In this blog post, we’ll explore the life and works of Charlotte Dacker against the backdrop of 19th-century London, focusing on how ‘Joploya’ and ‘Desire’ raised questions about women’s desires and social constraints.
Charlotte Daker had several names. Before marriage, she was known as Charlotte King, taking her father’s surname, and when publishing literary works, she used the pen names Rosa Matilda and Charlotte Daker. After marrying Nicholas Burn, she became Charlotte Burn. Today, she is primarily known as Charlotte Daker. It is unclear exactly how she came to use the surname Daker. However, she used it as a pen name in her novels, and over time, readers who encountered her works appear to have become familiar with that name.
Charlotte’s exact date of birth is unknown, but scholars estimate it was either late 1771 or early the following year. Charlotte was born to her father, Jonathan (John) King, and her mother, Deborah Lara. Jonathan was a moneylender and a radical writer who enjoyed a life of financial prosperity and wielded political and social influence through his wealth.
In London society, where Protestants were the majority, Jonathan, as a Jew, engaged in a form of usury. Consequently, he became known to the public as the “Jewish King of London.” Furthermore, the description of him as a “radical writer” suggests that he was deeply interested in social and political engagement and possessed a strong desire for power. Perhaps due to this background, when Charlotte was young, her father divorced Deborah and remarried Jane Rochford Butler, the widow of the Earl of Rainsborough.
Charlotte had a younger sister named Sophia. Sophia also showed literary talent and published five novels and two collections of poetry. Given that both Charlotte and Sophia were interested in literature and wrote novels and poetry, it appears that an intellectual atmosphere prevailed in their household. Since her father was also a writer, Charlotte must have devoured many books from an early age.
Her father seemed to view his daughters’ interest in literature and their creative activities favorably. Charlotte and Sophia published a collection of poems they had written together and dedicated it to their father. The dedication at the beginning of ‘Trifles from Helicon’, published in 1798, reads as follows: “To Sir John King. Accept these blooming flowers in place of the ripe fruits of the Muse. We wish to show that the education you supported was not in vain, and we pray that when we are older, we may serve you with something even more perfect. — Your beloved daughters, Charlotte King and Sophia King.”
As the dedication shows, it is clear that Charlotte’s father spared no interest or support in his daughters’ education. Their affection and gratitude are also evident. Charlotte was twenty-eight when this collection was published, and considering that her father had remarried early, it seems he took a special interest in and supported his daughters’ upbringing.
Around 1804, Charlotte began contributing poems to the Morning Post under the pseudonym Rosa Matilda, through which she met the newspaper’s editor, Nicholas Burn. Although Nicholas was married at the time, Charlotte did not mind and developed a relationship with him.
In 1805, she published ‘The Confessions of a Nun of Saint-Omer’, dedicating the novel to Matthew Lewis. This was largely due to the significant influence of Lewis’s novel ‘The Monk’, published in 1796. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the Gothic romance style of Charlotte’s later novels was shaped by Lewis’s work. In particular, ‘Zofloya: A Romance of Fifteenth-Century Venice’, published the following May, bears a striking resemblance to ‘The Monk’ in terms of plot structure, character development, and setting.
“Zofloya” was a huge success, selling 754 copies out of a print run of 1,000 within six months of its publication. At the time, this was considered a major bestseller. Riding on this popularity, parodies of “Zofloya” were published, and pirated editions began circulating.
Charlotte continued to publish poems reflecting political trends in the Morning Post, and in September 1806, she gave birth to her first son, William, with Nicholas. At the time, Nicholas was married and Charlotte was unmarried. In 1807, she published the novel “The Freethinker,” which gained immense popularity and went through three printings by the end of the year. In November of that same year, she gave birth to her second son, Charles, and two years later, her third child, Mary. It was not until 1811, after Nicholas’s wife had died, that the three children were baptized. That same year, Charlotte published the novel ‘Desire’.
Charlotte did not marry Nicholas until 1815, and in 1822, she published her final work, the poetry collection ‘George IV’. In her later years, Charlotte suffered from prolonged illness and passed away on November 7, 1825, at the age of fifty-nine, at Lancaster Place in London.
Although the historical setting of ‘Jofloya’ is the 15th century, the novel was published in 1806 and thus reflects the social and political conditions of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. At that time, women in British society were not independent. They had no right to vote, their property rights were extremely limited, and their social activities were not free.
