What's in a Name? The True Intent of Formal Realism in "Moll Flanders"

Jamie Ferrell

Professor Janet Sorensen

UC Berkeley English 45B

15 April 2016

What’s in a Name? The True Intent of Formal Realism in Moll Flanders

Daniel Defoe’s novel Moll Flanders incorporates elements of formal realism—namely, plain language, attention to detail, and chronological narrative—in order to create a believable fictional story. By telling the narrative through the character of Moll Flanders, a woman driven by a desire for monetary success throughout her life, Defoe’s use of these elements, especially plain language, also operates within the plot itself as Moll categorizes and “labels” other characters in the story. Moll achieves this labeling on the basis of characters’ associated accessories and objects, and those people consequently become commoditized accessories for her own personal, shifting identity. This layering of labels is especially apparent in her incestuous relationship with a man identifiable as both her brother and her husband. Moll’s labeling of people therefore both establishes and deconstructs her own value of identity; principally, her tendency to interact with people as “labels” comes from an innate goal to block her own sympathetic impulses towards others in order to maintain control over her own sense of identity.

Moll assigns the label of “husband” to one of her lovers at the beginning of the novel. Upon establishing this relationship, Moll immediately monetizes it:

I found he was very well to pass in the World; but that great part of his Estate consisted of three Plantations, which he had in Virginia, which brought him in a very good Income, generally speaking, to the tune of 300 l. a year; but that if he was to live upon them, would bring him in four times as much very well; thought I, you shall carry me thither as soon as you please, tho’ I won’t tell you so before-hand. (Defoe 67)

In this sense, the label of “husband” is a figure she can control and profit from. Moll maintains this relationship of husband and wife because it helps her to create an identity for herself and start a new life in Virginia. The husband therefore functions as an accessory to her identity as a wife traveling to the New World; in fact, she calculates the profits of this relationship in order to predict the quantifiable benefits, which will “carry [her] thither” towards success in the New World.

Elements of formal realism operate in this scene as well—the listing of her husband’s properties, along with specific numerical data, demonstrates careful, systematic attention to detail that can only magnify the illusion of a husband figure. In addition to this label, the character and value of her husband himself is established through these material items associated with him—she compounds his identity with descriptions of his estate, plantations, and income rather than typical affecting character traits or even a mention of his name. Furthermore, this elimination of the expressive, sympathetic components of his character causes Moll to remove sympathetic impulses of her own and upholds his status as a commodity. The material items that identify her husband therefore reflect her husband’s role as a commodity in identifying herself, a successful example of Moll’s “labeling” in its benefits for her own identity.

However, this labeling is only controllable to an extent. Moll reluctantly layers another label upon her husband’s initial identity when she discovers that his mother in Virginia is her own mother that she has not seen since she was a child. She says, horrified, “I came to reflect, that this was certainly no more or less than my own Mother, and I had now had two Children, and was big with another by my own Brother, and lay with him still every Night” (Defoe 72). This layering effect of multiple identities on a person therefore lends legitimacy and depth to each corresponding element of character, creating the sympathetic impulses that Moll has so emphatically tried to reject. Additionally, the “accessory” of Moll’s and her husband’s shared mother underscores the “brother” label in the same manner that their three children operate as accessories to his “husband” label. The plain language of formal realism is threatened in this instance, destabilizing Moll’s ability to control the identities of people around her. Rather than adhere to the “one word for one thing” aspect of plain language and formal realism, this person may be identified as both brother and husband, as demonstrated through the accessories of mother and children, which creates conflicting emotions over a previously unemotional, transactionary relationship. Moll sees this as a threat to her sense of control over her own identity, and she abruptly ends their time together in order to seek a less complex, more governable new identity for herself in England.

The “brother” label is shaped in part by the accessory of Moll’s and her husband’s shared mother, but it also still carries a monetary undertone when Moll abandons him. Moll says that he “promis’d and engag’d [her] to Correspond with [her] as a Sister, and to Assist and Support [her] as long as [she] lived; and that if he dy’d before [her], he would leave sufficient to his Mother to take Care of [her] still, in the Name of a Sister” (Defoe 84). Consequently, Moll does not entirely abandon her relationship with her brother, because the promise of financial support holds just as much, if not more attraction than their initial trip to Virginia did. This transitional period of Moll’s and her husband’s identities, underscored by language of commerce and correspondence, reflects a transaction of sorts. This concept of “relationship exchange” is elucidated in Janet Sorensen’s essay “I Talk to Everybody in Their Own Way,” where she describes the commodity as gaining value through its relation with other commodities, or in this case, identities and labels:

The commodity, marked by a series of slippages and displacements, is ultimately discernible only relationally, particularly in the moment of exchange… a distinctly atemporal entity, the value and identity of the commodity are instantaneous, apparent briefly in an exchange relationship of self and other via a numerical grammar. (Sorensen 85).

