This move effectively isolates her from any who bear her sympathy with regard to her plight and places her in a position far from any allies who might assist her in her determination to escape the threat that Mr. B. represents. It does in fact place her with Mrs. Jewkes who far from being sympathetic of Pamela’s plight sees the situation in the same way as the upper class and strongly encourages her to make the master happy and take advantage of the opportunities becoming his mistress would afford her. Pamela is of the servant class and cannot expect a dowry, therefore; she simply is not willing to part with the only thing that makes her a being of value in the marriage market and goes to great lengths to hang on to her investment, that investment being her virtue which in reality is a metaphor for her body. Pamela’s father’s statement that “they fear that she will be so grateful to reward him with that Jewel, your Virtue, which no Riches, nor Favour, nor anything in this life can make up to you” (27) reinforces the notion that virtue is a marketable commodity since jewels are just such a commodity.
As a servant Pamela has little power and is under the power of her master and therefore has few means of thwarting his intentions towards her. One of the ways in which she defies him is to set aside the fine suit of clothing that he has given her and purchases her own, more suitable to her position in life. The Literary Encyclopedia makes the point that “having accepted Mr. B.’s property in the guise of the suit of clothes at the beginning of the novel, Pamela has effectively become her master’s property” (1) whether she wishes it or not. This point of view specifies that Pamela's destiny will be purchased one way or another and that she has very little choice regarding the eventual outcome.
Her letters also provide a source of against his intentions in that as long as they are getting away other people are aware of what he intends. When she can no longer send them she decides to hide them from prying eyes by stitching them inside her petticoats, an act which the Literary Encyclopedia refers to as “emphasizing their status as a material articulation of her selfhood” (2). By this point Mr. B. has become as intrigued by Pamela’s letters as he is by her and orders that she present him with them as he wants to discover how she maintain such determination for self-preservation given all the obstacles that he has placed before her. The Literary Encyclopedia describes this incident as a “literal and metaphoric undressing of Pamela that divest her of the two signifiers of her social and moral self: her clothes and her letters.” (2)
Her letters provide the incentive and ultimately become the driving force that leads Mr. B. to marry Pamela. He admits that he loved her for her body but it was her letters that convinced him of her virtue and honor and eventually made him want to marry her instead of rape her. Pamela’s virtue is the price she pays for her marriage to Mr. B. This same virtue is what provided her with the little power that she did have. In marrying Mr. B. she loses that chastity which constituted both her market value and her personal power to become the possession of Mr. B. although on a far different level than her previous one.
Richardson’s Pamela’s, a lowly servant girl of unparalleled virtue, secures her reward in marriage to Mr. B. or does she?
Has Pamela’s extravagant and consistent virtue has been rewarded by her marriage to Mr. B. and her subsequent move up the social ladder? Viewed simply virtue has been rewarded if virtue is merely a result of maintaining chastity until marriage. Marriage itself becomes the reward, especially for Pamela who has risen in class through her marriage. The more complex view does not allow this to be the case recognizing that Pamela has little power as a servant and marriage to Mr. B. does not provide her any real power. She is still completely bound to his obey orders and obeys them unhesitatingly even when she questions their validity. Her gratitude to Mr. B. for his elevation of her to his social plane in exchange for her virtue does not allow for her to do anything contrary to his wishes. The good wife merely remains the good servant who has effectively surrendered her independence to the system that persecuted her in the first place.
Dafoe’s Roxana in contrast to Pamela started out as a young lady of the upper class and eventually chose to ignore virtue in order to advance her fortunes and maintain control over that fortune herself. Roxana like Pamela is fully aware of the value of virtue and all that it entails and initially falls into the pattern prescribed by the period’s social values. She marries a wealthy son of the merchant class only to discover that he has no aptitude for business, which leaves them destitute. He deserts her and their five children, an act that forces her to send her children to his relatives, as she has no means to feed or even clothe them. It is this experience that ultimately convinces Roxana that marriage is not the answer to security. She views it as the problem and rejects the bonds of matrimony as economically unsound if it places her at the mercy of fools such as her first husband.
