37 pages • 1 hour read
Daniel DefoeRoxana: The Fortunate Mistress
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1724A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Whoring, Lust, and Ambition
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, the Prince comments that Roxana’s company has kept him “Honest” because her sexual favor has meant that he has not “wander’d among the gay World here” (104) and taken a prostitute. Thus, although Roxana is not a wife, as a serial monogamist and a constant companion, she is classed above the common whores. It is only amongst the exotic entertainments of her London home that she becomes known as “Madam Roxana” (271), a procurable woman who is only set apart from common whores through her financial means. In displaying the increasingly flimsy distinctions between different types of whoredom, the text encourages the reader to see them all as part of the same system that trades flesh for worldly gain.
Until Roxana’s reputation becomes something she wishes to escape, first through entering the Quaker’s retreat and then through marriage to the Dutchman, she prefers the role of mistress to that of wife. She regards her first marriage as a dupe, which tricked her out of her own money and left her destitute. She would rather be a “Woman of Business” (131), a career mistress who is in charge of her own money, than a wife, who has both responsibility and money taken “off of [her] Hands” (153). When Defoe poses the question of Roxana’s experience—“[W]as ever Woman so stupid to choose to be a Whore, where she might have been an honest Wife?” (157)—the answer is ambiguous. She finds that being “honest” (157) is the most miserable state when a woman is married to a foolish, incompetent man; however, whoredom can also become burdensome, when a woman’s reputation threatens to expel her from polite society. Roxana therefore changes her mind according to her current circumstances. It is this flexibility, rather than an ideologically rigid stance, which enables her to enjoy “unexpected Success in all her wicked Courses” (2).
Female Solidarity in a Man’s World
The most steadfast relationship in the novel is that between Roxana and her maid, Amy. “A cunning Wench” (25), Amy is fiercely loyal to Roxana, stays with Roxana during the lean period when she has been abandoned by her husband, and acts as the agent who secures the advancement of Roxana’s designs. Amy undertakes the tedious task of being Roxana’s spy and messenger by distributing funds to Roxana’s children, whilst doing her best to keep them from contacting their mother.
Amy is rewarded when Roxana and her lovers allow her to be in a worldly, luxurious milieu, where she is able to conduct romances and intrigues of her own. Increasingly, Amy finds ways to look after her own interests whilst looking after Roxana’s. Though she is “frighted at the Sea,” Amy “ventur’d her Carcass once more by Water” (215) to go to France and find Roxana’s Dutch Merchant, so that she can meet with her own “Favourite” (216), whom she met from Roxana’s time with the Prince. Amy mirrors Roxana’s example and discovers that using her charms to gain male favor can bring pleasure and advancement.
The two women’s lifestyles, which become increasingly illicit and go beyond polite society’s prescribed female roles of virginity, wifehood, and widowhood, bond them in a confidence that is unusual, given their different ranks. Roxana does not only strategize with Amy, but “unbosom[s]” (265) herself to her when she is troubled by where her actions have led her. In a world where Roxana has lived in deceit, Amy, who has been with her all along, knows the truth about her yet remains loyal. Roxana is therefore able to be vulnerable with Amy in a way that is not available to her with the people she has deceived. However, the dynamics of the master-servant relationship persist enough so that the confidence goes only one way.
Defoe titillates his presumed male reader by showing Roxana and Amy’s physical closeness; they both take the Landlord as their lover, and they share a bed when the Lord who keeps Roxana in London pays his visit. The Lord’s reaction, which is to joke that Roxana may be in bed with either a “Mrs. Amy” or a “Mr. Amy” (185), shows how far from conventional morality she has strayed. While sexual relations between Amy and Roxana are not made explicit, the image of them sharing a bed leaves the possibility open. However, the most explicit sexual act between Roxana and Amy is when Roxana strips Amy naked before the Landlord and forces her to have sex with him as many times as it takes to make her pregnant. In this sadistic act, Roxana uses her power over Amy to make her an equal in lapsed virtue. When Amy protests that she has become “undone,” Roxana charges her with the enquiry, “[Am] I not a Whore as well as you?” (47). Roxana sees Amy’s sexual relations with the Landlord as a “Game” (48) that cements both her own position as desired mistress rather than wife and Amy’s loyalty as a fellow whore.
