Moll Flanders, Defoe's irresistible and notorious heroine, attacks life with all the confident genius of her creator.
Born in Newgate prison and abandoned six months later,
Moll's drive to find and hold on to a secure place ın society
propels her through incest, adultery, bigamy, prostitution and a resourceful career as a thief ('the greatest Artist of my time') before she is apprehended and returned to Newgate.
If Moll Flanders is on one level a Puritan's tale of sin and
. repentance, through self-made, self-reliant Moll its rich subtext conveys all the paradoxes and amoralities of the struggle for property and power in Defoe's newly individualistic society. According to lan Watt, 'he, and only he, among the great writers of the past, has presented the struggle for survival in the bleak perspectives which recent history has brought back to a commanding position on the human stage.