h her five children, she seldom thinks of them except as
encumbrances; she will provide for them as decently as she can without
personal inconvenience, but even a slight sacrifice for the sake of one
of them is too much for her. Towards all the men with whom she has
dealings, and towards the friendly Quakeress of the Minories, too, she
shows a calculating reticence which is most unfeminine. The continuator
of our story endowed the heroine with wholly characteristic selfishness
when he made her, on hearing of Amy's death, feel less sorrow for the
miserable fate of her friend, than for her own loss of an adviser.

And yet Roxana is capable of fine feeling, as is proved by those tears
of joy for the happy change in her fortunes, which bring about that
realistic love scene between her and the Prince in regard to the
supposed paint on her cheeks. Again, when shipwreck threatens her and
Amy, her emotion and repentance are due as much to the thought that she
has degraded Amy to her own level as to thoughts of her more flagrant
sins. That she is capable of feeling gratitude, she shows in her
generosity to the Quakeress. And in her rage and remorse, on suspecting
that her daughter has been murdered, and in her emotion several times
on seeing her children, Roxana shows herself a true woman. In short,
though for the most part monumentally selfish, she is yet saved from
being impossible by several displays of noble emotion. One of the
surprises, to a student of Defoe, is that this thick-skinned, mercantile
writer, the vulgarest of all our great men of letters in the early
eighteenth century, seems to have known a woman's heart better than a
man's. At least he has succeeded in making two or three of his women
characters more alive than any of his men. It is another surprise that
in writing of women, Defoe often seems ahead of his age. In the argument
between Roxana and her Dutch merchant about a woman's independence,
Roxana talks like a character in a "problem" play or novel of our own
day. This, perhaps, is not to Defoe's credit, but it is to his credit
that he has said elsewhere:[2] "A woman well-bred and well-taught,
furnished with the ... accomplishments of knowledge and behaviour, is a
creature without comparison; her society is the emblem of sublime
enjoyments; ... and the man that has such a one to his portion, has
nothing to do but to rejoice in her, and be thankful." After reading
these words, one cannot but regret that Defo