Get it In Writing: Contracts in Moll Flanders

Abstract

Abstract: This essay argues that Moll Flanders learns through experience to prefer entering into written, rather than verbal, marriage contracts, regardless of either type of contract's enforceability. It draws upon contract theories that emphasize relationship building as opposed to establishing the groundwork for future litigation to explain why Moll prefers written to verbal contracts. I also analyze several episodes in Moll Flanders in order to demonstrate that Moll learns through experience that written contracts are a pragmatic means of asserting herself, building relationships, and articulating the terms of her relationships. Writing slows down the contracting process and compels Moll's partners to listen to her, process her words, and respond to them thoughtfully and deliberately. The more prolonged the contractual process, the longer the contracting parties can occupy a shared imaginary space of equality, negotiation, and self-creation. This argument also illuminates Pamela's annotations of Mr. B's proposal to become his mistress in Samuel Richardson's Pamela (1740). I conclude that in both novels, written contracts are a feminist strategy used by female protagonists to assert their wishes despite their legal disempowerment.