Moll Flanders: Three Crucial Events

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Three Crucial Events in Moll Flanders Three events crucial to the story of Moll Flanders are based upon the idea that if these events had not occurred in the story as they did, the story would have changed direction. First, Moll needed to be accepted into a household after her “mother, the good old Nurse” died. Second, her first husband needed to die, and lastly, she needed to take that first step in thievery and steal. Moll would have been left to return to a gypsy lifestyle or worse if a noble household had not offered to take her in. Moll states that she is no longer concerned with being a gentlewoman, but is simply relieved to have a place to stay and glad to be a servant, or whatever else they deemed appropriate for Moll. However, through Moll’s words one sees that she is still just looking for someone to take care of her. About the time I was fourteen Years and a quarter Old, my good old Nurse, Mother I ought rather to call her, fell Sick and Dyed… Now was I a poor Gentlewoman indeed, and I was just that very Night to be turn’d into the wide World…But it seems some of the Neighbours who had known my Circumstances, took so much Compassion of me, as to acquaint the Lady in whose Family I had been a Week…and immediately she sent her Maid to fetch me away, and two of her Daughters came with the Maid tho’ unsent; so I went with them Bag and Baggage, and with a glad Heart you may be sure: The fright of my Condition had made such an Impression upon me, that I did not want now to be a Gentlewoman, but was very willing to be a Servant, and that any kind of Servant they thought fit to have me be. (Defoe, 14) During this passage we also see how Moll relates to her popularity after one family decides to take her home and she makes comment about the Mayoress wishing to lay claim on Moll since, ‘she had found her first.’ She is given a taste of how it feels to be
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