The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders

This proposal did not agree at all with my judgment of the thing,

though it was very fair and kind in my mother; but my thoughts ran

quite another way.

As to keeping the thing in our own breasts, and letting it all remain

as it was, I told her it was impossible; and I asked her how she could

think I could bear the thoughts of lying with my own brother. In the

next place, I told her that her being alive was the only support of the

discovery, and that while she owned me for her child, and saw reason to

be satisfied that I was so, nobody else would doubt it; but that if she

should die before the discovery, I should be taken for an impudent

creature that had forged such a thing to go away from my husband, or

should be counted crazed and distracted. Then I told her how he had

threatened already to put me into a madhouse, and what concern I had

been in about it, and how that was the thing that drove me to the

necessity of discovering it to her as I had done.

From all which I told her, that I had, on the most serious reflections

I was able to make in the case, come to this resolution, which I hoped

she would like, as a medium between both, viz. that she should use her

endeavours with her son to give me leave to go to England, as I had

desired, and to furnish me with a sufficient sum of money, either in

goods along with me, or in bills for my support there, all along

suggesting that he might one time or other think it proper to come over

to me.

That when I was gone, she should then, in cold blood, and after first

obliging him in the solemnest manner possible to secrecy, discover the

case to him, doing it gradually, and as her own discretion should guide

her, so that he might not be surprised with it, and fly out into any

passions and excesses on my account, or on hers; and that she should

concern herself to prevent his slighting the children, or marrying

again, unless he had a certain account of my being dead.

This was my scheme, and my reasons were good; I was really alienated

from him in the consequences of these things; indeed, I mortally hated

him as a husband, and it was impossible to remove that riveted aversion

I had to him. At the same time, it being an unlawful, incestuous

living, added to that aversion, and though I had no great concern about

it in point of conscience, yet everything added to make cohabiting with

him the most nauseous thing to me in the world; and I think verily it

was come to such a height, that I could almost as willingly have

embraced a dog as have let him offer anything of that kind to me, for

which reason I could not bear the thoughts of coming between the sheets

with him. I cannot say that I was right in point of policy in carrying

it such a length, while at the same time I did not resolve to discover

the thing to him; but I am giving an account of what was, not of what

ought or ought not to be.