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Zofloya book7/4/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Additionally, desire is not only reflected in female figures but also in 'rational' male characters. It appropriates topics of erotic violence, abandoned insatiability, and demonic love to engage a language of excess that eighteenthcentury critics described as too 'shock' for the 'delicacy of a female pen and mind'.1 Such critical reviews, associating a female writer's 'pen' with the 'delicacy' of her mind, reflected a general rise in discourse about women's education, conduct, and manners that, in turn, shaped the moral rubric of contemporary novels.2 As Dacre's critics objected, the text's display of excess modes of desire, and extensive focus on libidinal femininity, transgress the discursive boundaries prescribed to female reading and writing. Charlotte Dacre's Zofloya, or The Moor (1806) is an unconventional tale about an aristocratic woman dominated by her sadistic tastes and desires. ![]()
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