at home in england, or projecting liberal citizenship in moll flanders - yahav-brown

8/6/2019 At Home in England, Or Projecting Liberal Citizenship in Moll Flanders - Yahav-Brown

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At Home in England, or Projecting Liberal Citizenship in "Moll Flanders"Author(s): Amit Yahav-BrownSource: NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, Vol. 35, No. 1 (Autumn, 2001), pp. 24-45Published by: Duke University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1346042 .Accessed: 11/04/2011 21:26

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A t H o m e in E n g l a n d , o r Project ing L i b e r a lCit izenship in M o l l F l a n d e r s

AMIT YAHAV-BROWNIn 1957, Ian Watt suggested in TheRiseof the Novel that Protestantism and capital-ism are the informing logics behind novelistic representations of society. Defoe'snovels, inaugurating the new genre in Watt's account, represent communitiesthat privilege individual pursuit of economic possession and manifest the strifeand alienation that inevitably plague an order founded on such an ethic. The so-ciety envisioned in these novels, Watt points out, resembles the one theorized inthe political philosophy of John Locke. Following C.B. Macpherson, we havecome to identify this political philosophy as the origins of modem liberalism andto label it "possessive individualism." On such an account, rights-based politicsare designed to protect private property, and the autonomy of individuals neces-sarily comes at the expense of social commitment. As Watt puts it, "[t]he hypos-tasis of the economic motive logically entails a devaluation of other modes ofthought, feeling and action: the various forms of traditional group relationship,the family, the guild, the village, the sense of nationality-all are weakened" (64).Thus, in the novelistic vision of "possessive individualism," characters are essen-tially isolated accumulators of property; Defoe's characters, as Watt describesthem, are all "an embodiment of economic individualism" (63), and they,essentially, "all belong on Crusoe's island" (112).More recently, critics have challenged the notion that Defoe's vision of modemsociety is one of tenuously linked, alienated outcasts. For example, John Bender,in Imagining the Penitentiary(1987), argues that Defoe represents the formation ofa society whose bond is based on a homogenizing norm inculcated by social in-stitutions, for which the penitentiary is a paradigm. In the same manner in whichFoucault suggests that the rise of liberal individualism is accompanied by the riseof the penitentiary, Bender argues that the highly individualized personalities ofDefoe's characters are a product of the disciplining of consciousness to conformwith hegemonic norms. Political cohesion, in this model, is derived from the in-ternalization of ideology and the subjectivization of consciousness, a featachieved through the very architecture of modem cities and through the socialinstitutions that organize daily life.In the "possessive individualism" model assumed by Watt, persons are firstand foremost autonomous economic agents who become rightful citizens onlyafter they have become owners; they voluntarily surrender some of their naturalfreedoms to the state in exchange for its power to protect their property rights.The political bond, on this account, is a chosen and precarious alliance of

I'd like to thank Frances Ferguson for her inspiring and generous advice throughout, AmandaAnderson for her invaluable suggestions at crucial moments, Ronald Paulson for bringing AnEssay upon Projects to my attention, and Irene Tucker, Rachel Cole, and Galia Sartiel for theirilluminating comments on early drafts.


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economic convenience. In the recent critique of this model of liberalism assumedby Bender, individuals are first and foremost embodiments of ideology, and theybecome rightful citizens only insofar as they conform to the norms into whichthey have been disciplined. In this model, the choices of individuals are signifi-cantly predetermined by the social institutions that surround them and shapetheir consciousness from birth. The political bond, on this account, rests not somuch on the action of choice as on the content of one's choices, as it isdetermined by institutional structures.Neither of these models seems to me to explain adequately the social organiza-tion represented in Defoe's novels. Defoe's heroes are, indeed, extraordinarilymobile, and his plots do incessantly repeat the rags-to-riches myth of highly re-sourceful men and women. However, his heroes also invariably gravitate back toEngland throughout their lives, even though they make most of their money out-side their native country. And England seems to wield this unchosen and eco-nomically disadvantageous power in Defoe's plots despite the fact that the socialinstitutions that are supposed to inculcate hegemonic norms are so obviouslydefective in these stories of disobedient sons, petty criminals, and whores.What, then, is the logic behind Defoe's vision of social organization? I arguethat in Moll Flanders (1722) Defoe projects a rudimentary version of a rights-based, non-economic, and non-ideological liberal citizenship. Such citizenship isintended to guarantee inalienable access to resources to anyone born under astate's jurisdiction and to do so solely on the basis of their deliberative capacities.And it imagines that the political bond is a strong one, not because citizens aredisciplined to conform to hegemonic norms but because the benefits of citizen-ship make cooperation advantageous for people trying to pursue their interestsin a reality of scarce resources. We might identify such citizenship asfundamentally resembling the model John Rawls has recently offered in hisPolitical Liberalism(1993). Rawls's model stipulates rights on deliberative capaci-ties-defining personhood through two fundamental moral characteristics: thereasonable and the rational-and specifies the content of rights as the state'sobligation to secure access to primary goods for all citizens.The following discussion is divided into three sections. The first, "The Citizen,"considers the ways in which Defoe represents and emphasizes Moll's delibera-tive capacities. The second, "State Institutions," focuses on Defoe's welfare pro-posals in An Essay upon Projects (1697) and suggests that in the Essay and in MollFlanders he makes the case for the state's obligation to all its citizens-regardlessof their class status or economic profiles. In The Second Treatise of Government(1698), Locke argues that political membership is a function of express consent,suggesting that people become citizens well after they become proprietors. Oncecitizenship depends on express consent, the state is only obligated towards thosewho have previously demonstrated their commitment to the social contract. "'Tisplain then, by the Practice of Governments themselves, as well as by the Law ofright Reason, that a Child is born a Subject of no Country or Government"(347),Locke writes. While Defoe would have agreed that this is the practice of hisEnglish government, his projection of state institutions is precisely designed to

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refute the claim that it is right.1 In the social organization Defoe envisions,citizenship represents the political community's obligation to guarantee for allmembers, throughout their lives and regardless of their economic and social pro-files, a set of inalienable benefits. Unlike the social organization theorized byLocke in The SecondTreatise,Defoe's state makes economic success the outcome,rather than the origin, of citizenship.The third and last section of this discussion, "Citizenship and Institutions,"considers the representation of penal transportation in Moll Flandersand suggeststhat Defoe uses it to emphasize the value of home implied by his paradigm ofcitizenship. Defoe's representation idealizes the historical penal apparatus andturns transportation into the means by which England finally recognizes therights of a population that hitherto had been beneath its radar. I conclude thediscussion with a brief comparison between the representation of transportationin Moll Flandersand in Charles Dickens's GreatExpectations(1860-61) in order tosuggest both the sources and consequences of Defoe's idealistic projection. Writ-ing at the beginning of the eighteenth century, when England's institutions wererelatively weak and decentralized, Defoe projects liberal citizenship as a "newcontrivance"-to use the language of the Essay-and as a possible achievement.2By the mid-nineteenth century, England had already become thoroughly bu-reaucratized, but in a way that is inadequate when viewed from the perspectiveof Defoe's liberal citizenship. Thus, when Dickens takes up transportation, heuses Defoe's ideal primarily as a measure of missed opportunities.

