Oxford Classics used the painting by Charles Jervas [1], of Dorothy, Lady Townshend. Most other publishers did not make a connection to her orientalist Turkish costume.
Roxana [2] by Daniel Defoe
The high point for Defoe's high-class courtesan is her "little ball" in her swanky London apartments. Even the king turns up, and she makes her grand entrance in Turkish dress, prompting all the Restoration beaux to chant "Roxana! Roxana!" (an exotic beauty popular from the Restoration stage). "My dress was the chat of the town for that week; and so the name of Roxana was the toast at and about the court".
Roxana’s "Turkish dress" also serves as an example of this motif. For example, it came into Roxana’s hands by way of a "Malthese Man of War," which had captured as spoils a Turkish ship and enslaved its passengers, one of which Roxana bought, along with the slave’s "rich Cloaths too," (173-174) during her tour of Italy. As one commentator has observed, this dress enables Roxana to market herself to English court culture, while also evoking the "spoils of an expansionist culture," as well as that culture’s rewards for those who please or ingratiate the state. Roxana explains, "that Notion of the King being the Person that danc’d with me, puff’d me up to that Degree, that I ... was very far knowing myself" (177). Indeed, she was awestruck by the power of her faux-exoticness, which allowed her to even woo the king of England.
Further, this dress is also, as Roxana emphasizes, a counterpart to the slave she purchases. "...and with this Turkish slave," Roxana says, "I bought the rich cloathes too ... as a Curiosity, having never seen the like" (174). Here Roxana confronts the exotic "other" in the form of a person, and the material culture of that "other." In fact, her description of the dress itself reads like a laundry list of what Europeans had coveted of Asian societies since the journeys of travellers like Marco Polo in the middle ages. The "dress was extraordinary fine indeed ... the Robe was a fine Persian, or India Damask ... embroider’d with Gold, and set with Pearl in the Work, and some Torqouis stones" (174). Yet she is never mis-identified as a "Mahometan," even when she wants to be. As her suitor at her first ball says, despite her claim to be unable to perform English dances, "I had a Christian’s Face, and he’d venture it, that I cou’d dance like a Christian" (175). Her exoticness is never complete, and this allows her to maintain the social prominence she would not have had as merely a "Mahometan."
Source: DANIEL DEFOE, HIS NOVEL 'ROXANA', AND BRITISH COLONIALISM
The character of Roxana can be described as a proto-feminist because she carries out her actions of prostitution for her own ends of freedom, but before a feminist ideology was fully formed, which would rule out freedom through such a technique.[3]
Mavi Boncuk
Roxana [2] by Daniel Defoe
The high point for Defoe's high-class courtesan is her "little ball" in her swanky London apartments. Even the king turns up, and she makes her grand entrance in Turkish dress, prompting all the Restoration beaux to chant "Roxana! Roxana!" (an exotic beauty popular from the Restoration stage). "My dress was the chat of the town for that week; and so the name of Roxana was the toast at and about the court".
Roxana’s "Turkish dress" also serves as an example of this motif. For example, it came into Roxana’s hands by way of a "Malthese Man of War," which had captured as spoils a Turkish ship and enslaved its passengers, one of which Roxana bought, along with the slave’s "rich Cloaths too," (173-174) during her tour of Italy. As one commentator has observed, this dress enables Roxana to market herself to English court culture, while also evoking the "spoils of an expansionist culture," as well as that culture’s rewards for those who please or ingratiate the state. Roxana explains, "that Notion of the King being the Person that danc’d with me, puff’d me up to that Degree, that I ... was very far knowing myself" (177). Indeed, she was awestruck by the power of her faux-exoticness, which allowed her to even woo the king of England.Further, this dress is also, as Roxana emphasizes, a counterpart to the slave she purchases. "...and with this Turkish slave," Roxana says, "I bought the rich cloathes too ... as a Curiosity, having never seen the like" (174). Here Roxana confronts the exotic "other" in the form of a person, and the material culture of that "other." In fact, her description of the dress itself reads like a laundry list of what Europeans had coveted of Asian societies since the journeys of travellers like Marco Polo in the middle ages. The "dress was extraordinary fine indeed ... the Robe was a fine Persian, or India Damask ... embroider’d with Gold, and set with Pearl in the Work, and some Torqouis stones" (174). Yet she is never mis-identified as a "Mahometan," even when she wants to be. As her suitor at her first ball says, despite her claim to be unable to perform English dances, "I had a Christian’s Face, and he’d venture it, that I cou’d dance like a Christian" (175). Her exoticness is never complete, and this allows her to maintain the social prominence she would not have had as merely a "Mahometan."
Source: DANIEL DEFOE, HIS NOVEL 'ROXANA', AND BRITISH COLONIALISM
The character of Roxana can be described as a proto-feminist because she carries out her actions of prostitution for her own ends of freedom, but before a feminist ideology was fully formed, which would rule out freedom through such a technique.[3]
NOTES
[1] Charles Jervas [Jarvis] (c. 1675 – 1739) was an Irish portrait painter, translator, and art collector of the early 18th century.
Dorothy, Viscountess Townshend | Dorothy Walpole (1686-1726) was the sister of Sir Robert Walpole. She wears Turkish-style dress of a kind fashionable from c.1718.
[2] Daniel Defoe: The Fortunate Mistress; or Roxana
Defoe's Roxana, like his Moll Flanders, trades upon the appetite for apparently autobiographical thieves' tales and contes scandaleuses which appeared in early capitalist London, and which survives in modern celebrity magazines, newspapers and airport novels. The issues Defoe addresses, however, were more sharply felt in 1721 as capitalism had only recently been released from monarchical control by the Glorious Revolution (q.v.) and the “Financial Revolution” was inducing rapid changes in daily life and social institutions. The original title of the novel -- The Fortunate Mistress, A History of the Life and Vast Variety of Fortunes of Mademoiselle de Beleau, Afterwards call'd the Countess of Wintelsheim, in German. Source
[3] Source: 1001 Reads
[1] Charles Jervas [Jarvis] (c. 1675 – 1739) was an Irish portrait painter, translator, and art collector of the early 18th century.
Dorothy, Viscountess Townshend | Dorothy Walpole (1686-1726) was the sister of Sir Robert Walpole. She wears Turkish-style dress of a kind fashionable from c.1718.
[2] Daniel Defoe: The Fortunate Mistress; or Roxana
Defoe's Roxana, like his Moll Flanders, trades upon the appetite for apparently autobiographical thieves' tales and contes scandaleuses which appeared in early capitalist London, and which survives in modern celebrity magazines, newspapers and airport novels. The issues Defoe addresses, however, were more sharply felt in 1721 as capitalism had only recently been released from monarchical control by the Glorious Revolution (q.v.) and the “Financial Revolution” was inducing rapid changes in daily life and social institutions. The original title of the novel -- The Fortunate Mistress, A History of the Life and Vast Variety of Fortunes of Mademoiselle de Beleau, Afterwards call'd the Countess of Wintelsheim, in German. Source
[3] Source: 1001 Reads
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