Charlotte Dacre
Dacre, Charlotte. Confessions of the Nun of St. Omer. Reprint of the 1805 ed. published in 3 volumes by J. F. Hughes, London.
This is the story of Cazire, a young girl whose father would come to abandon her twice. He father takes her with him when he leaves her mother, leaving him free to move in with his mistress. Under the council of his lover, he abandons Cazire to be educated in a convent. Before Cazire is set to graduate her father sends her to live with her mother and completely disregards her. With very little maternal guidance, and a limited religiously influenced education, she embraces several stunning philosophies, like for instance reading works by Rousseau. She decides that the most important aspect for her in life is love. As she becomes a hopeless romantic she resolves that there are will be few men that are likely to meet what she comes to expect in a significant other.
As fate would have it Cazire finds her ideal mate in a man named Fribourg. Among being Cazire’s mother’s neighbor, Fribourg is also a husband and father. Being a husband to another does not ward off Cazire from falling deeply in love with him. Fribourg does not ward off Cazire's professions of love. The two connect while absorbing themselves in enlightening discussions. During these discussions Fribourg questions the foundations of love in his unhappy marriage and the role that responsibility plays in his life.
Biography of Charlotte Dacre
· Born between 1771 and 1172 in London.
· Dacre was of Sephardic Jewish Portuguese heritage
· She practiced both Judaism and Anglicanism.
· Her mother Deborah Lara was Jewish.
· Her father Jacob Rey was a Portuguese Sephardic Jew. He resided in London. Later in life he changed his name to John King. He rose in finical ranks by becoming prize winning fighter as well as banker/money loaner. Rey was well known for his radical political views; he published works about politics, mathematics, philosophy, and theology.
· She had one legitimate brother named Charles. Her sister, Sophia King was a poet and gothic novelist. Dacre also had three illegitimate brothers, one of which committed suicide in view of their father.
· In August of 1785 her parents divorced by a rabbinical court. Shortly after he re-married an English countess, Lady Lanesborough.
· Jacob Rey’s very public life affected all his children, his tumultuous finical situations coupled with scandals are said to have played a great role in Dacre’s life.
· The grandmother of Charlotte Dacre and Sophia King lived from 1714-1798. H low class and poor finical situation was used by Jacob Rey to sway public support or to soften his image
· In 1805 Dacre took a lover named Nicholas Barne who was the editor of the Morning Post. After ten years together couple would marry. They had three children together, William Pitt Byrne, Charles Byrne, and Maria Byrne.
· She would go on to have all her children by the Anglican Church—this could be seen as her severing her ties to the Jewish faith.
· Just as Dacre’s father was dangerously political and outspoken so too was Nicholas Barne, supporting William Pitt. Dacre followed and supported vastly different views than those of her father and husband; her views were praised by poet Mary Robinson and frowned upon by novelist Mary Wollstonecraft.
· In 1833, Nicholas Barne was murdered, supposedly having to do with political matters.
· She died, November 1, 1825 in Lancaster Palace London from illness.
· Charlotte Dacre also published under the name “Charlotte King” and "Rosa Matilda"; Rosa Matilda was named after temptress demon lover in Lewis's The Monk.
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What Critics Have Said
Dunn, J. A. (December 01, 1998). Charlotte Dacre and the Feminization of Violence. Nineteenth-century Literature, 53, 3, 307-27. Dunn says that Dacre’s, “...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 end tragically alone, cast out, spiteful and often dead”(311).
Wilson, L. M. (September 06, 1998). Female Pseudonymity in the Romantic 'Age of Personality': The Career of Charlotte King/Rosa Matilda/Charlotte Dacre. European Romantic Review, 9, 3, 393-420. Lisa Wilson writes, “Pseudonymity, like anonymity certainly provided authors with a means of avoiding critical readings of their fiction terms in their personal lives. At the same time pseudonymity offered authors the opportunity to create a fictional authorial persona for themselves....they provided the type of ‘name recognition’ important to sales and fame... Charlotte King seems to have teasingly invited critics to make just such a connections between her character and her characters”(393-395).
Craciun, A. (September 06, 1995). 'I Hasten to Be Disembodied': Charlotte Dacre, the Demon Lover, and Representations of the Body. European Romantic Review, 6, 1, 75-97. She comments that, “...her work demands that we question comfortable assumptions about gender...More importantly, Dacre's work requires us to question the boundaries some critics have begun to impose on Romantic women writers in general, through gender-complementary models of Romanticism which set up rigid distinctions between the canonical male writers and women writers”(75).
