaging throughout. I loved how she overcame adversity to live her life on her own terms without losing the capacity to love. While the language is a bit formal compared to modern prose, the story transcends. Heartily recommended - especially to those like me who have resisted classic literature. ( )

Moll Flanders is a young woman without prospects during the early 1700s in England. The book was published in 1722. Early on she is offered two paths; she must choose which way to go. The path she chooses and the results thereof are the remainder of the story.

To say this book is about Prostitution is not quite accurate. The main character, "Moll," certainly goes that route, but I believe the book is more about survival in a time where there were very limited options for young, unattached women. Moll is given an option, but she sees that the other way holds an easier prospect for more gain. In fact, she is always on the lookout for what will bring gain to her. Having stood on the edge of the abyss of poverty, she wants to stay as far away from that as possible, whatever it takes. Her character is an extreme pragmatist, even when it comes to her children and spouses. Are they good for gain? I will love them, they are dear to me. Will they be a drain on me, or offer no gain? They are dead to me and I will be rid of them.

I enjoyed reading this. Daniel Defoe pulls no punches and writes in a straightforward way. You will not find flowery descriptions, no lengthy chapters about nature, architecture or other distractions from the plot. In fact, no chapters at all. Some of the conversations drove me to distraction, people talking all around a thing, but I believe social etiquette required that verbal play at that time. It reminded me of Jane Austen's novels in that way. Not in any other way. This was a good insight into the lives of those not so nice as the characters in Austen's novels in the 1700s. I probably won't read it again, but glad to have done so once. ( )

This is a re-read of this classic novel which I previously gave up on a decade ago, now approaching its 300th anniversary (published in 1722). It is colourful, rambling and sometimes frustrating read, one that is typical of 18th century picaresque literature. Moll (not her real name, which we never find out) is born in Newgate prison to a woman sentenced to transportation and is brought up by gypsies and then in a household where, as she grows into a young woman, she is seduced by both of the brothers of the household. In all she has six marriages or quasi-marriages (including one to a man with whom she moves to Virginia and who turns out to be her own brother, whom she had not seen since young childhood, and where she also re-encounters her transported mother) and gives birth to numerous children over the next thirty years or so. After this time, reduced to poverty, she perforce turns to theft to keep body and soul together. But, as she grows richer through the proceeds of crime, it becomes its own motivation and she cannot give it up, becoming a member of a crime gang led by "the governess". After years of close shaves, she is eventually caught and taken to Newgate. She is sentenced to death but this is commuted to transportation. In Newgate she encounters one of her ex-husbands who has been arrested as a highwayman and they get together again for the voyage to Virginia. By dint of her links to a now reformed "governess", she is able to reacquire some wealth which enables her to turn over a new leaf and build a prosperous future in Virginia, where she is also reconciled to her son by her ex-husband/brother. A decade later in comfortable old age, Moll and her husband return to England in 1683.

This breathless account does, however, mask some problems with the narrative. It is one continuous course, not divided into chapters or sections; and, perhaps worse for readers' recall, almost none of the characters have names. We find out the first names of a couple of her husbands, and one or two other minor characters, but the vast majority are not named. I got used to this after a while, but had to make notes as I was going along to keep tabs on her relationships. A great read, though, dealing with issues in a way that most mainstream literature did not again for over another two centuries. ( )

Riotous! This book was written in the early 18th century, and I can understand why it would have been a bit of a sensation. Its tale is now pretty tame for our current time and place.
Spaced throughout the novel there are several pages regarding the condition of women at the time, and how they were at the mercy of a male dominated world in everything from their virtue, marriage, childbirth, and employment. While for me, it sometimes became tiring to read such moralizing, it did also make me grateful I live in THIS century. ( )

One of the first novels in English and division into chapters had obviously not been introduced, which is a little off-putting. But the story flows naturally on and on. Along the way it gives a fascinating insight into life and marriage circa 1700 in the English provinces, in London and in Virginia, among gentlemen and thieves, confidence-tricksters and planters, unwanted children and sailors.

I am sometimes afraid that we will have nothing to say to each other at our reader discussion groups. Hah! We talked for over an hour and a half about this picaresque classic. How much was to be considered 'true', considering that it was supposedly a memoir of a repentant woman? How could she say so little about her children? Did she exploit her sexuality or just make the best of the society? She confessed to liking the thrill of theft even after she no longer needed more money, trimmed her stories to her circumstances and her audience, barely mentioned the hardships of crossing the Atlantic (I wonder if Defoe ever did?), learned to make and manage money, and in general navigated a society that was not kind to women without status and means. Was Defoe as tuned in to the hardships of women as this book suggests? Or was he more interested in writing a sly, picaresque adventure with the allure of a female protagonist? Did we believe the 'woman's voice'?

