Moll Flanders: Fact or Fiction?

Moll Flanders: Fact or Fiction?

Although Daniel Defoe endeavors to portray Moll Flanders as an autobiography and convince readers that the sordid affairs of Moll actually occurred, readers can find through the reading of his work that Moll Flanders is undoubtedly a completely fictional character. It can be evidenced in the preface and mainly in the dichotomous nature of Moll that she could not possibly be a real person and is just a fictional character. Defoe betrays the credibility of Moll as a real person mainly through the extremeness of her seemingly ever-changing personality. Instead of just having slight to medial shifts of ideas or character, Moll swiftly goes from one end of the spectrum to the other.

In the preface is the first evidence of Moll Flanders’ fictitious nature. “The World is so taken up of late with Novels and Romances, that it will be hard for a private History to be taken for Genuine,” (Defoe v) this introduction to Defoe’s work is simply a literary ploy to make his work stand out and thus becomes more desirable to the readers of the times. Especially when people believe that the biography of the person in question might be someone they know or might have