The incredible journey of Moll FlandersAbandoned by her mother at the age of six months, Moll Flanders has none of the expected requirements for her life journey to be a very good journey. His first memory is that of “wandering among a crew of these people called gypsies or Egyptians”; (9). But from the age of eight or ten, she was aware of herself as an individual ready to shape her own life: "... alas! everything I understood by being a gentlewoman, 'was being able to work for myself and get enough to keep me going without that terrible scarecrow coming into use...' (13). Moll's first very frightening experience is that of being "jumped from the ship" when she is sent back out into the big wide world before reaching the age we call legal. She is very ironic when she says: "Now I was really a poor lady..." (18). At this time, when individualism was beginning to be seen as something worth striving for, Moll was aware that for a woman life was much more limited than for a man. This novel, written as an autobiography, was composed by a man, but I think it did a good job of conveying to us the experiences and thoughts of a woman. Moll wants to shape her own life, but she doesn't always achieve her goal. As a young woman, she is seduced by a man who does not keep his promise to marry her, then she marries her brother and experiences a marriage which is not at all happy. Having become a widow, she never stops thinking about the next step, her next stage in life. Since it is very difficult for a woman in this society to live alone, she is "...resolved to be married or nothing, and to be well married or not at all." (65). She has a very strong idea that a woman should not be kept as a mistress if she has my...... middle of paper...... Moll's life journey could very well have ended with her execution, but she has the chance to be sentenced to deportation. The novel The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the famous Moll Flanders takes us again to Virginia, where Moll and her husband from Lancashire begin a new life as planters. She meets her son (a very moving event) and inherits a farm from her mother. When we leave Moll and her husband, they lead a quiet life in England, "...where we decide to spend the rest of our years in sincere penance for the bad lives we have lived." (376). To a modern reader, Moll appears to be a “survivor” in a society that is not yet prepared or capable of caring for all of its members. She tries, and ultimately succeeds, to be the captain of a ship that is not easy to steer. Work cited: Defoe, Daniel. Moll Flanders. Popular Penguin Classics, 1994.