charlotte dacre

On Victoria:

"Hers was not the countenance of a Madona  it was not an angelic mould;
yet, though there was a fierceness in it, it was not certainly a repelling,
but a beautiful fierceness  dark, noble, strongly expressive, every
lineament bespoke the mind which animated it. True, no mild, no gentle,
no endearing virtues, were depicted there [. . .]; her air was dignified and
commanding, yet free from stiffness; she moved along with head erect,
and with step firm and majestic." (96)




On either side huge rocks towered above its loftiest spires, and half
embosomed it in terrible majestic sublimity, while no sound disturbed the
solemn silence of the scene but the fall of the impetuous cataract [. . .].
Beyond, steep rocks, seeming piled on one another, inaccessible
mountains, with here and there a blasted oak upon its summit, resembling
rather, from the distant point at which it was beheld, a stunted shrub:
huge precipices down which the torrent dashed, and foaming in the
viewless abyss with mighty rage, filled the most distant parts of
the surrounding solitude with a mysterious murmuring, produced by
the multiplied reverberations of sound. Victoria stopped for a moment,
and gazed around; the wild gloom seemed to suit the dark and ferocious
passions of her soul. She gave way to the chain of thought that came
pressing on her mind, her heart was anarchy and lust of crime. (170, 180)

She proceeded a considerable way up the rock, when the loud solemn
roar of the foaming cataract, dashing from a fissure on the opposite side
into the precipice beneath, broke upon her ear. She fearlessly advanced,
however, till she gained the summit, while louder and more stunning
become the angry sound of waters [. . .]. Hastening onwards with rapid
strides along the winding paths she had so lately traversed, she beheld the
gigantic figure of the Moor, gigantic even from the diminishing points
of height and distance. (20203)23


‘‘Infamous, abandoned girl!’’ exclaimed Leonardo, ‘‘palsied be thy
tongue!  cans’t thou, wretch! Without one compunctious pang, strew
with sharp thorns the dying pillow of thy mother?  kneel, monster of
barbarity! Kneel and solicit heaven and her for pardon.’’


Victoria: ‘‘vulnerable and destined for destruction precisely because of her
isolation in the domestic sphere’’.


contemporary review: ‘‘new words are introduced, such,
for example as enhorred and furor, the latter of which is certainly used in the
language of medicine, but in a sense which delicacy will not permit us to
explain