Roxana Flashcards
Protestant Whore
Though I was a Whore, yet I was a Protestant Whore.
Sick of the Vice
For now I began not to be sick of his Lordship only, but really I began to be sick of the Vice.
Why be a Whore
What was I a Whore for now? Why should I be a Whore now?
Repentance in the storm
For Repentance which is brought about by the meer Apprehensions of Death, wears off as those Apprehensions wear off; and Death-Bed Repentance, or Storm Repentance, which is much the same, is seldom true.
Last words about Roxana’s misery
The Blast of Heaven seemed to follow […]; and I was brought so low again, that my Repentance seems to be only the Consequence of my own Misery, and my Misery was of my Crime.
The She-Merchant
I became an Expert […] as any She-Merchant of them all.
Freedom for Women
I would be a Man-Woman; for I was born free, I would die so.
About marriage to the 1st husband
Be anything, be even an old Maid, the worst of Nature’s Curses, rather than take up with a Fool.
No feelings + use misery as an excuse
But the Misery of my own Circumstances hardened my heart against my own flesh and Blood.
Vanity
I was now become the vainest Creature upon Earth.
Richetti, “Life of Daniel Defoe” (2005) about Defoe’s narrators
Defoe’s narrators are “radical individualists seeking to break free from a hierarchal world”.
Defoe about marriage (“Conjugal Lewdness”)
Marriage without Love is the compleatest Misery in Life […]. He or She who, with that slight and superficial Affection, Ventures into the matrimonial Vow, are to me little more than legal Prostitutes.
Ian Watt, “The Rise of the Novel” (1957) about the individual in Defoe’s novels
Defoe’s novels are “an assertion of the primacy of individual experience” and “economic individualism”
