# Moll Flanders — Character guide

> Key figures in Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe.

- [Moll Flanders](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/moll_flanders_se/characters/moll_flanders.md): Moll moves through England as servant, wife, mistress, and finally thief, her identity shifting with each name she borrows. Her driving need is security — a woman without fortune must trade beauty, charm, or cunning to s
- [The Governess](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/moll_flanders_se/characters/the_governess.md): Having run through every disreputable trade available to a woman in London, the governess offers Moll both shelter and a professional education in theft. She is pragmatic where Moll is impulsive, and her maternal manner 
- [The Elder Brother](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/moll_flanders_se/characters/the_elder_brother.md): He is the first man to teach Moll that love and economics are inseparable, pressing gold into her hand while insisting she refuse his brother. His seduction is patient and calculated, exploiting her vanity and her precar
- [Robin](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/moll_flanders_se/characters/robin.md): Robin is decent, persistent, and oblivious to the affair between Moll and his elder brother, genuinely believing he has won her through his own merits. His marriage to Moll gives her brief respectability and entry into t
- [Jemmy](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/moll_flanders_se/characters/jemmy.md): Jemmy enters Moll's life as a fellow prisoner and fellow criminal, and their mutual recognition — each seeing in the other a mirror of their own disreputable past — produces the novel's most genuine emotional bond. He is
- [The Gentleman at Bath](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/moll_flanders_se/characters/the_gentleman_at_bath.md): He singles Moll out at Bath and installs her in lodgings, providing the material ease she craves while his wife remains conveniently distant. Their arrangement is tender but fundamentally unequal — he can abandon her at 
- [The Bank Clerk](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/moll_flanders_se/characters/the_bank_clerk.md): He enters Moll's world as a man of figures and quiet routine, the opposite of the gamblers and rakes who have marked her past. His appeal lies less in passion than in the security he represents — a household, a name, a s
- [Mrs. Betty](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/moll_flanders_se/characters/mrs_betty.md): A name Moll uses in her early life; also a separate gentlewoman acquaintance.
- [The Boatswain](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/moll_flanders_se/characters/the_boatswain.md): A ship's officer who helps Moll during her voyage to the colonies.
- [The Captain](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/moll_flanders_se/characters/the_captain.md): Various ship captains Moll encounters, including one who transports her to Virginia.

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