Changing Attitudes toward Marriage in the Time of Defoe: The Case of Moll Flanders

Author(s): David Blewett

Source: Huntington Library Quarterly, Vol. 44, No. 2 (Spring, 1981), pp. 77-88
Published by: University of California Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3817523 .
Accessed: 04/11/2014 09:49

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

University of California Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to
Huntington Library Quarterly.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 194.27.72.122 on Tue, 4 Nov 2014 09:49:57 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 Changing Attitudes toward Marriage
in the Time of Defoe:
The Case of Moll Flanders
By DAVID BLEWETT

MarriagewithoutLove,is the compleatestMiseryin Life. Besides,I mustsay,it

is to me utterlyunlawful,and entailsa Curseupon the persons,asbeingwilfully
perjured,invokingthe Name of GOD to a Falshood,whichis one of the most
provokingCrimesthat Mankindcan commit.He or She who, with that slight
and superficialAffection, Venturesinto the MatrimonialVow,are to me little
more than legal Prostitutes.
-Defoe, ConjugalLewdness
A MODERN READER, accustomed to the idea that marriages generally take
place after people fall in love, may take Defoe's words as a fairly conven-
tional piece of marriage counseling. But the vehemency of his tone re-
veals the fact that Defoe is not merely offering sensible advice but is
arguing a case. Defoe was writing at what was, in fact, an important
moment in the history of marriage in England. In this paper, after
briefly outlining the rise of new ideas about love and marriage which
gave to children greater rights in the choice of marriage partners, I con-
sider the ways in which these ideas are handled in the writings, fictional
and nonfictional, of Defoe.
In the last two decades the work of social historians investigating the
family has focused primarily on two questions, the nature and extent of
the household and the plight of children.' Less attention has been paid
'Serious, systematic investigation of the history of the family has developed in these two
large, and overlapping, areas as a result of the stimulus provided by two key studies. Philippe
Aries' study of French and Dutch attitudes toward children, LEnfant et la vie familiale sous
l'ancien regime (Paris, 1960), translated as Centuriesof Childhood:A Social History of Family Life
(London, 1962) has been followed by Ivy Pinchbeck and Margaret Hewitt, Childrenin English
Society (London, 1969-73); David Hunt, Parents and Children in History: The Psychologyof the
Familyin EarlyModern France (New York, 1970); Bernard Wishy, The Child and theRepublic: The
Dawn of ModernAmericanChildNurture (Philadelphia, 1967); and J. H. Plumb, "The New World
of Children in Eighteenth-Century England," Past and Present, 67 (1975), 64-95. What Aries
did for the history of childhood Peter Laslett has done for the history of social and domestic
structures. His The WorldWeHave Lost (London, 1965) announced the need, and prepared the
way, for detailed demographic studies of the sort provided by the Cambridge Group for the
History of Population and Social Structure. Similarly detailed investigations have been pro-
vided for New England in John Demos, A Little Commonwealth:FamilyLife in PlymouthColony
(New York, 1970) and Philip J. Greven, Jr., Four Generations:Population, Land and Family in
Colonial Andover,Massachusetts(Ithaca, N.Y., 1970). The denial by Laslett and others of the
existence of a premodern "extended" family has been challenged by Lawrence Stone, "The
Rise of the Nuclear Family in Early Modern England: The Patriarchal Stage" in The Family in
History,ed. Charles E. Rosenberg (Pennsylvania, 1975).

77

1981 by The Henry E. Huntington Libraryand Art Gallery

This content downloaded from 194.27.72.122 on Tue, 4 Nov 2014 09:49:57 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 HUNTINGTON LIBRARYQUARTERLY

to another major question, the choice of marriage partners. But in the

late seventeenth century the idea that mutual affection was an essential
ingredient in marriage emerged and began to prevail2against the older,
patriarchal idea that since children are their parents property, mar-
riage is a form of property trading.3 In the crisis of authority in family
life which such a challenge precipitated, the important but still largely
neglected figure of the Rev. Dr. William Fleetwood emerges as a pow-
erful proponent of the new set of values. His enlightened influence, I
argue, contributed to Daniel Defoe's ideas and extensive writings about
marriage, and those writings in turn shed light upon the thematic devel-
opment of the early novel.

Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the marriage

question was bound up with -the problem of keeping in balance the
conflicting claims of the various members of the family, particularly
those of parents and children. A vast body of literature was devoted to
the regulation of the Christian household so that family discord, which
was often seen as a fundamental source of social and political disorder,
might be resolved or even prevented. Although much of this literature
was originally Puritan in inspiration or composition, its ideas were
incorporated into the works of moralists of all persuasions.
The seventeenth-century writers thought of the family as the simplest
and most natural form of society. A well-regulated family was, to use a
favored metaphor, a cell in the great "beehive" of virtue, a sort of pri-
2 Widespread interest in the history of the family has led to the republication after many
years of two important older works, Levin L. Schuicking, The Puritan Family (1926; trans. Lon-
don, 1969) and Edward Morgan, The Puritan Family:Religious and DomesticRelations in Seven-
teenth-CenturyNew England (1944; rev. ed. New York, 1966). Bibliographical discussions of the
literature of the history of the family are provided by the "Introduction" to Philip J. Greven,
Jr., Child-Rearing Concepts, 1628-1861 (Itaska, Ill., 1973), and by two essays in Theodore K.
Rabb and Robert I. Rotberg's collection of essays from the Journal of InterdisciplinaryHistory
entitled The Family in History: InterdisciplinaryEssays (New York, 1973): Tamara K. Harevan,
"The History of the Family as an Interdisciplinary Field," and John Demos, "Developmental
Perspectives on the History of Childhood." Lawrence Stone's The Family,Sex and Marriage in
England 1500-1800 (London, 1977) draws together from widely scattered sources and studies
all that is now known, or may be reasonably postulated, about a subject in which there are still
many gaps in our knowledge.
3For seventeenth-century attitudes in general toward the marrying off of children the
following works may be consulted: Schucking, The Puritan Family:Religious and DomesticRela-
tions;James Turner Johnson, A SocietyOrdainedby God: English Puritan MamrageDoctrinein the
First Half of the SeventeenthCentury(Nashville, 1970); and Mirian Slater, "The Weightiest Busi-
ness: Marriage in an Upper-Gentry Family in Seventeenth-Century England," Past and Present,
72 (1976), 25-54. However, the only study which identifies and explains this major shift in
attitudes toward the choice of a marriage partner is Stone, The Family Sex and Marriage. Stone
argues that a combination of factors-religious, political, social, philosophical, and eco-
nomic-permitted the rapid development of a new family type based on an appreciation of the
need for mutual affection in marriage, or to what he called, in a phrase that clearly owes a
great deal to C. P. Macpherson, Affective Individualism.

78

This content downloaded from 194.27.72.122 on Tue, 4 Nov 2014 09:49:57 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 THE CASE OF MOLLFLANDERS

vate church or theocracy which served as a building block in the stable

Church and Commonwealth. Within the family the members were
bound together by a system of mutual duties, and order was preserved
by the authority of the father as head. It followed that within this domes-
tic theocracy no one could be a free agent, that children ought to seek
and accept the advice of the older and wiser members of the family,and
specifically that children should marry partners chosen for them by
their parents. From William Perkins early in the seventeenth century to
Richard Baxter near its end, theoreticians of family life emphasized
with remarkable consistency, not to say repetitiousness, the duty of chil-
dren to follow their parents' wishes in all things.4 Perkins still had one
foot in the medieval world when he maintained that a son could not
marry without his parents' consent because he "is part of his father's
goods and may not be alienated from him without consent,"5but this
view is echoed by William Gouge and Matthew Griffith.6Indeed Gouge,
writing a generation after Perkins, is, if anything, less humane, a fact
that supports Professor Levin Schucking's contention that "the spread
of pietism had caused ideas about children's rights to become not more
liberal, but actually narrower."7In his DomesticalDuties (1622) Gouge
scarcely gives any consideration to the question of the children's desires.
Richard Baxter, who dominated the moral landscape of the second half
of the seventeenth century, stated flatly that "If there be the peremptoiy
will or commandof Parents to children that are under their power and
Government ... the command of Parents signifieth the command of
God."t8
However, since the marriage service generally required promises of
mutual love from the partners, most moralists agreed that it was in fact
unlawful for couples to be forced into marriage when they couldnot love
one another. (The couples were on weaker ground in resisting marriage
merely because they did not yet love one another.)9The problem was to

