Customer Reviews

Roxana, Or The Fortunate Mistress (Penguin English Library)

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ROXANA is a fascinating book. Too often the title character is measured against Moll Flanders and is found inferior. Yes, she shares several of Moll's traits, including beauty, ambition and a lack of hesitation to use sex to exploit a situation to her advantage. But Roxana is a far more complex character. Whereas Moll started poor, Roxana suffers a calamity from which she must recover. It is through this experience that she develops into the con-artist that she becomes. But what truly sets her apart from all of Defoe's other characters is that she is capable of guilt. She is more psychologically developed in other ways, too. Notice all the complex emotions when she engineers a menage-a-trois with a gentleman and her maid, Amy. Defoe was "pushing the envelope" with ROXANA. Wherein MOLL FLANDERS is a comedy, ROXANA is a primitive thriller. It's a pity Alfred Hitchcock never adapted ROXANA for the screen because there are several very unsettling and suspenseful scenes in the novel as ROXANA's true identity is in danger of being revealed. And the ending is truly unsettling. I don't know why Hollywood hasn't discovered this one (although considering all the terrible film versions of MOLL FLANDERS, perhaps it's just as well).

The form of the novel was new when ROXANA was written. There were no rules. There were no precedents. Defoe came up with something truly extraordinary. There's nothing else quite like it. For me, ROXANA is unforgettable. I first read this book twenty years ago and there are scenes that still haunt me. If you've read ROBINSON CRUSOE and MOLL FLANDERS, by all means read ROXANA, too. You'll be amazed at how avant-garde ROXANA seems in comparison. Of the six of Defoe's major works that I have read, this is one of my favorites. It's not as tidy as CRUSOE and MOLL, but it has more of a plot and covers a broader range of emotions.

This novel follows the progress of a woman who is left by her husband with only her servant. She vows never to be poor again, and climbs her way back up the social ladder by using men and her body. The novel, while possibly intended as a conduct book to show women what happens to those who sin, reads today as a portrait of a woman trapped between society's views and her own upward movement. A very interesting, and at times disturbing, read.

I read "Robinson Crusoe" as a young boy, and never forgot it (55 years later); then, as a mature adult I read "A Journal of the Plague Year" and "Moll Flanders", both of which were execellent reads; and a few days ago I finished "Roxana", so let me share a few thoughts about the book.
First off, when you read Defoe, it is essential to realize that you are dipping into the very beginnings of English literature. Anything that is three centuries removed from the present has to be put into its historical context in order to make sense of it, and contemporary values must be held in abeyance. If you are capable of doing that, you are in for a heck of a good story, as are all of the books mentioned above.
"Roxana" concerns the rise and fall (mostly rise) of a woman left destitute, along with her five children, by her fool of a husband. Circumstances eventually lead her to prostitution as a means of survival, and as luck would have it, her "gentlemen protectors" are uniformly wealthy, and by means of careful marshalling of her earnings Roxana becomes independently wealthy. But what she lacks is social status, which leads her to her final alliance with a Dutch merchant who knows nothing of her past.
Along the way, Roxana begets and abandons about nine offspring here and there(this being the days before birth control), and one of them, Susan, figures in the downfall of Roxana. This novel pays great attention to the psychological aspects of living a life that is generally condemned by society. Defoe shapes Roxana's psychological health around his own ethical views, and, as such, makes Roxana suffer for her choices in the long run. Thus, the novel does not end happily for its central character, an interesting fact, in that this is the only novel of Defoe's that does not end happily for the protagonist.
All told, "Roxana" is a great read. Defoe certainly reflects his ethical biases, but at the same time does a good job of objectively fleshing out charaters who forcefully express points of view that differ from his own.
For me, everything worked beautifully in the novel until the last paragraph, but that happens a lot in literature.

