In View of Eternity: The Penitence of Moll Flanders and Nala Ray 

By Ruth Anne Amsden (Rated PG13)

    Nala Ray, a former Only Fans star, has made a very public confession of her conversion to Christianity and of her forsaking of her past life. Christians of all denominations are calling her conversion into question and arguing over whether or not it is possible for anyone to be forgiven and restored to relationship with God after living such a lifestyle. Those Christians who do believe such a conversion is possible and is in fact part of our Christian faith are calling into question the sincerity and reality of her conversion. The discourse called to mind an essay I wrote some years ago for university on an eighteenth century novel by Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders, in which I laid out the argument that a close reading of the text shows true penitence and conversion. It is my hope that my English major meditations may prove helpful to anyone considering coming to Christianity through Nala’s testimony.

  The confessions of Moll Flanders, as recorded by Daniel Defoe, are the story of an eighteenth century Mary Magdalene recounting a misspent life of thievery, prostitution, incestuous wifehood, and transportation to the colony of Virginia as a felon. It is tempting to read these confessions and to come away with the impression that Moll was an acquisitive individual with insatiable appetites whose apparent salvation at the end of the novel was artificially contrived to give a moral weight to an otherwise sensational novel. Yet by setting aside our twenty-first century incredulity regarding true penitence resulting from a religious experience and by engaging in a close reading of the text, we see a woman whose penitence results in a forsaking of her former wicked life of stealing and whoring, a new outflowing of affections toward those people closest to her, and a dependence upon Providence instead of her own efforts for provision of her needs. Like Mary Magdalene, Moll Flanders takes the chance to repent and to turn her life around, and that life is happy and prosperous as a result.

    Before examining Moll’s conversion experience, an acknowledgement of her wicked past is neccesary, as Defoe remarks, “to give beauty to the penitent part.” Yet this acknowledgement must be one of one of understanding and compassion. Wicked as Moll’s life choices were, even to twenty-first century sensibilities, not a single one of them was made out of a determination to be wicked “for the fun of it.” Every man to whom she gave her body, every item that she stole, and every marriage she entered into was an act of self-preservation. Completely on her own in the world, the child of a Newgate felon, with no way to support herself other than the dreaded “service,” Moll makes the same choice any human being would make in her situation: to survive by any means necessary.

    In view of the survival lifestyle that shaped Moll, before beginning an exploration of her process of penitence, it is important to differentiate between penitence and perfection. Moll, to the very end of her days, remains a very human woman profoundly impacted by her past. Although penitence means an abhorrence to and a turning from her past life, and a dedication of the rest of her life to an endeavor to live well, Moll never ceases to be as imperfect and flawed as any other individual.

    Moll’s process of repentance from a wicked life, no matter how necessary that wickedness may have been, begins after she is placed under the death sentence. For the first time in her life, she is in a position where money, marriage, or the manipulation of circumstances cannot preserve her life. There is nothing she can do to save herself. Her first reaction is very human terror: “Lord! What shall become of me? I shall be cast, to be sure, and there is nothing beyond that but death! I have no friends; what shall I do?” Yet she admits that there is no repentance, only fear, in these reflections. 

    There is only one more place for her to turn, and that is to God Himself. It takes the kindly guidance of a minister, a “serious, pious, good man,” to teach the self-sufficient woman to throw herself entirely upon God and to seek pardon, not from the authorities who can spare her life, but from Christ Who can spare her immortal self. It is only upon reaching this place of humility and helplessness, with eternity well in view, that Moll experiences a change of heart: “I began to look back on my past life with abhorrence, and having a kind of view into the other side of time, the things of life… began to look with a different aspect and quite another shape than they did before.” This softening of her heart and breaking down of her defenses is aided by the kindness of the minister, who is perhaps the first man to get so close to her soul while not contacting her body. In a cathartic confession, Moll pours out her story to him, and in emptying her soul of the rubbish of a wicked past life, she “comes into such a condition that I never knew anything of in my life before” and obtains “the comfort of a penitent– I mean the hope of being forgiven.” In this uplifted state, having cast herself upon the mercy of God, she feels that she can face even death with equanimity. 

