Defoe's Moll Flanders is considered as the expression of bourgeois ideology (Seldon, 1989).

Defoe’s
understanding of ‘Capitalism’ not only creates the capitalist heroine Molly but also epitomizes her as
a representative of all capitalist society.

Moll Flanders, the title heroine of Daniel Defoe’s 1722 novel, is a good-natured girl born into very
unfortunate circumstances in London—the cultural and economic hub of the western world during
the eighteenth century. Defoe portrays Moll as a capitalist; she is determined to make a fortune
through the exchange of goods and services because she does not have the option of relying on an
inheritance like a woman from a wealthy family would have had. London’s rapidly changing economic
climate—one transitioning from agrarian to a more commercial economy (Pollak 148)—creates what
I call a “bull market” for Moll to change her future. Moll, like an investor, believes that she can make
a profit despite not having any real fortune to begin with. And her biggest asset is herself; she
believes that she is worth more than she has. In the pursuit to elevate her financial status, Moll
simultaneously defies gender roles, or preconceived identities that determine how a male or female
should behave. Moll’s self-worth often challenges her assumed submissive, inferior, and domestic
female gender role. The traits that Moll needs to succeed financially—indifference in emotional
situations, meticulous money counting, and assuming authority in her marriages—all contribute to
the distortion of gender roles. Thereby Defoe suggests that capitalism enabled a change in attitudes
towards gender roles in eighteenthcentury London. Defoe gives the narrator an alias, Moll Flanders,
to suggest that Moll could quite literally represent any lower class woman living in eighteenth-
century London. Thus Moll’s eventual financial success proposes that any underprivileged woman
has the ability to change her own economic status.

Moll Flanders may be a capitalist tale of a particular society or period; but it depicts the formation of
capitalist values, morals and ideology which are universal in all capitalist societies. In social studies, a
political ideology is a set of ideas and principles that explain how the society should work, and offer
the blueprint for a certain social order. A political ideology largely concerns itself with how to allocate
power and to what ends it should be used. Capitalism is a widely studied ideology which governs the
politics and societies of the world since 14th century. According to Marx, ideology is as an instrument
of social reproduction. Marx proposed a base/superstructure model of society. The base refers to the
‘means of production’ of society. The superstructure is formed on top of the base, and comprises
that society's ideology, as well as its legal system, political system, and religions. Marx proposed that
the base determines the superstructure. It is the ruling class that controls the society's means of
production - and thus the superstructure of society, including its ideology, will be determined
according to what is in the ruling class's best interests. And Capitalism as Marx defined it is the
creation of a ‘labour market’ in which most people have to sell their ‘labour-power’ in order to
survive. Marx argued capitalism is also distinguished from other market economies with private
ownership by the concentration of the means of production in the hands of a few. Marx considered
capitalism to be a historically specific ‘mode of production’ (the way in which the productive
property is owned and controlled, combined with the corresponding ‘social relations’ between
individuals based on their connection with the process of production) in which capitalism has
become the dominant mode of production. The capitalist stage of development or “bourgeois
society,” for Marx, represented the most advanced form of social organization to the present date.
Thus, it is evident that ideology and capitalism has a very intense relation.

So, in any capitalist society, the ideology is determined by certain universal factors. These are:-
contractual relationships or binding agreements under the law-the economic motive-the drive to
consume or the rise of commodities-venturing in search of financial opportunities-a heightened
individual or a weak connection to community.
In many ways, Moll Flanders is very much a product of capitalism. All the factors are present in Moll
Flanders which are common to any capitalist society. In the criticism of Moll Flanders, we can say
that the historical survey of the relationship between the author's and the text's prevailing ideologies
are necessarily dialectical. Defoe takes pains to create Molly in such a way that she uses rigorous
inventory of each of her many marriages or affairs to value her networth. (Sexton, 2006) This passion
for capital worth is certainly not coincidental considering that England was in the midst of
transforming into a nation dominated by the rights of property, and that marriage was the only
property transaction available to a woman interested in keeping herself one step away from poverty
or debtors prison. Understanding the rapidly increasing attachment to property's increasing value
during Defoe's time is vital for anyone attempting to fully understand the novel's preoccupation with
capitalistic trade, and especially its association of trade with the convention of marriage. Considering
that at the time Daniel Defoe wrote Moll Flanders, there existed in England essentially no difference
in the punishment received by those who committed theft and those who committed murder. All the
while, of course, a woman’s rights to property were for all practical purposes null and void. A
woman’s opportunity for marrying into money was greatly dependent upon how much wealth she
could bring to the marriage. Beauty, Wit, Manners, Sense, good Humour, good Behaviour, Education,
Virtue, Piety, or any other Qualification, whether of Body or Mind, had no power to recommend:
That Money only made a Woman agreeable Moll Flanders takes precious little time to grasp and
embrace this relationship. Like many of her real-life contemporaries, Moll Flanders quickly
comprehends that money is the thing, and the mere possession of money is really the one thing that
makes a woman agreeable to a man when marriage is up for consideration. In fact, all of the women,
and most of the men, are obsessed with increasing their fortunes by virtue of the sacred institution.