40n these points see William Perkins,Christian Oeconomie;or, A Short Survey of the Right
Manner of Erecting and Ordering a Familie (1609); William Gouge, Of DomesticDuties (1622);
Matthew Griffith, Bethel; or, A Formefor Families (1633); Daniel Rogers, Matrimonial Honour
(1642); ThePractice of ChristianGraces;or, The WholeDuty of Man [by Richard Allestree?] (1658);
John Bunyan, ChristianBehaviour (1663); Richard Baxter, ThePractical Worksof theLateReverend
and Pious RichardBaxter(1707). Schucking and Morgan are the best guides through this
material.
5Perkins,p. 91.
6Gouge, DomesticDuties in The Workesof William Gouge, 2 vols. (1627), p. 256; Griffith, p.
18.
7Schuicking, p. 82; cf. Stone, "The Rise of the Nuclear Family,"p. 13; and TheFamily,Sex
andMariage, pp. 216-218, 275, 655.
"Baxter,p. 375. Baxter,to be sure, adds a provisothat there must be "nogreatermatter" to
hinder the marriage,but what he has in mind is the ungodlinessof the chosen spouse, not the
objectionof the child.
9SeeSchucking,p. 80ff; Morgan,pp. 54-59, 83.

79

This content downloaded from 194.27.72.122 on Tue, 4 Nov 2014 09:49:57 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 HUNTINGTON LIBRARYQUARTERLY

strike a balance between parental authority and the need for mutual
affection by the marriage partners. On the one hand, the marriage of a
child meant the possible alienation of family property, so that parents
had every interest in arranging the marriages of their children. On the
other hand, it was conceded that domestic harmony, and ultimately har-
mony in the state as a whole, depended on the mutual affection of the
married couples, so the parents had a duty to see that the young people
were at least content with each other. This inherent tension in seven-
teenth-century marriage morality meant that ultimately a readjustment
of the conflicting claims of parents and children would become
necessary.
Most seventeenth-century moralists did admit some exceptions to the
rule that children should marry partners of their parents' choice, but
these exceptions also tended to become less liberal as time went on. Per-
kins recognized that "the free and full consent"'0 of the couple ought to
be a necessary requirement for a valid marriage and argued forcibly
against what was clearly a frequent and serious abuse of parental
authority, namely, forced marriages. So, while he denied children the
choice of a marriage partner, Perkins at least allowed them to reject a
distasteful parental choice. At mid century Daniel Rogers, in his Mat-
rimonialHonour (1642), was still able to characterize consent as, among
other worthy things, "the life of the family, the daughter of love, the
sister of peace, the mother of blessing" and "the honour of marriage.""
But by the time we reach Baxter, virtually the only reason for refusing
the parents' choice was if the partner were ungodly. In this case the child
might "humbly refuse" the choice, but then remain unmarried.'2
One ground for refusing the parents' choice of a marriage partner,
being in love with someone else, was never mentioned. Children were,
in theory at least, accorded a veto, but they were not expected to seek
their own mates, even when their parents failed to provide a marriage
partner. Mutual affection was often mentioned as something desirable
and the possibility of it was sometimes insisted upon as a condition for
marrying. But the central point was, as Gouge put it, that children
ought to settle their affections "on the party whom their parents have
chosed for them."'3 Certainly no seventeenth-century moralist would
have maintained that the presence or absence of mutual affection was
by itself a reason for marrying or not. 4 Indeed, such reasoning would
have appeared to place marriage on a very uncertain and treacherous
foundation.
'0Perkins, p. 68.
"Rogers, p. 186.
'2Baxter, p. 433.
'3Gouge, p. 256.
'4See Schucking, p. 25.