    In the end, it is life, and not death, that tests Moll’s newfound resolutions. When the kind minister obtains a reprieve for her, the joy she experiences upon being granted a second chance impresses upon her mind “the mercy of God in sparing my life, and a greater detestation of my sins from a sense of that goodness, than I had in all my sorrow before.” Her life had been spared, not simply so that she could return to her old wicked life with as much relish as if its futility had never been revealed to her eyes by the light of eternity, but so that she may live a penitent life and forsake her past sins.

    Her sentence of transportation to the colonies in the company of hardened felons presents almost as much danger to her new resolutions as the fear of death from which she has escaped. Her minister and guiding light warns her that she must have “more than ordinary secret assistance from the grace of God” in order to keep from turning back to her old wickedness. 

  The only way to counteract the influences of her fellow criminals, then, is to turn to fellow penitents for support and encouragment. First, she turns to her governess, who is “a very great penitent” and whose example and introduction to the minister wrought such a change in Moll’s life. Finally, through her old ways of sneaking and manipulating, (penitent but not perfect, as has been said), she reunites with the husband whom she loved best, Jemmy, or her “Lancashire husband.” Also a Newgate inmate, Jemmy seeks a sentence of transportation so that he and Moll can stay together. Once in the New World, evidence of God’s goodness and provision in their lives “filled his heart with thankfulness” and he becomes a true helpmeet to Moll. He joins her on the path to penitence, as he becomes “as thoroughly a reformed man as ever God’s goodness brought back from a profligate.” As for Moll, it is the first symptom of a changed life that she returns to an “old” husband for companionship rather than seeking out yet another man with whom to share her new life.

    Despite the dangers posed by the evil influences of transportation, their sentence offers them a brand new start in a country full of opportunities, far away from the old temptations and the old life. Not only a new life, but an anonymous one of “living where no one could upbraid us with what was past, and without the agonies of a condemned hole to drive us to it;… and that we should live as new people in a new world.” 

    The clearest evidence of a changed life came after Moll and Jemmy had settled in Virginia. By serendipitous coincidence, they land near the plantation belonging to Moll’s brother/husband, and Moll has the opportunity to see her son for the first time in many years. Her response is in sharp contrast to the distinctly non-maternal language with which she has described her motherhood and the abandonment of her children. Consider the aching and yearning in the following passage:

“​Let any mother of children that reads this consider it and think but with what anguish of mind I restrained myself; what yearnings of soul I had in me to embrace him and to weep over him;and how I thought all my entrails turned within me, that my very bowels moved, and I knew not what to do, as i now know not how to express those agonies!”

    Her anguish is answered in a joyously tearful reunion with her son, replete with the embraces and kisses, and resulting in not only a loving restored relationship, but in honest provision for Moll and Jemmy. Her son is able to help her procure her inheritance left to her by her mother. A new thankfulness has made Moll more deeply aware of an overruling Providence, “which had done such wonders for me, who had been myself the greatest wonder of wickedness.” No longer does she have to rely upon her own skills as a thief and a whore; she has learned to rely upon the grace of God. 

    They have also been put in the way of making a living for themselves as tobacco farmers. Not only is their new lifestyle honest, it is a far superior alternative to Newgate and “the most prosperous of our circumstances in the wicked trade we had both been carrying on.”

    If the first proof of true penitence was a changed life, the final proof of penitence is that Moll’s resolutions stood the test of time. Writing her story as an old woman, Moll gives evidence that her repentance was not merely a reaction to fear and change, but was a lifelong decision. She closes her confessions by informing us that she and Jemmy are living “in good heart and health” in England, and that they “resolve to spend the remainder of our years in sincere penitence for the wicked lives we have lived.” 

   I suggest that there are many comparisons to be drawn between Moll’s story and Nala’s, and I hope my meditations here may help my readers consider these women’s stories in a more compassionate and more Christian light.