Roxana: or, The Fortunate Mistress (1724) - Daniel Defoe

Written by Daniel Defoe
Read by Juanita McMahon
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Roxana: or, The fortunate mistress. : Being a history of the life and vast variety of fortunes of mademoiselle de beleau. (1724)

Or
Roxana : the fortunate mistress, or, a history of the life and vast variety of fortunes of Mademoiselle de Beleau, afterwards called the Countess de Wintselsheim in Germany ; being the person known by the name of the Lady Roxana in the time of Charles II

Or
The life and adventures of Roxana the fortunate mistress or Most Unhappy Wife. : Containing, the vast variety of fortunes that attended her thro’ the several Stages of Life: Of her Advancement to the greatest height of Riches and Honour ; and afterwards falling into the most melancholy Scenes of Misery and Distress, which continued to the Time of her Death ; with several curious reflections, and entertaining particulars. (1749)

· Length: 15 hrs and 14 mins
· Release date: 10-03-13
· Publisher: W. F. Howes Ltd

Roxana, Defoe’s last and darkest novel, is the autobiography of a woman who has traded her virtue, at first for survival, and then for fame and fortune.

Beautiful, proud Roxana is terrified of being poor. When her husband leaves her penniless with five children, she must choose between being a virtuous beggar or a rich whore. Embarking on a career as a courtesan and kept woman, Roxana passes from man to man in order to maintain her lavish, glamorous lifestyle. But this life comes at a cost; she is torn between sinful prosperity and the respectability she craves.

Defore was not satisfied with the end and rewrote it several times. I don’t know which ending is used with this recording. In The Project Guttenberg version she had a sad but peaceful death.

She is a complicated character and this is not an easy read.

From Goodread - “It feels to me like his characters escape him (Defoe): they’re more than who he thinks they are…. Robinson Crusoe is a lunatic. Moll Flanders is almost a feminist. And Roxana…well, Roxana is complicated…. 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…. This is the most psychological of Defoe’s novels, and it exposes his weakness.”