Roxana has many endings, most of which were not penned by Defoe. The
prostitute and possible child murderess turned lady of leisure pays
for her crimes by alternately dying from soul-sickness, languishing in
jail, and expiring moments after finishing her memoirs. Defoe’s
famously ambiguous ending seems to invite not only interpretation, but
adaptation. Hacks and moralizers alike seized the opportunity to
rewrite Roxana’s closing statement that “after some few Years of
flourishing, and outwardly happy Circumstances, I fell into a dreadful
Course of Calamities…” (329). Rather than viewing this vague ending as
a narrative failure, I suggest that Defoe mediates between allegorical
and realist literary conventions, ultimately prompting the reader to
grapple with how selfhood is represented in the eighteenth-century
novel.
Defoe’s intense interest in the construction of selfhood, established
years earlier with the publication of Robinson Crusoe, is tempered by
his desire to address a readership that favored allegory. This tension
manifests itself in Roxana’s incompatible desires: to attain a lasting
repentance and to forge a consciousness outside of the social roles
available to eighteenth-century women. Indeed, Roxana is candid about
the inward struggles she experiences, telling us shortly after her
first attempt to atone for her sins “…I had only such a Repentance as
a Criminal has at the Place of Execution, who is sorry, not that he
has committed the Crime, as it is a Crime, but sorry that he is to be
Hang’d for it.” (129). Roxana is thus caught in the midst of
self-construction, allowing readers to witness her attempts to resist
representation in purely allegorical terms.
The tension between the subject and history is similarly addressed in
Lee Patterson’s essay on medieval selfhood. Patterson unearths a
paradox in Chaucerian writing, represented by divergent
interpretations of his work: while John Dryden embraces a model of
Renaissance humanism, Henry Scogan is receptive to a model of medieval
transcendentalism (21). Patterson proposes “the possibility that
[Chaucerian character] is in fact always in the process of being
constructed, that it is an open site for negotiating the problematic
relationship between outer and inner, historical particularity and
transhistorical generality” (16). Patterson’s work takes on special
significance in relation to Roxana’s many endings, as the sinful
protagonist is repeatedly configured to confront a rapidly changing
historical approach to subjectivity. For instance, the fatal illness
that claims Roxana’s life in one of the many endings has her “freely
resign[ing] her Soul to the Mercy of him who gave it, dying in Charity
with all the World” (viii). In an ending written later in the century,
Roxana’s life is spared on the condition that she exhibit maternal
concern for her many illegitimate children (xiv). Roxana must be
punished repeatedly to satisfy the shifting priorities of a readership
gradually acclimating themselves to the realist novel. As the
embodiment of the “open site” of which Patterson speaks, Roxana
rehearses the clash between the subject and history.
Like Chaucer, Defoe’s “double allegiance” can be found in his “habit
of simultaneously positing and undoing a foundational moment”
(Patterson 19). Roxana’s spiritual life is kept in a state of constant
flux, as she continually repents and then reverts to her sinful ways.
It is possible to read the non-linear pilgrimage of Canterbury Tales,
with its “persistent retracing of previous patterns,” as an apt
metaphor for Roxana’s unconventional path to repentance (Patterson
20). By the time the reader has reached Roxana’s final avowal of
repentance, mere pages after tacitly condoning her own daughter’s
murder, it is hardly a persuasive declaration. Defoe’s artistry lies
in his ability to prompt the reader to undo the foundational moment
and rewrite the ending, thus rendering them a participant in the
construction of Roxana’s selfhood.
I really like your reading of Patterson in relation to Defoe, particularly how Defoe's Roxana becomes "an open site for negotiating the problematic relationship between outer and inner, historical particularity and transhistorical generality” (16). I do wonder, however, if we couldn't say the same thing about characters whose narrative closure is less ambiguous than Roxana's. I think my problem with Patterson's argument (and I do concede that we only read the introduction) is that I fail to see how Chaucer's characters are more generative as "open sites" than any other fictional character. Doesn't the history of critical theory, and the emergence of new and disappearance of old critical paradigms attest to the tension between "historical particularity and transhistorical generality” for any work of fiction? Thus while I find your application of Patterson to Defoe particularly fruitful (as Roxana seems to have a very distinct afterlife) I wonder how useful it is in understanding other works of fiction. The mere fact that there are queer or deconstructive readings of Shakespeare or Milton seems to me to suggest that every work of fiction (no matter how apparently historically particular) can be an "open site" which negotiates changes in how we understand selfhood and how the authors might have conceived of the self.
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ReplyDeleteI like the parallel you notice in _Roxana_ and Patterson’s introduction. By tracking the phenomenon of incongruity as a productive rather than destructive force in both Roxana’s conflicting desires and conflicting relations between history and the individual in Chaucer’s work, you seem to me as offering important ways to think about the construction of subjectivity. As you observe, “…simultaneously positing and undoing a foundational moment” becomes the kernel of constructing a self for fictional characters in texts of Chaucer’s and Defoe’s. Your argument seems suggest a dialectical movement at play in both 18th Century and medieval literature.
ReplyDeleteThis incisive comparison between Defoe and Patterson made me think a lot about endings and the reader’s participation with the construction of meaning. The impulse that later writers have to sew up the ending of Roxana in a satisfying way, made me wonder about the efficacy of an “open site” text. I like the idea that Defoe’s awareness of the elasticity and subjectiveness of selfhood motivated his ambiguous ending to this novel as an intentional invitation to the reader. Could Defoe’s ending also be interpreted as breaking point for which there could and can be no resolution to the text because of his inability to come to terms with his two differing agendas? Does the author necessarily turn to the reader to create meaning when he has reached the limits of his narrative project or is this voluntary collaboration?
ReplyDeleteThis essay also excited some interest for me in the afterlife of the text and strategies authors may have for directing reading of their work. Does the intended, historical meaning of a text eclipse later interpretations in importance, or does a text only exist in the terms that it is currently read and understood in? Can a text be truly be “stable” or is it always “fluid”?