The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders

Well, let her life have been what it would then, it was certain that my

life was very uneasy to me; for I lived, as I have said, but in the

worst sort of whoredom, and as I could expect no good of it, so really

no good issue came of it, and all my seeming prosperity wore off, and

ended in misery and destruction. It was some time, indeed, before it

came to this, for, but I know not by what ill fate guided, everything

went wrong with us afterwards, and that which was worse, my husband

grew strangely altered, forward, jealous, and unkind, and I was as

impatient of bearing his carriage, as the carriage was unreasonable and

unjust. These things proceeded so far, that we came at last to be in

such ill terms with one another, that I claimed a promise of him, which

he entered willingly into with me when I consented to come from England

with him, viz. that if I found the country not to agree with me, or

that I did not like to live there, I should come away to England again

when I pleased, giving him a year's warning to settle his affairs.

I say, I now claimed this promise of him, and I must confess I did it

not in the most obliging terms that could be in the world neither; but

I insisted that he treated me ill, that I was remote from my friends,

and could do myself no justice, and that he was jealous without cause,

my conversation having been unblamable, and he having no pretense for

it, and that to remove to England would take away all occasion from him.

I insisted so peremptorily upon it, that he could not avoid coming to a

point, either to keep his word with me or to break it; and this,

notwithstanding he used all the skill he was master of, and employed

his mother and other agents to prevail with me to alter my resolutions;

indeed, the bottom of the thing lay at my heart, and that made all his

endeavours fruitless, for my heart was alienated from him as a husband.

I loathed the thoughts of bedding with him, and used a thousand

pretenses of illness and humour to prevent his touching me, fearing

nothing more than to be with child by him, which to be sure would have

prevented, or at least delayed, my going over to England.

However, at last I put him so out of humour, that he took up a rash and

fatal resolution; in short, I should not go to England; and though he

had promised me, yet it was an unreasonable thing for me to desire it;

that it would be ruinous to his affairs, would unhinge his whole

family, and be next to an undoing him in the world; that therefore I

ought not to desire it of him, and that no wife in the world that

valued her family and her husband's prosperity would insist upon such a

thing.