Dacre’s ‘Zofloya’ shows the fall from virtuous maiden to ruthless murderess of the spoilt and rash maiden Victoria. It is a gothic that clearly takes much inspiration from Radcliffe and Matthew Lewis before it, many plot elements being reciprocal, and makes comment of somewhat merit on where evil comes from and the vices born from failed parenting, but beyond that there isn’t much merit. 

First of all Dacre’s prose is absolutely terrible. She uses two or three adjectives in the place of one in pretty much every line of description, and often the two words either have the same meaning making one futile or are just completely contradictory to one another. I’m including one of the passages I highlighted to myself of this clunky style for example: 

“The intelligence, for an instant, gave to the haughty bosom of Victoria a pang of acute mortification, but this emotion was speedily succeeded by one of violence and uncontrolled rage” 

And this isn’t just a stand out example, the majority of the book is written in thus way consequently it reads awfully. The eponymous character only appears for the first time just past halfway through and is written with so many racist stereotypes, and I feel the series of events in the final three chapters are tacked on in a panic to give closure to characters Dacre (and I) had completely forgotten about.