Roxana by Daniel Defoe (Book Review)

Roxana 
By Daniel Defoe
Published by Penguin Classics, 1987
Price: $9.95

Roxana is just one of the aliases, or titles, that the protagonist of this faux biography, takes during her lifetime. Her real name is Mademoiselle de Beleau, but I don't think that at any point she actually addresses her self as such. So for the purposes of this review, I'll just call her Roxana.

Roxana is born in France but at an early age her parents immigrate to England to escape religious persecution. She grows up well cultured, smart, pretty and lacking nothing. At the age of 15, her father arranges for her to get married to the handsome son of a prosperous brewer. Finding him at first very attractive, Roxana soon learns that her attractive new husband is a complete idiot. He has no interest in his father's business and is only concerned with partying, hunting, and travelling. To no one's surprise, after his father's death, the brewery business goes to hell and then her husband burns through her substantial dowry as well. Roxana's brother, who was holding a legacy from her own father, makes some bad business deals and ends up in debtor's prison and loses her money as well! On top of this Roxana has five small children to feed! Her husband runs off and abandons her and their kids to their fate! And their landlord wants his rent.

Roxana convinces some of her husband's well-off relatives to take her children in, but she is at a loss as to how she herself is going to survive. This was England in the late 1600s, so there's no welfare or Medicaid or unemployment you can collect. If you were poor, you just DIED. The only help she has is her young maid, Amy, who decides to stay on with her mistress and work for free.

Luckily...I guess, rescue comes in the form of her landlord. He sees her situation and starts to be really nice to her. Letting her live in her rooms for free, giving her all kinds of gifts. I'm sure you're thinking this a bit seedy, but he even proposes to live with her as husband and wife and gives her money guarantees of his sincerity. Roxana eventually agrees and so begins a long life of Roxana living with men and being supported by them but never wanting to be tied down and ruled over by them by getting married.

The thing about Roxana that I found puzzling was that all her life she thought of herself as a "whore". I didn't see her as that at all. She just didn't want men to have power over her. She didn't ask for money or jewels or gifts from the men she was with. In fact, she went out of her way not to ask of them any favors or compensation. They do give her those things but only because they really like her or love her. And it wasn't like she was sleeping with multiple dudes at the same time or being a female "playa". For the most part, when she was in a "relationship" with a man, she was monogamous. They were almost like common law marriages. In fact, most of the men treated her like a wife.

I think Roxana was too hard on herself. She liked to have sex. There's nothing wrong with that. She was even ok with a threesome with her maid and one of her beaus. Roxana liked nice things. She liked socializing. Again, there's nothing wrong with any of those things. She was kinda into free love 300 years before it became a thing. Eventually, she DOES amass great wealth, but still continues her pattern of living with men without ever marrying them. She likes their companionship but males back then had ultimate power legally back then. After experiencing what she did with her first husband, she never again let her affairs be ruled by a fool.

On the back of this book, it says this novel is about "the decline and defeat of a woman fatally tempted by the sinful glamour of immorality". Again, I don't see it that way. I ADMIRE Roxana. That she was able to stay independent most of her life and not only survive but thrive. The only thing that was an enemy to her were the societal codes of her time. Unmarried women who slept with men were seen as harlots. I admired her strength and ability to move on even though society and her religion were constantly telling her she was a horrible person.

Roxana is not a saint. She commits some pretty brutal acts, mostly to her children. Like an NFL player she has multiple kids by multiple men. She doesn't really have any attachment to any of them and usually finds a way to dump them on a relative of her lover or finds some kind hearted sucker, I mean soul, to take care of them. That was pretty despicable of her. She saw children more as an unfortunate byproduct of sex rather than living beings to cherish and love.

I really liked the character of Amy as well. Her relationship with Roxana is much like a Batman/Robin, Don Quixote/Sancho Panza dynamic. Amy is her true friend through thick and thin, almost a sister. She is loyal to a fault, even offering to sleep with Roxana's lovers to help her out at certain points. There is a hint here and there that something sexual might even have went down with the two women, much before the current OBSESSION with bisexuality.

This was Daniel Defoe's last book and another quote from the back says it is "the only of Defoe's novels that does not end with the triumph of its protagonist". I disagree. I think Roxana lived the life she wanted. She did what she wanted. She slept with who she wanted. She was in charge of her destiny. Her "tragic" end only occupies about one paragraph in this book. Her life is the rest. I think Defoe had to punish her with her moral doubts throughout the book to sabotage his admiration of her. But he did subtitle the book "The Fortunate Mistress". The moral police of his time would never have stood for Roxana NOT getting punished for her decadent ways. So Defoe gives a couple of winks to the reader that yeah, Roxana knows she's a bad girl. But a fascinating woman controlled by none.

My Grade: A