80

This content downloaded from 194.27.72.122 on Tue, 4 Nov 2014 09:49:57 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 THE CASE OF MOLLFLANDERS

At the end of the seventeenth century a significant change took place

in the emphasis given to the role of mutual affection in marriage. The
allowance made by some earlier writers that the impossibility of affec-
tion might be a bar to consent and hence to a lawful union provides an
antecedent. But the insistence that love was not merely a desirable but
an indispensable element and that, therefore, children ought to have a
greater degree of freedom and responsibility in choosing marriage
partners represents a shift in the balance from parental authority to the
needs of the marriage partners. In 1692 John Dunton in the popular
journal the AthenianMercuryraised the question of whether a woman
ought to marry someone "she has an aversionfor, in Obedienceto herPar-
ents,"and contended that "Parents are not to dispose of their Children
like Cattel." He was even uncertain whether parents always had a nega-
tive voice, but "that they have an irresistable,despotical,positiveVote,none
but a Spaniardwill pretend, and I'm sure none of our English Ladies will
very willingly grant."'5And in the writings of the Rev. Dr. William
Fleetwood, one of the most celebrated and influential preachers at the
turn of the century, conjugal affection became the sine qua non of suc-
cessful marriage-and successful, for Fleetwood, as for modern com-
mentators, means happy.
I need to say a word about Fleetwood, since he is less well known than
the earlier moralists I have been discussing, and his originality and in-
fluence have not been noticed. Because he was an Anglican, he might
have been less bound by the heavily Puritan influences in the prevailing
doctrines of family life. But he was also "low church," in the older sense
of that expression; that is, a Whig, a staunch supporter of the Revolu-
tion and later of the Hanoverian succession, and a latitudinarian friend
of the Dissenters. And because of his fame as a preacher, he was fre-
quently appointed to preach on state occasions before both the royal
family and the houses of Parliament. He was a favorite of Queen Anne,
who protected him in spite of his Whiggism. In a word, Fleetwood was a
moderate who avoided the political or religious extremes which had
been so divisive during the seventeenth century and which continued to
divide the nation during his lifetime.
His major work on domestic responsibilities, TheRelativeDutiesof Par-
ents and Children,Husbandsand Wives,Mastersand Servants,Consider'din
SixteenSermons(1705), has at first every appearance of earlier conduct
books, but the change in tone as well as in substance is quickly evident.
After rehearsing arguments about the need for children to obtain

'5John Dunton, Athenian Mercury,Vol. I, No. 13, Question 12 (1691); cf. Vol. VIII, Ques-
tion 3 (1692). Stone (The Family,Sex and Marriage, p. 275) describes the Athenian Mercury as
"The best evidence for change in this area [the choice of marriage partners] in the late seven-
teenth century."

81

This content downloaded from 194.27.72.122 on Tue, 4 Nov 2014 09:49:57 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 HUNTINGTON LIBRARYQUARTERLY

parental consent before marriage, Fleetwood suddenly turns the tables

and considers the question from the children's point of view: "But to all
this," he says, "it is but reasonable to hear and consider, what may be
answered by the children." When that answer is considered, love rather
than wealth or position, becomes the most important element in select-
ing a mate. Like his predecessors Fleetwood laid great emphasis upon
the evil of domestic unrest, but he finds its source in the "Wantof Con-
jugal Affection." "There had need be a great many good Qualities, to
reconcile a constant Conversation [i.e., relationship] to one, even where
there is some share of Kindness and Affection, but without Lovethe very
best of all good Qualities will never make a constant Conversation easy
and delightful." This analysis of the causes of family discord led
Fleetwood to the startlingly modern conclusion that "If there be reason
that Young People should be left ... to their own Liberty, it seems to be
in the choice of those, with whom they are to live and die."'6
Fleetwood's willingness to recognize the legitimate desires and needs
of children marked an important shift from the old patriarchal family
structure to a new view of the family which accorded greater personal
liberty to individuals. Fleetwood did not intend to undermine parental
authority, but that authority, he saw, must itself be under the law. From
the beginning of The Relative Duties he emphasized the fallibility of
parental orders. When parents give commands that are against the laws
of God or the state "they are not to be heard or understood."'17 Instead,
Fleetwood advised, "the children are to mistake[i.e., ignore] their Par-
ents orders." An order to marry without love was, of course, an espe-
cially grave case of the kind of illegitimate order which was to be "mis-
taken." Fleetwood was the first important moralist of family life to
argue that on occasion children shoulddisobeytheir parents. The impor-
tance of Fleetwood was that his was the voice of the establishment. As a
highly respected and influential clergyman, eventually to be made a
bishop, and in favor at court, he gave official sanction to the new
morality.

