Roxana: A Tragic Aspect of the Masquerade

Abstract

Roxana: A Tragic Aspect of the Masquerade Defoe's Roxana has remained one of topical conundrums while numerous attempts have been made to elucidate what the fiction is all about. I have tried my own to flesh out the fiction's generic features as a spiritual autobiography by bringing light on the author's historical backdrop. I argue how Defoe the man is perhaps another tain of the mirror, making possible the phenomenon of Roxana. This perception is remotely reflected in its usual reception as a doppelganger fiction. Sets of doubles thread through the novel, offering a structural basis for possible analogies. The choice of a married woman with children constitutes a layer for a feminist masquerade as she happens to suffer so much as to circumvent any simplistic moral judgment. I suggest this purposively elusive theatrical performance may spring from the status as social minority commonly shared by the writer and his leading female character. I have tried to show how Defoe's religious root ends up foreshadowing the heroine's metamorphic adventure, ultimately betraying an innate tragic vision relentlessly.