Defoe shows us the society of the time, the narrow path between servant and master class in the late 17th century in an urbanizing country as well as a new world. The book is filled with incident - in fact, when Moll has achieved, however temporarily, a quiet life, we hear nothing about it except how it ends. Moll ('not my real name') tells us at the beginning that she ends up in London, secure, married, content, mature, repentant of her sinful life. So the traditional suspense is absent - it was all about how it happened. But it was fun to read, watching her journey and learning about the times. ( )

Moll Flanders is a strange book. It's a cautionary tale, but it also feels like a sermon on promiscuity and greed. The book follows the life of Moll Flanders from her infancy, being born to a criminal in prison, all the way through her life which also ends in crime.

She grows into a beautiful woman and ends up marrying one man after another. Her horrible circumstances move her from one bad situation to another. One husband dies, another ditches her, and another turns out to be her half-brother! I enjoyed the first half much more than the second. The story’s moralistic tone echoes that in the author’s other famous work, Robinson Crusoe. ( )

“If a young women once thinks herself handsome, she never doubts the truth of any man that tells her he is in love with her; for if she believes herself charming charming enough to captive him, 'tis natural to expect the effects of it.”

The full title of this classic novel is 'The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders' and this in many respects an apt summary of this book. It tells the life story of the titular character.

Moll Flanders was born in Newgate Prison, London, the daughter of a convicted felon who is subsequently transported to America shortly after Moll's birth. Moll is initially brought up by the state and later taken by benefactors. She grows up to be a beautiful woman determined to be someone other than a servant. This she attempts to do by marrying a variety of wealthy man, one of whom she later learns to her horror after bearing him several children, is actually her half-brother. As various marriages fail for various reasons, her fear of poverty leads her to commit many forms of theft. This way of life she later finds impossible to give up so that even when she became relatively wealthy, she continued stealing.

Through a variety of guises and some quick thinking Moll manages to evade prison for many years, unlike a number of her accomplices who are caught then hung or transported to the colonies, until she became the richest thief in London. Perhaps inevitably, she was finally arrested and taken to Newgate Prison whereupon she is sentenced to transportation to the American colonies. In prison Moll chances upon her most recent living husband, himself a highwayman awaiting sentencing. Whereupon both are transported to Virginia before moving on to Maryland where they become successful plantation owners in their own right.

At the age of almost seventy, Moll returned to London with her husband, where they planned to live out their lives in repentance for their past crimes.

There are several themes that run through this book but perhaps the most prominent one is Greed. The author seems to take great efforts to paint Moll as covetous. Moll sees people in particular her husbands as commodities — they appear little more than business transactions. Then when here first husband dies she seems happy to abandon her children to the care of their paternal grandparents. Then later in life even when she becomes relatively wealthy as a thief she is unable to forsake her criminal ways despite the main initial driving force, notably poverty, no longer applies. She continually raises the financial _target where she states she will go on the straight and narrow.

After her arrest repentance then becomes a major theme but even here Defoe seems to aim to paint Moll in a poor light. She repents about not giving up her criminal ways earlier rather than than the actual crimes themselves. She never seems to feel sorry for the people that she wronged.

Now initially I must admit that I found the early years of Moll's life rather tedious and I was tempted on more than one occasion to throw in the towel. However, I persevered and as she re-counted her criminal career I found it much more entertaining. On the whole I found this a little laborious but ultimately am pleased that I managed to finish it but may leave it a while before I challenge another classic. ( )

Story has sad, but honest beginning which moves into Moll's willing seduction by the elder son of her kind and generous patrons.

Character has little to recommend and plot quickly becomes repetitive, tedious, and too boring to continue... ( )

This review is written with a GPL 3.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted
at Bookstooge.booklikes.blogspot.wordpress.leafmarks.tumblr.com by express permission of this reviewer Title: Moll Flanders Series: ----- Author: Daniel Defoe Rating: 4 of 5 Stars Genre: Classic Pages: 337 Synopsis: The Life and Adventures in Crime of Moll Flanders. As told by Moll Flanders after she was exiled to America, made her fortune and came back to England as a rich socialite. My Thoughts: I can see why this was on the banned books list. Seduction of the innocent [Moll], crime sprees, incest and bigamy on a grand scale. Now, as Moll writes, she is supposedly repented from her former life and is writing these memoirs as a warning to others. However, that is a load of crock. Moll is proud of what she has done, the stealing, the lying, the whoring, all of it. Every line written, every word used reflects Moll's true attitude. Nothing was ever graphic but there was never any doubt of the acts that Moll committed. Defoe does a great job with his writing and I enjoyed this story, even as the story is not uplifting, inspiring or in anywise about anything good. " ( )

[From Books and You, Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1940, pp. 31-32:]

Now, the first book on my list is Defoe’s Moll Flanders. No English novelist has ever achieved a greater verisimilitude than Defoe; it is hard, indeed, when you read him, to remember that you are reading a work of fiction; it is more like a consummate piece of reporting. You are convinced that his people spoke exactly as he made them speak, and their actions are so plausible that you cannot doubt that this is how, in the circumstances, they behaved. Moll Flanders is not a moral book. It is bustling, coarse and brutal, but it has a robustness that I like to think is in the English character. Defoe had little imagination and not much humour, but he had a wide and varied experience of life and, being an excellent journalist, he had a keen eye for the curious incident and the telling detail. He had no sense of climax, he attempted no pattern; and so the reader is not swept away by a power that he does not seek to resist; he is carried along in the crowd, as it were, and it may be that when he comes to a side street he will slip down it and get away. He may, to put it plainly, after a couple of hundred pages of very much the same sort of thing feel that he has had enough. Well, that’s all right. But for my part I am quite willing to accompany my author till he brings his ribald heroine to the haven of respectability tempered with penitence.

