Zofloya or The Moor (Oxford World's Classics)

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Michelle Massé, In the Name of Love: Women, Masochism, and the Gothic (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992), p. 36. I came across this book when researching a reading challenge task to read a book published during the lifetime of Jane Austen. This was published in 1806 and caused quite a stir by all accounts, especially as it was written by a woman, and the female protagonist is lustful and violent. A less Jane Austen-y heroine is hard to imagine! 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.

What allows these seductions to occur is the knowledge that the subordinates possess, both of themselves and of their superiors." [12] Generally, Zofloya is far more interested in the sexuality of women than men. Readers were scandalized in its day for the graphic depiction of female lust, including one diabolical villainess who commits mass murder as a means to sleeping with her husband’s brother. With the aid of a magic potion, she even accomplishes the rarely-examined act of male rape.Notable among these is George Walker’s novel The Vagabond (1799), which recycles the report that Toussaint’s troop had employed, as their standard, a white infant impaled on a spear. The extirpation of the Moors in Spain is a far more central element in the literature of the Iberian peninsula than in that of Britain. For an overview of the Moor in Spanish literature see Israel Burshatin, ‘The Moor in the Text: Metaphor, Emblem, and Silence’, Critical Inquiry 12 (Autumn 1985), 98–117.

Adriana Craciun, Fatal Women of Romanticism, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 111; E.J. Clery, Women’s Gothic from Clara Reeve to Mary Shelley, (Devon: Northcote House), (2000) 2004, p. 107;.

Zofloya (Satan) The Moor: servant of Henriquez. First appears in Victoria's dreams. He claims he can help Victoria fulfill her every wish and desire. He gives her poisons to destroy the lives of those around her. In the end, he reveals his true self; he is Satan. Zofloya is known for its use of female characters who deviate from the standard notions of virtuous femininity in the early nineteenth century. The prominent female characters Victoria and her mother Laurina transgress in ways that were deemed inappropriate in this time period. Because of this, many critics consider this novel a deviation from the standard Gothic work, and characterize it as a part of the "Female Gothic". Beatriz González Moreno, an English professor at University of Castilla-La Mancha in Spain, wrote of Zofloya, "Dacre's novel constitutes a strategically crafted and singular work of complex Female Gothic that speaks to its time by challenging various established views regarding women's nature and roles". [5] Dacre was accused of "murdering the English language" due to her tendency of "applying extravagant language to common things". [14] We have to present to the class the structure of the Gothic novel, and I am doing the significance of the Devil and his role in a lot of Gothic books.

Kim Ian Michasiw, ‘Introduction’ (1997) in Charlotte Dacre, Zofloya, or The Moor, (Oxford: Oxford University Press), (1997), (2000), 2008, p. x. Dacre ends the story with a short paragraph, commenting on the novel. She claims that her story is more than a romance. She comments on human nature, their passions and weakness, and "either the love of evil is born with us, or we must attribute them to the suggestions of infernal influence." [2] Characters [ edit ] Alan Richardson, Literature, Education, and Romanticism: Reading as Social Practice 1780-1832 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 167-203.

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a b c d Mellor, Anne K. (2002). "Interracial Sexual Desire in Charlotte Dacre's Zofloya". European Romantic Review. Abingdon, England: Routledge. 13 (2): 169–173. doi: 10.1080/10509580212756. S2CID 145512375. Not to be missed - I'd never heard of this book before the course but would definitely recommend it for any one who is interested in Gothic or 19th Century literature. All the characters and their connecting stories come together in this final scene, and their unfortunate pasts surface. Leonardo and Megalena kill themselves, and Victoria is filled with guilt for all her past actions. She turns to Zofloya to tell him about her guilt, and instead of comforting her, he unmasks himself, thus revealing his hideous nature inside and out. He declares that he is Satan, and had tempted and used Victoria repeatedly. Victoria then gets annihilated by the Devil. That’s a shame. Zofloya has its problems, including psychological theories that are questionable by today’s standards, xenophobic character depiction, and sheer overabundance of melodrama. But it also demands readers ask big questions, confront the possibilities of nature versus nurture, and consider extreme examples of lust. The book may be over 200 years old, but its topics continue to startle and reveal understudied aspects of the human psyche. Add a splash of supernatural and murder plots that would make Soap Operas blush, and you have quite an enthralling thriller. Zofloya has no pretension to rank as a moral work". [3] Challenging feminine roles of the early 19th century [ edit ]

Il Conte Berenza: lover and later husband of Victoria. He is wary of her character, but gives in to his love for her. He loses her love to his own brother, Henriquez. While critics have focused on Zofloya and on his erotic relationship with Victoria, they have not explored the ways in which Dacre interweaves the subversive desires of Victoria, Zofloya, and her husband, Berenza, characters whose identities are interwoven and exaggerated by gender and racial categories.7 This essay therefore examines how Zofloya destabilises cultural categories and gender codes by employing the masquerade aesthetic of role reversal in its depiction of these relationships. It furthermore engages sexual politics, feminine virtue, and transgressive modes of desire within the context of patriarchal imperialist attitudes. The text displays female consumption of the sexualised, raced body alongside male consumption of the maternal, religiously coded body, portraying the collision and collusion of patriarchal and colonial structures. It further interrogates the cultural ideal of the pure maternal body, simultaneously destabilising the Madonna/whore dichotomy and patriarchal imperialist notions of motherhood as bearer of home and empire. Victoria not only kills her husband by aligning with the devil, but her hypersexuality, as postcolonial critic Homi Bhabha claims of the colonised figure, 'problematizes the sign of racial and cultural priority'.8 Essentially, the notion of the female body as bearer of culture and race collapses when mothers and their daughters sacrifice maternal and domestic virtues to gratify their sexual desires.

You have requested "on-the-fly" machine translation of selected content from our databases. This functionality is provided solely for your convenience and is in no way intended to replace human translation. Show full disclaimer I wholeheartedly wish that Zofloya took place in Sweet Valley and that Satan would visit the Wakefield twins... for then they might actually die.