Daniel Defoe is so well known for his fiction and for his journalism
that it is easy to forget that he was one of the most important moralists
writing about family life in the early eighteenth century. Between 1715
and 1727 alone he produced six books dealing with various aspects of

'6Fleetwood, p. 43. Hester Mulso (later Mrs. Chapone) in her "Third Letter on Filial
Obedience," addressed to Samuel Richardson, quotes this passage from Fleetwood in support
of her argument. Fleetwood, it is worth noting, is cited by both Miss Mulso and by Richardson.
See ThePosthumousWorksof Mrs Chapone(2 vols., London, 1807), II, 91, 101-102; SelectedLetters
of Samuel Richardson,ed. John Carroll, (Oxford, 1974), p. 205.
'7Fleetwood, p. 54.

82

This content downloaded from 194.27.72.122 on Tue, 4 Nov 2014 09:49:57 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 THE CASE OF MOLLFLANDERS
family relationships-courtship, marriage, the bringing up of children,
and the treatment of servants-all of which advance and illustrate the
new morality of family life that we found in Fleetwood's sixteen ser-
mons. These moral treatises in turn provide, I believe, a commentary on
the often-disputed morality of his novels.
Fleetwood would have appealed to Defoe for several reasons. Both
were Whigs and strongly anti-Jacobite in politics. Fleetwood meant to
appeal to Dissenter and Churchman alike. In the preface to TheFamily
Instructor (1715) Defoe explained that he had taken care "to avoid
distinction of opinions, as to the Church of England or Dissenter the
advice is impartially directed to both." And the "fine vein of casuistry"
in Fleetwood's writings would have delighted Defoe, who had a taste for
such moral problem-solving.'8
The passage with which I began this paper, from Defoe's Conjugal
Lewdness,orMatrimonialWhoredom (1727), may now be seen in its histori-
cal context. On the two central points I have been discussing-the need
for mutual affection between marriage partners and the right of chil-
dren to resist marriage when not in love with their prospective
spouses-Defoe is fully in accord with Fleetwood and sometimes is
rather in advance of him. Fleetwood, although strongly in favor of love
before marriage, was prepared to sanction marriages of those who at
least had no objection to one another. But for Defoe the partners of
such "prudential Matches," arranged by parents on the principle that
"Property begets affection," are "little more than legal Prostitutes." He
complains that not only parents but the children themselves choose
financial security before love:
Askthe ladies,whytheymarry,they tellyou 'tisfor a good Settlement;'thothey
had, their own fortune to settle on themselvesbefore. Ask the Men why they
marry,it is for the Money ... How little is regardedof that one essentialand
absolutelynecessaryPart of the Compositioncalled Love, withoutwhich the
matrimonialState is, I think, hardlylawful, I am sure is not rational,and, I
think,can neverbe happy.'9
Not that love alone justifies a precipitous marriage; "sincere Love" must
be "founded on real Merit, Suitability and Virtue." But without love,
marriage is prostitution.20
"8Preface in A CompleatCollection of the Sermons, Tracts,and Pieces of All Kinds, That Were
Written by the Right ReverendDr. William Fleetwood,Late Lord Bishop of Ely (1737); G. A. Starr,
Defoe and Casuistry(Princeton, 1937).
'9Defoe, Conjugal Lewdness,pp. 101, 27-28, 39.
20The best discussions of Defoe's ideas about marriage are those by Novak. See his Defoe
and the Nature of Man (London, 1963), Ch. iv, esp. pp. 93, 100, 101; "Conscious Irony in Moll
Flanders: Facts and Problems," CollegeEnglish, 26 (1964), 198-204; and his introduction to the
facsimile reproduction of ConjugalLewdness;or, Matrimonial Whoredom(Gainesville, 1967).