I. The CitizenIf Crusoe's ingenuity lies in his mechanical inventiveness, Moll's ingenuity lies inher deliberative capacities. Her actions, though seeming to be nothing more thancommon-sensical, always involve elaborate calculations. Which of her suitors tofavor, how to behave in an incestuous marriage, what to do with an inconvenientpregnancy, how to take a bundle that does not belong to her-all these questionsturn into "situations" for Moll, cases that need to be weighed and considered,never just simply resolved. Moll's "situations" evoke a Hobbesian model of de-liberation, representing a process of ranking coextensive desires and aversionsthat leads to willing and then to action. For the purposes of Moll Flanders, theforce of this model is twofold: first, in locating the distance between sensation

1Many critics have read Moll as a class-climber. On such accounts, whatever political benefitsMoll manages to achieve are a function of her ability to disentangle herself single-handedlyfrom her original destitution. For a survey of Marxist and economic-centered liberal readingsother than Watt's, see the introduction to Chaber's Marxist-feminist account. Recently, JamesThompson has read Defoe as only partially committed to economic models. He argues thatDefoe's novels represent the narrative of capitalism right before it has consolidated into thediscourse of political economy and separated from novelistic discourse, which defines itselfagainst it.

2 For accounts that focus on the ways in which Defoe's writings dramatize already-availableprecepts of political philosophy (rather than "new contrivances"), see Novak's Defoe and theNatureof Man and Schonhorn.


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and action in the comparative analysis of sensation itself, it allows for the leastabstract of calculations to be understood as deliberation. It thus recognizes themost basic actions as the outcome of the individual's will and takes these actionsto be articulations of interest. When Moll, for example, responds to a situation byfeeling nauseated-as when she discovers that her second husband is also herbrother-such a visceral reaction can be regarded as part of the process of delib-eration and as an articulation of her will. Second, since the deliberative process isgrounded in individual sensory experience, judgments of appropriate behav-ior-that is, judgments as to whether actions are good or evil-are entirely sub-jective. And indeed Moll-who is hardly competing for a title of virtue-is neverengaged in deliberation for the purpose of discovering the true or the good inany absolute or transcendent sense. Moreover, it is even difficult to tell whetherher preferences are those that, in the final analysis, have served her best interest,since it is difficult to imagine what "the best" interest might be when it is definedsolely by the individual's will. Insofar as Moll produces her own judgmentsthrough her own experience, and insofar as the novel doesn't offer a standardthat is independent of Moll's own assessments, we have no alternative measureto which we might compare her preferences and judge them as better or worse.3

Many critics have noticed that Defoe doesn't represent a free-standing or co-herent standard of value in his novels, but it has often been assumed that this is aresult of a kind of primitivism in his craftsmanship. It has been argued thatDefoe, pioneering in the invention of a new literary form and doing it in a hurry,failed to develop a mechanism for presenting an objective perspective, one thatwould allow the reader to confidently identify the judgment that he intends topass on his characters.4 In Moll Flanders, however, the absence of a self-evidentnarrative norm constitutes the necessary background for emphasizing Moll's de-liberative capacities. Insofar as nothing in Moll's world unequivocally deter-mines what her choices should be, her actions can be understood as products ofher lengthy deliberative processes. And it is the activity of deliberation, ratherthan the judgment of its end, that is privileged in Moll's story, not so much whather deliberation yields as the fact that she is deliberating rather than acting on animpulse.

3 See Hobbes's Leviathan120, 127-28. Kay offers an extensive discussion of how Defoe's novelsillustrate features of Hobbes's political theory.4 See Watt 99-101 and 115-18. Those who disagree with the initial claim about the absence ofcoherent moral order in the novels also tend to disagree among themselves regarding thenature of the judgment that is implied. For example, Zimmerman finds Moll guilty ofdegeneration from natural purity to the corruption of social expediency; Richetti, by contrast,

commends her for successfully transcending the ideology of possessive individualism thatgoverns her society. The presence or absence of an objective perspective that allows forjudgment is also the pivotal issue in the debate about irony in Defoe's novels. For a goodexplanation of the stakes of the debate and a survey of its early phase, see Watt, "The RecentCritical Fortunes of Moll Flanders." n a more recent discussion, Novak makes the case for ironyby an analysis of Defoe's use of innuendo and his command of the two different temporalitiesof Moll's narrative (the present of her narration and the past of her actions).

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G.A. Starr has drawn attention to this deliberative process and has accountedfor it as Defoe's innovative use of traditional casuistic forms.5 But while Starrrecognizes that the deliberative, or casuistical, form of Moll's narrative preventsthe reader from passing rigorous judgment over her actions, he attributes thedifficulties of judgment less to the nature of the action than to the quality ofMoll's narration. Starr consistently presupposes that Moll's actions are indeedmorally reprehensible, but that Moll makes use of the deliberative process as astrategy to elicit the reader's sympathy. Moreover, in relying on the forms of sev-enteenth- and early eighteenth-century casuistry, Starr's account implicitly sug-gests that Moll's deliberations attempt to reconcile discrete situations withequally identifiable rules of conduct. Although these early modern casuisticforms emphasize ostensible contradictions between actual cases and abstractrules, as well as between different available rules, they assume that the cases andthe rules-the materials of deliberation-are already available in usable form.The early modem casuistic case, then, always takes the form of a synchronic sort-ing out of details and principles. But Moll, by contrast, usually doesn't quiteknow what she is coming up against or what might be her alternative solutionsuntil she is well into the process of deliberation. For this reason, Defoe placesmuch emphasis on the temporal process of Moll's learning-the process of Moll'sfiguring out-what the details of her situation are and what the plausible modesof response might be. Thus, underlying the difference between Starr's under-standing of the deliberative process in Moll Flanders and my own is a differentascription of the temporal quality of narrative, which leads to a different under-standing of the very stakes of deliberation. While Starr locates the temporal qual-ity in retroactive narration, I locate it in the represented action itself. And whileStarr understands deliberation as the adjudication of circumstances and princi-ples within a pre-established value system, I understand it as in itself a value-constructing activity.6Insofar as Moll's situations often span conspicuously long periods of time,Defoe asks us to ascribe the temporal dimension-and, with it, the difficulties ofjudgment or valuation-to the deliberative process itself rather than to its retro-active narration. The incest episode, for example, runs for eight years, with Mollaware of the true nature of her affiliation with her partner for at least five years(but possibly more). During no less than three years, Moll is occupied with indi-vidual deliberation, trying to figure out how she feels about incest and what shecan do to respond to it. If she reveals her knowledge of incest, she might lose thefinancial and social status of her married life, since, as she thinks, her husband"was too nice and too honest a Man to have continued my Husband after he hadknown I had been his Sister" (70). But keeping their consanguinity a secret turns

5 See Starr's Defoeand Casuistry.6 My understanding of casuistry relies not only on Starr's but also on Chandler's in England in1819, chapter 4. Chandler suggests that casuistry instantiates the very form of deliberation as

value-constructing activity, and he explains its historical evolution from the classical Jesuitactivity to English Romanticism. Romanticism transformed casuistry, according to Chandler,from the adjudication of discrete cases and independent rules to the adjudication of cases andrules that are mutually constitutive.