At the urging of her maid, Amy, and to preserve her own life, she agrees to become the mistress of her landlord and although he considers it to be a rightful marriage due to the absence of their respective spouses, she labels herself as a “whore”. The basis upon which both Amy and the landlord justify the marriage as being legitimate lies in the fact that “his wife being gone from him, and refusing to lye with him” (37) negates the marriage contract since she is refusing to “do the Office of a wife”(37). Once she has overcome her initial training and reluctance to being a “whore” she acknowledges that as a mistress she will receive money and not lose control over the assets that she gains in the liaison. Instead of exchanging her body for marriage and the supposed security that marriage infers she is exchanging it for money over which she will retain complete management.
In effect in her role of mistress her body remains her own property rather than that of a husband and proves to be a rather marketable asset.
Following the death of her landlord “husband” in France, Roxana receives all the benefits that a true wife would receive since she was acknowledged as his wife. This windfall only serves to reinforce her determination to remain unmarried and firmly in control of her own fortunes. This line of thought according to Shawn Lisa Maurer “obviates the need for marriage and challenges the foundation of male control and ownership of women’s property -- understood as both her body and her money” (3). Roxana has moved mentally and literally from the realm of the traditional role of wife to that of an enterprising merchant fully cognizant of the value of her assets. It is in this frame of thought she takes a second lover who is a foreign prince.
Her liaison with the prince lasts about three years and serves to increase her overall personal wealth substantially. She is aware that in the manner of all mistresses she may be dropped as quickly as she has been taken up and with this in mind determines “that, therefore, it was my Business to take Care that I shou’d fall as softly as I cou’d” (105). She obtains good advice and makes careful investments with her money, which give her the freedom to live an independent life apart from any man, should she choose to.
During the course of their liaison she bears two sons to the Prince who of course cannot be legitimate heirs for him even though he has no children by his wife. This is the down side of avoiding marriage which legitimizes children, and gives them the right to inherit such property and titles as there may be in the family. For Roxana her gains financially far outweigh any problems illegitimacy bestows on her children, who apart from the children of her first marriage to the Brewer’s son are well looked after financially and are eventually placed into positions that allow them to make their ways quite successfully. Her attitude also reflects an attitude in conflict with the values of marriage that assume marriage is a vehicle that produces legitimate children capable of furthering an unblemished family line.
Roxana determines to remove from France back to England once her affair with the prince is over and her need puts her in contact with a Dutch merchant whose assistance she requires in converting her money and jewels into Bills of Exchange. Unfortunately he puts her touch with a Jewish merchant that he must ultimately rescue her from. This incident is the precursor to her next affair with the Dutch merchant who in truth wants to marry her. He unlike the landlord and the Prince is quite eligible since he is a widower of some wealth. Roxana refuse his offer of marriage out of her determination to retain control of her own affairs even though he assures her that he would have documents prepared that would ensure this for her.
After numerous refusals of his proposal she explains her aversion to marriage telling him “that the very Nature of the Marriage-Contract was, in short, nothing but giving up Liberty, Estate, Authority, and everything, to the Man, and the Woman was indeed, a meer Woman ever after, that is to say, a Slave” (148). Because she has already secured the financial security that comes with marriage she also has the ability to follow her desires and feels little need for the respectability that marriage implies. She has a preference for economic freedom over the bonds that automatically accompany marriage and even though the Dutch merchant assures her that he would allow her that freedom those preferences lead her to decline in the belief that: “holding on to her money would place the marriage on a “Foundation of Unkindness,” rendering both herself and the merchant “suspected one to another”” (Maurer, 11).
She is quite willing to barter her body in exchange for debts owed but is equally unwilling to risk placing her property in jeopardy of falling under the control of another. The merchant counters with the argument that should she consent to marry him in exchange she should “still manage the assets that men accrue though their “Toil” and “Anxiety” but avoid that toil and anxiety, be content with what all the world was, and not feel bondage because there would be mutual love that created one aim to counteract that feeling” (148). Roxana refuses this argument based on her previous experience assuring him that the conventions inherent in the social values permit these arguments from being the truth. Even the fact that she is pregnant cannot sway her in her decision to remain single and in control of her own affairs. He is unable to accept this and returns to Paris telling her that no matter what occurs she always has a friend in him.
