Critics have frequently noted Defoe's knowledge of English society, his keen observation of its workings, and his

ability to produce fiction that is believable as a personal or journalistic account. (cf. Daiches) It is these qualities, especially, that allow Moll Flanders to be read as an early sociological account or a work of history and has made it of particular interest to Marxist writers. Marxists, generally speaking, are interested in history and class analysis to explain how capitalism emerged; political and economic changes in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, especially those directly preceding the Industrial Revolution, are usually described as central to these explanations. Moreover, Defoe is often considered a technical writer, as someone interested in 'the surface of human behaviour' (Daiches) an attitude well-suited to Marxist critiques as they move through history and society, trying to understand the world in solid, material terms, leaving little for the realm of the 'ideal' or 'subconscious'.

Nevertheless, to take to Defoe's novels literally is to overlook the inevitable mixing of fact and fiction. While it would be ambitious to try and determine what in Moll Flanders is or is not accurate, this particular measure could be useful to bear in mind as we develop a comfortable Marxist position from which to read the novel. Instead,

From agar, our protagonist, Moll, is adept at surviving through the tumultuous seventeenth century in the dangerous city of London; and not only does she survive, she accepts the Puritan ideology of redemption by means of hard work, and eventually inherits property and is rewarded with comfort and security. This history leads many Marxists to conclude that Moll and, by extension, Defoe are decidedly capitalist. However, this analysis results from an inattention to definitions.

As Ellen M. Wood, in The Origin of Capitalism, puts it, a common Marxist intellectual lapse is the identification of the 'bourgeois' with the 'capitalist'. While 'bourgeois' traditionally refers to a towndweller, the 'capitalist' is described, obviously, as one who has capital and who gains his livelihood through the profits from his capital. According to this definition, it is easy to see that Moll, having little even by way of savings, is not a capitalist. We can, however, agree to some extent with those who accuse her of being bourgeois.

Early in Moll's life, we finding her expresses a desire to earn a livelihood for herself. While the ladies, older than her, belonging to an older world, initially misunderstand her as meaning to 'live Great, Rich, and High..' [50] While she does not, at that stage of her life, seek a life of gentility, she also abhors the idea of going to work as a servant in a household. To find the idea of earning through her skills as appealing is more accurately a bourgeois desire.

After a few years, Moll is exposed, for the first time, to gentility and, as she puts it, she 'had such a Taste of Genteel living at the Ladies House, that [she] was not so easie in her old Quarters as [she] us'd to be.' [53] It is this first exposure that sows the seed of aspirations that are further cultivated y her first lover, the elder brother. In fact, as an accomplished, even self-conscious, bourgeois, Moll rarely forgets her own social position relative to the aristocracy. When she marries for a second time, she calls her husband, the 'Gentleman-Tradesman' and comments that 'not a Beggar alive knew better how to be a Lord than my husband'. [105] Moll seems to have only ever been really attached to two men in the course of the book, the elder brother and Jemy, who are both Gentlemen. Of course, her disinterest in the younger brother, Robin, and her exclamations that he could not stop loving the elder brother betrays

her adherence to the idea of 'love' upheld by the English middle class.

However, it would seem simplistic to declare that Moll is bourgeois because, in fact, she spends very little of her life as a middle class wife. From THE TIME THAT HE

Defoe?