Title of dissertation: 
Dissertation directed by: 
ABSTRACT 
MARY SHELLEY AND UTOPIAN DO:MESTICITY 
Melissa Jo Sites, Doctor of Philosophy, 2002 
Professor Neil R. Fraistat 
Department of English 
In her seven novels and other writings, Mary Shelley critiques traditional 
restrictive domestic ideology while developing a feminist utopian vision of domesticity. 
She begins with Wollstonecraft' s prescription for women's education and adds Godwin' s 
ideas of simplicity, frankness, and forgiveness. Domesticity fosters these very 
conditions. Ernst Bloch's theory of the utopian function within ideology shows how the 
false consciousness of domestic and Romantic ideology can bear a utopian impulse. 
To provide a historical context of domesticity in feminist and reform thought, I 
discuss the emphasis on education, the importance of community, and the life of the mind 
in companionate marriage in Mary Astell, Sarah Scott and Margaret Cavendish; I then 
show how Adeline Mowbray by Amelia Opie and The Empire of the Nairs by James 
Lawrence illustrate the effects of putting Godwin's and Wollstonecraft's theories into 
practice. I look at Shelley's exploration of Romantic ideology in Frankenstein while 
countering prevalent critical misreadings of its nascent ideal of utopian domesticity. I then 
explore how Mathilda, Midas, Proserpine, and Maurice, or the Fisher's Cot develop 
contrasting ideas of utopia and dystopia around isolation and community. In her political 
novels, Valperga, The Last Man, and Perkin Warbeck Shelley developed 
Wollstonecraft's feminist theories and focused on women's relation to political power. 
Valperga's Euthanasia exemplifies the powerful Wollstonecraftian citoyenne and 
Shelleyan Romantic hero. The Last Man illustrates the priority of personal over public 
concerns, while Perkin Warbeck questions the legitimacy of political ambition. In her 
domestic novels, Lodore and Falkner, Shelley creates utopian domesticity by modifying 
Godwin's political system and by revising the Byronic Romantic hero; in Falkner, she 
rewrites Godwin's Caleb Williams according to a feminist idea of social justice. I 
conclude by looking at Persuasion by Jane Austen, Records of Woman by Felicia 
Hemans, and Helen by Maria Edgeworth, which demonstrate awareness of the potential 
benefits and drawbacks of domesticity, but were less concerned than Shelley with 
feminist critique. 
MARY SHELLEY AND UTOPIAN DO.MESTICITY 
by 
Melissa Jo Sites 
Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the 
University of Maryland, College Park in partial fulfillment 
of the requirements for the degree of 
Doctor of Philosophy 
2002 
Advisory Committee: 
Professor Neil R. Fraistat, Chair 
Professor Jane Donawerth 
Professor Susan Sniader Lanser 
Professor Claire Moses 
Professor Donald H. Reiman 
Professor Orrin N. C. Wang 
DEDICATION 
To Ian Blackwell Rogers 
and James Raven Rogers-Sites 
... and thus are we 
Most fortunate beneath life's beaming mom; 
And these delights, and thou, have been to me 
The parents of the Song I consecrate to thee. 
--Percy Bysshe Shelley, 
from the Dedication to Laon and Cythna 
ii 
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 
I wish to acknowledge Professor Neil Fraistat for his guidance through my 
graduate career and for his excellence as a reader. Thanks to Professor Jane Donawerth, 
Professor Susan Lanser, Professor Donald H. Reiman, Professor Orrin Wang, for their 
patience and invaluable assistance, and to Professor Claire Mose~ for her services as 
Representative for the Dean of the College. 
I also wish to acknowledge the many fine mentors and friends who have helped 
me along my scholarly path: in Franklin, West Virginia, where I began my schooling; at 
the West Virginia Scholars Academy; at Hollins College in Roanoke, Virginia; and at the 
University of Maryland in the Creative Writing Program, the Department of Women's 
Studies, and the Department of English. 
My greatest debt is to my parents, Michael and Nancy Sites, of Upper Tract, West 
Virginia, for their unfailing love and support. Thanks to my sister, Michelle Clark Sites, 
and to my parents-in-law, Hugh and Ruth Blackwell Rogers, for their encouragement and 
assistance. 
To my son Jamie, I offer a simple apology that this work kept me from him 
sometimes; perhaps he'll forgive me and even look it over some day. 
To my husband Ian, I give my thanks and undying love. 
iii 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
Dedication n 
Acknowledgements ru 
Mary Shelley and Utopian Domesticity: Introduction 1 
1. Domesticity in Early Utopian Feminism 
and Fictional Explorations of Philosophical Reform 28 
2. Frankenstein and the Possibility of Utopian Domesticity 75 
3. The Development of Shelley's Utopian Thought from Mathilda to Maurice 112 
4. Foundations of Utopian Domesticity in Valperga 149 
5. Locating Utopian Domesticity in The Last Man 186 
6. Chivalry and Utopian Domesticity in The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck 230 
7. Utopian Domesticity as Social Reform in Shelley's Domestic Novels: 
Lodore and Falkner 260 
8. Austen, Hemans, and Edgeworth: 
Contemporary Views of Domesticity and Feminism 311 
List of References 354 
iv 
Mary Shelley and Utopian Domesticity: Introduction 
Mary Shelley's feminist critiques in Frankenstein of Romanticism and of 
women's position in society have been recognized and explored by many scholars. Her 
other novels, however, have not yet received sustained critical attention. 1 In them, 
Shelley examined two of the dominant ideologies of her time, domesticity and 
Romanticism, developing over time a model for social reform I describe as utopian 
domesticity. While revising the theories of her parents and husband, Shelley developed a 
vision of women in society that is both feminist and utopian. Utopian domesticity is a 
model for social reform entailing radical reorganization of the most basic level of society, 
the family, and centering around the home. In utopian domesticity, woman are not 
restricted to the home, nor is the home considered best for them alone. Men and women 
are educated as equals and work together for social justice--a situational justice based on 
individual judgment, not on the expectations of the unreformed world. Relationships are 
based on friendship, not necessarily on romantic/marital entanglements or familial bkxxi 
ties. Both men and women shoulder the responsibilities they bear toward their intimates 
rather than pursue glory, ambition, or individual rights; this attitude of responsibility is 
then turned outward to affect the larger community through benevolent actions and by 
I For example, Mary Poovey, in her highly influential The Proper Lady and the 
Woman Writer, briefly mentions Falkner and does not discuss Lodore at all. Anne 
Mellor, in Mary Shelley: Her LJ/e, Her Fiction, Her Monsters, devotes only the final 
chapter to Matlulda, Valperga, Lodore and Falkner, "those works .. . which most 
strikingly manifest the contradictions inherent in Mary Shelley's idealization of the 
bourgeois family" (xiii). The 1993 collection entitled The Other Mary Shelley: Beyond 
Frankenstein contains fourteen articles, only two of which (by Barbara Jane O'Sullivan 
and Kate Ferguson Ellis) discuss Lodore or Falkner. Pamela Clemit, in The Godwinian 
Novel, does not discuss Lodore or Falkner, only mentioning that they "show an 
increased conformity to social and financial pressures" (139 note). Recent collections, 
includinglconoclasticDepartures (1997, ed. Syndy Conger, Frederick Frank, and 
Gregory O' Day), Mary Shelley in Her Times (2000, ed. Betty Bennett and Stuart 
Curran), and Mary Shelley's Fictions (2000, ed. Michael Eberle-Sinatra), have begun to 
reflect increasing scholarly interest in the rest of Shelley's work. 
1 
example. Such virtuous examples of utopian domesticity affect not only their fictional 
surroundings, but serve the Godwinian purpose of illuminating the truth, thereby 
educating readers and gradually improving the real world. 
One of the hallmarks of patriarchal culture is the attempt to restrict women to 
domesticity. Shelley saw that a perfected human society could be developed around a 
model of domesticity, but she was also well aware of the pitfalls of the restrictive 
domesticity prevalent in her day. Restrictive domesticity posits the home as a feminized 
haven in which idealized women provided a relaxing retreat for men who strive in the 
hectic public world.2 This idea of "separate spheres," which by the Victorian period had 
strongly taken hold, is reinforced in restrictive domesticity: women are denied entry to the 
public world, while men are supposed to excel outside the home. 3 In her earlier career, 
2 For a succinct description of restrictive domesticity, see Marlon Ross (117). Eve 
Tavor Bannet argues that Matriarchal feminists, such as Hannah More, used the 
supposedly restrictive ideology of domesticity to further their own feminist goals: "with 
their studied conventionality and their cautious, step-by-step and sphere-by-sphere 
approach, [Matriarchal feminists] often succeeded in carrying points which had originated 
among the more impatient, openly ambitious, and sweeping revolutionary Egalitarians ... 
. and successfully implemented every plank of the seventeenth-century egalitarian 
platform" (9). Although Shelley used the concept of domesticity as her basis for reform, 
she followed Wollstonecraft in its egalitarian implementation. 
3 Jane Aaron succinctly sums up critical understanding of Victorian separate 
spheres ideology as follows: 
According to Davidoff and Hall, this developing segregation had become 
entrenched by the 1830s: 'it was recognised that men would be preoccupied with 
business, and domesticity had become the "woman's sphere" rather than ... a 
way of living for both men and women' [Family Fortunes: Men and Women of 
the English Middle Class 1780-1850, 181] .... Mary Poovey, discussing the 
same polarisation, argues that it was strengthened and in part brought about by the 
need to retain a sacrosanct area of personal relationship within increasingly 
impersonalised methods of production: 'as competition and confrontation replaced 
the old paternalistic alliances of responsibilties and dependence, women ... as 
exemplars of paternalistic virtues .. . were being asked to preserve the remnants 
of the old society within the private sphere of the home" [The Proper Lady and the 
Woman Writer, xv]. (12) 
Aaron concludes that "In Mary Shelley's own society, too, women were excluded by an 
enforced passivity from bringing the values of love and relation - left to them to maintain 
in the domestic sphere - into the public domain" (20). This, of course, is exactly the 
2 
Shelley provides many scathing examples of the ill effects of restrictive domesticity, both 
on the men who find themselves forever alienated by and excluded from the feminized 
haven, and on the women who are trapped within it, powerless to affect the public world 
which nevertheless impinges upon their lives. As her career proceeds, Shelley continues 
to condemn restrictive domesticity in her narratives, even as she develops the seeds of 
utopian domesticity present in her earliest work. As a feminist, Shelley investigates 
domesticity as a utopian social model in order to revise away its patriarchal 
restrictiveness, not only for women, who were expected to maintain ideological control 
over the house, children and servants so that the husband would be presented with a clean 
and well-ordered universe when he returned from his day of important work in the real 
world, but also for men, who were excluded from human relationships by the expectation 
that they should single-handedly achieve worldly success. Shelley's ideal of utopian 
domesticity is not based on the modem nuclear family but depends on the ability to 
recognize others as community/family members and to consolidate their rights and 
responsibilities as part of an extended community. 
Utopian domesticity entails the formation of a community in which equality, 
responsibility, simplicity, and forgiveness determine the actions of its members. Shelley 
was influenced by the political theory of her parents in the development of this model for 
social reform. She takes from Wollstonecraft the pivotal idea that women should be 
educated to the same high standard as men so that women may become productive 
citizens, and she argues that men must respect women as autonomous individuals and as 
respected partners in marriage and in the larger community. From Godwin she takes the 
idea that such a social revolution could only be achieved through gradual educational 
problem that Shelley critiques and that spurs her to create a counter-model in her own 
writings. 
3 
efforts,4 when each person realizes the importance of responsibility towards others 
instead of personal ambition and individual rights. Shelley's idea of the perfect 
community depends on three basic elements laid out by Godwin in Politicallustice: 
simplicity of lifestyle, perfect frankness, and forgiveness towards wrongdoers. 
The ideological dangers of domesticity must be acknowledged in order to 
appreciate Shelley's transformative contribution to feminist thought. Joan C. Williams 
has theorized that the self-sacrificing mode of domesticity was constructed as a 
complementary and oppositional ideology to self-interest. Shelley modifies the ideas of 
Wollstonecraft and Godwin to develop a position on liberal, Lockean natural rights that 
does not favor the male over the female, because she understands the importance of the 
presence of both sexes in both the public and domestic spheres. The radical 
Wollstonecraft insists on the liberal concept of "natural rights" in her work, but, 
ironically, her demand for women's rights operates as a parallel to the self-interested 
liberalism which some men of her day were already using in their favor. According to 
Wollstonecraft, the woman's natural right to education enables her more perfect 
citizenship, thereby making her a more perfect wife and mother. The duties of the mother 
to the child are explicit and the ambitious distanced husband is implicit: thus domesticity 
supplements liberalism. As men progressed forward by natural right, women could 
easily be left behind in the restrictive domestic sphere, from within which they were to 
support the man and provide a haven for him from the competitive world. The natural 
4 In propounding his theory of justice as it gradually manifests, Godwin states, 
"Every community of men, as well as every individual, must govern itself according to its 
ideas of justice. What I should desire is, not by violence to change its institutions, but by 
discussion to change its ideas" (784 [Political.Justice, Book VIII, Chap. X, 
"Reflections"]). He further states that "the progress of truth is the most powerful of all 
causes" and that "That which we can be persuaded clearly and distinctly to approve will 
inevitably modify our conduct" (791 [Book VIII, Chap. X]). According to these 
precepts, Shelley writes novels that illuminate political philosophy and advance the cause 
of Godwinian reform. 
4 
right of the man to achieve his ambition is super-inscribed over the duty of the woman to 
care for the children and to preserve domestic harmony. But Godwin's ideas of 
responsibility to others were directly opposed to natural rights, and man's natural right to 
ambition is denied. Shelley spends a great deal of time in all of her novels implicating 
men in the success of domesticity. For Shelley, the man's primary role becomes one of 
responsibility to respect the wife and to share their lives and concerns with her as an 
equal. Godwin, who focused the efforts of his male citizen on a smaller, more private 
world, and Wollstonecraft, who sought to open up the larger public world to her female 
citizen, provided effective templates for their daughter to trangress traditional gender 
boundaries. 
In all her narratives, Shelley devotes considerable time to outlining the education 
and background of her characters, in the belief she shares with her parents that these 
factors are all-important in understanding how character evolves and how it can be 
reformed. Critiquing the Romantic idea of the solitary genius, Shelley shows how such 
an isolated figure, no matter how good its intentions, would always fail, sometimes with 
disastrous results. She contrasts the ambitious, corrupted Byronic Romantic hero with the 
perfected, benevolent Shelleyan hero, whose qualities of genius are devoted more to 
community than to self-aggrandizement Gender complicates these types of the· Romantic 
hero, and Shelley investigates how women who transgress prescribed gender roles, such 
as those who take on the role of the Byronic Romantic hero, are threatened with the loss 
of their class position as well. 
The utopian domesticity of Shelley's ideal is undeniably based on middle-class 
conditions, most importantly a comfortable domicile and enough leisure for study and 
self-improvement, such as was out of reach for the majority of people in the working 
classes. Shelley's fictions would be consumed by a class who had the leisure and the 
extra resources to read for pleasure, and her stories in the gift-book annuals were clearly 
5 
_,-...--u---~-------~~---
consumer products for the middle-class. Ownership of property such as a house or even a 
small garden, though not strictly required by Shelley, is also a common feature of her 
utopian ideal which was usually out of the reach of the working classes. Shelley's 
utopian model does not propose a class revolution, but it is reformist, for it argues that 
privilege begets responsibility, and urges (in Godwinian fashion) the voluntary 
redistribution of resources from those who have more than they need to those who do not 
have enough. By choosing a simpler way of life, and by acting according to the principles 
of disinterested friendship and benevolence, like the characters in Shelley's books, 
readers could improve society at large. 
The ideal of using one' s resources responsibly, through patronage or paternalistic 
oversight of one's dependents or employees, was imported into middle-class ideals from 
the aristocratic code of chivalry; in early feminist thought, such a sense of social duty 
works in tension with Paineite individualism. Whereas the individual's duty to 
community is sometimes interpreted as a sign of Burkean conservatism in Shelley, it is 
more directly derived from the duty of giving of assistance to those in need, as outlined 
by Godwin. Godwin's and Shelley's ideal of social responsibility may be distinguished 
from the kind of conservative paternalism advocated by Burke, in that while both systems 
stress the duties of the fortunate toward the less fortunate, in Burke the less fortunate are 
expected to reciprocate by supporting the superiority of their benefactors by service and 
by fidelity. Although neither Godwin nor Shelley ever advocate revolution, neither do 
they support the unquestioning loyalty felt by the subjects of Burkean paternalism. 
Shelley instead transforms the paternalistic aspects of middle-class responsibility into a 
more concrete sense of community and family formation: for example, she strongly 
criticizes the failures of the Frankensteins and the De Laceys to recognize the familial ties 
6 
--· 
created between them by the devoted service of Justine and the Creature, respectively. 5 In 
later works, Shelley does not depict hierarchical service relationships so directly, but 
focuses instead on the precariousness of class positions held by such characters as Fanny 
Derham, whose family has fallen into the lower strata of the middle classes. Shelley 
focuses on the reform of the upper classes--the re-education of moneyed characters such 
as Cornelia, Falkner, and Gerard Neville--but also includes middle-class figures like 
Fanny, who devotes her limited leisure and resources to study, self-improvement, and 
acts of benevolence, and who is rewarded at the end of Lodore by financial support in the 
form of patronage. In this way Shelley models the ideal of responsible redistribution of 
resources at various class strata, both in the upper classes through charity and patronage, 
but also in the middle and working classes, by the devotion of valuable leisure and 
resources to the assistance of one's chosen circle off riends. 
Shelley did not argue for the reorganization of class hierarchies, 6 but her utopian 
model for the reformation of domesticity does reconceive gender relations at the most 
basic levels. Although the word "feminist" is a modern historical concept, it is an 
s The aspect of choice in the formation off amily relationships is key to Shelley. 
Ruth Perry points out, however, that the emphasis on choice in family formation--
specifically the choice of a marriage partner--was tied to a move away from the 
recognition of women's property rights through relations by blood. Shelley does not 
differ greatly from other novelists in her reflection of the changing nature off amily in that 
her orphaned women heroes, Ethel Lodore and Elizabeth Raby, certainly fit Perry's 
paradigm of orphaned girls who stabilize their positions by reinstitution under the 
protection of male power. Shelley does insist, however, that the power for positive 
change inherent in one's choice off amily relationships should not extend only to the one-
time choice of a spouse, but to the conscious formation of deep friendships and 
community responsibilities carrying the same fervor as blood relationships. 
6 Shelley's complacent attitude toward class is similar to that of such other early 
feminists as Cavendish, Astell, and Scott, whom I examine in Chapter One. 
Wollstonecraft, who does critique class, primarily aims not at improving the conditions of 
the working classes but at condemning the corrupted and selfish values of the upper 
classes (see for example, Barbara Taylor's discussion of Wollstonecraft's class 
hostilities, 207-212). 
7 
appropriate descriptor for Shelley because she worked toward a transformation of those 
societal structures that keep women on the periphery of power, diminishing their ability to 
control their own lives or contribute meaningfully to the society in which they live. 
Traditional domesticity is the necessary other required by the isolated male genius of 
masculinist Romanticism: just as the wife preserves a quiet haven in the home, so 
domesticity creates a solid ground against which Romantic sturm und drang appears all 
the more dramatic. 7 Shelley challenges masculinist formations of Romanticism primarily 
in two ways: by placing women in the cultural center in her accounts of utopian 
domesticity, and by dramatizing their conspicuous absence or marginalization in 
traditional restrictive domesticity. 
A new understanding of domesticity will provide a new and deeper understanding 
of women's contributions to and critiques of the ideas of Romanticism. Scholars Anne 
Mellor and Marlon Ross pioneered a theory of Romanticism that takes gender into 
account, identifying cultural factors that discouraged women from participation in 
Romanticism or in the larger literary sphere. 8 Encouraged to write by her father and 
7 According to Joan C. Williams, the self-sacrificing mode of domesticity 
functions as a "dangerous supplement" to self-interest, natural rights, and "possessive 
individualism," the idea that a person' s success is based on competition and defeat of 
others. Traditional domestic ideology essentializes and naturalizes women as possessing 
the traits liberalism required, such as charity, compassion, and beneficence. 
8 Anne Mellor, in her anthology Romanticism and Feminism ( 1988) and book 
Romanticism and Gender (1993), and Marlon B. Ross, in The Contours of Masculine 
Desire: Romanticism and the Rise of Women's Poetry (1989), used difference feminism 
to argue that Romanticism had not been adequately theorized to include women. They 
define a masculine Romanticism in which Nature is gendered feminine and women 
themselves are as seen as Other and loved narcissistically. According to Mellor, Romantic 
period women emphasized the idea of the "ethic of care" developed by Carol Gilligan, as 
opposed to the masculine Romantic Ideology outlined by Jerome McGann and elaborated 
by Ross. Another important anthology of critical writing aiming to include women in the 
theorization of Romanticism is Carol Shiner Wilson and Joel Haefner' s Re-visioning 
Romanticism (1994). Gary Kelly theorizes the Romantic novel to take women into 
account, primarily in his Women, Writing and Revolution (1993), but also in The English 
Jacobin Novel (1976) and English Fiction of the Romantic Period (1989). 
8 
husband and by her mother's example, Shelley transgressed the cultural dictates of her 
prescribed gender role by participating in literary production to effect political outcomes. 9 
Her transgressive gender position distanced Shelley from Romanticism, placing her in the 
role of "outsider within" and allowing her a clearer critical perception of Romantic 
ideology than men, who were not thus distanced from it. For example, writing novels 
rather than poetry (a more acceptable activity for women) led Shelley to deeper 
exploration of her women characters than her poet counterparts. The alignment of gender 
with certain cultural activities should not be taken too far, however. It is tempting to 
assign, as Mellor does, certain valorized belief systems, such as an "ethic of care" or 
"belief in community," to the feminine gender, but the concept of "separate spheres" was 
eroded for Shelley not only by the ideas of Wollstonecraft, but also by the contributions 
Godwin and P. B. Shelley. And of course, Shelley responded to the issues raised by 
Romanticism and domesticity with critical thought, not merely in a manner determined by 
her gender. By gaining a fuller understanding of how women (Shelley, Wollstonecraft) 
and men (Godwin, P. B. Shelley)1° contributed to the construction of both Romanticism 
and domesticity, we can come to an understanding of these terms that allows us to 
theorize an ideology as complicated as Shelley's while remaining fully cognizant of 
9 Reviews of Frankenstein, for example, turned away from their attention to 
Godwinian politics and toward treatment of the novel as a Gothic production of a "female 
author" once Shelley's gender was revealed. As Betty Bennett notes, "From this point, 
the contemporaneous critical reception of Mary Shelley's works largely eradicated her 
reformist sociopolitical agenda" ("Not this time" 16). Not Shelley's participation in novel 
writing per se, but her attention to political concerns in her novels, was transgressive and 
therefore overlooked by critics. 
1 o Romantic-period writers Amelia Opie and James Lawrence (in Chapter One) 
and Jane Austen, Felicia Hemans and Maria Edgeworth (in Chapter Eight) will also be 
considered in my study of domesticity and feminism. 
9 
gender, class, sexuality, and race. 
In her engagement with the ideas of Romanticism, Shelley does not simply reject 
Romantic tropes but contrasts the negative qualities of one type of Romantic character 
with the positive qualities of another. It is important to understand the kinds of characters 
portrayed by Shelley in order better to understand her contributions to Romanticism as a 
woman writer. Shelley focuses on the contrasts between ambitious, self-centered, and 
isolated Byronic heroes, and benevolent, enlightened Shelleyan heroes. 11 The Byronic 
Romantic hero breaks down the bonds that form community through heedless, selfish 
acts, while the Shelleyan hero attempts to assist others. Shelley's portraits of these 
characters are not tied simply to gender, either: both the Byronic and the Shelleyan heroes 
may be male or female (though the female Byronic hero faces a different, more perilous 
fate than her male counterpart). Mellor did groundbreaking work in attempting the 
theorize possible differences between masculine and feminine Romanticism. In 
Romanticism and Gender, she tends to conflate the Romantic hero and the male Romantic 
poet, asserting of the Romantic poet that "What he most deeply desires is absolute 
possession of the beloved; but since this desire is never realizable in life, his quest always 
fails, leaving him frustrated, forlorn, sinking, trembling, expiring, yet still yearning for 
his impossible ideal" ( Gender 27). Mellor also argues that, for example, "Percy Shelley 
carried to an extreme [a] dual strategy of deifying the male ego even as it cannibalized the 
attributes of the female" (Feminism 7), deepening her metaphor by saying that "Positive 
feminine characteristics--sensibility, compassion, maternal love--are metaphorically 
appropriated by the male poet, while attributes of difference--independence, intelligence, 
11 Betty Bennett, describing Shelley's opposition of the Shelleyan and Byronic 
Romantic heroes, points out that Shelley's novels frequently tell the story of a "type" of 
anti-hero such as Lodore, who was contrasted with a Shelleyan hero, "his Eton friend, 
Derham, 'slender,' 'effeminate,' 'gentle,' who had 'wild fancies and strange inexplicable 
ideas' but mastered 'the abstrusest philosophy' [Lodore 31]" (Introduction 96). 
10 
willpower, aggressive action--are denigrated" (Gender 29). She ultimately defines 
feminine Romanticism as founded on the philosophy of Wollstonecraft: 
The rational woman, rational love, egalitarian marriage, the preservation of the 
domestic affections, responsibility for the mental, moral and physical well-being 
of all the members of the family--these are the cornerstones of Wollstonecraft's 
feminism, what we would now define as a "liberal" feminism, one that is 
committed to a model of equality rather than difference .... By selecting the 
image of the egalitarian family as the prototype of a genuine democracy, a family 
in which husband and wife not only regard each other as equals in intelligence, 
senstivity, and power, but also participate equally in childcare and decision-
making, Wollstonecraft introduced a truly revolutionary political program. 
(Gender38) 
Mellor argues that feminine differs from masculine Romanticism because it features "a 
mind relocated--in a gesture of revolutionary gender implications--in the female as well as 
the male body" ( Gender 2). Mellor' s assertions about the effects of Wollstonecraft's 
philosophy on Romantic-era woman writers are especially relevant to the novels of 
Shelley, who consciously followed a Wollstonecraftian program. 12 However, Mellor' s 
interpretation of Percy Shelley's Romanticism as emblematically masculine needs 
questioning, because images of Romantic perfection appearing in his poetry are used by 
Mary Shelley in her own revisions of the Romantic hero toward perfection, and because 
Shelley also models her perfected heroes on a mythologized version of Percy Shelley she 
12 Mellor recognizes Shelley's utopian project by briefly mentioning Lodore as "a 
celebration of the egalitarian family as the basis of the successful nation-state [in which] 
Shelley subtly follows her mother's revolutionary political vision" ( Gender 69-70). 
11 
herself largely fashioned through her editions of his poetry. 13 The description of this type 
of hero as "Shelleyan," then, appropriately blurs the distinction between the two Shelleys 
whose ideas commingle in its creation. 
Mary Shelley's visions of the perfected Romantic hero do not differ so much from 
Percy Shelley and his creations as they differ from the "Byronic hero" --a more robust, 
willful, self-destructive type, mad, bad, and dangerous to know, who does not even 
attempt to "cannibalize" female attributes, but simply treats "his" women as he likes--and 
in Shelley's works, he suffers the consequences. Shelley did not simply reject 
Romanticism or the masculine Romantic hero; instead she presents iterations of male and 
female Byronic and Shelleyan characters, attempting to investigate both the effects of the 
Romantic ideology and gender on characters indifferent configurations, including her 
explorations of the processes necessary for men and women to transform themselves to 
achieve Shelleyan perfection. 14 
Critical narratives currently attempting to theorize Shelley's work have fallen 
mainly into two groups. The first group, exemplified by Mary Poovey and Anne Mellor, 
identifies Shelley's early work as her best, and sees her later work as increasingly 
conforming to a socially orthodox, "separate spheres" domestic ideology. 15 These 
13 For more on Mary's creation of an idealized Percy through her editions, see, 
for example, Neil Fraistat and Mary Favret See also Annette Cafarelli' s excellent 
discussion of Percy Shelley's feminism as well as its shortcomings. 
14 The problem of associating Mary Shelley's critique of Romanticism with her 
critique of prescribed gender roles is taken up by David Vallins, although he continues to 
follow Poovey and Mellor in the belief in Shelley's "loss of youthful optimism" and her 
"moral and political conservatism" (166). 
1 s As Kate Ferguson Ellis summarizes, " ... the feminist attention that has been 
directed to Shelley's later [domestic] novels has found in them too little, rather than too 
much rage. Mary Poovey sees in Mary Shelley's later fiction an accommodation to the 
constraints on women summed up in the figure of the 'the proper lady' who suppresses, 
12 
scholars, although sympathetic to Shelley, assert that social pressures made Shelley back 
away from the bolder political stances of her intellectual circle. But by constructing a 
critical narrative in which Shelley's work devolves from Frankenstein, the masterpiece, 
into later work lacking in originality or philosophical integrity, these critics do little justice 
to the complexity of Shelley's thought: regarding the domesticity valorized in Lodore and 
Falk11er as a conservative retrenchment treats Shelley's complex processing of disparate 
ideologies as a simple concession to monetary needs and societal pressures. 
A second group of scholars, still mostly focusing on Frankenstein,_ have identified 
Shelley's critical attitude towards domesticity, as opposed to her adoption of the domestic 
ideology. Susan J. Wolfson, for example, reads Frankenstein's restrictive domesticity as 
a critique of "the liability inherent in women's domestic role" (my emphasis). Susan Allen 
Ford also identifies Shelley's negative critique of domesticity in Mathi.lda, while Kate 
Ferguson Ellis attends not only to Frankenstein but also Lodore and Falkner. Finding no 
hint of the utopian, Ellis claims that Shelley was aware of the isolating and stultifying 
effects of the retreat from the world to the domestic haven, arguing that even when 
marriages in Shelley's works end happily, the characters become casualties of 
domesticity. This critical narrative has the advantage of granting Shelley more agency in 
developing the ideas expressed throughout her work. However, in identifying only the 
negative critique in Shelley's work, such critics neglect her efforts to construct a theory of 
her own. 
An alternative to these critical narratives has been suggested by Betty T. Bennett. 
Responding to Poovey and Mellor, Bennett writes that "even today Mary Shelley is often 
depicted as a victim of conventional expectations for women, the inherent dissonance of 
perhaps even annihilates, the radical impulses that animated the author's younger self. 
More recently, Anne Mellor has continued and developed Poovey' s narrative, exploring 
what she sees as Shelley's ambivalent idealization of the bourgeois family, the 
constitutive institution of the proper lady" (220-1). 
13 
her works glossed over as ambiguous subservience or psychological affliction" 
(Introduction 121). As early as 1978, Bennett had suggested that Mary Shelley does not 
diverge so widely from the radicalism of Wollstonecraft and Godwin as has been 
portrayed, a claim with which I agree. 16 Shelley chose at an early age to align herself 
with the radical elements of her society. Following the revolutionary precepts of her 
mother and father, Shelley disregarded the decrees of custom and acted according to her 
own conscience. Living openly with a married man outside wedlock (from the 
elopement, 28 July 1814, until their wedding, 30 Dec. 1816, after the suicide of Harriet 
Westbrook Shelley), and penning the audacious Frankenstein (1818) aligned "the 
daughter of Godwin and Mary" with her parents' 1790s style radicalism. Although time 
took its toll, leaving her with only one child after five pregnancies and without the 
husband she had loved, outcast from respectable society, and dependent on a hostile 
father-in-law for monetary support for her son until 1844, 17 Shelley continued to write 
according to her original reformist philosophies, but she wrote within generic 
conventions (the historical novel, the roman d clef. the domestic novel) that may disguise 
her reformist program. 
Bennett explores the close connections between Shelley's work and that of her 
parents: "Mary Shelley modeled her life and works on her parents' belief in the power 
and responsibility of the individual to effect change [and] on their own activist and risk-
taking engagement with their society'' (Introduction 2). Bennett posits that Mary Shelley 
adheres to her parents' philosophies and to what she calls Percy Shelley' s model of 
16 See especially Bennett's enumeration of Shelley's adoption of Godwinian and 
Wollstonecraftian ideals in the education of Euthanasia ("Political Philosophy" 360-61). 
1 7 At that time Sir Timothy died and Percy Florence inherited the ti tie of baronet 
along with the heavily indebted estate. 
14 
universal Promethean love. The idea of love, in this context, is rational and Godwinian 
in its emphasis on justice and forgiveness. The concept of universal love, however, is 
somewhat vague, sometimes seeming to be closely connected to romantic love. I wish to 
focus attention more strongly on the ways in which domesticity works as a perfected but 
concrete social structure, as often associated with friendship and filial love as with 
romantic love. 
Shelley's refusal to adopt the doctrine of "separate spheres" for men and women, 
a doctrine that grew stronger into the Victorian era, is key to her reform of the ideology of 
domesticity. Jurgen Habermas has provided terminology for the discussion of separate 
public, private, and intimate spheres. The most basic model of the public sphere, as 
Habermas defines it, was a political sphere within which property owners, the 
aristocracy, were empowered to make decisions about government. This public sphere of 
politics and government was affected by two other sorts of public sphere, the sphere of 
public opinion and the sphere of sphere of letters and the press. 
The private sphere for Habermas is the sphere around the home, but it is also 
associated with economics and trade. Habermas gives the term "intimate sphere" to the 
ideological structures surrounding the inter-relations of members of the (patriarchal) 
bourgeois conjugal family: he describes the "family's self-image as a sphere of humanity-
generating closeness [and] the ideas of freedom, love, and cultivation of the person that 
grew out of the experiences of the conjugal family's private sphere" (48). Habermas 
states that "In the intimate sphere of the conjugal family privatized individuals viewed 
themselves as independent even from the private sphere of their economic activity--as 
persons capable of entering into 'purely human' relations with one another" (48). He 
argues that intimate, private and public spheres are inter-related and help to support one 
another ideologically. Whereas the private sphere has its public face, such as the salon or 
family room, even the intimate sphere can negotiate the public through, for example, the 
15 
• 
literary form of the letter (47-49). As writers of "personal letters" meant for private or 
public reception, or as professional writers of other literary forms, especially novels, 
then, women could enter into the public sphere of writing without violating their position 
as "official" (ideologically appropriate) residents of the private or intimate spheres. 
As a resident of the domestic sphere (a semi-permeable conflation of intimate, 
private and to some extent the public spheres), a bourgeois woman was a natwalized 
"expert" on intimate relationships, and a woman writer could even posit as a sort of duty 
the creation of literature in which her intimate, private or domestic experiences were 
oriented toward a public audience. This orientation of the private toward a public audience 
(which Habermas notes, 49) could be extended to a variety of public sphere matters--but 
it was not always clear when the contributions of a woman writer would be deemed 
acceptable or transgressive. Ideology in its simplest forms dictated clear-cut boundaries 
between the spheres of letters, public opinion, and governance which in practice were 
somewhat harder to delineate. 18 As a male-dominated arena, the sphere of public opinion 
was closely guarded against encroachment by women, and, of course the field of 
governance--even the right to vote--was entirely denied to them. It was women's 
encroachment on the sphere of public opinion from within the public sphere of letters that 
triggered ideological alarm bells, but women writers who wished to comment on public 
18 Scholars including Joan Landes and Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall have 
attempted to refine Habermas' s sphere theories in terms of gender. Landes argues that 
"the exclusion of women from the bourgeois public was not incidental but central to its 
incarnation" (qtd in Jones and Wahrman 9). Landes has more recently argued that 
"public-sphere theory needs to take account of the gendered construction of embodied 
subjectivities within both public and private life" (7). Davidoff and Hall use empirical data 
to show how ideological forces reshaped middle-class women's material realities within 
the home, divorcin~ them from earlier, eighteenth-century models of cottage economy. 
More recently, Davidoff has argued that women's involvement in charitable associations 
should complicate our assumption about the ways in which women were ideologically 
bound to the home over the course of the nineteenth century. 
16 
matters could, in fact, create a paradigm from within which to do so. 19 
Godwin's consideration of political associations parallels Habermas' s 
investigation of the public spheres of opinion, letters, and political decision making. 
Godwin strongly warns against the formation of "party spirit" and the substitution of a 
part for the w~ole in political decision making, but he argues that the open communication 
of ideas in individual conversation (and to a lesser extent in print) increases public 
knowledge without the risk of revolution. 20 Godwin argues that although formal 
associations tend to decrease inquiry, conversation among two or three gathered 
informally will tend to increase it; furthermore, though books are "cold" or uninviting, 
they have the capacity to distribute knowledge and to store it up for future preservation.2 1 
Shelley, in writing novels, adheres to the principle of Godwinian intervention into public 
discourse by avoiding public harangue yet still putting forward her ideas in a durable and 
inviting fonnat for the individual perusal of her readers. 
Historically, women exploring feminist ideas recognize their restrictions within 
domesticity as a central problem. The critique of restrictive domesticity and the desire for 
a regenerated utopian domesticity coexist and inform one another in Shelley's work. 
These two apparently contradictory positions can coexist because of the close connections 
19 For example, Helen Maria Williams, in her Letters from France, was able to 
couch her early support for revolutionary principles within anecdotes largely personal or 
domestic in nature. 
20 See Book IV, Chapter III, "Of Political Associations" (288-295). See also 
Carl Fisher' s application of Habermas to Godwin, 52, 62. 
21 Godwin discusses the durability and wide distribution of knowledge due to the 
discovery of printing in the conclusion of his chapter on revolutions (280 [Book IV, 
Chap. II]). 
17 
.. -----------------~--~-~~--
between ideology22 and utopia identified by such thinkers as Ernst Bloch. 23 Bloch 
discovers in ideology a thread of the utopian, a realizable hope for a better world. Fredric 
Jameson also identifies ideology's promise of utopian outcomes by positing that "the 
effectively ideological is also, at the same time, necessarily Utopian" (286). Focusing on 
utopia's function ~s a critique of the present and spur for future improvement, Bloch 
hypothesizes a utopian principle of hope that runs throughout all human endeavor. For 
Bloch, concrete utopia is the result of "anticipatory consciousness," as opposed to 
abstract utopia, which is merely compensatory, a product of wishful thinking that placates 
the thinker. The principle of hope suggests that utopia will become concrete as a real 
future possibility. In the case of Shelley, Bloch' s theories help illuminate the realizable 
(concrete) utopian elements Shelley extracts from domestic ideology to envision utopian 
domesticity. 
Bloch's theory may be used to interrogate the intersection of two ideologies, 
domesticity and Romanticism, in Shelley' s utopian project. In each of these ideologies a 
utopian thread exists that Shelley' s work attempts to make concrete. The idea of the 
utopian function within ideology helps clarify how the false consciousness of domestic or 
Romantic ideology can bear a genuine utopian impulse for a creative and critical thinker 
such as Shelley. Bloch especially illuminates Shelley's ideal of utopian domesticity, 
22 "Ideology" is usually defined as "false consciousness;" I use the term to refer 
to an overarching system of ideas that purports to provide an ordered explanation for the 
ways things are, while glossing over and veiling its own defects. 
23 See Bloch's 1959_three-volume chef d'oeuvre, The Principle of Hope, 
translated from the German m 1986 by Neville Plaice, Stephen Plaice and Paul Knight. 
See also The Utopian Function of Art and Literature: Selected Essays, translated by Jack 
Zipes and Frank Mecklenburg (1988). For criticism of Bloch, see Vincent Geoghegan, 
Utopianism and Marxism (1987); Ruth Levitas, The Concept of Utopia ( 1990) ; and Not 
Yet: Reconsidering Ernst Bloch (19<)7) , edited by Jamie Owen Daniel and Tom Moylan, a 
volume that includes the articles from the issue of Utopian Studies devoted to the 
consideration of Bloch (1.2 1990) as well as additional material. 
18 
.1 
because he identifies egalitarian marriage as a precursor or model in miniature of utopian 
socialist society (Principle of Hope I, 325-27), thus helping us get beyond the traditional 
Marxian critique of marriage as a bourgeois institution in order to understand Shelley' s 
own insistence on the utopian, even radical, power of a revisioned domesticity to serve as 
a new model for society and basis for societal change. 
After historically situating the linkage of utopian feminism, reform, and 
domesticity in Chapter One, as outlined below, I explore in Chapters Two and Three how 
Shelley exploits the figure of the isolated Romantic creative genius to give her works 
passion and impetus. This creative genius, isolated from family and community, provides 
a locus for Shelley's double critique at the intersection of Romantic and domestic 
ideology. It is easy to identify the utopian function (that is, the desire to work toward a 
perfected society) within the Romantic ideology as Shelley develops it in Frankenstein 
(1818, rev. 1831), Mathilda(c. 1819), or The Last Man (1826). Victor Frankenstein 
seeks to grant a great boon to humanity by overcoming the spectre of death. Mathilda, 
writing in her lonely hut, seeks to find the meaning of her suffering and to transmute it 
into literature as great as that of Dante. Adrian and Raymond seek to marshall their 
powers as political leaders for the good of their country, and eventually, Lionel Verney 
seeks simply to survive as a repository of some of the lost greatness of humanity ( or at 
least his own western culture). These Romantic narratives exemplify a faith in the power 
of the word to convey its meaning, to survive the storyteller, that is at the heart of the 
Romantics' ideological belief in the timeless and transcendent power of literary genius. At 
the same time, such faith carries a utopian moment of genuine hope in its own power to 
convey meaning faithfully and to survive. 
In tragic works such as Frankenstein and Mathilda, Romantic ideology tempts 
characters to reject or restrict domesticity in order to achieve greatness alone, and this 
restricted domesticity cannot deliver the better world it promises. In these works Shelley 
19 
develops a well-recognized negative critique of domesticity, demonstrating the flaws of 
an ideology in which she nonetheless recognizes a utopian potential. In Frankenstein, 
these flaws primarily spring from the persistent tendencies of exclusion which define 
traditional domesticity: patriarchal exclusion, in which women are both protected and 
stifled by their immersion in the home, as well as exclusions of "others" based on class 
and race. In Bloch's terms, Shelley ref uses to accept an abstract utopia, in which such 
flaws are glossed over by mere wishful thinking, and subjects her utopia to the demands 
of the concrete--would the utopia survive an exposure to the real, or dissolve under its 
pressures? Chapter Two focuses specifically on Frankenstein, in which Shelley looks 
closely at the destruction brought about by the ambition of the solitary genius, and the 
effects of a restrictive domesticity upon those who are confined and/or excluded by it. 
The De Lacey household is Shelley's first portrayal of domesticity with utopian potential, 
but because the De Laceys perceive the Creature as an intruding monster rather than a 
fellow outsider, this potential is destroyed. In Chapter Three I look at how Mathilda, 
continuing Shelley's examination of Romantic self-involvement, demonstrates the 
outcome of a domesticity warped by solipsism and the unnatural idealization of the female 
and deepens Shelley's critique of gender tensions operating within the Romantic 
paradigm. I also consider here some important shorter pieces written around 1820, 
including the mythological dramas, Proserpine and Midas, and.the recently uncovered 
children's story, Maurice, or the Fisher's Cot, in which Shelley first fully imagined the 
effects of an unrestricted, utopian domesticity on individuals and their community. 
Shelley's feminism and growing commitment to female characters across the span 
of her career impels her to confront the feminine-gendered, separate sphere of 
domesticity. But Shelley refuses to restrict either the female to domesticity or domesticity 
to the female. After her initial period of works constructed primarily around Romantic 
topoi (Frankenstein, Mathilda), Shelley's historical/political novels form a cohesive 
20 
I 
"middle period" in her career: Va/,perga ( 1823), The Last Man, and The Fortunes of 
Perkin Warbeck(l830). In Chapters Four, Five, and Six, I consider Shelley's focus on 
the ambition for power and its effects in these novels and her exploration of how power 
may be wielded in the public world according to a revised, feminist model of utopian 
domesticity. Shelley focuses a new harshness on the masculinized public sphere, holding 
up domesticity as a model for the public relations for all citizens, male and female. 
In her political novels, Shelley compares the model of utopian domesticity with 
other political models, especially tyranny (in which a solitary leader seeks personal glory) 
and chivalry (in which men seek military glory while upholding women as angelic 
ideals). In Valperga, Shelley describes several examples of utopian domesticity, while 
contrasting the rational and benevolent Euthanasia, a Shelleyan Romantic hero, with the 
hyper-masculine ambition and treachery of Castrucchio and the ultra-feminine, vicitimized 
Beatrice, both examples of the passionate Byronic hero. While Va/,pergaand Perkin 
Warbeck investigate a domestic model for civil authority, The Last Man occupies a pivotal 
moment of transition between a continued (elegiac) engagement with Romanticism and a 
concentration on the artificial divide between the feminized domestic and masculinized 
public spheres. In The Last Man, Shelley emphasizes the critical importance of 
interpersonal connections above all other human cultural constructs, and continues to 
study the contrast between the disinterested benevolence of the Shelleyan hero and the 
passionate genius of the Byronic hero. In Perkin Warbeck, Shelley finally condemns 
chivalry, individual patriarchal rights, and the concept of the "just war," holding up the 
ideal of domesticity while closely exploring the requirements necessary to make 
domesticity utopian. 
Chapter Seven considers Shelley's last two novels, Lodore ( 1835) and Falkner 
( 1837). In these domestic novels it is especially clear how utopian domesticity is to be 
realized by the perfection of both male and female Romantic heroes and the establishment 
21 
--
··--~ ........ --~-----------~ 
communities based on relationship, respect, and justice. While Ladore demonstrates 
specifically how Shelley constructs the possibility of utopian domesticity out of the ashes 
of the old masculinist Romanticism, Fal,kner shows Shelley rewriting the story of Ca'/eb 
Williams to give it a happy ending through the mediation of the well-educated daughter, 
Elizabeth, transforming Godwin's theories to create a feminist form of social justice. The 
full-fledged utopian domesticity of Ladore and Falkner has been misread as an 
acquiescence to conservative ideologies; even critics who understand Shelley as the 
radical writer of Frankenstein contrast her early career with her later novels to support this 
narrative of supposed devolution. But the domesticity of Ladore and Falkner should not 
be read as Shelley's abandonment of the radical impulses of Frankenstein nor as a 
fulfillment of perceived seeds of conservatism in Shelley's earliest work. Whereas 
Shelley's earlier work focuses on what is wrong with domestic ideology, her later 
utopian domestic novels provide a countermodel, exemplifying not only the dangers of 
domesticity, but teasing out utopian threads from within the ideology. The utopian 
domesticity Shelley describes in Ladore and Falkner makes more recognizable the less 
fully-realized utopian moments throughout her earlier work. 
Shelley was, of course, preceded by other women writers in her interest in the 
reform of women's situation, including domesticity. In the first and last chapters of my 
dissertation, I seek to place utopian domesticity in a historical context ranging from the 
late seventeenth century to Shelley's day. In Chapter One, I consider early women 
thinkers who recognized the dangers of enforced domesticity but at the same time used 
women's traditional realm as the basis for their utopian ideas. These writers viewed 
women as men's intellectual equals and sought to demonstrate how women could live 
outside the restrictions of men's control. Margaret Cavendish, duchess of Newcastle 
(1623-1673) explored the life of the mind in companionate marriage and in female 
friendship in her science fiction romance, The Blazing World (1666), and in her play, 
22 
The Convent of Pleasure (1668), laying out the tenns for utopian male/female 
partnership. Mary Astell ( 1666-1731) emphasized women's education and independence 
in her polemics, A Serious Proposal to the Ladies (1698) and Some Reflections on 
Marriage ( 1700), regarding a single, chaste life as preferable to the married state, and 
advocating above all the life of the mind for women. Sarah Scott ( 1723-1795) explored 
the importance of community in her feminist utopia, MilleniumHall (1762), in which she 
portrayed communal living and good works as crucial. I continue in Chapter One by 
looking at two responses to the philosophical theory of Wollstonecraft and Godwin: 
Adeline Mowbray, or, the Mother and Daughter ( 1804), by Amelia Opie, and James 
Lawrence's Empire of the Nairs (1811). Lawrence, who idealized Wollstonecraft, 
focused on free love and matrilineal property inheritance in his chivalric utopian tale. 
Opie, a realist, critiqued the hypothetical effects of Godwin's and Wollstonecraft's tenets 
were they to be acted out in contemporary life, arguing that it is naive to assume that 
society will laud an individual because she maintains her integrity and her philosophical 
principles. 
In order to relate the feminist/reformist nature of Shelley's work to the standards 
of her own time, I conclude in Chapter Eight by comparing her with her direct 
contemporaries, Jane Austen, Felicia Hemans, and Maria Edgeworth. In Persuasion 
(1818), Records of Woman (1828) and Helen (1834), these well-regarded women 
writers demonstrate the potential benefits and drawbacks of domesticity with sympathy 
and depth. They were less concerned than Shelley, however, with a thorough critique of 
social systems and mor~ willing to imply that individual circumstances were sufficient to 
ameliorate the potential hazards of traditional domesticity. Their differing levels of 
engagement with feminist and reformist critique highlight Shelley's own career-long 
project of imagining the revolutionary effects of a perfected domesticity. 
23 
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---. Mary Wollstonecraft Shetley: An Introduction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2000. 
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---. The Utopian Function of Art and Literature: Selected Essays. Trans. Jack Zipes and 
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Cafarelli, Annette Wheeler. "The Transgressive Double Standard: Shelleyan Utopianism 
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Daniel, Jamie Owen and Tom Moylan, eds. Not Yet: Reconsidering Ernst Bloch. New 
York: Verso, 1997. Includes the articles from an issue of Utopian Studies (1.2 
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Davidoff, Leonore. "Regarding Some 'Old Husbands' Tales' : Public and Private in 
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Feminist History." Feminism, the Public and the Private. Ed. Joan Landes. New 
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Ellis, Kate Ferguson. "Subversive Surf aces: The Limits of Domestic Affection in Mary 
Shelley's Later Fiction." The Other Mary Shelley. Ed. Audrey Fisch, Anne 
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Favret, Mary. "Mary Shelley's Sympathy and Irony: The Editor and her Corpus." The 
Other Mary Shetley: Beyond Frankenstein. Ed. Audrey A. Fisch, Anne K. Mellor 
and Esther H. Schor. New York: Oxford UP, 1993. 17-38. 
Ford, Susan Allen. "'A name more dear': Daughters, Fathers, and Desire in A Simple 
Story, The False Friend, andMathUda." Revisioning Romanticism: British 
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Fraistat, Neil. "Illegitimate Shelley: Radical Piracy and the Textual Edition as Cultural 
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Geoghegan, Vincent. Utopianism and Marxism. 1987. 
Habermas, Jurgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a 
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25 
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---, ed. Romanticism and Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1988. 
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26 
I 
Wilson, Carol Shiner and Joel Haefner, eds. Re-Visioning Romanticism: British Women 
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27 
U ll\VER.&ny OF MARYI...AKD 
Domesticity in Early Utopian Feminism 
and Fictional Explorations of Philosophical Reform 
The reimagination of domesticity is a central problem for the eighteenth- and early 
nineteenth-century feminists and reform thinkers who preceded Shelley in their critique of 
women's subordinate position in society. The groundwork for Shelley's political fictions 
was laid by Wollstonecraft and Godwin and by other utopian, feminist, and reform 
thinkers engaging the problems of domesticity within the English literary tradition. For 
early utopian feminists, like Margaret Cave~dish, Mary Astell, and Sarah Scott, the 
revision of domesticity is a key issue: the realm of the home, the family, and sometimes 
marriage, which has traditionally been naturalized as women's sphere, is reenvisioned as 
a site of women's empowerment. Such thinkers argue that the revision of domesticity 
must include thorough education for women, revision of gender expectations, an 
emphasis on women's friendship and a community-centered model of social benevolence, 
resulting in a feminist revision of how society conducts itself. These early feminists are 
relevant to Shelley's utopian project because their work reveals patterns of common 
concerns with persistent patriarchal structures, as well as similar solutions.1 These 
writers can be described as feminist because they portray women as active agents in their 
own destinies and vital participants in the lives of their communities; they argue for 
control of economic resources and revised education for women; they understand gender 
and gender relations to be socially constructed; and in their work, marriage is not 
regarded as "natural" or sacrosanct, but is examined closely for its positive and negative 
effects on women's lives. Exploration of these early feminists' revision of domesticity 
1 Although I do not attempt to show direct influence of these early feminists upon 
Shelley, Jane Donawerth and Carol Kolmerten hold that utopias by women "constitute a 
continuous literary tradition in the West from the seventeenth century until the present 
day" [l]), and the similarity of Shelley's ideas demonstrates her part in this continuity. 
28 
helps us to identify the potential for utopia which fonns the core philosophical thrust of 
Shelley's diverse work. 
Later explorations of domesticity by Amelia Opie and James Lawrence focus on 
the problems of marriage and theories of marriage refonn in response to the work of 
Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin. Whereas mid- to late-nineteenth-century 
feminism would take up issues of political representation and suffrage, at this time the 
education of women and the revision of marriage and property laws were considered the 
most important issues in the bettennent of women's lives.2 Opie, placing the theories of 
Godwin and Wollstonecraft in conversation, demonstrates the tragic outcome of applying 
Godwin's antimatrimonial theory in an unrefonned, prejudiced society, but she also 
demonstrates the applicability of some of Wollstonecraft's most important theory 
regarding woman's place in family and society. Lawrence promotes a utopian vision 
based on the absence of marriage, also including many of Wollstonecraft's ideas about 
the education of women, but he retains retrogressive political and economic structures 
(especially ideas of chivalry and masculine military glory) which undermine his accuracy 
in reflecting Wollstonecraft's ideas. Shelley's strong commitment to a feminist reform 
vision is illuminated not only by the contrast of her reform ideas with Opie's more 
conservative feminist response to Godwin and Wollstonecraft, but also with Lawrence's 
chivalric misreadings of Wollstonecraft, which influenced even Shelley' s feminist-
tending husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley. By looking at how early feminists and reform 
thinkers up to Shelley's day understood domesticity as it affected women's position in 
2 The Infants Custody Act of 1839 was the first law that went onto the books 
giving women some rights within marriage. This legislation was passed two years after 
Shelley wrote her last novel. Shelley's friend Caroline Norton led agitation which led to 
the passage of the Infants Custody Act. Other rights within marriage, such as rights to 
property and to divorce, were not gained until much later. For more on the progress of 
nineteenth-century legal reform, see Joan Perkin, A. James Hammerton, and Mary 
Lyndon Shanley. 
29 
I 
UNIVERSRY OF MAft:llAlnl:Y~l..AN." ;;D:;--- -----;;==== ==::::;;;;;;;;;;;;:;;;;;;;;;:;;;;;;;;;:==:::;:::::::::::= 
society, we will be better able to understand the use of domesticity in Shelley's own ideas 
of feminist reform. 
Margaret Cavendish 
In her utopian science fiction, A Description of a New World, Called the Blazing 
World (1666), Cavendish demands woman's intellectual freedom and makes "excellent 
conversation" the basic premise for utopian friendship and marriage. In her play, The 
Convent of Pleasure (1668), Cavendish describes a separatist women's utopia and 
critiques the problems of marriage, while also showing that it may be possible to 
overcome women's problems by educating men about women's concerns. Cavendish 
hints that disregarding gender expectations and basing utopian marriage on friendship are 
key to creating utopian relationships. 
In The Blazing World, Cavendish's main character is a woman who is transported 
to a new world where she becomes Empress. Cavendish writes herself into the story as 
the Duchess, who becomes not only the Empress's scribe, but also her adviser and 
friend. In her description of the friendship of the Empress and the Duchess, Cavendish 
uses the term "Platonic" to describe their souls as disembodied, but she also uses the term 
playfully, bluning its precise meaning. The term also seems to express a disregard of 
gender: the Empress, the Duchess and the Duke are less clearly gendered in the Platonic 
realm of souls, so that their friendship and love for one another is purified of worldly 
expectations of exclusivity or jealousy. 3 
In The Blazing World, Cavendish's marriage to William Cavendish, the Duke of 
3 The Empress selects the Duchess to be her scribe partly because she is a lady: 
"neither will the Emperor have reason to be jealous, she being one of my own sex" (306). 
But spirits, representing worldly opinion, point out that "husbands have reason to be 
jealous of Platonic lovers, for they are very dangerous, as being not only very intimate 
and close, but subtle and insinuating" (306). Lee Cullen Khanna rightly points out the 
"subtly erotic" undertones of this interplay (22-25). 
30 
Newcastle, is portrayed as utopian. The Duke and Duchess have such a good partnership 
based on excellent conversation that it easily expands to accommodate the Empress. 
When the Empress and the Duchess travel to visit the Duke, they actually enter into his 
body: 
. .. and then the Duke had.three souls in one body, and had there been but some 
such souls more, the Duke would have been like the grand-Seigneur in his 
seraglio, only it would have been a Platonic seraglio. 
But the Duke's soul being wise, honest, witty, complaisant, and noble, 
afforded such delight and pleasure to the Empress 's soul by his conversation that 
these two souls became enamoured of each other, which the Duchess's soul 
perceiving, grew jealous at first, but then considering that no adultery could be 
committed amongst Platonic lovers, and Platonism was divine, as being derived 
from the divine Plato, cast forth of her mind that idea of jealousy. 
Then the conversation of these three souls was so pleasant that it cannot be 
expressed. (319) 
The conversation of the three friends is not exclusive, exemplifying one of the most 
important features of utopian domesticity. The friendship of the Empress and the 
Duchess survives the Empress's attraction to the Duke and, likewise, the marriage of the 
Duchess and the Duke is hospitable to the Empress. It is key that both her marriage to the 
Duke and her friendship with the Empress are based on their respect for the Duchess's 
intellectual powers. Cavendish hints that the Duke, if he were less "wise, honest, witty, 
complaisant, and noble" might take advantage of his situation, like the sultan of a 
seraglio; in this manner, she gently reminds the reader that men must exhibit qualities like 
the Duke's so that utopian domesticity may come into being. 
For marriage to be utopian for Cavendish, the wife must be regarded as an 
intellectually equal partner. Both Cavendish and her husband considered her literary 
31 
output to be an important contribution to their marriage, and Cavendish, seemingly with 
her husband's support, explicitly states that her writings were to be considered as her 
offspring.4 Cavendish used her literary work to speak in public on her husband's behalf. 
Her fictional counterpart, the Duchess, asks the Empress to arrange for a trial in the 
Blazing World, and the Duchess uses the opportunity of the fictional trial to exonerate the 
Duke. 5 Cavendish also produced a literary biography of her husband, which (until new 
critical attention turned her way) was regarded as her best literary output (Shaver 7). 
Cavendish's defense of her husband reveals her own intellectual powers, proving her 
equality within maniage and also contributing to the household economy. 
The utopian potential of marriage shown by Cavendish in The Blazing World is 
balanced by her understanding of the dystopian possibilities faced by married women in 
the seventeenth century. In her play The Convent of Pleasure, Cavendish presents a 
4 In Poems, and Fancies Cavendish writes, " ... of these Nine Months . . . [I] 
wrote this work. . . . being so fond of my Book, as to make it as if it were my Child" 
(' 'To the Reader," np). The epitaph written for Cavendish by her husband states, "Here 
lyes the Loyall Duke of Newcastle and his Dutches, ~is second wife, by whome he had 
noe issue; her name was Margarett Lucas, youngest sister to the Lord Lucas of 
Colchester; a noble familie, for all the Brothers were Valiant and all the Sisters virtuous. 
This Dutches was a wise, wittie and learned Lady, '"".hich her many Bookes do well 
testifie; she was a most Virtuous and a Loving and carefull wife, and was with her Lord 
all the time of his banishment and miseries, and when he came home never parted from 
him in his solitary retirements" (qtd in Ferguson 311). Ferguson responds unfavorably to 
the epitaph, noting that Newcastle gives ''pride of place" to the fact that Cavendish is the 
Duchess "by whom he had noe issue" (311). An equally valid response is that the Duke 
had come to terms with his lack of heirs by the Duchess, allowing him to openly 
acknowledge that fact and to p~ace eq1:1al consideration on the valuable contributions she 
did make to his estate and to his happmess. 
5 Newcastle had been regarded as a traitor to the royalist cause for leaving the 
country after his men were slaughtered at the battle of Marston Moor in 1644 (Mendelson 
19). In November 1651, Cavendish unsuccessfully petitioned Parliament to receive the 
sales proceeds of her husband's sequest~re~ lands (Miller 37-8). Her bashfulness may 
have prevented her fro!11 actu~ly spe~~g m the courtroom (Ros~ 253). I~ Cavendish's 
narrative, her husband s case 1s convmcmgly presented, but even m the fiction, no ruling 
is given. 
32 
separatist female utopia in which the rich Lady Happy declines to marry and decides to 
retire with as many other women as her fortune can sustain, to live together, pursuing 
comfortable, pleasant Ii ves in a utopian domestic setting free of men. Cavendish uses an 
"anti-masque" or series of dystopian scenes to educate the Lady Happy and her friend the 
Princess about the negative ramifications of marriage for women. Central to Cavendish's 
philosophical work throughout her career is her commitment to the presentation of a 
variety of plausible arguments for any question. Throughout Cavendish's work is the 
dynamic dissonance between women's imagined freedom and their constraints in reality. 
For Cavendish, power lies in personal intellectual freedom and imagination. True to 
form, in The Convent of Pleasure Cavendish sees utopian possibility in potentially 
dystopian marriage by destabilizing the gender definition of "man." Cavendish 
recognizes the mutability of gender roles and suggests that men, properly educated, can 
also change. 
The Convent of Pleasure embodies several contradictions: on the one hand, it 
depicts a utopian domesticity--a free association of women who establish a home together 
based on likemindedness--that is free of the inequalities faced by women in marriage; on 
the other hand, that utopia is dis~antled by the marriage and perhaps the silencing of the 
heroine at the end.6 The revelation that Happy's beloved Princess is really a Prince in 
disguise destroys the women's utopian Convent. Lady Happy marries the Prince, and 
although the Prince promises to keep the convent open, Lady Happy no longer qualifies 
to Jive there as a virgin. Although the separatist women' s utopia that Cavendish created is 
brought down, utopian possibility may survive in the hope that the Prince has received a 
feminist re-education during his time in the convent. Through the character of the 
disguised Prince, who is successful in his effort to woo Lady Happy, the play 
6 Editor Anne Shaver points out that Happy speaks less and less as the play closes 
(13-14). 
33 
investigates the potential for men to be reformed by women's critiques of marriage and, 
in this way, points to the potential for a utopian domesticity that includes men and 
marriage. 
There are three possibilities indicating utopian potential in Happy's relationship 
with the Prince(ss). The first lies in Lady Happy's personal inclination toward the 
Prince(ss). Even though "she" turns out to be a Prince, Happy falls in love. Cavendish 
writes of herself, "though I did dread Marriage, and shunn' d Mens companies, as much 
as I could, yet I could not, nor had not the power to refuse him [William Cavendish], by 
reason my Affections were fix'd on him, and he was the onely Person I ever was in love 
with" (Natures Pictures 375). Like Cavendish, Happy also "shunn'd Mens companies" 
yet finds a mate who seems unlike (other) men. By relying on her own intuitive desires, 
Lady Happy has a chance to be as fortunate as Cavendish was in her own match. 
Second, the Prince(ss) is successful at his disguise until a messenger arrives who 
reveals the secret. That Lady Happy is to marry a man who is successful at adopting the 
traits of a virtuous lady surely bodes well for him in a story that valorizes a feminine 
ideal.7 Dolores Paloma points out that in several of her other plays, Cavendish writes 
about women disguised as men, revealing their capacities outside prescribed gender roles. 
Cavendish's emphasis on the power of the imagination to determine reality and her 
willingness to destabilize the idea of gender are undoubtedly linked. With the Prince(ss), 
Cavendish tries to strip away the dichotomy between gender roles, leaving an ungendered 
subject with the best characteristics of both sexes who is restricted by the prescribed roles 
of neither. 
7 Convent of Pleasure edit~rs Sylvia Bo~erbank and Sara Mendelson emphasize 
that "in the play, one man -- the Prince as the Princess -- does perform woman in subtle 
and instructive ways" and urge the reader to ask such questions as "Has the Prince 
changed in any substantial ~ay, given the.range of ge_nder-bencJ!ng experiences he has 
undergone during the play? (20), a question Cavendish seems mtent both upon asking 
and leaving open for argument. 
34 
Third, perhaps most importantly, the Prince(ss) witnesses the didactic play-
within-a-play and lives among the women for some time before he is revealed. Cavendish 
attempts to educate not only women, but also men, about the restrictiveness of their 
gender roles and the necessity for justice. The Prince is initially resistant to the 
argumentative thrust of the antimasque, but politely conforms his opinion of it to Lady 
Happy's, and eventually, concludes that he and Happy have merged toward a union of 
minds. Happy argues that her relationship with the Prince(ss) is different from the 
fickleness and discontented marriages of other courtly or pastoral lovers. The Prince(ss) 
concludes that, "We shall agree, for we true Love inherit,/ Join as one Body and Soul, or 
Heavn'ly Spirit" (IV. i. 157-8). Though Happy still thinks of the Prince(ss) as another 
woman, this scene (IV. i. 148-158) functions as a wedding ceremony. By the end of the 
play, then, the two lovers are one, and are figuratively merged in the person of the 
androgynous Prince(ss). Sophie Tomlinson alerts us that the dramatis personae, printed 
at the end of the play, reveals that the Prince is to be acted by a woman (157). This 
further complicates the valences of Lady Happy's absorption by the Prince. Because we 
cannot see "him" as wholly masculine at the end of the play, we must admit that "he" is at 
least as feminine as masculine--perhaps posing a figural enactment of the very joining 
together of male and female that is heterosexual marriage. 
In these utopian writings, Cavendish insists upon respect for women's intellectual 
powers and for women's equality in human relationships, and places women on center 
stage in reimagined domestic situations. An empress finds it possible to run a world 
based not only on the rational progress of philosophical enquiry, but upon the advice of 
her woman friend. A husband and wife find it possible to admit a third party into their 
relationship by ignoring the preconceived notions of gender that would create enmity and 
discord. A prince becomes a princess and receives lessons on how to be a better husband. 
In all these situations, traditional ideas of domesticity and gender are reimagined to create 
35 
the possibility of utopian domesticity. 
MaryAstell 
Astell made the advancement of women the subject of two pioneering feminist 
tracts: A Serious Proposal to the Ladies for the Advancement of their True and Greatest 
Interest, by a Lover of her Sex (1694) (followed by Serious Proposal Part II in 1697), 
and Some Reflections upon Marriage (1700). The women's community Astell strives to 
create is, like Cavendish's, modeled on a utopian view of what maniage should be like: a 
newer, better kind of maniage, in which women are not bound with unbreakable vows, 
not forced to bear numerous offspring, and not required to obey tyrannous husbands. In 
A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, Astell imagines a domesticity in which women live 
together in religious and academic retreat, and argues that ladies who did not wish to 
marry be allowed to withdraw from society to be given "an ingenuous and liberal 
Education, the most effectual means to direct them into, and to secure their progress in the 
ways of Vertue" (145). Astell believes in women's ability to influence larger realms from 
within a domestic women's realm, expanding outward to affect a wider public circle. 
Astell and Cavendish had in common their belief that women should be free to 
obtain a thorough education, but Astell worked to found the utopian separatist 
communities that Cavendish plays with in her fictions. Astell's most important difference 
from Cavendish is her belief that women can achieve power not only over their own 
minds, but through intellectual and charitable work, over the world as well. Although 
Astell found that worldly power was difficult and perhaps inappropriate for women to 
obtain, Astell agreed with Cavendish that gender had no bearing on a person's intellectual 
or spiritual potential--the realms Astell considered of preeminent importance. 
Astell recognized from the beginning the social construction of women's 
supposed inferiority: "The Incapacity, if there be any, is acquired not natural .... 
36 
Women are from their very Infancy debar' d those Advantages, with the want of which 
they are afterwards reproached, and nursed up in those Vices which will hereafter be 
upbraided to them. So partial are Men as to expect Brick where they afford no straw" 
(Proposal 143). Astell described herself as "a lover of her sex" and recommended that 
women exceed the boundaries of prescribed gender roles. Astell thought that power lay 
in training the body, mind, and soul to a life of intellectual and spiritual devotion. Astell 
blamed men for distracting women with trivialities such as dress and entertainment, 
keeping them from attaining their full intellectual and spiritual potential. 
Astell describes her utopian retreat in religious tenns, but also states that it was to 
be primarily "academical." Astell argues that only by giving women adequate allowance 
for spiritual and intellectual growth could their full potential in society be realized. Astell 
insists that the development of a woman's individual soul is of the utmost importance, but 
she also claims that women who are well-educated can be of greater use to society and in 
the raising of children. For Astell, domesticity--woman's intimate sphere--is only 
restrictive when defined by the vows of marriage. From Astell's utopian retreat, 
women's influence would expand into the public sphere, and the excellent example 
provided to the rest of the world by godly women would materially improve the nation. 
Alessa Johns argues that Astell' s utopianism is forged from the desire to create a 
community of woman, each of whom is a reflection of the glory of God, and that the 
conflict between loving earthly creatures and loving God was one the primary factors 
which led Astell to develop a system of utopian thought. Freed from the distractions of 
men, women together in a utopian setting could conduct lives devoted to God, emulating 
one another in holy love. Astell's single life gave her a clear-sighted vantage point from 
which to assess men's authority over women. Not tempted by the practicalities of the 
marital state to forgive the faults of a husband, she advised women not to marry, stating 
that they "need not be confin'd to what they justly loath" (Proposal 150). By avoiding 
37 
marriage in Astell's "Religious Retirement," at least for a while, women would be more 
fit "to attend the great business they came into the world about, the service of GOD and 
improvement of their own Minds" (150), two ends that were one and the same in Astell's 
understanding. Astell describes the triviality of the sacrifices women would make in her 
Retirement: "You will only quit the Chat of insignificant people for an ingenious 
Conversation; the froth of flashy Wit for real Wisdom; idle tales for instructive 
discourses" (150). To Astell, men are "insignificant people" or worse, "bold importunate 
and rapacious Vultures" (165), whereas women approach the epitome of Christianity in 
their friendships, because in the Retirement, women friends are able to "look into the very 
Soul of the beloved Person, to discover what resemblance it bears to our own, and in this 
Society we shall have the best opportunities of doing so" (164). In this way, Astell 
progresses from advising against marriage to questioning the very possibility of 
friendship with men, while emphasizing the utopian qualities of true friendship among 
women, who live together in a retired, domestic state. 
In theorizing a utopia for women, Astell is not at all concerned to include men 
within it.8 Still, she includes in her treatise a practical and patriotic (while religious) 
motivation to win other people's (men's) support: her Retirement would be "a Seminary 
to stock the Kingdom with pious and prudent Ladies, whose good Example it is to be 
hop' d, will so influence the rest of their Sex, that Women may no longer pass for those 
little useless and impertinent Animals, which the ill conduct of too many has caus' d 'em 
to be mistaken for" (152). In her attempt to convince men of their own self-interest in 
women's improvement, Astell prefigures (or perhaps influences) what would be 
Wollstonecraft's central argument in the Vindication , writing that it would "go a great 
s Eve Tavor Bannett classifies Astell among the "Matriarchal" feminists who 
believed in the virtuous superiority of women over men, as opposed to Egalitarian 
feminists like Wollstonecraft, who believed in men's and women' s equality (3). 
38 
way towards reclaiming the men, [since] great is the influence we have over them in their 
Childhood, in which time if a Mother be discreet and knowing as well as devout, she has 
many opportunities of giving such a Fonn and Season to the tender Mind of the Child, as 
will shew its good effects thro' all the stages of his Life" (167). 
Astell has great respect for vows, and because of this, supports the absolute 
authority of the husband within marriage: "A Woman that is not Mistress of her Passions, 
that cannot patiently submit even when Reason suffers with her, who does not practice 
Passive Obedience to the utmost, will never be acceptable to such an absolute Sovereign 
as a Husband" (Reflections 115). She therefore warned women not to undertake to marry 
unless they were able to submit their will entirely to that of their husband. In The Wrongs 
o/Woman, or, Maria, Wollstonecraft explicitly condemns the unavailability of divorce. 
Astell seems to describe the situation in which Wollstonecraft places Maria when she 
writes: 
To be yok' d for Life to a disagreeable Person and Temper; to have Folly and 
Ignorance tyrannize over Wit and Sense; to be contradicted in every thing one 
does or says, and bore down not by Reason but Authority; to be denied ones most 
innocent desires, for no other cause but the Will and Pleasure of an absolute Lord 
and Master, whose Follies a Woman with all her Prudence cannot hide, and 
whose Commands she cannot but despise at the same time she obeys them; is a 
misery none can have a just Idea of, but those who have felt it. (Reflections 90) 
Astell and Wollstonecraft agree in their assessment of how bad marriage can be, but 
disagree when Wollstonecraft urges women to consider a bad marriage breakable. An 
important facet of Aste II' s utopia was that women would not have to make irrevocable 
vows to become members of the community. The omission of vows not only signifies a 
difference between Astell's religious retreat and more traditional nunneries or 
monasteries, it also provides a point of extreme contrast with the state of marriage. The 
39 
lack of vows indicates Astell's respect and acknowledgement for ~omen's need for self-
determination. Instead of the steel-trap method of irrevocable vows, women's rationality 
and pious devotion would attract them to her retreat for as long as they needed it. 
Astell strongly believed in women's intellectual powers and argued forcefully for 
the establishment of social institutions that would provide women with rigorous academic 
and religious educations. Astell argued that marriage as it existed in her day subjected 
women to tyranny, and she reimagined women's intimate sphere in terms of a separatist 
utopia in which women could explore their own potential among friends, without the 
stricture of unbreakable vows. Astell argued that were such a utopian community 
established, women would not only improve themselves, but that society at large would 
feel the beneficial effects of its newly empowered women citizens. 
Sarah Scott 
Sarah Scott's Millenium Hall (1762) closely adheres to the Christian values 
promulgated by Astell, but is rather more flexible and secularized. Millenium Hall 
features a utopian community set up by gentlewomen who, rather than marrying, choose 
to expend their fortunes in the service of other women who lack the resources to make 
their own way in the world. The atmosphere of Milleniurn Hall is one of order, 
usefulness, cooperation, leisure, learning, and charity. The community of Millenium 
Hall provides an alternative education for women of varying ages and of several different 
social orders and allows them to learn sobriety and industry; for example, industrious 
girls from the neighboring community are trained in order that eventually they may 
manage a house or children. Scott reinforced many of the expected eighteenth-centwy 
gender roles for women, holding up as ideals the well-managed household, charitable 
pursuits, and regimented time well-spent, but her women require no supervision by a 
husband, father, or other masculine authority. Her utopia was a reprieve for single 
40 
women (unmanied women or widows) who wished to combine their resources with 
other gentlewomen. Millenium Hall builds a utopian model for society based on women's 
living together in friendship; most importantly, they use their combined resources to 
better one another's lives and actively engage the community around them. Scott argued 
that men would do well to follow the example of the ladies of Millenium Hall, arguing 
that the charity practiced by the ladies was not specific to women. 
Scott's understanding of power was at once idealistic and exceedingly practical. 
She held that women who were independently wealthy could direct the courses of their 
own lives. Scott's utopia was created by wealthy women who wished to share their 
economic privilege with those around them through enlightened charitable projects. 
Scott's analysis of the proper uses of economic power is identifiable as feminist, because 
in her work, women combine resources, lessen inequality, and work to better one another 
across class lines. The ladies of Millenium Hall have dedicated their financial means to 
secure a good home for themselves and for many other women. Not only do they provide 
a means for women with independent fortunes to leave the world; they also provide that 
haven for those who are interested in a temporary respite. 
Hierarchies are not broken down in Scott's utopia, but are, rather, strictly 
enforced; however, women share their resources across social rank but are educated 
according to their rank in order that they might attain economic self-sufficiency. 
Although the lower classes might seem to absorb all the benefit but transmit none to those 
above them, Scott demonstrates that if it is better to give than to receive, those who 
receive confer the greater benefit to their benefactors by giving the benefactors a chance to 
do good works. The hierarchical structure of the ladies' society is closely tied to 
economics. In general, women could not, legally or informally, exert sufficient control 
over their economic situations to enable them to flout the social order. Scott's idea that 
ladies who had independent wealth should pool that wealth for the communal good was a 
41 
revolutionary idea in itself, even without the notion that wealth and rank should be 
equalized across class barriers. 
In Millenium Hall, female friendship and unity of property occurs horizontally--
friends own in common, not according to the magnitude of their donations. Hierarchy is 
preserved, but the degrees of hierarchy are significantly flattened. Habermas notes that 
the privatization of the eighteenth-century home was reflected by the division of the 
communal hall into smaller privatized rooms (44-5): Scott, however, retains the centrality 
of the common hall, emphasizing an older "public" model for the management of 
"private" affairs but at the same time blurring the distinction between ranks which is 
signified primarily by differences in dress. "Unity of property" was discussed explicitly 
and agreed upon by the schoolmates Miss Mancel and Miss Melvyn (later Mrs. Morgan) 
(41), but was also agreed upon by all the ladies who join their society. Between Miss 
Mancel and Miss Melvyn, the two romantic friends, unity of property is a dramatic pledge 
of their love for one another, emblematic of and modelled upon marriage.9 In Millenium 
Hall, the rules governing this sort of "marriage" between women are socially regulated, 
codified, and improved Entry into the society is on a trial basis and is fully reversible, 
with the woman receiving back her initial capital should she quit the society. Women unfit 
for the society could be expelled--upon the marriage model, this is a sort of divorce, a 
safeguard against women whose own consciences are not fully developed enough to 
recognize their own insufficiencies in the society. 
Scott delivers a strong critique of marriage through the women's personal 
narratives, but she does not decry marriage in general because it seemed necessary for 
those not independently wealthy. Although Scott's protagonists are not married at the 
time of the relation of their narrative, Mrs. Morgan states that "We consider marriage as 
9 See George Haggerty on romantic love in Millenium Hall. 
42 
UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND 
------
absolutely necessary to the good of society; it is a general duty" (115). Still, Mrs. 
Morgan does claim that those who are fortunate enough to be able to maintain themselves 
outside marriage should be free to do so. Scott confounds expectations for the 
romance/marriage plot because we know that none of the ladies are manied by the time 
we meet them. Essentially she has created an "anti-romance" plot that ensures that the 
woman in question will not be married by the end of her narrative. Scott argues that 
many marriages end in disaster because both men and women are ill-educated and ill-
acting. During time spent at Millenium Hall, women experience such felicity in the 
company of other women that there is no need for them to marry precipitously: they are 
secure financially, and enjoy companionship, mental exercise, spiritual growth, useful 
occupations, and amusing diversions. Scott' s vision for women includes time for them to 
overcome past difficulties and provides remedial education that will allow the women 
either to remain among themselves or to reenter the world on their own terms. 
According to Dorice Williams Elliott, much philanthropic effort in the eighteenth 
century was dedicated to the reformation of "fallen women." Elliott points out that 
women's charitable contributions, traditionally rural and neighborly, were joined in the 
eighteenth century by a new practice of businesslike, male-dominated philanthropic 
institutions. By organizing their own philanthropic efforts in a systematic, institutional 
way, the ladies redefine the restrictive ideology of domesticity according to their own 
interests and escape the confines of a tightening private/domestic sphere. Rather than deal 
directly with the reformation of prostitutes, Scott emphasizes that women can recover 
themselves from sexual danger or actual "falls" without the help of philanthropic men. In 
a tone of concession, Spencer notes that "On one level . .. the novel upholds the 
restrictive ideal of woman as a naturally virtuous creature who gets by without direct 
power, because she can influence men towards good by her example" (xv). Under 
patriarchy, women are indeed perceived through a false dichotomy to be naturally either 
43 
virtuous or vicious, virgin or whore. Scott counters this patriarchal assumption by 
painstakingly demonstrating how the women of the novel are educated by their friends 
and by experience, showing that women are not "naturally virtuous" but that their virtue 
must be achieved. Furthermore, Scott complicates and derails the virgin/whore dichotomy 
by showing that the sexually "fallen" woman can be redeemed: Mrs. Selvyn's mother, 
though "fallen," is rewarded (after a lifetime of repentance) by her eventual reunion with 
her loving daughter ( 166-17 4 ). Scott demonstrates her understanding of the social 
construction of virtue by showing that the women's society is run by conscious, rational 
action. Far from merely restricting their actions to example, influence, or indirect power, 
the women's entire way of life is explicitly under their own control. Their sphere of 
influence reaches throughout their neighborhood and continues to expand at the close of 
the novel. 
The ladies' good domestic management soon becomes public, as it begins to 
influence the surrounding countryside and, through the male narrator, the real world (see 
Spencer xi). The estate soon becomes a shining example, and the neighborhood nearby is 
transformed. Soon neighboring estates are taken into their sphere of influence, first when 
the ladies decide to acquire a second manor for gentlewomen, and later when Sir George 
Ellison follows up on his intention, stated at the end of Millenium Hall, "to imitate [the 
ladies] on a smaller scale" (207). Ellison's later actions are related in Millenium Hall's 
companion novel, The History of Sir George Ellison; as Vincent Carretta points out: 
"Inspired by the example of the Hall, Ellison decides that ... the feminine standards of 
benevolence and virtue should prevail, and to institute [similar] reforms" (318). 
"Influenc[ing] men towards good by her example" is Scott's goal for her novel. 
Influence could be understood as indirect power, but Scott demonstrates that influence, 
specifically in terms of ideas arrived at through philosophical or spiritual study, is a 
powerful guiding force in society. The reformation of Lamont, the young coxcomb, is 
44 
UNIVERSITY OF MARYL.ANO 
indicated at the book's close by his being found reading the New Testament (206). 
Lamont had been "convinced by the conduct of the ladies of this house that their religion 
must be the true one" and that "the purity of its precepts ... could thus exalt human 
nature almost to divine." Reading the New Testament is put forth as a way of imbibing 
the purest 1)recepts for social behavior; by analogy, similarly pure precepts (modeled after 
those of the New Testament) have been instilled into the mind of the reader by Scott's 
own novel. Lamont's perusal of the New Testament is directly followed by Sir George 
Ellison's recalling the frame of the novel to the reader's conscious notice, as he directs his 
closing paragraph to the attention of the editor to whom he is sending his account of 
Millenium Hall: "If what I have described may tempt anyone to go and do likewise I shall 
think myself fortunate in communicating it. For my part, my thoughts are all engaged in 
a scheme to imitate [the ladies] on a smaller scale" (207). 10 As Linda Dunne notes, "it is 
understood that this conversion of the male visitors represents the potential for general 
societal reform extending beyond the boundaries of the female community and the book" 
(56). Similarly, reform ideas could influence readers from within their fictional context, 
advancing the Godwinian idea of the "general illumination" of society by rational 
philosophy .11 
Scott's community is based on a measure of openness, or willingness to be 
inspected, which looks forward to the attitudes of Godwin. This openness occurs at the 
juncture of public and private, muddying the division of the spheres which at first glance 
10 Ellison paraphrases Jesus's command at the end of the parable of the Good 
Samaritan, Luke 10:37 (my italics). 
11 Political Justice 738 (Book vm, "Of Property," Chap. IV, "Objections to this 
System from the Frailty of the Human Mind"). See also Carl Fisher, who states that 
"Godwin hoped to reform the people through examples and principles of reasoning. The 
novel form would be ideal for this duty. Reading a novel is an individual act and allows 
for reflection" and might result result in "a wide[r] distribution of his ideas" than he could 
hope for with books of pure philosophy (62). 
45 
seems clear. In his list of basic principles for Political Justice, Godwin states that "Justice 
requires that I should put myself in the place of an impartial spectator of human concerns" 
(76 ["Summary of Principles"]). As Dunne shows, Scott not only places her characters' 
lives under the scrutiny of the inquiring male visitors, but she, in a sense, allegorizes the 
mode of spectatorship by including within her utopian compound a settlement of 
"monsters"--dwarves and giants. The word monster is derived from the Latin monstrare, 
to show. Godwin's conception of the public realm extends down into the private, as does 
Scott's, because the things that are private are nonetheless available for show. Although 
their privacy is guaranteed, the monsters agree to be seen (21). There is a strong 
connection between the monsters, who had previously been immured in cages and 
displayed for profit, and women in general, who are trapped in marriage without control 
of their own economic resources. In Scott's utopia, the monsters are given the decision, 
and they choose to be shown--as in Godwin' s utopian system, in which citizens will not 
attempt to hide their actions or their assets from their neighbors. 
Life on the country estate, as it was imagined by Sarah Scott in the mid-eighteenth 
century, may appear nostalgic or even naive by the 1820s and-30s, when 
industrialization had begun to undermine the system of country estates such earlier 
utopias are built upon. Davidoff and Hall assert that rural cottage life is anachronistic and 
unattainable by the 1830s, but they also point out that some thinkers, like landscaper John 
Loudon, were beginning to reconceive the cottage ideal in the suburbs (180).12 But the 
reliance of early feminists like Scott, Cavendish and Astell on the aristocratic holding of 
property as a source for women's self-determination is carried over into early-nineteenth-
12 Loudon writes in The Suburban Gardener, "We shall prove in this work that a 
suburban residence, with a very small portion of land attached, will contain all that is 
essential for happiness" (8; qtd in 189). As Davidoff and Hall note, "Initially he had 
assumed that all would seek the joys of country life and that the working household 
should operate in a rural setting" but "he soon realized that rural life was possible for 
few" (189). 
46 
century middle-class thinking, with dreams of small holdings of property, a "small 
comfortable house and a good-sized garden,"13 which would provide middle-class 
individuals with enough independence to insulate them from the struggles of the 
workings classes without conveying the sense of waste and luxury they condemned in the 
upper classes. In class terms, a retreat to country life indicates the desire for a closer 
connection between production and consumption. The lives of utopian characters, as long 
as they retain enough leisure for study, are enhanced by their close connection to bucolic 
nature, as well as by a reasonable measure of productive labor. Men and women who 
choose a simple, natural life may find abundance, serenity and beauty in nature. In gender 
terms, the picture of the utopian cottage, well-managed by the careful housewife, 
valorizes woman's traditional skill at creating a comfortable home and maintaining ties of 
community, as Scott shows. 
Scott frames her utopia around women's friendship and shared commitment to 
community benevolence. By pooling their resources, women are empowered not only to 
help themselves, but to help others in similar situations, as well as those at different class 
levels. Scott subtly adjusts the philanthropic focus on "fallen" women, arguing that if 
given sufficient resources, women can re-educate themselves. She reiterates this point 
with her portrayal of the monsters' enclave: these extraordinary individuals are able to live 
satisfying lives once they are freed from restrictive social expectations about their intrinsic 
13 Qtd in Davidoff and Hall, 17, from James Luckcock' s Sequel to memoirs in 
humble life (Birmingham, 1825), 28. After leaving his business as a jeweller, Luckcock 
retired to a "modest white stuccoed house, on one side attached to its neighbour .... in 
Lime Grove, in the residential suburb of Edgbaston" ( 17). Other example of the appeal 
of the cottage are found by Davidoff and Hall, who argue that the wide appeal of Princess 
Charlotte, the heir to the throne who died in 1817, was connected with "her pleasure in 
simple domestic duties, charitable activities, and the creation of a beautiful home and 
garden for herself, her husband and her prospective child" (153). Davidoff and Hall also 
call to attention Cowper's "central themes" of "the humility, comfort and peace to be 
found in the whitewashed cottage" (157), or "pretty little cottage" of lesser-known Mary 
Ann Hedge (My Own Fireside [Colchester, 1832], 44, qtd in 178). Cottage themes are 
also important in the poetry of Felicia Hemans, as I explore in chapter three. 
47 
natures based on their external appearances. Scott applies feminist principles to the model 
of the country estate, explicitly linking the welfare of the privileged to those they assist. 
Even those with greater resources benefit from the community created by their friends, 
and the beneficial effect of the establishment of such a community radiates outward to 
affect the world at large. 
Amelia Opie 
Adeline Mowbray; or, the Mother and Daughter(1805) is Amelia Alderson Opie's 
contribution to a debate about marriage that was begun by her old friends William 
Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft in the 1790s. After Wollstonecraft's reputation was 
destroyed by her husband's revelatory posthumous memoirs (1798), overt feminist 
argument was sanctioned by cultural conservatives, and the debate about marriage might 
have been thought closed. But Opie attempts a fair evaluation of the New Philosophy 
through her fictional character's attempts to put Godwin's and Wollstonecraft's ideas into 
practice. Tragic, dystopian, but thorough and even-handed, Opie's novel places 
Godwin's and Wollstonecraft's theories side by side in philosophical conversation, 
demonstrating the value of some of their radical theories while at the same time arguing 
against their naive application. Godwin and Wollstonecraft themselves had revised their 
opinions regarding marriage before the birth of their child, the future Mary Shelley. Opie 
had seen Godwin marry twice by the publication of her novel (as Roxanne Eberle points 
out, 127). The change of heart which led to Godwin's and Wollstonecraft's marriage 
does not come soon enough for Opie' s radical heroine, Adeline. 
Throughout Opie's novel, various characters argue that what may seem alluring in 
theory may be pernicious in practice. Whereas Godwin, in his Political Justice (1793, 
revised 1796, 1798) held that ''The abolition of the present system of marriage appears to 
48 
UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND 
involve no evils" (763), 14 Opie argues that this is not the case. Opie opens her novel with 
the terse pronouncement, "A little experience is better than a great deal of theory" (5), and 
throughout her novel seeks to show how a woman who has chosen to disregard society' s 
rules for her behavior is badly treated, despite her actual virtue. While showing that she 
believes marriage to be flawec., Opie defends the concept of marriage and denies that 
philosophy should edge out experience as the guide to right action. Opie is clearly critical 
of characters such as Berrendale, Adeline's bad husband, of whom she writes that he was 
"no advocate for the equality of the sexes, .. . [and] thought it only a matter of course 
that he should fare better than his wife" (184). But Opie still warns against rash 
innovation and argues that even though marriage may be abused in individual cases, the 
custom of ages should be respected. 
Opie pits her own language against Godwin's quite early on in the novel, in a 
section in which she outlines Glenmurray's true reasons for wanting to marry Adeline. In 
an infamous section of Political Justice, Godwin had stated, 
Marriage, as now understood, is a monopoly, and the worst of monopolies. So 
long as two human beings are forbidden, by positive institution, to follow the 
dictates of their own mind, prejudice will be alive and vigorous. So long as I 
seek, by despotic and artificial means, to maintain my possession of a woman, I 
am guilty of the most odious selfishness. (762) 
Opie' s narrator, unveiling Glenmurray's innermost psychology, echoes but subtly 
redefines Godwin' s terms, asserting that 
The true and delicate lover is always a monopolizer, always desirous of calling the 
woman of his affections his own: it is not only because he considers marriage as a 
holy institution that the lover leads his mistress to the altar; but because it gives 
14 Godwin' s discussion of the system of marriage occurs in Book VIII, "Of 
Property," Appendix, "Of Cooperation, Co-habitation and Marriage" (756-767). 
49 
him a right to appropriate the fair treasure to himself, - because it sanctions and 
perpetuates the dearest of all monopolies, and erects a sacred barrier to guard his 
rights, - around which, all that is respectable in society, all that is most powerful 
and effectual in its organization, is proud and eager to rally. (38-39) 
Opie redefines Godwin's "worst of monopolies" as "the dearest of all monopolies" and 
changes his "odious selfishness" to "a sacred barrier." What Godwin calls the "despotic 
and artificial" prejudice of "positive institution" (his anarchist term for non-situational 
law), Opie sanctions as that "around which, all that is respectable in society, all that is 
most powerful and effectual in its organization, is proud and eager to rally." Toward the 
beginning of the book, the narrator is able to attribute such glowing praise to the 
subconscious dreams of Glenmurray, whereas toward the end, such uncomplicated 
panegyric (though precise in its response to Godwin) would sound much less 
convincing. 
Although Opie is generally suspicious of reform theory, she supports 
Wollstonecraft' s argument that women must be well-educated if they are to be fit mothers 
and wives (see Eberle 128-9). The relationship bet~een mother and daughter is 
foregrounded by the subtitle and central to the plot of the novel. It is Editha Mowbray's 
faulty handling of her daughter's education that gives root to Adeline's philosophical 
opinions. As Rachel Pemberton, a sympathetic Quaker moralist, states, ''Thy daughter's 
faults originated in thee! her education was cruelly defective .. .. Thou ownest that thou 
didst openly profess thy admiration of the sentiments which she adopted ... she set thee 
the virtuous example of acting up to the dictates of conscience" (257, 258). 
Wollstonecraft has predicted as well the source of division between Adeline and her 
mother: ''The mother will be lost in the coquette, and, instead of making friends of her 
daughters, view them with eyes askance, for they are rivals--rivals more cruel than any 
other, because they invite a comparison, and drive her from the throne of beauty, who 
50 
has never thought of a seat on the bench of reason" (VRW 49). Although Editha did 
study philosophy, her rivalry with her daughter over Sir Patrick O'Carrol, whom she 
marries, overrides any philosophical strength Editha might have had, and blinds Editha 
from the possibilities of retrieving her daughter from the brink of disaster. Opie presents 
Editha merely dabbling in philosophy, rather than considering the full ramifications of its 
application, as problematic throughout the novel. 
By the conclusion, Adeline has repented of her philosophical stance against 
marriage (although her eventual recantation has clearly been tortured out of her), and in a 
letter to Colonel Mordaunt, an erring suitor, she outlines her new defense of marriage 
(243-4). Adeline puts Godwin and Wollstonecraft at odds, using arguments similar to 
Wollstonecraft's from A Vindication of the Rights of Woman to counter Godwinian 
ideas, asserting that marriage is necessary to preserve the social structure, primarily for 
the sake of children. Adeline argues that marriage "has a tendency to call forth and 
exercise the affections, and control the passions" and that "it is on the cultivation and 
influence of the affections that the happiness and improvement of social life depend" 
(243). Amelia Alderson had had conversations with Godwin in which she found his 
understanding of the affections lacking; she wrote to describe Godwin's surprise that on a 
visit, she remained with relatives in Southgate instead of residing in London: 
at last I told him I had not yet outlived my affections, and that they bound me to 
my family at Southgate. But was I to acknowledge any other dominion than that 
of reason? - 'but are you sure that my affections in this case are not the result of 
reason?' He shrugged disbelief, and after debating some time, he told me I was 
more of the woman than when he saw me last. (a letter of Sept. 1794, qtd in St. 
Clair 148) 
Opie is sure that reason and the affections can and must work side by side hannoniously, 
while Godwin is stalwartly prepared to subordinate the affections to reason no matter 
51 
what the cost--he must always save Fenelon and sacrifice the chambermaid. 
Echoing Wollstonecraft's more complicated arguments about passion, reason, and 
sensibility (which eventually influenced Godwin as well), Opie invokes affection as a 
keyword for the strong but calm social attachments to which both passion and reason are 
subordinated. Having already observed "that whatever is likely to induce parents to 
neglect the education of their children must be hurtful to the welfare of the community," 
Adeline sounds most Wollstonecraftian when she asks, 
"What then, in such a state of society, would be the fate of the children born in it? 
- What would their education be? Parents continually engrossed in the enervating 
but delightful egotism of a new and happy love, lost in selfish indulgence, the 
passions awake, but the affections slumbering, and the sacred ties of parental 
feeling not having time nor opportunity to fasten on the heart, - their offspring 
would either die the victims of neglect, and the very existence of the human race 
be threatened; or, without morals or instruction, they would grow up to scourge 
the world by their vices, till the whole fabric of civilized society was gradually 
destroyed" (244-5) 
For Opie, affection is a kind of social glue which binds people together in community 
when fickle passion or cold reason cannot. To an extent Godwin agrees; he alludes to 
affection in his defense of maniage based on friendship: 
if by friendship we understand that affection for an individual which is measured 
singly by what we know of his worth .... Friendship therefore may be expected 
to come in aid of the sexual intercourse to refine its grossness, and increase its 
delight. All these arguments are calculated to determine our judgement in favour 
of marriage as a salutary and respectable institution, but not of that species of 
marriage in which there is no room for repentance and to which liberty and hope 
are equally strangers. (763-4) 
52 
For Godwin, affection is a key ingredient in a good marriage, but he feels that only · 
marriages with "room for repentance" have much positive potential. By "repentance," 
Godwin alludes to divorce. Godwin believes that the availability of divorce would 
influence couples to strengthen their ties of affection and friendship in order to preserve 
their marriages, whereas Adeline wishes marriages to be indissoluble, and urges patience 
and forbearance as the key to happiness, or at least peace: "to BEAR and FORBEAR I 
believe to be the grand secret of happiness . . . a lesson so needful in order to perfect the 
human character, that I believe the difficulty of divorce to be one of the greatest blessings 
of society" (220). Opie uses Godwin's own language of perfectibility to make her point. 
In identifying the affections as the key bonds of society, Opie recognizes this issue as the 
reconciliation point between the disparate marriage theories of Wollstonecraft and 
Godwin. The bonds of affection and friendship (urged by Wollstonecraft) are simpler and 
more genuine than the bonds of law or custom (derided by Godwin) and must be present 
in order to elevate a relationship to the utopian level. 
In line with Wollstonecraft's general argument about the importance of a girl's 
education, Opie emphasizes Adeline' s education when, to the shock of all present, 
Adeline first makes her pronouncement against marriage in company: "With an unreserve 
which nothing but her ignorance of the world, and the strange education which she had 
received, could at all excuse, she began to declaim against marriage, as an institution at 
once absurd, unjust, and immoral, and to declare that she would never submit to so 
contemptible a form, or profane the sacred ties of love by so odious and unnecessary a 
ceremony" (28). Wollstonecraft's accusation that women are educated for the pleasure of 
men is given a strange twist, in that it is Adeline's supposedly progressive thought that 
precipitates her downfall. Glerunurray allows Adeline to make decisions he knew to be 
ill-advised, letting passion overrule him and using faulty reasoning to support his desire 
for her: "He knew, though Adeline did not, the extent of the degradation into which the 
53 
step which her conscience approved would necessarily precipitate her" (38). By allowing 
Adeline's education to produce his own gratification, Glenmurray follows in the footsteps 
of Rousseau, whom both Wollstonecraft and Opie (57-8) condemn (Eberle 129). 
As the novel progresses, Adeline's convictions are eroded by her experiences 
with the disapproval of society: "How strange and irrational," thought Adeline, "are the 
prejudices of society! Because an idle ceremony has not been muttered over me at the 
altar, I am liable to be thought a woman of vicious inclinations, and to be exposed to the 
most daring insults" (120). Her doubts become stronger when she realizes the extent of 
the condemnation she is expected to endure: "surely, surely, there must be something 
radically wrong in a situation which exposes one to such a variety of degradations!" 
(122). Opie makes the erosion of all her social attachments the sign of both society's 
intransigence and Adeline's error. Rachel Pemberton, the wise voice of custom, makes 
the strongest arguments in the novel against putting theory into practice. 15 Opie 
manipulates the character of Rachel Pemberton vecy skillfully, using her penchant for 
Godwinian forthright criticism to illustrate her problems with Godwin's own ideas. 
Furthermore, as a Quaker, Mrs. Pemberton is framed as a character who obeys the 
dictates of external authority only when her own judgment persuades her it is right to do 
so. 
Adeline's wholehearted adoration of Glenmurray leads to a concern for his fame 
which connects Opie's novel to Godwin's Caleb Williams (1794), in which Caleb's 
character, like Adeline's, is destroyed to protect the reputation of a well-respected man. 
Adeline asks, "shall I scruple to give up for his honour and fame the petty advantages 
which marriage would give me? Never - his honour and fame are too dear to me" (92). 
Adeline's readiness to "think no sacrifice too great, ... to disregard all personal 
15 See for example her exchange with Adeline 125-126. 
54 
inconveniences rather than let him forfeit, for her sake, his pretensions" cause Dr. 
Norberry to compare her with "a Malabar widow, who with fond and pious enthusiasm, 
from an idea of duty, throws herself on the funeral pile of her husband" (93). Just as 
Falkland, a murderer, betrays his better nature by persecuting Caleb because of his love 
of his own good fame, so does Glenmurray betray his better nature by failing to act 
wisely with regard to Adeline--eventually leading to her recantation and sorrowful death. 
Eventually, Glenmurray changes his tune, but with reservations, and too late for 
Adeline: "I will own that some of my opinions are changed ... as the mass of society 
could never at once adopt them, they had better remain unacted upon, than that a few 
lonely individuals should expose themselves to certain distress, by making them the rules 
of their conduct" (153). Glenmurray's position leads to a kind of stasis, in which the 
bravery of social pioneers (like Adeline) is seen as futile. Nevertheless, Godwin's own 
sentiments on marriage, obviously, had changed, resulting in his marriage to 
Wollstonecraft, as his 1797 letter to an unknown correspondent indicates: "I find the 
prejudices of the world in arms against the woman who practically opposes herself to the 
European institution of marriage ... I found that the comfort and peace of a woman for 
whose comfort and peace I interest myself would be much injured if I could have 
prevailed on her to defy those prejudices" (9 May 1797 b229/I, qtd in St. Clair 172-3). 
Godwin, not so foolish as Glenmurray, protected the legitimacy of his lover's offspring 
through marriage, but he was less circumspect in his publication of the Memoirs which 
were to be used against the cause of women's rights for years afterward. In the first case, 
Godwin was willing to subordinate theory to his concern for his beloved, but in the latter 
case, he was blinded by his convictions into assuming that the public would accept and 
even admire the controversial life Wollstonecraft had led. 
The ideas of openness and sincerity, the willingness to subject oneself to public 
scrutiny, are among Godwin's most basic principles in Political Justice. Part of his 
55 
argument against marriage is its tendency to transform the aptitude for inconstancy into 
clandestine falsehood: 
Inconstancy, like any other temporary dereliction, would not be found 
incompatible with a character of uncommon excellence. What, at present, renders 
it, in many instances, peculiarly loathsome is its being practised in a clandestine 
manner. It leads to a train off alsehood and a concerted hypocrisy, than which 
there is scarcely anything that more eminently depraves and degrades the human 
mind. (764) 
In response to Godwin's argument, Adeline argues that "in men especially, a new object 
can excite new passion," and that the lack of marriage would produce "unbridled 
licentiousness." Adeline has learned this from the vicious behavior of her husband, 
Berrendale: "his fidelity to his wife had not been proof against a few weeks' absence; but 
then, being, like most men, not over delicate in his idea on such subjects, as soon as 
Adeline returned he had given up the connexion which he had formed, and therefore he 
thought she had not much reason to complain" (189). Opie, however, seeks to 
demonstrate in her novel that even constancy can be forced to remain clandestine due to 
public censure of supposedly private affairs. Adeline, indeed, is severely tempted to 
falsehood when she has the chance to deny her servant Mary Warner's allegations in 
order to retain her teaching position (171 ). Adeline feels that the privacy of her union with 
Glenmurray should invite no public scrutiny or outrage. In her conversation with Mrs. 
Pemberton, Adeline disregards the opinion of the public world, asking, "But surely you 
will allow that in a family quiet and secluded as ours, and in daily contemplation of an 
union uninterrupted, faithful, and virtuous, and possessing all the sacredness of · 
marriage, though without the name, it is not likely that [Mary] should have imbibed any 
vicious habits or principles?" But Mrs. Pemberton identifies the clandestine nature of 
Adeline's union with Glenmurray as part of its hypocrisy: "But in contemplating thy 
56 
union itself, she has lived in the contemplation of vice; and ... by having given it an air 
of respectability, thou hast only made it more dangerous" (124-5). Adeline's "air of 
respectability" --since respect can only be conferred by the world--is deceptive in itself, 
and at worst, hypocritical or vicious. 
Godwin believes that the sincerity of well-meaning people will gradually reform 
the world. But Opie argues that people are often treated in ways that disregard whether 
they are sincere or insincere. The spiteful Maynard sisters and the Norberrys are harsh 
and quick to criticize those they consider fallen, yet conduct themselves according to a 
double standard based on appearances. Glenmurray's disdainful female relatives carry on 
affairs, but are supposedly too good to be introduced to Adeline. Villains, such as Sir 
Patrick O'Carrol and Berrendale, who are insincere, suffer little public censure (although 
the author punishes them with death). In contrast, Adeline's virtue is powerless against 
the deprecations of public opinion: Mrs. Beauclerc states, 
I should consider your example as a warning to all young people; and to preserve 
my children from evil I should only wish them to hear your story, as it inculcates 
most powerfully how vain are personal graces, talents, sweetness of temper, and 
even active benevolence, to ensure respectability and confer happiness, without a 
strict regard to the long-established rules for conduct, and a continuance in those 
paths of virtue and decorum which the wisdom of ages has pointed out to the 
steps of every one. (172) 
Wollstonecraft had attempted to defend "fallen women," pointing out that 'The woman 
who is faithful to the father of her children demands respect, and should not be treated 
like a prostitute" (71). She also makes the connection between women who "must marry 
advantageously" arguing that they are "often legally prostituted" (60). An attitude like 
Wollstonecraft's is reasonable and charitable, but rare. 
Opie, in agreement with Godwin, makes the illusory split between public and 
57 
private a central point in Adeline Mowbray. Editha's dabbling in philosophy, although 
she does not act upon her ideas, damages her reputation in society, as people are shocked 
by her ideas and her willingness to associate with philosophers such as Glenmurray. 
Adeline, who does act on her ideas, is even more shocking. Adeline' s most intimate 
relationships, such as with her mother, her oldest friend Dr. Norberry, her well-wishers 
Rachel Pemberton and Mrs. Beauclerc, and even with her eventual husband Berrendale, 
are riven because Adeline applies her beliefs before the eye of an unaccepting public. 
What might be considered Adeline's private beliefs about the conduct of her own life are 
in fact radically public. 
Throughout the novel, Opie supports the idea that Adeline's virtue is genuine. 
However, Opie's comparison of Adeline with religious enthusiasts (37, 94), although 
favorable, may lead the reader to feel that Adeline's inspiration may have been mistaken, 
as the not entirely positive term "enthusiast" indicates: "Who that had seen her 
countenance and gesture at that moment, could have imagined she was calling on heaven 
to witness an engagement to lead a life of infamy? Rather would they have thought her a 
sublime enthusiast breathing forth the worship of a grateful soul" (37). In fact, as with 
her example before Mary Warner, her goodness is deceptive, for it obscures her error: 
"What a glorious champion would that creature have been in the support of truth, when 
even error in her looks so like to virtue!" (93). 
Adeline has no footing to regain personal power because she is cut off from 
family and society by her actions. Society denies her power because she refuses to 
capitulate to its demands. Adeline depends on her associates for monetary support; she 
receives money from Glenmurray, Glenmurray's publisher, the Norberrys, Berrendale, 
and even Savanna, who purchases presents of good food for Adeline with her own 
money (184). The affecting scene where Adeline insists that Langley, the insulting 
lawyer, keep his fee is an example of her refusal to be drawn into an illicit economy (178-
58 
80). Her gift of three guineas to Savanna--all she had, and money she needed to care for 
Glenmurray--is rewarded by Savanna's lifelong service. Savanna sums up the relation 
between power and money in the realistic world of Adeline Mowbray: '"This it be to have 
money,' said Savanna, as she saw the various things prepared and made to tempt 
Adeline' s weak appetite: - 'poor Savanna mean as well - her heart make all these, but her 
hand want power"' (272). 
The following paragraph from Vindication of the Rights of Woman describes 
Adeline's situation almost perfectly: 
.. . highly as I respect marriage, as the foundation of almost every social virtue, I 
cannot avoid feeling the most lively compassion for those unfortunate females 
who are broken off from society, and by one error tom from all those affections 
and relationships that improve the heart and mind. It does not frequently even 
deserve the name of error; for many innocent girls become the dupes of a sincere, 
affectionate heart, and still more are, as it may emphatically be termed, ruined 
before they know the difference between virtue and vice:--and thus prepared by 
their education for infamy, they become infamous. Asylums and Magdalenes are 
not the proper remedies for these abuses. It is justice, not charity, that is wanting 
in the world! (71) 
Opie's book, far from condemning Wollstonecraft's philosophy, seems to bear it out, but 
with a sense of tragic warning rather than with a reformer's zeal. 
If Opie agrees with Wollstonecraft about the need for justice instead of charity, 
then on this point she may agree with Godwin as well. In Political. Justice, Godwin 
argues that owning property creates in the owner a debt to those in need, not an 
59 
opportunity for "a show of generosity."16 Adeline's commitment to justice in the form of 
charity is the incontrovertible demonstration of her virtue, and the lack of means to 
provide charity is one of her most severe losses. The contrast between Adeline's ability in 
her native Rosevalley to give charity and her poverty-stricken situation after she elopes 
with Glenmurray is noted by Rachel Pemberton: "It was thine ... to diffuse happiness 
around thee, and to enjoy wealth unbated, because thy hand dispensed nobly the riches 
which it had received bounteously ... "(128). Opie shows that women's ability to use 
their property wisely depends upon social expectations about their behavior; because 
Adeline has disregarded social mores, she no longer has access to her accustomed means 
of benevolence. Opie shows how women's charitable intentions may be thwarted at will 
by bad men. When Editha marries Sir Patrick, for example, she relinquishes control of 
her fortune ( 51) and is unable to provide Adeline with means of relieving the distress of 
neighbors near Sir Patrick's abode (58-60). Sir Patrick does take action, but seemingly 
only to impress Adeline--in line with Godwin's criticism of the rich who dispense charity 
merely as a show instead of establishing justice. 
Examining the end of the novel, Eberle identifies a potential utopian space in 
Rosevalley, a community made of re-empowered, re-educated women. Eberle warns, 
however, that the space seems "entirely cut off from the masculine 'public sphere"' 
(187). When Rosevalley is compared to the forbidding public sphere inhabited by 
16 Godwin argues that "the rich ... hold their wealth only as a trust [and) are 
strictly accountable for every atom of their expenditure . . . they are merely 
administrators, and by no means proprietors in chief. But, while religion thus inculcated 
on mankind the pure principles of justice, the majority ... have been but too apt to treat 
the practice of justice, not as a debt, which it ought to be considered, but as an affair of 
spontaneous generosity and bounty. 
The effect . . . is to place the supply of our wants in the disposal of a few, 
enabling them to make a show of generosity with what is not truly their own, and to 
purchase the submission of the poor by the payment of a debt. Theirs is a system of 
clemency and charity, instead of a system of justice" (707-08 [Book VITI, "Of Property", 
Chap. I, "Preliminary Observations"]). 
60 
Berrendale, this is so. However, as in Sarah Scott's utopia, Opie's scheme reallocates 
both social and economic power to females, who, it is hoped, will emulate Adeline from 
the beginning of the novel, dispensing their benevolence according to the dictates of 
justice. Lifelong support promised to Savanna, and livings offered to Miss Woodville 
and Mary Warner (upon mending their ways) indicate that this may be the case. 
Writing in 1805, Amelia Opie's assessment of the possibility for utopian 
reformation of marriage and domesticity is grim. She agrees with Wollstonecraft's 
assessment of the importance of good education for women but warns against 
inculcuating in them any enthusiasm for radical, new, or untried philosophy. Opie asserts 
that arguments which weaken marriage may in fact play into the hands of those who 
would take advantage of women's trust, and, moreover, their weak position under 
contemporary law and in the actual arrangement of society. Eroding the idea that inner 
satisfaction can override an individual's experience of social injustice, Opie points out that 
charitable impulses also require the support of social structures. While Opie praises 
Adeline's real virtue, her narrative ultimately supports a conservative stance, warning 
against "innovation" and bleakly critiquing women's place in marriage without offering 
substantial alternatives. 
James Lawrence 
James Lawrence, in The Empire of the Nairs; or, the Rights of Women, a Utopian 
Romance (published in German 1801, first published in English 1811), makes explicit 
his respect for and homage to Mary Wollstonecraft. Although Lawrence's elaborate 
utopia, based on differences in education and sexual customs, is meant to demonstrate the 
benefits of Wollstonecraft's suggestions for change in Vindication of the Rights of 
Woman, his novel is flawed by the retention of gendered restrictions on the activities of 
men and women. Despite his respect for Wollstonecraft, his partial adoption of her 
61 
argument results in men's retention of chivalrous behavior, hierarchical structures, and 
war, and women' s greatest honor is not to be great in their own right, but to bear 
numerous heroic sons and to educate great men. 
Lawrence only partially adjusts the balance of power between the sexes. By 
freeing both men and women from the restrictions of marriage, he removes the role of 
"husband as turnkey," a complaint shared by many marriage reformers including Godwin 
and P. B. Shelley. Lawrence's removal of marriage from society, however, is based on 
a belief that women are naturally best fitted for domestic duties, especially childrearing, 
while men are unfit for these duties. In Lawrence' s view, men should be freed of the 
restraints of caring for the home and children, in order that they may achieve glory in the 
public sphere. Women are ceded economic security and security in their own persons, 
but their relationship to the structures of political power remains unchanged. 
Lawrence's feminism is evanescent and amounts to an essentialist chivalric 
glorification of women' s supposed nature. His romance leaves political and warlike 
power in the hands of men, while women are understood to influence future leaders 
through their kind and benevolent nurturance: in other words, "the hand that rocks the 
cradle rules the world--" such ideas were used throughout the nineteenth century to deny 
the necessity of women's right to vote. 
Because Lawrence's story is fanciful, the reader is not meant to wonder what 
might happen should men wish to seize the property of the women by force, or to enact 
more restrictive laws against them. Lawrence pits the Paradise of the Mothersons against 
an enemy, the Mahometans, whose culture is meant to be understood as the system with 
the most severe restrictions on women. Lawrence' s Nairs are fierce, crusading knights, 
out to rescue as many women as they can from the clutches of Islam. By pitting his 
knights against an outside enemy, he attempts to draw the mind of the reader from 
dangers inherent in the Nairs ' own society. He attempts to convince the reader that the 
62 
N airs' gentle education ensures that they could never perpetrate crimes against women. 
Lawrence fails to realize that the very concepts adored by the N airs form the basis of the 
English ideology critiqued in his romance. Without political power, women's supposed 
protected sphere is precarious. 
Lawrence's strongest point of agreement with Wollstonecraft is that women and 
men should be educated together from the time they are children. In this respect, 
Lawrence wholeheartedly adopts Wollstonecraft's arguments and relates many examples 
, of the beneficial effects of coeducation on both women and men. Solid relationships 
between men and women which last a lifetime are formed in school (see for example 
book ii, 128-130). Men's respect for women is increased when they see how women 
excel as their equals. In Lawrence's book as in Wollstonecraft's theory, women's equal 
education makes women better companions and enables them to wisely govern their 
families (if not their country). Lawrence agrees with Wollstonecraft' s arguments, stated 
clearly in the following: 
.. . to improve both sexes they ought, not only in private ·families, but in 
public schools, to be educated together. If marriage be the cement of society, 
mankind should all be educated after the same model, or the intercourse of the 
sexes will never deserve the name of fellowship, nor will women ever fulfil the 
peculiar duties of their sex, till they become enlightened citizens, til they become 
free by being enabled to earn their own subsistence, independent of men . . . 
Nay, marriage will never be held sacred till women, by being brought up with 
men, are prepared to be their companions rather than their mistresses. (165) 
Lawrence also agrees with Wollstonecraft that women should be able to maintain 
their own subsistence. On this point, though, Lawrence and Wollstonecraft diverge, 
because Lawrence believes that women should be restricted to domesticity. Speaking with 
open didacticism in his Introduction, Lawrence states, 
63 
Though the female be not designed for the camp, the senate, or the bar, let her 
receive such an education as will enable her to superintend the first instruction of 
the future lawyer, general, and politician; for the same uncertainty which destroys 
the whole claim of the child to the possessions of the father, absolves the father 
from all obligations of educating and maintaining the child: the care and 
management of the child must therefore entirely and exclusively devolve on the 
mother. (xxviii; echoed by Mrs. Montgomery at book vii, 83) 
Lawrence not only confines women to domesticity, but essentially defines women as 
existing only to produce great men, and does so on the assertion that women cannot be 
trusted to name the fathers of their children. Even Mrs. Montgomery, a figure of 
Wollstonecraft as the author of a tract on the rights of woman (book vii, 36, 80, 84), "is 
convinced that domestic life is the province of a woman" despite her portrait hall of great 
ruling ladies (book vi, 194). 
Wollstonecraft believes that women have domestic duties--duties she extends to 
men as well--but she argues, of course, that they should not be restricted to domesticity. 
Wollstonecraft lists by name a number of professions that should be open to women: 
"Women might certainly study the art of healing, and be physicians as well as nurses, 
[and should engage in] midwifery . . . How many women thus waste a life away the 
prey of discontent, who might have practised as physicians, regulated a farm, managed a 
shop, and stood erect, supported by their own industry" (148-9). Although men possess 
"superiour strength of body," this should not be seen as a women from "acquir[ing] 
sufficient to enable them to earn their own subsistence, the true definitions of 
independence" (85). Wollstonecraft strongly hints (but does not openly assert) that 
women should be given a role in government: 
In France or Italy, have the women confined themselves to domestic life? Though 
they have not hitherto had a political existence, yet, have they not illicitly had great 
64 
sway? corrupting themselves and the men with whose passions they played. In 
short, in whatever light I view the subject, reason and experience convince me 
that the only method of leading women to fulfil their peculiar duties, is to free 
them from all restraint by allowing them to participate in the inherent rights of 
mankind. Make them free, and they will quickly become wise and virtuous. 
(175) 
Full participation in "the inherent rights of man" frees women from confinement to a 
domestic life, but at the same time makes them better able to "fulfil their peculiar duties." 
Wollstonecraft explicitly argues against the idea of regulating women's behavior 
according to a public/private split: "In order to render [women' s] private virtue a public 
benefit, they must have a civil existence in the state, married or single" (148-49). Stating 
that "natural affection ... I believe to be a very faint tie" (152), Wollstonecraft further 
denies that women are naturally good mothers or that they are naturally drawn to nurture 
and care for their babies--an idea that was contradicted by the evidence of her day, when 
many mothers sent their children away or hardly saw them. By denying the natural 
affection of women to babies, she reconstructs that affection as a socially constructed 
trait, and lays the groundwork for the idea that men might have just as important a 
relationship with their offspring. Wollstonecraft's idea of citizenship for both men and 
women is also the same: "man must necessarily fulfil the duties of a citizen, or be 
despised, and ... his wife, also an active citizen, should be equally intent to manage her 
family , educate her children, and assist her neighbours" (146); therefore it is proper to 
conclude from her arguments that women should take similar positions in government to 
men--quite the opposite of Lawrence's portrayal of the Nair women' s transmission of 
ruling office to their brothers and sons. 
In Lawrence's utopian scheme, men's hereditary lines are carried on through their 
sisters' offspring; the men are known as Phoenixes because successors seem to magically 
65 
spring from the ashes of the old heroes: ''The phcenix is a fabulous bird, at the death of 
which its successor rises from its ashes: hence it was selected with great propriety to 
distinguish the shield of our emperor, and to be the national badge of our country. Every 
man here is unimpeded by children in the path of glory, as long as he lives; but at his 
death his nephews arise, as if from the ashes of their uncles, to carry on his name, and 
sustain the honor of his family" (book ii, p. 95). Even though men are "unimpeded" by 
childcare, children still perpetuate their name. It is important to note that the flag of the 
country bears the men's emblem and not one meaningful to women. Lawrence even goes 
so far as to assert, in direct contradiction to Wollstonecraft's project, that "A wife is a 
dead weight, which retards one's progress in the path of glory" (book xii, 203). 
Wollstonecraft points out that men have a duty to perform in the rearing of their children, 
and that mothers who are forced by the death of a husband to raise their children alone 
have a "double duty of being the father as well as the mother" (50, and similarly on 48). 
Wollstonecraft argues that women cannot be expected to fulfill their duties as mothers ''till 
men become attentive to the duty of a father" (6); further, she asserts that their ability to 
achieve full citizenship is conditional on men's cooperation not only politically (as with 
the Nairs) but within the family: "make women rational creatures, and free citizens, and 
they will quickly become good wives, and mothers; that is--if men do not neglect the 
duties of husbands and fathers" (178). Nair men value their women relations--the 
Samorin's joy at recovering the lost Osva looks like tender family love (book vii-ix, 
especially ix, 202-3)--but the Nair males' appreciation for females is inextricably tied to 
the perpetuation of the male line, as Neff notes: "the matrilineal and matrilocal features of 
Nair society ... would ease male anxiety be replacing wary 'fathers' unsure of their 
biological ties to their offspring, with proud 'uncles' who would maintain emotional but 
not direct economic ties" with their sisters' offspring (207). 
The idea of chivalry is extolled by Lawrence as the basis of the Nair men's 
66 
devotion to their female relations, and to women in general. Their zeal for a heroic 
reputation is fed by their attacks on the neighbouring Mahometans. Upon assumption of 
her status as princess, Osva (fonnerly Camilla Harford, who had grown up in England 
unaware of her true lineage) encourages the Nairs to attack the Mahometans, and "a 
thousand swords darted from their scabbards ... Who could describe the indignation of 
the Nair army at the sight of a seraglio? The sight of the bastille would not have filled a 
Briton with greater wrath" (book x, 6, 8). Lawrence echoes the very moment in 
Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France which epitomizes the 
passionate tenor that Wollstonecraft mocks so harshly in her Vindication of the Rights of 
Men: 
I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge 
even a look that threatened [the queen] with insult.--But the age of chivalry is 
gone .. .. The glory of Europe is extinguished for ever. Never, never more, 
shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that 
dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in 
servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom. (Burke 89) 
Wollstonecraft, using Burke' s own words, condemns chivalry as a system of "romance 
and folly" (VRM 25). Far from adhering to the heroic, chivalric behavior asserted by 
Lawrence, and alluded to nostalgically by Burke, Wollstonecraft expands her critique 
from chivalry to the military mindset in general, asserting that "A standing army .. . is 
incompatible with freedom; .. . A spirit inspired by romantic notions of honour ... can 
only be felt by a few officers" (VRW 17). 
Lawrence insists that men in his society should be freed to do great and heroic 
deeds. Wollstonecraft directly contradicts this idea, quoting Francis Bacon on the 
detrimental effects of family on great men as a negative example: 
When I treat of the peculiar duties of women, as I should treat of the peculiar 
67 
duties of a citizen or father, it will be found that I do not mean to insinuate that 
they should be taken out of their families, speaking of the majority. 'He that hath 
wife and children,' says Lord Bacon, 'hath given hostages to fortune; for they are 
impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief. Certainly the best 
works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried or 
childless men.' [ 17] I say the same of women. But, the welfare of society is not 
built on extraordinary exertions, and were it more reasonably organized, there 
would be still less need of great abilities, or heroic virtues. (63-64) 
Wollstonecraft begins her rebuttal of Bacon by applying to women the widely accepted 
idea that they should not leave the domestic sphere, but ends by applying that same idea 
to men--but not without asserting that freedom from family responsibilities would benefit 
women to the same extent that it has benefitted men. 
Wollstonecraft insists that a man has responsibilities to a woman and her children, 
even if he is not married to her: 
when a man seduces a woman, it should, I think, be termed a left-handed 
marriage, and the man should be legally obliged to maintain the woman and her 
children, unless adultery, a natural divorcement, abrogated the law. And this law 
should remain in force as long as the weakness of women caused the word 
seduction to be used as an excuse for their frailty and want of principle; nay, 
while they depend on man for a subsistence, instead of earning it by the exertion 
of their own hands or heads. (71; latter italics added) 
Lawrence and Wollstonecraft dispute a key point here: Lawrence asserts that the Nair 
women are economically self-sufficient, and that therefore they do not need men's 
support in raising a child; in addition, he states that "every mother receives a sum out of 
11 Editor Carol ~oston _id~?tifies the source of the Bacon quotation as Essay VIII, 
"Of Marriage and the Smgle Life. 
68 
the public treasury, according to the number of her children" (97). Despite the utopian or 
romantic nature of Lawrence' s story, the economic self-sufficiency he describes seems 
dangerously fragile, as men in his narrative retain political and military power.18 
Although Lawrence creates a utopia in which women own property, are well-
educated, and are universally respected for their care of children and establishment of 
well-run homes, Lawrence's belief in chivalry and masculine glory leaves the division of 
gender roles unquestioned. His antimatrimonialism creates a world where men enjoy the 
benefits of sexual relations without bearing the consequences. Women maintain their 
domestic duties without becoming full citizens or gaining any power in men's political 
and military systems. Without any real shift in the ideological systems dividing women 
from men--systems which center power in masculine structures of politics and war--
women have only maternal influence and the ideals of chivalry to rely on. 
From open feminist utopia to more cautious feminist critique of society to mere 
chivalry and antimatrimonialism, the narratives described here illustrate over a century of 
attempts to reimagine domesticity in ways that would benefit women. Writers of feminist 
utopia run the gamut from imagining the possibility of utopian marriage, to decrying 
marriage as tyranny, to cautioning that women should be well-prepared to find marriage a 
less than perfect situation. Cavendish, Astell and Scott all insist, regardless of their 
opinions on marriage, that women' s intellectual powers deserve respect and that women 
should have the opportunity for thorough education. In different ways, these three writers 
also agree that improving the situation of women will improve society generally: 
Cavendish argues for the active rehabilitation of men by freethinking women; Astell 
1s In actual fact, Nair .women in what is now the state of Kerala in India did 
possess most of the land, which was, and to a large extent still is, inherited matrilineally; 
see Neff, 204-5. 
69 
argues for the beneficial effect of virtuous women's societies; and Scott argues that 
women's benevolence will be felt both directly by their communities and indirectly by 
example. The utopian feminists focus on improving the situation of women and end with 
the potential for feminist revision of society in general. 
In response to the radical reform ideas presented in the 1790s by Wollstonecraft 
and Godwin, Opie and Lawrence also focus on the possibility of perfecting domesticity. 
Opie recognizes the value of many of Wollstonecraft's feminist arguments, but argues 
that unreformed society would destroy individual freethinkers who dared to live 
according to radical philosophical principles. Opie critiques women's position in society 
and in maniage but argues that women should conform themselves to society's 
expectations in order to be sure of the safeguards society offers, few though they may be. 
Lawrence, spinning his antimatrimonial utopian tale, attacks the idea of marriage but does 
not provide women with any new social safeguards to replace it, leaving political and 
military power in the hands of men while relying on the code of chivalry to protect 
women in their idealized domestic role. 
As an inheritor of the ideas of Wollstonecraft and Godwin, Shelley also inherits a 
place in a literary tradition that includes both the feminist utopianists and writers who 
responded to her parents' ideas. Shelley upholds the feminist principles laid out by her 
mother--principles which remained faithful to many of the precepts of her feminist 
predecessors--and in her own responses to Godwin and Wollstonecraft, Shelley presents 
a socially realizable model (in line with the concerns of the more conservative Opie) and 
takes on the concepts of chivalry and male-dominated systems of power (ideas key to 
Lawrence) in her own revisions of domesticity and the Romantic men and women who 
populate her fictions. 
70 
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74 
Frarzi<:enstein and the Possibility of Utopian Domesticity 
In his Preface to the 1818 edition of Frankenstein, Percy Bysshe Shelley 
identifies the centrality of domesticity to Mary W. Shelley's text: writing as the author, he 
says, "my chief concern ... has been . . . the exhibition of the amiableness of domestic 
affection, and the excellence of universal virtue" (8). In Frankenstein, Mary Shelley hints 
at the possibility of utopian domesticity: a perfected society based on the equality between 
the sexes prescribed by Wollstonecraft, and situated, as stipulated by Godwin, not at the 
level of state power, but around the most basic social connections. Shelley follows 
Godwin in his community-based theories of anarchism, believing that society could be 
improved by changing its basic structures on an individual basis. A devotee of 
Wollstonecraft's feminism, Shelley sees domesticity as the site of this transformation a 
' 
space to be inhabited by both sexes on an egalitarian basis. 1 As her career progresses, 
Shelley explores the political ramifications of utopian domesticity in Valperga, The Last 
Man, and Perkin Warbeck, giving her fullest portrayal of this model in the late domestic 
novels Ladore and Falkner. Although the earliest fully-blown portrayal of her utopian 
domesticity is found in her 1820 children's story, Maurice, or, The Fisher's Cot, in 
1 For support of the close connections between Shelley's work and that of her 
parents, see Betty Bennett, especially her most recent Introduction ( 1998): "Mary Shelley 
modeled her life and works on her parents' belief in the power and responsibility of the 
individual to effect change, on their own activist and risk-taking engagement with their 
society and on their ability to recognize t~siti?n--in thems,elve~ and in t~e society-and 
to respond accordingly" (2). ~ennett also.1~en~1fies Shelley s pnmary behef in 
Promethean "universal love, as exemphf1ed m P.B. Shelley s Laon and Cythna and 
Prometheus Unbound. I wish to focus attention more strongly on the ways in which 
domesticity works as a structural model for Shelley as she attempts to revise Godwin's 
and Wollstonecraft's theories and bring them into reality. Responding to Poovey and 
Mellor Bennett writes that "even today Mary Shelley is often depicted as a victim of 
conve;tional expecta~ons for women, th~ inher~nt.dis,~onance of her works glossed over · 
as ambiguous subservience or psychological affhction (121). For a contextual 
description of Godwin's.and Wollstonec~t' s u~P!.~ th~fi~s .and their effect on P. B. 
Shelley see Michael Scnvener' s Introduction (XI-xm) and V1s1onary Radicalism and 
Radical.Culture" (3-34) in Radical Shelley. 
75 
outnumbered and politically shackled. Percy Shelley's Queen Mab ( 1813) was a veritable 
primer of radical theory, Godwin's and Wollstonecraft's included, but acting on such 
beliefs, as Mary and Percy did in their elopement, led to social ostracism--even by 
Godwin himself. Shelley composed for an immediate audience consisting mostly of 
well-educated and sympathetic men of letters--P. B. Shelley, Godwin, Byron, Hunt, 
even Tory Sir Walter Scott--but a broader public was likely to be more hostile to the 
portrayal of a radical utopia. Outside the Shelleys' immediate circle, contemporary literary 
responses to Godwin's and Wollstonecraft's writing included Amelia Opie' s pessimistic 
and moralizing Adeline Mowbray ( 1804) and James Lawrence's perversely chivalric 
Empire of the Nairs (1811), considered in Chapter One. Rather than follow the naive 
romance template of Lawrence, the bitter morality story of Opie, or even the enthusiastic 
radical casebook of her husband, Shelley took her cue from the gothic horrors of her 
father's Fleetwood and St. Leon to create a cautionary tale, an instructive picture of 
horror seeded, as Ernst Bloch theorizes is possible in ideology, with a tiny germ of 
utopian hope.2 
Shelley's complex understanding of domesticity is demonstrated in Frankenstein 
by its two central narratives: in both, utopian potential is destroyed by a too-restrictive 
definition of domesticity. Victor Frankenstein rejects domesticity as diametrically 
opposed to his ambition for personal greatness. Shelley's debt to Godwin in Frankenstein 
is well-recognized,3 but it is important to emphasize that Shelley specifically takes from 
Godwin elements of character and plot formation that reinforce the negativity of Victor's 
2 see my discussion of Bloch in the Introduction. I base my reading of Bloch on 
his 1959 The Pri,u;iple of Hope, trans. 1986, and The Utopian Function of Art arul 
literature: Selected Essays, trans. 1988. 
3 Frankenstein's simil~ty t<? St. Leon w_as ?,O~~ed immediately by reviewers 
including Walter Scott. For discussions of the s1mI1anties between Godwin's and 
Shelley's work, see Pamela Clemit, Katherine C. Hill-Miller, and Colleen Hobbs. 
77 
solitary project. Echoing St. Leon, Shelley patterns Victor's personal habits after the 
alchemist heroes of his youth, men who in deadly secrecy sought to unravel the secrets of 
nature for personal gain. Echoing Falkland in Caleb Williams, Victor deliberately cuts 
himself off from contact with others and shuns his own Creature as a monster. Both 
Falkland and St. Leon have the potential for greatness but are destroyed by the isolation 
they create around themselves, as is Victor. 
The Creature finds utopian domesticity in the De Lacey family, but their utopia is 
so narrowly defined by those who enjoy its benefits that it is not capable of expanding to 
include one so different as the Creature, even though he is benevolent and desperately 
needs human contact. What begins as a utopian portrait metamorphoses into a description 
of how ideology interferes even with the most basic human interactions--even when that 
ideology stems from the supposedly enlightened thinkers who were heroes to the 
Shelleys. 4 From Plutarch, Volney, and Goethe, the Creature learns just how much he 
lacks in terms of human society; neither can he fit within the divine mythology of Milton. 
The Creature's attempt to set up his own utopian domestic scene in South America is also 
prevented, as I describe in more detail below. 
The critical reception of Frankenstein has not acknowledged the validity of 
Shelley's utopian vision within the overall negative critique of her novel offers. Marlon 
Ross identifies the utopian suggestions in Frankenstein but misinterprets their meaning: 
"Shelley's perfect domestic spaces ... turn out to be fantasies. Because they remain 
patriarchal havens, they cannot protect their inhabitants from the assault of masculine 
4 The reviewer for the Brit~h Critic evaluates these selections as an "extraordinary 
stock of poetical tht:<>logy, p~gan biography, adulterous sentimentality, and atheistical 
jacobinism': (436), 3ust as might~ ex~ted from an oppone~t of th~ Godwinian school, 
while the sbghtly more sympathetic Edinburgh [Scots] Magazine reviewer describes these 
works as producing an education in ~'German sentiment, ancient heroism, and Satanic 
sturdiness" (822 [252]). The sarcasnc Quarterly reviewer, John Wilson Croker finds the 
explanation for the Creature's lo_nging for a mate in that "the Sorrows of Werte; had, its 
seems, given him a strange longmg to find a Charlotte, of a suitable size" (765 [381]). 
78 
conquest, being the origin and effect of such conquest. Because they are feminized 
havens, they are not strong enough to protect their inhabitants from the assault of 
masculine conquest" (117, original emphasis). But Shelley' s utopian hints are not merely 
fantasies. They are suggestions for what domesticity might become. Although 
Frankenstein treats the domestic ideal "negatively ... in terms of romantic irony" (Kelly 
188), domesticity is not abandoned as an ideal. Frankenstein offers a critique of existing 
conditions as well as a visionary prescription, and the flaws of exclusion Shelley clearly 
recognizes in domesticity are not glossed over but allowed to reach their logical 
outcomes. 
Critical understanding of how gendered ideologies play out in Frankenstein began 
with Kate Ellis' s essay targeting the domestic affections as a veil covering "the separation 
of male and female spheres of activity characteristic of the bourgeois family" ( 124), for 
the purpose "of maintaining the purity of the family and the sanctity of the home" (140). 
Ellis rightly identifies Shelley's critique of the arbitrary gendered separation of spheres, 
but she over-extends this critique onto a domesticity defined exclusively as bourgeois. An 
understanding of Shelley' s portrayal off amilies as "subversive" ( 126) does not explain 
the real need of the Creature for human interaction and the evil which arises from the 
denial of a place for him precisely within a nurturing domesticity--be it one constructed by 
the De Laceys (whom Ellis recognizes as somewhat less concerned with gendered 
divisions, 125), with Victor, or with the nameless pair the Creature attempts to assist in 
the forest. 
In her influential psychological/biographical reading of Frankenstein, however, 
Mary Poovey fits Frankenstein into a critical narrative of growing conservatism only 
staved off initially by the influence of Percy Bysshe Shelley, reading Shelley' s argument 
as "conservative" (122) and "conventionally feminine" (125, 131). That Shelley' s 
revisions for the 1831 edition of Frankenstein support a narrative of growing 
79 
conservatism, as Poovey argues, is made more doubtful by the fact that Shelley had 
intended to revise her first two chapters long before 1831. In the Thomas text, 5 Shelley 
wrote a footnote to the end of chapter two: "If there were ever to be another edition of this 
book, I should re-write these two first chapters. The incidents are tame and ill arranged -
the language sometimes childish. - They are unworthy of the rest of the <W> <book> 
narration" (34 note a [fhomas I, 77]). Shelley emphasizes the need for revision of style 
and for the inclusion of more interesting events--not a revision of ideological content. 
Charles E. Robinson suggests this notation might have been made as early as 20 
December 1818 (xcvii). These first two chapters are the most heavily revised for the 1831 
text and include the extensive revisions concerning Victor's childhood and Elizabeth's 
origins. Ascribing the 1831 changes primarily to a conservatism of later life contradicts 
the textual evidence that proves Shelley already intended to revise the first two chapters--
perhaps soon after first writing them, and certainly within five years, while P. B. Shelley 
was still alive. It also discounts the fact that not even the most hostile of Frankenstein's 
reviewers single out the so-called incest motif (in the 1818 version, Elizabeth is Victor's 
cousin) as a basis for attacking the novel6--so Shelley would probably not have been 
inspired to change Elizabeth's origins to appease "conservative" critics. The 1831 
version, in which Elizabeth becomes an orphan, unrelated to Victor, who is given to him 
as his future wife while still a child, serves as a more damning critique of traditional 
domestic ideology. Secure in the knowledge that Elizabeth is "his," Victor leaves her and 
s "Thomas" refers to a marked-up copy of Frankenstein's 1818 first edition that 
Shelley gave to Mrs. Thomas, a f ri~nd in Genoa, no later than July 1823; the volume is 
now held by the Pierpont Morgan bbrary. 
6 Had Victor and Elizabeth's relationship been deemed incestuous, the failure of 
hostile reviewers ~ decry it would ha~e been eve~ mor~ astounding considering the 
willingness of goss1pmongers to descnbe the relationships between the Shelleys Clair 
Clairmont and Byron as a "League of Incest." ' 
80 
neglects to communicate with her, settling for formal bonds instead of attempting to 
maintain their relationship as friends and equals. 
Poovey argues that, both biographically and in her novel, Shelley felt a "tension . 
. . between the self-denial demanded by domestic activity and the self-assertiveness 
essential to artistic creation" (138). Shelley, however, presents a persuasive case for 
"self-control and moderation," but does not reject the value of genius out-of-hand, either 
in her personal life or in her novel. Despite Shelley's establishment of herself as a 
professional author alongside her husband, and later without him, Poovey argues that 
Shelley's 1831 revisions and especially her Pref ace indicate Shelley's rejection of her 
own authorship and reluctance to put herself forward in print Poovey does not take into 
consideration the strictures about the Shelley name appearing in print that Shelley's 
father-in-law had placed upon her, strictures Shelley had to subvert until his death in 
1844. Contrary to Poovey' s reading, Shelley published throughout her career under the 
name of "The Author of Frankenstein;" and the great popular success of her novel and its 
inclusion alongside her father's work in Bentley's Standard Novels would not have 
convinced her that her work was "a failure" (139).7 
The question of genius impinges on Shelley's vision of utopian domesticity 
because of the association of genius with solitary masculinity, but whether genius can 
improve or can only harm society is never fully resolved in Frankenstein. The reviewer 
for La Belle Assemblee, for example, finds some ambiguity in the moral: "We hope . .. 
that the writer had the moral in view which we are desirous of drawing from it, that the 
7 Shelley's own lifelong image of herself as an author would have been reinforced 
by familial attitudes such as were later expressed by Claire Clairmont: "in our family if 
you cannot write an epic poem or a novel that by its originality knocks all other novels on 
the head, you are a despicable creature not worth acknowledging" (Clairmont 
Correspondence I, 295). I_ndeed the conte~t of this quote (Claire is defending her late 
brother Charles's lack of literary talent) pomt out the strong expectations that both sons 
and daughters in the Godwin household should succeed as writers. 
81 
presumptive works of man must be frightful, vile, and horrible; ending only in 
discomfort and misery to himself. But will all our readers understand this?" (42 [139]). 
This review shows that some contemporary readers were not sure of Shelley's opposition 
to the "presumption" of genius. Other more negative (usually politically motivated) 
reviews are more certain of the novel's allegiance with genius (read as humanist impiety). 
The more positive reviewer of the Edinburgh [Scots] Magazine finds a balance in the 
"harsh and savage delineations of passion, relieved in like manner by the gentler features 
of domestic and simple feelings" (819 [249]) . 
If Shelley means to tell the tale of "The Modem Prometheus," the price for human 
advancement might in fact be the sufferings of the individuals involved--but Frankenstein 
is about the way in which genius in isolation "necessarily" brings about destruction. 
Walton, the recipient of Victor's contradictory advice, never comes to a conclusion as to 
the value of his own quest for glory. Discussing Walton's interactions with Victor, 
Marlon Ross identifies solitary masculine genius as "relentlessly aggressive, anarchic, 
and destructive" unless tamed by domestic affection (114). The tragic outcomes in 
Frankenstein do not insist that greatness must not be desired, but do insist that there must 
be anotl).er way to achieve greatness than by rejecting domestic ties. 
Shelley's portrait of Victor Frankenstein vacillates between revolutionary 
transcendence and egoistic self-righteousness, avoiding an easy resolution of the 
problems of genius and personal ambition. Noting that Romantic period fiction betrays a 
mixed attitude of attraction and repulsion to characters of genius, Gary Kelly describes a 
cultural context for Frankenstein, less dependent on gender ideologies, that took interest 
in the "Romantic" individualistic project: 
The exploration of excessive selfhood marked a deep ambivalence, a revulsion 
against yet a fascination with this central theme of Romantic culture, for excessive 
selfhood could be seen as a transcendence of merely social categories and values, 
82 
yet still somehow associated with courtly and aristocratic egotism and 
paradoxically, with the self-righteous individualism of revolutionary transgression 
against traditions and laws. (184) 
Kelly characterizes later (i.e., "second generation") Romantic novels as "preoccupied 
with themes of excess and transgression" (184), a description well-suited to 
Frankenstein. Bloch's theory of the utopian function of ideology serves again to help 
unravel the paradox of "excessive selfhood" as both transcendence and egotism at the · 
same time: Victor's (Romantic) genius is supposedly dedicated to the benefit of mankind, 
towards achieving a utopian control over life and death, but the traditional divide between 
public ambition and domesticity separates him from his friends. Victor's ideological 
blinders reinforce his belief in his own powers of genius, leading him not to maintain 
close bonds of communication with his friends nor to form the slightest bond of 
interaction with his creature. Thwarted by egotism, the utopian potential of Victor's 
Romantic "transcendence" is lost. Shelley will later explore this question of the uses of 
Romantic genius for the betterment of society in her opposition of the benevolent 
Shelleyan Romantic hero and its counterpart, the Byronic Romantic hero, of whom the 
ambitious, passionate, and isolated genius, Victor Frankenstein, is Shelley's first, 
. . 8 prototypical iteration. 
Although Anne Mellor recognizes Shelley's attraction to domesticity, and devotes 
a chapter to Shelley's critique of the gendered division of spheres, her own critique in 
terms of the bourgeois private sphere denies the utopian possibility that Shelley located in 
an expanded, non-gendered private sphere that took a reformed domesticity as its primary 
s No other character in Frankenstein opposes Victor as a Shelleyan anti type, nor 
does Victor evolve into a S~elleyan hero. In~ Creature, as in Valperga' s Castruccio, 
Shelley delineates a devolutl<?n from the.P?te~tlal f?r Shelleyan benevolence and the 
capacity to contribute to.~top1an domesticity _mto v10lence and destructive isolation. I 
explore Shelley's oppos1t1on between Byroruc and Shelleyan Romantic heroes more fully 
in later chapters, especially in terms of Valperga, The Last Man, Lodore and Falkner. 
83 
model. Mellor speaks of Shelley's interest in what she terms the 
profound contradiction inherent in the very concept of an egalitarian bourgeois 
family .... for the bourgeois family is founded on the legitimate possession and 
exploitation of property and on an ideology of domination--whether of the male 
gender over the female or of parents over children--that render it innately 
hierarchical. (Mary Shelley xii) 
Certainly Shelley's thinking was influenced by bourgeois pressures. But because the 
dominant family structure of her day is identifiable as bourgeois does not mean we should 
assume that Shelley's own domestic model exactly matched that of her society. 
Additionally, according to Bloch's utopian theory, that Shelley's work is influenced by 
bourgeois ideology should not invalidate its contributions to the imagining of the utopian. 
As a utopian thinker, Shelley attempted imaginatively to reconfigure the social structures 
that surrounded her, as well as to bring to light the flaws of existing structures, which, as 
Mellor acknowledges, she so admirably does in Frankenstein. 
In contrast to the domestic vacuum Victor has created around himself, Shelley 
allows the Creature to imagine a domestic utopia--one, however, that he will not be 
allowed to realize. The creature compellingly describes the utopian existence he and his 
mate would create: 
I will go to the vast wilds of South America. My food is not that of man; I do not 
destroy the lamb and the kid, to glut my appetite; acorns and berries afford me 
sufficient nourishment. My companion will be of the same nature as myself, and 
will be content with the same fare. We shall make our bed of dried leaves; the sun 
will shine on us as on man, and will ripen our food. The picture I present to you 
is peaceful and human, and you must feel that you could deny it only in the 
wantonness of power and cruelty. . . . If I have no ties and no affections, hatred 
and vice must be my portion; the love of another will destroy the cause of my 
84 
crimes, and I shall become a thing, of whose existence every one will be ignorant. 
My vices are the children of a forced solitude that I abhor; and my virtues will 
necessarily arise when I live in communion with an equal. I shall feel the 
affections of a sensitive being, and become linked to the chain of existence and 
events, from which I am now excluded. (109, HO [II, 147, 150]) 
As in utopian moments elsewhere in Shelley' s oeuvre, the natural world reflects the 
utopian relationship imagined for the two mates. In this domestic utopian vision, Shelley 
invokes the New World both as a ~ite for republican experiments and as a natural Eden 
ready to be populated by a new race of noble savage. Note that the Creature defines his 
utopia as "human" --asserting not only his own humanity but also the invisibility of sexual 
dualism within the overarching paradigm of the human. The radical vegetarianism of the 
Creature conforms to that outlined in Percy Brsshe Shelley' s utopian Queen Mab, A 
Philosophical Poem, with Notes (1813), and both are derived in part from the "peaceable 
kingdom" prophesied in the book of Isaiah ( 11: 1-10), of which the central cornerstone is 
justice. Here, the beast of prey who subsists on vegetarian food is the Creature, rather 
than the lion or the wolf: to make this reference overt, the Creature specifically promises 
not to menace the lamb or the kid. The promise of utopia is also bolstered by details from 
Greek mythology: editor Nora Crook points out that the Creature' s food of acorns and 
berries is "the food of the Golden Age, according to Ovid, Metamorphoses, I. 103-6" 
(109) . 
The Creature himself asserts that "the love of another" will make this utopia 
possible. The problem undermining this utopian potential lies in the assumption that the 
female will love the Creature. Both the Creature and Victor conceive of the female with 
less than complete understanding of her autonomy. Victor finds the possibility of her 
autonomy an unacceptable risk, indicating his underlying misogyny, whereas the 
Creature assumes that he will be able fully to mold her personality as he intended to do 
85 
with Victor's little brother, William. Because of these attempts to pre-detennine the fate of 
the female, domesticity is clouded by its ideological veils before it even has a chance to 
become utopian. In a direct parallel, the fate of Elizabeth was determined when she was 
given to Victor as a small child. Her happiness, wrapped up entirely in Victor's, is 
precarious at best, and she dies because of his misdeeds: by destroying the Creature's 
bride, Victor incites the Creature to destroy his own. Both domestic situations, 
overdetennined and restrictive, result in misery, and the potential for utopia is lost. 
Of all the characters in the novel, it is the Creature who most highly values human 
companionship, the very thing forever denied to him. The De Lacey family provides the 
clearest portrait of utopian domesticity to be found in the novel; indeed, the Edinburgh 
[Scots J Magazine reviewer asserts that the Creature's "natural tendency to kind feelings, 
and the manner in which they were blighted, --and all the domestic picture of the cottage, 
are very interesting and beautiful" (823 [253])--a contemporary identification of the 
utopian promise afforded by the De Laceys. When the Creature demands Victor's 
attention after meeting him at the summit of Montanvert, he immediately points out that 
the heart of his misery stems from the isolation he suffers: 
"I was benevolent; my soul glowed ~ith love and humanity: but am I not alone, 
miserably alone? You, my creator, abhor me; what hope can I gather from your 
fellow-creatures, who owe me nothing? They spurn me and hate me .... On you 
it rests, whether I quit for ever the nieghbourhood of man, and lead a harmless 
life, or become the scourge of your fellow-creatures, and the author of your 
speedy ruin." (75 [II. 27, 30]) 
He then begins to tell Victor his story, which quickly comes to focus on the De Laceys. 
Discouraged by his two previous encounters with humans (he meets a peasant who runs 
from him and enters a village where he is attacked), he hides himself within the hovel 
adjacent to the De Laceys' cottage and begins cautiously to observe them. He is 
86 
emotionally affected by his observations of the family from the very beginning, and 
particularly values the gentleness of Agatha and the benevolence of her father--two 
characteristics which dominate the description of De Laceys. For her introductory scene, 
Shelley carefully presents a tableau of shared domestic tasks: Felix appears and relieves 
Agatha of her bucket of milk, then goes for wood while Agatha tends the house and 
garden. Later, they share the task of preparing a meal. The Creature notices the old man 
within the cottage: "The silver hair and benevolent countenance of the aged cottager, won 
my reverence; while the gentle manners of the girl enticed my love" (81 [II. 48]). The 
Creature begins to feel a part of the tableau he is witnessing and is strongly empathetic to 
the emotions of the De Laceys. As the old man plays sweet music, distressing Agatha, 
"the fair creature, leaving her work, knelt at his feet. He raised her, and smiled with such 
kindness and affection, that I felt sensations of a peculiar and overpowering nature: they 
were a mixture of pain and pleasure, such as I have never before experienced" (81 [II. 
48]). After his first day of observation, the Creature remarks, "What chiefly struck me 
was the gentle manners of these people; and I longed to join them, but dared not. I 
remembered too well the treatment I had suffered the night before from the barbarous 
villagers" (82 [II. 53]). The genuineness of their emotional bonds is what affects the 
Creature so strongly. Their "gentleness" suggests to him that he might be able to join 
them, but because of his prior experiences, he is too afraid. Although the family are 
distressed, their attempts to share each other's burdens and provide comfort to one 
another suggest the foundations of utopian domesticity. 
The Creature r~gards his own miserable hovel, a pigsty, as a "paradise" (80 [II. 
45]) because it is warm and dry and floored with clean straw. How much more so does 
he regard the De Laceys' situation: "They possessed a delightful house (for such it was in 
my eyes), and every luxury; they had a fire to warm them when chill, and delicious 
viands when hungry; they were dressed in excellent clothes; and, still more, they enjoyed 
87 
one another' s company and speech, interchanging each day looks of affection and 
kindness" (82 [II. 55]). The "looks of affection" are accompanied by acts of self-
sacrifice, as Agatha and Felix give up their own food to make sure their father does not 
go hungry. The Creature is inspired to his own acts of benevolence, and begins 
providing their firewood. Editor Nora Crook notes that when the Creature allows Felix 
more time to cultivate the garden, Shelley echoes the end of Voltaire' s Candide, in which 
cultivation of the garden represents "the means whereby to attain contentment on earth" 
(83n). 
The De Laceys' cottage represents a bucolic setting of utopian domesticity that 
appears throughout Shelley's work, reflecting wide-spread early-nineteenth-century 
middle-class nostalgia for a rural mode of life. 9 Usually, such nostalgia did not fully 
acknowledge the poverty and back-breaking labor such a life entailed, but here, the 
Creature uses his unnatural strength to shoulder the burden of heavy labor actual peasants 
would have had to bear. His violent rejection at the hands of Felix, then, partly indicates 
a deep aversion on the part of the middle and upper classes to acknowledging their 
dependence on the working poor for providing them with the leisure to pursue study and 
the arts. Victor exhibits a similar aversion when he attributes the Creature' s providing him 
with sustenance in the Arctic to "the spirits" ( 155 [III. 141]). 
The symbolic names of Felix and Agatha ("happy" and "good" [84n]), and signal 
their importance as representatives of utopia in the novel. Safie ("wisdom") represents 
the capacity of women to escape patriarchal tyranny in order to make their own decisions 
and arrange their own lives: "When alone, Safie resolved in her/ own mind the plan of 
9 Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall present such findings in their Family 
Fortunes, as I note in Chapter One. 
88 
conduct that it would become her to pursue in this emergency" (94 [II. 95-6]). 10 Over 
and over, the Creature's narrative reiterates their gentle manners and benevolent actions 
even in the midst of the distresses of poverty: he says, "I looked upon them as superior 
beings" (85 [II. 66]). The small society they form is marked by respect, shared 
responsibility, and love. Their travails are eased by the enlightened recreations of reading 
and music--hallmarks of utopian domesticity throughout Shelley's works. Yet the 
Creature is still excluded from their company: 
"I admired virtue and good feelings, and loved the gentle manners and amiable 
qualities of my cottagers; but I was shut out from intercourse with them, except 
through means which I obtained by stealth, when I was unseen and unknown, 
and which rather increased than satified the desire I had of becoming one among 
my fellows. The gentle words of Agatha, / and the animated smiles of the 
charming Arabian, were not for me. The mild exhortations of the old man, and the 
1 o Safie' s importance to the novel is signalled structurally, symbolically, and 
thematically. The structure of the n':)Vel, bounded b~ the edito~al activity of Margaret 
Walton Saville, centers around the mnermost narrative of Saf1e. (For an extended 
discussion of the frame structure, see Beth Newman's 1986 article.) Many have noted 
that the initials of Walton's editing sister are those of Mary W. Shelley, but Safie also has 
a claim to the status of Shelley double. The names of Safie and Margaret Saville are 
linked: the French pronunciation of "Saville" and "Safie" are very similar (Lew 282 · see 
also Robinson, I, lxxiv n.38) ; in addition, "Safie" is derived from Sophia, meaning' 
wisdom and "Saville" may derive from the verb savoir, to know. 
The name De Lacey is an amalgam derived from the names of De Grey and Lacy 
from Lawrence's The Empire of the Nairs. Safie' s story parallels that of Lawrence's 
Camilla who is the daughter of a woman explicitly compared to Wollstonecraft Just as 
Lew suggests a parallel between ~illiam G?<l~in ( outraged at his daughter' s flouting of 
marriage) and the Turk (who mamed a Christian but refused to allow his daughter to do 
the same), the figure of Safie' ~ ~other can ~ seen to represent Wollstonecraft, in that she 
urges her daughter not to remam m the seragho, butt? ?btain the comparatively greater 
freedom of Europe (92 [II.89]) . Wollstonecraft exphc1tly refers to "Mahometanism" and 
"the seraglio" as exemplars of woman's. degradation in the Introduction to A Vindication 
of the Rights of Woman (73, 76). Readmg The Empire ojthe Nairs in 1815, Shelley 
might have see~ 3: paf8:Ilel ~twee~ the daughter of a Wollstonec~t figure and herself, 
and created a similar figure m Saf1e. See also Joseph Lew, who mterprets Safie as racial 
other in the novel, and Roswitha Burwick, who points out how Safie' s otherness is 
absorbed into the European standard of the De Laceys (51). 
89 
lively conversation of the loved Felix, were not for me. Miserable, unhappy 
wretch!" (90 [II. 81-2]) 
The section of Frankenstein during which the Creature relates his experiences 
with the De Laceys contains the most overtly political content of the book. Felix instructs 
Safie from Volney' s Ruins of Empire. Attending to the lesson, the Creature not only 
learns to read written language, but learns to read his own position, or lack thereof, in 
society. He }earns about the distinctions of property and "all the various relationships 
which bind one human being to another in mutual bonds" (90 [II. 82]). At the same time, 
he begins to learn about good and evil: "Was man, indeed, at once so powerful, so 
virtuous, and magnificent, yet so vicious and base?" (89 [II. 78]) These lessons increase 
the Creature' s despair, as he realizes all his lacks and differences. Later, he finds the 
package containing Paradise Lose, Plutarch 's lives, and the Sorrows of Werter. These 
books fill him with "extreme delight" but "more frequently suck [him] into the lowest 
dejection" (95 [II. 99, 100]). The books expose the Creature to greater knowledge than 
he has practical experience to understand, causing him great confusion and distress, as 
opposed to his observations of the cottagers: "These were the reflections of my hours of 
despondency and solitude; / but when I contemplated the virtues of the cottagers, their 
amiable and benevolent dispositions, I persuaded myself that when they should become 
acquainted with my admiration of their virtues they would compassionate me, and 
overlook my personal deformity" (98 [II. 106]). The utopian domesticity observed by 
the Creature is heightened by the influx of material wealth brought by Safie, and as the 
weather begins to tum cold, utopian conditions prevail against the hardships of the 
previous winter: "They loved, and sympathized with one another; and their joys, 
depending on each other, were not interrupted by the casualties that took place around 
them" (98 [II. 11 O]). 
The relation of the history of the De Laceys and Safie is also overtly political. 
90 
Their efforts to assist Safie' s father after his unjust trial reinforce the tendency to see the 
De Laceys as agents of enlightenment and justice. Safie' s leaving her corrupt father to 
join the De Laceys represents the tendency of those who are enlightened to come together 
and join forces--in this case, to strengthen and further establish utopian domesticity. The 
De Laceys' history is further testimony to their gentleness and benevolence, supporting 
the clearest statement of the De Lacey household as an example of utopian domesticity: 
"I learned, from the views of social life which [their history] developed, to admire 
their. virtues, and to deprecate the vices of mankind. And yet I looked upon crime 
as a distant evil; benevolence and generosity were ever present before me, inciting 
within me a desire to become an actor in the busy scene where so many admirable 
qualities were called forth and displayed." (95 [II. 98]) 
The utopian domesticity the Creature so admires is shattered when Felix 
"protects" his family by violently driving the Creature away. Felix's actions unveil 
uneven power relations hidden inside the scene of seeming equality. The "gentleness" of 
the De Laceys masks a code of conduct that is both chivalric and patriarchal. Felix and 
Agatha love their father and sacrifice their own welfare secretly to feed him when they 
don't have enough for themselves. Felix also desires to help Agatha and to protect her 
from the severity of their labor. These practices of self-sacrifice and protection, based in 
love but conforming to codes of patriarchy and chivalry, shape Felix into an agent of 
exclusion. 11 The Creature has used his powers of reason to appeal to the father and is 
kneeling before him clutching his knees in an attitude of supplication, but his appearance 
still seems to be so horrible that Agatha immediately faints and Safie runs from the 
11 Leila Silvana May suggests that the sibling relationship between Agatha and 
Felix yields the most egalitarian ~d. ut?pian co~mu~ty in_ Frankenstein (675; see also 
Mellor, Mary Shelley 44), ~ut this s1blmg relationship 1s disrupted when Felix displaces 
Agatha, his equal , with Saf!e, wh~~ he _teaches to ~ome a European woman and wife, 
a displacement foreshadowing Fehx s v10lent expulsion of the Creature. 
91 
cottage. The scene assaults Felix on both vulnerable fronts. His chivalric urge to protect 
the females is triggered by their distress. Furthermore, Saf"ie, whom Felix has regained 
after long separation, is driven out by the sight of the Creature, threatening Felix' s 
connection with her. Felix's place in the patriarchal system is also threatened by the 
Creature' s supplication to the father. Shelley makes these valences clear in the Creature' s 
recollection of the scene: "The horrible scene of t~e preceding day was for ever acting 
before my eyes; the females were flying, / and the enraged Felix tearing me from his 
father's feet" (102 [II.123-4]). 
The Creature's further attempt to find a society for himself leads him to seize the 
child William in order to re-educate him. But William reveals that he is already well-
schooled in his own upper-class familial placement: "My papa is a Syndic!" ( 106 [II, 
138]). A child well-placed in his family hierarchy meets a child who has been harshly 
disowned. Domesticity at its most ideological is used to bolster and solidify class stability 
in Frankenstein. 12 The Creature has learned from Felix's lessons to Safie that he 
"possessed no money, no friends, no kind of property" (90 [II, 80]). His lack of the 
things Felix has taught him he needs adds to his despair. His education is not designed to 
help him foster relationships, but rather emphasizes his alienation both spiritually and 
materially from humanity. 
The case of William Frankenstein should help to clarify some interesting points 
raised by Anne Mellor, who argues that "Mary Shelley's celebration of the loving and 
egalitarian bourgeois family as the basis of political justice--embodied in Frankenstein by 
the De Laceys--f ails to take into account the innate injustice of the hierarchical structure of 
the bourgeois family" (Mary Shelley 88). Whereas Mellor' s identification of the Burkean 
sublime with the Creature's appearance (130-31) is convincing, her suggestion that this 
12 See, for example, Anca Vlasopolos and Margo V. Perkins on class in 
Frankenstein. 
92 
family-based political ideology is derived from the ideas of F.dmund Burke is less so (86; 
Romanticism and Gender 65). When William is faced by the Creature, he immediately 
alerts the Creature that his father has political power, and that he is under his powerful 
father's protection. This is certainly a Burkean model of the family as it reflects and is 
reflected by a similarly patriarchal government. 13 But it is hard to hear William's 
statement with a sympathetic ear. Using William, Shelley makes plain that she 
understands the patriarchal family to be a closed-off, uninviting system; she has already 
made this point clear with Felix's expulsion of the Creature, showing that counter to 
Mellor' s point, she precisely recognizes the "injustice of the hierarchical structure of the 
bourgeois family." Mellor' s focus on Burke as the only theorist of the family ignores 
Wollstonecraft's more powerful influence on her daughter's ideas about the potential for 
well-educated women, in partnership with men, to create egalitarian families. Shelley 
does not view the family as innately hierarchical, but critiques the family as a patriarchal 
institution as well as a class product. Mellor' s alternative working-class model "in which 
children are raised to pass into adult responsibility and to contribute to the financial 
resources of the household as quickly as possible" (88) may function as an alternative to 
the so-called bourgeois family, but inasmuch as it does so, it supports Shelley's main 
point: if the Creature had been successful at entering into economy, instead of being 
denied his exchange of labor for acceptance with the De Laceys, he would not have been 
driven to murder. 
The effects of class upon the degree to which Justine and Elizabeth are invited 
within the "domestic haven" must be acknowledged: Justine, as a lower class girl, is 
accepted primarily as a servant, whereas the 1831 Elizabeth is expected to join the family, 
13 As Pamela Clemit sta~s, "While [Sh~lley' s] ima~ery of familial transgression 
suggests [her] Bur~ean srmpathies, el~ewhere m ~e narrati~e she remains deeply 
skeptical about the mtegnty of the patnarchal f amlly, the basis of Burke's hierarchical 
order" (165). 
93 
although her origins lie outside it. A woman's entrance into the family of her husband, 
whereupon she takes on his name, is a contractual, and not a blood relation; Safie also 
enters the De Lacey household by a contractual agreement. To a certain extent, Shelley 
may be arguing for a more liberal interpretation of family ties, based on the tangle of 
different relationships she herself had experienced as part of the Godwin household. 14 
But the Creature, lacking blood relations, finds no way to make an entrance into 
contractual relations either. Bernard Duyfhuizen points out that although a pattern is 
established for welcoming orphans (Caroline, Elizabeth, Justine) into the home, the 
acceptance is based on personal attractiveness, which the Creature lacks (482-3). The 
Creature's lack of a place within the family can also be contrasted with the women in that 
while they are clearly marked with gender and class determinants, the Creature is less 
clearly marked. His origins are both unnatural and unnaturalized. Even his race (or 
species) does not fit into any pre-existing societal mold. The Frankenstein family, for all 
14 The Godwin household was an amalgam of children, not all of whom were 
related by blood; according to Penny Kane's study, nineteenth-century families were 
often broken up by death, and am~gamated families like the Godwins were common. 
Mary's older sister, Fanny ~odwm, was ~ary W<:>ll~tonecraft's child by Imlay, but 
Godwin had raised her as his own. Marys step-s1blmgs, Charles and Mary Jane (Claire) 
Clairmont, were c~ldren of two diff e~nt fat~e1:5 brought ~nto the household through the 
marriage of G?<1wm and ~ary .J~e Vial. Wilham Godwm, ~r.,_was th~ offspring of 
Godwin and his second wife, g1vmg_ ~ary h~r second blood s1blm~. This amalgamated 
family experienc~ a great deal of fn?tlon, .w1~ Mary.deeply resentmg her step-mother 
and carrying on a lifelong rocky rel~t10nsh1p wit~ Claire. The murder of young William 
Frankenstein is often read as a retaliatory act agamst the difficult, even usurping, younger 
brother. (See for example, U. C. K.noepflmacher' s psychological reading of several of 
Shelley's novels. William Crisman extends this thesis into an elaborate argument about 
sibling rivalry which inv<:>lv~ most of the no~el' s ~to~ characters.) However, it is 
William's secure pla~ within the Frankenste~n family., y1ct?r' s love of him, that inspires 
the Creature's rage. Elizabeth Lavenza expenences Wtlham s death both as a sister and a 
surrogate mother-:regardless of whether sh~ has ~n w~tten ~n as a first cousin in 1818 
or a noble orphan m 1831. If the Frankenstem family, with Ehzabeth and even Justine as 
adoptive members, is read as a reflec?on of the GOO:~ins, w~ must acknowledge that 
blood ties are not central to the esta~hshm~~t off amihal relations. Although Shelley sees 
potential for human empowe~ent ~n f amihe_s created by choice, Ruth Perry argues that 
the replacement of ~lood rela~on~~ps b~ affmal ( chosen) marital relationships seems to 
have been linked with women s dismhentance from property ownership over the course 
of the long eighteenth century. . 
94 
that it seems to welcome new members into the fold, does so (like the De Laceys) only 
insofar as they can clearly be fit into the stable hierarchy the family has created. 
Although the Creature desperately longs for a domestic, companionate situation, 
and Frankenstein and Walton both clearly suffer (Walton acknowledgedly so) for the lack 
of it, the suffering caused by the exclusionary flaws of traditional domesticity in the novel 
cannot be denied. The most evident case of this harmful restriction is that of Justine. 
Framed by the Creature for William's death, Justine finds her adoptive place within the 
Frankenstein family to be unstable. She internalizes the blame for William's death, 
accusing herself with a false confession: "I almost began to think that I was the monster 
that he [her confessor] said I was" (62 [I, 174-5]). Victor never speaks up to save her, 
and she is hanged. Elizabeth delivers a passionate speech in the 1818 version regarding 
the lack of justice available to Justine. This speech is omitted from 1831, more narrowly 
restricting Elizabeth to seemly, female-gendered behavior, such as the speech to the court 
on Justine's behalf that is retained in the 1831 text. 
Mary Wollstonecraft's posthumously published novel fragment, The Wrongs of 
Woman, or, Maria, has a direct bearing on this scene, making it Shelley's most unveiled 
accusation of gender prejudices in the novel. Shortly before Wollstonecraft's unfinished 
novel closes, Maria attempts to defend herself by having a defence she has written read in 
court. The judge disregards the testimony, decreeing women's testimony unseemly, and 
finds against Maria. In 1818, Elizabeth's passionate Godwinian speech about Justice may 
convince the reader but fails to prevent the fatal outcome of Justine's trial. The unheard 
plea of Wollstonecraft's Maria, is echoed by Elizabeth and Justine and by the Creature 
himself, who delivers a long and convincing vindication of himself but is denied the right 
of testimony: Victor warns Walton not to listen to the Creature because he is too 
convincing. The creature's act of framing Justine demonstrates how easily patriarchal 
narratives can distort justice. 
95 
The 1831 revisions, especially as described by Hill-Miller, show Shelley 
remodelling the character of Elizabeth from a more outspoken, independent woman, into 
a more docile "idealized" angel in the house (88-93). This refashioning takes the character 
of Elizabeth farther out of the text, to be sure; but it makes the absence of a vital female 
presence in the novel that much more conspicuous. The 1818 Elizabeth ventriloquizes 
Godwin, but her fiery speeches are ineffective. Moreover, they are conspicuously 
polemical in an otherwise politically unsophicated character. In the 1831 version, Shelley 
changes her tactics. Rather than propound the principles of "justice" only to have them 
ignored, Shelley places more commonplace sentiments in Elizabeth' s mouth. To show 
how such social commonplaces fail to comfort is a more subtle attack than loud 
declaiming against injustice, and demonstrates the inadequacies of the female who has 
been defined by the bounds of traditional domesticity. The 1831 Elizabeth, modelled on 
I 
supposedly'~ nevolent social norms, has no power to ·save Justine, much less Victor or 
herself. As Betty Bennett notes, Elizabeth is chastened by Justine' s unjust death, and 
fades into silence ("Not this time" 7-8). 
The domestic sphere is often described as a haven, from which the public world is 
carefully excluded, but Elizabeth is excluded from any world of Victor's, even his 
intim;te world. Despite their lifelong betrothal, she is forced to ask, "Tell me, dearest 
Victor . ... Do you not love another?" (144 [III, 98]). Elizabeth, denied the truth about 
her fiance' s pursuits, is strangled by the monster after surviving the deaths of William 
and Justine. The responses of Victor to the deaths of his friend and his new wife are 
telling: the death of Clerval, which is unexpected, sends Victor into a nervous breakdown 
and weeks of delirium, whereas the murder of Elizabeth, against which the monster had 
given him a warning which he obtusely misinterpreted, does not cause such an immediate 
breakdown. Inf act it is Victor's father who succumbs after Elizabeth is killed. Victor has 
excluded Elizabeth from his life to the extent that even the bonds of traditional 
96 
domesticity--the bonds of betrothal--have begun to break down. 
Clerval, however, inhabits a privileged realm closer to Frankenstein: he has entry 
to the academic world where Victor is studying and is able to nurse Victor through a 
nervous breakdown.The Creature's destruction of Clerval shows that he recognizes 
Clerval to be a kind of mate to Frankenstein (see Ross 114). Because Clerval is not a 
woman, he is not separated from Victor by proscribed spheres of gendered activity 
(though there are divisions between him and Victor due to class status). Victor's own 
narrative recognizes the closeness of this friend, and describes their relationship in more 
attractive terms than the terms, primarily of ownership, by which he describes Elizabeth. 
Whereas the genders of Victor, Elizabeth, and Clerval seem to determine, to a 
large extent, the way they will interact, the characterization of Walton blurs the lines of 
gendered behavior in the novel. As an explorer and a scientist, his ambition for individual 
glory and his willingness to turn aside from his domestic ties are similar to Victor's. But 
instead of entirely shutting himself off, he is willing to form attachments: with his sister, 
to whom he writes; with Victor, to whom he listens; with his crew, to whom he 
eventually capitulates in their desire to tum around; and even with the Creature.15 When 
the Creature visits Victor's dead body like a grieving son, the genuineness of the 
Creature's grief is clear to Walton, and it is with Walton that the Creature has his only 
1 s See Marjean Purinton' s study of cross-gender characterization in Frankenstein, 
especially her discussion of ~alton (54-55) . Althou~~ Purinto1:1 claims that the novel 
"collapses the gender-determmed _spheres of domesticity and discovery, of private and 
public activities" (5~) in that men m Franke_nstein are not gend~red iD: strict!)'. "masculine" 
ways, females are still relegated to a confinmg sphere and derued their contnbutions to the 
advancement of knowledge, as a result of what Shelley calls a "sexual education." 
Because men seem to embody gender characteristics associated with both sexes, women 
are deemed both deficient and superfluous, and domesticity, which could be realized as 
utopian for the benefit of bo~ sexes, is ~estricted ~y the individualistic desires for 
attainment that men have aspired to realize on their own. In keeping with Shelley' s other 
works, Frankenstein on the whole demonstrates that if individualistic attainment is 
allowed to create such extreme self-centeredness, utopian domesticity can never be 
established. 
97 
calm, rational, two-sided conversation. This openness to communication is the 
prerequisite for Shelley's utopian ideal, lending utopian potential to Walton's 
relationships with both his sister and Victor. The way Shelley bends gendered behavior in 
Walton sets the stage for her later, more fully realized utopian domesticity, in which 
gender expectations must be shucked by both men and women for utopia to be 
established. 
Still, although Walton continues to write to his sister, the utopian potential of their 
relationship is downplayed, as his sister evidently does not fulfill all his requirements for 
perfect friendship. Walton longs to meet a man who, like himself, struggles for new 
knowledge. When Walton finds such a man in Victor, utopian potential based on equality 
and shared goals is hinted at but rendered unstable when Walton is unable to learn 
whether Victor' s search for knowledge is worthwhile or foolish. It is Victor's own 
inability to communicate honestly and consistently that destroys any utopian potential: at 
one point, Victor advises Walton against the thirst for unattainable knowledge, while at 
another point he raves against Wal ton' s men, who would abandon their quest Wal ton 
never makes his own decision, but is forced to return by the threat of mutiny spurred by 
the crew's insistence on survival. Walton is unable to attain his goal, and he also loses his 
friend. However, he is successful in relating his narrative to his audience, Margaret 
Walton Saville, and is able to preserve the community he feels with her through 
communication, one-sided though it is. It is through Margaret Saville, the recipient of the 
letters, that the community of the novel is then extended to include the reader. Wal ton's 
relationship with his sister provides a site where utopian domesticity has the potential to 
grow. 
Shelley's ideal of utopian domesticity is reflected by her model of personal 
autonomy within collaboration while working on the Frankenstein MS. This professional 
cooperation revises the traditional domestic model in which the husband's work is seen to 
98 
be primary whereas the wife's work is to prop up and support the efforts of her husband. 
Evidence of the Shelleys' interactions establishes that while Shelley welcomed Percy 
Shelley's assistance, she maintained authority over the text. 
Shelley's writing practices reflect an attempt to restructure expected gender roles 
in the professional relations between herself and her partner, both for Frankerzstein and 
for History of a Six Weeks ' Tour (1817, compiled after the completion of Frankerzs-rein 
but published earlier). This co-authored volume includes her travel writing and letters as 
well as her husband's letters and the first appearance of his major poem, "Mont Blanc," 
there entitled "Lines Written in the Vale of Chamouni." According to editor Jeanne 
Moskal, part of this volume, the journey through Holland, is taken from drafts for 
Frankerzstein (3). Shelley and PBS16 co-edited each other's work for the volume, and 
Shelley appended the volume, somewhat dismantled, to her 1840 edition of PBS' s 
Essays, Letters from Abroad. Shelley considered "The Journal of A Six Weeks' Tour'' 
(volume 2, pages 5-46) her own, marking it with her initials even while including it in a 
volume of her late husband's works. When considered alongside the co-authored Journal 
that they had shared, and which provided source material that Shelley absorbed and 
rewrote, the textual history of History of a Six Weeks'' Tour helps illuminate the 
complexities of authorship and editorial revision practiced by the two Shelleys when 
Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein. 
The shared production of both History of a Six Weeks'' Tour and Frankerzs-rein 
indicate an attempt by the Shelleys to create a utopian intellectual partnership. 
Thematically, Frankenstein explores isolation and domesticity, but textually, the work 
should be read as a document of domestic cooperation. A middle ground (such as Bette 
16 Pe_rcy By~she ~helley is re~erred to hr his it?ti~s in_t~s section, for clarity, 
brevity, and in keeping with the practice of Robinson m his edition of the manuscripts 
under consideration. 
99 
London's) should be developed between the polarized positions of Mellor and James 
Rieger in their discussions of the shared authorship of Frankenstein, neither adopting 
Rieger' s disparaging tone toward Shelley nor Mellor' s attitude that her text must be 
defended or "corrected" from PBS' s revisions. The manuscript revisions made by PBS 
(and by Godwin in the 1823 second edition) must inform critical understanding of the 
text, but the fact of authorial collaboration must be acknowledged at a deeper level. The 
Shelleys' authorial collaboration is evidence of the extent to which they shared an 
intellectual project to which both were important contributors and that was central to their 
own domestic arrangements. 
Textual evidence from the draft and fair copies of Frankenstein can illuminate the 
extent to which the Shelleys worked together, and to some degree, can indicate Shelley's 
attitude toward her husband's involvement in the text. Charles E. Robinson, in his edition 
· of the Frankenstein Notebooks, gives a thorough survey of the history of the assessment 
of Percy Shelley's involvement in the text (I, lxvii-lxix). 17 Robinson concludes that 
PBS' s contributions to Frankenstein were no more than what most publishers' 
editors have provided new (or old) authors or, in fact, what colleagues have 
provided to each other after reading each other's works in progress . ... (1) PBS 
suggested and made alterations to the text of Frankenstein for the purpose of 
improving an already excellent narrative (in [?February 1818] he wrote a review 
that judged the published novel 'one of the most original and complete 
productions of the day') and .. . (2) MWS accepted the suggestions and 
alterations that she agreed with. (I, lxvii) 
Robinson argues that the manuscript evidence is most accurately described by a 
collaborative model between the Shelleys: ''There are times in the manuscript when you 
17 see also Johanna M. Smith's exploration of the ambiguities of interpreting their 
collaboration. 
100 
can actually 'see' MWS and PBS at work on the notebooks at the same time, possibly 
sitting side by side and using the same pen and ink to draft the novel and at the same time 
to enter corrections." He cites, for example, evidence on folio 3v of Notebook A in which 
both Shelleys wrote in the manuscript in an unusual light grey ink (I, lxx). 
Shelley's degree of acceptance of PBS' s alterations and suggestions may be 
assessed using her surviving Fair Copy manuscript pages. 18 Shelley's handwriting 
smoothly incorporates most of PBS' s changes as she copies her text from the draft into 
the fair copy. She does not seem to wrestle with the suggestions as she incorporates 
them, but neither does she slavishly adopt PBS' s language in all cases. The MS evidence 
of PBS' s involvement in Frankenstein should be regarded as a measure of his 
appreciation of Mary Shelley's abilities, and of their attempt to work together as equals, 
rather than evidence of her subordination. 19 
The Shelleys' collaboration, beyond the mere fact that they did work together on 
the text, must affect critical understanding of the novel's ideological allegiances, 
especially with _PBS and his brand of Romanticism. To read Frankenstein as an attack on 
PBS, rather than as a work in conversation with many of his ideas, is to ignore his heavy 
involvement in the text itself and his high approbation of the finished product. PBS' s 
1s See Robinson, II, 646-m. See also parallel texts of the draft and fair copy (II, 
780-817). Illustrations too le~gthy to quote ~ere may~ found in ~I, 788-89, in which 
Shelley accepts some of PBS s language while emending some of 1t; Shelley modifies her 
own language instead of PBS' s; Shelley takes a cue from PBS that the language should 
be changed but provides her own substitution; and PBS' s latinate style is adopted by 
Shelley herself, showi~g that, in general, she approved of it stylistically. 
19 In several ways, Shelley's position as a writer was subordinated to her 
husband's: she was younger, h~r education had been less fo~al , and ~e h~d already 
published several volumes of his own ~or~. PBS _probably slipped easily mto the role of 
editor as he had strongly encouraged his sister Ehzabeth to write, and with her had co-
autho;ed the volume, .Original Poetry by Victor ant!, Cazire ( 1810). The work of Mary 
Godwin his future wife, was muc~ more substantial, and he not only helped by editing 
the nov;I, but also supplied stylistic changes and corrective notes. 
101 
most obvious contribution to the 1818 volume (although he contributed language 
throughout the novel--Robinson estimates "more than 4000 words" [I, }xviii]) was the 
Preface, where he asserts that prose work can approach the goals of poetry from the likes 
of Homer, Shakespeare, and Milton. He contrasts Mary Shelley's novel with "a mere 
tale of spectres" such as the juvenile Gothic novels he himself had produced (Z,a.strozzi 
[1810] and St. Irvyne; or, The Rosicrucian [1810]), and he believes that it "affords a 
point of view to the imagination for the delineating of human passions more 
comprehensive and commanding than any which the ordinary relations of existing events 
can yield" and that it may "preserve the truth of the elementary principles of human 
nature, while ... innovat[ing] upon their combinations" (7 [I, viii]). This high praise 
indicates that PBS believes the novel to serve a common purpose with his own work.20 
Mary W. Shelley is certainly "the author of Frankenstein," as she was to style 
herself throughout her career, but she participated in fashioning authorship as a joint 
project. With a balanced understanding of PBS' s intentions (and psychological quirks) as 
he worked with his wife's text, comes the opportunity for a clearer understanding of 
Shelley's reception of his interventions: she need not be viewed as "excessively 
deferential" (London 258). One must strike a balance between PBS' s high-handed 
responses, his calling her "Pecksie" (Robinson I, 300-301), and his adoring portrayal of 
20 He composed the preface in September 1817 just as he was finishing a long 
work of his own, I.Aon and Cythna, or the Revolt of the Golden City, a Tale of the 
Nineteenth Century (1817, revis~ and ~epublished in 1818 as The Revolt of Islam), 
which he prefaced ~ith an autob1?graphical and adul~.tory fourteen-stanza dedication "To 
Mary ___ ---" in which he pays tnbute to both Godwm and Wollstonecraft famously 
calls Mary th~ "child of love and light" and de~ribes her as "beautiful and ~m and free." 
PBS seems to have patterned the real h~ro of his poem, Cythna, after Mary Shelley, 
giving her irresistible rhetorical powers m a_ Wollstonecraf tian project of freeing women 
from domestic tyranny and thereby prompting the great Revolution for which he longed. 
102 
his new mate as the embodiment of ideal philosophy. 21 Unlike Victor Frankenstein, PBS 
was in communication with and available to his immediate domestic circle at this point in 
their careers. If we read the authoring of Frankenstein through the lens of the moral of the 
tale itself, this must be a good thing. Perhaps Shelley might have wished to have 
participated more fully in the composition of her husband's works, as she later did with 
The Cenci and as she admirably fulfilled the responsibilities of joint authorship in her 
posthumous editing of PBS' s works. 
The common project shared by the Shelleys can be examined in the similarity of 
subject matter between Frankenstein and PBS' s Alastor, or, the Spirit of Solitude ( 1816). 
Both Victor and the Poet seek solitude. PBS shows how solitude gradually destroys the 
Poet over the course of the 720-line poem. But Shelley is more interested in challenging 
Victor's solitude and secrecy by exposing him to the interventions off amily and 
friends. Within the generic constraints of the novel, Shelley has more room to explore 
isolation in a complex, nuanced, and psychologically thorough manner. 22 Thus, in 
comparison with Shelley's novel, PBS' s short, lyrical vision tends to be read as a milder 
21 PBS was never quite clear-sighted about any woman he was attracted to, 
vacillating sometimes wildly between adoration and hatred. For example, he turned from 
inviting correspondent Elizabeth Hitchener to live with him to referring to her as "the 
Brown Demon" (PBS Letters, I, 336). 
22 The Creature's tragic isolation is strongly felt by a late contemporary reviewer 
(in Knight's Quarterly Magazine, Augu~t ~824): . 
The justice is indisputably on his side, and his sufferings are, to me, touching to 
the last degree. Are there are [sic] any sufferings, indeed, so severe as those 
which arise from the sensation of dereliction, or, (as in this case) of isolation? .. . 
what is it to feel oneself (!Jone in the ~o~ld! Fello~-feeling is the deepest of all the 
needs which Nature has implanted within us. The impulses which lead us to the 
physical preservation of our life are scarcely stronger than those which impel us to 
communion with our fellows . .t\las! Then to have no fellows!--to be, with 
feelings of kindliness and beneficence, the object of scorn and hate to every one 
whose eyes lighted on us!--to be repaid with blows and wounds for the very 
benefits we confer! --The poor monster always, for these reasons, touched me to 
the heart. (499-500 [198-199]) 
103 
critique of isolation, if read negatively at all. 
Jane Blumberg asserts that Shelley subversively critiques Godwinian ideas of 
hwnan perfectibility and revolution in Frankenstein. To the contrary, Shelley's novel 
closely resembles Godwin's own stories that were designed to revise the arguments in 
PoliticalJustice and to make them more understandable. Godwin continued to revise 
PoliticalJustice after its initial publication in 17':13, putting the work through three 
editions in the 1790s and commenting on it again in the preface to St. Leon (1799). The 
most important new idea in Godwin's later work, especially in St. Leon and Fleetwood, 
is his argument for the importance of domesticity. As Clemit states in her introduction to 
St. Leon, Godwin was exploring "a sustained opposition of public and private values 
based on central aspects of Wollstonecraft's writings" (xvi); Shelley's revision of 
Godwin's schema was much less oppositional. The stories of both father and daughter 
demonstrate the futility of attempting to control societal outcomes without taking time to 
introduce improved philosophical understanding among the general populace--the basis of 
Godwinian understanding of both perfectibility and "revolution," or rather, as Godwin 
would have it, the falling away of restrictive laws and gradual improvement of society 
over time. Blumberg argues that "In all the hundreds of pages of PoliticalJustice and in 
the optimistic belief in man's potential shared by Godwin and PBS, Shelley could not 
find any treatment of the problem of egoism [and] personal ambition" (53). It is, 
however, precisely the point of both Caleb Williams and St. Leon to explore the 
detrimental effects of personal ambition and a "preoccupation with the search for truth" 
(36) at the expense of all else; it is also PBS' s project in Alastor to critique the isolating 
effects of personal ambition. 
Godwin's new appreciation for domesticity is made evident by a passage in his 
Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1798) that he copied 
into his preface to St. Leon: 
104 
True wisdom will recommend to us individual attachments; for with them our 
minds are more thoroughly maintained in activity and life than they can be under 
the privation of them; and it is better that man should be a living being, than a 
stock or a stone. True virtue will sanction this recommendation; since it is the 
object of virtue to produce happiness, and since the man who lives in the midst of 
domestic relations will have many opportunities of conferring pleasure, minute in 
the detail, yet not trivial in the amount, without interfering with the purposes of 
general benevolence. Nay, by kindling his sensibility, and harmonising his soul, 
they may be expected, if he is endowed with a liberal and manly spirit, to render 
him more prompt in the service of strangers and the public. (St. Leon, xxxiv; 
Memoirs, 274, from a passage in chapter six rewritten for the second edition 
(1798]) 
Shelley reacted to her father's expanded appreciation of domesticity by making its 
problems and potential the theme of her work. 
As Frankenstein progresses, the positive and negative aspects of domesticity are 
thoroughly explored. The utopian potential of domestic relationships is suggested, then 
snatched away. The horrifically destructive effects of isolation, either internally and 
externally enforced, are insisted upon throughout the book. Restrictive ideologies of 
gender, both feminine and masculine, result in the decay and destruction of potential 
utopian spaces. The possibility for change must find its own place outside the scope of 
the novel. Farther outside the novel--among its reading audience--must lie the real arena 
for the social change that Shelley, like other members of her circle, wrote to effect. Her 
novel is not merely an exciting tale of pursuit and Gothic horror, but focuses on the 
problems of the domestic ideology arising among the newly professionalized middle 
class, as well as the problems posed for the Romantic artist seeking to realize utopian 
goals of genius and transcendance without succumbing to exclusion and isolation. The 
105 
problems of gender, genius, advancement and isolation are clearly laid out, but, in this, 
her earliest mature work, Shelley does not provide clearcut solutions. 
106 
WORKS CITED 
Bennett, Betty. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley: An Introduction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins 
UP, 1998. 
---. "'Not this time, Victor!': Mary Shelley's Reversioning of Elizabeth, from 
Frankenstein to Falkner." Mary Shelley in Her Times. Ed. Betty T. Bennett and 
Stuart Curran. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2000. 1-17. 
Bloch, Ernst. The Principle of Hope. 1959. Trans. Neville Plaice, Stephen Plaice and 
Paul Knight. Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell Ltd, 1986. 3 vols. 
Blumberg, Jane. Mary Shelley's Early Novels. Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 1993. 
Burwick, Roswitha. "Goethe's Werther and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein." Wordsworth 
Circle 24 (1993): 47-52. 
Clemit, Pamela. The Godwinian Novel: The Rational Fictions of Godwin, Brockden 
Brown, Mary Shelley. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. 
Crisman, William. "'Now Misery Has Come Home': Sibling Rivalry in Mary Shelley's 
Frankenstein." Studies in Romanticism 36 (1997): 27-41. 
Croker, John Wilson. Review of Frankenstein. Quarterly Review 18 (Jan. 1818): 379-
385. Rpt. in The Romantics Reviewed, C, 764-7. 
Davidoff, Leonore and Catherine Hall. Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English 
Middle Class, 1780-1850. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1987. 
Duyfhuizen, Bernard. "Periphrastic Naming in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein." Studies in 
the Novel 27 (1995): 477-492. 
Ellis, Kate Ferguson. "Monsters in the Garden: Mary Shelley and the Bourgeois Family." 
The Endurance of Frankenstein. Ed. George Levine and U. C. Knoepflmacher. 
Berkeley: U of CalifomiaP, 1979. 123-142. 
Godwin, William. Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman. 
1798. Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin. A Short Residence in Sweden 
107 
and Memoirs of the Author of 'The Rights of Woman.' Ed. Richard Holmes. 
New York: Penguin, 1987. 
---. St.Leon: A Tale of the Sixteenth Century. 1799. Ed. Pamela Clemit. New York: 
Oxford UP, 1994. 
---. Things as They Are; or, The Adventures of Caleb Williams. 1794. Ed. David 
McCracken. New York: W.W. Norton, 1977. 
Hill-Miller, Katherine C. "My Hideous Progeny": Mary Shelley, William Godwin and 
the Father-Daughter Relationship. Newark: U of Delaware P, 1995. 
Hobbs, Colleen. "Reading the Symptoms: An Exploration of Repression and Hysteria in 
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein." Studies in the Novel 25 (1993): 152-69. 
Kane, Penny. VictoruznFamilies in Fact and Fiction. New York: St. Martin' s Press, 
1995. 
Kelly, Gary. English Fiction of the Romantic Period: 1789-1830. New York: Longman, 
1989. 
Knoepflmacher, U. C. "Thoughts on the Aggression of Daughters." The Endurance of 
Frankenstein. Ed. George Levine and U. C. Knoepflmacher. Berkeley: U of 
California P, 1979. 88-119. 
Lew, Joseph. "The Deceptive Other: Mary Shelley' s Critique of Orientalism in 
Frankenstein." Studies in Romanticism 30 (1991): 255-283. 
London, Bette. "Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, and the Spectacle of Masculinity." PMLA 
108 (1993): 253-67. 
May, Leila Silvana. "Si.bling Revelry in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein." Studies in English 
Literature 35 (1995): 669-685. 
Mellor, Anne. Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters. New York: Methuen, 
1988. 
---. Romanticism and Gender. New York: Routledge, 1993. 
108 
Newman, Beth. "Narratives of Seduction and the Seductions of Narrative: The Frame 
Structure of Frankenstein." English Literary History 53 (1986): 141-161. Rpt. in 
Frankenstein/Mary Shelley. Ed. Fred Botting. New York: St Martin's, 1995. 
166-90. 
Perkins, Margo V. "The Nature of Otherness: Class and Difference in Mary Shelley's 
Frankenstein." Studies in the Humanities 19 (1992): 27-42. 
Perry, Ruth. "Women in Families: The Great Disinheritance." Women and Literature in 
Britain, 1700-1800. Ed. Vivien Jones. New York: Cambridge UP, 2000. 111-
131. 
Poovey, Mary. The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer: Ideology as Style in the Works 
of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen. Chicago: U of Chicago 
P, 1984. 
Purinton, Marjean D. "Ideological Revision: Cross-Gender Characterization in Mary 
Shelley's Frankenstein." CEA Critic 56 (1993): 53-64. 
Reiman, Donald H., ed. The Romantics Reviewed: Contemporary Reviews of British 
Romantic Writers, Part C: Shelley, Keats, and London Radical Writers. 2 vols. 
New York: Garland Publishing, 1972. 
Review of Frankenstein. LaBelle Assemblee; or, Bell's Court and Fashionable Magazine 
2d series, 17 (March 1818): 139-42. Rpt. in The Romantics Reviewed, C, 42-45. 
Review of Frankenstein. The British Critic n.s. 9 (April 1818): 432-438. 
Review of Frankenstein. The Edinburgh [Scots] Magazine, 2d series, 2 (March 1818): 
249-53 . Rpt. in The Romantics Reviewed, C, 819-23. 
Review of Frankenstein with reviews of Valperga and of P. B. Shelley's Posthumous 
Poems. Knight's Quarterly Magazine 3 (August 1824): 182-199. Rpt. in The 
Romantics Reviewed, C, 491-500. 
Rieger, James. "Mary Shelley's Life and the Composition of Frankenstein." Mary 
109 
Shelley. Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (the 1818 Text). Ed. James 
Rieger. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1974. 
Robinson, Charles E., ed. The Frankenstein Notebooks. Manuscripts of the Younger 
Romantics: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Vol. 9, in two parts. New York: 
Garland, 19%. 
Ross, Marlon. The Contours of Masculine Desire: Romanticism and the Rise of 
Women's Poetry. New York: Oxford UP, 1989. 
Scott, Walter. Review of Frankenstein. Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine 2 (March 
1818): 613-620. Rpt. In The Romantics Reviewed, C, 73-80. 
Scrivener, Michael. Radical Shelley: The Philosophical Anarchism and Utopian Thought 
of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1982. 
Shelley, Mary W., and Percy Bysshe Shelley. History ofa Six Weeks ' Tour through a 
part of France, Switzerland, Germany, and Holland, with Letters Descriptive of a 
Sail round the Lo,ke of Geneva, and of the Glaciers of Chamouni. London: T. 
Hookham, Jun. and C. and J. Ollier, 1817. Ed. Jeanne Moskal. London: William 
Pickering, 1996. 
Shelley, Mary W. Frankenstein; or, the Modem Prometheus. 1818, 1823, 1831. Ed. 
Nora Crook. The Pickering Masters: The Novels and Selected Works of Mary 
Shelley. General Editor Nora Crook with Pamela Clemit, Consulting Editor Betty 
T . Bennett. Vol. 7. London: William Pickering, 1996. 
---. "Journal." Essays, Letters from Abroad, Translations and Fragments, by Percy 
Bysshe Shelley. Ed. Mary W. Shelley. Vol. 2. London: Edward Moxon, 1840. 
5-46. 
Smith, Johanna M. "'Cooped Up': Feminine Domesticity in Frankenstein." Mary 
Shelley. Frankenstein. Ed. Johanna M. Smith. Boston: Bedford Books of St. 
Martin's Press, 1992. 270-285. 
110 
Vlasopolos, Anca. "Frallkenstein' s Hidden Skeleton: The Psycho-Politics of 
Oppression." Science Fiction Studies 10 (1983): 125-136. 
111 
The Development of Shelley's Utopian Thought 
from Mathilda to Maurice 
Between the publications of her novels Frankenstein ( 1818) and Valperga ( 1823), 
Mary Shelley completed several shorter works, including Mathilda, a novella, Proserpine 
and Midas, two dramas, and Maurice, or the Fisher's Cot, a short story. In these works, 
utopian and dystopian themes play out through the trope of personal loss and the 
counterpoised effects of community and isolation: utopia is indicated by loving 
communication with family and friends, often reflected by a paradisical natural setting, 
whereas dystopia is brought on by isolation and the loss of loved ones (as in 
Frankenstein). Through differentiating between utopia and dystopia in each work, 
Shelley engages the psychological difficulties of reconciling the beauty of the external 
world with deep emotional trauma, a battle she personally was fighting: the composition 
of these four pieces occurred during the period of depression Shelley experienced after 
the death of her son William on 7 June 1819, preceded a scant nine months earlier by the 
death of her daughter Clara on 24 September 1818. Mathilda,, Proserpine and Maurice, or 
the Fisher's Cot are deeply concerned with themes of death and the separation of parent 
from child. Midas, in its way, also plays out the theme of separation by focusing on the 
curse of Midas's unwisely wished-for golden touch. In Maurice, Shelley works through 
these problems to formulate her first fully-realized vision of utopian domesticity. 
These narratives were written as Shelley made the transition from shorter, 
Romantic narratives (Frankenstein, Mathilda) that look at personal ambition set against 
the desire to belong to a larger community, to longer, historical novels (Valperga, The 
Last Man. Perkin Warbeck) that examine the individual within the context of that larger 
community, especially in terms of the wielding of political power. The stories discussed 
here serve as testing grounds for Shelley's utopian theory in general as well as for the 
112 
utopian moments that Shelley works into all her novels. In Bloch's terms, such utopian 
moments function to point out the best possible hopes within the ideological structures 
against which Shelley is applying pressure. 1 Shelley' s theory of utopian domesticity 
plays out in these stories involving a small cast of characters and relatively restricted plot 
development. 2 Indeed, Proserpine, Midas and Maurice were written in a simplified style 
explicitly intended for children.3 In these narratives, Shelley creates utopian domesticity 
in miniature, so that the "happy household" (or its demise) can stand in for society at 
large. In Maurice especially, Shelley presents some of her core ideas in very 
straightforward terms. 
In addition to those mentioned above, Shelley may have written several additional 
stories between 1818 and 1823.4 Of these, "Valerius, or the Reanimated Roman"5 is of 
1 See my discussion of Bloch in the Introduction. 
2 Tillotama Rajan, for example, has challenged the notion that Mathilda is a 
narrative, much less a short novel with character or plot development. 
3 Charles E. Robinson suggests that Shelley conceived of the dramas as 
children's literature, and he connects the composition of the dramas to that of the later 
Maurice, in that all three tales were inspired by Mrs. Mason's publication of juvenile 
fiction and the audience represented by her two daughters. 
4 In their note on the "story for Laurette" (328, n.3), Paula Feldman and Diana 
Scott-Kilvert attempt to sort out which of "several short tales" might have been written in 
1820-21 · they mention Maurice, which was in fact the "story for Laurette" as Robinson 
had spec~ated (xviii, n.12). !hey also m~~tion "in the Bodl~ian Library (MS. Shelley 
Dep. e.229) . . . the ~anus~npt of an unf1mshed _sto~ for,~hildre~ ~ntitled Cecil . . .. " 
Robinson does not pnnt this fra~ment, but descn~ 1t ~ an unf1rushed 31-page 
manuscript . .. a child's story with two chapte! des1gnat1ons ('.'!--The Boy" and "II--The 
youth")" (xix, note 12). Feldman ~d ~~tt-Kilvert ne~t menu.on a short story sent to 
Hunt for the Indicator. As Bennett s ed1tJ.on of Shelley s letters reveals, this turns out to 
be not an original story but a transcript in Italian of "Formal Duel of Two of the 
Florentines" from Marco Lastri, L'Osservatore Fiorentino (letter to Hunt, 17 April 1821 · 
MWSL 189-97). "An Eighteenth-Century Tale" (345-46) is "an untitled and fragmentary 
6-page holograph" (399) from th~ Abinger collection which Robinson dates to before 
1824. Robinson point out that this fra¥,ment fotn?-s part of the source material for 
"Recollections of Italy" (23-31). Both Recollections of Italy" and "The Bride of Modern 
113 
greatest interest, because in it, Shelley begins to investigate utopia and dystopia and 
provides a basic model of utopian domesticity. Shelley proposes that the benefits of true 
friendship may ameliorate Valerius's mourning for the glories of ancient Rome (from 
which he has come) compared to the degradations of nineteenth-century Italy. 
The recovery of Valerius from his deepest despair is initiated by his platonic 
friendship with Isabell, who requests that he consider her his daughter (338). This sort of 
freely-chosen relationship is at the heart of Shelley's theory of utopian domesticity: it is 
an open extension of friendship that invites the recipient into a caring household where he 
"will be cherished and honoured" (338). The figure of Isabell remains merely a sketch 
and so resembles the standard "angel" of domestic ideology: the story focuses on Valerius 
and the benefits he will gain from Isabell and her domestic haven. What differentiates this 
scenario from the usual domestic plot is that Isabell creates a welcoming social sphere for 
Valerius outside accidental bonds of kinship or marriage/sexual attraction. Isabell' s 
friendship is not proffered as part of an economy of exchange; although she gains 
Valeri us' s gratitude and love, she does not gain social status or economic support from 
him, as would be usual for women (wives, daughters, maiden aunts) who take part in a 
standard domestic economy. Also importantly, he demands nothing more of her than 
what she freely offers. Their "father/daughter"-style relationship is freely chosen, based 
Italy" (32-42) seem to have been written at:ter th~ death of PBS (and almost certainly after 
the completion of Valperga) and were pubbshed m the London Magazine for January and 
April 1824. "A Tale of the Passions" (Robinson 1-23), published in the liberal, number 
2, January 1823, is an offshoot of Sh~lley' s res~ch for Valperga, and might have been 
written either before or after the novel s completion. 
5 Found in Robinson, 332-44, "an untitled 62-page holograph in the collection of 
Lord Abinger" (397; from the same notebook as "An Eighteenth-Century Tale," [345-
46]), "Valerius" consists_ of two fragments, one from ~e point of view of the Roman and 
other from the point of view of I~abell Harley, a m~ed woman who has befriended 
him. Both Nitchie (103) and Rob1nson_(3?7) _date this fragmentary tale as belonging to 
1819, based on its subject matter and s1mdanty to Percy Bysshe Shelley's story, "The 
Coliseum." 
114 
on friendship and generous open-heartedness. 
As a fragment, "Valerius" does not resolve the question of whether friendship 
could eventually have conquered the isolated Roman's melancholy, but his relationship 
with Isabell is the one bright spot in his life: 
... from that day began that friendship which is the only hope and comfort of my 
life. If on my return to earth my affections had never been awakened, I should 
not have lived long. But Isabell has softened my despair and nursed with angelic 
affection every wound of my heart. I cannot tell you how much I love her--how 
dear the sound of her Voice is to me .. , , YOU cannot know half her virtues or half 
her wisdom. She is so frank-hearted, and yet so tender, that she wins my soul 
and binds it up in hers in a manner that I never experienced in my former life. 
She is Country, Friends--all, all, that I had lost is she to me. (339) 
If Valerius experiences a sexual attraction to Isabell, he submerges it within his feeling of 
grateful love for her. As the fragment breaks off, Valerius remains mournful, but he has 
agreed to travel with a friend in order to learn of the modern world. Shelley inserts a 
Godwinian moment when she has Valerius state, "I want before I again die to examine 
the boasted improvements of modem times and to judge if .. . man is nearer perfection 
than in my days" (339). Although Rome is acknowledged to be superior to Italy, Isabell 
argues that the possibility of perfectibility still exists as the degraded Italians preserve and 
honor the glories of the previous civiliz.ation. The mournful tone of melancholy and 
sorrow which pervades "Valerius" is similar to that of Mathi.lda., and the double setting of 
Rome and the Elysian Fields framing the narrative is strikingly parallel to that of The 
Fields of Fancy. The character of Valerius is also similar to that of Mathilda: he "dwel[t] 
.. . on the most mournful ideas" (341) and "He felt deeply, but little joy mingled with his 
sentiments" (343). 
Shelley's exploration of utopian domesticity is complicated by her willingness to 
115 
consider its opposite--a love relationship that has become stifling and destructive. To do 
this, in MaJhi/da, Shelley uses the common Gothic trope of incest. 6 The plot of Mathilda 
was probably affected by Shelley's close mental involvement with several other projects. 
Her husband had urged her to write a play based on the tragic history of Beatrice Cenci 
' 
and she remained involved with the project, though she persuaded him to write it 
instead. 7 fa the meantime, she had been studying playwriting and began a translation of 
6 Incest is a common theme in Gothic horror, and Shelley would have found 
precedent for her story in novels such as Elizabeth Inchbald' s A Simple Story (1791) and 
Mary Robinson's Ihe False Friend ( 1799). See Susan Allen Ford's" 'A name more 
dear': Daughters, Fathers, and Desire in A Simple Story, The False Friend, and 
Mathilda." 
7 Percy Bysshe Shelley's play, published in 1820, was, like Frankenstein, an 
instance of collaboration between Shelley and her husband. In this case, the poet turned 
to his wife for advice rather than vice versa. In her note on The Cenci, Shelley wrote 
"This tragedy is the only one of his works that he communicated to me during its ' 
progress. We talked over the arrangement of the scenes together'' (Works of PBS II 
274). Shelley's note to The Cenci in her monume~tal edi~on of her husband's w~r.ks' 
provides additional reflections Shelley had of the time penod covered by this essay, 
which I quote here at lei:ig~: .. 
He [PBS] oftenmC1ted me to attempt the wntmg a tragedy-he conceived that! 
possessed some dramatic talent, ~d he was always most earnest and energetic in 
his exhortations that I should cultivate any talent I posessed, to the utmost. J 
entertained a truer estimate of my powers . .. . When in Rome, in 1819, a friend 
put into our hands the old m~uscnpt account of the st~ry of the C~nci. We 
visited the Colonna and Dona palaces, where the portraits of Beatnce were to be 
found, and her beauty cast the reflection of.its own grace over her appalling story. 
Shelley's imagination became strongly exC1ted, ~d he urged the subject to me as 
one fitted for a tragedy. More than ever I felt my mcompetence; but I entreated 
him to write it instead; and he began and proceeded swiftly .. . . We suffered a 
severe affliction in Rome_ by the loss of our eldes~ child, who was of such beauty 
and promise as to cause ~m deserv_edly to be the idol of our ~earts. We left the 
capitol of the world, anxious for a ti~e to escape a spot as~~iat~ too intimately 
with his presence and loss. Some fnends of ours were res1dmg m the 
neighbourhood of Leghorn, and we took a small house, Villa V alsovano, about 
half-way between the town and fyfonte Nero, where we rem~ned during the 
summer . . .. Universal approbation soon stamped the Cenci as the best tragedy 
of modern times. (272-79) 
The copy of the Cenci manuscript from the Palazzo Cenci archives in Rome belonged to 
the Gisbornes, and Shelley copied this on 23-25 May 1818. The Shelleys viewed the 
portrait of Beatrice Cenci at the Palazzo Colonna on 22 April 1819, and visited Casa 
Cenci itself on 11 May 1819. Clear from this note is the heartbreak suffered by Shelley at 
the loss of her son; her unshakable belief in her husband's literary powers and 
116 
Alfieri' s Myrrha, which was based on the Ovidian story of father-daughter incest. 8 P.B. 
Shelley's The Cenci, published in 1820, was replete with scenes of torture as well as a 
horrific and politically loaded portrayal of father-daughter incest; Mathilda, in its treatment 
of similar taboo subject matter, is relatively restrained. While The Cenci, a kind of 
companion piece to Prometheus Unbound, portrays an evil father's intentional corruption 
of his virtuous daughter, Mathilda instead focuses on how the education and life histories 
of father and daughter, and a domesticity too isolated and restrictive, produces in them a 
love too passionate. Shelley echoes The Cenci when Mathilda realizes the nature of her 
father's passion: she "felt as if stung by a serpent, as if scourged by a whip of scorpions 
which drove me--Ah! Whither - Whither?" (28).9 This echo signifies the terrible trap of 
restrictive domesticity from which Mathilda can find no escape. 
Shelley sent the fair copy manuscript of Mathilda to Godwin in 1820 via her 
friend Maria Gisborne as an offering to help him pay his debts, but he refused to have it 
published. 10 Gisborne records Godwin' s response to the novella: 
underestimation of her own is also evident. 
8 On 14 September 1818, Shelley records "Begin to translate A" (MWSJ 226) 
that is, Alfieri. J:Ier n?tation ".write" on. the 15th of March 1819 through the 20th might 
indicate her contmuat1on of this translation (MWSJ 253-4). 
9 Giacom?, Count. ~en~i' s son, has f ai!~ to obtain remedy !rom ~he Pope against 
his sadistic father s cruel mJust1ces, and says, we are left, as scorpions nnged with fire. 
/ What should we do but strike ourselves to death?" ( Cenci, Act II, scene ii). Beatrice 
awaiting her execution f ~r Cenci' s 11;rnrder, also fears that there can be no escape fro~ 
their father's malevolent mfluence: Who ever yet returned/ To teach the laws of death' s 
untrodden realm?/ Unjust perhaps as those which drive us now,/ Oh, whither, whither?" 
(V.iv) 
1 o Shelley produc~ M~hilda after her son Willi~'.s death on 8 June during a 
concentrated period of wntmg m August 1819, completmg 1t before February 1820. 
Although Shelley Jiad kept a copr (perhap~ the Fields of Fancy draft--see.Murray' s 
edition of the portion of the draft .m Bodl~1an MS. Shelley d. 1, and Clem1t 1 for complete 
information on the draft manuscnpts) which she read to Edward and Jane Williams on 5 
117 
The subject he says is disgusting and detestable, and there ought to be, at least if 
[it] is ever published, a preface to prepare the minds of the readers, and to prevent 
them from being tormented by the apprehension from moment to moment of the 
fall of the heroine; it is true (he says) that this difficulty is in some measure 
obviated, by Mathildas [sic] protestation at the beginning of the book, that she has 
not to reproach herself with any guilt; but yet, in proceeding one is apt to lose 
sight of that protestation; besides (he added with animation) one cannot exactly 
trust to what an author of the modem school may deem guilt. (Gisborne Journals 
82, qtd in Harpold 63) 
Godwin's distrust of the modem author was probably deepened by his soured 
relationship with his son-in-law, and he evidently did not share his daughter's estimation 
that stories like The Cenci or Mathilda were composed of fit material for literary works of 
the highest caliber. 
Brother-sister love might be thought to have some utopian overtones. For 
example, P. B. Shelley's portrayal of an idyllic brother-sister relationship in Laon and 
Cythna suggests the rapport that might grow between men and women were they 
educated and brought up together in Wollstonecraftian fashion. Shelley herself, in 
Frankenstein, had depicted a close and loving relationship between first cousins Victor 
Frankenstein and Elizabeth Lavenza. But in Shelley's narratives, such close association 
(as in the cases of Castruccio and Euthanasia in Valperga, Richard of York and Monina 
de Faro in Perkin Warbeck, or Rupert Falkner and Alithea in Falkner) seems to reinforce 
the man's sense of ownership of the woman rather than leading to a working romantic 
relationship. In Frankenstein, Elizabeth is destroyed by Victor's deadly secret, which he 
August and 4 September !821 res~cti'yely, the novella remained unpublished until it was 
brought out in 1959 by Ehzabeth ~1tch1e. Shelle)'. repeatedly attempted, through Maria 
Gisbome, to retrieve her manuscnpt from Godwm. See letters of 1822 dated 18 January, 
7 March, 6-10 April, and 2 June (MWSL 215, 224, 229, 237). 
118 
promises to reveal after their wedding (but indeed, believing the monster will kill him, he 
does not really intend to reveal the secret). Eliz.abeth' s life is frittered away as she waits 
for Victor to return from his studies, and their tragedy prefigures that of Mathilda and her 
father, revealing the flaws in restrictive patriarchal domesticity. Likewise, Mathilda waits 
a lifetime for the return of her father, only to be destroyed by his equally deadly secret: 
"There was too deep a horror in my tale for confidence ... . I must shrink before the eye 
of man lest he should read my father's guilt in my glazed eyes: I must be silent lest my 
faltering voice should betray unimagined horrors. Over the deep grave of my secret I 
must heap an impenetrable heap of false smiles" ( 41). The secret, transmitted from father 
to daughter, makes a monster of Mathilda: a "monster with whom none might mingle in 
converse and love" (61). 11 Both Mathilda and Eliz.abeth suffer from a relationship that 
has become too close, too restrictive, and indeed, incestuous: their society has become 
too narrow to allow for a healthy life, furthering Shelley's critique of the problems of 
domestic ideology and negating the utopian potential of domesticity. 
The utopian possibilities of a passionate sibling relationship must be contrasted 
with the entirely negative overtones of father-daughter incest. While the sibling 
relationship posits a measure of equality, the distribution of power in a parent-child 
relationship is disastrously uneven. The father controls the daughter and mandates a 
dangerous exclusivity in the daughter's social life. Shelley attacks such structures of 
control and isolation in all her work. 12 Susan Allen Ford accurately credits Mary Shelley 
with the understanding that "the ideal family, with its emphasis on the bonds of love and , 
filial obedience to the patriarch, is . . . dangerous--and terrifyingly so--in its very 
11 Susan Lanser explores many parallels between Frankenstein and Matlulda, 
both structural and thematic in terms of the "monster'' (164-172). 
12 In Ladore, Shelley again focuses specifically on the perils of educating the 
daughter to please the father. 
119 
strengths" (69). 13 Anne Mellor recognizes Shelley's critique of the inhibiting closeness of 
the father-daughter relationship in Mathilda, as well as how this critique unmasks a 
repressive element in societal domestic ideology, but reads MaJhi/da, as a celebration of 
the bourgeois family skewed by Shelley' s "revenge" and "pure wish-fulfillment" against 
Godwin and P. B. Shelley (194). But Shelley's model of utopian domesticity is not a 
simple idealization of the bourgeois family. In Mathilda, she exposes the threats inherent 
in the traditional "patriarchal" or restrictive model of domesticity, while at the same time 
mourning the possibilities that have been lost It is less useful to view the incestuous 
passion of Mathilda's father in psycho-biographical terms, and more consistent with 
Shelley's other work to interpret the incestuous relationship in Malhi/da, as a warning 
about the ideological structures which allow passionate romantic love to become too 
exclusive, preventing maturation and the individual's ability to oppose adversity. Shelley 
specifically attacks the idea that a woman can survive unscathed an education that tailors 
her to the desires of her father (or of any man). Since the father and daughter have been 
all to one another, there is nowhere for Mathilda to turn, and since she has spent her 
entire life preparing herself to be a companion for her father, she loses her identity upon 
discovering he wants her to be something she cannot be. 
The original draft of this novella, entitled The Fields of Fancy, is a didactic tale 
emphasizing the value of utility in overcoming grief. It features a first person nanator 
who is enticed away from her sorrow by the spirit of Fantasia This nanator is very 
similar to Shelley herself, and Shelley later records the therapeutic value of writing 
Ma1hilda: "Before when I wrote Matilda, miserable as I was, the inspiration was 
13 Other scholars also recognize Shelley' s critique of oppression in the father-
daughter relationship. Janet Todd sees _Shelle_r's feminist c~tique when she notes that in 
MathiJ.da the themeoffather-daughtermcest suggests patnarchal oppression through 
both clas~ and gender o~ a personal and poli~cal plane" (xxii). Margaret Davenport 
Garrett shows that "The mcest tale that Mathilda tells becomes a metaphorical nanative 
representing ... any woman's excessive dependence upon a male protector'' ( 45). 
120 
sufficient to quell my wretchedness temporarily" (27 October 1822; Journals 442). 
Fantasia talces the narrator to the Elysian Fields to receive the wisdom of Diotima, the 
female tutor of Socrates and who is, as Janet Todd notes, an image of Wollstonecraft. 
The instructions of Diotima are meant to draw the narrator/Shelley out of her own 
sufferings into the contemplation of a life of utility. Diotima next hears the sorrowful life 
story of the young, newly dead Mathilda. Mathilda's story is one in which utility is 
rejected, a point made more explicit in The Fields of Fancy by Diotima' s lessons, but still 
subtly present in Matlukla. In revision, Shelley drops this framework, 14 addressing the 
story as a posthumous letter to the young poet Woodville who has befriended Mathilda in 
her seclusion. Both Diotima and Woodville insist that a life of usefulness can def eat the 
stubborn power of despair, but Mathilda has been crippled by a lifetime of isolation and is 
unable to recover. 
In Matlukla, the story of Mathilda' s parents is more fleshed out than in The Fields 
of Fancy: Mathilda's mother, Diana, is given more attention and absorbs some of the 
Wollstonecraftian nature of Diotima She is older than Mathilda's father and more mature: 
"her knowledge was of a deeper ~nd and laid on firmer foundations .. . . She was his 
monitress as he learned what were the true ends of life" (8, 9). Starting out as a fine 
example of utopian domesticity, their friendship begins in childhood and strengthens into 
love. But when Diana dies in childbirth, Mathilda' s father is unable to bear up under the 
loss and leaves the country, leaving Mathilda under the care of her maiden aunt. Without 
a mother or any other friend to become attached to, Mathilda can only long for the day 
when her father will return, shaping herself into someone she hopes will please him: "the 
14 Elizabeth Nitchie details sig~ficant changes ~tween draft and fair copy in the 
notes to her edition. Overall, these rev1s1ons read as a shift from an artificial didactic 
mode to a more naturally-flowing first-pers~~ narrative. ~n revision, Shelley's many 
references to Dante worked to create an ambitious aesthetic and artistic tone, as Arlene 
Bowen has shown. 
121 
idea of [my] unhappy, wandering father was the idol of my imagination" (14). Shelley 
contrasts Mathilda' s isolation, the result of her careless father and uncaring aunt, with the 
love her dead mother is unable to give her. 
As in Frankenstein, isolation is at the heart of dystopia. Shelley opens Mathilda 
by situating the heroine on a barren wintry heath, which externalizes the dystopian effects 
of her despair at having lost her father due to his incestuous desire for her; the story 
closes as Mathilda isolates herself on the heath because she cannot bear the company of 
other people. 15 Shelley portrays Mathilda' s younger self as a Wordsworthian child, 
loving to be outdoors, playing the harp, and benefitting from reading the great poets. l 6 
But this seemingly pleasant solitude cannot compete with the joys of companionship, and 
moreover, it allows Mathilda to spend her time dreaming about her future with her father 
and focusing all her hopes on him. When her father returns, "All around me was changed 
from a dull uniformity to the brightest scene of joy and delight" (15). The presence of the 
loved one transforms the Romantic landscape, deepening and enriching its utopian 
qualities, but Mathilda's Wordsworthian reliance on Nature is critiqued in that her solitary 
upbringing, rather than helping her, proves debilitating and leaves her unable to cope with 
the catastrophe when her father' s love is lost 17 
15 Like many victims of sexual assault, Mathilda perceives herself to be soiled. 
She feels that she is poisoned and pestilential . For a more extended discussion of the 
sexually transgressive female as a vector of pestilence, see Chapter Five on The Last 
Man. 
16 Charlene E. Bunnell points out the resemblance between Shelley's portrait of 
Mathilda and "the Wordsworthian child of nature" (79). 
17 In her passionate and imaginative natl.J!~, Mathilda resembles Shelley' s female 
Byronic Romantic heroes, but she l~cks th~ amb1t1on of that character type, which Shelley 
will explore more fully in Va/.perga s B~tnce of .Ferr~ ~d The Last Man' s Evadne 
Zaimi. Like Beatrice and Evadne, Mathil_d~ falls mto isolation and toward madness and 
death illustrating the structural vulnerab1hty faced by women who trangress gender 
expedtations, especially sexual mores. 
122 
The father's own solitary life has also been unhelpful to his development: his 
wanderings through "Persia, Arabia, and the north oflndia" (15) have furnished him 
with a wealth of interesting stories, but his romantic wanderings have impeded his 
growth to maturity, and the influence of the wise Diana has fall en away: 
My father was very little changed from what he described himself to be 
before his misfortunes. It is intercourse with civilized society; it is the 
disappointment of cherished hopes, the falsehood off riends, or the perpetual 
clash of mean passions that changes the heart and damps the ardour of youthful 
feelings; lonely wanderings in a wild country among people of simple or savage 
manners may inure the body but will not tame the soul, or extinguish the ardour 
and freshness off eeling incident to youth. The burning sun of India, and the 
freedom from all restraint had rather encreased the energy of his character: before 
he bowed under, now he was impatient of any censure except that of his own 
mind. He had seen so many customs and witnessed so great a variety of moral 
creeds that he had been obliged to form an independant one for himself which had 
no relation to the peculiar notions of any one country: his early prejudices of 
course influenced his judgement in the formation of his principles, and some raw 
colledge ideas were strangely mingled with the deepest deductions of his 
penetrating mind. 
The vacuity his heart endured of any deep interest in life during his long 
absence from his native country had had a singular effect upon his ideas. (16) 
Percy Bysshe Shelley, in his short essay "On Love," states that love "is the bond and 
sanction which connects not only man with man, but with every thing which exists" 
(Poetry and Prose 473). The poet further writes 
I know not the internal constitution of other men .... I see that in some external 
attributes they resemble me, but when misled by that appearance I have thought to 
123 
appeal to something in common and unburthen my inmost soul to them, I have 
found my language misunderstood like one in a distant and savage land. (473)18 
P. B. Shelley argues for universal redemptive potential in the power of love, but under 
certain circumstances, he seems to realize, the power of love fails. His Alastor Poet, for 
example, pursues to the death an imaginary love while remaining unaware of the potential 
for real love with the Arab maiden. Nevertheless, P. B. Shelley forges his masterwork, 
Prometheus Unbound, from his belief in an all-forgiving universal love. Betty Bennett 
uses the concept of Promethean universal love, a love that hopes all, as a key to 
understanding Mary Shelley's integration of her husband's philosophical standpoint into 
her own reformist worldview. 19 
But in Mathi]da, it is clear that, again, love fails both Mathilda and her father. The 
problem is, in fact, that their love is not universal, but too tragically personal. Rather than 
condemn the idea of universal love because of this personal failure, Shelley swings her 
exploration of the problem of the failures of love from the failure of two individuals to 
keep their love on the empyrean, Promethean/universal level, to focus instead on the 
structures in and around the domestic situation that caused their love to sprout a seed of 
corruption. 
Mathilda's father finds nothing in common with the inhabitants of "a distant and 
savage land" and fails to create close relations with the foreign inhabitants precisely 
because those relations are·not domestic. He fails to extract a code of his own from their 
18 Mary Shelley could hav~ been aware of this f~g1!1entary e~say, since it was 
probably composed in 1~18 (as Reiman n?f:es, based o~ its mclus1on m Bodleian Shelley 
MS adds. e. 11), well pnor to the C<?mpos1t1on of Mathilda . . It was among the first of P. 
B. Shelley's prose pieces to be pubh~hed by Mary Shelley (m ~e Keepsake for J 829). I 
became aware of the usefulness of this passage for my work while reading it in the 
context of Forest Pyle's discussion of Edward Said's theorizations about exile as applied 
to P. B. Shelley. 
19 See, for example, Bennett' s Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley: An Introduction. 
124 
ethical systems because he sees the foreigners as separate from and. alien to himself. It is 
not so much a failure of universal love, as a problem of a lack of structures and pathways 
through which to channel love. The idea of utopian domesticity gives a structure and a 
name to the thing that Mathilda's father lacks: not love itself, but the means by which to 
love. His failure with his daughter is even more insidious, then, because he supposes that 
his relationship to her guarantees him the right to control her life, who she sees, and even 
what she feels. He perverts the ties of domestic love into ties of punishment and denial, 
thus thwarting P. B. Shelley's universal love and destroying the house Mary Shelley 
would built for it. It is interesting to note that even the "disappointment of cherished 
hopes, the falsehood off riends, or the perpetual clash of mean passions" have a "taming" 
and "civilizing" effect on the soul when structured within the bounds of relationships. As 
Wollstonecraft states in her Vindication of the Rights of Women, "If we mean, in short, 
to live in the world to grow wiser and better ... we must attain a knowledge of others at 
the same time that we become acquainted with ourselves--knowledge acquired any other 
way only hardens the heart and perplexes the understanding" (112). Shelley argues along 
with Wollstonecraft that passions, even painful and disruptive ones, can bring us into 
closer community and are not necessarily isolating by nature. It is when passion is 
divested from the structure of community, argues Shelley, that it becomes destructive. 20 
Shelley uses the language of colonialism to describe Mathilda's father's travels. 
The influence of the "burning sun of India" is compared negatively to that of "his native 
country;" "a wild country" and "people of simple or savage manners" do nothing to 
contribute to Mathilda's father's socialization, since maturity demands "intercourse with 
civilized society." Colonialism insists upon its own "civilized society" as a standard 
against which to judge other societies--implicitly, to judge them inferior--and here, 
20 See Orrin Wang's Fantastic Modernity for a more detailed discussion of 
Wollstonecraft's understanding of the passions ( 122-140). 
125 
colonialism functions as a double for the restrictive domestic ideology to which 
Mathilda's father will adhere in his treatment of her. The exclusive boundaries of his 
"domestic circle" (like his colonialist explorations) define all outsiders as "other." His 
Romantic qualities--both "the ardour and freshness of feeling incident to youth" and "the 
deepest deductions of his penetrating mind"--develop untempered by the schooling he 
would have received in a domestic situation had Diana survived. In his short time with 
her, he learned no one central creed by which to evaluate the "many customs and .. . a 
variety of moral creeds" to which he is exposed, having to rely on mere schoolboy 
prejudices. "Intercourse with civilized society"--which does not, then, mean just any 
"civilized" society, such as school, but rather a caring domestic interaction--seems 
unavailable to him after the death of his wife, and unable to imagine a broader community 
for himself, he eventually returns to create a mockery of his original domestic happiness 
by substituting his daughter for his departed wife. 
Shelley constantly qualifies Mathilda's period of utopian companionship with her 
father with intimations of its dissolution: "My life had been before as a pleasing country 
rill, never destined to leave its native fields, but when its task was fulfilled quietly to be 
absorbed, and leave no trace. Now it seemed to be to be as a various river flowing 
through a fertile and lovely landscape, ever changing and ever beautiful. Alas! I knew not 
the desart it was about to reach" (17); and again: "Like Psyche I lived for awhile in an 
enchanted palace, amidst odours, and music, and every luxurious delight; when suddenly 
I was left on a barren rock; a wide ocean of despair rolled around me: above all was 
black, and my eyes closed while I still inhabited a universal death" (18). Shelley here first 
mentions the story of Proserpine as an emblem of the abrupt transition from utopia to 
dystopia: Mathilda says "I have compared myself to Proserpine who was gaily and 
heedlessly gathering flowers on the sweet plain of Enna, when the King of Hell snatched 
126 
her away to the abodes of death and misery" (19-20).21 After Mathilda ta.lees up her 
solitary life, she again roams amidst Nature, but no longer experiences that joy and love 
of life she had previously ( 45). The cyclical return of May noted by Mathilda does not 
indicate for her a hopeful return like Proserpine's (Bowen 81). For Mathilda, the 
alternation between utopia and dystopia illustrated by the Proserpine myth has been shut 
down by death. In The Fields of Fancy we were told that Mathilda would eventually 
learn, in the afterlife, how to transcend the sorrows of her life, but in Mathilda we are 
given no promise of this. 
The dystopian nature of Mathilda's story results from a too-restrictive 
domesticity. Further evidence of this may be found in her later relationship with 
Woodville. Woodville is Mathilda's platonic friend, a poet who shares the suffering of 
having lost a loved one, his wife. Friendship has come too late for Mathilda, since she 
has come to believe that the only meaningful relationship she could ever have had was 
with her father.22 Mathilda has been schooled to expect an all-or-nothing relationship 
from the only people she has ever been close to: both her father and her aunt. She is 
u.nable to conduct her friendship with Woodville on a moderate scale: "I began to reap the 
fruits of my petfect solitude. I had become unfit for any intercourse . . .. my temper was 
utterly spoilt. ... I viewed all he did with jealous eyes. If he did not visit me at the 
appointed hour I was angry, very angry, and told him that if indeed he did feel interest in 
21 The link between Mathilda and Proserpine had already been made in the works 
of Dante, to which Shelley often refers in Mathilda (Bowen 75). 
22 Critics posit different.roles for f ~endship in Mathilda's life, but most do not 
consider Woodville a viable option. Rosana Champagne argues that Woodville "should 
have been her suitor" (55). Janet Todd notes that "In Mathilda no female friend is allowed 
to mitigate the harm of the confining family [or the heroine, who ~~mply.embodies the 
notion that a girl has no other rol~ but as lovmg daughter an~ desmng.w1fe" (xxvi); Todd 
is explicit in her theory that Ma~Il~ should have a female f~end. While William Brewer 
agrees that Woodville' s "masculm1ty may well present a barrier to communication," he 
also notes that "it is unlikely that anyone would be able to penetrate her reserve" ( 400). 
127 
me it was cold" (55). Mathilda's desire for Woodville is the desire for an audience to her 
tragedy, as Charlene Bunnell explores, and not as a potential romantic partner. She is 
already "in love with death" and wishes to join her father in the afterlife. She becomes so 
selfish that she entreats Woodville to join her in a double suicide, but he responds by 
laying out at length his Godwinian theory of utility. Mathilda abandons the suicide 
attempt, but Woodville' s disquisition fall on deaf ears, and she never recovers her spirits. 
Eventually, when Woodville goes away, Mathilda falls ill from being caught in a 
rainstorm, and pens her story for him as she dies. 
Mathilda's relationships with both her father and Woodville display Shelley's 
conception of power. Mathilda' s father's power over her lay in her upbringing, which 
separated her from any close human contact and made her solely dependent on his love. 
His ability to shape Mathilda's life reveals him as Shelley's embodiment of the social 
structures that worked to shape women into suitable daughters and wives. When his love 
is a bond between them, it makes Mathilda happy without really strengthening her. His 
love is intrusive even before he admits its passionate quality, when he becomes angry and 
turns coldly away from her at his recognition that she has attracted a suitor. After he 
admits his passion, his love is even more intrusive: it demands a response that Mathilda 
can never give, yet to deny her father is something she was never trained to do. The most 
terrifying moment of her plight comes when she hears her father approaching her room. 
Her room symbolizes the only sovereignty of self that she possesses--yet it is a room in 
his house, and only his own self-control keeps her safe from him. She is entirely at his 
mercy, within the sphere of his power. 
By fleeing to the remote heath, Mathilda seeks to gain some power over herself, 
but it is merely negative--only by avoiding others does she keep them from having power 
over her. When she meets Woodville she finds herself slipping back into the expectations 
she had had with her father, insisting that Woodville devote himself entirely to her as she 
128 
and her father had done with one another. But Woodville cannot be brought under 
Mathilda's control--Shelley' s symbol of how difficult it is for women to reverse societal 
structures which give men power over them. Further, Woodville has not been crippled by 
socialization as a female, which Shelley tropes as an education imparted in almost 
complete isolation, centered around the idealization of one love object He will recover 
from the loss of his wife and will probably go on to love again, leaving open the 
possibility of utopian domesticity for him and a future wife--as the restrictive domestic 
ideologies surrounding Mathilda assure that for her it is not. Janet Todd asserts that "As 
Mathilda refuses the rational utopianism of Godwin, so she rejects the utopianism of 
Shelleyan love . . .. and insists . .. on the reality of misery" (xxi). Mathilda may reject 
utopianism, but Shelley does not In writing Mathilda, Shelley explores this very divide 
between utopia and misery, seeking to unravel their intertwined causes. She holds out 
the benefits of Godwinian utility as an ameliorative to suicidal despair and explores the 
rapture of Shelleyan love even as she points out its precarious underpinnings. Shelley 
provides the parallel case of Woodville to show that if rationality and love are paired, then 
the fall from utopia is less certain. 
Mathilda' s father leaves her his last lesson in his suicide. Rather than attempt to 
survive by becoming part of society again, her father drowns himself. This lesson is 
deeply impressed upon Mathilda, causing her to consider her short time in society after 
his death an agony. She fakes her own death in order to withdraw into isolation. In The 
Fields of Fancy, Mathilda is still stuck at the feet of Diotima because she has not learned 
enough to move on, th~ lesson that Woodville attempted to teach her: Woodville is able to 
survive his own loss because he believes he still has some good to offer the world. 
Mathilda, to the contrary, believes she has nothing to offer anyone now that her father is 
gone: "Mine was an idle useless life; it was so; but say not to the lily laid prostrate by the 
storm arise, and bloom as before" (45). The final lesson of Mathilda is that human 
129 
relationships indeed promise utopia but also threaten dystopia: the selfish abuse of power 
must be recognized and condemned. At the same time isolation must not be the resort of 
the grieving mind. Instead, the griever must reinvest in the community in order to forge 
new loving relationships. Shelley takes up this theme more strongly in Maurice, or the 
Fisher's Cot. 
In 1820, Shelley composed two dramas on mythological subjects taken from 
Ovid, Proserpine and Midas. 23 Proserpine and Midas are milder in tone than Mathilda, 
yet the dramas continue to engage the nature of utopia and dystopia. Shelley refers to the 
idea of Proserpine in Mathilda; thematically, the two are very similar explorations of the 
fall from innocence into experience, but Proserpine has a more hopeful ending. Although 
Midas is a more light-hearted tale, it remains focused on the transmutation of a seeming 
blessing into a curse. 
The drama of Proserpine begins by situating Proserpine amid the beautiful 
flowery fields beneath the mountain of Enna. Ceres, Proserpine's mother, is called away 
to serve at a feast by Jove, and leaves two nymphs, Ino and Eunoe, to guard her 
daughter. Susan Gubar points out the utopian nature of the gathering of women: the scene 
"represents a time of nurturing sisterhood between mother and daughter, a pastoral time 
of communality between all women, young and old" (303). 24 The flowery fields, though 
23 Shelley "read O".id on ~6 April [1820]~ one week before ~mpleting Proserpine 
on 3 May; and she read Ov1d agam on 4 May, as 1f she were prepanng for the writing of 
Midas" (Robinson, BSM X, 11). Although the drafts of Mathilda witness no intervention 
by P. B. Shelley, the _pattel":° of collaboration the Shell~ys established in t~e composition 
of Frankenstein contmues m these dramas. PBS contnbuted, for Proserpine, Ino' s song 
about Arethusa (1.82-171) and Proserpine's song to her mother (1.208-219) , and, for 
Midas, the songs of Apollo (1.42-77) and Pan (l._78-113). P. B. .~helley's contributions 
indicate that even in the troubled atmosphere dunng ~e ~ompos1t1on of these works, the 
Shelleys continued to regard themselves as collaborative mtellectual partners. 
24 Alan Richardson expands this reading by pointing out the female deities' 
solidarity in wishing to dwell in Hell with Proserpine and in Arethusa' s attempt to rescue 
her from Pluto (129-130). · 
130 
beautiful, are not presented as a paradise; much more important to Proserpine's happiness 
is the presence of her mother. Proserpine and her nymphs gather flowers to make a 
wreath for Ceres when she returns, dedicating the natural beauty of the place to her 
mother as the more important source of happiness. Gubar and Richardson both note that 
the myth of Ceres/Demeter and Persephone/Kore is and has been a central one for 
feminist writers and mytho-historiographers. For Shelley scholars to recognize her choice 
of this myth is especially important because of the dearth of mother-daughter relationships 
in Shelley's oeuvre. 25 Shelley was both a daughter who had lost her mother, and a 
mother who had lost her daughter, and the subject seems very personal at this time, but 
Shelley is able to expand the subject matter to include not only the theme of loss, but also, 
her ongoing investigation into the boundaries of utopia and dystopia. 
While wandering to gather flowers, the nymphs stray from Proserpine, and when 
Ceres returns, the nymphs have lost her. Ceres's sorrow causes a blight to fall on the 
land. Ultimately, Proserpine may spend half the year with her mother, but must reign as 
Pluto's queen for the other half, because she has eaten the seeds of a pomegranate. In 
Shelley's version of the tale, it is not so much a legalistic interpretation of the 
pomegranate seeds--one month for every seed she has eaten--but Ceres's heart-rending 
prayer and, indeed, as Gubar notes, her threats to make the earth barren because of her 
sorrow, that cause Jove to decree that Proserpine may return for half the year. In 
Proserpine, unlike Matfd/da,, a resolution of grief and loss is achieved through community 
effort: Ceres and the nymphs band together to petition for Proserpine's return. 
Shelley has deliberately chosen a tale that literalizes the division between the 
utopian feeling created by the presence of the loved one and the barren, dystopian state of 
despair caused by forced separation: 
25 Shelley explores the mother-daughter relationship again in Lodore, notably in a 
context of estrangement and loss. 
131 
When Enna is starred by flowers, and the sun 
Shoots his hot rays strait on the gladsome land, 
When Summer reigns, then thou shalt live on Earth, 
And tread these plains, or sporting with your nymphs, 
Or at your Mother's side, in peaceful joy. 
But when hard frost congeals the bare, black ground, 
The trees have lost their leaves, & painted birds 
Wailing for food sail through the piercing air; 
Then you descend to deepest night and reign 
Great Queen of Tartarus, mid' shadows dire ... (Il .243-252) 
Although Proserpine has become a queen, and her new husband is now said to rule half 
the world ("Thus has black Pluto changed the reign of Jove, I He seizes half the Earth 
when he takes thee" [II.300-1]) there is absolutely no hint of domestic felicity in their 
relationship. Pluto has stolen Proserpine by force ; as she is carried away she is heard to 
cry "My Mother!" (11.77). Proserpine' s primary relationship remains with her mother, 
and her friends are the female nymphs who play with and protect her. It is with these 
women, and not with Pluto, that Proserpine establishes a utopian relationship, made 
tangible by the beauty of Summer. Gubar states that "The grievous separation of mother 
and maiden implies that in a patriarchal society women are divided from each other and 
from themselves" (305): Shelley' s choice of this myth and the nature of her adaptation of 
it make clear her not only her deep feelings of grief at the separation of mother and child 
' 
but also her condemnation of relationships based on abuse of power rather than 
community and love. Shelley's feminist understanding of the myth allows her to 
illustrate her most basic points about utopia and dystopia in very simple terms--especially 
useful if, as conjectured, children were her intended audience. 
The play between feelings of utopia and dystopia is also present within Midas. 
132 
When Midas prefers the song of Pan, his own god, to that of Apollo, Apollo gives Midas 
ass's ears. There is a very subtle interplay on the nature of utopia present in this contest 
and its outcome. The utopian world-view of Apollo, which focuses upon his own light 
and goodness, is destabilized, whereas Pan's modest claims are more believable, and 
though melancholy, more peaceful and attractive. Tmolus, the god of a bare hill, is the 
official judge of the contest. When he votes in Apollo' s favor, Pan accuses him of 
partiality: "you think by this/ To win Apollo with his sultry beams/ To thaw your snowy 
head, & to renew / The worn out soil of your bare, ugly hill" (I.120-3). Although Pan is 
older, Apollo is a much more powerful god than Pan, as their songs (written by P. B. 
Shelley) attest. Apollo has already taken music and poetry as his special province, and 
Tmolus, who may indeed be partial , merely seconds the proclamation of the other gods. 
Midas, however, is also a partial judge: as he indicated before hearing the gods sing, "My 
judgement is made up before I hear; / Pan is my guardian God, old-homed Pan, / The 
Phrygian' s God, who watches o'er our flocks ; I No harmony can equal his blithe pipe" 
(I.38-41). But to a great extent, Apollo is to be awarded the crown because it is his own 
definition of poetry and song by which the contest is judged. Midas, judging by the older 
standard, chooses Pan: as king of a pastoral land, he decides in favor of a pastoral god. 
Apollo' s claims to benevolence are belied by his immediate revenge upon Midas. 
Although Midas' s judgment derives credibly from a utopian pastoral worldview, 
it is also depicted as faulty, for when Bacchus grants Midas a wish for showing courtesy 
to Silenus, Midas chooses the golden touch rather than to have his human ears restored. 
Midas for a time revels in his wealth, but soon realizes that he cannot enjoy the simplest 
pleasures, such as eating, drinking and sleeping. Bacchus says, "I found you rich & 
I 
happy; & I leave you, / Though you know it not, miserably poor" (1.350-1). Again the 
pastoral landscape is preferred to the wealth of gold Midas has transmuted: "Now shall 
we tend our flocks and reap our com / As we were wont, and not be killed by gold. / 
133 
Golden fleeces threatened our poor sheep, I The very showers as they fell from heaven / 
Could not refresh the earth; the wind blew gold, / And as we walked the thick sharp-
pointed atoms I Wounded our faces" (Il.187-193). Midas has the gold dumped into the 
sea, proclaiming: "we will make all echoeing heaven ring/ With our loud hymns of 
thanks, & joyous pour/ Libations in the deep, and reach the land, i Rich, happy, free & 
great, that we have lost I Man's curse, heart-bartering, soul-enchanting gold" (11.288-
292). Midas teaches the simple lesson that overt symbols of power such as a wealth of 
gold or the reign of the brilliant but arrogant and vengeful Apollo may not be preferable to 
the simpler, more peaceful existence of utopian pastoralism. Such pastoralism, with its 
inherent simplicity and reliance on a community-based way of life, is often featured in the 
more complicated portraits of utopian domesticity found elsewhere in Shelley's work--in, 
for example, the utopian domesticity represented by the soldier farmer Guinigi of 
Val,perga. In this instance, Shelley's middle-class nostalgia for pastoralism is also 
aligned with a critique of gold and power and their association with empire. 26 Midas's 
enlightened rejection of gold in favor of simpler pleasures is allegorically connected with 
more overtly radical systems, such as Percy Shelley's argument that a simpler diet would 
not only make people healthier, but would undercut the pernicious empire of trade in 
luxury goods and render humanity less barbarous in general.27 
Like Proserpine and Midas, Maurice, or the Fisher's Cot was intended for 
26 As Richardson points out, "Mid~ errs not in rejecting Apollo's song, but in 
failing to reject as well ~s e~eme~t and all its stands for: power, acquisition, the golden 
crown of empire. By d1vestmg himself of these through the power of Bacchus, Midas is 
able by the drama's end to. ~om~ once more a member of the 'festal band' escorting 
'Silenus to his woods agam (62) (133). 
27 See P. B. Shelley's note to Canto VIII, Queen Mab, "No longer now / he 
slays the Iamb that looks him in the face." 
134 
~~,,,.,.IIPVII-~--==-=----------------
children. 28 Maurice, as Tomalin points out, has a happy ending but a melancholy tone 
overall. Although Maurice is restored to his true parents, he is never relieved from his 
nostalgic longing for the old fisherman, Barnet, who took him in and gave him a real 
home in the old cot. In the end, even the cot crumbles away. The subtitle of Maurice, or 
the Fisher's Cot, identifies the utopian scene at the heart of this melancholy tale. The boy 
himself, Maurice, canies a shifting, multiplicitous identity, but the cot lingers as a scene 
of utopian domesticity even after it has physically been destroyed by time and the 
elements. 
Despite their poverty, age, and physical complaints, Old Barnet had lived in the 
little cot with his wife for many years in domestic tranquillity. His wife had not only 
made a welcoming home for her husband, but had reached out into her community to 
effect some good: 
His dame was so lame that she seldom moved from the old, worsted, high-backed 
armchair where she used to sit mending the nets, and hearing a few children read 
' 
who came to her from the neighbouring farmhouses . . .. She would not be paid 
for this, calling it merely a good neighbourly turn . ... When he came home wet 
from fishing, during the stormy winter days when every wave almost broke over 
his boat, she would contrive to have the fire lighted for him and the little old 
cottage set in order for his supper. [But] the old cottage under the cliff had 
become quite hateful to him since his dame' s death. (78-79, 80) 
The death of the old woman destabilizes the utopian scene, but the appearance of the 
young boy, Maurice, reaffirms it As is the case throughout Shelley's work, utopian 
28 In her journal entry for 10 Au~ust 1820, _Shelley records "Write a story for 
Laurette" (MWSJ328). This story _was given as a gift to the eleven-year-old child of 
Mary Wollstonecraft's former pupil_, Margaret Countess _Mountcashell , who, living 
quietly as "Mrs. Mason," was ~e fnend C?f the Shelleys m Italy. Maurice has been 
recovered and published by Claire Tomalm ( 1998). 
135 
domesticity does not require heterosexual pairing or strictly male/female gendered 
coupling: in Proserpine, utopia is established among mother and daughter and their 
community of women; in Midas, utopia is recognized when Midas and his men recognize 
the value of simple pleasures in preference to power or gold. Barnet and his wife made a 
happy home, but so do Barnet and Maurice. 
Barnet sees a chance to create a new family by welcoming a homeless boy. As we 
discover, Maurice has belonged to several households. His origin, as a child of wealthy, 
loving parents, has been lost to him. He leaves the couple who raised him because the 
father beats him. He has little better luck with his second master, who works him too 
hard so that he falls ill. He is rescued by a poor woman, but she is too poor to maintain 
him for long. So the boy has already had a string of placements before he finds a real 
home in the fisher's cot. Barnet thinks to himself: 
"I have no child upon earth: my only relation is a brother who disdains a poor old 
fisherman like me. My name is dead, and I am alone without anyone to help me if 
I am sick or to say a cheerful, 'Good bye, God send you luck!' when I go a 
fishing. Surely this boy seems sent by heaven to me, and it seems to me that I 
love him already as if he were my own son. He shall stay with me; I can maintain 
him as I maintained my poor wife who is gone: he can put my cottage in order, 
mend my sails and nets, and on windy evenings who knows but he may be able 
to read the bible to me as my dame used." (82-3) 
This arrangement works out well, and since the young boy is more spry than the old 
woman had been, the C9ttage is better maintained than it had been before. The boy ta.lees 
up the woman's charitable duties in instructing other young children to read. He is 
"always ready to do a good tum for the poor as well as the rich" (83). 
To an extent, the boy is feminized by the old man's treatment of him as a wife. 
There is a certain parallel between his case and that of Mathilda's in that both fathers 
136 
attempt to create surrogate wives. But in Shelley's narratives, the acceptance by men of 
lives of "womanly" service is seen as wholly positive. The Shelleyan revised masculine 
hero is always willing to serve others, and often his service talces place within the realm 
of domesticity, as is the case with Guinigi, the warrior turned fanner in Valperga, or 
Neville, the young Shelleyan hero in Falkner. To further differentiate their cases, the old 
man is frank about his intentions to employ the boy in wifely duties, in strong contrast to 
Mathilda's father' s deep harboring of his dark secret. The boy and the old man combine 
their resources: the old man provides a home and an income while the young boy 
provides labor, in a domestic economy that, for example, the Creature would have 
envied. Their shared leisure activity, reading the Bible some nights, is also familiar from 
the utopian scene viewed by the Creature, and is a very basic example of the Godwinian 
principle of using leisure time to pursue intellectual improvement 29 Old Barnet's 
frankness and Maurice' s willingness to be useful both exemplify Godwinian aspects of 
Shelley' s utopian domesticity. 
To answer the questions of the Traveller to whom Maurice' s story is revealed, the 
landlady of the local inn describes Maurice as "a kind of servant or apprentice" (77), 
focusing on the economic aspect of the arrangement. A young countryman, who is more 
familiar with the situation, identifies Maurice as "the best creature in the world" (77), 
implying that the arrangement between Maurice and Barnet grows organically out of 
29 In this instance there is little se~e, as there certainly is in Frankenstein, that the 
reading material being perused leads to a highly_ skewed ?utlook. In ~odwin' s utopian 
ideal, sharing property and labor prod.uces the leisure for mtellectual improvement "If 
superfluity were banished, the necessity for th~ greate! part of the manual industry of 
mankind would be superseded; and t!te rest, bemg amicably shared among the active and 
vigorous members of the commmuruty, would be burthensome to none. Every man 
would have a frugal , yet who!esome diet; ever:y m~ w?uld go fo~. to that moderate 
exercise of his corporal functions that would g~ve hilanty ~o the spm!S; none would be 
made torpid with fatigue, but all would h':1ve le1s~re ~ cultivate the ~ndly and 
philanthropical affections, ~d le~ loose h~s f ac~ttes m ~e ~h of mtellectuaI 
improvement" (730). For d1scuss1on placm~ this quotation m the context of Shelley's 
treatment of class difference, see Chapter Five on The Last Man. 
137 
natural goodness. The countryman, without recognizing the irony of his own neglect, 
relies on this intimation that good wiJJ naturally come to the good when he speculates 
regarding Maurice's fate: "I do not know; but he is so much loved that I do not think he 
will come to want. For my part I am now leaving the country for a few weeks ... but 
when I return the first question I shall ask is what is become of Maurice" (84). 
Somewhere between these two is the opinion of old Barnet himself. Barnet identifies the 
boy as a worker, but recognizes as well the benefits he can confer on the boy. Seeing in 
him a potential heir, Barnet thinks of him "as if he were my own son." Barnet 
understands the complexity of an economic relationship but also the potential for love to 
transform the relationship beyond the economic. Within the old cottage Barnet and 
Maurice forge a family relationship based on mutual choice, mutual benefit, and love: 
utopian domesticity. 
The revision of the family based on association by mutual free choice is central to 
Shelley's utopian domesticity. Eve Tavor Bannet, in her study of enlightenment 
feminisms, argues that egalitarian feminism, such as that for which Wollstonecraft is the 
best known representative, usually features a revision of the family centering centering on 
"marital partners [ who J make their contract freely and as a result ofrational choice" ( 51 ). 
Bannet presents the egalitarian feminist family as modeled on "a voluntary compact 
between people of equal worth to enter into one community for mutual assistance and the 
good of all [with] governors [who] only govern with the consent of the ruled and for as 
long as they fulfilled their trust" (51). In this egalitarian model of the family, "men and 
women live together as persons of equal sense, who have the same right and authority to 
direct each other's conduct. Both sexes exhibit the same human nature--a compound of 
'masculine reason' and 'feminine softness'--and obey the same models of conduct" (51). 
When Shelley focuses on heterosexual relations, this model is reasonably similar to hers. 
Throughout her work, Shelley certainly upholds the idea that men and women have equal 
138 
potential and a nongendered hwnan nature. But Shelley goes beyond egalitarian 
feminists' emphasis on free choice of marriage partners, seen here as a central feature by 
Bannet and also present in the early feminists Cavendish, Asten30 and Scott (described in 
Chapter One). In the creation of a family relationship between Old Barnet and Maurice 
' 
Shelley pictures the formation of utopian domesticity in extra-legal terms. The "voluntary 
compact" entered into is not the legal contract of marriage, but an agreement between 
parties who agree to uphold their own responsibilities outside the inflexible statutes of 
"positive institution." Later examples of utopian domesticity include the female 
friendships of Euthanasia and Beatrice in Valperga and Katherine and Elizabeth in Perkin 
Warbeck and the revised family models adopted by Elizabeth, Neville, and Falkner in 
Falkner, and by Cornelia in Lodore, when she places the welfare of her daughter her 
daughter's family above her own personal worldly position. 
These non-heterosexual models are important because they avoid two pitfalls 
common to feminist revisions of the family: idealization of the father, and idealization of 
the mother. As Bannet notes, the father in egalitarian families was liable to be viewed as a 
"'benevolent patriarch,' who cared for his dependent children, felt for the suffering of 
others, helped his poor or unfortunate neighbours and friends, and governed his social 
and domestic inferiors with justice mitigated by compassion" (52). Shelley openly 
critiques the patriarchal family in Frankenstein, depicting Old De Lacey as benevolent but 
blind, and demonstrating the violence inherent in the system in Felix's attack on the 
Creature. The suffocating love of the patriarchal father is also literalized in the incestuous 
relationship between Mathilda and her father. The patriarchal family is depicted with 
sympathy in The Last Man, but Shelley carefully describes how it is dependent upon 
30 Astell, as what Bannet calls a "Matriarchal" feminist (one who argues that 
women are actually superior in virtue to men), warns that women should be prepared 
fully and voluntarily to obey their husbands should they enter into marriage. 
139 
restrictively gendered code of chivalry; she further dismantles the values of chivalry in 
Perkin Warbeck. Shelley finally reckons with the image of the "benevolent patriarch" in 
both Lodore and Falkner, casting Lodore as a well-intentioned but hopelessly self-
centered father who gives his daughter a dangerously gendered education, and Falkner as 
a passionate but reluctant father who only becomes fit after his daughter re-educates him. 
Mary G. Dietz critiques the idealization of the mother in her reponse to the social 
feminism of Jean Bethke Elshtain. Elshtain' s feminism is based on "the social practice of 
mothering" and on viewing women as mothers, rather than as citizens who act outside the 
realm of the family. Tavor also investigates early feminists, whom she tenns Matriarchal 
feminists, who emphasize women's superior virtue and the benefits resulting from their 
rule over the family. Shelley avoids idealization of the mother in two ways. In her many 
critiques of restrictive domesticity, Shelley demonstrates the dangers faced by the self-
sacrificing wife, mother and daughter: in Caroline Frankenstein, Eliz.a.beth Lavenza and 
Justine Moritz, who all die because of their gendered roles; in The Last Man's Idris and 
Clara, whose mothering roles lead them to despair; in Eliz.a.beth of York's dashed 
expectations regarding her position as wife to Henry VII and mother of his children in 
Perkin Warbeck; in Cornelia's disastrous maniage to Lodore; and in Alithea' s bad 
marriage in Falkner. Shelley also avoids idealizing woman's role as mother by focusing 
on the utopian potential of other roles. As mentioned above, she looks at the utopian 
potential of female friendship; in the character of Euthanasia, she looks at woman's 
capacity for political leadership without relying on the maternal as model or metaphor; in 
the character of Fanny Derham, Shelley models woman' s capacity for scholarly 
excellence. In instances where motherhood does become woman's role--as with Cornelia, 
her daughter Ethel, or Falkner' s Alithea--Shelley is careful to portray a realistic, rather 
than an idealized, portrait of the joys, sorrows, and conflicting motivations resulting from 
motherhood. In short, Shelley is more likely to portray an idealized mother in her critique 
140 
of restrictive, negative domesticity, just as idealizaton of the role of father is liable to 
indicate her critique of the patriarchal family and chivalric ideals. For utopian domesticity 
to come about, men and women must create community bonds, like those of a family, 
voluntary and equal in nature, without idealizing restrictive gender roles. Shelley's is not 
an apolitical, "private" paradigm which focuses only on familial roles, but one which uses 
the family as a model to reconceive society at its most basic level. 
The death of Old Barnet again deprives Maurice of a home. Barnet's brother, who 
inherits the cot, does not recognize Maurice as anything but a servant and gives him one 
Week to vacate. Maurice is stricken with sorrow, but still the shadow of his domestic 
happiness with Barnet is reflected in the beauty he sees in the old cottage as he describes 
it to the Traveller: 
Although it is poor and ve.ry old, yet taking it altogether I do not think 
there is a prettier [cottage] in all the country round. The trees fall over and shelter 
it, a number of pretty flowers grow beside the brook which comes running down 
from the tall, red cliff. And nothing to mind can be more beautiful than the moss 
and lichens, yellow, green, white and blue, that grow on the old thatched roof, 
making it look finer than a slated roof could possibly be. In the spring yellow 
wallflowers grow there, and the green before the door is covered with daisies. 
Besides if you come round to the other side where the cottage faces the hill you 
will find a pretty lattice grown over with honeysuckles and several geraniums in 
the stand outside the window. The geraniums were the great favourite of old 
Barnet's dame, and he loved them for her sake. (92-3) 
Shelley makes clear how a beautiful natural scene becomes invested with human 
meanings: Maurice's attachment to the geraniums, which he intends to purchase with his 
only two shillings, stems from Barnet's affection for them and from the old woman' s 
affection, linking her to him even though he never knew her. 
141 
As Maurice and the Traveller talk, another utopian scheme is outlined. This one is 
introduced by the Traveller, and is based on the radical principles of Shelley's family and 
circle (simplified for a children's audience). They talk "of the beauty of the little birds 
' 
and the cruelty of those who kill them," which partially reflects the Shelleys' 
vegetarianism. They talk of an agrarian lifestyle of healthy exercise, reflecting the utopian 
ideal foretold by Godwin in PoliticalJustice. They also discuss reading "entertaining 
books, telling them of how the earth is cultivated, and how various countries bring forth 
various frui_ts: of the sea, and how different voyages and discoveries have been made on 
it: of the sky, and how the beautiful stars which we see at night move, and the signs they 
make of winter and summer" (96). These books of scientific knowledge and exploration 
are very similar in topic to those which influenced Shelley to create Frankenstein. The 
Traveller goes on to describe "books more delightful than these which told of what good 
and wise men had done a great many years ago; how some had died to serve their fellow-
creatures, and how through the exertions of these men everyone had become better, wiser 
and happier" (96-97)--in a nutshell, a simplified account of Godwinian necessity and 
peif ectibility. The Traveller then offers to share this way of life with Maurice. 
The Traveller is a happy revision of the wandering poet of Alastor. "The son of a 
professor of mathematics at the University of Oxford," the Traveller is very well 
educated. He is full of the poet's love of nature, but also shares Victor Frankenstein's 
scientific curiosity without his corrupting alienation. His love of the beautiful old temples 
of antiquity prompts him to become an architect: "my kind father sent me abroad to Asia, 
Italy and Greece to visit the remains of the old temples that still exist, and I passed five 
Years in this happy manner, dwelling among foreign nations, often in desert places" 
(102). Unlike the Alastor poet, the Traveller returns home, manies, and has a son. This 
son, again with shades of Frankenstein, is lost from the care of a nurse who has fallen 
asleep, and the Traveller has spent eleven years looking for the boy. After relating how 
142 
his boy was stolen, the Traveller says, "If I never find my darling boy you shall be a son 
to me, and if I do find him--" (110). Perhaps by hearing the story of how Barnet had 
accepted the boy as family, the Traveller is inspi~ed to do so as well. In a fairy tale 
ending, Maurice turns out to be Henry, the Traveller's lost son, and so the family 
relationship is shored up. The Traveller purchases the old cottage from Barnet's brother 
and they make a summer home of it. 
The centrality of Old Barnet and the cottage to the utopian nature of the story is 
striking. Even though it is no longer the boy's home, the cottage retains some of its 
utopian air: "When they were at this cottage Henry always went by the name of Maurice, 
and he would go about among his friends whom he had known when he lived with old 
Barnet, helping and consoling them if they were sick or afflicted, and doing all the good a 
little boy could do, or by the help of his father making people happy when poverty or 
misfortune had made them miserable" (113). ·The identity of Maurice, Barnet's helpful 
boy, is more fully realized in the story than the fairy-tale prince Henry, so that when 
Henry wants to help his old friends, he has to do so as Maurice. Shelley seems to insist 
that Henry remember his identity as Maurice because it was as Maurice that he learned the 
possibility of utopian domesticity, and from him his father learned it before he even knew 
that Maurice was Henry, his son. 
The cottage becomes the home of Dame Smithson, the woman who had stolen 
Henry but who genuinely had loved him. In the final pages of the story, Shelley 
dismantles the old cottage. While Henry is away travelling, Dame Smithson dies and the 
cottage falls down. As~ traveller, Henry moves away from his utopian site and it is lost, 
but not irrevocably. The utopian effects of "old Barnet's that he loved so well" are 
refashioned as Henry builds a new house for another family who were afflicted. 
Maurice, or the Fisher's Cot is a tale of the hard realities of poverty and loss and 
of unstable, shifting identity. But it is also a tale of utopian possibility through the 
143 
=~~~ 
..... 
, ,,__ _ _
_________ 
_ 
forging of a loving community, the possibility of making choices about family 
relationships and talcing a hand in the creation of one's own identity, and in these ways it 
is the very opposite of the pessimistic story of Mathilda. The gender differences between 
Maurice and Mathilda are important, but Shelley lessens these differences by making 
Maurice a child, and one incapable of hard physical labor. Whereas Mathilda remains 
entrapped by the lessons of her gender, Maurice has not imbibed these restrictive lessons-
-but neither is he empowered by his masculinity, which remains unformed. Despite the 
beatings received at the hands of his false father, Maurice has not lost the ability to forge 
new relationships as Mathilda has. Suffering the grief of loss in the old cot (as Mathilda 
suffered in her retreat), Maurice determines to overcome his idleness and remain useful. 
Through this resolve he is reunited with his true father. The possibility of utopia which 
had been so precarious given the isolation and crippling power structures of Mathilda are 
reaffirmed by Shelley and brought to completion for the first time in Maurice. 
144 
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Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1994. 57-71. 
145 
Garrett, Margaret Davenport. "Writing and Re-writing Incest in Mary Shel1ey' s 
MaJhilda." Keats-Shelley Journal 45 ( 1996): 44-60. 
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Shelley, Mary W. Malik/a,. Ed. Pamela Clemit. The Pickering Masters: The Novels and 
Selected Works of Mary Shelley. General Editor Nora Crook with Pamela Clemit 
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148 
Foundations of Utopian Domesticity in Valperga 
Utopian Domesticity in Shelley's Political Novels: 
Valperga, The Last Man, and The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck 
'The writer of romance is to be considered the writer of real history," wrote 
Godwin; Percy Bysshe Shelley, in his letter to Charles OIIier concerning Valperga, 
suggests that it captures the "romantic truth of history. "1 For Mary Shelley as well, the 
importance of history is not located in bare facts, but in the creative act of the author, 
whose setting forth of the feelings and motives of historical actors has the capacity to 
effect readers' moral and political edification. In Shelley's political novels, the lessons of 
the past are interpreted through the lens of the present, and set forth for the good of the 
future. Although Valperga (1823), The Last Man (1826), and The Fortunes of Perkin 
Warbeck (1830) are all tragedies, Shelley explores in them, as in her other works, the 
idea of utopian domesticity as a vision for social reform. 
In her political novels, Shelley contrasts utopian domesticity with the more 
conventional political systems of republicanism and tyranny. Utopian domesticity, with 
its foundation in family, home and the local, is antithetical to the absolute sway of the 
authoritative tyrant. Yet Shelley insists that violent overthrow of the tyrant is to be 
avoided. In Valperga, Euthanasia offers Castruccio a truce, swearing that she will not 
allow her fortress to be used against him. Even after he has betrayed her, she only joins a 
plot against him in order to save his life. In The Last Man, Raymond's military campaign 
against Constantinople; though it brings about universal peace, inspires Lionel to a sick 
contemplation of his quick enthusiasm for military glory. And in Perkin Warbeck, 
Richard's just claim against Henry VII, portrayed as a cold, cruel, and unforgiving 
1 Godwin in his essay, "Of History and Romance," qtd in Rajan, "Romance" 90· 
P. B. Shelley, PBSL Il, 353, qtd in Rossington 104. ' 
149 
tyrant, is harshly and thoroughly condemned by Shelley as wrongheaded and destructive. 
In all three novels, the reform of society occurs from within utopian domesticity, not 
from violent rebellion against tyranny. Utopian domesticity is based not only on freely 
chosen bonds of love, formed on a model of family, but also on forgiveness, which must 
apply to the tyrant as well. 
In Perkin Warbeck, and to some extent in The Last Man, the strictly gendered 
system of chivalry is contrasted with the disregard of gender roles required by utopian 
domesticity. In order to show how traditional, restrictive domesticity can be reformed, 
Shelley demonstrates the damaging effects on both men and women of traditional, 
restrictive gender roles, and shows how both men and women should aspire to the role of 
the Shelleyan Romantic hero--a hero motivated by disinterested friendship, benevolence, 
forgiveness, and simplicity of lifestyle. In contrast, she examines the Byronic hero, 
whose ambition and isolation leads to destruction despite his--or her--creative genius and 
personal magnetism. Shelley examines the differences between the male and female 
Byronic heroes--Beatrice and Castruccio in Valperga, or Evadne and Raymond in The 
Last Man--by showing how women are situated more precariously in gendered social 
structures, so that a passionate risk may cause their social downfall, leading to madness 
and death, whereas men may couch their passionate ambition in social structures which 
·, 
actually validate an~ reward risk, even when it leads to danger and destruction. In the 
case of Lionel Verney. Shelley explores how the Byronic hero may be schooled and 
transformed to emulate the Shelleyan, whereas in the case of Monina de Faro, the female 
Byronic hero avoids death when her own reason, along with the chivalrous code of 
Richard, save her from the madness and social downfall resulting from utter 
abandonment and betrayal. Shelley will more fully explore the transformation of the 
Byronic into the Shelleyan Romantic hero in her domestic novels, Lodore and Falkner. 
150 
As Shelley's first historical novel, Valperga inaugurates her open discussion of 
the intersections between domesticity and politics. As the fictionalized history of a real 
prince of Lucca, Valperga does not restrict itself to reporting the facts about the corruption 
of a tyrant, but lends emotional impact to extolling the virtues of an imaginary woman 
Republican. Euthanasia, the heroine of Valperga, is a politically empowered woman in a 
struggle against tyranny. Utopian domesticity is manifested in Euthanasia's conduct 
throughout the novel as the antithesis of the tyrannical power embodied by her corrupted 
lover, Castruccio. Although, ultimately, tyranny prevails in Valperga, Shelley uses the 
work to present several important models of utopian domesticity as imagined but 
attainable social ideals. 
The first depiction of utopian domesticity in Valperga, the education of Euthanasia 
by her father, contains both the elements of free, voluntary association and the necessity 
of freedom from gender assumptions in education. The depiction of domesticity adopted 
by Castruccio's friend, Guinigi, shows the importance of a simple life--its association 
with the pastoral, but especially its rejection of military glory--and the formation of an 
alternative model for masculine virtue. Euthanasia's care for her subjects and her 
understanding of the County of Valperga primarily as a home yields further dimensions to 
Shelley' s portrait of utopian domesticity. Finally, the relationships between Euthanasia, 
Castruccio and Beatrice allow Shelley to explore the true meaning of "love" as it 
contributes to utopian domesticity and to further refine her treatment of gender roles and 
her depiction of the Shelleyan and Byronic Romantic heroes. 
As early as 1978, Betty Bennett argues that Shelley, like her husband, should be 
read in terms of her reform politics.2 Bennett argues that, especially in Valperga and 
Perkin Warbeck, Shelley uses the concept of "Promethean" universal love as her ideal, in 
2 Bennett recaps her 1978 article, "Political Philosophy," in her 1998 monograph, 
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley: An Introduction, 54-61. 
151 
response to the philosophies of Wollstonecraft, Godwin, and Percy Shelley. Bennett's 
concept of universal love is an important facet of my exploration of utopian domesticity. 3 
Most scholars who have since published work on Valperga have acknowledged its 
political nature, but still regard it as profoundly pessimistic. Critics such as Mary Poovey 
have argued that as Shelley's career progresses, Shelley begins more and more to 
confonn with the ideology of the Proper Lady. Mentioning Valperga in passing, Poovey 
refers to it as Shelley's last novel "that show[s] most clearly the influence of her mother's 
self-confidence and Percy Shelley's aesthetics," after which she "began to use her literary 
career both to defend her behavior and, more significantly, to so characterize it that it 
would need no defense" (116). Poovey's work has been so influential that some later 
critics, although acknowledging Valperga's open concern with republicanism and 
tyranny, read Valperga as though its primary project were conservative. 
Anne Mellor focuses on Shelley's appraisal of the bourgeois family and the 
ideology of domesticity, but does not situate Shelley within the context of the utopian 
thinkers with whom she was in dialogue. In a short overview (210-11), Mellor argues 
that Valperga "is primarily an attack on male ambition and egotism" but also that it 
"emphasizes the inability of women, whether as adoring worshippers Oike Beatrice) or 
active leaders (like Euthanasia), to influence politicial events or to translate an ethic of 
care--whether embodied in the domestic affections or in a political program of universal 
justice and peace--into historical reality" (210). Shelley does attack ambition and egotism-
-but not only in men, as Beatrice's misplaced belief in herself as Ancilla Dei (the 
3 Bennett associates Promethean universal love with "making choices that benefit 
the most people" ("Political Philosophy" 364) or a "democratic, activist ideal of love" 
(367); Promethean love must also be _a factor in her ar~ents tha~ "In Valperga, a 
conscious struggle is depicted, in wh1ch the forces of liberty are p1tted agamst the forces 
of repression" (368) and that Mazy SheUey:s stateme~t, "! wi~,h no injury to any human 
being" constitutes "the echo of Prometheus most ra~cal _1dea ~369). I attem,rt to bring a 
more concrete definition to Bennett's concept by relating 1t specifically to utopian 
domesticity. 
152 
handmaiden of God) shows. The horrors of war, partisanship and superstition are 
Shelley's targets in Valperga. The "ethic of care" I describe as "utopian domesticity" is 
not put fozward only by women, but also by men, as demonstrated by the just teachings 
of Euthanasia's father and Castruccio' s friend Guinigi. Euthanasia, as an independent 
thinker, is much more in control of her own fate than is Castruccio, whose ambition and 
self-justification lead him farther and farther into corruption and self-deceit. Euthanasia's 
is a "noble death" because she has acted according to her ideals,4 but Castruccio's 
amassed temporal power collapses, and he dies in spiritual emptiness. Finally, by 
inventing the stories of Euthanasia and Beatrice, Shelley makes an important revision of 
what counts as "historical reality."5 As Betty Bennett writes, "Shelley introduces the 
idealized Euthanasia into the life of Castruccio to give voice to a socio-political value 
system committed to justice and freedom" ("Machiavelli's" 148). 
Critics including Barbara Jane O'Sullivan and Joseph Lew focus on the political 
potential of Valperga's transgressive women characters, concentrating on the challenges 
faced by Beatrice as a sign of "the troubled history of female spiritual and imaginative 
power which is buried alive beneath the surface of Western culture" (O'Sullivan 141). 
O'Sullivan and Lew, like Poovey, view Beatrice as a voice of women's oppression that 
overcomes Shelley's urge to repress it, suggesting that to identify Beatrice's rebellious 
nature is to read against the grain of Shelley's intended narrative. On the contrary, Shelley 
puts Beatrice forward as an ultra-feminine type of the Byronic Romantic character, 
4 Kari Lokke argues that Euthanasia dies not only at peace in her own mind but 
also experiencing bliss within nature (168). 
s See Curran Introduction. See also James P. Carson's interesting discussion of 
Shelley's treatment o'f popular culture in Valpe!'ga, i~ which. he concludes tha~,"Valperga 
represents a new kind of historic3;! novel, one m which sentiments ar~ ~ven~ (186), and 
Tilottama Rajan, who argues that Valperga may well be the first fem1rust histoncal 
novel" ("Mathilda" 62). 
153 
balancing Castruccio 's masculine representation of the type. Gender is important in 
understanding Beatrice's nature, but it is especially interesting in tenns of how it 
complicates her figure as a Romantic hero. Both O'Sullivan and Lew recognize the 
utopian possibility inherent in Euthanasia. Although Lew labels Euthanasia's concern for 
domesticity "anonymous," it is really at the heart of her public life. As Lew states 
' 
Euthanasia's "management of her own estate helps to establish the material preconditions 
necessary to an almost Godwinian pezfectibility" (177) and he raises the idea that 
Valperga represents "a lament for a time--simultaneously 'lost' and 'imagined' --before the 
differentiaton of 'separate spheres' of activity, a time when men and women could 
Participate fully in both the private and public realms" (160). O'Sullivan also notes, 
though refening to Shelley's later novels, that "By domesticating female power, Shelley 
finally finds an acceptable way to write about it" (154). 
Even expanding Valperga's context slightly by reading it beside more of Shelley's 
novels may still lead to inaccurate conclusions about Shelley and her commitment to 
refonrust ideals. Focusing on Frankenstein, Valperga and The Last Man, Jane Blumberg 
is led to view Shelley's work as intensely pessimistic. Because the plots of these three 
novels end in tragedy, Blumberg finds them to be at odds with the optimistic utopian 
writing of Godwin or Percy B. Shelley. Yet Godwin and Shelley themselves wrote 
works ending in tragedy: for example, Godwin's Caleb Williams ( 1794) and St. Leon 
(1799) both feature protagonists brought down by their own moral failings; P. B. 
Shelley's Laon and Cythna and The Cenci both feature martyred heroes unable to 
overcome the moral failings of those surrounding them. 6 Wollstonecraft also wrote 
novels that seem much more pessimistic than her polemic; her unfinished Wrongs of 
6 Laon and Cythna perish ~nconupted an~ ~ laud~ after death, ~ut Beatrice 
Cenci unable to endure her father s monstrous evil, mtema11zes her father s patriarchal 
logic ~d having arranged his death, argues that Cenci has been killed according to the 
will of God, leaving herself blameless. 
154 
Woman, or Maria, ends with a trial scene in which the protagonist is pronounced by a 
judge to have no right to speak for herself. Wollstonecraft outlined several bleak endings 
for the tale, including suicide. 7 Syndy McMillen Conger notes The Wrongs of Woman 
as "one of Shelley's favorites among her mother's works" (83); comparing Beatrice's 
story to Maria's, she too argues that it "recapitulates the dark fears for women that are 
central to Maria--miseducation and oppression; madness, misogyny, and persecution; 
love and betrayal--and it represents Mary Shelley's greatest moment of doubt about 
women's capacities--however gifted they may be--to liberate themselves from the 'iron 
cages' in which they 'starve"' (85). Unlike Blumberg, Conger goes on to conclude that 
"Shelley's novel forges covert links to her mother's ideas ... Shelley has erased her 
heroine's culpability [ and] has extricated her from the twin burdens of debilitating guilt 
and self-doubt" (85). In other words, Beatrice's story illuminates social ills Shelley 
recognized and which she counters in her condemnations of Castruccio's and praise of 
Euthanasia's behavior towards Beatrice. 
Just as in these tales by Wollstonecraft, Godwin and P. B. Shelley, the tragic 
outcomes of Shelley's own novels represent not the failure of refonnist ideals, but the 
results when these ideals are ignored The primacy model of reform presented time after 
time in Shelley's work is utopian domesticity: a blueprint for societal refonn requiring 
gender equality, community responsibility, and a preference for justice over power, 
revenge and worldly custom. Shelley's early novels show the dire consequences of 
ignoring and/or destroying utopian domesticity, while her later novels show the personal 
and community benefits of its adoption. Blumberg acknowledges that in Frankenstein, 
7 Wollstonecraft's 1788 Mary, A Fiction, precedes her polemic writing, and as an 
embryonic romance, probably has little bearing on the intezpretati.on of her m~ture 
political thought, but like The Wrongs of Woman ten rears later, 1t als!) ends m the female 
protagonist's isolation, disappoin~ent and death. RaJan takes ~p th: 1ssu~ of ,tpe story's 
influence on Shelley, specifically m tenns of her novella, Mathilda ( Mathilda 56-61). 
155 
"Shelley was already committed to the idea of domestic responsibility and one's 
accountability to others" and that "Shelley initiated a fundamental criticism of ... the 
Romantic myth" (54). Shelley's ability to see the problems of revolutionary thought and 
of Romanticism should not be confused, however, with the idea that "her real vision of 
human potential is dark and pessimistic" (54).8 Tilottama Rajan notes that Va/.perga 
"evokes the deferred utopianism of more 'radical' histories by Percy Shelley and 
Godwin" (62-3), yet she concludes that Shelley's "darker vision is the unconscious of 
Percy's increasingly qualified idealism which, in tum, remains the mobilizing force 
behind her pessimism" (61). Shelley is unwilling to gloss over harsh realities and often 
explores the tragic consquences of societal injustice, but she also suggests remedies in her 
fiction. In Valperga, Euthanasia does die, and she has made mistakes, but the reader is 
made to approve continuous efforts to effect what she feels is justice. 
The education of Euthanasia by her father is the first depiction of utopian 
domesticity in Valperga. Although Euthanasia and her father are blood relatives and 
bound together by family ties, the true ties of utopian domesticity are voluntary, not 
social, legal, or even familial in the traditional sense. Euthanasia' s association with her 
father is of a voluntary nature: her tutelage is not enforced as a condition of his love for 
her, for example. Shelley makes this clear in the implicit contrast between Euthanasia's 
willing and active participation in helping with her father's studies, and the story of 
Milton, whose daughters are mere amanuenses.9 Shelley also contrasts Euthanasia with 
her brothers, who have been sent away to school, and her mother, who is uninterested in 
8 Blumberg calls Valperga "the darkest and most profoundly pessimistic novel 
that [Shelley] ever wrote" (76). 
