英美文學 Sexual Politics in Roxana - Getting Closer to God's Voice 1985

In the first place, it is said before Victorian age, sex drive and sexual intercourse are valued as spontaneous and natural. It is widely believed that the power mechanism of Victorian times disfigures the essence and orientation of sexuality. Undeniably, the advent of Darwinism indirectly serves as an impetus to the occurrence of sexual morality. The hypothesis of Darwinism unprecedentedly juxtaposes human’s sexual intercourse with animalistic instinct. It is widely believed that people of Victorian times are inextricably chained by this hypothesis and contrive to sever the interrelationship between human beings and animal by claiming those who fail to control their sexual desire are inferior human beings. In a sense, the pleasure of sexual intercourse is extremely removed and the bondage followed in the wake of this aforementioned assumption. It is an established fact that sexuality is greatly restricted to the formal purpose of procreation. In this approach, the essence of sexual intercourse is extremely stigmatized and the sexual bondage followed. At root, morality is quintessentially man-made and socially-determined. At any rate, it involves in artificial intervention. The highly-placed people of Victorian contrive to debase the essence of sexuality and view sexuality as something shameful and despicable.

It is widely believe that adultery is a notion heavily associated with disgust and shame. In spite of this understanding, in Moll Flanders and Roxana, it is evident that it is a commonplace thing for men and women to commit adultery. Then, is the society sick or morbid? If the majority represents the norm, can majority just the wrongdoings or manifest true humanity or the nature of sexuality when perversity turns into an overwhelming and overarching social phenomenon?

Still, sex is undeniably treated as a forbidden subject or an unspoken and dangerous subject to engage in conversion on public occasions. In respect to sexual morality, it leads toward a question: are we still situated in the Victorian age? For centuries, Victorian ideology pertaining to sexuality successfully popularized and is forcefully embedded in the minds of everyone that the masses are initially compelled to view sexuality through the lens of morality. At the core, sexual morality dehumanizes human beings by demonizing and annihilating sexual desire and human beings subsequently entered into a mechanized society. The internalization of sexual morality makes it way to the modern world. Therefore, those who infringe the social normality are doomed to endure self-hatred and self-depreciation. Woman who commits sexual deviation are viewed as dangerous victims who harbors bizarre impulse.

In modern times, weighted is judged as incorrigible bondage for women and it becomes a commonplace thing for people to get involved in the so-called abnormal sexual relationship and behaviors such as adultery or sexuality-oriented role play. If the majority represents the norm, can majority just the wrongdoings or manifest true human nature when sexual aberration turns into an overarching social phenomenon?“If the regular sexuality happened to be question once again, it was through a reflux movement”(Foucault 893). At length, it revisits another perennial question: is sexual intercourse natural or shameful? Is it or disgraceful or immoral to embrace and perform lavish sexual practice? Is bizarre sexual fantasy morbid? On the other hand, sexual intercourse is justified and within marriage as a duty but a shame in and out marriage. If sexuality has something to do with shame, then husband and wife are obliged to practice obscenity on a regular basis, which sounds illogical.

My argument is hierarchy system attribute to the stratified world in the domain of gender, class and race and based on the operation of exploitation, oppression and discrimination by exploiting the weaker or exploiting the other. I conceive hierarchy system is more entrenched and irreversible than patriarchy ideology.

Roxana is a non-conformist who displays anti-convention spirits and she questions male authority imposed upon her by subverting gender hierarchy. Roxana pits against patriarchy system but she is a prisoner of hierarchy ideology that she can never free from the glamor of the aristocracy. Roxana ultimately betrays her principle of self-reliance by marrying for the sake of the temptation of the duchess title. On the other hand, Roxana’ scheme of child-murder evidences her annihilation of emotional ties, including motherly bond to her kids, which offers a subtle evidence of the pernicious social impact of fetishized culture. In a sense, she is basically unnatural in the moralist term.

Roxana is never a free agent. She is persistently haunted by fear of exposure of her real brutish self. By burying her dreadful abjection, including her whore identity and her traumatic identity of a beggar, she buries a monster or a bomb under her skin.