Roxana admits that she has quite probably been a fool in not marrying him and admits that “I threw away the only Opportunity I then had, to have effectually settl’d my Fortunes and secur’d them for this World” (161). She initially questions her decision and even has regrets for remaining in her “Life of Scandal and Hazard” (161). The expression of these doubts suggests that she still recognizes some values in the conventions she has forsaken for the alternative of being financially free and foreshadows her eventual capitulation to the merchant’s proposal. With the merchant’s return to Paris Roxana returns to England where she intends to have her baby and perhaps realize her goals of becoming “Mistress to the King himself” (161). A lover of such high standing would certainly allow her to add to her already substantial estate.
She recognizes her need for advice in handling her finances and secures the aid of Sir Robert Clayton whose assistance eventually makes her a wealthy woman who has no need for the financial security provided by marriage. She also has no need to continue as a mistress to any man but says that her “vanity” leads her to continue her in “her wicked ways”. This goes against the advice of Sir Robert who tells her fortune would allow her the choice of many husbands. She responds that
“she knew no state of Matrimony, but what was, at best, a State of Inferiority, if not of Bondage; that she had no Notion of it; that she had liv’d a Life of Liberty now; was as free as I was born, and having a plentiful Fortune, I did not understand what Coherence the Words Honour and Obey had with the Liberty of a Free Woman; that she knew no Reason the Men had to engross the whole Liberty of Race, and make the Women, not withstanding any disparity of Fortune be subject to the Laws of Marriage” (171).
She persists in her resolution and eventually finds herself another very high-ranking lover with whom to pass the time and increase her finances.
Susan, her oldest daughter from her marriage to the Brewer’s son, turns up as a maid in her house and it is this strange event that sets the stage for Roxana’s return to a more conventional life. The girl is convinced that Roxana is her long missing mother and pursues that conviction with a single mindedness that frightens Roxana in the extreme as confirmation would lead to public discovery of her past life. In an effort to avoid her daughter Roxana takes on the persona of a Quaker and gives up her past way of life. This is the character in which the Dutch merchant once again finds her and this time she accepts his proposal on the terms that she had previously refused in Rotterdam.
The merchant takes things one-step farther and purchases the title of a Baronet making Roxana a Baroness thus fulfilling another of her ambitions. In spite of all of her admonitions about the state of marriage being one of bondage Roxana reflects that: “the Life of Crime was over” (242) and enjoys the feeling of relief that marriage brings. She is now a respectable married woman, still in control of her own economic situation and like Pamela has moved up in social status.
Pamela and Roxana both achieve the conventional state of marriage that ensures respectability, legitimization of heirs, and meet the social values of the time although they have followed far different paths to achieve that state. They have both moved up the in social class and are able to reap the benefits of that move. They both have husbands that they love and know that they are loved, The difference is that Roxana is not subject to the system that places her at the mercy of her husband’s every whim as Pamela is. She has retained her own power, independent of the merchant, while Pamela’s power is merely an extension of Mr. B.’s power. Roxana has managed to circumvent the social values of the period through somewhat dubious means and still ultimately gained everything that Pamela has through accepted methods. I would argue that Roxana has made the best bargain. She has sold her virtue and gained freedom while Pamela has sold her virtue and still remains a servant to the social values of the period if not her husband.
Works Cited
Dafoe, Daniel. Roxana or The Fortunate Mistress. 1724, Ed. Mullen, John.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.
“Pamela: or, Virtue Rewarded” Literary Encyclopedia. 30 Oct. 2004.
.
Maurer, Shawn Lisa.” “I wou’d be a Man-Woman”: Roxana’s Amazonian Threat
to the ideology of Marriage.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language.
46.3 (2004) 363-386.
Richardson, Samuel. Pamela or Virtue Rewarded. 1740, Ed. Eves, T. C. Duncan
and Kimpel Ben D. New York: Houghton Milton, 1971.
