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. s novels present villainous father figures who imprison heroines in dark castles in attempts to either rape them or steal their property. Alternatively, she presents benevolent forms of masculinity and nurturing fathers in contrast to villainous patriarchy. I recommend this if you like Gothic novels and not to too many others... even then there is not enough Sublime (Edmund Burke) to make this worth much.

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. Anne Mellor, ‘Interracial Sexual Desire in Charlotte Dacre’s Zofloya’, European Romantic Review, Vol. 13, No.2, June 2002, pp.169-173, p.173.An assassin enters the home of Victoria and Berenza at night. He attempts to stab Berenza in his sleep, but Victoria awakens and defends her lover by taking the dagger in her arm instead. The assassin flees, and Berenza awakens, shaken. He is impressed by Victoria's action and no longer questions her love for him. Victoria decides not to tell Berenza that she noticed that her long-lost brother, Leonardo, was the assassin. 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.

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. As far as the Gothic genre goes, this is a stunner. It encompasses both the traditional features of the Gothic whilst also subverting them. That’s no small feat for the clever Dacre in 1806. I just adore her female villains and the way she describes them. I have been studying the Gothic and this is the only one that has arisen which features women who are not just the damsels in distress and where masculinity is very much sidelined. Gender roles are here subverted and redefined. Victoria is absolutely feminine but also masculine and in depicting both Dacre hints at the ridiculousness of such polarities... in 1806! I enjoyed this so much. It was very welcome after Ann Radcliffe. It’s been compared to The Monk for more than mere coincidental features, as a female reaction even, I’ve yet to finish that one but I’m not too bothered. This is a very clever piece of its own. Ambrosio spends much of the novel in an attempt to pursue and rape the delicate and innocent Antonia, a character later revealed to be his sister. Lilla: the love interest of Henriquez (Berenza's brother.) As the recipient of Henriquez' affections, she stands in the way of Victoria's happiness. Kim Ian Michasiw, ‘Introduction’ to Charlotte Dacre, Zofloya, or the Moor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. vii-ix.Burke expressed concern that the revolution in France would incite a revolution at 'home': 'Whenever our neighbor's house is on fire, it cannot be amiss for the engines to play a little on our own' (p. 9).

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.The parts where no one is dying reminds me of Scream. The reason Henry Winkler's principal character had to die is because the producers called and told Wes Craven that the audience was going to get bored because it had been too long between kills. So they added him in (along with a Wes Craven cameo), and they catapulted the movie to wonderful heights. Victoria and Zofloya converse and meet in a dream-state, engaging in a dialectical exchange that allows trauma to unfold within what French West-Indian psychiatrist Frantz Fanon characterised as the 'psycho-affective' realm.29 In his forward to Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth, Bhabha claims that '[t]he colonized, who are often devoid of a public voice, resort to dreaming, imagining, acting out, embedding the reactive vocabulary of violence and retributive justice in their bodies'.30 When Zofloya, as Satan, appears in her dreams, Victoria is presented with a Faustian contract in which she gives her soul to Zofloya in exchange for killing Berenza. The following morning, Victoria meets Zofloya as a noble servant but shortly after, Zofloya disappears because another jealous servant, Latoni, kills him. Nine days later, to everyone's surprise, Zofloya reappears. From this point forward, Zofloya is depicted as a supernatural figure, and he and Victoria conduct a dialogue in a dream-like state in which, in Bhabha's terms, they enact a 'reactive vocabulary of violence and retributive justice' against patriarchy. Engaging in an erotic exchange based in a master/slave dialectic, Victoria finds herself in 'involuntary awe' of Zofloya's 'manner' as Victoria realises she is in Zofloya's thrall, and he seduces her with his words. He leads her to the banditti, led by her brother Leonardo. Zofloya and Victoria live among savages, and Zofloya shows his possessive evil side when he exclaims "thou wilt be mine, to all eternity" (244); Zofloya begins showing a different side to himself, including an ability to read Victoria's thoughts. Mellor, 'Interracial Sexual Desire in Charlotte Dacre's Zofloya', European Romantic Review, 13.2 (2002), 169-73 (p. 173). 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 ]

Both Zofloya and The Monk were criticised in their time for employing scenes of sexual transgression seen as offensive in the late 18th and early 19th century; However, Zofloya was received with greater criticism because its author was female. "When Lewis wrote The Monk it was not welcomed, but it was conceivable that a man could write this sort of infernal thing; however Dacre's crime was greater because it was inconceivable that a woman could even imagine such horrors and use such voluptuous language," Moreno wrote. [5] Critical reception [ edit ] 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. Marriage and motherhood are conventions that Dacre's text explores as coterminous products of domestic ideology. As I argue in this article, Zofloya subverts the marriage plot presented in Samuel Richsardson's novel Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740), a popular eighteenth-century text. Pamela became a media event, attracting both positive and negative attention, and prompting parodies and spinoffs, like Henry Fielding's Shamela (1741) and Joseph Andrews (1742). In Richardson's novel, virtue and sexual restraint provide the heroine with cultural capital, emblematising the rise of a middle class that attempts to distinguish itself from the 'vulgar' classes below it and the 'depraved' classes above it.20 Pamela wins the heart of the aristocrat Mr. B-, who she also tames and civilises. Her efforts to appeal to Mr. B-'s heart and reform him reiterate the points made in the pedagogical literature of the period. Men were required to learn the language and nature of the world, while women learned the language and nature of men's desires.21 In Zofloya, Dacre inverts this gender code by demonstrating a failed reading of female desire, which leads to an unhappy marriage. Both gothic and domestic novels end with marriages, to signal a 'happy ending'. Novels by Walpole, Radcliffe, Frances Burney, and Jane Austen often conclude with such marriages. However, Zofloya does not progress toward an ending in which narrative events lead to marriage after a series of moral tests and trials. Rather, Victoria murders her husband after five unsatisfying years of marriage without children. In transgressing the moral rubric of the eighteenth-century novel, the text constructs a space for interrogating domestic and normative gender codes, for Victoria does not care to win Berenza's heart nor does she wish to make a home with him. a b c Chaplin, Sue (2004). Law, Sensibility, and the Sublime in Eighteenth-Century Women's Fiction. Burlington, Virginia: Ashgate Publishing Company. p.142.I read the Oxford World’s Classics edition. As another reviewer has pointed out, the blurb of the book contains a massive spoiler so watch out for that, if that’s something you want to avoid. I’d recommend holding off on the introduction until after reading the book, for the same reason.