I read this having recently enjoyed Moll Flanders. They are very different, Moll's story is something of a bawdy, satirical comedy, whereas Roxana's is a tragic tale. I think that other reviewers have perhaps missed the irony that is inherent in Defoe's work. While presenting these tales of 'fallen' women as confessions of repentence, I think that was something of a cover, without which his novels would have been unacceptable to his contemporary audience. He creates strong, autonomous women, driven by economics. He does not judge them and because of that neither do we. Was he in fact an early feminist? He believed strongly in the education of women and advocated equality in marriage in 'Conjugal Lewdness.' I think Roxana is an extention of those ideas.

I liked this book because of the type of grammar
used. Defoe went beyond societies taboos of that
time making this a controversial book. Once you get
started you like to see what's going to happen next.
This book, if written today, would definitely be a
romance, murder, mystery kind of book. The way Defoe
writes, it makes you feel like you are in that age.
After reading it I wanted to go out and do research'
on the age that the book was written in. I would
recommend this book to anyone who is open to a
challenging book that allows the reader to escape to
another world.

The itinerary of Daniel Defoe's heroine is absolutely not a common example of life in Paris and London in the 18th century. At that time, only 10 % of the population was older than 30 years and only one in one thousand was rich.

For Roxana, `Poverty was my Snare', `the dreadful Argument of wanting Bread'. And, `Poverty is the strongest Incentive; a Temptation against which no Virtue is powerful enough to stand out.'

What saves Roxana from a certain early death is her beauty, her sex-appeal: `In une Deshabile you charm me a thousand times more.'

With her beauty she amasses a fortune. After being a slave (`comply and live, deny and starve'), she is free (`the sweetest of Miss is Liberty'): `that while a Woman was single, that she had then the full Command of what she had, and the full Direction of what she did.'

She abhors the institution of matrimony and prefers to be a Mistress: `A Wife is treated with Indifference, a Mistress with a strong Passion; a Wife is looked upon as but an Upper-Servant, a Mistress is a Sovereign.'

But what ultimately brings Roxana down is religion and its correlative, remorse: `the Sence of Religion, and Duty to God, all Regard to Virtue and Honour given up ... (I was) no more than a [...].'

Remorse makes her look after her abandoned children, but this quest turns into a tragedy.

Like `Moll Flanders', this more moralist text constitutes a formidable portrait of the `horrid Complication' to be a woman.

Not to be missed.

This novel is about how the desperations brought on by poverty can lead not only to crime but to a moral vacuum within an individual. Roxana is left a penniless widow with five children at age 22. In order to survive she becomes the mistress of her landlord and eventually bears him a son. Greed replaces need, and she determines to become a "woman of Wealth." After the landlord is murdered in a robbery, she becomes the mistress of an even wealthier prince, refusing to marry him because that would mean having to share her wealth. Eventually, after guilt and repentance set in over her squandered life, she decides to marry the prince, but all does not turn out well: she moves to Holland with him where "I fell into a dreadful Course of Calamities ... and I was brought so low again." One of the most interesting characters in the book is Roxana's faithful maid Amy, who sticks by Roxana through all her tribulations, even once offering her body to the landlord when Roxana appears to be barren. But for the life of me, after reading the ending a dozen times, I can't tell for sure whether Amy actually kills Roxana's menacing daughter or merely threatens to do so. This edition retains all the original spellings and punctuations, so it's a little hard reading at first, but with a little perseverance the eye and mind adjust and the difficulty wanes. Worth the effort.

This is the first of Daniel Defoe's novel I've ever read and I found it pleasing enough in both story and characters. The plot was concise and quite surprising at times, making it entertaining enough to get through it with general ease.

One thing that is different is the age of the novel, seeing as it is written in the old English fashion, with words that would be considered grossly misspelled these days, and with many words capitalized that are not done so today, unless at the beginning of a sentence. Also, it can be confusing at times, especially when the characters talked, since there are no quotations used. You really have to pay attention when reading it at instances like this, but you can used to it pretty quickly if you choose too. A good classic, but one I will probably never read again.

Daniel Defoe has a way with words, lovely piece of words. I would advise you to read this book slowly to eat up the words.

I love this book. It was as good as "Moll Flanders" and has a very happy and satisfying ending.