9 Katherine C. Hill-Miller contrasts Euthanasia to Milton's daughters in her study 
of father-daughter relationships in Shelley's work; Hill-Miller concludes that Euthanasia 
does benefit from her father' s tutelage, stating that she "acquires .. . intellectual vigor, a 
taste for abstract learning, and the ability to act decisively" (130). 
156 
study: it is Euthanasia alone who undertakes to assist her father in his blindness. 
Shelley here disagrees with some of the views put forward by Godwin in Political 
Justice. Godwin is suspicious of cooperation and cohabitation, preferring the sincerity 
which operates between strangers as more open, free, and likely to lead to improvement. 
For Godwin, humans should strive for self-sufficiency and should avoid the "thwarting, 
bickering, and unhappiness" that result when peo?le who naturally "vary in their habits, 
preferences, and views" (761 [Book VIII, "Of Property," Appendix, "Of Co-Operation, 
Cohabitation, and Marriage"]) attempt to cooperate or cohabit. But even Godwin admits 
that "conversation, and the intercourse of mind wlth mind, seem to be the most fertile 
sources of improvement" (760-1). Godwin admit; as well that even the self-sufficient 
may find pleasure in the "luxury" of society, friendship, and love (761). For Shelley, 
however, social connections are a basic necessity, never a luxury, and the withdrawal 
from society into isolation is always negative. Still, Godwin's suspicion of cooperation 
leads Shelley to emphasize the critical importance of the voluntary nature of association. It 
is because Euthanasia and her father enter into their association with similar goals, both 
intending the good of the other, that their association is positive, even utopian. 
Throughout Shelley's works, utopian domesticity is formed by the voluntary association 
of likeminded individuals who bond together to seek one another's improvement. 
Euthanasia's education is free of gender restrictions, according to the precepts of 
Wollstonecraft.10 Euthanasia does not perceive any impropriety or difficulty arising from 
her gender in her study of classical knowledge. Arguing that she would enjoy and benefit 
from reading to her father, she states, "I think I should be able to understand these 
difficult authors" (18 [I. 28]). Her father "forgets" her age (and sex) and pours out the 
10 As William D. Brewer notes, "Euthanasia is the kind of rational woman that 
Wollstonecraft, in Vindication, hopes will become the norm when women are given 
proper educations" ("Triumph" 113). 
157 
"high strains of that ennobling spirit which he felt in his inmost heart" (19 [I. 29, 30]). 
Because no restrictions are placed on her, Euthanasia soaks up knowledge and becomes 
an inspired utopian: "Her young thoughts darted into futurity, to the hope of freedom for 
Italy, of revived learning and the reign of peace for all the world: wild dreams, that still 
awake the minds of men to high song and glorious action" (19 [I. 30]). This description 
of the young and hopeful Euthanasia is a clear example of the difference between concrete 
utopian thought and mere "wishful thinking" as defined by utopian Marxist philosopher 
Ernst Bloch.11 Euthanasia holds in her mind a vision of perfected society--a utopian 
vision--and it is this vision which inspires her and others not only to create utopian art 
("high song") but to actively engage in working toward the creation of utopia ("glorious 
action"). 12 
Euthanasia is the first of Shelley's characters actually to benefit from her studies. 
The fruits of utopian domesticity are not confined to the immediate domestic circle, but 
rather spread out into the larger community and into the world. Unlike Victor 
Frankenstein, who studies in order to gain unique knowledge that will set him apart from 
the rest of humanity--even though he intends to use that knowledge for good--Euthanasia 
understands her own position in the world to be relative to the efforts of many others and 
subject to continuous change over time: 
The effect of this education on her mind was advantageous and memorable; she 
did not acquire that narrow idea of the present times, as if they and the world were 
the same, which characterizes the unlearned; she saw and marked the revolutions 
11 See my discussion of Bloch in the Introduction. 
12 This passage is cited by Bennett as evidence of the Shelleys' shared utopian 
vision: "Euthanasia reflects the Shelleys' cyclical view of history that, as in P. B. 
Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, can bring a new era of social justice depite temporary 
setbacks" (Introduction 56). 
158 
that had been, and the present seeemed to her only a point of rest, from which 
time was to renew his flight, scattering change as he went; and, if her voice or act 
could mingle aught of good in these changes, this it was to which her imagination 
most ardently aspired. She was deeply penetrated by the acts and thoughts of 
those men, who despised the spirit of party, and grasped the universe in their 
hopes of virtue and independence. (18[1. 28-9]) 
Euthanasia's study of history leads her beyond "politics" to "perfectibility"--the 
Godwinian desire to gradually effect positive change in the overall state of humankind, 
rather than to place one's own group--or one's individual self--in a position of power.13 
Euthanasia's position is the antithesis of tyranny. 
In this context the source of her name becomes clear. "Euthanasia" represents the 
Godwinian falling away of government as responsible citizens increase overall good and 
decrease the need for rule. According to the footnote provided by Nora Crook, 
Euthanasia's name comes 
from the Greek, with overtones of 'noble death', 'good death'; also so used by 
Godwin when urging that with the annihilation of ignorance and blind 
subservience would come the demise of the state and thus 'the true euthanasia of 
government' (Political Justice, I, ID, vi, 'On Obedience'; PJV, p. 114. 281); 
Godwin here engaged against David Burne, to whom the 'true Euthanasia of the 
British constitution', would be its replacement by absolute monarchy (Essays and 
Treatises on Several Subjects (1753-6), pt I, vii). (16) 
Lew's derivation of Euthanasia's name from sentiments in Hume leads him to follow 
13 As Michael Rossington indicates, Shelley's choice of historical novel allows 
for this sort of transhistorical musing on Republicanism. 
159 
Anne Mellor in asserting Shelley's "disdain for and fear of the lower classes" (162). 14 On 
the contrary, Euthanasia struggles to use her power responsibly, both to benefit and 
protect her peasants and to preserve the good she perceives in Castruccio. Her refusal to 
bow to the wishes of Castruccio as he becomes a tyrant represents "the annihilation of 
ignorance and l lind subservience" referred to by Godwin. At the same time, however, 
the overtones of absolute monarchy which come to the name from the source in Hume 
' 
while not representing a full picture of Euthanasia's nature, have important resonance in 
the problems the novel explores. As a Countess, Euthanasia is burdened with a 
responsibility to her subjects similar to that of an absolute monarch--her decisions to a 
large extent detennine the welfare of her subjects. 
The second depiction of utopian domesticity in Valperga is Shelley's account of 
the lifestyle adopted by Guinigi, the retired soldier friend of Castruccio's father, to whom 
Castruccio goes after he has been orphaned. Guinigi exemplifies one of the central 
concepts of Shelley's utopian domesticity: that domesticity, as opposed to concern for 
worldly power or glory, is the ideal for everyone, men as well as women. Guinigi's 
utopian character as a masculine role-model provides a vital contrast to the hyper-
masculine Castruccio. In Machiavelli's story of the historical Castruccio, Guinigi 
"teaches him the art of war" (Nora Crook 22, footnote), but Shelley pointedly refigures 
the character, who attempts to dissuade Castruccio from warfare by showing him the 
contentments of the simple life and the pointlessness of the ravages of war. Rather than 
seeking to reverse the fortunes of his party, or seek revenge as Castruccio ~ill, Guinigi 
attempts to contrast his peaceful and simple pastoral existence with the chivalric glory and 
the way of the soldier that Castruccio plans for himself. 
14 Unfortunately, Lew did not locate the source of the name in Godwin and 
stated that "Shelley derived her couP,tess' s name from Hume's Essay 7, which ;he had 
read December 12, 1817 (MSJ, 87) (162). James P. Carson persuasively counters this 
assertion. 
160 
Shelley describes Guinigi as a man who has completely left behind his former 
warlike pursuits: ''The sparkling intelligence of his eye was tempered by gentleness and 
wisdom; and the stately/ mien of the soldier had yielded somewhat to his late rustic 
occupations; for, since his exile he had turned his sword to a ploughshare, and he dwelt 
with much complacency on the change" (24 [I. 45-6]). Guinigi does not necessarily defy 
expected gender roles, but he does act the role of a loving parent to his son, Arn.go, and 
he has abandoned the "hyper-masculine" aggression of the soldier for the peaceful 
masculine role of the farmer. 15 At the same time, Shelley' s providing Guinigi as an 
example of utopian domesticity should challenge our habitual conceptions of domesticity 
as exclusively feminine. 16 Shelley has Guinigi acknowledge the differences between 
Castruccio's enactment of gender and his own, which lie primarily in Castruccio's 
attraction to the glory of chivalry: 
"You come to the dwelling of a peasant who eats the bread his own hands have 
sown; this is a new scene for you, but you will not find it uninstructive. To my 
eyes, which do not now glance with the same fire as yours, the sight of the 
bounties of nature, and of the harmless peasants who cultivate the earth, is far 
more delightul than an army of knights hasting in brilliant array to deluge the 
fields with blood, and to destroy the beneficial hopes of the husbandman. But 
these are new doctrines to you; and you perhaps will never, like me, in the deep 
sincerity of your heart, prefer this lowly cottage to yonder majestic castle." (25 [I. 
1s James P. Carson correc~y identi~es Guinigi with utopia, using the term 
"radical agrarianism" to charactenze the belief Shelley shared with Godwin, 
Wollstonecraft and historian Sismondi, in which labor on small independent farms is 
celebrated (170). 
16 For example, Daniel White asserts that Guinigi and Arn.go should be 
considered representatives of the "feminine" (84, 91) because they are shown to inhabit a 
peaceful domesticity. 
161 
45-6]). 
Guinigi's eyes do not dance with the hyper-masculine "fire" of joy in warlike trappings. 
Shelley also emphasizes Guinigi's Godwinian sincerity--his attempt to convince 
Castruccio of the rightness of his own moral creed. Shelley employs the authority of the 
narrator to describe Guinigi's society as "characterized by a simple yet sublime morality, 
which resting on natural bases, admitted no factitious colouring. Guinigi thought only of 
the duty of man to man, laying aside the distinctions of society, and with lovely humility 
recognized the affinity of the meanest peasant to his own noble mind" (25 [I. 48]). 
Shelley's emphasis on the peasant's way of life that Guinigi has adopted is part of the 
Godwinian nature of this example of utopian domesticity. 17 Guinigi 's adoption of a 
simple, peasant's way of life becomes an infinitely replicable model--a model which 
could (assuming an equal distribution of resources, an admittedly tall order) be adopted 
by all of humanity. 
Guinigi explicitly views the pastoral countryside as utopian: "When I would 
picture happiness upon earth, my imagination conjures up the family of a dweller among 
the fields, whose property is secure, and whose time is passed between labour and 
intellectual pleasures" (27 [I. 53]). Shelley's utopian vision, like many feminist utopias 
(especially as exemplified in Sarah Scott's Millenium Hall, discussed in Chapter One), 
often includes an environmental or pastoral element, focusing on the Edenic bounty of 
nature rather than the perfected commonwealth often seen in male writers' utopias: 
"What a Paradise is this!" he said "Now it is bare; but in the summer, when the 
17 Editor Isaac Kramnick has noted Godwin's "rural nostalgia and the longing for 
the simplicity ?fa frog~ ~onomy and a fac~-to-face society~' (31), themes which are 
confined to neither radicalism nor conservat1~m. As Adela ~mch notes, "It is easy to 
imagine what a popular nov~l of the 17~0s m1~ht ~ nostalgic for: a landscape different 
from the changing countryside of ~granan capitalism; ... rather than a countryside in 
which relations between classes _displaced ~d threatened many; ... an idealized, 
unanxious leisure .... Nostalgia [is] not simply a conservative, Burkean sentiment 
Nostalgia is a cultural practice that has no deteminate content" (118). · · · · 
162 
-__ --,~----===========: 
corn waves among the trees, and the ripening grapes shade the roads; when on 
every side you see happy peasants leading the beautiful oxen to their light work, 
and the sun, and the air, and the earth are each labouring to produce for man all 
that is necessary for his support, and the ground is covered with vegetation, and 
the air quickened / into life, it is a spot, on which the Creator of the world might 
pause, and be pleased with his work ... . " (26-7 [I. 51-2]). 18 
This utopian pastoralism first appears in Shelley's writings around 1820, in the children's 
story "Maurice, or the Fisher's Cot" and her two mythological dramas, Proserpine and 
Midas. A later example may clearly be seen in the peaceful garden and cottage created by 
Alithea's mother and loved by Rupert Falkner in Shelley's last novel. 
Guinigi's utopian Paradise is threatened by the warlike activity Castruccio longs 
for. Castruccio, a creature of party spirit, longs to revenge the exile of his political party 
and seeks glory and power through the actions of war. As Bennett notes, Castruccio 
"begins as a sensitive, caring being" but becomes politically corrupt because of his exile 
as a Ghibelline and his service with military conquerors (Introduction 55). Even in 
philosophical discussions, Castruccio is self-aggrandizing and aggressive: 
When Guinigi and Castruccio became intimate, the youth would reason with him, 
and endeavour to prove that in the present distracted state of mankind, it was 
better that one man should get the upper hand, to rule the rest. 'Yes,' said 
18 It was in response to such ideas as this that Coleridge and Southey formulated 
their Godwinian Pantisocracy, intending to found their utopia upon the banks of the 
Susquehanna. Godwin had claim~d that "Half an _hour a day employed in manual labour 
by every member of the commuruty would sufficiently supply the whole with necessities" 
(Political Justice 746 [Book Vlll, "Of Property," Chapter VI, "Objection . . . from the 
Allurements of Sloth"]), and Percy S~~lley ec~oes this claim (Queen Mab, Note to Canto 
v "And statesmen/ Boast of wealth! ), but gives the necessary time as two hours a day Mary Shelley's portrait of utopia does _D?t spec~late up?n how land would be · 
redistributed in order to make sue~ a vision re~ity, but _mstead seeks to paint a 
philosophical picture of the attractiveness of a simpler hfe to a reader already well-off in 
means. 
163 
Guinigi, 'let one man, if it be forbidden to more than one, get the upper hand in 
wisdom, and let him teach the rest: teach them the valuable arts of peace and 
love.' 
Guinigi was a strange enthusiast. Men, like Alexander and other 
conquerors, have indulged the hope of subduing the world, and spreading by 
their triumphs refinement into its barbarous recesses. Guinigi hoped, how 
futilely! to lay a foundation-stone for the temple/ of peace among the Euganean 
hills. He had an overflowing affection of soul, that could not confine itself to the 
person of his son, or the aggrandizement of his country, or be spiritualized into a 
metaphysical adoration of ideal beauty. It bestowed itself on his fellow-creatures; 
and to see them happy, wanned his heart with a pleasure experienced by few. 
This man, his imaginative flights, his glowing benevolence and his humble 
occupations, were an enigma that Castruccio could never solve. (26 [I. 49-50]). 
Guinigi's utopian vision centers around domesticity: love for his son, contentment in the 
simple tasks of a farmer. He has already tried and rejected the paths of warfare and 
conquest, and now concentrates his actions on local efforts, centering around his cottage 
and fann, which he hopes will become "a foundation-stone for the temple of peace." The 
primary thrust of the passage is to compare Guinigi 's desire that "wisdom . . . peace and 
love" be taught to all, so that the effects of his actions will not be confined to the love of 
his son, or country, or even abstract ideals. Shelley herself attempts to teach the virtues 
of Guinigi 's system to all through the distribution of her "historical" novel. But 
Castruccio is unable to sympathize with Guinigi's contentment outside the system of 
political and military rank. And it is because of Castruccio, and others like him, that 
Guinigi' s hopes for a peaceful Italy are futile; Shelley's calling him "a strange enthusiast" 
indicates at least a measure of skepticism as to the practicability of his ideas. It may also 
be that Guinigi 's retired lifestyle does not allow him enough influence to affect change, as 
164 
opposed to the way that Euthanasia wishes to add her voice and action to the side of 
change for good. But Guinigi's "imaginative flights" are clearly meant, like "his glowing 
benevolenc " d . 
e an his pleasure at others' happiness, to be admired by readers as a good 
example. 
The third depiction of utopian domesticity in Valperga lies in Euthanasia's care for 
her subjects and her understanding of the the County of V alperga as primarily a home 
ra
th
er 
th
an merely as a political district or power base for herself. As Rajan notes, 
"Euthanasia functions effectively as long as she practices a local and domestic fonn of 
government" ("R · · ' al omance"lOO). Valperga 1s portrayed as Euthanasias person 
birthright, inherited from her mother and governed wisely because of the patrimony of 
education received from her father. Euthanasia's conduct is indicative of how utopian 
domesticity works as a model for political action in Shelley's novel. It is both her private 
home and her public concern, functioning as an autonomous community knit together by 
ties of duty. Euthanasia vows to place her duty to her subjects first in all her actions; she 
spends her tax money for the good of the community (even, at one point, in pageantry, 
Which she claims will rouse a beneficial feeling of civic pride in the peasants). In 
accordance with the theories of Wollstonecraft and Godwin, Euthanasia rules with a 
justice based on her thorough education and knowledge of her own rational powers. In 
0rd
er to maintain the independence of her people, Euthanasia must refuse to align her 
holding with either the nearby city of Lucca (under the control of Castruccio, a Ghibelline 
Partisan) or the farther off but politically sympathetic Republican city of Florence. The 
Guelph party, to which Euthanasia owes her allegiance, represents the principles of 
republicanism, as its cause was local administration of smaller, independent states, as 
opposed to the Ghibelline party, who fought for larger alliances under centralized rule. 
1h
e content and well-being of tiny, self-contained V alperga is in marked contrast to the 
confusing, fluctuating boundaries of the empires and city-states negotiated by Castruccio 
165 
in his ambitious rise to power. 
Shelley acknowledges the contradictions inherent in Euthanasia's Republicanism 
and her continuing as an hereditary Countess holding dominion over her subjects. 
Euthanasia obviously benefits from the inheritance of an independent holding: 
... her mind acquired new dignity, and the virtues of her heart new fervour, 
from the entire independence of her situation, and the opportunities she possessed 
of/ doing good. There was none to gainsay her actions, except the rigid 
censorship of her own reason, and the opinion of her fellow-citizens, to whose 
love and esteem she aspired. Most of her time was now spent among her 
dependents at V alperga; the villages under her jurisdiction became prosperous; 
and the peasantry were proud that their countess preferred her residence among 
them to the gaieties of Florence. (71 [1.169-70]) 
Shelley sets Euthanasia up as a woman with independence and power, and tells the reader 
that Euthanasia's priority is to do good. While showing how a woman could function 
admirably as a citizen if given the opportunity, Shelley is not concerned with the source 
of wealth in this novel, but uses simple inheritance to grant Euthanasia independence. 
Likewise, Shelley does not explore class inequality, but merely describes Euthanasia as a 
ruler who attempts to merit the benefits of her inheritance by attending to her 
responsibilities. Shelley's project is not so much to show how a woman could become 
Euthanasia, as to show that women would be capable of comporting themselves as well 
as she, given the opportunity. Despite being a woman, Euthanasia is considered one of 
the "first citizens" of Florence. Besides following the dictates of "her own reason," 
Euthanasia attempts to merit the "love and esteem" of "her fellow citizens"--she attempts 
to balance what she has determined to be right with the opinion of others she respects, in 
accordance with Godwinian principles. In this manner she transfonns an autocracy--an 
"absolute monarchy" in miniature--into a type of republic by applying the Republican 
166 
principle that general opinion (along with reason) should determine the best course of 
rule. 
But Euthanasia's Valperga goes beyond republic to represent utppian domesticity 
because Euthanasia makes V alperga her home and disregards the "gaieties of Florence" to 
live a simpler life. The peasantry are not only "prosperous" but "proud"--their spiritual 
welfare is as important as the material. The tyranny of Castruccio represents a threat not 
to the material safety of the peasants--Castruccio will not destroy their farms and homes, 
because they will be absorbed into nearby Lucca--but to their spiritual well-being. The 
peasantry are willing to fight and die to preserve Euthanasia as their Countess because the 
alternative is to submit to tyranny. 
Because Euthanasia cares about the spiritual well-being of the peasants, she holds 
a noble court to celebrate the peace in Tuscany on the first of May, raising the peasants' 
own celebration of Walpurgisnacht to a grand scale. 19 Stuart Curran notes the utop!an 
importance of this episode of the novel, describing "its profuse abundance, exuberant 
vitality, and artistic display" as demonstrating an "ideal of communal values shared by a 
free and peaceful people" (xx.ii). Euthanasia recognizes that the funds for her court come 
from the taxes collected from her people, and for this reason she makes sure that the 
courtly and the peasant are intertwined, fusing noble and peasant cultures in a utopian 
moment: "Nor do I think that I hurt my good people by such an extravagance: their joy on 
this occasion will be far greater than mine; their pride and love of pleasure will be 
gratified; for in arranging the amusements of my court the country people will have a full 
share" (101 [I. 248]). 
When Castruccio demands the surrender of V alperga, Euthanasia responds with a 
mixture of concern for her people and conviction of her own duties toward them: 
19 Walpurgisnacht is May 1, the day of the German female saint named Walperga. 
For more on Saint Walperga, see Lokke 164-65. 
167 
SiHi.!!". i 
"I wiJJ never willingly surrender my power into his hands: I hold it for the good 
of my people, who are happy under my government, and towards whom I shall 
ever perfonn my/ duty. I look upon him as a lawless tyrant, whom every one 
ought to resist to the utmost of their power; nor will I through cowardice give way 
to injustice. . . . if I wished to despoil myself of power, it would be to make my 
people free, and not to force them to enter the muster-roJI of a usurper and a 
tyrant." (201, 202 [II. 222-31) 
Euthanasia acknowledges her own power and refuses to transfer that power to a tyrant. 
Castruccio also represents a double threat to V alperga and to Euthanasia herself. 
Euthanasia's body and the County of V alperga are connected in the same way that the 
body of the absolute monarch stands for the state--Castruccio wants to possess both 
Euthanasia and V alperga. Castruccio shows his lieutenant a secret way into the castle 
(204-6 (Il. 230-235]), learned during his early friendship with Euthanasia; this secret 
way is used to bypass the castle's defenses. Although it occurs after Euthanasia has 
abjured Castruccio due to his execution of one of her friends, this breach of V alperga 
marks a point of no return: a metaphoric rape of Euthanasia herself and the destruction of 
Vaiperga's utopian qualities in what Pamela Clernit tenns the novel 's "pivotal act of 
treachery" (1 ?9) . 
. Valperga itself is a metonym for utopian domesticity. "Valperga is your refuge," 
Castruccio's mother warns him upon his initial banishment (10 [I. 91), signifying the 
importance of Valperga as a utopian site even for Castruccio, though Castruccio's and 
Euthanasia's families were politically opposed. Castruccio could have found a home in 
V alperga with Euthanasia, but his corruption and military ambition destroy this · 
Possibility. When the castle has fallen to Castruccio's men, SheJiey describes 
Euthan · , as1a s leave-taking: 
She walked unhesitatingly through the hall, long the seat of her purest happiness. 
168 
Her inf ant feet had trodden its pavement in unreproved gaiety; and she thought for 
a moment that she saw the venerable form of her father seated in his accustomed 
place. But she proudly shook the softening emotion from her, and looked with a 
tearless eye upon the hearth, round which the soldiers of her enemy stood, 
profaning its sacredness by their presence. The inner. court of the castle was filled 
by a/ number of women and children, the wives of the peasantry who depended 
on her, who, as they saw her advance, raised one cry of grief ... (218-9 [II. 
271-2]) 
Shelley contrasts Euthanasia's happy memories with her painful present by focusing on 
the hearth and the inner court, clearly evoking the theme of the utopian domesticity that 
Castruccio's soldiers have destroyed. The women and children, her most vulnerable 
subjects, most need Euthanasia's protection and sanctuary in Valperga's inner court. 
Since V alperga has been breached, Euthanasia must carry within herself any chance of re-
establishing utopian domesticity, and she seems to absorb the utopian aura from the inner 
court of V alperga in this scene. 
The fourth depiction of utopian domesticity in Valperga--and the most 
complicated, as their relationships evolve over the course of the narrative--takes place 
within the love triangle formed by Euthanasia, Castruccio, and Beatrice. The relationship 
between Euthanasia and Castruccio is depicted as a childhood friendship that should have 
developed into a utopian marriage but is thwarted by Castruccio's fall into depravity as a 
tyrant. The relationship between Castruccio and Beatrice depicts all the worst aspects of 
romantic love due to Beatrice's ignorance and superstition, and Castruccio's willingness 
to take advantage of her. Utopian domesticity springs up in the unexpected quadrant of 
the relationship between Euthanasia and Beatrice: Euthanasia sympathizes with Beatrice, 
cares for her, and gives her a loving home in an attempt to help her recover from the 
169 
many betrayals she has faced.20 Beatrice benefits from Euthanasia's care, and Euthanasia 
benefits, not only from her recognition that their shared betrayal by Castruccio unites 
th
em, but also from her own charitable feelings toward Beatrice. Creating a home for 
Beatrice in Lucca, Euthanasia in effect creates a home for herself after Castruccio has 
taken her from V alperga, and Euthanasia and Beatrice unite in friendship despite worldly 
expectations: 
Since her days of happiness had ended, Euthanasia's enthusiasm had become 
more concentrated, more concealed; but Beatrice again awoke her to words, and 
these two ladies, bound by the sweet ties of gratitude and pity, found in each 
other's converse some balm for their misfortunes. Circumstances had thus made 
friends of those whom nature seemed to separate: they were I much unlike; but the 
wild looks of Beatrice sometimes reflected the soft light of Euthanasia's eyes; and 
Euthanasia found her heart, which was sinking to apathy, awake again, as she 
listened to Beatrice. (248 [ill. 59-60]) 
Although Euthanasia fails to save Beatrice from madness and death, her attempts win the 
reader's approval and serve to demonstrate unquestionably the superiority of Euthanasia's 
practical philosophy to that of the self-involved Castruccio. 
As Euthanasia's negotiation of the perilous triangle of relationships in Valperga 
demonstrates, utopian domesticity involves a certain kind of love; it is important to 
investigate exactly what kind of Jove that is. Betty Bennett identifies the centrality of a 
"Promethean" universal Jove to Mazy Shelley's goals as a reformer, distinguishing 
between "personal love" and "universal love": 
20 As Stuart Curran notes "It is Euthanasia, refusing to be thrust into erotic 
competition, who comes to Beatrice's aid and comforts her with undemanding affection. 
In Valperga, while one woman succors the other, the men betray them both and one 
another'' (xviii). Tilottama Rajan asserts that "Euthanasia's bond with Beatrice is the 
affective core of Mary Shelley's novel," ("Mathilda" 64) "the most compelling part of the 
novel" (63); see also Lokke 164 and Brewer, ''Therapeutic." 
170 
It is not Castruccio's rejection of love which detennines the course of his life (for 
example, had he accepted Beatrice's love, she indicates that she would not have 
changed him), but the rejection of Euthanasia's love on her own terms--that is, his 
refusal to first accept the ideal of universal love and its responsibilities. In fact, 
Castruccio does not reject Euthanasia's love; it is she who rejects his. Their love 
relationship fails in political terms; a personal love would not suffice. ("Political 
Philosophy" 363) 
Shelley demonstrates that personal feelings are at odds with political concerns, focusing 
on the opposition of personal and political in the lives of Castruccio and Euthanasia: close 
family ties, love, and betrothal, oppose differing political goals and affiliations. Bennett 
seems to present a choice in Valperga between "politics or love" while Ann Wake argues 
more precisely that Shelley shows "the need to reconcile the two" (250). 21 
The term "love" becomes slippery as it is deployed in Bennett's argument: 
Castruccio's "love," Beatrice's "love" and Euthanasia's "love" are laid out alongside the 
insufficient "personal love" and ''the ideal of universal love."22 The term "universal love" 
is attractive because it would have been recognized by the Sheileys and their circle; 
however, I use the term "utopian domesticity" because it immediately signals its more 
21 James P. Carson states that "For Shelley, four things may transform a person 
into a superior being: education, broad cultural forces, compassion, and love" (174 )--this 
argument, though accurate, would also gain precision with an investigation of the term 
"love." Daniel White states that "Valperga plays out at length a drama of love and 
ambition within contemporary dynamics of gender and power" (80): this seems both a 
careful and accurate statement. 
22 In her Introduction, Bennett restates, "Euthanasia's act of breaking her 
engagement to Castruccio illustrates her commitment to the concept of a universal love 
that supersedes both personal love and political systems based on power" (56). And later, 
along the same lines as my argument regarding Shelley's vision of utopian domesticity 
but with more of a nod to traditional readings of gender, Bennett states "Euthanasia 
symbolizes universal re-creation configured on traits often regarded as feminine--love, 
peace, charity. Through Euthanasia, Mary Shelley intezpolates her English Romantic 
vision of a world in which love might ultimately defeat power'' (59). 
171 
overtly political overtones, and flags itself as a critically precise term. Neither Beatrice's 
nor Castruccio's love create "utopian domesticity": Beatrice's love, though good at heart 
' 
is based, due to her ill-managed education, on her superstitious belief in her own special 
powers as a prophet, and Beatrice is deceived by Castruccio's good looks and charming 
manner into thinking him honest. Beatrice's love is a fairy tale, or as utopian philosopher 
Ernst Bloch would say, "wishful thinking." Castruccio's love is based merely on his 
physical attraction to the beautiful Beatrice, and perhaps in self-flattery that the 
charismatic and famous prophetess would "sacrifice her virtue" to him. Castruccio's love 
is selfish and conforms to worldly wisdom rather than consideration for Beatrice. 
Euthanasia's love, however, is full of the potential for utopian domesticity. Her 
romantic attraction to Castruccio could be described as mere "personal love," but it is 
based on long-standing friendship and on the belief that the two are well-suited for one 
another. Euthanasia's growing recognition of Castruccio's destructive ambition, her 
determination that he refonn, and her willingness to forgive him if he does reform, all 
exemplify a love that is no less "personal" for being well-considered and part of a utopian 
plan of action. Shelley seeks to show that tyranny is invested in a person who wields it; 
Euthanasia's love for Castruccio represents the necessity to act toward the tyrant with 
justice rather than revenge. The model of utopian domesticity describes a willingness to 
love and to forgive, a mode of justice which joins members of a household as family and 
extends in ever-widening circles into the larger community; this model describes 
Euthanasia's resistance to Castruccio's aggression as well as her urge to protect him by 
joining the conspiracy against him even after she has ceased to "love" him--or at least, no 
longer considers him her betrothed. 
Beatrice serves to remind the reader that the novel cannot be broken down into a 
simple gender dichotomy (as, perhaps, feminine Euthanasia is good, while masculine 
Castruccio is bad). Castruccio, Beatrice, and Euthanasia represent three different 
172 
gendered modes of being. Castruccio represents an ultra-"masculine" mode of desire for 
glory, military conquest, and tyranny, embodying all the worst aspects of chival.ry.23 
Beatrice represents an ultra-"feminine" mode of bad education, superstition, excessive 
emotion, naive trust in love, and victimization at the hands of men. Euthanasia represents 
a non-gendered attempt to achieve justice by balancing reason with personal generosity, 
and to seek peace within a conflicted community without sacrificing political autonomy. 24 
As such, Euthanasia is the first fully-fledged example of the Shelleyan Romantic hero--
that is, she represents qualities valorized by both Mary and Percy Bysshe Shelley. By 
portraying Euthanasia with the Shelleyan qualities of erudition, reason, love and 
forgiveness, Shelley revises not only the model of the brilliant but destructive genius of 
Castruccio, the Byronic Romantic hero typified by Manfred, but also Beatrice, the female 
Byronic hero and ultra-feminine improvisatrice typified by Gennaine de Stael's 
Corinne.25 Euthanasia's passion is no Jess deeply felt than these other Romantic models; 
23 Perkin Warbeck, Shelley's last hi~torical novel, ~x~nes a character who, by 
contrast, embodies all the best aspects of chivalry, yet who 1s still led astray by its 
militarism and emphasis on personal fame. 
24 Kari Lokke also makes an interesting exploration of the three primary women 
characters of the novel--the witch Fior di Mandragola, Euthanasia, and Beatrice--as 
"embody[ing] three different respon~s to mal_e, do~nation .. . explic.it .challenges to 
patriarchal literary, religious and pohtical tradition~ (161). In my opm1on, Mandragola's 
presence in the novel serves to block easy expectations that men are the oppressor and 
women the oppressed. Mandragola has ~en ~e victilll: of injustice b~t is nevertheless a 
monster of hatred, revenge and simply mischievous _evd. !{er ~ascul!ne counterparts in 
the novel include the superstitiou~ an~ so~ewhat _erugmatic albm<?, ~mdo; the miser, 
Pepi, who disgusts even Castrucc10 with his self-interested behaVIor, and worst of all, the 
sadistic priest, Tripalda. 
25 Elizabeth Nitchie, among others, identifies ~astruccio as a Byronic hero, 
alongside Lodore and The Last Man's Raymond (qtd m Blumberg 84); see also Lokke 
158. Rajan identifies "the Byronic Castruccio and the androgynously _Shelleyan 
Euthanasia" ("Romance" 88-89). Lokke explores not onl):' the correlation between 
Corinne and Beatrice, but between Corinne and Euthan~Sia. B1u!11be;g,:"so associates 
Beatrice with the figure of the Romantic poet presented m Co1endge s Kubla Khan" 
(104). 
173 
her urge to use her genius to good effect and to leave a mark of change upon the world is 
also strong. But her acceptance of Godwinian gradualism as well as a Wollstonecraftian 
understanding of women's role in community transmute Euthanasia into a distinctly 
Shelleyan utopian hero, in line with P. B. Shelley's Prometheus but also culminating in 
the heroes of Lodore (Cornelia, Lady Lodore, and Horatio Seville) and Falkner (Elizabeth 
Raby, Gerard NeviJle, and eventually, Rupert Falkner).26 
Castruccio represents an ultra-masculine mode, in which strength and conquest 
are preferred to trust and peaceful coexistence. His role as warlord is a stereotypically 
masculine one, but he chooses it over other, equally viable paths traditionally gendered as 
masculine. Though he begins innocent and beautiful, his ill-schooling and the desire for 
revenge corrupt him. He seeks absolute political control of his surroundings and 
subordinates all other considerations to the shoring up of his own position in Tuscany. 
He considers Valperga a threat and has it destroyed because he refuses to trust that 
Euthanasia would not betray him. Castruccio rejects the role of fanner, a masculine role 
held honorably by Guinigi, and fails at the role of courtier, even in England, away from 
the corrupting influences of the feuding Italian factions. These rejected options are 
significant because Castruccio' s identity as a man does not determine his career as a 
soldier and warlord; his career is not a reflection upon manhood as such, but instead, 
26 The "Shelleyan" hero is to a certain extent based by Mary on an idealized 
version of P. B. Shelley himself. As Benn~tt ~ports, t~e _language Mary used to 
describe Euthanasia's death in her 1823 fiction 1s very similar to the language she used to 
describe P. B. Shelley's death in her 1839 edition of his poetry (Introduction 58 and 
note). . ... 
Katherine c. Hill-Miller states that Euthanasia 1s the first female character in 
Shelley's novels who is utte:lr co1;11petent in worldly terms" and compares her with the 
1818 version of Frankenstein s Ehzabeth Lavenza and Fanny Derham of Lcdore. Heroes 
such as Adrian (commonly recognized as a Sh~lley stand-in in. The Last Man) and 
possibly even Victor and the Creature (whe? viewed as potent.J8! h~roes brought down by 
the tragic complexes at w~rk in Frankenstein} ~so represent vanations of Shelley's 
exploration of the Romantic hero and her rev1s1on toward a Shelleyan hero. 
174 
upon his own misguided choices, based upon ambition, the desire for revenge, and the 
lack of a thorough education such as Euthanasia's. 
Beatrice represents an ultra-feminine mode, in which inspiration and superstition, 
ungrounded by any tried and true knowledge, alongside passionate emotion, fonn the 
basis for her actions. Beatrice's ultra-femininity may derive from her lack of formal ties to 
father figures, being the illegitimate daughter of a discredited ''feminist prophet," and 
therefore, as Katherine C. Hill-Miller convincingly argues, outside the bounds of 
patriarchal "protection" (130-31). This idea is echoed by Kari Lokke (163) and Barbara 
Jane O'Sullivan, who notes that Marsillio, the priest who raises Beatrice, deliberately 
deprives her of the knowledge of the identity of her mother (145), while at the same time 
expecting that the mother's taint of religious deviance will appear in the daughter. 
Beatrice's resulting ignorance thus strengthens her mystical bent and her susceptibility to 
"superstition." Moreover, Beatrice occupies a pivotal role as she is acted upon by both 
Castruccio and Euthanasia, as well as several other forces in the novel, including her 
overdetermined parentage, a well-meaning bishop, a sadistic torturer, and a vengeful 
witch. Acting as an improvisatrice in her role of prophetess, Beatrice resembles a negative 
image of the Romantic poet, allowing her untutored imagination (intezpreted by her as 
divine inspiration) to flow unchecked and to guide her actions for good or ill. 
Unfortunately Beatrice's gift of prophecy is a sham, and _her later vacillations between the 
Paterin heresy and orthodoxy illustrate that without the boundary of reason, her powers 
of inspiration and oratory only serve to muddle truth with doubt. 27 Acting on inspiration, 
she engages in a Jove affair with Castruccio, and her discovery of his wrong intentions 
destroys her faith in herself and eventually her very sanity. Shelley's ultra-"feminine" 
21 As Godwin warns, "harangues and declam~tion lead to pass~on, and not to 
knowledge. The memory of the heaz:er is crowded with pompous ~othin~s, with images 
and not arguments. He is never pemutted t~. be sob~~ enough t~ ~e1g~' things with an 
unshaken hand" (285 [Book IV, Chap. Ill, Of Pohtical Associations ]). 
175 
portrait of Beatrice encodes passivity, susceptibility and victimization, vividly bringing to 
life the result of the social, political, and educational practices attacked by Wollstonecraft 
in her Vindication of the Rights o/Woman.28 Such an ultra-feminine gender position is · 
not natural to women, but socially constructed in ways Shelley makes very clear; Shelley 
connects such a gender position with extreme vulnerability leading to madness and 
death. 29 By focusing on the forces that formed Beatrice's character, Shelley hopes to 
unmask and subject them to reform. 
The significance of Beatrice's affair with Castruccio also lies in the comparison of 
the differing ways Beatrice is treated by Castruccio and Euthanasia. Castruccio misleads 
and abandons her. Euthanasia, however, refuses to regard her as a rival and instead treats 
her with compassion and behaves toward her as a tender friend. Euthanasia embodies 
justice, whereas Castruccio embodies only selfishness and deceit. Castruccio took what 
was offered to him without any thought of giving in return, whereas Euthanasia gave of 
herself without any thought of recompense. Beatrice's affair with Castruccio also serves 
as a mirror of Castruccio's relationship with Euthanasia: his interest in each woman is 
subordinated to his own self-interest, eventually leading to his casting them both aside. 
The relationship between Castruccio and Euthanasia is not based on appearances or 
sudden inspiration, as it is in Beatrice's case, but on close family ties and long-standing 
friendship. Castruccio and Euthanasia's relationship has all the weight of a formal 
28 As William Brewer has argued, Euthanasia represents the well-educated 
woman envisioned by Wollstonecraft, while Beatrice represents ''the pernicious effects of 
'a disorderly kind of education"' (''Triumph"139). Brewer q~otes Wollstonecraft on 
women's disorderly education: "All their thoughts ~ on thin~s calculated to excite 
emotion; and feeling, when they shouJd reason, the1r con~uct 1s. unstable, and ~eir 
opinions are wavering--n~t th~, waye~ng produced by dehberati,on ?r pro9;ess1ve views, 
but by contradictory emotions (Vindication 61 , qtd m Brewer, 'Tnumph 140). 
29 A similar fate awaits similar characters such as Mathilda and Evadne; see 
further discussion in Chapter Five on The Last Man. 
176 
engagement. But Castruccio disregards his relationship with Euthanasia as much as he 
disregards the legitimate expectations of Beatrice. His affair with Beatrice betrays 
Euthanasia, himself, and Beatrice as well. 
The fall of Beatrice from her exalted position of Ancilla Dei to heretic, 
madwoman, and outcast, illuminates the links perceived by Shelley between gender and 
class and the relationship between reason and passion.3° For Shelley, as for 
Wollstonecraft, passion is a strong motivator and may work in conjunction with reason to 
lead to personal improvement. As Orrin Wang argues, '"superior judgment ... and 
fortitude' depend on a prior experience of emotions which allows us to learn through our 
mistakes and our incorrect beliefs" (134). Shelley does not align passion with feminity or 
reason with masculinity--women and men have the potential to be equally passionate or 
reasonable in her works. Traditionally, although passionate masculine characters were a 
hallmark of the Romantic period, the passions are aligned with women (and especially 
with the ungoverned sexuality of women), but also with class: the passions are associated 
with the lower classes, with the mob, and may lead to depravity or violence, while reason 
is associated with the middle classes and propriety. John Morillo makes this linkage of 
class and gender especially clear when he notes that "in the 1790s, enthusiasm, already 
feared for over a century, becomes the scapegoat for a host of concerns connected 
variously to the French Revolution and mass democracy, the minds of women, and the 
behavior of zealous believers of both sexes" (46). Shelley makes use of these traditional 
alignments in her characterizations as part of her feminist critique in which she shows that 
women's allowing passion to motivate them can be extremely dangerous in terms of 
social position. 
30 "Passion" is defined by Godwi~ as "a p~nnanent an_d hab!t~~ tendency toward 
a certain course of action" usually producmg a ff;ling o~ happmes_s ~ruti~ly but quickly 
becoming habit (Political Justice 379 [Book N, Operati~? of Opm10n m Societies and 
Individuals," Chapter X, "Of Self-Love and Benevolence ]). 
177 
Beatrice then should not be taken as an extraordinary case. Lacking a solid 
education (like most women, as Wollstonecraft argues) Beatrice has only her feelings and 
superstitions to guide her actions, and she is easily deceived by Castruccio. When she 
realizes that her supernatural superiority is a sham, she can no longer rely on the guidance 
of her own inner voice. As Morillo notes, enthusiasm is an inwardly directed passion 
(98), and when it is shaken, Beatrice has no moral center to fall back on. Euthanasia, in 
her attempts to assist Beatrice, moves within the discourse of benevolence (theorized by 
Morillo in opposition to enthusiasm as an outwardly-directed passion)--but her 
benevolence cannot really reach the inwardly-directed, enthusiastic Beatrice. Beatrice's 
attempt to fashion a new identity for herself (she becomes a penitential pilgrim) exposes 
her as an unprotected woman (she is captured and made into a sexual slave). Catherine 
Decker argues that "women treated in public as mad or immoral may become mad or 
immoral. "31 Without the controls of reason, then, following the dictates of feeling, 
intuition or passion can lead to devastating social consequences for women that are 
practically unparalleled for men, whose passionate actions are couched in social systems 
31 As Decker notes, women who moved u~escorted in public in the early 
nineteenth century were often assumed to be prostitutes an.d ~ated as s~xually available. 
Decker argues that if "external, cultural codes do actually limit the capacity of men and 
women to act upon their interna!, moral decisions" then "~ ~oman c8!1 ~,forced into 
immoral behavior against her wdl by cultural codes that limit her options (20, 21). 
Decker also notes the cultural currency of the idea of "aristocratic men who 
kidnapped and raped women" (21), as happens to Beatrice. The atmosphere of 
suffocating, inescapable horror .experience~ by Bea~ce co11:1poun~ the inexo~able 
progress of victimization expenenced by Ric~ardson s Clanssa with ~e trappings of 
Gothic horror which depend upon the reader s sense of the vulnerability of the heroine. 
Shelley surp~ses the Gothic in her willingness to portray the threats Beatrice faces as 
honibly real with real consequences that irreparably damage her psyche; she goes 
beyond Rich~dson to portray the dismantling not only ?f Beatrice'~ corporeal self but 
more importantly, her moral f~amework as well. These ideas arose m conversation with 
the Washington Area Romantics Group, 2 March 2002. 
178 
that confer honor or even glory to their consequences. 32 
Even Euthanasia's perceived feminine weakness to the influences of passion is 
fatally dangerous33--she joins the Florentine plot against Castruccio on the condition that 
he not be killed. Euthanasia tempers her passionate responses (her conflicting loyalties to 
Florence and freedom, and to Castruccio) with reason, and takes positive action rather 
than passively allowing the plot to go forward for Castruccio's death, but even so she is 
exiled and drowned. Importantly, Shelley portrays this as a political but not a moral 
failure. Euthanasia is caught in a double bind created by what Godwin terms the 
"intrinsically wrong" nature of associations. The group is caught up in political fervor, to 
which Euthanasia can only cast her lot against tyrannicide.34 The corrupted nature of the 
group is made explicit by its blind inclusion ofTripalda, as Euthanasia immediately points 
out. As Wang points out, Wollstonecraft argues that passion and reason must impose 
dialectical limits upon each other in order for growth to occur (138); Euthanasia cannot 
merely observe the Florentine plot, but must take action: ''The world cannot be seen by an 
32 Lord Raymond dies a D:rili~ he~o in the destruction of Constantinople; Lord 
Lodore preserves his honor by bemg killed m a duel~ ~alkner atte~pts to die in the 
military action in Greece--all ~ese m~n couch .the swcidal tendencies resulting from their 
passionate behavior in masculme social behaviors that confer honor or glory. Only 
Mathilda's father has no recourse and openly commits suicide. 
33 Euthanasia's actions are misinterpreted and construed as more passionate than 
reasonable by Bondelmonti (292 [Ill 181]), Tripalda (308 [Ill. 222-3]), and Castruccio 
(312-3 [ill. 234-51). 
34 Godwin states, "Associations, as a measure in~nsically wrong, the wise man 
will endeavour to check an~ postpoJ?e, ~s much as he .can ... (291 [Book IV, Chap. ill]). 