To this end, Moll’s material, surface level relationship becomes more substantive through the brief, seemingly trivial moments of “transaction” that characterize it. Upon fleeing Virginia, Moll instructs her brother to pretend she has died in an effort to erase this relationship from both of their lives: “When I parted with my Brother, for such I am now to call him; we agreed that after I arriv’d he should pretend to have an Account that I was Dead in England” (Defoe 84). She therefore establishes him as a widower, again assigning another identity to him while inadvertently creating a more complex, emotionally charged situation for herself. By compounding her husband’s incestuous status with this additional “widower” label, backed by the promise of financial support should she return, his commoditized form gains traction and influence through its intersections with other labels in a transactionary exchange. Sorensen adds that this exchange relationship creates “no direct referent, no essential object of value,” lending it a “shaky, indeterminate status” (Sorensen 85). Thus, instead of generating a more concise label for her brother, Moll’s attempts to characterize him as a brother, husband, and then widower reflexively assign him an indistinct value that she believes she has avoided.

In fact, after living for decades in England and portraying numerous different identities there, all of which have commercial undertones supported by labels she assigns to other people, Moll eventually returns to Virginia. Upon arrival she seeks out her brother at his plantation in order to reclaim the support and assistance he offered her years earlier. Again, the monetary aspect of his character reiterates the commoditized role he plays in her life, in this case overlapping with the two labels of “brother” and “husband.” The layering of identities marks his character as a more dynamic and complex person when compared with the other men that Moll tries to make a profit from through romantic relationships, who are often labeled with simpler titles such as “banker” or “gentleman.” A “brother” relationship is not only closer to Moll by blood, but it is incredibly complex given the intersections with “husband” and “widower” that are also assigned to him throughout the novel. His layered, multifaceted distinction, as demonstrated through his character’s many labels and accompanying emotional ties, is what brings Moll back to his plantation to seek refuge. Therefore, Moll’s attempts to remove emotional ties to her brother through the many labels she applies to him actually lend him a more complex and multifarious identity than she ever intended.

Upon returning to the plantation, the distinctive character of Moll’s brother is brought full circle when she refrains from assigning him labels and finally mentions his name for the first time in the novel. Upon asking a local woman about the identities of the men on the plantation who she believes to be her brother and son, the woman replies, “I know not… what the old Gentlemans Name is, but his Sons Name is Humphry, and I believe… the Fathers is so too” (Defoe 251). This identification of her brother by name is long awaited, confirming Moll’s distinct relation with him over many of her other suitors. Moll immediately knows that “this was no Body else, but [her] own Son, by that Father she shewed [her], who was [her] own Brother” (Defoe 251). Naming Moll’s brother lends him a characteristic representative of his own sense of identity rather than the material items that Moll values him for, as well as establishes his final “label” in the book. This acknowledges his complex character as one identifiable as “Humphry” rather than the multiple signifiers of “husband,” “brother,” or “widower.”

Conversely, Moll’s brother’s name is still introduced in relation to a son—an accessory that marks his and Moll’s incestuous history—also named Humphry. The multifaceted impression that results from labeling other characters has therefore not entirely disappeared, especially considering that the reveal of Moll’s husband’s name comes following the name of his son in the local woman’s telling. The chronological element of formal realism is subtly mirrored here. Rather than saying the son is named after the father, the local woman circumvents that chronology and makes it a matter of power and significance instead: she remembers the more dominant son figure’s name, and the father’s name is proposed as an afterthought, flipping the causal relationship so that Moll’s husband’s newest label is again crafted based on the accessory of their son. Additionally, this new label is compounded with iterations of his past labels of “father” and brother” in the same sentence, again complicating the “one word for one thing” rule of plain language that Moll has attempted to use when classifying him in the past. Furthermore, Moll commoditizes the son’s identity because he offers her complete financial support and stability. This final transaction reiterates the earlier verbiage of Moll and her husband’s relationship when she left for England: The value of her son is established in relation to other commodities like land, wealth, and superiority over his father in yet another example of relationship exchange.

Overwhelmingly, Moll’s instances of labeling other characters in the novel have implications for her own value and sense of self, both intentionally and unintentionally. Moll rejects “real” identities for people beyond what she herself may assign because they destabilize her own sense of identity, and more importantly, her control of said identity. However, Moll also role-plays multiple different labels that she applies to herself, i.e. the “sad widow,” the “whore,” or the “young virgin,” inadvertently creating a more substantive identity for herself that the reader experiences firsthand. Principally, Defoe carefully constructs the narrative so that the reader is Moll’s most stable relationship, and as a result the reader sees the “whole Moll”—layered labels that she assigns herself to inadvertently reveal a more complex identity underneath.

This layering appeals to the reader’s emotion and sympathy towards her character in the same way that Moll’s layering of labels for her husband strengthens her own emotional ties to him. Defoe strategically defines Moll’s character through his own use of the elements of formal realism, especially plain language, which compounds Moll’s own attempt at defining her husband’s identity through the same mechanisms. The very form of the novel therefore challenges and destabilizes the basis of formal realism on which he wrote the story, because by intertwining these layers he creates an experience that the reader is more emotionally invested in than at first perceived.