Stable jobs were mostly held by men, and women supported themselves by engaging in domestic handicrafts or performing menial tasks such as laundry and cleaning. Women who received even a minimal education could hold positions such as governesses or housekeepers, but generally, it was considered taboo for women to receive an education. Since opportunities for social advancement and stable income were limited, women typically chose to marry once they reached a certain age. Marriage was a means of securing a stable life for survival, and upon marriage, a woman’s entire estate became the property of her husband.
Women’s studies scholar Barbara Welter summarized the status of women at the time with four keywords: “chastity, piety, home, and obedience.” To that extent, women’s lives were male-centered, restrictive, dependent, and religious.
Although ‘Zofloya’ was published in London, its primary setting is Venice. This choice of setting appears to be an attempt to avoid criticism of reality. Since the novel’s content is quite scandalous and challenges social norms, the author chose a setting distant from reality. Novels containing provocative content at the time often used settings from eras preceding their own or set the location in Europe—particularly Italy—rather than in Britain.
The effort to avoid criticism as a pornographic novel is made even clearer through the narrator’s ethical and didactic remarks. The narrator expresses his views at the beginning, end, and throughout the novel, asserting that the purpose of the narrative is to warn readers against falling into similar temptations. For example, the narrator says the following at the end of the novel:
“Readers, do not think this is merely a fictional tale. No matter how tightly one grasps the reins of human desire and weakness, it is never enough. Evil progresses gradually and is imperceptible. That cunning enemy waits ceaselessly to profit from humanity’s downfall. For humanity’s ruin is his glory!”
At one point, the narrator suddenly intervenes in the novel’s plot to express an opinion as if he were a character himself. This occurs during a scene where Leonardo is worrying about the future. At that moment, the narrator speaks directly to Leonardo.
I said, “Good heavens, for the heir of Loredani to suffer such disgrace! Perhaps you would be happy if you remained in the shadows. He might even be respected. But if he dares to step into the light of betrayal, he’ll be despised and ignored! [……] Ah, no, Loredani, there’s no place for you in this world. Your reputation won’t allow it. I hope you never show yourself before people!”
This intervention by the narrator might seem like a mistake caused by the author confusing the narrator with himself, but on the other hand, it can be read as a clear example of how cautious the author is regarding the (scandalous) plot. The author steps in directly to criticize the Loredani family’s adultery and disgrace. The narrator’s intervention is even somewhat exaggerated.
Perhaps the author wanted to make it clear, through the narrator, that Victoria and Leonardo’s lives were immoral and antisocial. Otherwise, the novel would have been viewed merely as a sensational story designed to titillate. For the novel to appeal to readers in a conservative era—especially female readers whose sexual desires were suppressed—it had to provide a “legitimate” reason for them to read it. Charlotte created that legitimacy through the “moral teacher” narrator.
However, ‘Joan of Arc’ should not be read merely as a didactic novel emphasizing ethical living for readers. As mentioned earlier, the “moral teacher” narrator is merely a shell wrapping the author’s essential message. So, what story did the author actually intend to tell? Looking at the protagonist, Victoria, the true nature of the story becomes clearer.
Victoria is the embodiment of desire. At first, she desires Berenice, and later, she desires Enrique. Her desire stems from her mother. Witnessing her mother, Laurina, abandon her devoted husband to run off with Adolfo, Victoria envies her mother’s boldness in acting to satisfy her own desires.
It is difficult to explain, but at the time, Victoria viewed her mother’s union with Adolphe as enchanting and blissful. Whenever Berenza showed particular interest in her or courted her with words of love, she was overcome by an intense desire and longing to become like her ill-fated mother.
“I wanted to be cherished like my mother, to sink into sweet words and the passionate gaze of a lover.”
Seventeen-year-old Victoria harbors romantic feelings for thirty-five-year-old Berenza. Despite the significant age gap, Berenza was a charming man.
As a “gentleman of exceptional taste and outstanding refinement,” he was “stately in bearing, and though his face was stern, it bore a captivating expression that drew the eye and delighted the beholder.”
Berenza became the idol of many women, and Victoria, consumed by a competitive spirit, sought to claim him first. She ultimately proved her passion by injuring herself and ended up marrying him.
However, once the competitive situation subsided, Victoria no longer desired Berenza. Her interest shifted to Enrique, who already had a fiancée, Lila. Lila is younger, purer, and more elegant than Victoria. Faced with such a formidable rival, Victoria feels an even more intense impulse, which ultimately leads her to murder.