83

This content downloaded from 194.27.72.122 on Tue, 4 Nov 2014 09:49:57 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 HUNTINGTON LIBRARYQUARTERLY

On the question of the children's right to resist arranged matches,

Defoe is equally radical in outlook, even to allowing love for another as
an excuse for refusing the parents' choice of a marriage partner.21In
ReligiousCourtship(1722) a daughter is wholly vind'icatedin her refusal
to marry a man approved of by her father. When the father asserts to his
sister that "it is a first principle, an original command of God, that chil-
dren should obey their parents," her reply succinctly expresses the
Fleetwoodian doctrine that the laws of God are above the commands of
parents: "Ay,brother, when the parent commands nothing that clashes
with the laws of God; but then, brother, our authority ceases." A father
cannot command his daughter to marry someone she does not love
since "the very laws of matrimony forbid it; she cannot repeat the office
of matrimony at her marriage, viz., to love and honour him."22
What does all this say about the marriage morality of Defoe's fiction?
In his fiction Defoe does not treat, as Richardson was to do so magnifi-
cently in Clarissa,of the problem of a child who refuses to marry a suitor
selected by her family. But he does deal more than once with the related
problem of marrying for the wrong reason. It is sometimes assumed
that Defoe's attitude toward moral issues, in his fiction at any rate, is an
impenetrable muddle. Ian Watt has argued that we simply have to
accept the "direct contradiction" between Defoe's concern about mar-
riage and the family in his didactic works and what Watt sees as the
indifference to anything but economic advancement displayed by the
protagonists in his novels. Watt maintains that, in the case of Moll Flan-
ders,for example, the "plot, in fact, flatly contradicts Defoe's purported
moral theme."23Watt's assessment of Defoe's "failure" has provoked a
number of spirited replies, notably those by Howard L. Koonce,24
Maximillian E. Novak,25and Juliet McMaster,26all of whom point out,
in different ways, that the moral muddle, or blindness, of protagonists
like Moll is a deliberate and skillful attempt by Defoe to expose the self-
deceptions, the "rationalizations and pretensions" in Novak's words,27
by which Moll, like many of us, lives. Lately,however, Watt has received
support, or partial support, in two studies of Defoe's fiction. John J.
Richetti is persuaded that Moll's moral inconsistencies are shared by
Defoe, and that what is "primarily ironic" about Moll Flandersis "our
2'See Defoe, Conjugal Lewdness,p. 167.
22Defoe,Religious Courtship,pp. 92-94 in TheNovels and MiscellaneousWorksof Daniel De Foe
(20 vols., Oxford and London, 1840-1841).
23TheRise of the Novel (Harmondsworth,Mddx., 1963), pp. 68, 120.
24"Moll'sMuddle:Defoe's Use of Irony in Moll Flanders,"'ELH, 30 (1963), 377-394.
25"Conscious Irony in Moll Flanders."
26"TheEquationof Love and Moneyin Moll Flanders,"Studies in theNovel, 11(1970), 131-
144.
27"Conscious Irony in Moll Flanders,"p. 204.

84

This content downloaded from 194.27.72.122 on Tue, 4 Nov 2014 09:49:57 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 THE CASE OF MOLLFLANDERS