Moll Flanders—the novel—appears to be sanctioning this practice as an honest method of keeping a

woman financially stable. Consider that Moll is reduced to committing crime to remain solvent only
after she has begun to lose her sexual attractiveness. The implicit prediction here is that if Moll had
only been able to enact a transaction with a man who was able to live long enough, or not run away,
or make bad business decisions that she might never have fallen into her life of wickedness. When
Moll Flanders takes those painstaking inventories after each of her relationships fail, she is proving
herself keenly aware of the fact that adding whatever wealth she can to her greatest possession—
her attractiveness and sexual desirability—is of the utmost importance in ensuring that she can
continue to do the one thing that will prevent her from falling into abject poverty: landing another
husband. This may give the reader a feeling of Moll's calculating personality. According to the Marxist
critics, the story is a tale of capitalism due to the numerous allusions to money, contracts, and other
currency-related items: Everything, including people, has a monetary value. (marianopolis.edu) Truly,
in Moll Flanders, money makes the world go around. Hardly a page goes by in the novel without a
mention of money. Moll's money worries begin at the age of eight when Moll must figure out a way
to avoid being placed in servitude.………..I was eight years Old, when I was terrified with News that
the Magistrates, as I think they called them, had ordered that I should go to Service To do this, she
tells the nurse who has taken her in that she can work, and that eventually she will learn her own
way in the world. When the nurse expresses doubt that Moll can really earn her keep, Moll responds,
“I will work harder, says I, and you shall have it all.” Though Moll is easily flattered by men
commenting on her beauty, she is even more flattered at their attentions if the men are wealthy.

I was more confounded with the Money than I was before with the Love, and began to be so
elevated, that I scarce knew the Ground I stood on: [20]When she and the elder brother are
discussing their future, he shows her a purse full of coins that he claims he will give her every year
until they are married, in essence for remaining his mistress. here's an Earnest for you; and with that
he pulls out a silk Purse, with an Hundred Guineas in it, and gave it me; and I’ll give you such another,
says he, every Year till I Marry you. Moll's “colour came and went, at the sight of the purse,” [24] and
at the thought of the money he had promised her. Moll complains after the death of her first
husband that no one in the city appreciates a beautiful, well-mannered woman, and that the only
thing a man is looking for in a wife is her ability to bring money into the relationship. She notes that
“money only made a woman agreeable: That Men chose Mistresses indeed by the gust of their
Affection, and it was requisite to a Whore to be Handsome, well-shap’d, have a good Mien, and a
graceful Behaviour; but that for a Wife, no Deformity would shock the Fancy, no ill Qualities, the
Judgement; the Money was the thing; the Portion was neither crooked or Monstrous, but the Money
was always agreeable, whatever the Wife was.” [54]

