Moll Flanders is raised until adolescence by a good foster mother, and then gets attached to a household as a servant where she is loved by both sons. The elder son convinces her to sleep with him, but eventually unwilling to marry her he convinces Moll to marry the younger brother. She then is widowed, leaves her children to the care of in-laws, and begins trying to pass herself off as a rich widow to attract a man who will marry her and provide her with security. After a series of marriages, mishaps and plot twists, she eventually ends up in Newgate Prison where she repents and finds love.

Moll Flanders Flash Card

Author: Daniel Defoe, 1722
Narration: 1st person
Form: Novel
Style: picaresque, morality tale, lighthearted, humorous

Character List

The Elder Brother – One of the two brothers in the family with which Moll spends her teenage years, he falls in love with her and she becomes his mistress, thinking that he intends to marry her when he comes into his inheritance.
Robert – The younger of the two brothers who fall in love with Moll. He eventually marries her, in spite of his family’s disapproval, but dies after five years.
The Draper – Moll’s second husband, whose financial mistakes sink them into poverty. He eventually escapes to France as a fugitive from the law.
The Plantation Owner – A man who marries Moll thinking she has a great fortune. Together they move to Virginia, where he has his plantations. There, Moll learns that he is actually her half-brother and leaves him to return to England.
The Gentleman – A well-to-do man who befriends Moll and eventually makes her his mistress. His wife is mad, but he keeps Moll for six years before an illness and religious experience prompt him to break off the affair.
The Banker – A prosperous man whom Moll agrees to marry if he will divorce his unfaithful wife. They live happily for several years, but he then dies.
Jemy - Also called James and “my Lancashire husband,” he is the only man that Moll has any real affection for. They marry under a mutual deception and then part ways. Eventually they are reunited in prison and begin a new life together in America.
“My Governess” - Moll’s landlady and midwife, later her friend and confederate in crime. She helps Moll manage an inconvenient pregnancy and initiates her into the criminal underworld.
Humphrey – Moll’s son by the husband who was also her brother. She meets him with an overwhelming affection on her return to America, and he very generously helps her get established there.

Read the full text of Moll Flanders at Project Gutenberg.

Listen to the Moll Flanders audio book below.

See the following post for Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders GRE flashcards and audio.

Note: this audio recording jumps ahead to book 2, chapters 1-3. To hear more visit  Librivox.org.

To read Tom Jones online, visit the Project Gutenberg e-text.

Synopsis

Tom Jones is a foundling discovered on the property of Squire Allworthy, a kind wealthy landowner, who decides to raise the boy himself. Tom grows into an attractive, lusty youth. He is often in trouble and generally somewhat selfish and impulsive, but is nevertheless honest and kind at heart. He falls in love with his neighbor’s daughter, Sophia Western, but his status as a bastard causes Sophia’s father and Allworthy to oppose their love.

Note: I’d advise you not to try to read this book. It is extremely long, and unless you plan to study for three years prior to the test it will take up way too much of your time. Study the synopsis below, learn the characters, and listen to the audio book of Tom Jones in this and the following posts.

Tom Jones: GRE Flash Card

-First published on 28 February 1749
-Tom Jones is among the earliest English prose works describable as a novel.
-Main Characters:

• Tom Jones (a bastard and ward of Squire Allworthy)
• Squire Allworthy (a wealthy squire with an estate in Somersetshire)
• Mrs. Bridget Allworthy-Blifil (Squire Allworthy’s sister)
• Captain Blifil (Captain and Mrs. Blifil’s husband)
• Master Blifil (ill-natured son of Captain Blifil and Bridget)
• Black George Seagrim (a gamekeeper)
• Molly Seagrim (Black George’s second daughter)
• Squire Western (a hunting man)
• Sophia Western (the Squire’s only daughter)
• Honour (Sophia’s maid)

- listen to the audio file of Tom Jones.

For the GRE Literature, focus on Tristram Sha andy. It is very very likely to appear on the test.

Notable for its bawdy humor and inventive narrative devices, Tristram Shandy is ostensibly Tristram’s narration of his life story. But it is one of the central jokes of the novel that he cannot explain anything without endless diversions, and so we do not even reach Tristram’s own birth until Volume III.

Tristram Shandy – GRE flash card

notable characteristics: bawdy humor, dense satire, unconventional narrative devices

primary characters:

Walter – Tristram’s father
Uncle Toby – his uncle
Trim – Toby’s servant
Doctor Slop
Parson Yorick

allusions:

- Pope and Swift are frequently satirized.
- references to Cervantes, particularly Don Quixote are also present in the frequent references to Rosinante (the horse), the “quixotic” character of Uncle Toby and Sterne’s own description of his characters’ “Cervantic humor.”

-The novel also references John Locke’s theories of empiricism, or the way we assemble what we know of ourselves and our world from the “association of ideas” that come to us from observation and our senses.

Click below to listen to chapters 1-3 of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy.

As someone who refused to use spark notes or cliff notes in high school, I feel a little cheap recommending them now.  But if you are the sort of person who can memorize facts from such bare bones outlines, these might serve you well. If you need a little more substance to make things stick, audio books are your answer. For the next several weeks I’ll be posting audio books of 18th and 19th century British prose and novels which are likely to appear on the GRE. I’m not going to post the whole book, because honestly you don’t have to read the whole book. Just getting a sense of the prose style and characters will probably be enough. Happy listening!