Charlotte Dacre Character Analysis

Charlotte Dacre, an English Gothic novelist, frequently challenged the norms of women’s etiquette of her time. She freely depicted violence and aggression. As Dunn puts it, “the hermeneutics of violence in Dacre’s fiction often splits along [these] lines: it is coded positively in relation to sexual justice, as the murderous rages of her anti-heroines are lent no small degree of credence and legitimacy in the context of a larger gender injustice; and it is coded negatively in relation to the value of love, for Dacre’s violent women always end tragically alone, cast out, spiteful, and often dead” (Dunn 311). One of the Dacre’s heroines, to who this notion of Dunn can be applied, is Victoria de Loredani, a character in Zofloya, or the Moor (1806). She is a daughter of Marchese di Loredani, who resided in one the Venetian palazzos. During the novel, she travels a lot (and even escapes captivity), falls in love with three different men, commits crimes (two killings and adulteries), and finds her end from the devil. Most of the events in the novel are caused by Victoria, who is moved by desires, including the sexual one. The strongest of them is Victoria’s desire to Zofloya, a black servant of her husband’s brother. This desire serves as a frame, in …show more content…
When she at first met Zofloya, ’’she took pleasure in knowing that he gazed upon her’’ (153). He was tall, “solemnly beautiful”, and she was ‘‘above the middle height’’, ‘‘tall and graceful’’ as the antelope (96). Later Zofloya is described as ‘‘towering figure’’ (190), ‘‘so gigantic’’ that he seems ‘‘increased to a height scarcely human’’ (191). (Mellor 172). Mellor argues that After Henriquez’ suicide, Victoria’s erotic attraction to Zofloya becomes even more intense – ‘‘On him the eyes of Victoria involuntarily fixed; dignity and ineffable grace, were diffused over his whole figure; – for the first time, she felt towards him an emotion of tenderness’’ (226). (Mellor