Zofloya or The Moor (Oxford World's Classics)

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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. 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.

As the progeny of an adulterous mother, Victoria must, in the logic of the gothic mode, sacrifice her own blood to prove her worth. Though her virginal purity is compromised as Berenza's mistress, the spilling of blood and act of sacrifice redeems female virtue for both generations. Victoria's sense of worth, however, is wounded after learning that Berenza's offer of marriage is conditional: we are told that 'pride ha[d] always kept her from surmising the struggles of Berenza upon her subject, and that he had not till this period offered to become her husband, because till this period he had deemed her unworthy to become his wife' (p. 126 emphasis in original). Zofloya is a text that invites conflicting interpretations, constructing a space for critique while articulating conventional gender codes. Despite what is depicted as her misplaced pride, for she is a fallen woman, Victoria is nonetheless portrayed as a victim of patriarchal abuse, as she discovers her worth is conditional on her willingness to sacrifice her own life for his. Upon discovering Berenza's false love, Victoria finds that she is seen as possessing no intrinsic worth, and therefore, has no real sexual power. Rather, she becomes enslaved in marriage, as it is the only outlet in which she can be 'afford[ed] [...] protection' (p. 134). Necessity dictates her decision to marry Berenza as a compromised woman, first marred by maternal sin and later dependent on patriarchal authority. The novel also evokes sentiments of race and power between dark-skinned men and fair-skinned women regarding the power relationship formed between two of the main characters, Zofloya and Victoria. Victoria and Zofloya forge a power relationship throughout the course of the novel which seems to upset the dominant fair-skinned, subservient dark-skinned hierarchy. This power relationship is characterised by the Moorish character Zofloya's superiority over the fair-skinned female character Victoria.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.

a b c Chaplin, Sue (2004). Law, Sensibility, and the Sublime in Eighteenth-Century Women's Fiction. Burlington, Virginia: Ashgate Publishing Company. p.142. Ginotti: a small character who surfaces at the end of the novel as the leader of the soldiers. He is stabbed by Leonardo and used as an additional tragic effect in the novel. Mellor, 'Interracial Sexual Desire in Charlotte Dacre's Zofloya', European Romantic Review, 13.2 (2002), 169-73 (p. 173). 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.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.