Still, by the end of the novel, Amy and Roxana are no longer intimates, as the strain of trying to cover up Roxana’s deception results in Amy playing an instrumental part in Roxana’s daughter’s death. Rather than being solely remorseful for her own actions, Roxana lashes out at the Agent who “had made her [daughter] away” and Amy responds by her temporary “Absence” (325) from Roxana’s side. Their mutual guilt over the girl’s death lessens their intimacy, as the values and deceptions they have mutually stood for prove to be deadly. However, their remorse and good luck in not being held accountable for their crimes unites them.
Getting Away With It: How Roxana’s World Facilitates Her Crimes
Roxana’s succession of triumphs in subverting the moral order and profiting from it are not only a result of her own actions but the responses of those she encounters, who either ignore her crimes or facilitate them. As Roxana and Amy set on their “wicked Courses” (2) of seducing several rich benefactors and then retreating into a genteeler life with the Quaker and Dutchman, they remain largely unquestioned and unscathed. Defoe builds tension in his narrative by having the threat of being found out or entrapped in infamy hanging over Roxana; however, at every turn, and with ever higher stakes, Roxana escapes the punishment a Christian moralistic society would bestow on her.
When the Landlord, who has been Roxana’s benefactor, dies on the road, she gets away with pretending to be his widow, although she never marries him. This benefits her, first in giving her enough pretensions to respectability to attract the Prince, who sets her up in a life of luxury for several years and after his departure, and to solicit the Dutchman’s assistance to take charge of the Landlord’s jewels and fortune. The Dutchman chooses to see Roxana as she would present herself to him, “that I was a Widow; that I had some Jewels to dispose of, and also some Money […] but being but a Woman […] I knew not what to do, or how to secure my Effects” (112).
Roxana’s combination of feminine beauty and professed hardship as a result of widowhood makes powerful men feel both lustful and protective towards her. When a Jewish potential purchaser of the Jewels, who is described as having “Devil’s Looks” (113) amongst other Anti-Semitic attributes, questions Roxana’s honesty and even suspects that she has murdered her husband, his low societal status invalidates his doubts, meaning that the Dutchman prefers to go with Roxana’s testament.
There is a similar occurrence when Roxana’s grown-up daughter comes to find her and claims that Roxana is both an infamous courtesan and her mother. Two of the gatekeepers of Roxana’s virtue, her Dutchman husband and the pious Quaker, choose to discredit the daughter’s report because their comfort, affections, and in the Dutchman’s case, the reputation of his family, are invested in Roxana’s virtue. Further, the Dutchman and the Quaker are associated with Roxana’s sheer good luck; the Quaker’s lodgings and friendship are procured when Roxana tires of being publicly infamous, and the Dutchman returns at the moment she feels that she could at last benefit from marriage’s security.
Another factor that allows Roxana to get away with her vices is the contemporary custom whereby wealthy women would retreat into obscurity during the obvious stages of pregnancy. This enables her to birth illegitimate children without attracting too much notice. Also, Roxana’s employment of Amy and the funds she has secured enable her to provide for her offspring in the most discreet mode possible. When, ironically, it is Roxana’s legitimate daughter, by her first husband, who goes to great lengths to force her mother to own up to her past, Roxana solicits Amy’s help to put her off in a way that procures the young woman’s death. Roxana claims that
she brought me even to the Brink of Destruction and wou’d, in all Probability, have trac’d me out at last, if Amy had not by the Violence of her Passion, and a Way which I had no Knowledge of […] put a Stop to her; of which I cannot enter into the Particulars here (328).
Roxana here absolves herself of responsibility for her daughter’s death, scapegoating Amy and claiming her ignorance of the methods she used. Roxana’s excuse-making and evasions frame her culpability, but the daughter’s low social status means that her life does not matter enough for anyone to investigate the reasons behind its loss and Roxana is never brought to justice. Overall, Defoe depicts a world that allows Roxana to get away with her crimes. However, through his references to Roxana’s torment and “Repentance” (330) at the end, he provides the moralistic Christian reader with some hope that she will be brought to justice on Judgement Day. It is up to God to step in, where humans, blinded by Roxana’s charms, have failed to expose her and prevent her run of wicked successes.
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