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out to be an impractical solution; under the weight of her knowledge, Moll de-velops an aversion to her husband: "I liv'd therefore in open avowed Incest andWhoredom, and all under the appearance of an honest Wife; and tho' I was notmuch touched with the Crime of it, yet the Action had something in it shockingto Nature, and made my Husband, as he thought himself even nauseous to me"(71). Her husband, in turn, grows impatient and even violent with her. "We hadmany Family quarrels," Moll explains, "and they began (in time) to grow up to adangerous Height" (73; emphasis added). Even after Moll lears how she feelsabout incest, she needs time to figure out what to do next: the violent quarrelsbring Moll "to a Resolution, whatever cameof it to lay open [her] whole Case; butwhich way to do it, or to whom, was an inextricable Difficulty, and took me upmany Months to Resolve" (73). When Moll finally confides in her mother, indi-vidual deliberation doesn't give way to instantaneous solution, but, instead, aprocess of social deliberation begins. The mother believes that the secret shouldbe kept between the two of them and family life should be maintained as is. "Inthis directly opposite Opinion to one another my Mother and I continued a longtime, and it was impossible to reconcile our Judgments," Moll explains and adds,"many Disputes we had about it, but we could never either of us yield our own,or bring over the other" (78). To break the tie, Moll finally involves herhusband/brother, using an elaborate quasi-legal negotiation process by whichshe tries to secure his opinion to her side. But her husband, just like Moll and hermother before him, at first thinks that ignoring the secret is the best solution, andit takes him several months to realize that he, too, cannot live with its burden.The man becomes depressed, tries to kill himself twice, falls "into a long ling'ringConsumption" (82), and finally agrees with Moll that the best way to solve theirproblems would be to let her return to England on her own.The difficulty that Moll faces here-the reason why the family has to gothrough such a lengthy and painful deliberation process-stems from a conflictbetween social circumstances and the narrative's more general concern in secur-ing Moll's status as a deliberating agent. In Moll's world, once a marriage is dis-covered to be illegal (as it would if husband and wife are siblings), it isimmediately dissolved, and wife and children are left with very few legal rights.Thus, Moll explains, if her husband/brother "should take the Advantage theLaw would give him, he might put me away with disdain, and leave me to Suefor the little Portion that I had, and perhaps waste it all in the Suit, and then be aBeggar; the Children would be ruin'd too, having no legal Claim to any of hisEffects" (76). Moll and her children would have no rights to property-not evenan unquestionable entitlement to the (little) wealth that Moll brought with herinto the marriage; the only right that Moll would retain is the right to sue. Butwithout money or property, Moll might be very well reduced to necessity, theluxury of deliberation in court necessarily given up for the more urgent claims ofsurvival. Thus, revealing the secret to her husband/brother could make Moll'sdeliberative capacities vulnerable in the extreme: the risk that Moll runs is less amatter of losing the chance of satisfying her will in this particular situation, thana matter of losing access altogether to the conditions that make it possible for herto deliberate. In keeping her husband out of the picture for as long as she can and

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then taking great care in how she involves him, Moll not only prolongs the proc-ess of this particular deliberation, but also attempts to ensure her ability toremain party to any such processes in the future.Yet the incestuous alliance not only endangers Moll's material ability to followthrough with future deliberative processes; it also conceptually jeopardizesMoll's status as a deliberating agent. As Claude Levi-Strauss explains in TheSavageMind, what distinguishes the logic of endogamous and exogamous mar-riages is that while the first is a strictly biological relationship, the second alsoserves as a site for the construction of social value. The guiding principle behindendogamous marriages is the sexual capacities of the partners-what theirphysical organs make them-while the one defining the logic of exogamous mar-riages is their social characteristics-the identity of the persons beyond their sex.The added social difference in exogamous marriages makes it possible to concep-tualize the alliance between husband and wife not as a sexual neces-sity-something like the call of nature-but rather as a deliberative alliance.7And, indeed, marriage in Moll Flandersis always a contract negotiated betweenMoll and her future husbands; it is one of the primary activities through whichMoll exercises her deliberative capacities.When Moll first tells her family that she wants to leave, her brother accuses herof being an "unnatural Mother" for prioritizing her own interests over those ofher children (72). This accusation emphasizes the double bind that the endoga-mous marriage puts Moll in, as far as the conventional take on "nature" goes:living in incest, as Moll considers it, is "shocking to Nature" (71), while abandon-ing children is also "unnatural." These conflicting versions of what a womanshould do in order to be considered "natural" only underscore the fact that whatis at stake here isn't defending the true value of nature, or, for that matter, thenatural value of virtue. For, whatever course of action Moll might have resolvedto take, she would have been condemned as "unnatural." Thus, when Moll ar-gues that dissolving the incestuous marriage is the thing to do, she is entirelybypassing the question of naturalness in order to defend her own ability to par-ticipate in the production of evaluative criteria. Her preference for exogamyamounts to a commitment to the logical presuppositions that make it possible forher society to recognize her as more than a biological resource. In dissolving theendogamous marriage, Moll protects her status as a deliberating agent-as aperson who is more than what her physical organs make her and as one who canparticipate in the process of evaluation.8

7 Levi-Strauss argues that the totem system (in which exogamy is practiced and which isopposed to the caste system, whose marriage practices are governed by endogamy) stands asthe conceptual basis of modern individualism. Such "social individualism" can also beunderstood as an alternative model to Watt's "possessive individualism."

