Vanya Nikolova

Essay on topic: What is the role of maternal love in Defoe's

novel Roxana?
Faculty Number : 0603131054
Major: Bulgarian and English language
Year : 4th
Defoe's novel Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress tells the story of a beautiful woman who

becomes an upper-class prostitute to save herself from poverty. But this is also a story about a

female who must survive in the male dominated English society in the early part of 18th

century. The author himself, an Eighteenth Century man, chooses this personage, because his

main purpose was to educate and please the audience. But teaching morality it does not

necessarily mean a saint as a main character, it has to be someone like us, who can make

mistakes and commit sins, but at the end, draws a conclusions on his own, closely related to

the self-experience and at the same time showing to the reader what is right and what is

wrong. The myth of the 18th century for ordinary people who achieved success is implied in

the story, as well as that success does not always equal with happiness. Along with the

spiritual and moral decline of Roxana, who is the narrator of the story too, are presented and

the arguments for her choices and her bitter conclusions of repentance.

The author's strict religious beliefs are revealed through his ideas about motherhood, which is

considered as a saint act and inevitable part of women's life. But during 18th century maternity

has been used many times for higher purposes and was considered as part of women's

duties,as the female power have been seriously limited, so the woman is usually represented

as mother. And at the beginning of the story we see the same case, a married woman with five

children, leading life according to the society's norms, represented as choiceless, voiceless

mother, because of the domination of her male counterpart. But forced by the consequences

she chooses abandonment rather than committing herself to strugle with her beloved children.

And it is actually where the story of her corruption begins. She chooses the wrong way, as she

reflects later on her decision “the misery of my own circumstances hardened my heart against

my own flesh and blood, and when I considered they must inevitably be starved, and I too, if I

continued to keep them about me, I began to be reconciled to parting with them all, anyhow

and anywhere, that I might be freed from the dreadful necessity of seeing them all perish and
perishing with them myself”(Defoe, Chapter 2) condemning herself for her deed. She points

out her as the only one responsible for the life she had done and for the sins she had

committed.

As the story goes, Roxana receives lots of opportunities in her life, because of her beauty.

Besides that she is reluctant at the beginning and too afraid to trade with herself, she gives it a

try. And the result is fast; she gets part of the high society and becomes a wealthy woman. But

in addition to these achievements is the fact that her conscience hardens by degrees, until she

is not able to be completely attached neither to a man, nor to her own offspring. She forgets

about her legitimate children, left in England, and does not really love her illegitimate

children from the jeweler and the prince. Her new way of life, gave her new values and

virtues, and from a loving mother she becomes a woman pragmatic, who care mostly for

keeping her wealth untouched. She realizes her priorities and is blaming the society that puts

women in the position she is. What is more, she even refuses to get marry for the Dutch

merchant and to legitimate the child she awaits from him, because this will limit the freedom

she has achieved. And besides that in 18th century the illegitimate kids are mark and testimony

for the wickedness of their mother and the crime she has committed, she can not make

compromise with herself and the independence she has, because, according to Susan

Greenfield “marriage, to which maternity is legally bound, ironically provides no legal

support for woman's role as caretaker”. (Greenfield, pg.23)

The role of maternal love in this novel is of high importance, because Roxana realizes that

the social conditions does not allow to her to be a mother and self-independent. So she is even

willing to be “a man-woman; for as I was born free, I would die so” (Defoe, Chapter 14). This

statement can be examined as some type of rebellion against the patriarchal laws of the 18th

century society, but it corrupts and makes her loose the idea about the true values. She rather
keep her children at distance and support them financially, instead of giving them the love

that only mother can. So the relationship is alienated and shows her moral declination.

Roxana becomes an example about a female not limited to be a mother. She chooses for her

pseudonym an exotic name which meaning is “luminous beauty”, and clearly indicates that

she focuses on her beauty and her fortune as a mistress, rather than having a family, husband.

She is fond of her legitimate children though, in her own way. After starting to live with the

Quaker woman, she even begins to reflect upon her manner of living, in order to be able to get

close to her three children from the brewer.

The big collision in the story is when Roxana's daughter appears and threatens to reveal all

details about her mother's history of being a prostitute and expose her, because all that is kept

in secret from her honest and moral husband, the Dutch merchant. And besides that Roxana

does everything possible to keep her away, in the moment when she happens to kiss her she

feels “a secret inconceivable pleasure” (Defoe, Chapter 26), which stands as a proof that the

love between mother and daughter can not be destroyed. Furthermore, the maternal love is the

only thing that can awaken her conscience, to make her repent of her sins and remind what is

valuable in life.

The pain of Roxana's loss of her daughter actually reveals her love as a mother, and what

makes it worst is that she also feels guilty for it, because her maid Amy did it in order to

protect her. This fact makes her go insane, because she realizes her failure as mother and “she

was ever before my eyes. I saw her by night and by day; she haunted my imagination” (Defoe,

Chapter 30) , because she can not forgive herself and will never be able to.

In conclusion, the story of Roxana can be defined as the perfect example what not to be done

and how a life in quest for individualism may have a tragic end. The heroine's psychological
collapse suggests also that a failure of being mother leads inevitably to not a good end and

reveals the mother as wicked and sinful. And besides that the society during 18th century is

patriarchal and the females are oppressed by the males, Roxana is the one who makes her own

choices. She admits sincerely and recounts about her wicked life and shows that the price she

has paid for all of her achievements is too high and not worthy. She is her own judge at the

end and is so ashamed of all she has done that even she can not forgive herself.

In other words, the novel can be categorized as a morality tale of a woman who goes astray

and looses the right way. Roxana does not realize that maternity is an integral part of woman's

identity and when she eventually does, it is already too late and there is no way back.

WORKS CITED FROM

Daniel Defoe Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress. Wikisource – an online free library, 6 May
2008 <http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Roxana:_The_Fortunate_Mistress>

Maurer, Shawn Lisa. "I wou'd be a Man-Woman": Roxana's Amazonian threat to the ideology
of marriage.(Critical Essay), Texas Studies in Literature and Language, September 22, 2004
<http://www.accessmylibrary.com/article-1G1-123708951/woud-man-woman-roxana.html>

Susan Greenfield “Introduction Mothering daughters, Novels and the politics of family
romance” Mothering daughters. 2002 by Wayne State University Press

http://books.google.bg/books?
id=3tvMLy_MSt8C&printsec=frontcover&dq=Susan+Greenfield+Mothering+daughters&sou
rce=bl&ots=ptHBvtr2mx&sig=OPeQqdPnn0rttVIdzTXCgKEnupM&hl=bg&ei=JVBlS8bLJ4
79_AaSzd2LCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CAcQ6AEwAA#v=on
epage&q=&f=false