The reading
The bead. A criminal autobiography where the wish carried with swagger is escape from consequence itself — Moll grew "bold" and "rich" not because of the danger or the craft but because she had carried it on so long and never been taken; the unaccountability is the savored payoff.
Engines
- impunity · content · spine · ✓ — slot 1 the standing risk of being taken (the gallows, Newgate); slot 2 the long unbroken run of evasion ("practice had hardened me, and I grew audacious to the last degree; and the more so because I had carried it on so long, and had never been taken"); slot 3 the consequence-free relish ("we not only grew bold, but we grew rich, and we had at one time one-and-twenty gold watches in our hands"). The savored object is the impunity itself — boldness caused by unaccountability, not by thrill or skill.
The bundle. Single-engine specimen, the second of impunity (maximally different from The Invisible Man: social-cunning rather than supernatural means; picaresque memoir rather than scientific-horror). Two specimens sharing only the savored escape-from-consequence and nothing else is what confirms impunity is a robust engine rather than a Wells one-off.
Dual-use read. The crucial discrimination is from Raffles: The Amateur Cracksman (Hornung), the controlled near-miss: Raffles fills the same surface (a thief who gets away) but savors the wrong thing — the transgression-thrill and the craft, "the most thrilling moment of my infamous career," treating impunity as a mere means ("To follow Crime with reasonable impunity you simply MUST have a parallel… career"). Raffles is unleashing-thrill + mastery-craft. Moll is the clean case: the relish is the getting-away. Value-flow call (subjective, per the README): Defoe wraps the tale in a Newgate-repentance frame and a moralizing preface, but the bulk of Moll's narrative savors the impunity in the relevant beats — the surface is moralized; the engine is impunity.
Verdict. Impunity's second specimen — the social-cunning register, paired with The Invisible Man (supernatural-means register) to confirm impunity generalizes beyond the Wells specimen. The Raffles exclusion is the sharp guard the catalog's impunity / unleashing / mastery discriminations rest on.
Evidence. ✓ slot-proven — full record at Moll Flanders. Slot-test cleared via verbatim quotes from Gutenberg #370; Raffles contrast verified against Gutenberg #706.
The evidence
The second, maximally-different specimen of impunity: where The Invisible Man removes the check by supernatural means, Moll removes it by social cunning — she is never caught, and the not-being-caught is itself the savored payoff. Realist criminal autobiography, not scientific-horror; the wish carried with swagger rather than dread.
Slot 1 — The check (the law, the risk of being taken)
Moll's whole trade runs under the standing risk of capture (the gallows, Newgate), the external check her career is organized to evade — the danger named throughout as being "taken."
Slot 2 — The check removed (a long run of never being caught)
The constraint is lifted not by a device but by a sustained, unbroken evasion — practice and luck compounding into apparent untouchability:
"practice had hardened me, and I grew audacious to the last degree; and the more so because I had carried it on so long, and had never been taken" (ll. 7211–7212)
Slot 3 — The consequence-free act, savored
The payoff is explicit and is escape from consequence itself — the boldness and the riches both flow from never having been caught:
"we not only grew bold, but we grew rich, and we had at one time one-and-twenty gold watches in our hands" (ll. 7214–7215)
The savored object is the impunity: "the more so because I had... never been taken" — the swagger is caused by the unaccountability, not by the thrill of the act or the skill of it.
Guard / distinctness — impunity, not unleashing-thrill, not mastery-craft
The guard is sharpened by contrast with a correctly-excluded near-miss, Raffles: The Amateur Cracksman (Hornung, #706). Raffles fills the same surface (a thief who gets away) but savors the wrong thing: the transgression-thrill and the craft, not the escape. He is keenest precisely when the mark is on guard ("do you suppose I should be keen on it if we hadn't?"), names his savored peak as the danger-moment ("the most thrilling moment of my infamous career"), and treats impunity as a mere means ("To follow Crime with reasonable impunity you simply MUST have a parallel... career"). So Raffles is unleashing-thrill + mastery-craft. Moll is the clean case: the relish is the getting-away, not the danger.
Honest caveat: Defoe wraps the tale in a repentance frame (Newgate, the moralizing preface), as Wells wraps Griffin in horror — but the bulk of Moll's narrative savors the impunity in the relevant beats.
Result
All three slots fill, with the wish savored as escape-from-consequence and isolated from unleashing/mastery by the Raffles exclusion. Tagged impunity — maximally different from The Invisible Man (social-cunning vs supernatural; picaresque memoir vs scientific-horror).