ABSTRACT
Roxana, the heroine of the tale, defends single women. text from Daniel Defoe’s Roxana (1724). See Zhang (1993); Castle (1979) and Donoghue (1993:174-6). I returned, that while a woman was single, she was masculine in her politic capacity; that she had then the full command of what she had, and the full direction of what she did; that she was a man in her separated capacity, to all intents and purposes that a man could be so to himself; that she was controlled by none, because accountable to none, and was in subjection to none…
I added, that whoever the woman was that had an estate, and would give it up to be the slave of a great man, that woman was a fool, and must be fit for nothing but a beggar; and that it was my opinion a woman was fit to govern and enjoy her own estate, without a man, as a man was without a woman; and that if she had a mind to gratify herself as to sexes, she might entertain a man as a man does a mistress; that while she was thus single she was her own, and if she gave away that power, she merited to be as miserable as it was possible that any creature could be.