Victoria’s behavior appears to be a variation of the Oedipus complex described by Sigmund Freud. Freud posits that a young boy views his father as a rival and a threat, believing that without the father, he could have his mother all to himself. Meanwhile, the child fears rejection or punishment from his father, so while maintaining a tense relationship with him, he simultaneously strives to emulate him. This gives rise to a psychological drive to secure his relationship with his mother.
Victoria’s process of identification is similar. She drugs Enrique, causing him to mistake her for Lila. Although temporary, by becoming Lila, she steals Enrique’s love. Just as a young boy tries to emulate his father to win his mother’s love, Victoria tries to emulate her rival to win the competition.
Such lust, adultery, and crimes of passion can be seen as representing, to some extent, Charlotte’s own desires—and, by extension, the repressed desires of women of that era. Charlotte’s father abandoned his first wife to remarry a countess. A wealthy Jewish father remarrying a countess’s widow appears to have been an attempt to move into the upper echelons of mainstream society. In other words, marriage was likely a tool for social advancement for him.
Charlotte herself also chose a married man as the object of her affection. She bore him three children even while his wife was still alive. Although Charlotte’s affair was shocking in the conservative culture of London at the time, she did not seem to care much. After the man’s wife died, Charlotte had the children baptized and, four years later, married him openly. Her life was like a drama.
Charlotte’s desires should not be limited to simply the infidelity of one woman. She can be viewed as an avant-garde artist and women’s rights activist who revealed the suppressed desires of many women at the time. At the time, women’s sexuality was regarded as a means of preserving the human race and a tool for male pleasure, and it was considered a sin for women to feel or express sexual desire. As Welter pointed out, a virtuous woman was expected to preserve her chastity, care for her children at home, and support her husband. Women’s autonomy was ignored, and asserting freedom and rights was viewed as sinful. Charlotte lived a life that challenged these sociocultural notions.
The novel must be read within this context. Although she introduced a “moral teacher” narrator to maintain a neutral stance, what Charlotte ultimately sought was the expression of women’s autonomy, freedom, desire, and human rights. Although there is some exaggeration for dramatic effect, Charlotte sought to project this femininity through Victoria. In this context, then, who is Jofloya, and what does he symbolize?
On the surface, Jofloya is the “arch-enemy of all creation”—that is, Satan. At first, he appears before Victoria as a slave and servant—a figure of the lowest social standing. He arrives at the Palazzo in Berenza with Enrique, but Victoria does not recognize his presence until he appears in her dreams. Zofloya emerges alongside the object of desire, and as that desire intensifies, his existence takes on meaning.
Zofloya stirs Victoria’s desire, subtly guiding and actively supporting her in realizing it. To Victoria, Zofloya was a being who was wicked yet fearsome, mysterious, and beautiful. “The Moor’s form shone brilliantly with elegant beauty, and his face was imbued with a sweet charm. His luminous yet affectionate gaze pierced her very core with intense tenderness.” Victoria gradually succumbs to Jofloya’s spell and comes to rely on him, eventually serving him—who was initially her slave—as both her lover and master. Victoria dedicates “her heart, body, and soul” to him forever, and ultimately meets a tragic end after falling victim to the curse of the insidious Satan.
It is not as though Victoria had no chance of salvation. Before she is finally abandoned, an angel appears to warn her.
“Leave the Moor, who is disguised as a liar, at once. Then heaven will guide your path. [……] But remember! [……] If you continue on the path you are now taking, death and eternal ruin will soon come upon you!”
Victoria ponders the angel’s warning for a moment but accepts that she has no other choice.
The angel’s appearance revives the classic “rewarding good and punishing evil” motif found in traditional fairy tales and embodies the theme of religious salvation. As a figure standing against evil (Zofloya), the angel reenacts the dichotomous moral concept of good and evil, while simultaneously confirming that human history is a narrative shaped by the clash between good and evil. If Zofloya is the manifestation of the unfaithful desires inherent in the human heart, the angel is the voice of conscience upholding social norms.
Some scholars did not view Zofloya and Victoria as separate entities. Instead, they saw them as a single subject and interpreted these two characters as projections of the subject’s duality. Every human possesses two minds—one of good and one of evil—and is sometimes dominated by the good mind and sometimes by the evil mind. From this perspective, Zofloya embodies the evil mind.
Freud explained the psyche by dividing it into the conscious and the unconscious. Unfulfilled desires accumulate in the unconscious; these desires, which Freud called the “id,” remain unfulfilled because they transcend the boundaries of social conventions and norms. These desires lie dormant in the unconscious and rise to the surface of consciousness in dreams or semi-conscious states.
