Modern Woman’s Tragedy Of Body Transgression In Roxana

Roxana (1724) is the last novel of the pioneering English novelist Daniel Defoe,as well as his only biographical novel that ends tragically. It mainly tells the story ofRoxana who changes from a female role model with a disciplined body to a“she-merchant” with her body capital to pursue personal interests and yet ends up in atragedy. Her inscribed body is imprinted by the discursive power that oppressingwomen in the early eighteenth century and bears the characteristic of modernity, andis full of marks of the impact of the rising individualism in the eighteenth-centuryEngland in particular while her tragedy manifests the incompatibility of the traditionalfamilial duty of being a mother and wife and the pursuit for autonomy and self for awoman at that period.The body theorist Michel Foucault holds that cultural value is “imprinted” onhuman body and power disciplines and punishes human body through practices anddiscourses to consolidate itself. And gender is one of the deepest decisive factors toculturally shape the body. From the perspective of female body this thesis tends tofigure out how Roxana’s body is at first bounded by its gender and constructed by thepatriarchal discursive power, and then how it deconstructs patriarchal discursivepower in pursuit of individualism, and delves into the complicated relationshipbetween gender ideology and individualism at the time, thus expose the heroine’stragedy actually shows the inevitability of the failure to pursue individualism offemale body under the domineering power of patriarchy.The first chapter focuses on how Roxana’s body was imprinted to a disciplinedbody with the gender code of the eighteenth-century English society. In girlhoodRoxana was disciplined to be a role model to women, and later was married to anignoramus brewer by her father. Roxana in marriage was also tamed to be aproductive instrument restricted within family. Her major duty was to look after herhusband and raise their children. And her voice was completely stifled outside offamily only to watch her husband dissipating the family property. As female body was prescribed to be part of men’s property in the flawed marriage system Roxana waspowerless at her matrimonial change. The second chapter focuses on Roxana’sexploitation of her body as the site of production for selfhood and autonomy under theinfluence of modernity, through which she deconstructs the gender code. Whenmisfortunes fell and her husband left, Roxana gradually turned into an individualoutside of the traditional family unit by unwillingly abdicating her duty of a motherand wife. In the beginning she traded her chastity for survival; later her somaticconsciousness was gradually awakened and even grew to be a courtesan. Shecommoditized her body to accumulate capital and became a successful“she-merchant”. From passively imprinted on to mastering the ownership of her body,the transgression of Roxana’s body has a substantial shift and is extremely modern.The third chapter mainly concentrates on Roxana’s struggle between the two powersof gender ideology and individualism, and the subsequent punishment on her body.Since the beginning of bodily transgression, Roxana’s inscribed moral awareness wasin constant conflict with her changed personal desires. When the condemnation ofmorality seemed not able to stop her individualistic pursuit any more, her pastresurfaced in the form of her first husband and daughter and threatened her presentsuccess, which directly leads to the death of her daughter Susan. Roxana is thushaunted by endless nightmare, and her body full of contradiction was thus beingpunished.As the site of resistance for body politics, Roxana’s body transgresses the normof femininity in eighteenth England and inevitably incurs the punishment from thepower. Her detachment from the familial role, attempts to transform from the“otherness” to the subject, and her pursuit of individuality by catering to thepatriarchal system using “emphasized femininity” and performing body altogetherpredict her doomed tragedy. Roxana’s personal tragedy is actually an inevitableconsequence of any woman in eighteenth century Britain to practice modernity bymeans of female body at the cost of the prescribed femininity.