Son of a Heath

I have had some difficulty understanding the character of Macheath, the dashing gentleman bastard of our play.  Although he is not exactly a hero--what does he do which can be considered "heroic" (besides get the girl(s))--he is a farce of the gallant Rinaldo-type characters depicted in war-shattered romances of Italian opera.  I thought this meant he was simply a crook dressed in noble morals and fond of civil philosophy; yet the farce continues when we view the hero as a lover.

Heroes are meant to profess their eternal love to one other soul and often die for their monogamous affair.  Other women may love him, but the man is always true, as befits any honorable person.  Macheath the virtuous gang leader, however, has made such a pledge multiple times and consents to death in order to escape his less than tragic relationships: "What--four wives more! This is too much.  --Here-- tell the Sheriff's officers I am ready" (81).  Compare this to his otherwise gentlemanly personality and his character seems at odds with itself.  Professor Cervantes offered "living in the moment" as a reason for his multiple matrimony issues, but the "moment" becomes a very confused one when Macheath is stuck in the same room with Lucy and Polly both.  "How happy could I be with either," he sings, "Where t'other dear charmer away.  But while you thus tease me together, To neither a word will I say". . . and then decides to flatter Lucy, as she is the more advantageous partner (53).  He can love deeply in the moment, unless said moment is awkward.

Not until I read the back cover of the Regents Restoration Drama edition did I begin to comprehend.  Macheath is "so devoted to matrimony that he has two or three wives already."  Not only is he a farce on the hero, but a farce upon the lover.  Just like Mr and "Mrs" Peachum, Macheath has a warped understanding of love.  For them, it is a foolish notion which leads only to mistakes.  For Macheath, it is an emotion to be shared freely among numerous lovers.  And what do these women expect but marriage pledges?  He is more than happy to comply. 

Perhaps among the upper class, love seems like a wasted thing; a luxury and a vice.  For the Peachums, it is a costly luxury which their daughter cannot yet afford.  For Macheath, a vice which lands him in prison just as easily as robbery, although with quicker results.  Polly (the idealistic maybe-wife) and Lucy (the jilted mistress) may love in earnest, but it certainly doesn't work out for them.  Love, like avarice, is held up for deeper consideration.

The Lucky Ones

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)

Identity Crisis

Mrs. Moll seems to be having a recurring crisis of identity, with each of her dramas outlined under a new moniker (either gained by gossip or marriage).  She has, at various points so far, been known as, "the little gentlewoman," "Mrs. Betty," "the pretty widow," and "Mrs. Flanders;" and these do not include the names gained by the multiple marriages.  Each of these names have bought with it a new hope of an improved lot and opportunities, only to entertain some new drama and dropped for another pseudonym.

One could argue this is just the way of criminals, or a exercise to maintain anonymity within the autobiographical format.  Criminals are often rather proud of their accomplishments, however, and using aliases or not, are known for their deeds.  Still, I think Moll Flanders is rather attached to her identity (the one currently used, at least), and is anonymous only for personal safety.  She wants so badly to become this woman, secure in estate and marriage enough to be a pretty and sensible woman; and this woman must have a name she just has not found yet.  If this goal cannot be achieved as Mrs. Betty, perhaps the pretty widow will have better luck.  Our Moll admits, "I resolv'd therefore, as to the State of my prsent Circumstances; that it was absolutely Necessary to change my Station," and how else to do this but, "make a new Appearance in some other Place where I was not known, and even to pass by another Name" (64).

"Flanders" has been glued to her by the title of our novel and by infamy within Newgate.  Indeed it seems her most "wicked" acts have been committed in that name (marrying her brother, for one, albeit unintentional).  Yet she lives to become rich and a penitent, quite removed from the the girl so easily fooled by the devil's temptations; and it is this name, this final achievement of status and security, that she wishes to protect with anonymity.  Sure, the pending cases at the Bailey might be a threat for her discovery, but she risks losing the life and identity she has suffered so long to know.  "Flanders" is used up, a crook, and left to squander in her wickedness, while the new Moll can rest happily in the final name she has established.

Apparently Mother Nature is the Only Chick Out There

In Behn's romanticizing of Oroonoko's foreign beauty, she has made his visage and attitude heavily influenced by European norms.  "His nose was rising and Roman instead of African," denying the inherent genetics of his culture; he also "loved, when he came from war, to see all the English gentlemen that traded" there and learned their language (14-15).  The character's Westernization also includes pledges of monogamy to Imoinda "contrary to the custom of his country," "where men take to themselves as many [wives] as they can maintain" (17).

Behn's narrative is a window into the state of nature (mostly Locke's), in which men know no vice and lived with love (at least of their tribe)--and of course, of women.  This distinction between relationships is a curious one, when applied to the theories of said state: neither Locke nor Hobbes made much room for women in their natural worlds.  Relationships and childbearing are necessities regardless of a commonwealth's rule, and certainly women existed somewhere off to the side while the men were arguing over acorns.  Locke allows the mother some authority where child rearing is concerned, but she is decidedly absent in concerns of property; a category into which wives arguably fall.  Surely, in a Hobbsian war state, women will be vying for self-control and avoiding the men who wish to make them slaves (of a sort).

Where, then, do the women exist beneath the politics?  The mother of any man's child is certainly important to him, and deserves protection by war or the distinction of property; but their XX chromosome, and the relationships which inherently lie in their biological functions, fall through the cracks of philosophical nature.  Marriage cannot exist without the laws of matrimony defending it; and spoken vows only mean so much when each man must fight for himself.  Is love, and, er, baby-making, also a free-for-all?

A Man Outside the Law

A monarch who transcends the limits of the Law is a startling concept, especially if he is given divine right to stand above the rest and pass judgement.  If one is given to believe either Hobbes or Locke (though Locke would disprove of such a monarch), the people will have chosen--or at the very least agreed--to put themselves in this man's power. His influence includes the right to punish as "an aspect of the sovereign's right to make war on his enemies: to punish belongs to 'that absolute power of life and death,'" which seems to put our prince on level with a god--a decider of  right and wrong, life and death (Foucault, 48).   The people have created their own judge and executioner:  "A PUNISHMENT is an evil inflicted by public authority on him that hath done or omitted that which is judged by the same authority to be a transgression of the law" (Hobbes, 203).  This authority, however, answers to none but the Almighty (as a divine sovereign) and is given free reign of whim and fancy if he should decide to ignore this or that moral notion of propriety.

What should happen, then, if a prince were to become tyrant and take advantage of his immunity--assuming of course, the heavenly power which enthroned him does not deem it fit to strike him down?  Modern thinkers would demand his removal, and Locke would agree.  Yet, "there can happen no breach of covenant on the part of the sovereign; and consequently none of his subjects," because that would be going back on their word!  What mortal group could think of disposing a god appointed by God, anyway?  Even Locke concedes that revolutions are rare; if frequent, our textbooks would not print their glorious deeds in bold.  The Enlightened philosopher believes "people are not so easily got out of their old forms as some are apt to suggest," and fall into a sort of Stockholm Syndrome with their pompous leader (Locke, 234).  Certainly, a complete reform is not necessary for "every little mismanagement in public affairs," but the divine monarch does not have even this to fear (235).  His "mismanagements" cannot be questioned and his decisions absolute.  If lightning does not strike him from the sky, his judgement must be just.