Daniel Defoe
1660-1731
ROXANA
1724
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I. Who was Daniel Defoe?
O dissenter
O business venturer,
O “projector”
O political journalist,
O undercover agent,
O novelist,
O etc.
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A Prolific writer
O ► 1719 First novel: Robinson Crusoe
O ►1722: The Fortunes and
Misfortunes of the Famous Moll
Flanders; A Journal of the Plague
Year; & Colonel Jacque
O ►1724: The Fortunate Mistress
[Roxana]
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Other important publications
O ►1697 Essay on Projects
O ►1698 An argument shewing, that a
standing army, with consent of Parliament, is
not inconsistent with a free government, &c
O ►1701 The True-Born Englishman
O ►1702 The Shortest Way with the Dissenters
O ►Review, 1704-13
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II. Defoe: a signature moment
O A. Political History
O Glorious Revolution,
O William & Mary
O Queen Anne
O B.
The Shortest Way with the Dissenters
O Impersonating in order to expose: The
extreme high-church voice (cf. dramatic
monologue).
O Unintentional self-exposure, selfcondemnation
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The Pillory: Understanding the extreme
http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47df-7499-a3d9e040-e00a18064a99
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Impersonation
O Defoe was adept at impersonation--
both in his writing and in his active
political work.
O His talent for impersonation is part
of his novelistic achievement.
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III. Precursor to Defoe’s
fiction: casuistry
O A. What is Casuistry?
O a system of moral problem solving
O Negotiates between general moral
rules and individual cases
O Operates on the principle that
Circumstanes alter cases
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B. Casuistry as precursor: Examples
O Athenian Mercury cases
O Question:
O Whether a tender Friendship between two Persons
O
O
O
O
of a different Sex, can be innocent?
Question:
If it be lawful for a Man, having bury’d his Wife, to
marry her own Sister, the first leaving issue
behind her?
Question:
Whether it is lawful to marry a Person one cannot
Love, only in compliance to Relations; and to get
an Estate?
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C. Casuistry and Roxana:
moral ambiguity
O 'm a Gentlewoman of a small Fortune, and Married to a Man
who . . . left me with a Charge of Children, and went to
another Country, without making the least Provision either
for them or me--Nor will his Friends look on us, and I've been
already very chargeable and troublesome to my own, who
are now grown as Cold as his: A gentleman now Importunes
me very much to be his Mistress, who I know Loves me
passionately, and will provide for me and them. I desire your
Advice what I were beset do, Whether I must lay my Children
to the Parish; for Begging won't maintain us, and Stealing is
as bad as Whoring? Or how I ought to behave myself for I
can find no Means, but either to yield to this Temptation; or
see my Children starve? I know I ought not to do the least
Evil that Good may come of it; but yet of two Evils, we must
chuse the least: An Answer to this would both oblige and
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quiet, you, &c.
Examples in the novel of “cases” of
problem solving
O "I was terribly frighted at the Apprehensions of
my Children being brought to Misery and
Distress, as those must be who have no Friends,
but are left to Parish Benevolence" (25).
O Defoe, both creates character and satirizes
the parish system of “poor relief,” while setting
up a commentary on the inadequacy of the
family “values.”
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Amy as casuist
O "there's abundance of Charity begins in that Vice,
and he is not so unacquainted with things as not to
know, that Poverty is the strongest Incentive" (27).
Amy says it would not be lawful for anything else
(28)
O "I think Honest is out of the Question, when Starving
is the Case" (28).
O Roxana states the virtuous (and heroic) extreme—
she would die before consenting to sex just to get
food: "a Woman ought rather to die, than to
prostitute her Virtue and Honour, let the Temptation
be what it will" (29)
O
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Roxana’s comments nevertheless create
sympathy for casuistical reasoning.
O O let no Woman slight the Temptation that being
generously deliver'd from Trouble, is to any Spirit
furnish'd with Gratitude and just Principles" (35).
O Notice how “principle” is used.
O Where are your sympathies?
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Amy again as casuist
O "he
calls you Widow, and such, indeed, you are;
for as my Master has // left you so many Years,
he is dead to be sure; at least, he is dead to you;
he is no Husband, you are, and ought to be free to
marry who you will . . ." (37).
O Landlord’s casuistical reasoning: "and it wou'd be
very hard that we should be ty'd by the Formality
of the Contract, where the Essence of it was
destroy'd" (41).
