Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress: Or, a History of the Life and Vast Variety of Fortunes of Mademoiselle de Beleau, Afterwards C

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.

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.

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.

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.