Zofloya’s first appearance in Victoria’s dream can be understood precisely in this context. Zofloya’s appearance was the manifestation of the id inherent in Victoria’s unconscious. Consequently, Zofloya is another aspect of Victoria’s self—that is, the manifestation of desires that are not permitted by social conventions and are defined as sins by religion.
However, there is a problem with this interpretation. If Zofloya and Victoria are a single subject, and Zofloya represents evil desires, then Victoria must represent goodness. Yet the Victoria in the novel already possessed a wicked disposition even before meeting Zofloya. Therefore, interpreting Zofloya solely as the id of the unconscious warrants reconsideration.
“Zofloya” is commonly classified as a Gothic romance. While today “romance” typically refers to a love story, in the Middle Ages it signified a heroic narrative in which a hero overcomes hardships to rescue a lover. Looking at the novel’s content, ‘Jofloya’ is closer to a love story, and in modern terms, it could even be described as a “soap opera.”
To explain the Gothic aspect further, “Gothic” refers to the grand architectural style of the Middle Ages (12th–15th centuries). This style was primarily used in the construction of Catholic cathedrals and monasteries. With the religious conflicts of the 16th century and the waning influence of Catholicism, many Gothic buildings were destroyed or fell into disrepair. Gothic novels use this historical and environmental context as the backdrop for their stories.
Gothic novels have several characteristics; summarizing the keywords listed in a class handout, they include: ancestral curses, anti-Catholicism, cemeteries, claustrophobia, disguise (masks), demons, doppelgängers (doubles), dreams (nightmares), traps and confinement, supernatural phenomena or artifacts, exorcism, female archetypes, ghosts, the grotesque, haunted castles, evil spirits, the Inquisition, wonder and mystery, masochism, sadism, fog, mystery, spiritism, necrophilia, obsession, the protagonist on the run, ambiguity, mimicry, revenge, somnambulism, sensitivity, grandeur, superstition, horror and dread, perversion, metamorphosis (transformation), unreliable narrator, vampires, anti-heroes, the Wandering Jew, werewolves, witches and sorcery.
While “Zofloya” does not encompass all of the above characteristics, it reflects many of them. Among these, what modern readers should pay particular attention to are the majestic and sublime aspects of nature, such as “wonder and mystery” and “grandiosity.” In the face of vast nature, humans become insignificant beings, and the Creator and creation are symbolically compared. The Creator warns of human depravity through nature, but humans, having fallen into evil, ignore this warning.
For example, Victoria, having imprisoned Lila in a cave dungeon and striving to claim Enrique, sets off into the forest. The late-evening sky is covered in dark clouds, and thunder rumbles. Though blue-black lightning flashes and splits her path, she is consumed by inner conflict and pays no heed to nature’s warning. A short while later, Victoria meets Jofloya to devise a scheme to deceive Enrique, and even then, “lightning split the sky and flashed vividly.” Jofloya warns her of the storm, but Victoria completely ignores nature’s warning, saying, “Oh, don’t worry about a storm!”
The grandeur of nature appears with increasing frequency as the novel nears its conclusion. In Volume 3, we see Victoria gazing at the vast wilderness, her frail figure in the awe-inspiring forest, the fantastical Alpine landscape she glimpses after killing Lila and teleporting with Jofloya’s help, the mysterious natural scenery encountered on the way to Leonardo’s cave fortress, and the final description of Victoria struggling on a cliff while in Zofloya’s grasp—all of these contrast the insignificance of humanity against the grandeur of nature.
In addition, various elements of Gothic fiction can be found. For example, the anti-Catholic sentiment revealed through Madame Modena, the religious trial by the Council of Ten that Victoria fears, Jofloya’s supernatural abilities, Victoria’s sadism toward Lila, Victoria’s doppelgänger transformed into Lila and the doppelgängers of Cato and Victoria, and the feminine exemplar of her mother Laurina—Gothic elements can be observed in these various aspects.
Even if not strictly Gothic elements, the racial issues surrounding the Moorish character Jofloya are also difficult to overlook. Motifs such as Black people, demons, sorcery, slavery, obscenity, and miscegenation frequently appear throughout the novel. The premise of a Black male slave having a relationship with a white aristocratic woman was extremely provocative at the time. On the other hand, it was also accepted as a kind of fantasy by white aristocratic women who dreamed of transgression. Therefore, the relationship between the Moor and Victoria is controversial in many ways. As a reader, keeping these points in mind and looking for directly related passages or implied descriptions adds another layer of enjoyment to the reading experience.