8 For an account of the incest episode that relies on a similar theoretical apparatus but arrives atan antithetical conclusion, see Ellen Pollak. Pollak notes the centrality of this episode to Moll'smastery of her political life, but she identifies its significance as Moll's failure: "the Virginiaepisode has the effect of both organizing and ultimately neutralizing the subversive force ofMoll's subsequent transgressions against institutional authority" (6). If Moll would haveadhered to endogamy, Pollak argues, she would have subverted the last and most oppressiveinstitution of patriarchy. Pollak picks up on the fact that in the initial form of the totem system


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Defoe emphasizes Moll's commitment to maintain her deliberative capacitiesnot just in the incest episode but throughout the novel. Participating in the delib-erative processes through which her actions are evaluated is among Moll's earli-est concerns. At the age of eight, she is determined to avoid becoming a servantand insists that earning one's bread by wages is being a gentlewoman (9-10).Moll's claims raise condescending laughs in both her nurse and the gentlewomenof Colchester, a reaction that indicates their perplexity: though they all agree thatto work is Moll's duty, it never occurred to them that it might actually be herright. But it is precisely the right to earn, as opposed to the duty to serve, thatMoll is asserting-"all I understood by being a Gentlewoman, was to be able toWorkformyself, and get enough to keep me without that terrible Bug-bear going toService" (11-12, first emphasis added)-and, in spite of the novelty of her de-mand, she is successful in having things go her way. Moll's preference "to workfor [her]self" is not simply an assertion of her right to her labor, that is, her own-ership of her body, for a servant is already guaranteed this right. This is whatdistinguishes the servant from the slave. Neither is she imagining that she cansurvive simply by accumulating the products of her labor. If she were ship-wrecked on a desert island that might have been possible, but she's not. Whatmust be at stake in working for herself, then, is Moll's right to take part in theprocess of valuation itself, her status as a deliberating agent who participates inconstructing the norms through which her actions and their products areevaluated.

Throughout Moll Flanders, Moll is specifically concerned with ensuring herability to deliberate her way to luxury, an activity that is distinct from the abilityto labor for wealth or to have luxury conferred on her as a gift. Labor isn't atstake because England is by no means in a state of nature-or, as Locke definesit, a state of plenitude-as, for example, Crusoe's island is. If Robinson Crusoeisabout the capacity of making good use of raw abundance, Moll Flandersis aboutthe right to resources in conditions of scarcity. And gifts aren't at stake because,unlike Roxana, who often characterizes herself as a passive source of pleasure,Moll insists that her achievements are deliberate. If Roxana accumulates herwealth through the will of her lovers, who lavish her with gifts that she, point-edly, never asks for, Moll gains her wealth by figuring out what it is she wantsand how she might collaborate with others to achieve it.o1women were in fact treated as objects of, rather than parties to, the marriage alliance. However,endogamy, as I have tried to explain, puts women at an even further remove from achievingthe status of deliberative agent and thus of political rights; exogamy, at least in principle,attributes to women capacities beyond their sex. Moreover, in Moll Flanders as in his otherwritings (for example, Conjugal Lewdness), Defoe conceptualizes marriage as a mutualagreement between husband and wife, not as an agreement between a husband and a wife'sfamily.

9 When her nurse dies, Moll is technically taken into service by the Colchester family into whichshe later marries, but she is treated there as more than a servant, benefiting from "all theAdvantages for my Education that could be imagin'd" (15).10 Roxana emphasizes many times that she never asks her prince for anything: "I crav'd nothingof him; I never ask'd him for any thing in my Life," she says. "[H]is Bounty always preventedme in the first, and my strict concealing myself, in the last" (82-83).

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II.State Institutions

To characterize Moll through her deliberative capacities is one thing, but to sug-gest that society is responsible for making sure she can sustain them is quite an-other. In fact, the ostensible paradox of Moll Flanders-the predicament of Moll'slife-is that Moll has to deliberate in order to secure her own deliberative capaci-ties. Thus, we find Moll at the age of three improbably negotiating her own entryinto English society: she tells us that she chose to leave the Gypsies who havebeen caring for her for the past two years and to charm the Colchesterfunctionaries into taking her into their parish. This improbability underscores theimpossible circumstances in which England puts its poor orphans. To begin with,Moll finds herself outside English society only because its government failed toguarantee her basic needs during the first three years of her life. Moll is left anorphan because her mother is transported to America, and, as Moll explains,while in France orphans such as herself are "immediately taken into the Care ofthe Government," in England she is left "a poor desolate Girl without Friends,without Cloaths, without Help or Helper in the World" (7).In Defoe's England, poverty was considered a public nuisance, and welfareadministration was left to individual parishes. Sidney and Beatrice Webb, in theirmonumental English Local Government, label the logic of the Old Poor Law a"framework of repression" (407), indicating a reality in which the destitute wereeither incarcerated or forced into vagrancy by a system that was geared to avoidpoor relief more than it was designed to administer it. Each parish was finan-cially responsible for its own poor, yet parish officers-being accountable only tothe rate-payers, who were property owners in the community-often exercisedthe cheapest way of "poor relief" by driving the destitute, and sometimes thosewho were only potentially destitute, beyond parish borders. This practice re-ceived legal sanction in The Law of Settlement and Removal of 1662, by whichparishes were entitled to remove to her original parish anyone who could mightbecome chargeable. (Essentially, anyone who couldn't provide security to theoverseers of her financial independence at present as well as in the future mighthave been removed.) Although this law was intended to sedentarize the prop-ertyless population of England, it in fact only exacerbated mobility. Moreover,this law catalyzed the breakdown of the poor-relief administration because itgave rise to incessant inter-parochial litigation; while the destitute could not sueagainst their removal, the parish of destination could sue against their reception,and determining the parish of origin was notoriously difficult in what was, infact, an increasingly mobile society.l1In his An Essay upon Projects,Defoe makes an extensive argument for a differ-ent management of poor-relief. There, Defoe proposes, among other projects, re-forms for poor-relief institutions. He suggests instituting a state-wide system thatwould care for those who no longer are able, or may never be able, to care forthemselves. Two features make these projected reforms remarkably innovative:first, Defoe argues that the national system can be supported exclusively by

For a detailed account of the effects of sedentarizing legislation on the condition and regulationof the poor in the eighteenth century, see Webb, chapters 5 and 6. Also see Dorothy Marshall.