perception of it."28 And Everett Zimmerman, although he finds the

first half of the novel carefully organized to a moral end, laments Moll's
moral schizophrenia in the latter half: "A carefully defined ironic
perspective succumbs to the formlessness of Moll's mind. One must sus-
pect that in some sense Defoe shared Moll's confusion."29Now, while I
agree that the repenting sinners who are the heroes of Defoe's novels
often do fail to recognize their mistakes, I do not believe that Defoe
expected his contemporary readers to be so easily taken in. It seems to
me, as to Novak, that Defoe "probablyregarded much of his fiction as a
form of 'Satyr' or criticism of the vice and immorality of his time."30
Moll Flanders, Colonel Jack, and Roxana, understood in the light of
what Defoe has to say about marriage elsewhere, are examples of people
who have several times married for the wrong reasons, and all are pun-
ished accordingly.
I want to look briefly at one of Defoe's novels to illustrate this point,
and I have chosen Moll Flandersbecause I think that might seem to be
the least likely illustration of Defoe's marriage morality.31 There are two
points that can be made. First, everything Moll has to say about mar-
riage, either to us the readers, or to other characters in the novel, is
wholly at odds with Defoe's teaching in his treatises on family life. Sec-
ondly, all her own five marriages, with one important exception, end
quickly,or unhappily, or both. In other words, Moll is the negative illus-
tration of Defoe's advice about marriage, just as characters like the El-
dest Sister in ReligiousCourtshipare positive illustrations.
Moll's first marriage is a clear case of what Defoe calls matrimonial
whoredom. In love with the elder brother in the house where she lives,
she agrees to marry his younger brother when she realizes that the older
one has no intention of marrying her himself. But her prudential match
cannot still her longing: "I never was in Bed with my Husband but I
wish'd my self in the Arms of his Brother ... In short, I committed
Adultery and Incest with him every Day in my Desires."32In Conjugal
LewdnessDefoe condems precisely this sort of marriage: "to marry one
Woman and love another, to marry one Man and be in love with another
... is a Kind of civil, legal Adultery, nay, it makes the Man or Woman be
committing adultery in their Hearts every Day of their lives; and it may
be very well called a Matrimonial Whoredom."33

28Defoe'sNarratives: Situations and Structures(London, 1975), p. 94n.

29Defoeand the Novel (Berkeley and London, 1975), p. 106.
30Defoeand the Nature of Man, p. 1 2.
3'For a discussion of Moll's attitude toward marriage from the point of view of casuistry
see G. A. Starr, Defoe and Casuistry(Princeton, 1971), pp. 11 1-148.
32MollFlanders, ed. G. A. Starr (London, 1971), p. 59. Subsequent references are given in
parentheses in my text.
33Defoe, ConjugalLewdness,p. 181.

85

This content downloaded from 194.27.72.122 on Tue, 4 Nov 2014 09:49:57 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 HUNTINGTON LIBRARYQUARTERLY

Moll's subsequent marriage career is an extended matrimonial

whoredom which exhibits her mistaken and corrupt notion of marriage.
Having found from her experience with the elder brother that love does
not always lead to marriage she concludes, conversely, that marriage
does not require love: "I had been trick'd once by thatCheatcall'dLOVE,
but the Game was over; I was resolved now to be married or Nothing,
but to be well Married, or not at all" (p. 60). But Moll's conclusion flatly
contradicts Defoe's message in ConjugalLewdness,namely, that "Matri-
mony without Love is the Cart before the Horse, and Love without Mat-
rimony is the Horse without any Cart at all."34Moll's comments about
marriage are a cynical perversion of Defoe's marriage morality as he
expounds it in works such as ReligiousCourtship,which appeared within
a month of the novel. We are meant to recognize the fundamental error
and internal contradiction of Moll's policy.
Moll, however, is not solely to blame for her mistaken notions. The
moral disorder of her life following her first marriage owes a great deal
to the disruption of proper family duties in the Colchester household.
However much moralists like Fleetwood and Defoe may have altered
the balance of reciprocal family obligations in the direction of greater
individual freedom and initiative for the children, they still retained the
notion that parents had a responsibility to vet, and if necessary to veto,
unsuitable matches by their children, and even by their servants. The
entire second half of ReligiousCourtshipshows the unhappiness that be-
falls a family when the father too lightly approves a child's choice of a
spouse. Similarly,in the novel, the father fails to live up to his duties to
his son, who marries a woman little better than a servant, and to Moll,
who is allowed to marry a man whom she does not love. "And as to the
Father,"Moll explains, "he was a Man in a hurry of public Affairs, and
getting Money, seldom at Home, thoughtful of the main Chance; but
left all those Things [i.e., family matters] to his Wife" (p. 54). The point
is clear. In such families, as Defoe repeatedly points out, disaster follows
the breakdown of the system of relative duties. In the rest of the novel
Defoe's indictment of Moll goes beyond the individual to attack the
deplorable, indeed immoral, cynicism of a society which by treating
marriage as a money market reduced a sacred institution into mere con-
jugal lewdness. Moll is shown as learning "by Experience ... that Mar-
riages were . . . the Consequences of politick Schemes, for forming
Interest, and carrying on Business, and that LOVE had no share, or but
very little in the matter" (p. 67).
Although Moll frequently refers to herself as a whore, she is not a
whore in the usual sense of the word. Rather she is, in Defoe's terms, a

34Defoe,Conjugal Lewdness,p. 32.

