A New Person: Moll Flanders

Circumstances in life so often take us in direction we could not have imagined. Who's to say where we could be (or the person we could become)--given an unfortunate series of events. What are we capable of? What would we do to survive?

I guess that's part of what fascinates me about Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders (review), one of the first English novels, published in 1722. We learn of her many misadventures, but we also find that hidden hope (or at least self-preservation). We don't ever really know our capabilities--strengths and weaknesses--until we face those grim, brutal realities.

In the novel, we read (Chapter 10): "All that hellish, hardened state and temper of soul, which I have said so much of before, is but a deprivation of thought; he that is restored to his power of thinking, is restored to himself."

Cover Art © Modern Library.