Much has been said about Moll’s blatant disregard for her
children, yet little has been mentioned about Moll’s childhood. She herself was abandoned as a child, and is
a tad resentful for it (especially, I’m sure, knowing her brother did not share
the same fate). Moll bemoans those like
her mother, “I wish all those Women who consent to the disposing their Children
out of the way, as it is call’d for
Decency sake, would consider that ‘tis only a contriv’d Method for [murder];
that is to say, a killing their children with safety” (145). Granted, her mother had more pressing matters
than “decency,” but the problem still remains.
“We are born into the World helpless and uncapable,” in need of “Care
and Skill” which are “plac’d by Nature in the Hearts of Mothers” for the sake
of the child’s survival (145). To
abandon a child, even to a good home, is to kill it by depriving it of a
mother’s care.
Moll was a child who, once abandoned, fell through the
cracks of society and grew into a life of debauchery and thievery; not to
mention abandoning several children which may follow in her footsteps, as Moll
is most certainly following in her mothers.
This is a point I believe Defoe wants to raise, as it were, by absence. Moll’s children are given up, assumed safe,
and forgotten. Moll forgets, society
forgets, and so does the reader. The
result of one child dropped by the system, then, is a multitude of future
degenerate generations.
This is reflected in Moll’s gradual repetition of her
mother’s mistakes, as mentioned before.
While visiting some incarcerated friends of the trade, she is faced with
an existential crisis: “but [Newgate] gave me so much Horror, reflecting that it
was the place of my unhappy Birth, and of my Mother’s Misfortunes, that I could
not bear it” (170). One can also note
that her mother, sitting pretty in Virginia, has achieved the goal Moll herself
will one day reach: financial wealth, security, and the comfort of looking back
on life as an impartial narrator.
However, this leaves a conflicted impression: will those
children who grow without their mother’s love, rely on sin to get by, and live
on the other side of the law thrive
because of their experience? Or are
Moll and her mother just the lucky ones?
(Better late than never, though my internet is still a problem)
