The English Novel Vices and Virtues Pamela Roxana

Daniel Defoe, Roxana, London, Penguin Books, 1987, p. 47

4 Daniel Defoe, Roxana, London, Penguin Books, 1987, p. 74-75-76

5 Daniel Defoe, Roxana, London, Penguin Books, 1987, p. 104

6

“I am a standing mark of the weakness of great men in their vice, that value not squandering

away immense wealth upon the most worthless creatures.”

7

It is curious to see how, having fallen into vices, it is almost impossible to come out of

them. Temptations comes up suddenly with an irresistible intensity and, like a

whirlwind, they drag men in ruins. Vice is an indelible mark upon human soul.

Roxana wonders: “What was I a whore for now?” and at the end she realizes that it is

too late and that she can’t be saved in no way. Her life is her punishment:

“I had begun a little, as I have said above, to reflect upon my manner of living, and to think of

putting a new face upon it, and nothing moved me to it more than the consideration of my

having three children, who were now grown up; and yet that while I was in that station of life I

could not converse with them or make myself known to them; and this gave me a great deal of

uneasiness.”

8

2. Wealth and poverty

Poverty is a serious problem in the Eighteenth century in England because it involves

more than half the population, who have to struggle against starve. During these hard

times, the poor are helped by local parishes, according to the guidelines of the Poor

Laws and several private charitable institutions sprang up in order to offer assistance to

the needy. But despite these forms of support, misery drives people to despair and so to

try in any way to survive, especially through immoral means like begging and

prostitution. But immorality exists also among rich people, as asserts Defoe (as a

journalist): “Poverty, which is no crime at all, is being treated as the key crime of the

society” , he argues. According to Defoe, the laws against vice should be used also

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against the rich. So this aspect plays a predominant role in the works of the major

English novelists of the Eighteenth Century, who try to depict the English society,

where the rich get richer and richer, whereas the poor starve, as it is shown through by

Defoe and Richardson.

Daniel Defoe, Roxana, London, Penguin Books, 1987, p. 109-110

7 Daniel Defoe, Roxana, London, Penguin Books, 1987, p. 250

8

9 Maximillian E. Novak, Daniel Defoe: Master of Fictions : His Life and Ideas, 2003

They both insist on the contrast between the world of the rich and the world of the poor.

The risk of a life in uncertainty looms over both Pamela and Roxana, but they have two

opposites views of poverty.

Pamela is aware of her humble origins and she’s not afraid of getting back to her simple

way of life with her poor parents:

“For although I have lived above myself for some time past, yet I can be content with rags and

poverty, and bread and water.”

10

According to her, poverty is strictly connected to honesty and virtue: she is virtuous

because of the education of his poor mother and father.

This contrast between wealth and poverty is emphasized also by the recurring references

to the way of dressing: the fact of wearing her “poor honest dress” represents to Pamela

the return to her modest way of life and she feels unworthy of wearing her lady’s

dresses:

“My master has been very kind since my last; for he has given me a suit of my late lady's

clothes, and half a dozen of her shifts, and six fine handkerchiefs, and three of her cambric

aprons, and four holland ones. The clothes are fine silk, and too rich and too good for me, to be

sure.”

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Pamela recurs to reflect upon this contrast when she gets engaged to Mister B: she feels

unworthy of becoming his wife, because of her humble origins, and she fears

gentlemen’s judgment:

“It will be said by everyone, that Mr B. a man not destitute of pride, a man of family, and ample

fortunes, has been drawn in by the eye, to marry his mother’s waiting-maid.” 12

Thanks to Pamela, also the evil gentleman, Mister B., has a “re-education” about

marriage and virtue and it represents, according to Watt,” the triumph of the middle-

class code”. He says to Pamela:

Samuel Richardson, Pamela, London, Penguin Books, 1985, p. 47

10 Samuel Richardson, Pamela, London, Penguin Books, 1985, p. 49

11 Samuel Richardson, Pamela, London, Penguin Books, 1985, p. p. 297

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“You make a much better figure with your own native stock of loveliness, than the greatest

ladies they have seen, arrayed in the most splendid attire, and adorned with jewels”

13

The contrast between rich and poor is connected to the conflicts between social classes,

which is a typical theme of the novel. The character of Lady Davers, Mister B.’s sister,

represents the world of the aristocracy, defending her noble origins and trying to prevent

his brother from marrying a servant: “Our is no upstart family. It is as ancient as the

best in the kingdom” she says. But Mister B. answers back with an incisive example:

he asserts that: “A man ennobles the woman he takes and adopts her into his own rank”.