86

This content downloaded from 194.27.72.122 on Tue, 4 Nov 2014 09:49:57 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 THE CASE OF MOLLFLANDERS

matrimonial whore, an extreme example of one who uses the institution

of marriage improperly for gain. The result of each marriage-deser-
tion, death, and worst of all, the discovery of incest-makes it clear that
Moll is always punished for her matrimonial whoredom. As she says
after her third marriage when she discovers that she has married her
own brother: "for I liv'd, as I have said, but in the worst sort of whore-
dom, and as I cou'd expect no Good of it, so really no Good Issue came
of it, and all my seeming Prosperity wore off and ended in Misery and
Destruction" (pp. 88-89).
One marriage, however, is different from all the rest. Although her
marriage to Jemy is, a typical piece of matrimonial scheming, by both
partners, Moll is genuinely attracted by Jemy and actually falls in love
with him-as a strange episode of mental telepathy makes clear. This
fact entirely alters the nature of a marriage "in which love was meant to
have no Share" (p. 67). He alone of all Moll's husbands represents the
possibility of a true marriage. That is why, after the expiation (on both
sides) of Newgate, Jemy can be brought back and reunited with Moll. In
a marriage properly based on mutual affection Moll discovers that she
can have all those things that her years of false marriages had denied
her. Hence the final page of the novel is spent in regularizing Moll's life.
With the death of her brother, she can at last publicly own her marriage
tojemy. She is forgiven by her son, who assures her that her marriage to
his father and her brother was "a Mistake impossible to be prevented."
And, in the closing paragraph, Moll announces her return to England,
where she is now living with her husband "in good Heart and Health"
and "in sincere Penitence, for the wicked Lives we have lived."
Moll Flanders,despite the sensationalism of its title page and the sense
we sometimes have that Moll is as much proud as ashamed of her ex-
ploits, in no way contradicts the principles that we find in Defoe's moral
treatises. Rather it illustrates one of his central moral doctrines, the ut-
ter wrongfulness of marriages of expedience. Contemporary readers
would have had little difficulty in seeing that Defoe presents Moll's
story as a negative illustration of the essential need for love in marriage,
and her tribulations as the appropriate punishment for her marital
misdeeds.
The history of the connection between the change in marriage moral-
ity and the development of English fiction does not end with Defoe. The
indifference to his daughter's unhappiness displayed by fathers such as
Clarissa'sand Sophia Western's shows that the older idea that children,
especially daughters, should expect to have their spouses chosen for
them by their parents did not fade away quickly.35The crisis in family
35Patrick Delany, for example, writing shortly before the appearance of Clarissa and Tom
Jones, preached the old morality. See his TwentySermonson Social Duties and Their OppositeVices

87

This content downloaded from 194.27.72.122 on Tue, 4 Nov 2014 09:49:57 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 HUNTINGTON LIBRARYQUARTERLY

life, precipitated by the conflict of two very different ideas about the
child's role in choosing a marriage partner, and the anguish of a daugh-
ter caught in the crossfire of ideas, informs maior fiction after Defoe.
One of the origins of this concern of English fiction in the eighteenth
century-and beyond it36-lies in the importnt shift in the morality of
marriage which took place in the time of Defoe and was first exploited
in fiction in his works.

(1747): "But there is one instance, wherein obedience to parents is of more importance to
chldren, than any other in life ... and that is in the articleof Marriage:for, as long as children
continue a part of their parentsfamily... they are absoltely in their parentspower"(p. 153).
36Transformedinto the larger question of the struggle of a young womanto realize her
individualityit becomes central to the work of novelists such as Jane Austen, George Elliot,
and HenryJames.

88

This content downloaded from 194.27.72.122 on Tue, 4 Nov 2014 09:49:57 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions