¶ … Fortunes of Beauty
Daniel Defoe's Roxana, or the Fortunate Mistress is an analysis of beauty on many different levels. Most importantly, it is a look at how closely a real woman can compare to an ideal. Throughout much of Western History, notions of beauty have been intimately connected with a whole series of particular characteristics. These qualities transcend the merely physical. A Greek statue is a beautiful work of art -- it is flawlessly executed, has perfect proportions, and -- in the case of the true Classical masterpiece -- stands entirely alone; a self-contained image of virtue captured and immobilized. The viewer reacts to not only the physical perfection of the work of art, but even more powerfully, to the inner emotions that the work inspires. Curiously enough, these inner feelings are, in a way, not emotional at all. The Greek ideal of beauty is entirely rational, even mechanical. One understands the proportions of the ideal, and then seeks to reproduce them in a substance that is itself, hard, cold, and completely devoid of feeling. Fortune, personified as a goddess, is another example of the ideal given substance. Greek goddesses have a way of acting out, and behaving in highly unpredictable ways. This is strangely at odds with their standard artistic representation. Defoe's Roxana, too, is the impersonation of an ideal -- she is one thing on a physical level, and another, on a spiritual level.
Like her Classical prototypes, Roxana is classically beautiful -- that is to say that her "beauty" corresponds to a specific, and minutely-detailed, artistic canon. Roxana might be perfect, if it is only her beauty that is considered, but as Roxana must move, and react, and interact, she is, at the very same time, something other than beauty. Fortune is an action. It can be beautiful. It can be ugly. It can be promising. And it can be terrible. The life of every human being is touched...
So too, is the story of every god or goddess. At the beginning of Defoe's novel, the reader is invited, almost commanded really, to think that Roxana's beauty will be a kind of passport to good fortune. Any woman who is that perfect, who resembles the ideal so closely, must be pre-destined for everything that is good and desirable in human existence. It is only natural that the reader should believe this deception. A glance even at the title of Defoe's work lulls one into the complacent conviction that this must be the story of a charmed woman.
But this is only "half" the story. The novel is entitled Roxana, or The Fortunate Woman: Roxana and "The Fortunate Woman" are not the same. In principle the two figures could be identical. Yet, as the Ancient Greeks knew, no one -- not even a goddess -- can match up to the ideal. If Roxana had chosen to be perfect, there would have been no story. The perfect woman -- the perfect beauty -- is unchanging, and unerring. She leads a wholly passive existence. She remains beautiful because she never changes ... At all! However Fortune, who is generally represented as being beautiful, is a ceaselessly changing character, a force that is neither human nor divine. The artists (and the worshipper) make her beautiful because that is how they would like her to be. Everyone wants to enjoy good fortune. Everyone wants to believe that the Fates smile upon them and their endeavors. It would be an aberration for anyone to conceive of Fortune as ugly or repulsive -- thus, the reader is forgiven for postulating a "beautiful" life for the heroine of Defoe's tale. Were human beings -- or gods -- to conceive of Fortune as something terrible, as something to be avoided, it would be the same as believing that there is no such thing as hope, nor any chance of an improvement in one's condition.
The reader, like Roxana herself, and like all the other characters…
