Daniel Defoe, the popular 1700s smut peddler, is back with another sexy story about sexy sluts having sex - and this one might be his dirtiest yet! Roxana offers her maid up for sexual purposes to her lover! She dresses like a harem slave and puts on sexy little dance numbers! It's not as dirty as famed 1750 porno Fanny Hill, but it's not so far off.Defoe likes to put his characters in desperate straits. He's most famous for the one about the castaway, but his two next-most-famous books use the word "whore" a lot, and that's enough for a pattern for me: these books were meant to titillate, and it's fair to think of Defoe as a guy who wrote dirty books. He gets away with the racy stuff by creating those desperate straits, forcing his characters to make difficult decisions, and then clucking his tongue over it a lot, a tradition that extends all the way down to the Friday the 13th movies and their beloved habit of showing teenagers having premarital sex and then getting chopped up.More Having One's Cake And Fucking It Too- Dangerous Liaisons- Delta of Venus- Lolita- Fatal Attraction- Fifty Shades of GreyHe's also a pedant. If his books are distinguished by the exigencies they put their protagonists into, they're also consistent in their meticulous records. Crusoe made lists of all the supplies on his island. Roxana goes through her finances with you, in to-the-dollar detail, over and over. This too is a tradition, extending through Balzac and A Tree Grows In Brooklyn. It sounds boring, but if you want to understand how money worked in the 1700s, here's your big chance. You don't, of course, so it's mostly boring.Virginia Woolf says that Defoe "seems to have taken his characters so deeply into his mind that he lived them without knowing exactly how, and, like all unconscious artists, he leaves more gold in his work than his own generation was able to bring to the surface." It feels like to me like his characters escape him: they're more than who he thinks they are. (Or, at least, there's enough life in them to become more with time.) Robinson Crusoe is a lunatic. Moll Flanders is almost a feminist. And Roxana...well, Roxana is complicated. "Seeing liberty seemed to be the man's property, I would be a man-woman, for, as I was born free, I would die so," she says, and that's pretty awesome, right? She insists on independence. Her refusal to marry her series of companions seems triumphant to a modern reader. She reminds me of the mighty Becky Sharp, who similarly escapes her author and is punished by him for it, or despite it.But punished she is, and Roxana doesn't translate as well for we modern readers as Moll Flanders does. She's a sort of accidental unreliable narrator. She sounds convincingly kind, but she's terribly cruel to her children. I like her; I find it hard to reconcile the woman who seems constantly aware of and concerned about the feelings of others to the woman who drops a trail of abandoned children behind her like a harp seal. This is probably Defoe's fault; he tries harder to get into Roxana's head, to describe her motivation and personality, than he ever did with Moll or Robinson, and he mucks it up a bit. She just fails to come across as a consistent, believable human. This is the most psychological of Defoe's novels, and it exposes his weakness. On the plus side, though, there are some sexy parts.
Roxana is the young and beautiful wife of a foolish man who, after losing his business and money that he inherited from his father, abandons her with five children. For a woman in this situation in the early 18th century there are not many choices, but Roxana falls into one of the least desirable, that of a mistress. While she is quite successful, in terms of gaining a succession of wealthy benefactors, her own personal wealth and securing her financial future, it is at the expense of her relationship with her children, and their happiness as in order to embark on her career she has to first palm them off to relatives with limited resources. Defoe describes well the limited choices, and the consequences, faced by women who are abandoned and expected to make a living to survive with no employment opportunities, or help from family, the government or charity. When she manages to amass a tidy fortune and has an honourable offer of marriage, which she can accept as she understands her husband is dead, she baulks at the thought of having to give over her funds to her husband and risk being placed in the same penniless situation again and so rejects the offer. She is unable to reunite with her children and shows little interest in doing so. Through her relationships she has three or four more children and they are suitably cared for, but do not know their parents. She does not seem to regret this and while this may seem strange to our modern view it possibly reflects the high child mortality rate of the time and the author being a man rather than a mother. The book gives an insight into the difficulties faced by women and their marriages. Defoe's views on marriage come through in the narrative as well as his views on poverty and its effects on moral choices. Roxana is a strong and likeable character who makes the best she can out of her circumstances but is not sensible enough, due to vanity and greed, to change her course when given the opportunity to do so. Ultimately she regrets her choices and ends her life in misery. Roxana is an early example of a literary tragedy.
What do You think about Roxana (1998)?
This book has one of the strangest and most slapdash endings I've ever read...the only way it could have been stranger is if Defoe had concluded that all of Roxana's life had been an opium induced hallucination. It was as if someone came into the room to say Defoe's tea was ready while he was finishing the novel and he had to hurriedly bash out a final paragraph. This being said, the overall novel was quite enjoyable. Defoe's style comprises of a strangely relaxing, monotonous chant of well turned out phrases which is incredibly easy to read considering its age. I also relished the unrestrained lewdness which many classics lack, and the fact that Defoe clearly sympathise with Roxana's behaviour (here repentance is mentioned basically as a postscript, unlike his earlier novel Moll Flanders) and hardly condemns her actions at all, preferring instead to reason them out and justify them.
—Ellie
Roxanne !!! put on the red light... put on the red light...Indeed, Roxana has exceptional success in the mistress/pussypower business, becoming an independent lady in a world where men control commerce and political power. Defoe explores the role and viability of female Authority in a man's world, by narrating from Roxana's perspective.The book has many dull passages, but the fourth star is for the novel's dark drama, and its sometimes brilliant and morally complex passages - Roxana forcing her maid into sex; her scathing account of marriage to fools; her reflections on "storm-repentance" at sea; her bedside debate with the Dutch merchant about marriage and blackly amusing comparison of being wife v mistress; and several more. The ending of the novel sustains a tone of dread, and peculiar perplexity about women's supposedly 'maternal' instincts. I can't decide whether it feels forced, or oddly convincing for this operator in the world of men. In any case, it lingers in the mind, and makes me wonder who writes like this today. For even though women have far more options these days, many of the issues still arise.
—Ben Doeh
Well, Roxana may fit the bill for a seventeenth century 'whore' but otherwise her activities are not tremendously 'whore' like, apart from a possible period in France. She seems to me to be a person who is initially trying to survive difficult circumstances and choses the best routes to ensure her survival. Defoe was obviously being a little tricky with Roxana, I can't think otherwise, considering his preface. We must remember that at times Roxana is still a God fearing woman despite her 'sins'. A book which may have helped sexually liberate western woman with discussions of the benefits of not marrying and how a woman may keep her finances separate from a male lover or spouse. (It at least reflects some male attitudes to those questions). An interesting novel, with a story which wanders from one difficult scenario to another. Despite the fact that Defoe may not have written the ending himself, and the ensuing come down, I found it very enjoyable. I read the public domain version.
—Tebo Steele