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So --What does casuistry provide?
O A way of solving problems: Casuistry emerges when a
culture faces questions and problems that don’t seem
to have adequate answers in traditional rules or
practices.
O Modern examples:
O “Applying the seventeenth-century casuistry of
accommodation to HIV Prevention”
O “Casus or casuistry? - Weapons of mass destruction:
Iraq's elusive weapons”
O “How Casuistry and Virtue Ethics Might Break the
Ideological Stalemate Troubling Agricultural
Biotechnology.”
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Circumstances alter cases & the novel
O If “circumstances alter cases,” it follows
that motive and intention have to be
considered.
O Casuistry thus provides an entry into the
mind.
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Paradox of casuistry
O Casuistry may provide a method of trying to follow
principle when there is no clear path, “What ought I
to do in these circumstances?”
O But it may also lead to the question “What can I get
away with?” –and still justify myself?
O Defoe called it “playing bo-peep with God.”
O Even “playing bo-peep with God” leads into the
mind (and is thus useful to the novelist).
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A view of the mind with no ethical guarantee
O Casuistic reasoning allows a glimpse of the
mind at work but does not guarantee the
ethical quality of that mind.
O Readers may feel ambivalent about Roxana’s
thinking. See Roxana’s report of the landlord’s
reasoning. (42).
O Casuistic reasoning offers the novelist a
means of creating both skepticism and
sympathy about the mind being revealed.
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The reader and Roxana’s divided mind
O Do you have a readerly alliance . . .
O when Roxana is relentlessly self-critical: "I say but too
O
O
O
O
justly, that I was empty of Principle . . . . and Conscience
left off speaking, where it found it cou'd not be heard"
(44).
when Roxana puts Amy to bed with the Landlord (46ff)?
when Roxana has a premonition of the Jeweler's death
(52-3).
when Roxana's tears of affliction are dried up by the
handsome treatment of the Prince--and she becomes the
"finest Woman in France" (58-64)?
When she says: "I had no Casuists to resolve this Doubt"
(68) and "as it was all irresistible, so it was all lawful"
(69).
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Why are Roxana’s men named as they are?
O By profession or status
O The Brewer
O The Landlord
O The Jeweler
O The Prince
O The Merchant
O How is this naming different from Wycherley’s
Sparkish, Mr. Pinchwife, etc.?
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Aloneness even in sociability
O Where is the social community when Roxana
is living with the Landlord/Jeweler? when
she becomes mistress to the Prince? What
do you make of the kind of confinement she
agrees to?
O Defoe allows Roxana to slip in and out of
social communities, to transform herself
continually.
O A continuous fluidity of identity.
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The Turkish dress
O Relation of power and appearance
O The novel seems to be making a case that power
in the world depends on appearances - people
ask who Roxana is, where she comes from, what
her fortune is, but there seems no reliable way to
check it out
O Defoe is responding to increased mobility and
decreased social context in which everyone is
known.
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Competing narrative trajectories
O Repentance vs Survival
O The repentance project seems embedded
in her continual self-castigation. As the
Preface says, "she makes frequent
Excursions, in a just censuring and
condemning her own Practice: How often
does she reproach herself in the most
passionate Manner; and guide us to just
Reflections in the like Cases" (preface)
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Repentance vs. Survival
O "with my Eyes open, and with my Conscience, as I may say,
awake, I sinn'd, knowing it to be a Sin, but having no Powr to
resist" (44).
O The Prince's delight in showing her the sights and telling her
the history as they traveled: "What valuable Pains were here
thrown away upon One, who he was sure, at last, to abandon
with Regret!"
O See Amy's repentance during the storm. 125. But Roxana
though she can mouth the words lord have mercy on me has
a kind of insensibility of soul - 129 She says it's no thorough
repentance.
O See great work of repentance. 159
O And her talk about being a Monument and a Memorial
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Her business is, however, SURVIVAL
O "I did not forget that I had been Rich and Poor
once already, alternately; and that I ought to
know, that the Circumstances I was now in,
were not to be expected to last always.”
O This memory of the past is foundational for
Roxana - It is knowledge based on experience.
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More on Roxana’s survival
O She is as realistic in assessing what it takes to survive
as she is in assessing her moral character. Survival
means not just getting on- but becoming so rich that
you cannot be touched, harmed, compromised.
O .
O Compare Hobbes.
