Moll Flanders: A 21st Century Novel?
Why does Moll Flanders feel so contemporary?
Happy June, R&W’ers! I hope your summer is off to a beautiful beginning, and the weather is all sunshine and warmth where you live.
Over on the podcast side of The Reader & the Writer, we are halfway through Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe. From the very first episode, Rhea has been saying how contemporary this novel reads. In conversation, I mildly agreed with her, and have even had a similar inclination. But, it was faint and unexplainable. So, I resisted the idea.
I can’t ignore or resist this notion any longer. Moll Flanders is a novel for our late-modern age.
But how? It was written 300 years ago (1722). The language, though written in “common” form for the time, is decidedly uncommon for our own.
My True Name is so well known in the Records, or Registers at Newgate, and in the Old-Baily, and there are some things of such Consequence still depending there, relating to my particular Conduct, that it is not to be expected I should set my Name, or the Account of my Family to this Work; perhaps, after my Death it may be better known; at present it would not be proper, no, not tho- a general Pardon should be issued, even without Exceptions and reserve of Persons or Crimes.
(Moll Flanders, Penguin Classics edition, p. 43)
That is the opening paragraph of the novel. Everything about it is “old” and “odd” to the modern reader: the turns of phrase, random capitalization of nouns, and string of independent clauses all connected by the semi-colon with a single period at the end of the paragraph. So far, not contemporary.
Then there is the story itself. It features a time and place totally unlike our own: a hierarchical class system set in pre-industrial England, where heredity, not merit or education or work ethic or any other thing, is the determining factor of social status and mobility. The entire story’s plot revolves around the slow unraveling of the main character, Moll, by way of this class system.
Yet, for all this “back-in-the-day” way about it, I can’t shake how relevant Moll’s story is for our present moment.
Maybe it’s as simple as this: Despite all of Moll’s very real problems entangling her—unjust laws and societal systems, discriminatory practices, etc.—the problem that has her most trapped is the problem inside herself.
It’s the common problem we all have: Straining to be something beyond our authentic, given self.
It’s the problem of image.
Moll’s station in life isn’t great. She’s born at the bottom of the social ladder (below it, even), in a system that allows for no movement. Within this sad situation, however, Moll is gifted early in life with kind and generous people who care for her as their own and offer her every advantage insofar as they are able. Not only is she educated and taught to be a seamstress (which she has a natural inclination towards), she is treated generously and continues to learn alongside the daughters of the gentry family she is sent to work for.
Given where Moll started from (born to an inmate in the Newgate prison, abandoned by mother’s relatives) and the odds of her even making beyond infancy, Moll has been granted new life. Not only new life, but even all she needs to continue flourishing in that new life.
But, Moll turns away from all that. She snubs her nose at it. Instead, she is focused on becoming something she can literally never be: a Gentlewoman.
Moll doesn’t want to be a gentlewoman in an, “Oh, how I wish I could be a gentlewoman,” sort of way. Oh no, no. She wants to be a gentlewoman in the same way an addict wants her next fix. She needs it. She must have the image. And, she goes after it at all costs.
It costs her alright. It is costing her everything. Not to mention leaving a trail of destroyed lives, in the way of abandoned children, behind her.
This problem of Moll’s is as old as Eden’s story. It’s Eve and Adam believing the lie that they can be anything they want to be, even the thing they literally cannot be: God. And then grasping after that thing and consuming unto their death.
The wild part is, they were already like God: designed in his image, made to commune and co-rule with him. they were given dominion over all the earth. They were the “linchpin” (to borrow an apt image from my pastor) connecting heaven to earth.
Besides all that, who’s to say what other wonderful gifts God had waiting to bestow on them (and the generations beyond them) had they had accepted their God-made, God-designed status (which, let’s be real, didn’t suck) and lived into it?
So then, if this is a tale as old as time, why do I sense it is especially relevant now?
There is something about this moment in our history where the lie of the serpent seems especially strong.
It all goes back to the image.
The lie has always been you can be anything you want to be and do anything you want to do. But now we have technology. Now, all you have to do to prove it, is create the image, post it on social media for all to see and “like” and affirm. Do this over and over and over again. Then it becomes true.
And you will be fulfilled.
Except, no one is fulfilled. We are all anxious, depressed, and talking to bots like they’re our friends (this isn’t a condemnation of AI, in case you’re wondering).
We—meaning 21st century, late-modern “we”—are like Moll. We keep putting out images of ourselves that are lies. Even when we are being “authentic” we are posing in order to post it.
Furthermore, we believe the lie that if we put it out there, it becomes true. And the whole greater order will contort itself around us and our image. We believe we are somehow that powerful.
All the while, we’re blind to the gift of our real lives and selves. These are the lives given to us, limited, imperfect, sometimes even deeply flawed. But, nonetheless, they are real and holy and full of beautiful potential. If only we will have eyes to see and a heart to perceive what beauty can be born and flourish from brokenness.
But it’s even worse. We aren’t just blind. We’ve come to despise our given selves and lives. When you despise something, it becomes easy to mistreat it. Abuse it. Mutilate it. Destroy it. And no destruction is ever contained to itself.
Just look at Adam and Eve. Look at Moll. Look on social media any given day of the week.
Moll has an image problem. So, it seems, do we.
Are you reading Moll Flanders with us? Or read it before? Do you think Moll’s story is especially relevant for us today?
What other themes do you think are contained within Moll Flanders?
Are there other old stories you’ve read, or are reading, that seem to be speaking to our cultural moment? How so?
Shari, this is amazing!!