Charlotte
Dacre's 1806 novel begins not with the eponymous Zofloya or his tempestuous
lover Victoria di Loredani, but with the corruption and seduction of Victoria’s
mother, acknowledging the novel’s interest in parental responsibility on
childhood development. Similar to Emily
Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, Dacre
creates a generational gap in her narrative to show how paternal and maternal
influences, or lack thereof, affect the outcome of the second generation. Both Bronte and Dacre’s characters, despite
their aristocratic class, become wild and impassionate through the negative
presence of the mother. Dacre’s somewhat
psychological approach to the novel allows for both male and female characters
to employ manipulation and power for pleasure, a radical depiction of female
authority at the time.
The novel expresses the difficulty in successfully raising children, especially for the nobility, focusing on the limitless flow of pleasure that
wealth affords them. Though the Marchese
and his wife are innocent in their endeavors to make their children happy,
Leonardo and Victoria turn out spoilt and in constant need of pleasure. Victoria develops “a wild, ardent, and
irrepressible spirit, indifferent to reproof, careless of censure –of an
implacable, revengeful, and cruel nature” (4) while Leonardo, “with all the
bolder shades of her character…[develops] a warm impassioned soul, yielding
easily to the seductions of the wild and beautiful, accessible of temptation,
and unable to resist, in any shape, the first impulses of his heart” (4). Even under the guidance of a stable matriarch
the children develop a wanting disposition that takes shape after
their mother leaves with Ardolph. Laurina
becomes taken by the affections of Ardolph, and her vanity and weak nature are
unable to resist his bold profession.
She is torn “with conflicting sentiments; her reason, her gratitude, the
secret and powerful ties of early habit, taught her to adore her husband; but
the insidious Ardolph daily led her senses wandering, and corrupted the purity
of her heart” (11). The danger of
passion resonates throughout the novel, and holding multiple passions
simultaneously seems to allude to an unsafe division of the mind. Laurina’s marriage to the Marchese was
founded in a youthful “delirium of passion,” and her attraction to Ardolph is
likewise fueled by passion and vanity.
After
her mother’s abandonment of the pallazzo, Victoria becomes the matriarch of the
home, a position she is clearly not prepared for or even aware of.
Without her mother’s reproofs, Victoria’s spirit, now “with an unlimited
scope for the growth of [her] dangerous propensities…bade fair soon to overtop
the power of restriction” (14). Though
her father believes that, despite her always having a corrupt nature, a proper
education will tame Victoria’s more wild and passionate characteristics, her
mother essentially “seals the fiat of [her] future destruction, by setting
[Victoria] in her own conduct an example of moral depravity” (15). The successful cultivation of a child thus
seems, according to Dacre, a combination of nature, nurture, education, and
maternal influence. Victoria’s lack of
all these qualities prepares the reader for the remainder of the plot, and even
her father, upon realizing the extent of her character, “endeavored to disguise
from himself the suspicion that her heart was evil” (15).
Laurina's reckless influence on her daughter confirms Victoria's wicked nature throughout the novel, expressing Dacre's opinions on the role of the mother in developing the behaviors of her child. By denying the sanctity of motherhood, Dacre's female characters circumvent any stereotypical categorization of femininity.
For a general overview of the nature/nurture debate, click here.
To what extent does the role of the mother influence the actions of Victoria and Leonardo?
How are the traditional standards of women challenged, especially through motherhood and matrimony, and does this reveal anything about the female nature?
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