defoe
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From the beginning of Moll's erotic experience, we are left wondering whether love is natural and spontaneous, or whether it is a response to external stimuli - above all, economic ones.
Elder brother is a rake (p. 10) who "baits his hook" - so we have no way of judging his claim to Betty that he is "in love with her" (12). What is certain is that he woos her on two levels simultaneously, the sexual and the financial.
Story of Danae - prophesied that her son will kill her father, he shuts her up in a tower - Zeus comes to her as a shower of gold, she gives birth to Perseus.
Elder brother's gold is a form of penetration - first 5 guineas, then a handful - when he gives her a hundred she puts it into her bosom herself, then yields to him.
Moll's passion is fetishistic - "I was more confounded with the money than I was before with the love, and began to be so elevated that I scarce knew the ground I stood on" (13). The money sweeps her off her feet; it precedes sex and is more exciting - to some extent it is a substitute for it.
All of Moll's subsequent sexual relations will have a monetary dimension:
Daniel Defoe (c. 1661-1731) was the son of a London butcher called Foe, a name which Daniel bore for more than forty years...