Moll Flanders: The Felon as Lawyer

Moll Flanders: The Felon as LawyerBeth Swan Moll Flanders draws the reader into the narrative of her criminal life by way of her language. Her characteristic discourse, special pleading, is clearly appropriate to her attempts at self-vindication. But it also derives meaning from her status as convicted felon. Moll, the narrator, is also a woman with a "record," inscribed in the annals of the Old Bailey and Newgate prison, a purely juridical text she cannot overlay with her own. Moll Flanders is Moll's personal text, a counter-text to contest the public record, an example of special pleading, not only after the fact of her crime but also after conviction and sentence. It is a plea in mitigation made to the court of her readership. It is difficult for twentieth-century readers fully to grasp Moll's discourse , to identify and appreciate its rhetoric, because it functions as part of an intricate juridical context. E. Anthony James acknowledges that Defoe "convinces us of the absolute plausibility of her crimes," but fails to recognize the role of legal detail in creating this "verisimilitude."1 Lincoln B. Faller also recognizes Moll's encounters with the law as realistic elements ofplot, but does not account for their ideological function, declaring that Moll Flanders is "about God's providence—if actually it is 'about' anything at all besides its protagonist."2 In this essay, I will attempt to reconstruct the contemporary legal context and judicial procedure, and to 1 E. Anthony James, Daniel Defoe 's Many Voices: A Rhetorical Study of Prose Style and Literary Method (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1972), p. 221, n. 25. 2 Lincoln B. Faller, Crime and Defoe: A New Kind of Writing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 165. EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION, Volume 11, Number 1, October 1998 34 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION identify the role ofjuridical discourse within the ideological framework of the novel. Defoe draws on the popularity of trial pamphlets and criminal biographies to support his consideration of one of the most important issues of his time: crime and the way in which society deals with it.3 Paula R. Backscheidernotes the parallels between Defoe's novels and "popularephemera " such as the "criminal life ... of Mary Raby; Who was Executed at Tyburn on Wednesday the 3rd of November 1703 ... her several pretended Marriages ... her many Cheats, Robberies, Shop-liftings, Clipping, Coyning, Receiving Stolen goods?'* FJ. McLynn points out that "Breaking and entering private property with felonious intent was the most commonly encountered capital crime of the eighteenth century."5 Moll thus embodies common public fears; the narrative of her crimes, apprehension, and punishment would inevitably have been ofgreatinterest to Defoe's readers. Readership ofcrime literature was diverse but Philip Rawlings argues that "the core of the readership ... came from the same broad social group as those who published it": "the middle classes"6—often tradesmen, particularly at risk from thieves such as Moll. With this in mind, it is perhaps not surprising that Defoe should present sympathetically the tradesman from whom Moll steals. The tradesman embodies a juridical ideal: he is socially responsible, ensuring that Moll answers for her behaviour, but he is also equitable, since he will not weight the case against her and even requests the court to show mercy. His prosecution of Moll is not motivated by a personal desire for revenge. Defoe removes the onus of the prosecution from him by having one of the servants call the constable; the tradesman realizes that as soon as a legal 3 Lawrence Stone makes the important distinction between the transcripts written for lawyers and unashamedly salacious versions ofcourt events. See Roadto Divorce: England 1530-19S7(Oxford: Clarendon, 1990), pp. 248-53. For discussions of crime literature, see Faller, Crime and Defoe, pp. 4-31 and Turned to Account: The Forms and Function ofCriminal Biography in Late Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 2038 ; Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. A. Sheridan (London: Penguin, 1977), pp. 65-69; Philip Rawlings, Drunks, Whores and Idle Apprentices: Criminal Biographies of the Eighteenth Century (London: Routledge, 1992), pp. 1-27; and John Richetti, Popular Fiction before Richardson: Narrative...