Haggerty, G. E. (January 01, 2004). Mothers and Other Lovers: Gothic Fiction and the Erotics of Loss. Eighteenth-century Fiction, 16, 2, 157-72. When a gothic novel experiments with sexual magnetism and gender norms, Haggerty explains that, “Gothic fiction, moreover, is not about homo or hetero desire as much as it is about power but that power itself charged with a sexual force---a sexual-ity--that determines the action and gives it shape”(157).
González, M. B. (December 01, 2007). Gothic Excess and Aesthetic Ambiguity in Charlotte Dacre's Zofloya. Women's Writing, 14, 3, 419-434. When Dacre challenges customary boundaries in regards to femininity, Gonzales says that, “...the reader especially the male reader is confronted with issues that transgress established values of domesticity and flirt with new models of femininity” (419). Also according to Gonzales, in the gothic genre there are two types of women in society: “...good women who have no sexual desire...or...bad women who are sexual by nature...Virgin/Whore syndrome...” (420).
Brewster, Glen. (September 2011). Monstrous Philosophy: Charlotte Dacre’s Zofloya, or the Moor and John Milton’s Paradise Lost, 8, 9, 619. Dacre often times offended readers according to Brewster when she made, “...many references to erotic activity, often adulterous, or its extended scenes of violence...Critics of Gothic literature have offered varied interpretations of the moral issues presented in the novel, and the narrator makes numerous contradictory statements about morality, reason, and temptation”(619).
Why It’s Gothic
· Setting: Nature; many times the characters experience traumatic events and have revelations when they are in a beautiful setting like a garden; the tranquility and beautiful nature around the lies unaffected while their lives fall apart. St.Omer; the convent that Cazire that serves as the religious edifice; creates the backdrop of her morally strict upbringing.
· Characterization: Many of the characters have the qualities of a Byronic hero; moody, secretive, seemingly brilliant, sexually intriguing, openly passionate and brooding.
· Plot: Elements of suspense, highly sentimental language, distress in direct relation to
· Language/Tone/Style: Romantic; the way in which the characters interact and speak to one another creates drama and also tests boundaries of feminine and masculinity.
· Themes: Rise of Individualism; the characters philosophies about individual fulfillment are pushed beyond the conventions of society. Appeal to scandal/gossip; the affair between Cazire and Fribourg; he’s a respected accomplished married man whereas she is unattached to wealth or privilege, knowing/caring nothing for hierarchy morality.
· Point of View/Narrator: First person narrative gives the reader an in-depth view Cazire’s thoughts and feelings. Furthermore, a first person narrative in this gothic novel adds foreshadowing or foreboding.
Other Observations
This novel is an easy and quick read, although the text in the edition that I have read is visually a bit difficult to make out. There are passionate sentiments throughout the novel which make it romantic; i.e. that the tragedy of Cazire and Fribourg’s “love” makes it truly romantic. The crescendo in Cazire’s fascination with the ideals of philosophy are consistent with similar characters in the gothic genre who believe in experiencing is the medium to reach the sublime and/or to a greater understanding. The author criticizes Fribourg's way of thinking as well as his love affair with the anti-heroine Cazire. Like Matthew Lewis, Dacre very strategically and meticulously presents her criticisms in the text.
Works Cited[]
Cambridge. (n.d.). Charlotte Dacre . Retrieved May 3, 11, 2012, from Orlando: Womens writing in the Britsh Isles form teh beginnings to the present: http://orlando.cambridge.org/protected/svPeople?formname=r&person_id=dacrch&subform=1
Thompson, D. H. (2002). Gothic Writers: A Critical and Biograpical Guide. In C. Dacre, Confessions of the Nun of St. Omer (pp. 99-103). Westport, Connecticut-London: Greenwood Press.
Trifles of Helicon. By Charlotte and Sophia King. (ECCO Release Date: 2004, May 1). Retrieved May 29, 2012, from Eighteenth Century Collections Online: http://find.galegroup.com.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/ecco/retrieve.do?sgHitCountType=None&scale=0.33&sort=Author&docLevel=FASCIMILE&prodId=ECCO&tabID=T001&searchId=R1&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&searchType=BasicSearchForm¤tPosition=1&qrySerId=Locale%28