The Fortunate Mistress (Roxana) av Daniel Defoe

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''I liv''d indeed like a Queen; or if you will have me confess, that my Condition had still the Reproach of a Whore, I may say, I was sure, the Queen of Whores.''Left destitute by her husband, the heroine of Defoe''s final novel has to choose between her virtue and her life. Choosing survival, she makes her way as a kept woman and courtesan. The Fortunate Mistress (1724), also known under the title Roxana, tells the story of how she climbs society''s ladder by dint of her own enterprise, shedding and gaining multiple identities as she moves through the worlds of business and finance, and across the trade capitals of Europe. Amassing a fortune, her taste for men and luxuries veers increasingly to the aristocratic and exotic, culminating when she dances before the King at a masquerade dressed in the garb of a Turkish Sultana--at which point she is granted the name by which she is known to history, Roxana. Despite her rise, Roxana''s past never recedes from view, and her choices eventally