The quality of Defoe’s work varies wildly and if you have been stung before, fear not, for this is one of the good ones. It’s a proper page turner, but there’s far more to it than that. All the way through there’s this counterbalance between reason on the one hand and crime on the other, caused by either inclination or necessity. You can read it just as a series of plot less set piece scenes but what really fascinated me in Moll’ character was her treatment of her own children. It’s almost psychopathic. Seriously, she abandons all her, what, nine or ten children. I think this behaviour all ties in to being (unintentionally) abandoned by her own mother in Newgate and I think this ties to the reason / crime argument. She’s a sinner, not by inclination but because of the appalling events of her life. An argument that’s still going on today, and this novel explores the idea better than anything else I’ve read. ( )

“…let the Experience of one Creature compleatly Wicked, and compleatly Miserable be a storehouse of useful warning to those that read.” Daniel Defoe’s summation (at the bottom of p.250 in the 2002 Modern Library paperback edition I just read) in the mouth — or at least in the thoughts — of Moll Flanders is, thankfully, as close to didacticism or morality as the author ever comes. It’s also a good illustration of the non-standard spelling, capitalization, punctuation and syntax of his era (he finished the book in 1683), which may be the greatest obstacle to an otherwise clear and thorough enjoyment of the text.

To print Moll Flanders in the original was a conscious choice on the part of the publisher — and a choice I’m not entirely certain I agree with. As I had a similar difficulty with John Cleland’s Fanny Hill, let the reader beware. (Imagine trying to dig through the unedited manuscript of a contemporary writer whose writing mechanics are, to say the least, primitive, and you’ll get the picture.)

That caveat notwithstanding, Moll Flanders is a grand story — and eminently worth reading — no less than Fielding’s Tom Jones or John Cleland’s Fanny Hill. And one of the more interesting aspects of this novel is the point of view: in this case, first-person singular. In other words, a man (Defoe) tells the story through the eyes and heart — and, however obliquely, between the legs — of a woman (Moll). Moreover, he does so — in my opinion — quite convincingly.

What is perhaps most remarkable about the author of Moll Flanders (but also of the more popular if not necessarily more notable Robinson Crusoe) is that Defoe first turned his hand to fiction only at the age of fifty-nine! One has to wonder whether he was an example and an inspiration to Benjamin Franklin, who first turned his hand to the violin at fifty-three. Who says — on the basis of this evidence — you can’t teach a (smart) old dog new tricks?

RRB
10/21/13
Brooklyn, NY
( )

Moll Flanders
1996, Recorded Books LLC, Read by Virginia Leishman
Want to Read
“I am giving an account of what was, not of what ought or ought not to be.”

Having read Moll Flanders many years ago in university, in the usual panicked rush which characterized that time, I wanted to visit it again for a clearer sense of it. Too, it’s in [1001 Books], and I like to make some effort to read a number of these each year. I decided to listen to Defoe this time, and am happy to highly recommend Viriginia Leishman as a wonderful narrator.

What struck me about Moll’s character in the first half of the story were her contrasts: she has experienced a great deal of life and yet is naïve; she is an intelligent woman and yet a foolish woman – or at least one who makes foolish decisions. As her story unfolds and as she matures, she becomes much more weathered in the ways of her world: a seasoned con (and later convict), bold thief, wary whore. I wondered whether Moll chose her way of life, or whether having set out on that wrong path, albeit perhaps unintentionally, it was impossible to find her way back. Part of me thinks the latter, particularly as a woman living in the 17th century; and yet I believe she enjoys her wily, wicked ways. In the novel’s concluding chapters in which Moll falls into favour with the gift of a grown son and a handsomely profitable plantation in Virginia, I was amused at her humility and penitence in the face of Providence – after all, what’s a woman to do? Whatever the case, I don’t intend to spend any more time with the character.

Having read [Robinson Crusoe] and [Moll Flanders] within a few months of one another, I’ve decided that I can appreciate Defoe for his contribution to the form of the modern novel; but he really is not one I can treasure. I’m glad to have read and reread some of his work presently, but probably with leave him with this final word. ( )

A wild, chaotic ride through 17th century London, culminating in an unplanned trip as an exile to the New World. Moll Flanders is an amoral opportunist who tries to turn every situation to her advantage when she discovers that as a young woman alone, the deck is stacked against her. She learns not only how to survive, but how to thrive until it all comes crashing down in a legal case that threatens her very life. ( )

We get a real taste of old England. Very well written in the King's English. If you are a little unsure about the subject matter, the great writing will make you happy you picked up the book. The leading character always has your sensibilities uppermost in her mind, so no worries. ( )