So, whatever she wanted to become—wife, whores or mistresses, of course, these relationships are
built upon money, as well. Ultimately, most of Moll's actions are precipitated by the need or desire
for money. She searches for husbands who have money and usually tries to give them the mistaken
impression that she is wealthy. She plots and schemes because she believes that all that matters in
life is the acquisition of wealth. Her motto is “Deceive the Deceiver” [61]. Even when she becomes
the richest thief in all of England and her fame threatens her ability to continue stealing, she cannot
stop her hunt for more money. Her greed ultimately having her downfall, for she gets sloppy and is
caught stealing from a house where she cannot pretend to have been shopping. In the novel, Moll
sails to Virginia twice: first as the wife of a plantation owner and second as a convicted criminal
sentenced to serve time as a slave. In the late seventeenth century and early eighteenth century,
Virginia was an English colony, an evidence of expanding English overseas interests in the name of
trade and political power. Settled in the early 1600s, Virginia was a thriving and important
complement to England's economy by the early 1700s.During this period, wealth came progressively
more from merchants’ capital, creating a powerful and prosperous business class. Business was
booming in England, fostering an attitude that there was lots of money to be made. England's major
manufactured export product during this period was cloth, which, along with other manufactured
goods, was shipped to the American colonies in exchange for an increasingly valuable commodity,
tobacco. It is significant that it is only when Moll Flanders reaches America that she achieves long-
lasting financial stability without having to resort to whoredom or thievery. In America, she can live
out the dream of being a property owner, something which would be forever denied her in England
because of the accident of her birth. Daniel Defoe seems relatively unconcerned with Moll's personal
morality, choosing instead to relate it to the larger concern of the immorality inherent in the rising
English system of capitalism and consumerism which clearly seemed determine to leave women with
very little choice in terms of morality if they aspired to live better than their circumstances of birth
proscribed. Moll Flanders’ attitude at the end of the novel appears to be in perfect accord with her
attitude throughout the book; while seeming to be in complete juxtaposition to the promises made
in the preface that hers is a story from which the moral is more important than the fable. The
apparent lack of a moral, however, seems to be one more case of Defoe's ironic indictment of
capitalism and consumerism, most specifically how they relate to women in England. For a rational
critical analysis of this novel, it's important to understand how Defoe’s interest lies in the morality of
capitalism as it serves women in England at the time. By the novel’s end Moll Flanders has all but
forgotten her embrace of Christianity and her desire to do self-punishment for her past crimes as she
almost immediately accepts bribery as her way of getting out of Newgate and getting to America in
the finest class possible. She also apparently has no regret about using the gains she got through her
life of crime to further her career as an American plantation owner. Nor does she seem to mind lying
to her son about her state of matrimony. Not only is she still continuing her questionable moral code
of living, but by the end of the novel, Moll Flanders is living in good heart and health, which seems to
be a direct contradiction of Defoe's claim that no villain exists in the novel who does not meet either
an unhappy end or is redeemed through penitence. A contradiction, that is, unless one assumes that
the real moral lesson Daniel Defoe is providing here is that there exists no moral component to
capitalism when applied to any British woman not to the manor born. By having Moll Flanders end
up successful, happy and, most importantly, alive in a story which has seen her earn money as a
bride willingly engaged in a loveless marriage, as a whore, as a mistress, as a thief — in every way
except as an honest worker — the moral of the story doesn't seem to rest on Moll's penitence, as
was promised, but rather on the fact that the only means available to Moll of producing enough
capital to assure herself of living the kind life she aspired to was a series of financial transactions
which were demeaning to her moral stature. The pivotal point of the novel revolves around the
transformation of a religious society into a secular society. Material conditions balanced religious
issues, and at times outweigh it in the cultural texts of the Eighteenth Century. Daniel Defoe was a
keen Capitalist, and his values are present in the material presentation of middle -class life in all his
works. Marx (Fromm, 1991) argued that it was the material condition of an individual’s life that
shaped that individual’s understanding of the world and themselves (Class consciousness). Historical
Materialism refers to the idea that material conditions are determining factors in the development of
human social history. Marx viewed human history as the development of society along the line of
material conditions. These conditions shape the balance of power. (Fromm, 1991) We can analyze
Moll as a Capitalist Heroine because she exhibits Capitalist tendencies, and her material conditions
shape her understanding of the world. While the philosophy of the eighteenth-century
Enlightenment period addressed such issues as individual liberties, social welfare, economic liberty,
and education, these concerns did not translate into major changes for women between the late
1600s and early 1700s. In fact, there are indications that the status of women declined during this
period; in 1600, more than two-thirds of the businesses in London were reported to be owned by
women, but by the end of the eighteenth-century, that rate had been reduced to only ten percent.
Because the English economy at this time was based on the family unit, financial success determined
that most people live within a family unit. In such an environment, society looked upon individuals
who lived outside of a family unit with suspicion and assumed they were probably criminals, beggars,
or prostitutes. Moll, when she finds herself in particularly difficult situations, frequently bemoans the
fact that she does not have any family or friends whose household she could join. I had no
Acquaintance, which was one of my worst Misfortunes, and the Consequence of that was, I had no
adviser, at least who cou’d advise and assist together; above all’ I had no Body to whom I could in
confidence commit the Secret of my Circumstances to, and could depend upon for their Secresie and

