Mastodawn

My cursory pre-reading knowledge of #MollFlanders did not prepare me to find in the book's heroine an early 18th-century #Feminist, calling out the inequities of her context's gendered courting scripts and expectations and devising some delicious revenge for women friends when wronged by men.

She would have much to say about men and marriage, for instance, that would jive with this weekend's NYT op-ed about contemporary #Marriage prospects for women (linked).

Holding forth on marriage, Moll says: "On the contrary, the Women have ten Thousand times the more Reason to be wary and backward, by how much the hazard of being betray'd is the greater; and would the Ladies consider this, and act the wary Part, they would discover every Cheat that offer'd; for, in short, the Lives of very few Men now a-Days will bear a Character; and if the Ladies do but make a little Enquiry, they will soon be able to distinguish the Men and deliver themselves[.]"

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/11/opinion/marriage-women-men-dating.html

Opinion | Why Aren’t More People Getting Married? Ask Women What Dating Is Like.

Harping on people to get married from up in the ivory tower fails to engage with reality in the dating trenches.

The New York Times

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Trevor Burrows Nov 12, 2023

Also unexpectedly modern is Moll's penchant for *consciously* taking up a new identity. Defoe plays with the malleability of identity not just in Moll's character but everyone around her, and he often ties this to geography or the scope of British life -- including the British empire.

Men's life at sea, and the dispersed nature of the colonies, open up the possibility of multiple (hidden) lives...

So when Moll helps to spread rumors of a man's doubtful character, she adds to the pot "that he had a Wife alive at Plymouth, and another in the West Indies, a thing which they all knew was not very uncommon for such kind of Gentlemen."

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Trevor Burrows Nov 12, 2023

But it is interesting that for Moll, the malleability of identity is something she sometimes explicitly, consciously opts for in response to her circumstances. (Moll itself is a chosen name, one of her earliest moments of self-transformation.)

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Trevor Burrows Nov 12, 2023

So the malleability of identity becomes both a source of uncertainty and doubt - in assessing the character and history of others - and a means of raising your own prospects.

Finding the "habit of a Widow" to be limiting - particularly one without money - Moll resolves to "change my Station, and make a new Appearance in some other Place where I was not known, and even to pass by another Name if I found Occasion."

#MollFlanders