CorruptionDefoe's capitalist views and his moral purpose in Roxana Essay

CorruptionDefoes capitalist views and his moral purpose in Roxana - test ExampleRobinson Crusoe extended the form of the picaresque and turned an adventure statement into a evaluate of colonialism. gangsters moll Flanders did the same with the class of gentlewomen. Roxana similarly has come to be accepted as a critique of first capitalism -- a time in English history when the industrial revolution was yet not a tactile reality but a creepy creature whose tugs on morality, civility and cordial infrastructure were being secretly felt. Defoe takes a old world morality tale about a womans coming to terms with her protest profession as a whore and turns it into a contemporary tale about capitalisms philosophy of self-aggrandizement and saleability of the self.In retrospect Defoe will seem prophetic in his g everywherenance of the plot about Roxanas willing acceptance of her profession and how she readily agrees to capitalise it when she knows her moral degradation is irreversible. In mediaeval morality plays, Roxanas good self would have been saved by a benign god who in a climactic moment would retrieve her from misery. But in Defoes world emergent capitalism prevails over frivolling morality and what would have been a fallen life before becomes a life of opportunities for Roxana.No extol Roxana is called Defoes darkest novel and that explains the crowd of critical and scholarly attention that it has received. The term dark is not a secular expression and hence burdens the novel with a given morality and wisdom. By such means it is easy to house an ordinary, feminist framework for Roxana and turn it into a conventional male authors depiction of a bold woman, as well much in control of her sexuality and hence too obviously susceptible to moral decrepitude and eventual fall. But at another level Roxana is a mock tale about capitalism, rot and individual enterprise. As the novel proceeds, we see Roxana triumphant, outwitting the males in her life and by using them to achieve her own purposes. Later, she is seen to be felled again and reverts to her previous status of misery and helplessness. At one level if this is her punishment for funding against the moral standards of the society and the fantasy of a protestant moralist, at another level it is a critique of the