“He bears no rival near the throne”: Male Narcissism and Early Feminism in the Works of Charlotte Dacre

Abstract

For many critics, Charlotte Dacre is an essentially conservative author, whose female villains ventriloquize and thereby discredit early feminist thought. This essay disputes such readings by exploring her under-acknowledged criticisms of patriarchy. Dacre’s male characters are self-important narcissists, who disdain female education for the agency it gives women. If a woman is well-educated, she is less likely to submit, less likely to serve as an extension of her husband’s will alone. Patriarchy also encourages women to turn on one another, Dacre argues; her female villains uniformly value advancement among men over sisterhood, and they willingly destroy other women to attain their own ends. Dacre thus takes a pessimistic approach to women’s options at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Her female characters do not enjoy happy endings, regardless of marital status, level of education, or morality, because patriarchal systems are designed to crush women no matter how they behave. Far from mocking early feminism, then, Dacre criticizes it for being insufficiently radical in addressing problems with male behaviour.