Playing the Feminine: Politics of Gendered Performances in Charlotte Dacre’s Zofloya
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This essay explores the performativity of villainesses in Charlotte Dacre’s Zofloya to investigate Dacre’s ironic use of gendered ideals. Featuring two villainesses, Victoria and Megalena, who use their knowledge of the others’ desire for maidenly/matronly women in disguising and achieving their vile wants, Dacre exposes the fictitiousness of gendered ideals and mocks the one-dimensionality of gender norms. Victoria and Megalena are keen actresses adept in cloaking themselves in robes of femininity, and their efforts to perform the ideal feminine may mark them as submissive. But it is important to note that the performative selves over which the two villainesses have full command allow them to unravel gendered hierarchies, to turn the dynamics of male-female gazing on its head. Victoria and Megalena’s assertive personas, which Dacre condemns but does not soften, also gives hints as how we can understand Dacre’s defiant approach to gender politics of her time as well as to the gothic convention, both of which drew firm lines between the male and female. Like its villainesses who transgress the boundaries of gender, Dacre’s text also defies the gothic norm that relates terror to female and horror to male writing by appropriating them both. Like her female antagonists, Dacre performs the femimine role of an apologetic writer, reassuring the readers with “dear reader” comments and the violent deaths she pens for them. However, the fact that Dacre forces her readers to witness villainesses glide in and out of idealized female roles with ease and undermine, criticize, and subvert the gendered order of things reveals that Dacre’s intent had been to unnerve and disrupt, rather than titillate then reassure.
Abstract
This essay explores the performativity of villainesses in Charlotte Dacre’s Zofloya to investigate Dacre’s ironic use of gendered ideals. Featuring two villainesses, Victoria and Megalena, who use their knowledge of the others’ desire for maidenly/matronly women in disguising and achieving their vile wants, Dacre exposes the fictitiousness of gendered ideals and mocks the one-dimensionality of gender norms. Victoria and Megalena are keen actresses adept in cloaking themselves in robes of femininity, and their efforts to perform the ideal feminine may mark them as submissive. But it is important to note that the performative selves over which the two villainesses have full command allow them to unravel gendered hierarchies, to turn the dynamics of male-female gazing on its head. Victoria and Megalena’s assertive personas, which Dacre condemns but does not soften, also gives hints as how we can understand Dacre’s defiant approach to gender politics of her time as well as to the gothic convention, both of which drew firm lines between the male and female. Like its villainesses who transgress the boundaries of gender, Dacre’s text also defies the gothic norm that relates terror to female and horror to male writing by appropriating them both. Like her female antagonists, Dacre performs the femimine role of an apologetic writer, reassuring the readers with “dear reader” comments and the violent deaths she pens for them. However, the fact that Dacre forces her readers to witness villainesses glide in and out of idealized female roles with ease and undermine, criticize, and subvert the gendered order of things reveals that Dacre’s intent had been to unnerve and disrupt, rather than titillate then reassure.
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