Each person in life faces different adversities they must struggle to overcome, from these obstacles the person and those around will, ideally, take with them a lesson and learn from the experience. Daniel Defoe's novel Moll Flanders seems to lie out an instruction manual on life for readers and evidence of this can be found in a close reading of selected passages through out the book. .
Moll wasn't born into the most ideal of circumstances and her life shows this through her experiences she lives through. When introducing the readers to her life she brings up Robin and how, "he took care upon all Occasions to lay it home to me, in the worst Colours that it could be possible to be drawn in; on the other Hand, he fail"d not to set forth the easy prosperous Life, which I was going to live." (Defoe 55) Moll illustrated how through her future husband amplifying the negative nature of her life that she was forced to see the positive aspects of marrying Robin, the younger brother. One can see this portrayed throughout the rest of the novel; Moll is shown something that looks better than her current situation and she automatically goes for it, because after all, anything could be better than what she was currently going through. The reader can learn through her actions in these situations that though something may be bad to not jump at the first good thing that comes along, but rather wait out for what feels like it fits right.
Though the elder brother employed Moll as a prostitute, he helped to sway her decision towards marrying the younger brother, but he did make sure that Moll's past would not be discovered:.
his elder Brother took care to make him very much Fuddled before he went to Bed, so that I had the Satisfaction of a drunken Bedfellow the first Night: How he did it I know not, but I concluded that he certainly contriv"d it, that his Brother might be able to make no Judgement off the difference between a Maid and a married Woman; nor did he ever Entertain and Notions of it, or disturb his Thoughts about it.