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taxation of earnings. In this sense, the welfare projects of the Essay are designedfor a state of earners, not of owners: both in its economic base and in its pur-poses, it targets a population of job-holders rather than one of property holders.Second, Defoe presents the obligation to provide welfare as a matter of right,rather than as a matter of charity. He suggests that people who can't work be-cause of deficient capacities are entitled to welfare, which is different from sug-gesting that people who are well-to-do should take the poor's condition to heart.The first makes welfare a collective responsibility, the second leaves it up to in-dividual compassion; the first casts welfare as the right of all citizens, the secondas an ethical obligation of the more fortunate. Within the logic laid out by AnEssay upon Projects, England's failure to provide material sustenance for theinfant Moll amounts to a positive infringement of this child's rights.Among the various national projects sketched in the Essay, Defoe proposes na-tionally administered pension-offices to replace the existing parish system. Whilethe parish system drew its funding from poor-rates and from donations and gavefull responsibility for procuring funds as well as administrative autonomy toeach parish-community, Defoe proposes a uniform system that draws its fundsfrom the income of earners. Each earner would regularly contribute a certain por-tion of her earnings, and when she is incapable of working (as a result of injury,disease, or old age), she would receive either complete care, including health andboard, or a pension whose amount is determined in relation to the incurred lossin productivity. Any person who works is required to contribute, and any personwho has contributed is eligible for compensation (Essay57-67).Defoe here designs an association for people who need each other's help toraise money, are capable of realizing this need, and are therefore willing tocooperate for this particular purpose. Thus the plan is for a state of earners-itaspires to turn all persons into earners and to cater to persons' needs as such. Butthis plan also gestures toward a more generalized welfare system-one thatdoesn't rely on the prior contribution of the compensated individuals-whenDefoe goes on to consider what is to be done when a person is incapable, andnever has been capable, of realizing her needs. He projects for such people in thechapter "Of Fools." Fools are "depriv'd of Reason to act for themselves"(69)-they are precluded from membership in the pension office because theirdeliberative capacities are disabled and they will never be able to earn. How,then, should their needs be taken care of?At first, Defoe uses the more conventional charity logic, suggesting that thosewho received abundant reason have a moral responsibility to contribute from thefortune that they earn by means of this good fortune:

If I were to be ask'd, Whoought in particularto be charg'dwith this Work? Iwould answer in general, Those who have a Portion of Understandingextraordinary:Not that I would lay a Tax upon any man's Brains, or discourageWit, by appointing Wise Men to maintain Fools: But some Tribute is due toGod'sGoodnessfor bestowingextraordinaryGifts;and who can it be betterpaid to,thatsuch as sufferforwant of the sameBounty?

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For theprovidingthereforeomeSubsistenceforsuch, thatNatural Defectsmaynot beexpos'd:It is Propos'd,That a Fool-House be Erected,eitherby PublickAuthority, or by the City, orby an Act of Parliament; nto which,all thatare Naturals, or bornFools, withoutRespectof Distinction, should be admittedand maintain'd.For theMaintenanceof this a small statedContribution, ettl'd by theAuthorityof an Act of Parliament, without any Damage to the Persons paying the same,might be very easily rais'd, by a Tax upon Learning,to be paid by the Authors ofBooks.(71)

But if at first Defoe seems a little naive about the percentage of those endowedwith extraordinary reason, he soon adds to the book tax another source for fund-ing fools: revenues from a lottery inaugurated especially for the purpose. Withthe lottery, he writes, we shall "maintain Fools out of our own Folly" (72).Defoe's insistence on a kind of poetic justice in the allocation of resources forfools is more than elegant or witty. Its profundity lies in the fact that it coordi-nates the resources of the pension-office with those of the fool-house, and thus itshifts the responsibility of caring for the needy away from fortunate individualsand over to the social organization as a whole. All earners will eventually con-tribute to the maintenance of those who can't take care of themselves: those whohave too much reason to think that gambling serves their interest will be taxedon their income; those who are reasonable enough to earn, but every now andthen can't resist superstition, will be taxed on their occasional lapses. Thus, withthe pension-office project and the fool-house project, the state as an association ofearners begins to look as though it is obligated towards anyone who has beenborn under its jurisdiction. It becomes the state's responsibility to distribute re-sources among those who can take care of themselves, as well as among thosewho can't.12

Until now, though, Defoe has mandated social fairness as a "Tribute due toGod's Goodness," and it still might be mistaken as another version of charity.But at the end of the most famous chapter of the Essay, "Of Academies," Defoemakes an argument for formal equality which squarely positions social fairnessnot as a private matter-a charity that might be more efficiently administered bythe state-but, rather, as a public matter that involves the rights of each andevery individual:

I believe it might bedefended, f I shouldsay, That I do supposeGodhas givento all Mankind equal Gifts and Capacities,in that he has given them all Soulsequally capable;and that the whole differencein Mankind proceedseitherfromAccidentalDifference n the Makeof theirBodies,orfrom the foolish Differenceof Education.(114)

12 Locke, by contrast, relegates sole responsibility for fools to their families. Since for Lockecitizenship requires the express consent of the individual, the state cannot be held responsiblefor either children or fools (see 308).


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Defoe's direct goal in making this claim is to defend his project for a women'sacademy; but he does invoke "all Mankind," which makes it possible to infer themore general principle that informs his calls for social reform throughout theEssay. The fool-house passage might have suggested that we should be taxed forour individual indulgence in God's bounty as a way of thanksgiving for our in-dividual fortune. But if we use the Academies passage to gloss the earlier fool-house passage, then it becomes possible to infer that we should be taxed for ourindividual indulgence because God hasn't bestowed his bounty on us asindividuals at all. The goodness of reason is one that we receive as a spe-cies-"God has given to all Mankind," the later passage asserts-and, therefore,our tribute to God must take the form of ensuring that it indeed benefits allmembers of our species. Reason is bestowed as a collective resource, and there-fore, the task of social action is to compensate for all that contradicts reason (or,we might say, all that is irrational): the purpose of social action is to correct "ac-cidental Difference" and to eradicate "foolish Difference." Compensation for dis-advantage, by this logic, is the entitlement of the needy, since they are part ofGod's scheme of equality. Read in this way, An Essay upon Projects turns welfarefrom a matter of charity to a matter of right.13Defoe's innovative double move to a state of earners that considers welfare asthe right of all citizens is important for my reading of Moll Flanders because itsolves the ostensible paradox of Moll's having to deliberate in order to secure herown deliberative capacities. The Essay assumes that deliberative capacities arethe origin of wealth-since earning is privileged over serving and owning-butit shifts the responsibility for securing the capacities of individuals from the indi-vidual herself to the collective association. No person should have to endure theparadoxical predicament of deliberating for her own deliberative capacities, De-foe suggests, and this can be ensured if welfare is treated as an inalienable legalright.14

13 For my larger claim regarding the similarity between Defoe's projections of citizenship andideal liberal citizenship, it doesn't matter whether the commitment to fairness is derived fromthe belief that God has created us equal, or from the belief that nature has created us equal, or,for that matter, from any other theory of origins. It doesn't matter why we choose to believe inequality as long as we accept that the belief in equality logically entails that if we are inprinciple equal then we are in principle eligible to equal access to resources.

