Moll Flanders: Money, Sexuality, and Philosophy Explored

Introduction: Defoe's Novel and Its Enduring Relevance

What are the lessons to be learned from the novel Moll Flanders — lessons in terms of historical relevance, social values, personal values and goals, and the need for a stable, survivable income for each individual? How is philosophy tied into those lessons? And what do philosophers Immanuel Kant and Carole Pateman contribute to the overall understanding of what is presented in the novel?

This paper offers insights into — and germane examples of — human behavior patterns and the philosophical view of how to interpret those behaviors. It will not moralize or take strong positions on one side or another; on the contrary, the materials presented attempt first to digest and then to represent what the novel and the philosophers' views have to offer the reader. After all, a novel written in 1722 is not "contemporary" in a literal sense; and yet the characters are certainly members of human society, and their acts and behaviors carry applications and lessons for this generation and future generations.

The way in which the story is presented to the reader is very natural, and — except for obviously dated items and events — uses a style that might have appeared in a magazine feature published recently. This paper delves into situations that are sometimes ludicrous and often bizarre, and looks at those scenarios through the eyes of an interested reader and through the interpretations of philosophy. The straightforward style of Daniel Defoe allows his characters and themes to emerge and be understood clearly.

The novelist Daniel Defoe — son of a butcher and trained as a minister, though he never practiced that profession — demonstrates his craft efficiently. As W. H. Davies observes, Defoe tells stories so well that his story of Moll Flanders "moves on in such a natural way that no reader can doubt its being a true history." It further appears that Defoe "moves with so much ease [in his writing] that we never get the impression that he has an overtrained mind" (Davies, ix). Davies continues that one can learn from the way this book is written, because "There is not one page in Moll Flanders that does not contain one or more passages that could be quoted as an example of clear and simple beauty" (xii).

Defoe's Narrative Style and Authorial Philosophy

An example of that simple beauty that Davies extols is found in a passage in which Moll is still a little girl, not yet sophisticated enough to understand what being a "gentlewoman" really means: "As for my money, I gave it all to my mistress-nurse, as I called her, and told her she should have all I got for myself when I was a gentlewoman, as well as now... [and] my old tutoress began to understand me about what I meant by being a gentlewoman, and that I understood by it no more than to be able to get my bread by my own work..."

Davies is commenting here on a passage that captures, with combined simplicity and beauty, a young girl who believes that being a gentlewoman means earning her own money — notwithstanding her youth.

The author's philosophy: tongue-in-cheek polemics or literary honesty? In the Preface, Defoe prepares the reader for some of the rather raw and sexually aggressive behaviors of his protagonist: "When a woman debauched from her youth, nay, even being the offspring of debauchery and vice, comes to give an account of all her vicious practices, and even to descend to the particular occasions and circumstances by which she first became wicked... 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" (xv).

This is on one level a rather thin excuse for portraying very graphic scenes. For example, the young woman Moll, who is being aggressively kissed (p. 22), says: "perhaps he found me a little too easie, for God knows I made no Resistance to him while he only held me in his arms and... by and by, taking his Advantage, he threw me down upon the Bed and Kiss'd me there most violently..." When the torrid scene was interrupted by footsteps on the stairs, the aggressive suitor "told me it was all an honest Affection, and that he meant no ill to me; and with that he put five Guineas into my Hand, and went away down the Stairs."

On another level, Defoe's explanation for writing such explicit prose in an 18th-century novel is conveyed in the Preface itself, where he excuses himself for what the reader is about to encounter, saying he could not help writing it because that is how Moll lived. She lived that way, of course, because he created her living conditions. Or is he simply teasing the reader with tongue in cheek? "All possible care... has been taken to give no lewd ideas, no immodest turns in the new dressing up this story," Defoe writes on page xv. Indeed, some of the more "vicious part[s] of her life, which could not be modestly told, is quite left out."

That is an interesting and understated introduction to a frank novel, because on page 23, that same suitor — who a page earlier had paid five Guineas for some kisses — now throws Moll "upon the Bed again." The narrator explains: "But then being both well warm'd, he went farther with me than Decency permits me to mention, nor had it been in my power to have deny'd him at that Moment, had he offer'd much more than he did."

