This Norton Critical Edition is again based on the first edition text (1722), the only text known to be Defoe’s own. It is accompanied by detailed explanatory annotations and the editor’s essay outlining the novel’s textual history.“Contexts” collects related documents on criminal transport, contemporary accounts of lives of crime, and colonial laws as they applied to servants, slaves, and runaways.“Criticism” includes eleven interpretations by Juliet McMaster, Everett Zimmerman, Maximillian E. Novak, Henry Knight Miller, Ian A. Bell, Carol Kay, Paula B. Backscheider, John Rietz, Ann Louise Kibbie, John Richetti, and Ellen Pollak.A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.
Excerpt
MY TRUE NAME is so well known in the records or registers at Newgate,and in the Old Bailey, and there are some things of such consequencestill depending there, relating to my particular conduct, that it is notto be expected I should set my name or the account of my family to thiswork; perhaps, after my death, it may be better known; at present itwould not be proper, no, not though a general pardon should be issued,even without exceptions and reserve of persons or crimes.
It is enough to tell you, that as some of my worst comrades, who are outof the way of doing me harm (having gone out of the world by the stepsand the string as I often expected to go), knew me by the name of MollFlanders, so you may give me leave to speak of myself under that nametill I dare own who I have been, as well as who I am.
I have been told that in one of neighbour nations, whether it be inFrance or where else I know not, they have an order from the king, thatwhen any criminal is condemned, either to die, or to the galleys, or tobe transported, if they leave any children, as such are generallyunprovided for, by the poverty or forfeiture of their parents, so theyare immediately taken into the care of the Government, and put into anhospital called the House of Orphans, where they are bred up, clothed,fed, taught, and when fit to go out, are placed out to trades or toservices, so as to be well able to provide for themselves by an honest,industrious behaviour.
Had this been the custom in our country, I had not been left a poordesolate girl without friends, without clothes, without help or helperin the world, as was my fate; and by which I was not only exposed tovery great distresses, even before I was capable either of understandingmy case or how to amend it, but brought into a course of life which wasnot only scandalous in itself, but which in its ordinary course tendedto the swift destruction both of soul and body.
But the case was otherwise here. My mother was convicted of felony for acertain petty theft scarce worth naming, viz. having an opportunity ofborrowing three pieces of fine holland of a certain draper in Cheapside.The circumstances are too long to repeat, and I have heard them relatedso many ways, that I can scarce be certain which is the right account.
However it was, this they all agree in, that my mother pleaded herbelly, and being found quick with child, she was respited for aboutseven months; in which time having brought me into the world, and beingabout again, she was called down, as they term it, to her formerjudgment, but obtained the favour of being transported to theplantations, and left me about half a year old; and in bad hands, youmay be sure.
This is too near the first hours of my life for me to relate anything ofmyself but by hearsay; it is enough to mention, that as I was born insuch an unhappy place, I had no parish to have recourse to for mynourishment in my infancy; nor can I give the least account how I waskept alive, other than that, as I have been told, some relation of mymother's took me away for a while as a nurse, but at whose expense, orby whose direction, I know nothing at all of it.
The first account that I can recollect, or could ever learn of myself,was that I had wandered among a crew of those people they call gypsies,or Egyptians; but I believe it was but a very little while that I hadbeen among them, for I had not had my skin discoloured or blackened, asthey do very young to all the children they carry about with them; norcan I tell how I came among them, or how I got from them.
It was at Colchester, in Essex, that those people left me; and I have anotion in my head that I left them there (that is, that I hid myself andwould not go any farther with them), but I am not able to be particularin that account; only this I remember, that being taken up by some ofthe parish officers of Colchester, I gave an account that I came intothe town with the gypsies, but that I would not go any farther withthem, and that so they had left me, but whither they were gone that Iknew not, nor could they expect it of me; for though they sent round thecountry to inquire after them, it seems they could not be found.
I was now in a way to be provided for; for though I was not a parishcharge upon this or that part of the town by law, yet as my case came tobe known, and that I was too young to do any work, being not above threeyears old, compassion moved the magistrates of the town to order somecare to be taken of me, and I became one of their own as much as if Ihad been born in the place.
In the provision they made for me, it was my good hap to be put tonurse, as they call it, to a woman who was indeed poor but had been inbetter circumstances, and who got a little livelihood by taking such asI was supposed to be, and keeping them with all necessaries, till theywere at a certain age, in which it might be supposed they might go toservice or get their own bread.
This woman had also had a little school, which she kept to teachchildren to read and to work; and having, as I have said, lived beforethat in good fashion, she bred up the children she took with a greatdeal of art, as well as with a great deal of care.
But that which was worth all the rest, she bred them up veryreligiously, being herself a very sober, pious woman, very housewifelyand clean, and very mannerly, and with good behaviour. So that in aword, excepting a plain diet, coarse lodging, and mean clothes, we werebrought up as mannerly and as genteelly as if we had been at thedancing-school.
I was continued here till I was eight years old, when I was terrifiedwith news that the magistrates (as I think they called them) had orderedthat I should go to service. I was able to do but very little servicewherever I was to go, except it was to run of errands and be a drudge tosome cookmaid, and this they told me of often, which put me into a greatfright; for I had a thorough aversion to going to service, as theycalled it (that is, to be a servant), though I was so young; and I toldmy nurse, as we called her, that I believed I could get my livingwithout going to service, if she pleased to let me; for she had taughtme to work with my needle, and spin worsted, which is the chief trade ofthat city, and I told her that if she would keep me, I would work forher, and I would work very hard.
I talked to her almost every day of working hard; and, in short, I didnothing but work and cry all day, which grieved the good, kind woman somuch, that at last she began to be concerned for me, for she loved mevery well.
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