• CHAPTER XI
• So that in the first place, I put for a generall
inclination of all mankind, a perpetuall and restlesse
desire of Power after power, that ceaseth onely in
Death. [A man] cannot assure the power and means
to live well, which he hath present, without the
acquisition of more.
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O And this too is one of Defoe's satirical
targets. Money makes the difference in
whether people have to deal with
consequences. E.g. When she comes to
England pregnant (after leaving Holland) she
is too rich to have the parish authorities
questioning her about who will pay for the
upkeep of the child
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What is the instructive agenda for
each: survival vs repentance?
O Defoe has Roxana speak out of the text to
the reader in order to reinforce the selfaccusatory judgments she makes.
O To the extent that the reader wants Roxana
to survive, to that extent, the reader is
engaged in a desire that runs counter to the
repentance agenda.
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How elastic can the principle that
"Circumstances alter Cases" become?
O "Comply and live; deny and starve" (110)
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A well-known case
O Henry Garnet, Jesuit priest, was long supposed to have provided the
justification for the Gunpowder plot.
O
“As a renowned casuist, some of the papists applied to
him to solve a nice case of conscience: ‘Whether, for the
sake of promoting the Catholic religion, it might be
permitted, should necessity require, to involve the
innocent in the same destruction with the guilty?’ to this
he replied, without any hesitation, ‘That, if the guilty
should constitute the greater number, it might.’ This
answer led to the Gunpowder Plot . . .”
O Edward William Grinfield, The Jesuits: an historical sketch, 1851, p. 119
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How does
dress
function in
Roxana?
O The Turkish
Habit (173)
O The Quaker
habit (211)
O “Quite
another
body”
The Turkish Habit
O Roxana becomes exotic and almost
untouchable
O She makes herself up and no one seems to
check her story out.
O She is a sign pointing to nothing. She is no more
than her appearance, no more than her
performance.
O Similarly, Roxana lives in uncertainty about the
reliability of others’ appearance & performance
(122).
O Appearance is all there is.
O Dress is so important to Roxana that her
view of disaster is to be naked (121).
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The Quaker’s habit
O “I had not only learn’d to dress like a
Quaker, but so us’d myself to Thee and
Thou, that I talk’d like a Quaker too, as
readily and naturally as if I had been
born among them”.
O “there was not a Quaker in the Town look’d
less like a Counterfeit than I did” (213).
O cf. “All this while, this was indeed, but a
Copy of my Countenance” (233).
Unfixed, Immaterial, Unidentifiable
O And so is credit:
O “Money has a younger Sister, a very useful and of􏰜
cious Servant in Trade, which in the absence of her
senior Relation, but with her Consent, and on the
Supposition of her Confederacy, is very assistant to
her; . . . but if she be never so little disappointed, she
grows sullen, sick, and ill-natured, and will be gone for
a great while together: Her name in our Language is
call’d CREDIT, in some countries Honour, and in
others, I know not what. “
O From Defoe’s Review
O South Sea Bubble – early financial collapse
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The past
O Roxana’s survival depends on erasing the past
O Anyone who holds a “trace” of the past can expose
her self-constructing fictions.
O The Jeweler’s relatives
O Her brewer husband
O The loss of the jewels
O The Dutch merchant says he “wou’d not upbraid
[her] with the past” (160), but that’s the past he
knows about.
The past produces evidence of
her identity.
O The dress becomes empirical evidence of her
existence in the past.
O As savvy as Roxana is, how could she have
carried a piece of the past with her?
O Materiality vs fiction (fictions of identity &
fictions of credit)?
O Even her “countenance” begins to be
evidence. Things are closing down for her.
O She can’t go to Paris. She can’t go to
London.
O Her options are “remote in the country” or out
of England (233)
The End of Prosperous Wickedness (243)
O What would you think of the novel if it ended
here?
O With the wedding, the dinner, the bedding, the
joking about fertility, the joining of fortunes?
O What genre underlies the narrative to this
point?
O What does “the handwriting on the wall”
suggest? (259)
Susan
O Susan becomes the material reality that limits
Roxana’s fictions (though named only once
[205])
O Susan is the past that forces its way into the
present.
O Susan creates a ‘new scene of life’ for
Roxana—and a new scene of interpretation for
the reader.
O What does Susan bring to the narrative that no one
else does?
O How do you take Susan into account as you interpret the
novel?
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