Women invested their pin money and any other money they owned in The South Sea Company which was guaranteeing huge dividends. Women discover the "pleasure of business" (Ingrassia).

Daniel Defoe portrays Credit as a woman and associates the new concept of a credit economy with "hysteria, disorder, unregulated passions" (Ingrassia).

Glicera should be ruined, but she bounces back and becomes a jilt. She takes the fortune that should have been hers by marriage. She assumes the male subject position, making financial arrangements and controling mortgages.

Glicera becomes a kept woman without actually sleeping with anyone. She artfully promises without fulfillment. This allows her to trick the Alderman into giving her Melladore's mortgage deed.

Glicera removes herself from the economy of exchange. Not a prostitute and not a wife, she achieves her only desire of men -- money.

Glicera moves from a liminal state -- between subject and object -- into a powerful position as subject.

Glicera recoups her credit, learns the sexual thrills of controlling others financially, and is able to manage herself, her property, and even other women. She is a subject, which in this economy is usually defined as male, and that is what leaves the reader uneasy.

If a woman acts like a man, does it do her any credit?