Roxana - The Fortunate Mistress

Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress is a 1724 novel by Daniel Defoe. The novel concerns the story of an unnamed 'fallen woman'. In Roxana, a woman who takes on various pseudonyms, including 'Roxana' describes her fall from wealth thanks to abandonment by a 'fool' of a husband, and movement into prostitution upon his abandonment. Roxana moves up and down through the social spectrum several times, by contracting an ersatz marriage to a jeweler, secretly courting a prince, being offered marriage by a Dutch merchant, and is finally able to afford her own freedom by accumulating wealth from these men.

The novel examines the possibility of eighteenth century women owning their own estate despite a patriarchal society, as with Roxanna's celebrated claim that 'the Marriage Contract is... nothing but giving up Liberty, Estate, Authority, and every-thing, to the Man'. The novel further draws attention to the incompatibility between sexual freedom and freedom from motherhood. Published anonymously, and not attributed to Defoe till 1775, Roxana was nonetheless a popular hit in the eighteenth century.

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