Zofloya or The Moor (Oxford World's Classics)

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Zofloya has no pretension to rank as a moral work". [3] Challenging feminine roles of the early 19th century [ edit ] Most critical works have focused on Victoria and Zofloya's miscegenistic and transgressive desire. These include Diane Long Hoeveler, 'Charlotte Dacre's Zofloya: A Case Study in Miscegenation as Sexual and Racial Nausea', European Romantic Review, 8.2 (1997), 185-99; Ann Mellor, 'Interracial Sexual Desire in Charlotte Dacre's Zofloya1, European Romantic Review, 13.2 (2002), 169-73; George Haggerty, 'Female Gothic: Demonic Love', in Unnatural Affections: Women and Fiction in the Later Eighteenth Century (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1998), pp. 171-78; and David Sigler, 'Masochism and Psychoanalysis in Zofloya, or the Moor\ in Sexual Enjoyment in British Romanticism: Gender and Psychoanlaysis, 1753-1835 (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2015), pp. 151-80. Lisa M. Wilson, ‘Female Pseudonymity in the Romantic “Age of Personality”: the Career of Charlotte King/Rosa Matilda/Charlotte Dacre’, European Romantic Review 9, 3 (Summer 1998), 393–420.

On the importance of desire in Dacre’s work see Clery, Women’s Gothic, James A. Dunn, ‘Charlotte Dacre and the Feminization of Violence.’, Nineteenth-Century Literature, Volume 53, No.3, December 1998, pp.307-327; Anne Mellor, ‘Interracial Sexual Desire in Charlotte Dacre’s Zofloya’, European Romantic Review, Vol. 13, No.2, June 2002, pp.169-173 and Pramod K. Nayar ‘The interracial Sublime: Gender and Race in Charlotte Dacre’s Zofloya. Multidisciplinary Journal of Gender Studies, 2 (3), 2013, 233-254. Nina: an older woman that Leonardo comes upon after he leaves the Zappi household. She has just lost her son and is very sad. Leonardo offers to help her out and keep her company. Nina agrees, but shortly thereafter she dies, forcing Leonardo to continue on. Perhaps it is also a testament to the reality of male-dominated academia that The Monk remains an enduring classic while Zofloya is all but forgotten. Dacre’s novel is just as compelling, provocative, multi-faceted, thought-provoking, scary, and entertaining as The Monk—and yet this Oxford World’s Classic edition is the only re-printing by a major publisher. I imagine one could get an entire PhD in nineteenth century literature and never read Zofloya. Only Gothic specialists, it seems, have it on their radar. And even they may miss it. The story itself is not too complex, somewhat like a telenovela, has a lot of drama, sex and violence. My only problem in this departmen Zofloya” is a gloriously melodramatic gothic story of lust, revenge and violence, beginning with an adulterous liaison and family scandal and ending with multiple murders. It is a deliciously over the top tale with passions running high and people plunging daggers into breasts left, right and centre! Great stuff :-)Some literary critics suggest that Zofloya is not a text which provides readers with any type of moral substance. Literary Journal Monthly wrote, "Zofloya has no pretension to rank as a moral work. As a work of imagination or entertainment it will be read with some interest from the immediate incidents and the manner in which they are treated. Its merits as a whole or entire composition are very slender." [18] Dacre's works [ edit ] Well--spoiler alert--this fairly good Gothic romance suffers a bit, in modern eyes certainly, for being mostly a rewrite of Matthew Lewis's Gothic masterpiece, The Monk. What salvages it, and makes Zofloya quite interesting, despite the plot givaway for those who've already read Lewis's romance, is the gender reversal. Here we have a female protagonist (well, I guess an anti-heroine) falling headfirst into Satan's trap, rather than the proud and guileless monk Ambrosio. It's well worth a read for that, and its second half is filled with nonstop Gothic action, nastiness, and horror. Kim Ian Michasiw, ‘Introduction’ (1997) in Charlotte Dacre, Zofloya, or The Moor, (Oxford: Oxford University Press), (1997), (2000), 2008, p. x. Contemporary critics have asserted that Zofloya 's title character mirrors the character of Matilda in The Monk. "Not only does Dacre reverse the gender of the principle[ sic?] characters from The Monk but she also changes the race of the arch-villain, insisting on the darkness of Zofloya's skin". [9] We of course know a lot more about psychology now than we did then - even having learned some of it myself at university, I dare say that most of the things Charlotte arrives at are legit!

Margaret Garner, ‘The Anapestic Lyrical Ballads: New Sympathies,’ Wordsworth Circle XIII, 4 (Autumn 1982), 183–8. That could add a boost to Zofloya: When in doubt, kill Henry Winkler. (Or have him appear in your music video as Say Anything did).Some literary critics were in favour of Dacre's characterisation of women. The Passions wrote: "Cast in a different mould than those of her precursors, her heroines do not exhibit any elegance or artificiality of diction, nor coy daintiness of mien, nor any inveterate ingenuousness of character…Miss Dacre's women are not one-dimensional beings concerned with propriety or taste. They think, feel and reason." [17] Berenza's assumption of women's feminine traits further allows Victoria to exploit the male gaze against itself. Upon witnessing what he interprets as Victoria's sacrifice when he believes she has risked her life to save his own, '[s]o complete and powerful a dominion had the act of Victoria obtained over his mind, that his proud and dignified attachment, softened into a doating and idolatrous love. He was no longer the refined, the calculating philosopher, but the yielding and devoted lover! Devoted to the excess of his passion' (p. 125). Berenza's transformation from 'calculating philosopher' to 'doating and idolatrous love[r]' is figured as a self-indulgent 'passion'; he is overcome by an 'infatuat[ion]' (p. 171) with Victoria's apparent maternal femininity (p. 171). This role reversal and subversion of controlled masculinity, as Berenza succumbs to irrational indulgence and effeminacy, prefigures the introduction of the 'foreign' in the text, as enfeebled masculinity makes the domestic space vulnerable to foreign invasion/rebellion. In the same chapter, the narrative glosses over five years, to introduce Henriquez and his noble servant Zofloya. Zofloya initiates a Faustian contract with Victoria and procures a poison for her to administer to her credulous husband, in exchange for her soul. Against the voice of reason - for Henriquez begs Berenza to see a doctor - Berenza consumes her deathly cure (p. 169). Zofloya concocts a poison that makes Berenza ill and its gradual administration permits Victoria to don the image of a devoted wife, in masking the poison as a drink of domestic nourishment or 'lemonade' (p. 169). Essentially, Victoria performs the role of a nurturing mother-figure excessively devoted to alleviating her child/husband's illness. Berenza is enfeebled and transformed from a rational figure with patriarchal authority to a dependent, 'doating' child.