14 Both the Webbs and Marshall assign to Defoe a conservative and illiberal stance on poor reliefbased on his 1704 pamphlet Giving Alms no Charityand Employing the Poor. The Webbs andMarshall are correct to notice Defoe's complete impatience with non-industrious poor and tobe indignant at Defoe's suggestion that England's unemployed men suffer exclusively from acharacterological problem. But I think they overlook Defoe's strong and consistentcommitment to government intervention through positive-rather than penal-policies, acommitment that is evident even in this pamphlet. Giving Alms no Charitywas designed to stalllegislation promoting the establishment of parish-owned wool manufactures in which the poorwould be forced to work (for context, see Webb 114-16). In their stead, Defoe suggests thatgovernment should promote policies that would guarantee employment within the privatemarket-i.e., regulate consumption, circulation and production, so as to increase them in thisorder-rather than as part of a penal mechanism. He is thus promoting governmentintervention for the improvement of the lives of the employed over and against the coercion ofthe unemployed. Giving Alms no Charity is also especially keen on maintaining nation-wide

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Insofar as the logic of charity depends on individual disposition, few werecompassionate enough to care for the sons and daughters of Newgate; as Mollexplains, "as I was born in such an unhappy Place, I had no Parish to haveRecourse to for my Nourishment" (8).15Thus, the existing charity system doesnot ensure Moll's access to basic material resources-those resources that sheneeds in order to develop into a fully functioning, deliberating human being, acontributing member of the would-be community of earners. This initial depriva-tion forces Moll out of English society, and she is taken up by a band of Gypsieswho look after her until she develops some minimal capacities that allow her tore-enter English society. She then lingers around Colchester telling the parishofficers that "I came into the Town with the Gypsies,but that I would not go anyfarther with them" (8). She is "not a Parish Charge upon this or that part of theTown by Law," and she is still "too young to do any Work" (8-9); but Moll al-ready has enough command of her deliberative capacities to successfully mobi-lize the charity of the functionaries of Colchester: "Compassion mov'd theMagistrates of the Town to order some Care to be taken of me, and I became oneof their own, as much as if I had been born in the Place" (9). Thus, with someluck, her own agency, and other people's compassion, but without institutionalguarantees of a right to welfare, Moll survives her first years in the world.A similar scenario of individual agency and luck, which emphasizes the failureof institutions to actualize Moll's rights, characterizes Moll's survival throughouther narrative. With very limited forms of earning open to women, Moll is forcedto put herself back on the marriage market each time her present marriage dis-solves. In order to ensure her ability to earn a living, she must relocate, abandonher children, and deny her previous marriages-all this in order to secure hermarketability as a wife. Because of a faulty welfare system, then, Moll is forcedinto reconstituting herself as an earner over and over again-each time almostentirely from scratch-and, in so doing, to transgress both propriety and law.Moll turns into a whore and a thief primarily because her society consistentlydeprives her of straightforward access to the material resources she needs inorder to deliberate her way through the world. Moll cannot really earn an honestor respectable living, since her society does not guarantee the welfare ofNewgate-bor orphan girls and of young women who do not have wealthy fam-ily or friends. Thus, Moll must figure out on her own-through lengthy delibera-tive processes-not simply what she can do in order to survive, but what she canget away with in order to earn a living in a society that does not recognize herrights. By showing that Moll often has to earn her keep by transgressing hercommunity's laws and manners, Defoe points out the shortcomings of a socialorganization that does not recognize the rights of persons such as Moll. Insofaras England fails to secure Moll's basic material needs, its institutions are much

circulation of goods, indicating a commitment to constructing England as a collaborativenational economy as opposed to a system of independent parishes.15 Blewett emphasizes that children born in Newgate usually did not receive parish support notbecause Newgate was outside any parish but because it was fairly simple for the parishes of St.Sepulcher, Holbor, and Christchurch, Newgate Street to avoid their responsibilities in thesecases (430n8).

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more conducive to the production of whores and thieves than to the breeding oflaw-abiding and respectable citizens.

III.Citizenship and TransportationAfter five marriages and a thriving criminal career, Moll is finally called by hersociety to account for the disparities between her own rules and theirs. She iscaught, suggestively, attempting to steal silver spoons, thrown into Newgate,tried as an old offender, and sentenced to death. But, while in Newgate, Moll re-pents, and, with the help of a minister, she receives a reprieve that transports herto America in lieu of the final trip to Tyburn. This symbolic self-reconstitution-at the site of her birth and under the same predicament of trans-portation as that of her mother, which also constitutes Moll's originalmisfortune-finally lasts: following her transportation, Moll settles into the en-during identity of a penitent and wealthy wife and mother. Yet the concludingdetail of Moll Flanders isn't Moll's conversion but her return to England. After"having perform'd much more than the limited Terms of [her] Transportation"(268), Moll returns to the country of her birth to write her autobiography fromthere, indicating that adequate closure for this novel is, specifically, politicalrepatriation, rather than economic and spiritual rehabilitation.When a state treats some of its residents as undesirable, eliminating them byway of exile, it effectively suggests the irrelevance of citizenship to their case.Thus, when Defoe brings Moll back to England, he underscores the significanceof the rights-bearing status of political membership for anyone born underEnglish jurisdiction-be they poor, female, or felons. Moreover, had the novelended with Moll's good fortune in the New World, Moll's citizenship wouldhave become irrelevant to her welfare. In such a scenario, Moll's spiritual con-version in Newgate prior to her transportation would have authorized her pros-perity, and the novel's critique of England's institutions would have been super-fluous. But Defoe doesn't seem to be particularly interested in the state of Moll'sspirit; indeed, many critics have doubted the authenticity of Moll's conversion,even though her narrative conforms to the formal structure of spiritual autobiog-raphy, as G.A. Starr has shown.16 Instead of staking Moll's welfare on the state ofher consciousness, Defoe stakes it on the state of her citizenship, and he usestransportation as a way of finally activating the benefits that Moll's politicalstatus should have entitled her to all along.Defoe was an outspoken supporter of transportation, and it has been suggestedthat Moll Flanders served as propaganda for the Transportation Act of 1718.17Defoe's support of transportation might be explained by the fact that this penalapparatus was, in part, foundational to constituting citizenship as a function ofthe capacity to earn. However, transportation also constituted citizenship asrevocable, and it is significant that in its representation in Moll Flanders this

16 See Starr's Defoeand SpiritualAutobiography.17 In a letter to Applebee's Original WeeklyJournal,Defoe passionately presents the advantages oftransportation. Backscheider suggests that the novel is propaganda for the Transportation Act.

