{"title":"Analogues of Eve: Imagining a Sublime Gothic Heroine in Charlotte Dacre’s Zofloya, or the Moor","authors":"Alice Capstick, Rowan Burridge","doi":"10.3366/gothic.2023.0151","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"In Zofloya, or the Moor (1806), Charlotte Dacre subverts gothic traditions by representing her heroine, Victoria, as the first sublime gothic heroine: a female protagonist who embodies and uses the sublime to empower herself without sacrificing her female identity or sexuality. Dacre challenges the gendered roles of the satanic seduction narrative which, by the nineteenth-century, had become commonplace in the Gothic and had been influenced by the version of the Fall portrayed in John Milton's Paradise Lost (1667). Although Victoria becomes victim to Satan, Dacre radically reimagines the Fall. Victoria does not Fall as a result of being overwhelmed by masculine tyranny, but because she is exposed to a more powerful sublimity than her own. Through comparison of the female characters in the novel – who each represent the existing options for characterising women in the Gothic – Dacre's critique of gothic gender roles is apparent, as she presents sublimity as the only means of achieving independence.","PeriodicalId":42443,"journal":{"name":"Gothic Studies","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2000,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Gothic Studies","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.3366/gothic.2023.0151","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
In Zofloya, or the Moor (1806), Charlotte Dacre subverts gothic traditions by representing her heroine, Victoria, as the first sublime gothic heroine: a female protagonist who embodies and uses the sublime to empower herself without sacrificing her female identity or sexuality. Dacre challenges the gendered roles of the satanic seduction narrative which, by the nineteenth-century, had become commonplace in the Gothic and had been influenced by the version of the Fall portrayed in John Milton's Paradise Lost (1667). Although Victoria becomes victim to Satan, Dacre radically reimagines the Fall. Victoria does not Fall as a result of being overwhelmed by masculine tyranny, but because she is exposed to a more powerful sublimity than her own. Through comparison of the female characters in the novel – who each represent the existing options for characterising women in the Gothic – Dacre's critique of gothic gender roles is apparent, as she presents sublimity as the only means of achieving independence.
期刊介绍:
The official journal of the International Gothic Association considers the field of Gothic studies from the eighteenth century to the present day. Gothic Studies opens a forum for dialogue and cultural criticism, and provides a specialist journal for scholars working in a field which is today taught or researched in academic institutions around the globe. The journal invites contributions from scholars working within any period of the Gothic; interdisciplinary scholarship is especially welcome, as are studies of works across the range of media, beyond the written word.