Here's the last novel by Daniel Defoe, author of one of the best-loved novels in English literature – "Robinson Crusoe", of course. Warning – "Roxana" ends so abruptly that at first I thought Defoe had died before he was able to finish it, but it seems that's not so. The novel was, after all, published with that abrupt close in the year 1724, and Defoe lived for about another seven years. Looks like he just decided he'd had enough of it. Goodness knows why.
As was frequently the case with this author, the narrator of "Roxana" is the lead character – that is, Roxana herself narrates her own story in the first person, and in his introduction Defoe insists that the story is true. The lady in question, whose name isn't Roxana but apparently Susan, tells us that she was born in France and moved with her parents to England fleeing religious persecution. We skip over most of her childhood and pick up the story at the time of her marriage to a brewer's son, who has no inclination to work. He sires no less than five children, spends everything he's got, and eventually abandons his family, leaving them to starve. The rest of the story follows Roxana as she sends her children to her husband's relatives, picks up various lovers, acquires a pretty sizable fortune, gradually avoids miscellaneous troubles, marries again, and upon telling us that she and her husband enter into enormous disaster, ends her narration without providing any details. Okay.
I might as well add here that at one point, Roxana runs into trouble with a Jew, who recognizes some of her goods, assumes she stole them, and tries to bring her to court as a way of taking her property away. Oh boy. There's nothing very unusual about Jewish characters in literature of the period acting like that, but it bugged me. I wish Defoe and the rest of his colleagues had realized that there was no need to turn his antagonists into Jews; it adds nothing to the characters or story. It's something I'd better get used to if I'm going to continue reading books from the 18th Century, and afterwards too, for that matter.
Roxana tells us several times that her tale is intended to be educational, and an instructive lesson to those who seek to acquire material wealth by means of sin. She seems cautious to warn us as readers that the sinful part of her life may seem more exciting and grand than the more virtuous years, and it certainly does. I've got a picture in my mind of Defoe sitting at his writing desk, penning that warning about how exciting the sins of his character are, and chuckling to himself about the irony. I have no idea whether or not he actually did take note of that, but you never know.
I've mentioned in the past how rare it is for novelists to produce work featuring a member of the opposite sex. Remarkably, this author did it twice, here and with "Moll Flanders," which is also on the "1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die" list. To my mind, though, the most intriguing element of the sexual politics in "Roxana" is not the mere fact of the narrator's gender, but her lengthy explanation to the various men in her life as to why she won't marry them. As you might guess, this has to do with her deep desire to maintain her independence. She will sleep with various wealthy noblemen or rich men of business, but won't marry them because law and custom make wives into what she calls lead slaves. This is a normative attitude today – in 1742 it was revolutionary.
Various authors have written completions for the story. My edition has one in which Roxana and her husband do indeed undergo catastrophes of various kinds, and at the end of which Roxana dies. The introduction of this edition tells us that this continuation probably was not Defoe's work, though. So it looks like we're just going to have to put up with the ambiguous, uneasy close. Not like Defoe's usual cheerful conclusions. That's life.
Benshlomo says, We may like happy endings, but we don't always get them, in stories or in life.
Comments