INSPIRED BY MOLL
FLANDERS
William Hogarth (1697-1764) was an extremely
popular painter and engraver in eighteenth-century England, and
Moll Flanders contributed in no small part to his success.
After a modest early career, Hogarth decided to present A
Harlot’s Progress as woodcuts (1731-1732) that could be
mass-produced and sold to individuals inexpensively. The series
shows the rise and fall of a young country girl named Moll
Hackabout; for this character Hogarth took inspiration from Defoe’s
heroine, from numerous lurid media accounts of prostitution and
philandering, and from John Bunyan’s religious allegory The
Pilgrim’s Progress (1678, 1684), the most widely read book in
England at the time, except the Bible. A Harlot’s Progress
soon became famous, and after many unscrupulous salesmen made their
own copies of Hogarth’s woodcuts, the artist successfully lobbied
to pass the first copyright bill in England pertaining to
engravings.
The first engraving shows Moll’s arrival in the
city and her acquaintance with the kindly-appearing Mother
Elizabeth Needham, the madam of a well-known brothel. Things
progress with reasonable success for Moll in the second engraving,
which shows the heroine ushering her handsome lover out of the
bedroom before he is noticed by the rich older man who has invited
Moll to live in his apartment. Moll’s downfall begins in the third
panel, in which her new apartment is unkempt and inexpensively
furnished, and Moll shows signs of incipient venereal disease. The
fourth image finds her in prison, the fifth on her deathbed, and
the sixth in a coffin, her toddler son dressed in mourning on the
floor beside it.
In their tone and overall message, the images
bear great resemblance to Defoe’s work: Slightly silly and
irreverent, they nonetheless depict the treacherous states in which
some women found themselves when stripped of more conventional
options for survival. Hogarth followed his popular series with A
Rake’s Progress (1735), a less sympathetic portrayal of a young
man who squanders two fortunes, his father’s and his wife’s.
Moll has also been an appealing subject for
filmmakers, though none have done Defoe justice. Director Terence
Young’s The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders (1965)
features the beautiful Kim Novak, who sports a daringly low
neckline throughout the film. This comic, bawdy sex-romp was an
unsuccessful attempt to capitalize on the success of the Academy
Award-winning Tom Jones (1963), based on the 1749 novel by
Henry Fielding.
David Attwood’s The Fortunes and Misfortunes
of Moll Flanders (1996), which appeared on British television
and was later released on DVD, is a four-hour bodice-ripper that
includes no fewer than seventeen sex scenes; some critics found
these to be gratuitous, and a small controversy followed the
premiere of the series. The film stars Alex Kingston as Moll and
Diana Rigg as a memorably funny Mrs. Golightly. The realistic sets
and costumes also rate star billing.
Pen Densham’s Moll Flanders (1996) takes
more liberties with Defoe’s novel than any of its counterparts,
which is saying quite a bit—virtually no details from the novel
make the transition to film, except for the name of the heroine,
played by Robin Wright Penn, and those of some of the other
characters. Indeed, poor Moll isn’t even particularly memorable in
this telling—it’s Stockard Channing who steals the show, as Mrs.
Allworthy, the bordello madam.