Moll Flanders

The period during which Defoe wrote Moll Flanders—early 18th-century England—was a time of unprecedented change and upheaval. Though he sets the writing of Moll Flanders in 1683, the book is very much concerned with the changing social mores and economic systems of the decades leading up to the 1720s. The social and economic mobility that Moll achieves would have been unthinkable in the previous century, and it is possible because of the specific political and economic circumstances of early 18th-century England.

In 1714, a new royal dynasty took the British throne. The Hanoverian kings hailed from Germany, and neither George I (reign 1714-27) nor his son, George II (1727-60), spoke much English. George I rarely resided in England, preferring to return home to Hanover as often as he could. As a result, the job of governing England fell to the Prime Minister—an office created during this period—and Parliament. At the same time, England’s economic system grew to rely more and more on trade and private enterprise, particularly the spoils of the growing British empire. This emerging economic system, capitalism, replaced the centuries-old feudal system under which every individual fulfills a particular role socioeconomic niche that is determined by the social rank into which they are born.