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aspect is revised. Penal transportation, as it was actually instituted in England,was designed to fulfill four different purposes. First, as J.M. Beattie has argued, itwas intended to modernize England's previously immoderate and highly ineffec-tive penal code into a more gradual system, thus making it better suited to ad-dress an increasing variety of offences. Second, it was imagined as a more hu-mane punishment, one that gave offenders a chance for a fresh start in a newcommunity. Third, it was designed to supply cheap labor to the colonies. A.G.L.Shaw emphasizes these purposes in his study of transportation to Australia.Finally, transportation was a way of "ridding England of her undesirables"(Shaw 49). From the beginning of its official practice after James I's commissionto the Privy Council of 1614-15 through to its cancellation in 1867, transportationwas intended to eliminate an unwanted population of destitute delinquents byway of exile.18In sentencing convicts to limited terms of indentured labor, transportationturned earning into the focal activity through which political rights and obliga-tions are worked out, and thus, it implicitly recognized the status of convicts ascitizens. Because transportation turns convicts into indentured servants, thustemporarily subordinating the criminal's capacity to earn to the interests of an-other person, it might seem like the perfect penalty for the state of earners. If thestate's responsibility towards its citizens is grounded in a principle of right ratherthan a principle of charity, and if this principle of right is grounded in people'scapacity to earn, then fairness entails that the price of transgression should be theloss of one's right to one's earnings.19However, at the same time that transporta-tion recognized convicts as potential earners, it exiled this population, thus alsorevoking convicts' citizenship. In practice, transportation revoked citizenshipinsofar as it was designed to restrict convicts' ability to return to England evenafter their terms expired. The Magna Carta (1215) protects all English subjectsfrom punishment that is not in accordance with law and judgment, which in-cludes the prolongation of punishment beyond sentence duration. The MagnaCarta also secures the rights of English subjects to free mobility within Englandas well as across its borders.0 Transportation, thus, revoked two well-recognized

18 For a similar formulation, see Beattie 600. For Beattie's account of transportation, see hischapter 9 and especially 474-75 and 512-13.

19 Transported convicts were sentenced to limited terms of servitude during which they wereexpected to labor for a variety of purposes and authorities. In America, convicts were sold toprivate plantation owners as indentured servants. In some phases of the Australian system,convicts were organized as a kind of public workforce in charge of building the colony'sinfrastructure; in other phases, they were hired out to private landowners in an attempt torepeat the benefits of the American system, which isolated the criminals from one another and,it was imagined, increased the chances of their rehabilitation by incorporating them into law-abiding families. For the Australian system, see Shaw; for the American, see Smith; for both,see Bentham, "Panopticon versus New South Wales."

20 Magna Carta, clauses 39 and 42. For a discussion of transportation's violation of the Englishconstitution, see Bentham's "A Plea for the Constitution"; he discusses the violation of theMagna Carta on 278. As a restriction on the mobility of the poor, the 1662 Law of Settlementand Removal, to which I referred in the previous section, also constituted a breach of the


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rights of English subjects, stripping ex-convicts of the substantive benefits oftheir citizenship.21 Such revocation seems inappropriate when viewed from theperspective of Defoe's An Essay upon Projects.If, as the Essay suggests, rights are acollective entitlement of humans as a rational species, then an individual's mis-use of her rational capacities cannot serve as grounds for the loss of citizenship.In fact, if the ground of citizenship is that human beings-as a species-arepotential earners, then no human being-child, fool, or criminal-can everlegitimately lose membership in the community of earners. Thus, while a personmight be granted only partial rights as a sign of diminished obligations-becauseshe is not yet an adult, or has been engaged in criminal activity, or is mentallyhandicapped, etc.-she cannot be entirely stripped of her citizenship.So while transportation recognized the status of convicts as earners, it was notso much designed to encourage them to be better English citizens as it was de-signed to give them a chance to become new citizens of a new community. It isfair, then, to describe it as a procedure that recognized the potential citizenshipof all persons at the same time as it revoked the actual citizenship of the popula-tion it targeted. Given the faulty institutional organization of welfare, for manyof England's poor the only brush with citizenship would occur precisely at thetime when that citizenship was revoked.In concluding Moll Flanders with Moll's repatriation, Defoe revises this grimreality, idealistically projecting citizenship as an inalienable status. But this ges-ture of closure doesn't suggest that transportation is a privileged site in the for-mation of political identity within Defoe's logic of citizenship. In the context ofthe rest of the novel's plot, it suggests that transportation is the default site forthe activation of citizenship in the institutional reality of eighteenth-centuryEngland. In the absence of such institutions as national orphanages and pension-offices, transportation becomes the first and only occasion for recognizing a per-son as a citizen. Had Moll been granted her rights since childhood-had therebeen institutions to guarantee her basic needs, as well as to hold her accountablefor her actions-she still might have become a felon (though, as I suggested ear-lier, the likelihood of this would have significantly decreased), but by that timeshe would have already been a recognized citizen. Thus, my emphasis on Moll'scollision with state institutions differs from Bender's; he argues that the peniten-tiary is the original site of the production of moder consciousness and readsMoll's imprisonment as the foundation of her autobiographical narrative. As Ihave indicated in the introduction, for Bender, the prison is a paradigmatic

Magna Carta. Transportation, thus, can be read as an extension of the logic that Englandpracticed more generally in its treatment of the poor.21 We have unreliable information about return rates from America, but it is clear that as

transportation became increasingly institutionalized, and especially after the inception of thepenal colony in New South Wales, official policy intended to bar the return of expirees toEngland. The length and high expense of the voyage ensured that very few of those whosesentences expired would be able to afford it. Moreover, throughout the years, the governmentimposed a variety of administrative requirements that made return additionally difficult.These included prohibiting ship owners to carry expirees back to England, as well asstipulating return on a procedure of certification that was not conducted automatically at theconvict's completion of his sentence. See Shaw and Bentham, "A Plea," especially 272-76.

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institution in a political system whose purpose is to shape consciousness. In myunderstanding of Defoe's projection of citizenship, the penal apparatus is only adefault institution in a political system whose purpose is to facilitate deliberativeaction.

Bender's emphasis on the penitentiary and his understanding of citizenship asa tool for the production of consciousness seem more applicable to Dickens'srepresentation of citizens and institutions than to Defoe's. But Dickens's account,I would like briefly to suggest by way of conclusion, rather than challengingDefoe's projected ideal, comments on the actual evolution of England's institu-tions in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. During this time, penal reformwas vigorous; transportation and, later, the police force and the prisons werecentralized.2 Welfare reform, however, was slow and ineffective. The New PoorLaw of 1834 was a preliminary, mostly failed, attempt at centralizing poor reliefadministration, but within it the destitute were still treated as a rightless popula-tion: relief was stipulated on incarceration in the workhouses.23 Thus, the institu-tionalization of England in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries increasedinfringement on the poor's freedom to exercise their deliberative capacities,while still not providing resources for the development and maintenance of theability to earn. Within such a reality, transportation brings the inadequacy ofEngland's political order into much sharper relief, and the injustice of transporta-tion's own premises also becomes more clearly visible. If in 1722 Defoe assimi-lated transportation into a progressive and optimistic projection of liberal citi-zenship, by 1860, Charles Dickens made it the crux of a scathing critique of thegrim realities of his contemporary England. Great Expectations(1860-61) followsMoll Flanders's liberal logic, but it focuses on the extent to which England is farfrom recognizing the rights of those among her citizens who are not propertyowners.