Fidelity; and I found by experience, that to be Friendless is the worst Condition, Essentially, her
eternal search for a husband is a search for a family unit of her own. Working-class women were
expected to participate in the labour force as early as their sixth birthday. If a child was an orphan
without anyone willing to provide financial support, as Moll's nurse did for her, the authorities
expected the orphan to go into “service,” usually household work for young girls. Women could
rarely marry without a dowry, an amount of money that went to the husband as a sort of investment
in the family economic unit. Women of labouring families, married or single, worked in low-status
jobs. Middle-and upper-class women had more economic options although by the seventeenth
century, as a woman's status increased, her ability to secure productive work diminished as she was
not expected to being a situation where she would have to work. Many progressive Englishmen of
the day believed that education was a paramount requirement for a civilized society; educational
opportunities were extended to middle and upper class-women in addition to men. But the existing
attitudes dictated that only men should receive instruction in the more intellectual subjects such as
philosophy and science, and that women should study subjects that would contribute to their moral
development and to their desirability as marriage prospects. These subjects included singing,
dancing, and languages, as demonstrated by the young girls in the household of Moll’s first husband,
Robin. Moll learns these lessons, giving her an edge that most girls in her economic status did not
have. From the Marxist critics, we know literary forms are themselves expressions of class
ideologies(154). Pierre Macherey suggests that literature can “show the incoherence of ideology.”
“Weber thesis” about the connections between capitalism and the “Protestant ethic” suggests that
“Calvin's ‘inward’ ethical attitude, which saw the individual life as a ‘labour’ for a deferred end, also
resembled capitalist ideology (155). Defoe’s identity as both an entrepreneur and a religious
dissenter affects the Puritan/capitalist ideological “mélange” (Moll's double perspective in her
narration: her indulgence and lament of her “wicked” life.) of his novel. “The incoherence and
contradictions are suppressed in ideology's 'imaginary' representations”(156).

Moll Flanders suggests that the new and ruthless capitalists of the times resemble in their values the
criminal underworld of the day. The paradoxical and contradictory nature is a direct effect of the
ideology Defoe produces in his text. (Lin & Liu, 2000) We can relate Capitalism to Puritan Ideology.
Puritans were Protestants that believed that we are born damned and need to live in discipline life in
order to receive signs of God’s Providence. The neurosis of being born Damned forced Puritans to
have an individual relationship with God, and they believe in the internal personal financial success
as a sign of God’s grace. Max Weber (1904, 1905), a German sociologist, wrote The Protestant Work
Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. He argued that these Puritan values generated an enhanced
capitalist drive in early Modern Europe.
Protestant Work Ethic: a Puritan view that promotes hard work and self-discipline as means to
financial wealth and God’s grace. Economics and religion become interestingly intertwined. Defoe’s
capitalist motive in not only prominent in Moll Flanders, but also in his other major works like Roxana
and Robinson Crusoe. Defoe’s Roxana, like his Moll Flanders, trades upon the appetite for apparently
autobiographical thieves’ tales and context scandalous which appeared in early capitalist London,
and which survives in modern celebrity magazines and newspapers. The issues Defoe addresses,
however, were more sharply felt in 1721 as capitalism had only recently been released from
monarchical control by the Glorious Revolution and the “Financial Revolution” was inducing rapid
changes in daily life and social institutions. The narrative tells of Roxana’s descent from middle-class
propriety to whoredom and charts her accumulation of a huge fortune by judicious sale of her one
asset, her remarkable good looks. Defoe’s work thus exploits the salacious imagination whilst staging
the moral problem of the body on sale: if it is fundamentally good that everything can be traded in
the market, then what could be wrong in a woman selling her own body?(Clark, 2000)Again Defoe’s
most legendary creation Crusoe is as economic man. As economic man, Crusoe has been specifically
identified with capitalism, particularly by Marxist critics. His solitary state on the island, his limited
relationships with others, including his own family, and the insignificance of sex/women reflect the
nature of capitalism, which emphasizes individual self-interest. So, it is evident that Defoe formed a
capitalist motive which has a universal point of view present in all of his novels. Capitalist economic
practices incrementally became institutionalized in England between the 16th and 19th centuries;
capitalism has been dominant in the Western world since the end of feudalism. Capitalism gradually
spread throughout Europe, and in the19th and 20th centuries, it provided the main means of
industrialization throughout the world. And the latest version of capitalism is globalization. In the
present situation of globalization, we have millions of Molly who represent the capitalist ideology in
various forms of economic and cultural exploitation; repressions of workers and trade unionists, and
other phenomena such as social alienation, inequality, unemployment, and economic instability.
Thus, we can end with to conclude that Moll Flanders is a universal tale of capitalism and such
ideology.