Daniel Defoe"s Roxana, or the Fortunate Mistress is an analysis of beauty on many different levels. Most importantly, it is a look at how closely a real woman can compare to an ideal. Throughout much of Western History, notions of beauty have been intimately connected with a whole series of particular characteristics. These qualities transcend the merely physical. A Greek statue is a beautiful work of art – it is flawlessly executed, has perfect proportions, and – in the case of the true Classical masterpiece – stands entirely alone; a self-contained image of virtue captured and immobilized. The viewer reacts to not only the physical perfection of the work of art, but even more powerfully, to the inner emotions that the work inspires. Curiously enough, these inner feelings are, in a way, not emotional at all. The Greek ideal of beauty is entirely rational, even mechanical. One understands the proportions of the ideal, and then seeks to reproduce them in a substance that is itself, hard, cold, and completely devoid of feeling. Fortune, personified as a goddess, is another example of the ideal given substance. Greek goddesses have a way of acting out, and behaving in highly unpredictable ways. This is strangely at odds with their standard artistic representation. Defoe"s Roxana, too, is the impersonation of an ideal – she is one thing on a physical level, and another, on a spiritual level. .

             Like her Classical prototypes, Roxana is classically beautiful – that is to say that her "beauty" corresponds to a specific, and minutely-detailed, artistic canon. Roxana might be perfect, if it is only her beauty that is considered, but as Roxana must move, and react, and interact, she is, at the very same time, something other than beauty. Fortune is an action. It can be beautiful. It can be ugly. It can be promising. And it can be terrible. The life of every human being is touched by Fortune.