Analysis of Moll Flanders

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Analysis of Moll Flanders Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe is about a woman who was abandoned by her mother at a very early age and raised by in poverty. She tries to do anything in order to keep her from going back to an impoverished condition. Money corrupts the good qualities in people. Abandoning morals in the first sight of danger, leaving family out of selfishness and giving up ethics to make a quick buck are all examples of how money corrupts the good qualities in people. By discarding of morals at the first sight of danger lets the evils inside humanity out. “…for though I had no great scruples of conscience, as I have said, to struggle with, yet I could not think of being a whore to one brother and a wife to the other.” (104). This quote shows how she is indecisive in her what she should do. She wants to have both brothers to herself but cannot decide between marrying one and having an affair with another. Firstly, she openly admits that she normally does not usually have to make these decisions, because if it involves money she will take it. The article says “By being wed to her brother and conceiving a child that she gives up, Moll’s arteries of her morality harden and her spiritual condition becomes more reprobate” Hammond (331). This quote gives a ideal example of how Moll develops a way of evil. She learns about the marriage of herself to her brother and calls for a divorce but she takes no hesitance to get rid of the child. The children are not necessary to Moll and she does not grow attached to any of them. “Moll justifies her stealing in her reflections of the theft by saying she did the child no harm and necessity made her do it” Zhang (14). This quote shows another example of how Moll twits her ideas to make them appear moral. She has to rationalize why stealing the necklace from a girl is moral for her even though in the back of her mind it is
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