Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress

From the Preface of Defoe’s novel, Roxana is set up as an enticing, “Beautiful Lady” (1) who trades her physical attractiveness and charm for financial advancement and luxury. Roxana, who gains the name of a Turkish exotic dancer or courtesan, becomes an object of male lust; as an erotic subject, however, she becomes less reliant on sex than on male attention and admiration for her sense of self.

Her ambition to gain advancement from her looks and charms begins by a need to survive, as she claims that “the terrible Pressure of my former Misery” (33) is what induces her to become the Landlord’s mistress. However, as the Landlord’s and then the Prince’s mistresses, she gains a taste for luxury and having her good looks on display rather than living the private life of a virtuous woman. Flattered by the Prince—who says, “[Is] it fit that Face, pointing to my Figure in the Glass, should go back to Poictu?” (60)—Roxana gains trumped up notions of her own beauty and decides to publicize it abroad, while guarding the secret of her immodest virtue. 

Importantly, Roxana resists being classed as a regular whore, a woman who trades specific sexual acts for money. During their Italian journey,