And he refers to the situation of the Stuart family:

“When the royal family Stuart allied itself into the low family of Hyde, did anybody scruple to

call the lady Royal Highness and Duchess of York? And did anybody think her daughters, the

late Queen Mary and Anne, less royal for the inequality between the father and the mother?”

14

Pamela persists in upholding the idea of the equality between the rich and the poor:

“How poor people are despised by the rich and the great! And yet we were all on a foot

originally. A time is coming, when they shall be on a level with us: the richest of princes, and

the poorest of beggars, are to have one great and just Judge, at the last day, who will not

distinguished between them, according to their circumstances when in life”

15

Money represents one of the most predominant themes in Roxana: the protagonist is

born in a family of merchants in a stable economic situation but after her parents’ death,

her brother loses all the family property and her husband, a brewer, fails too, leaving her

in a wretched condition with five children. So she goes through poverty: poverty itself

forces her to leave her children:

“But the misery of my own circumstances hardened my heart against my own flesh and blood;

and when I considered they must inevitably be starved, and I too if I continued to keep them

about me, I began to be reconciled to parting with them all, anyhow and anywhere, that I might

be freed from the dreadful necessity of seeing them all perish, and perishing with them

myself”

16

Samuel Richardson, Pamela, London, Penguin Books, 1985, p. 309

13 Samuel Richardson, Pamela, London, Penguin Books, 1985, p. 441

14 Samuel Richardson, Pamela, London, Penguin Books, 1985, p. 294

15 Daniel Defoe, Roxana, London, Penguin Books, 1987, p. 52

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When she starts meeting the jeweler, initially she feels unworthy and she emphasizes

the gap between him and her:

“There was a vast difference between our circumstances, and that in the most essential part,

namely, that he was rich, and I was poor; that he was above the world, and I infinitely below it;

that his circumstances were very easy, mine miserable, and this was an inequality the most

essential that could be imagined” 17

But her extreme difficulties drive her to become mistress successively to the jeweller,

the Prince, and the Dutch merchant:

“But poverty was my snare; dreadful poverty! The misery I had been in was great, such as

would make the heart tremble at the apprehensions of its return; and I might appeal to any that

has had any experience of the world, whether one so entirely destitute as I was of all manner of

all helps or friends, either to support me or to assist me to support myself, could withstand the

proposal; not that I plead this as a justification of my conduct, but that it may move the pity

even of those that abhor the crime.”

18

Thanks to the innumerable gifts received from her men, she becomes soon very rich and

then very capable of managing her riches. Not only she is afraid of returning to her

previous condition, but she also craves getting richer and richer, till she gets corrupt,

vicious, wicked and completely blinded by money:

“Unhappy women are ruined by great men; for, though poverty and want is an irresistible

temptation to the poor, vanity and great things are as irresistible to others. To be courted by a

prince, and by a prince who was first a benefactor, then an admirer; to be called handsome, the

finest woman in France, and to be treated as a woman fit for the bed of a prince—these are

things a woman must have no vanity in her, nay, no corruption in her, that is not overcome by it;

and my case was such that, as before, I had enough of both. I had now no poverty attending me;

[…] but my virtue was lost before, and the devil, who had found the way to break in upon me

by one temptation, easily mastered me now by another.”

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Whereas Pamela is admired both by the poor, her parents and the other servants, and by

Mister B. and the other ladies and gentlemen who frequent Mister B.’s dwelling,

because her merit is the ability to be rich in her heart; according to the young maid,

poverty is a vehicle to happiness, because a person who is generous and honest, as she

is, can easily be loved by other people:

Daniel Defoe, Roxana, London, Penguin Books, 1987, p. 76

17 Daniel Defoe, Roxana, London, Penguin Books, 1987, p. 73

18 Daniel Defoe, Roxana, London, Penguin Books, 1987, p. 100

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“Her greatest excellence is, that she is humble, and courteous, and faithful, and makes all her

fellow-servants love her.”

20

On the other hand, Roxana, while she is maintained by the Prince, she lives isolated, in

order to not being annoyed by other men, but later she becomes very popular and a lot

of gentlemen begin to visit her, aiming at her riches, rather than herself.

3. Beauty

Both Pamela and Roxana are very pretty and their beauty influences, in two different

directions, their conduct of life.

Pamela, although the temptation, keeps being faithful to the idea that “it is virtue and

goodness only, that make the true beauty” and by her perseverance in virtue she will

obtain a magnificent reward.

She is entirely aware of the fact that her extraordinary beauty can be a danger for her

virtue:

“She thought me the prettiest wench she ever saw in her life; and that I was too pretty to live in

a bachelor's house; since no lady he might marry would care to continue me with her. […] and

that it would be pity, that what was my merit should be my misfortune.”

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Initially, indeed, her beauty is the main quality that draws the attention of her master,

since his craving for the