Occupied with "the long chain of iron or gold" (72) that binds people to theirpast, GreatExpectationsdevotes much attention to the drama of the exile's return.But if Pip's attachment to home is represented in the vocabulary of affect andimagination-recall the nightmares that the injunction "'DON'T GO HOME"'evokes (366-67)-the transported Magwitch's attachment is manifest primarily inthe vocabulary of the penal institutions that schooled him. If Moll enjoys a longcriminal career, uninterrupted by state institutions, Magwitch spends his entirelife-from his very early childhood until his death-in and out of prison. Unlike

22 A professional police force was established in London in the mid-eighteenth century, though itwas formally recognized by Parliament only in 1828;prison reform began with the PenitentiaryAct of 1779 and intensified with the Prison Acts of 1835 and 1839. Before the reforms, prisonerswere financially responsible for their upkeep-for room and board as well as for the profits oftheir jailers (see Bender 11-25 and 144-45).3 For poor relief during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, see Webb, vols. 8 and 9,and Rose. In the last decades of the nineteenth century, England began to legislate

systematically for the provision of health, education, and employment for its poor, but only in1945 was a national welfare system instituted to which all citizens, regardless of class,contribute and from which they are all entitled to benefit.


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is a ignorant commonfellow now, for all he's lucky,' what do I say? I says tomyself, 'IfI ain't a gentleman,noryet ain't got no learning,I'm theownerof such.All on you owns stock and land; which on you owns a brought-up Londongentleman?'Thisway I kepmyselfa going." (321)

Of course, because Magwitch's consciousness is shaped by faulty institutions, hisaccount of his reward is imperfect. What redeems Magwitch by the standards ofthe novel is not the "fixed idea" (343), as Herbert Pocket calls it, of owning aLondon gentleman, but the intentions behind it and the industriousness manifestin its actualization. Magwitch isn't exactly invested in owning a gentleman;rather, he is devoted to earning in order to improve the expectations oi anotherhuman being. Magwitch's reform consists in his ability successfully to deliberatehis way to wealth (which he is effectively denied in England, but which he canachieve in Australia), as well as in his choice of an orphaned blacksmith-to-be asthe beneficiary of his work. His project in Australia demonstrates both his delib-erative capacities and sound humanistic sentiments. He proves thus his ability todetermine his own interests and to pursue these in cooperation with others, aswell as his understanding of the equal worth of all persons. In exile, Magwitchhas become an ideal liberal citizen, fit to participate fully in a Defoean state ofearners.But just as England's institutions do not recognize Magwitch's rights duringhis childhood, they don't recognize them once he is a reformed adult. The courtinterprets his return to England not as a rightful actualization of his citizenship,but as a depraved "yielding to those propensities and passions, the indulgence ofwhich had so long rendered him a scourge to society" (457). Following this mis-

interpretation of Magwitch's insistence on his right of repatriation, the court sen-tences him to death and confiscates all of his property. Thus the judge implicitlyadmits that even after completing the sentence of transportation the expiree wasnever exactly a free man, his right of mobility denied and his earnings foreversubordinated to the tyrannical will of the crown. By focusing on the limitationson Magwitch's political status under English law, GreatExpectationsemphasizesthat transportation effectively revoked citizenship from convicts, depriving themof the basic rights secured to Englishmen by the Magna Carta.If transportation takes on a grim and thoroughly realistic image in GreatExpectations,this is because Dickens emphasizes the fact that England did notrecognize its working citizens when they were honest and would not function astheir political home even though its penal institutions had previously deter-mined that it was. In contrast with Moll Flanders,transportation arrives in GreatExpectations ong after Magwitch's citizenship has been activated, which is whythe chain that links Magwitch to his political home is much more visible than theone that links Moll. And, because Magwitch's citizenship has been activatedmuch earlier than Moll's, but in just as faulty a manner, no "inventivecontrivance"-no projection of which even a novelist is capable-could plausiblytransform this chain from iron to gold.The century and a half that passed between Defoe and Dickens had turned lib-eral citizenship from an achievable ideal into one that can only measure reality's

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deficiency. Great Expectationsretains faith in the value of the liberal ideal, but itstrips it from any pretensions to documentary realism and recasts it as solely aprinciple of critique. This is not to suggest that Dickens's Great Expectationscon-stitutes a sobering antidote to what might be understood as Defoe's naively ide-alizing Moll Flanders. Rather, it is to point, first, to the political values thatDickens and Defoe share and, second, to the way in which different social condi-tions determine the different uses of similar ideals. In the early eighteenth cen-tury, when England's institutions were only rudimentary, Defoe projects liberalcitizenship as a means of making the originally destitute at home in England. Inthe mid-nineteenth century, when England's institutional organization had ex-tensively developed but from the liberal perspective in inadequate ways, Dickensprojects liberal citizenship as a means of demonstrating England's failure to be agenuine home to all its citizens.

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. "A PleafortheConstitution." 803.TheWorksofJeremy entham. ol.4. 249-84.Blewett,David,ed. MollFlanders.ByDaniel Defoe. London:Penguin,1989.Chaber,Lois."MatriarchalMirror:Women and Capital n MollFlanders."MLA97 (1982):212-26.Chandler,James.Englandn 1819.Chicago:U of ChicagoP, 1998.Defoe, Daniel. An Essay UponProjects. 697.Ed.JoyceD. Kennedy,MichaelSeidel, andMaximillianE.Novak. New York:AMSPress,1999.

GivingAlmsnocharity ndEmployinghePoor.London,1704.MollFlanders.722.Ed. EdwardH. Kelly.New York:W.W.Norton,1973.

. Letter.Applebee'sOriginalWeeklyournal 6 Jan.1723.Rpt.in SelectedPoetryandProseof DanielDefoe.Ed. MichaelF. Shugrue.New York:Holt, Rinehartand Winston,1968.214-17.

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Dickens, Charles. GreatExpectations.860-61.Ed. Charlotte Mitchell. London:Penguin,1996.Hobbes,Thomas.Leviathan.651.Ed.C.B.Macpherson.London:Penguin,1985.Kay,Carol.PoliticalConstructions:Defoe,Richardson,nd Sterne n RelationoHobbes,Hume,andBurke.thaca:CornelUP, 1988.Levi-Strauss,Claude.TheSavageMind.1962.Chicago:U of ChicagoP, 1966.Locke,John.An EssayConcerningheTrueOriginal,Extentand EndofCivil Government.heSecondTreatiseofGovernment.woTreatisesfGovernment. d. Peter Laslett.Cambridge:

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at home in england, or projecting liberal citizenship in moll flanders - yahav-brown

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