“The Slave of Your Wishes”: Re-Reading Race in Charlotte Dacre’s Zofloya; or, the Moor (1806)

abstract: This essay re-reads Charlotte Dacre’s depiction of the Gothic villain Zofloya in terms specific to the European racialization of Moorish identity in 1806. Contrary to existing critical accounts, this essay suggests that Dacre’s construction of Zofloya’s non-whiteness should not be conflated with the “blackness” of the enslaved as it was being constructed in either abolitionist or anti-abolitionist texts.