Invoking Kant's Philosophy of Duty and Happiness

Her suitor "did not attempt" the "last Favour," and apparently said he would take "Freedoms" with her at a later date, but "stay'd but a little while" and "put almost a Handful of Gold" in her hand. The author, it seems, is signaling philosophically — with an editorial wink — that he hopes readers are not offended. On page xvi, Defoe again justifies the racy nature of his work: "This work is chiefly recommended to those who know how to read it, and how to make the good uses of it which the story all along recommends to them." He adds, in the same paragraph, that readers "will be more pleased with the moral than the fable, with the application than with the relation, and with the end of the writer than with the life of the person written of."

When Moll Flanders is still only a child of ten, she already begins to understand — or at least conjures the belief — that most things go better with money. The stage is set for the reader to engage with this youthful yet brash philosophy when Defoe paints the necessary pictures through the character of Moll, explaining what she means by wanting to become a "Gentlewoman."

When asked what a Gentlewoman was, Moll first explained that her Mayoress had flattered her: "she look'd upon one of my hands. Nay, she may come to be a gentle-woman, says she, for ought I know; she has a lady's hand, I assure you." Betty was very impressed ("This pleased me mightily...") and after those flattering phrases, the Mayoress "put her hand in her pocket, gave me a shilling."

In Immanuel Kant's "Metaphysics of Morals," he discusses "duty" at length and asks whether "an action in accord with duty is done from duty or for some selfish purpose" (13). His discussion of duty offers a direct correlation to Betty's story. To "preserve one's life" is a kind of duty, Kant continues, although the "often anxious care which most men take of it has no intrinsic worth" because men and women preserve their lives "according to duty, not from duty." Duty therefore goes beyond mere survival. It goes beyond the human instinct of keeping life and limb from harm's way.

On page 15 of his "Metaphysics of Morals," Kant writes that "to secure one's own happiness is at least indirectly a duty, for discontent with one's condition under pressure from many cares and amid unsatisfied wants could easily become a great temptation to transgress against duties." In this context, Betty secures her "own happiness" through the receipt of money, and she appears to allow men to enjoy sensual pleasure with her out of a sense of "duty" to keep herself happy. On page 23 of the novel, Betty admits that she possesses a "most unbounded Stock of Vanity and Pride," and not very much "Vertue," and therefore she is quite impressed with the "fine words" he spoke — "telling me how passionately he lov'd me... [and that when he inherited his estate he would] Marry me" — as well as "the Gold."

This duty of Betty's — to make herself happy — is shown again when she indicates that her suitor may well have been lying about marriage in order to have his way with her: "whether he intended to Marry me or not Marry me, seem'd a Matter of no great Consequence to me." What did matter was the money, and the sexual adventures she was involved in on a regular basis. It was apparently her "duty" to be available whenever her suitor desired her, because the trading of sexual favors for gold and Guineas brought Betty happiness. Kant affirms that securing "one's own happiness is at least indirectly a duty" (15), because "discontent with one's condition under pressure from many cares and amid unsatisfied wants" could very easily "become a great temptation to transgress against duties."

In other words, if Betty had turned down her suitor's sensual advances and refused the money, she might have grown discontented with her condition and unhappy. Kant writes that "all men [meaning women too] have the strongest and deepest inclination to happiness, because in this idea all inclinations are summed up." Yet as to inclinations, he also explains that "the precept of happiness is often so formulated that it definitely thwarts some inclinations, and men can make no definite and certain concept of the sum of satisfaction of all inclinations, which goes under the name of happiness."

Conclusion

The question, as it relates to Pateman's philosophy and to Moll Flanders, then becomes: if a "basic income" had existed in England at that time in history, would Moll have felt compelled to engage in sex and petty crime in the name of being a "gentlewoman" — that is, of supporting herself? That is an open question, and this paper offers no opinion beyond noting that this is a very entertaining, if frank, novel whose style of writing and the situations created by its characters make it a fascinating read, worthy of extended discussion among fellow readers.

Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders presents a richly layered narrative that invites philosophical interrogation across the centuries. Viewed through Kant's ethics of duty and happiness and through Pateman's theory of the sexual contract, Moll's choices and circumstances reveal the enduring tensions between personal agency, social constraint, and economic survival. Whether Moll's conduct represents a rational pursuit of happiness, an animalistic submission to causal impulse, or a form of civil slavery enforced by the sexual contract depends on which philosophical lens one applies — and perhaps on all three simultaneously. The novel's honesty about money, desire, and power ensures its continued relevance, and the philosophical frameworks explored here offer productive ways of engaging with both Defoe's world and our own.