Godwin also points. out that 1f ass!8smatton attempt fads, 1t ~~nders the ~~an!, ten times 
more bloody, ferocious and cruel (294 [Book IV, Chap. IV, Of Tyranrnc1de ]): this is 
the case, as Castruccio has an untold but vezr large num~r of Florentines executed when 
the plot is discovered, spal?n~ only Euthanas.1a. Euthanasia takes th,e onlr .Godwinian 
option available when she 3oms tJ:ie,Pl?t, hopmg to check the group s pohttcal fervor and 
prevent their attempt on Castrucc10 s life. 
179 
unmoved spectator" (VRW 112, qtd in Wang 139). Completing Shelley's cross-linkage 
of gender and class in her critique of passionate action, Castruccio' s passions also lead to 
his ultimate destruction, but to his social elevation rather than his downfall. He uses a 
masculinized social system--the machinery of warlare--to solidify his own position so 
that he may act on his passions in a way that is unavailable to women. Still, Euthanasia's 
benevolence, an outwardly-directed passion working dialectically with reason, has the 
potential to change the political system around her, as is demonstrated when she moves 
Castruccio to tears when he is convinced she meant to save him through her participation 
in the plot. Castruccio's tears signify the possibility of the beneficial effects of passion, 
even though they come too little, too late. At the end of Valperga, with the deaths of all 
three main characters, the reader is led to conclude that Castruccio deserves blame 
' 
Beatrice pity, and Euthanasia sympathy--passions that lead, in a Wollstonecraftian 
fashion, to the improvement of reason. 35 
Euthanasia represents a balance which shuns the ultra-feminine sensibility of 
Beatrice, as well as the cold plotting and tyranny of Castruccio. Her principles are well-
grounded and she acts on them even when her actions are fraught with danger and 
possibly destructive outcomes. In two most important instances, Euthanasia acts 
according to her principles in defiance of her loyalty to Castruccio: first, when she refuses 
to cede Valperga to him peacefully, and second, when she joins the plot against him. In 
both cases, she acts on the final principle that she cannot allow his tyranny to be 
strengthened by her actions or her inactions. Yet, in both cases, her actions result in 
35 Adela Pinch argues, "We c~ot ass~rt a simple continuity ~tween the 
expression of misery in women's senti~e~tal li~e!11ture and the express1<?n of political 
grievance in late eighteenth-cent':11)' femm1st wnting_. The formal and ep1~temological 
dimensions of a literature of f~lmgs must be taken mt<;> accoun_t._ But _domg_ so may in 
fact make it possible to see sentimental poetry as enabling a political discussion about 
personal feelings" (71). The use of sentiment in Shelley's overtly politically novels must 
similarly bolster their impact. 
180 
Castruccio' s bloody revenge. The tragic outcome of Euthanasia's well-grounded actions 
in the face of tyranny make Valperga Shelley's most philosophically challenging novel, 
embodying an almost fatalistic belief in the importance of doing the right thing even in the 
face of certain failure. In this way, Valperga represents a kind of allegory of Shelley's 
feminist utopian project: a novel may not be capable of effecting real, material change, but 
it does serve as an example of feminist utopian thought which could fonn the basis for 
real social change. 
Euthanasia's character, while demonstrating what women are capable of, is also 
meant as a model for human behavior in general. She must be compared to .other 
characters in the novel: she attempts, like Guinigi, to live a simple life, but unlike 
Guinigi, she does not shrink away from public affairs but attempts to do good by 
controlling the reins of state she has been handed. She does not, unlike Castruccio, 
attempt to broaden her sphere of influence by military conquest; she will not willingly ally 
herself with Castruccio after he becomes the tyrant of Lucca; and only reluctantly does 
she involve herself in political intrigue by joining the Florentine conspirators. 
Euthanasia battles against type not only in the minds of the early nineteenth-
century reader (reviewers claimed that because she is a woman, her refusal of Castruccio 
from patriotic motives was highly doubtful; see Bennett, Introduction 56 and note) but in 
the minds of other characters in the novel (as when certain characters, especially the evil 
Tripalda, doubt her motives because she is a woman and presumably swayed more by her 
emotions than by rationality). Euthanasia does consider the emotional import of her 
actions, but she also strives to act for the greater good, not as a woman, but as a 
"chieftain" and a powerful individual. Euthanasia is willing to participate in whole-hearted 
Jove, but her love is regulated by her belief in what is right. She finds herself unable to 
continue her engagement to Castruccio when he begins to attack her friends. He, on the 
other hand, compartmentalizes his love for her as having nothing to do with his military 
181 
campaigns. Euthanasia's resistance to Castruccio is twofold: she will not personally 
support him with her love if he continues his aggressions; and she will not support him 
politically by ceding her stronghold. This twofold resistance encompasses the 
complexities of the utopian domestic political model that Shelley begins to explore in 
Valperga. The personal and the political, Euthanasia insists, cannot be artificially 
separated. 
Valperga is a dark, not a hopeful story, and its models of utopian domesticity are 
swept aside by the devastating power of tyranny. At the heart of the novel is the Paterin 
heresy of Beatrice: that the world is ruled not by a benevolent God, but by the spirit of 
evil. This philosophy also appears in the opening Canto of Percy Bysshe Shelley's Laon 
and Cythna, in which the weakened spirit of good is cast in the suspect form of a serpent 
and the spirit of evil is everywhere upheld by sanctioned state and religious authorities. 
If, however, Euthanasia and Beatrice both die young at the end of the novel, as a result of 
Castruccio's ruthless machinations, so does Castruccio himself. Shelley rewrites 
historical fact to mete out judgment upon Castruccio: the real-life Prince left a wife and 
heirs, whereas Shelley's fictional character is preceded in death by his chosen heir, the 
son of Guinigi, and never marries, having destroyed both of the women who ever loved 
him. Euthanasia, representing rationality, compassion and utopian domesticity, is lost at 
sea, and Beatrice, representing superstition and the untamed imagination, goes mad; but 
Castruccio, representing tyranny, wears himself out in continued offences against 
Florence and dies without leaving a solid legacy behind him. His works are less 
enduring than those of Euthanasia, because although the novel clai~ that Euthanasia was 
"forgotten by men" (in fact, Euthanasia and Beatrice are both entirely fictional characters), 
Shelley's novel reminds us of Euthanasia and convinces us that her path is to be preferred 
and emulated. 
182 
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--:-. "Mary Shelley's Mathilda.: Melancholy and the Political Economy of Romanticism." 
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1823. Ed. Nora Crook. The Pickering Masters: The Novels and Selected Works 
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Editor Betty T. Bennett. Vol. 3. London: William Pickering, 1996. 
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Shelley's Va/perga and Perkin Warbeck." Iconoclastic Departures: Mary Shelley 
after Frankenstein: Essays in Honor of the Bicentenary of Mary Shelley's Binh. 
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(assistant ed.). London: Associated University Presses, 1997. 235-259. 
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Eberle-Sinatra. Intr. Nora Crook. New York: St. Martin 's, 2000. 75-94. 
185 
Locating Utopian Domesticity in The Last Man 
The Last Man, an apocalyptic tale of the destruction of humanity by Plague, might 
easily seem profoundly pessimistic, and indeed, prevailing critical opinions of The La.st 
Man, a novel begun in 1824 after Percy Bysshe Shelley's death and published in 1826 
' 
view it as predominated by Shelley's despair over having survived her husband, her 
children Clara and William, and her friend Lord Byron. Critics often expand their 
intezpretation of the novel's pessimism into an argument that The Last Man represents 
Shelley's rejection of the radical theories of Percy Shelley and of her parents, Mazy 
Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, or, sometimes, that the text betrays Shelley's 
unconscious anger at these figures and her guilt about that anger. Because of the fatalism 
of its story--all humanity will be destroyed--The Last Man is hard to read as anything 
other than a negative critique--and it does offer, as I will argue, a negative critique of 
traditional gender relations as well as of political and religious agendas for attaining 
personal power and glory. Yet the tragedy of humanity's destruction and the complete 
isolation of Verney, the survivor, also emphasize the positive enduring value of human 
interconnectedness. 
In a study of utopian domesticity in Shelley's work, the overt tragic nature of The 
Last Man need not be seen as an outright rejection of utopian possibility, despite the 
novel's overt pessimism. Robert Lance Snyder argues that "The Last Man embodies the 
recurrent Romantic theme of spiritual and metaphysical isolation" (446), but Shelley's 
point is not that this isolation is unavoidable--to the contrary, she emphasizes the 
importance of companionship even if that companionship exists only in memory. Snyder 
further argues that the Plague is an "irreducible phenomenon ... mocking all 
assumptions of order, meaning, pwpose and causality" (437, 436), and Lee Sterrenburg 
concludes that "utopian hopes prove futile in The Last Man because nature is impervious 
186 
to human will and human rationality .... the demonic plague ... cancels out the utopian 
rationality of Godwin as surely as it cancels out the conservative organicism of Edmund 
Burke" (335). 1 Criticism along these lines misses the prophetic point of The Last Man, 
which uses the Plague to emphasize what is enduringly important and what is not. Its 
horror ~ies in its ability to wipe away what is good, not only what is flawed. Human 
relationships, perhaps because of their vecy fragility, are clearly of paramount importance 
to Verney, the eponymous Last Man. The principles of utopian domesticity for which 
· Verney longs remain valid, even though he describes in his narrative how the domestic 
relationships with which he was most familiar did not live up to that ideal. 2 
Volume One of The Last Man is given over to the complicated relationships of the 
family and friends of Lionel Verney, the narrator and eponymous last man, whose fate it 
is to survive the Plague that destroys humanity in Volumes Two and Three. The novel 
features a complicated cast of inter-related characters: Lionel and his sister Perdita; 
Lionel's friend Adrian, Earl of Windsor, whose sister Idris who becomes Lionel's wife; 
Raymond, who courts Idris but marries Perdita; and the Greek princess Evadne Zairni, 
whom Adrian loves but who loves Raymond. Their stories explore the problems of 
traditional domesticity while emphasizing the importance of recognizing and striving to 
realize its utopian potential. 
Shelley's refinements of the idea of the Romantic hero are entangled with her 
development of utopian domesticity and her critique of traditional gender roles. Shelley 
1 Giovanna Franci sees the Plague as symptomatic of the "profound uneasiness 
which followed the failure of great revolutions and the crisis of radical and liberal 
ideology" (183). 
2 As William Lomax observes, "The ~ost intense spiritual ~d ffi:Or~ strengths, 
the greatest happiness, emerge from close farmly and pers<;>nal ~la~onships m the novel, 
and the greatest despair grows out of the loss of such relationships (11). 
187 
represents two types of hero, which, importantly, may appear as either male or female 
characters: the passionate, magnetic, destructive genius usually known as the Byronic 
hero, whose tendency towards isolation undercuts community; and the enlightened, 
learned, usually Republican Shelleyan hero, whose benevolence helps create utopian 
domesticity--so-called because Shelley herself preferred this type, but also because it 
shares many of the characteristics she used in descriptions of her husband, Percy Bysshe 
Shelley.3 When The last Man is seen primarily as a roman a clef, Lord Raymond has 
been understood as a portrait of Byron, and Adrian as Percy Bysshe Shelley. It is more 
useful to understand Raymond as an example of the Byronic hero, so that we may 
separate Shelley's portrait of Byron's person, attitudes and actions from the character she 
creates and the ways in which she manipulates the character. In the figure of Adrian, 
Shelley paints Percy Bysshe Shelley in his most angelic light, but also develops the figure 
of the Shelleyan hero by revealing his flaws (his fall into insanity when he learns that 
Evadne loves Raymond, his physical weakness, his reluctance to take public office, his 
final bad decision to support Clara's wish to go to Greece). Shelley's portrayals of 
Lionel Verney as a Shelleyan disciple of Adrian, and Evadne Zaimi as a Byronic lover 
3 Betty T. Bennett also _speaks of Shelley's modi~cation of the hero, though in 
terms slightly different from mme; Bennett contrasts Adrian and Raymond as figures like 
Alastor and Napoleon, while s~ing in the early Verne~ Shelley's critiqu~ ?f the 
"Wordsworthian ideal [of] the mnocence of youth .. . m favor of Godwmian education" 
(148). Pamela Clemit identifies fairly accurately .Shelley's "rather schematic juxtaposition 
of Raymond and Adrian" (2~0), 200-205, rocusmg ~n Raymond's "self-aggrandizing 
ambition" (201). Victoria Middleton. notes m Shell~Y. s work a movem7nt away from 
emphasis on the self of the P!otagorust to~ard. depiction of chara~ters m relationship, a 
movement toward relationship and domestication she sees as commg at the expense of the 
Promethean or Byronic hero; since _it also co~e~ at the expense of the "se!f' Middleton 
does not perceive the need for utopian domesticity .eve~ though she does i<;fentify Lionel's 
(and Shelley's own) suffering from t!te lack o~ social ties. I woul~,take pa.ms to separate 
the Promethean hero from the Byroruc, prefemng to use the term Promethean" as 
Bennett has to describe the hero originated in Percy Bysshe Shelley's dramatic poem and 
developed by Mary Shelley into the Shelleyan hero. Bennet!, however, sees Adrian as an 
Alastor-figure, and not as a perfected Shelleyan hero. Sophie ,T~f mas notes Adrian• s 
feeling of organicism as Shelleyan (24). See also Paul Cantors Mary Shelley and the 
Taming of the Byronic Hero." 
188 
and victim of Raymond, further deepen and complicate Shelley's exploration of the 
Romantic hero. 
A novel that features the Plague so centrally might seem antithetical to any utopian 
possibility, but Mark Canuel stresses how the Plague works to effect a "community of 
shared risk" in which "social units . .. stretch into new formations" unconfined to 
biological family units (162); this is a key aspect of utopian domesticity, were it not under 
such dire circumstances. Canuel notes how Windsor Castle "becomes 'an asylum for the 
unhappy' . . .. a charitable institution no longer occupied by the insular family" (162), 
but it is not clear that this transformation deeply affects social structures. When Lionel 
plans to establish a "haven and retreat for the wrecked bark of human society" at 
Windsor, he means a retreat for his own family: "if among all my fellow-creatures I were 
to select those who might stand forth examples of the greatness and goodness of man I 
could choose no other than those allied to me by the most sacred ties. Some among the 
family of man must survive, and these should be among the survivors" (205 [II. 212-
13]). When such a retreat does form at Windsor, Lionel says, "within the walls of the 
castle we had a colony of the unhappy" (215 [II. 243-4], emphasis added). Seemingly, 
the Castle takes in new members, but not on the same level as family: their community 
remains insular. 
The degree to which the society of friends living in Windsor Forest is utopian 
may be investigated in two quotations. First, Lionel describes the period after Adrian, 
Idris, and Lionel have moved into Windsor Castle, and Raymond and Perdita live in a 
cottage in the Forest: 
We had our separate occupations and our common amusements. Sometimes we 
passed whole days under the leafy covert of the forest with our books and music. 
. . . we rode out, and sought new spots of beauty and repose. When the frequent 
rains shut us within doors, evening recreation followed morning study, ushered 
189 
in by music and song .... Then we were as gay as summer insects, playful as 
children; we ever met one another with smiles, and read content and joy in each 
other's countenances. . .. Nor were we ever weary of talking of the past or 
dreaming of the future. Jealousy and disquiet were unknown among us; nor did a 
I fear or hope of change ever disturb our tranquillity. Others said, We might be 
happy - we said - we are . 
. . . Idris and Perdita would ramble away together, and we remained to 
discuss the affairs of nations and the philosophy of life . ... 
Years past thus, - even years .... We talked of change and active 
pursuits, but still remained at Windsor, incapable of violating the chann that 
attached us to our secluded life. (73-75 [I. 186-92]) 
This passage describes an idyllic, leisured existence, which though happy, is not, by 
Shelley's standards, utopian. Though the friends are engaged in art and philosophy, 
occupied by books, song, even political discussion, they remain isolated, even stagnant. 
Earlier, Lionel presages their careless, uninvolved life, stating that, with no means of 
supporting himself, he nearly starved before he married Idris (63-4 ). Adrian doesn't 
notice that Lionel is lying when he refuses "offers of supplies," and Lionel knows that 
Lord Raymond, his new brother-in-Jaw, would hold him in disdain according to his 
"worldly principles." The leisure of the friends is supported by their class position, and 
their good fortune does not extend beyond their group--or even, before he manies Idris, 
to Lionel himself. 
The idyll is also characterized by a gender division which excludes Idris and 
Perdita from the philosophical discussions of the men. This gender division is 
emphasized by the portrayal of the friends' musical amusement as the special purview of 
Idris, whose talent in music "had been carefully cultivated" (73 [I. 187]). Whereas Lionel 
and Raymond can easily join in with Idris in her music, Idris cannot so easily join in with 
190 
them in their discussions. It is a classic example of a woman educated to develop 
"accomplishments" instead of a sound understanding. 
After the Plague arrives in England, society is changed. Class position is eroded 
or toppled, and upper class individuals turn to a simpler way of life that is more observant 
of the needs of others. The next quotation, which describes the Windsor fellowship after 
Perdita and Raymond have already passed away, more closely approaches the ideals of 
utopian domesticity: 
Among some these changes produced a devotion and sacrifice of self at once 
graceful and heroic. It was a sight for the lovers of the human race to enjoy; to 
behold, as in ancient times, the patriarchal / modes in which the variety of kindred 
and friendship fulfilled their duteous and kindly offices. Youths, nobles of the 
land, performed for the sake of mother or sister, the services of menials with 
amiable cheerfulness . . .. The females received them on their return with the 
simple and affectionate welcome .known before only to the lowly cottage--a clean 
hearth and bright fire; the supper ready cooked by beloved hands; gratitude for the 
provision for to morrow's meal: strange enjoyments for the high-born English, 
yet they were now their sole, hard earned, and dearly prized luxuries. (240 [II. 
318-19])4 
Yet the utopian nature of this scene must still be qualified, for the cheerful services of the 
highborn youths are performed only for the benefit of their own mothers and sisters. 
Shelley's use of the word "patriarchal" in her glowing description of the scene alerts 
feminists that though this scene portrays the best features of chivahy, it has not gone far 
enough. The virtues of the cottage hearth are still strongly gendered: females remain at 
4 Richard Albright uses these tw~ passages ~n his examination of how time seems 
to flow in reverse in The Last Man, c~mg. humaruty on a course that reverses the 
advances of civilization, and embodymg social structures that seem more and more 
primitive. 
191 
home to create an inviting haven while males venture out to procure necessities from the 
harsh world. It is not until after the Plague has broken down traditional family structures 
that people band together outside these structures, and at this point, the situation is tinged 
with grief, horror and despair. Still, the attempt to transcend difficulties by fonning 
community is a feature of utopian domesticity even in this extremely tragic setting. 
Anne Mellor, in her discussion of Shelley's uses of domesticity, focuses on 
describing the behavior of men, primarily Adrian and Raymond, as narcissistic and 
egoistic, and the experiences of Idris, Perdita and Clara within the restricted domesticity 
described in the novel. Mellor significantly simplifies Shelley's characterizations, 
concluding that the men are villains and the females victims. While only the first volume 
of the book recounts the love affairs of the Windsor set, it seems clear that Shelley 
wished to tell a more complicated story for her characters than can be accounted for in a 
scheme of narcissistic, ambitious men and victimized, housebound women. It seems 
significant that Mellor passes over the character of Evadne, a woman whose creative 
genius, political ambition, and disruptive lovelife, indicate that she, like Raymond, 
should be regarded as an unregenerate Romantic hero. As a Byronic figure, Evadne is 
creative, passionate, magnetic, but ultimately headed on a course for destruction.5 Evadne 
5 Lynn Wells states that "Evadne emanates a dangerous sexuality carefully 
abstracted from the other women characters. This double sexual menace is largely 
neutralized by Evadne's martyred death and ~aymond:s remorsefyl r~on.ciliation with 
Perdita" (221). Wells is right to note Evadne s sexuality, and to lmk 1t with Raymond's 
"overweening masculine sexuality that is repugnant yet captivating," but her description 
of Evadne as "like the shadowy female figures in Byron's The Giaour and Percy 
Shelley's Alastor'' fails to consider Evaru:ie's active ~Jes not only as lover bu! as artist, 
politician, and prophet. William Golds~th al.so cons1~rs Evadne as collapsing the 
patriarchal order with her many roles as foreigner, tr8!,tor, home~cker, sorceress, 
madwoman parricide obsessive lover, and prophetess (148). Michael Eberle-Sinatra 
succinctly speaks of Shelley's characterization of Evadne as an example of Shelley's 
attempt to "merge or exchange qualities (virtues or defects) conventionally assigned to 
one or the other sex" (102). 
192 
is crucial to Shelley's delineation of the Romantic hero and also to her evaluation of 
utopian domesticity in The Last Man. The function of gender is important in 
understanding any character, but Raymond, Lionel, and Adrian may be best understood 
in terms of how the conjunction of gender and Romantic roles plays out in Shelley's 
exploration of the Romantic hero. 
In common with other Byronic figures portrayed in Shelley's works, such as 
Victor Frankenstein, Castruccio, or Lord Lodore, Raymond's great potential and personal 
magnetism comes to nothing as his tendencies toward self-aggrandizement lead to his 
destruction. Raymond leads Greece against Constantinople but is killed when he charges 
recklessly through the ominously quiet city. His moral destruction comes earlier, though, 
when his passions lead him into an unwise affair with Evadne, and he deceives his wife, 
Perdita, about it, and accuses her of unnecessary harshness towards him when he 
attempts a reconciliation. Raymond is a dabbler in the affections of women. He originally 
schemes to many Idris, though he does not love her, hoping to strengthen his position in 
his goal of reestablishing the monarchy of England, with himself as King. Passionately, 
he abandons this plan and marries Perdita, his true love. But domestic happiness with 
Perdita and public utility as Lord Protector do not prevent him from secretly consorting 
with Evadne, whose constancy towards him after many long years he finds flattering. He 
is similar in many ways to Castruccio, the Byronic figure in Valperga, who enjoyed the 
attentions of the prophetess Beatrice of Ferrara, especially in his way of confonning his 
love life to his political ambitions and his carelessness of the consequences when women 
fall in love with him. 
Shelley's negative portrayal of Raymond, however, should not be cast as an 
indictment of the masculine Romantic hero in general. These behaviors are not tied in 
Shelley's mind solely with the masculine. Raymond's powers of oratory, condemned in 
Godwinian terms, strongly associate him with the role of improvisateur, a role more 
193 
commonly associated in Shelley's writings with women characters such as Mathilda 
' 
Beatrice and Evadne. 6 As Evadne illustrates, the Byronic hero may be male or female· n 
, or 
do all men act like Raymond, as Adrian and Lionel illustrate; and a Byronic Romantic 
hero may yet transfonn into a Shelleyan. 
Lionel Verney's early life as a criminal in the state of nature, and his refonn after 
Adrian introduces him to friendship and study, demonstrate the transformation of the 
Romantic hero from Byronic to Shelleyan. In Verney, Shelley combines and reconciles 
the strengths of both Romantic types: as a young rogue Lionel is full of Byronic daring, 
magnetism, leadership, and scorn for those he perceives as wronging him, but as an adult 
he delights in learning, friendship, and benevolence. As a Byronic figure, Verney is 
strong enough to survive, and as a Shelleyan figure, his philosophical nature keeps him 
from suicide. The opposition of the Byronic tendencies toward isolation and solipsism 
versus the Shelleyan goal of devotion to family and friends is taken to its extreme in Tlze 
Last Man. Verney's skills at survival, learned on the hills as a shepherd, and in the game 
reserves as a thief, are a blessing and a curse when he becomes the Crusoe-like Last Man: 
his robust physicality, daring, and adventuresome resourcefulness become strengths 
incorporated into the sometimes ineffectually angelic portrait of the regenerate Romantic 
hero Macy Shelley herself largely created. 
Adrian's long speech after his recovery from madness, excerpted here, is central 
to understanding the nature of the utopianism represented by the Shelleyan Romantic 
hero. He begins by relating his understanding that the sorrows faced by humanity are 
pervasive, and that he knows this first-hand. He responds, however, not with bitterness, 
6 Raymond wins an important debate i~ Parliament with a speech}escribed as 
melodious graceful superhuman and enchanting, yet Shelley notes that It were useless 
to record the debate'that followed this harangue" (51 [I. 123]). As Godwin warns, 
"harangues and declamation lead to passion, and not.to knowled~e" (285 [Book IV, 
Chap. m, "Of Political Associations"]). See my earlier use of this quotation in relation to 
Beatrice as improvisatrice in Chapter Four on Valperga. 
194 
but with renewed appreciation for the blessings of life, especially the essential blessing of 
community: 
"My lot has not been fortunate. I have consorted Jong with grief, entered 
the gloomy labyrinth of madness, and emerged, but half alive. Yet I thank God 
that I have Jived! ... I am glad that I have loved, and have experienced 
sympathetic joy and sorrow with my fellow-creatures. . .. Ye who are Jinked by 
the affectionate ties of nature; companions, friends, lovers! fathers, who toil with 
joy for their offspring; women, who while gazing on the Jiving fonns of their 
children, forget the pains of maternity; children, who neither toil nor spin, but 
Jove and are loved!" (62-63 [I. 153-154]) 
"The affectionate ties of nature" include familial, platonic, and romantic ties. Such 
relationships also include the idea of toil undertaken not in a strict economy of quid pro 
quo exchange, but for the benefit of loved ones who may or may not be able to 
reciprocate. This ideal of wide-reaching social responsibility is central to the utopian 
domesticity of the Shelleyan hero. Adrian continues by speaking of his hopes for 
humanity and for earthly existence: 
"Oh, that death and sickness were banished from our early home! that 
hatred, tyranny, and fear could no longer make their lair in the human heart! that 
each man might find a brother in his fellow, and a nest of repose/ amid the wide 
plains of his inheritance! ... Sleeping thus under the beneficent eye of heaven 
can evil visit thee, O Earth, or grief cradle to their graves thy luckless children? 
Whisper it not, Jest the dremons hear and rejoice. The choice is with us: let us will 
it, and our habitation becomes a paradise. The will of man is omnipotent, blunting 
the arrows of death, soothing the bed of disease, and wiping away the tears of 
agony. And what is each human being worth, if he do not put forth his strength 
to aid his fellow-creatures? ... I dedicate all of intellect and strength that remains 
195 
to me, to that one work, and take upon me the task, as far as I am able, of 
bestowing blessings on my fellow-men!" (63 [I. 154-5]) 
These statements have been taken as Shelley's bitterly ironic commentary on the 
utopianism of Godwin and P. B. Shelley. But in context, Adrian's speech includes not 
just the hope for a wishful dreamworld in which man, through force of will, has banished 
hatred, tyranny, and fear, but understanding of a more important and realizable utopia in 
which, through the sympathy and generosity he has earlier described, "the arrows of 
death," if not entirely destroyed, are blunted, "the bed of disease" is soothed, and "tears 
of agony," though still wept, are met with comfort and wiped away. Adrian realizes that 
this task will be beyond his ability, but he will "dedicate all of intellect and strength ... 
as far as I am able" in order "to aid his fellow-creatures." Occurring early in Volume One 
this speech outlines promises Adrian will later fulfill. Adrian's claims are not belied by 
the Plague: the Plague allows him the opportunity to demonstrate his tireless benevolence 
in the face of overwhelming adversity. Although Adrian is unable to save humanity, his 
efforts remain admirable. 7 Adrian's status as a perfected Shelleyan Romantic hero 
depends on his attempts to better the human race, not necessarily on his success, as the 
similarities (described below) between The Last Man and P. B. Shelley's La.on and 
Cythna show. He attempts to comfort his fellow-creatures even as their ability to provide 
comfort to themselves through wonted networks of family, friends and lovers is 
destroyed. Human worth, according to Adrian, depends on giving aid to others whenever 
possible. The "omnipotence" of the human will is dependent upon "the affectionate ties of 
nature" and "sympathetic joy and sorrow;" human worth, according to Adrian, is 
dependent upon the extent to which we aid our fellow-creatures in adversity, and our 
"omnipotence" is relative to the effort we expend on behalf of others. Individually, as 
1 As William Lomax notes, Adrian fails as a Christ-figure but not as a 
humanitarian (14). 
196 
' 
Adrian acknowledges, the effort is inadequate, but if all worked together, the Shelieyan 
hero would argue, it would not be. When such aid is freely and generously rendered, 
what has previously been the heII of death, disease and agony is remade as the proving 
grounds of benevolence, "and our habitation becomes a paradise." 
Before SheIIey defines the ability to perceive opportunity in adversity as a 
measure of "omnipotence," she schools the reader to reconsider the definition of power. 
Adrian teaches Lionel, a refonn.ing criminal and leader of rogues, about a different kind 
of power: 
"This," I thought, "is power! Not to be strong of limb, hard of heart, ferocious, 
and daring; but kind, I compassionate, and soft." - Stopping short, I clasped my 
hands, and with the fervour of a new proselyte, cried, "doubt me not, Adrian, r 
also wiII become wise and good!" and then quite overcome, I wept aloud. (26 [I. 
46-7]) 
Lionel's definition of power uses tenns which clearly signify his advancements from a 
Byronic to a more perfected SheIIeyan character. As editor Jane Blumberg notes (26), 
Lionel's tears are reminiscent of Percy SheIIey' s tears after he dedicates himself to the 
powers of good in the opening poetic Dedication to Laon and Cythna (stanza iv). The 
tears, sometimes regarded as a sign of androgyny or feminization, may more usefuIIy be 
understood as a sign of purified passion in the Romantic hero, 8 passion that has been 
redirected from selfish to selfiess ends. 
Adrian is sometimes seen as a somewhat ineffectual figure, even as a portrait of a 
s As James P. Carson notes, the rhetoric of sentimentalism includes male tears as 
"a natural reliable and not at all arbitrary sign: they are beyond feigning, they provide 
demonstr~tion in the last analysis of an overflow of feeling, they enforce belief, and they 
are a 'sure indication' of deep passion" (171). <?arson also contends f!tat such tears do 
not indicate ''the appearance of a new sympa~etic and ~u~e ~asculine character" 
( 171 ), certainly true of the tears of Castrucc~o Carson 1s discussmg, but they ~o, 
however, provide the sure evidence he mentions when they accompany a man s pledge to 
benevolence in SheIIey's work. 
197 
narcissistic, egoistic Percy Shelley (Mellor 149). Mellor parallels such an Adrian with 
Menival, the abstracted astronomer who takes his family for granted while dreaming of 
paradise. Mellor and others have argued that Percy Shelley's descriptions of utopia, 
especially those in Queen Mab, are parodied in Menival's predictions of the coming of 
paradise in 6000 years due to the precession of the equinoxes, while his family suffer 
deprivations and eventually death before he notices (150). The bite of Menival's 
characterization is not so much his utopianism, but his lack of connection to his family: in 
his preoccupation with future potential, he neglects present reality. Adrian is not so 
abstracted. When he discovers that Evadne prefers Raymond to himself, he temporarily 
goes mad, but upon his recovery, he views her with equanimity and compassion 
(although, like his friends, he does not act on it). Adrian's will to romance seems to fade 
after Evadne evades him, but his friendship with Lionel is devoted, unselfish and wholly 
benevolent. In fact, Adrian loses gendered characteristics along with romance, becoming 
far more androgynous (a feature of Shelleyan perfection for male or female) than Lionel, 
who is often interpreted as a cross-dressing figure for his author. 
Wollstonecraft cites this dying away of sexual passion and its replacement by 
outwardly-directed benevolence as one of the primary reasons women should cultivate 
their understandings, instead of their accomplishments or mere attractive attributes, in 
order to become better wives, mothers, and citizens.9 In her revisions of the Romantic 
hero, Shelley is largely concerned with the transfonnation of what. Wollstonecraft calls 
"those emotions which disturb the order of society" into equally strong emotions which 
9 For example, Wollstonecraft write~, "Friendship or in~fference inev~tably 
succeeds love . . . . Passions are spurs to acaon, and o~n th_e mmd; but they smk into 
mere appetites, become a personal ~d momentary gratification, wh_en ~e object is gained 
. ... In order to fulfill the duties of life, and to be able to purs_ue with vigour the various 
employments which fonn the moral character, a master and nustress of a family ought not 
to continue to love each other with passion. I mean to say, they ought not to indulge those 
emotions which disturb the order of society, ~d engross the thoughts that should 
othezwise be employed" (Vindication of the Rzghts of Woman 30). 
198 
strengthen and preserve it. As Adrian nurses Lionel into a newly humanized way of life, 
Lionel finds in Adrian a mother-figure, saying of his tutelage, "I was as a child lisping its 
devotions after its mother, and my plastic soul was remoulded by a master hand" (26 [I. 
47]), and "under the mild sway of his dear eyes, I was obedient and good as a boy of five 
years old, who does his mother's bidding" (31 [I. 63]). Adrian's importance as a mother-
figure is to detach from gender Wollstonecraft's ideal of the mother as the guiding hand 
that rears good citizens. Adrian takes on the duties of mothering in contrast to the 
patriarchal/chivalric system in which familial duties are strongly determined by gender. 
As a mother-figure, Adrian may be usefully compared to Clara, Lionel's young 
niece who becomes surrogate mother to his surviving child Evelyn after the Plague has 
taken the rest of humanity. As the last biological female left alive, Clara is the repository 
of some hope for the continuance of the human race, but ShelJey refuses to sexualize 
either Clara or Adrian. Rather than posit Adrian and Clara as a new Adam and Eve, 
SheJiey values them for themselves rather than for their potential as breeders--the tragedy 
of their loss is felt by Verney personally, not as a missed opportunity for repopulation. A 
caregiver throughout her own childhood, Clara has been educated to be a mother, and 
"felt towards (Evelyn] in some degree like a young/ mother" (336 [IlI. 269-70]). She 
feels like, and acts like, a mother to Evelyn, helping to create a transitory utopian 
domesticity in the newly formed family: "Were we not happy in this transitory retreat?" 
(335 [III. 267]); "and though our four hearts alone beat in the world, those four hearts 
were happy" (336 [III. 271]). 
ShelJey often emphasizes the importance of the element of choice in the formation 
of families with the potential for utopian domesticity. One problem with this little family 
may be the way in which its formation is more a feature of necessity than choice: as the 
last remaining survivors, they choose to remain together: Adrian and Lionel bonded 
together as friends before the plague began, and adopt Clara as their own: but for Clara, 
199 
the life that stretches out before her offers no other real option. Clara's role in the new 
family is not of her own choosing: as she matures, she grows to realize the inflexibility of 
the role her well-meaning friends have created for her to mature into. Adrian and Lionel 
name Clara "the little queen of the world," (333 [ill. 261]) attending to her every need, 
but the adults, and eventually Clara, feel their aloneness, and cannot sustain the happiness 
they feel with each other. Nor can they preserve Clara's "childish gaiety:" "She lost her 
gaiety, she laid aside her sports, and assumed an almost vestal plainness of attire. She 
shunned us, retiring with Evelyn ... She approached us timidly, avoided/ our caresses" 
(335 [ill. 268-9]). Clara's lost gaiety is followed closely by Evelyn's fever and death 
' 
and thus seems related to her fear of his mortality. Although the Plague gave Adrian a 
chance to act out his philosophical motherhood by lessening the sufferings of his fellow-
creatures, it has denied Clara that opportunity. Evelyn's mortality convinces Clara that her 
behavior as a mother cannot maintain her companions' well-being. To become a 
sexualized being--a possible lover to Adrian 10--would be to reinscribe a merely physical 
motherhood role for herself. Clara's lost gaiety, vestal manner and avoidance of 
physicality indicates Shelley's rejection of the limitations of the traditional maternal role 
and her understanding that domesticity must expand outward to involve the family in 
larger social structures in order to fulfill its utopian potential. After the fall of humanity, 
Clara perceives that her education solely as a mother has rendered her pointless. 
The primary female characters in The Last Man may profitably be seen as studies 
of the effects of domesticity on women's Ii ves. Clara, a young girl, fonns her character 
10 It is unlikely that Shelley meant ~e reader to posi~ Clara ~d Adrian as mates, 
that Clara could make the psychological switch froJ?l re~arding A<l?an as a father-figure, 
or even less that Adrian is to be faulted for n~t making himself avml~ble to Clara a~ a 
mate, as Mellor suggests (156-7). In Shelley s novels cros~-generation_al love affairs turn 
out badly: in Mathilda, the incestuous_love of a fathe! fo~ his. dau~~r 1s portrayed as~ 
devastating curse; in Lodore, the marna~e of .a Lord m ~s mid-thirtie~ to a teenaged wife 
(barely older than his own son) leads fairly directly to his own death m a duel. 
200 
around her position as surrogate mother to Lionel's children, a role she is unable to 
transcend. Evadne, the passionate and creative Greek princess, serves as a female 
example of the unregenerate Romantic hero. Perdita, raised as an orphan servant girl, 
takes refuge in dreams and becomes susceptible to the allure of the Byronic hero. Idris, 
sister to the angelic Adrian, shares little of his desire for knowledge, and so remains a 
good but limited, domestic figure. 
The character of Evadne makes it impossible to construe gender as determining 
destiny in the novel; even her political ambitions are played out in Greece just as 
Raymond's are in England: 
She manied; and, canying her restless energy of character with her into new 
scenes, she turned her thoughts to ambition, and aimed at the title and power of 
Princess of Wallachia; while her patriotic feelings were soothed by the idea of the 
good she might do her country, when her husband should be chief of this 
principality. She lived to find ambition, as unreal a delusion as love. Her 
intrigues with Russia for the furtherance of her I object, excited the jealousy of the 
Porte, and the animosity of the Greek government. She was considered a traitor 
by both, the ruin of her husband followed; they avoided death by a timely flight, 
and she fell from the height of her desires to penury in England. (90-91 [I. 240-
41 J) 
Evadne's thwarted political ambition is not wholly condemned by the other characters of 
the novel--Raymond offers to clear her name in Greece--and neither is her disruptive 
romantic life unforgiven by the Windsor circle: 
Idris had shared Perdita's ill opinion of the Greek; but Raymond's account 
softened and interested her. Evadne's constancy, fortitude, even her ill-fated and 
ill-regulated love, were matter of admiration and pity; especially when . .. it was 
apparent that she preferred suffering and death to any in her eyes degrading 
201 
application for the pity and assistance of her lover. (113-114 [I. 312]) 
Even Adrian, who had loved Evadne in his youth and was driven mad by his discovery 
that she preferred Raymond, is also sympathetic to her situation. It is not, then, that 
Evadne's political ambitions or romantic mistakes make her intrinsically evil. Precisely to 
the contrary, Evadne represents a moral challenge to the other characters in the novel. As 
with Mathilda and Beatrice, Evadne is a character who loses her social position because 
her passionate inclinations lead her to act outside the boundaries dictated by society. 
Shelley does not simply condemn Evadne's passionate impulses but also the treatment 
Evadne receives. According to the precepts of utopian domesticity laid out elsewhere in 
Shelley's novels, Evadne must be gently persuaded of her mistakes in Godwinian 
fashion, fully forgiven, allowed to educate herself so as to take full advantage of her 
human potential according to Wollstonecraft's plan (the genius of her design for a public 
building is squandered, for though it draws Raymond to her, their love affair causes 
Raymond to leave public life and abandon his public improvement schemes), and drawn 
into the community as a full member, like family. 
Evadne's situation parallels that of Valperga's Beatrice of Ferrara. The most 
important principles of utopian domesticity are illustrated when Euthanasia forgives 
Beatrice for her affair with Castruccio, nurses her and tries to assuage her mental 
anguish, offering her true friendship and a home. The crucial difference here is that while 
the Windsor circle are sympathetic to Evadne's situation, no one steps forward to draw 
her into their community--an important indication that although the Windsor group is 
characterized by loving relationships, it is insular and therefore not truly representative of 
utopian domesticity. Indeed, Raymond, in his initial repentance over his involvement 
with her, abandons Evadne for nearly a month, and when he at last returns, she is nearly 
on her deathbed. Evadne removes herself from the scene ( 114 [I. 315]), and is next 
discovered by Lionel in Greece, deranged and dressed as a soldier, ranting about 
202 
Raymond and cursing him with Plague (144-5 [II. 32-38]). As Evadne destroys the 
domestic felicity of Perdita and Raymond, as well as Raymond's career in England, she 
is herself destroyed by exclusion from their circle, and all meet with death as a result. 
Shelley stages the arisal of the Plague against the backdrop of the troubled 
domestic and sexual entanglements of Perdita, Evadne and Raymond. 11 Although this 
disrupted domesticity does not engender or cause the Plague, it fonns an appropriate 
backdrop of wony and stress against which Shelley may introduce her metaphor of the 
disease plaguing humanity. The Plague is an inhuman agent of isolation, separation, and 
death, which intezposes itself into evecy human relationship in The Last Man, and Shelley 
uses the Plague to urge the necessity of reassessing actions and value systems before it is 
too late. Perdita 's relationship with Raymond is the first to be affected by the Plague: she 
had previously believed Raymond's high rank would keep him from military harm, but 
she begins to fear for him because of the Plague. This fear deepens her reluctant 
forgiveness of Raymond's betrayals, and the repair of their riven relationship is given a 
new sense of urgency because of the threat of loss. 
The troubled domesticity framing Shelley's first mention of the Plague is framed 
again by the larger context of Raymond's military action. Although Raymond's campaign 
will bring a reign of universal peace (ironic, since the world is shortly to be depopulated), 
Shelley is unsparing in her critique of militarism. Shelley closely associates the Plague 
with the battlefield and with the depopulated city of Constantinople, but she does not 
assert that militarism causes the Plague. Instead, Shelley sets their horrible destructive 
powers side by side for comparison. Shelley uses Lionel's report of his initial militaristic 
11 The Plague is first mentioned in the fl!S~ chapter ~f vo1W:1e two: "One word, in 
truth, had alanned [Perdita] more than battl~s or sieges, dunng which she truste~ 
Raymond• s high command would exempt him from danger. That '"'.Ord, as yet 1t was no 
more to her, was PLAGUE. This enemy to the human race ... was m Constantinople" 
(139 [II. 19]). 
203 
enthusiasm and almost immediate sorrowful repentance to set the stage for the 
reappearance of Evadne as a wasted soldier who prophesies the Plague. 
Lionel has joined Raymond's aimy and fallen under his magnetic spell: '"Now by 
the fells of Cumberland,' I cried, 'by all of the vagabond and poacher that appertains to 
me, I will stand at your side, draw my sword in the Greek cause, and be hailed as a victor 
along with you!"' (142 [II. 261). Even in his own terms, this is clearly Lionel's worst 
moment. Lionel's portrayal of his youthful, energetic self featured more positive 
attributes such as leadership and fearlessness--even his disdain for authority might be 
seen as a valuable attribute in fighting tyranny--but "vagabond" and "poacher'' describe 
only his worst characteristics. Being hailed as a "victor" also has distinctly negative 
connotations within Shelley's oeuvre. The action he professes--"! will stand at your side, 
draw my sword ... along with you"--is phallic, but more to the point, hyper-masculine 
behavior. He is not really acting for himself, but is swept along in a frenzy of wanting to 
be like Raymond. He realizes all this almost immediately, changing his tone dramatically 
from revolutionary fervor to pacifist sorrow within the space of five pages in Shelley's 
first edition: 
During the busy day, my mind had yielded itself a willing slave to the state of 
things presented to it by its fellow-beings; historical association, hatred of the foe, 
and military enthusiasm had held dominion over me. Now, I looked on the 
evening star, as softly and calmly it hung pendulous in the orange hues of sunset. 
I turned. to the corse-strewn earth; and felt ashamed of my species. (143 [Il. 311) 
"The evening star'' is no mere stock image in this passage; it alludes directly to Percy 
Shelley's Laon and Cythna, in which the spirit of Good takes the form of the morning 
and evening star--that is, Venus, goddess of Love, or Lucifer, the light-bringer. Sight of 
the evening star reminds Lionel that he owes allegiance not to Raymond (whose name 
literally means "world king," connoting his worldly priorities) but to the Shelleyan 
204 
(Promethean) love represented by Adrian, whose values are benevolence, justice and love 
rather than military conquest or personal glory. 
It is immediately after this that Verney hears the "piercing shriek" of Evadne 
' 
Whose "form seemed to rise from the earth; it flew swiftly towards me, sinking to the 
ground again as it drew near" (144 [II. 32]). Evadne's "fonn" is noticeably dehumanized 
and associated with the earth. In "seem[ing] to rise from the earth" "[flying]" and 
"sinking to the ground again" Evadne seems more like a vapor than a solid form; this 
associates her strongly with the prophetic voice of ancient female oracles Oike the 
Cumaean sibyl in the frame of the novel) who lived in caverns where they uttered 
prophetic words after inhaling intoxicating fumes risen from the depths of the earth. Her 
association with prophecy aligns her, like Beatrice, with an image of the inspired 
Romantic poet, especially the improvisatrice. Her vapor-like fonn suggests a spectre of 
the Plague itself, which her prophetic words reinforce. Evadne's words are broken, 
repetitious, frenzied, and prophetic--like the words the novel's framer has pieced together 
from Sibylline leaves. 12 Her message is this: 
''This is / the end of love! - Yet not the end!" - and frenzy lent her strength as she 
cast her arm up to heaven: "there is the end! there we meet again. Many living 
deaths have I borne for thee, 0 Raymond, and now I expire, thy victim! - By my 
death I purchase thee - Jo! The instruments of war, fire, the plague, are my 
servitors. I dared, I conquered them all, till now! I have sold myself to death, 
with the sole condition that thou shouldst follow me - Fire, and war, and plague, 
unite for thy destruction - O my Raymond, there is no safety for thee!" (144 [Il. 
. 12 Stephen Goldsmith also links the ~gures of Evadne ~d the Sy~i17 but if .her 
function in the text is that "she is always and irredeemably other' (148) this 1s certainly 
the problem Shelley is getting at: ~l~mith ~so identifi~s the "po~er'' of Evadne's 
speech as well as its confusing smulanttes to a lamentation, a wammg, a prophecy, or a 
curse" (149). 
205 
- - ~- -
33-34]) 
"Th' · 1s is the end of love! - Yet not the end! - ... there is the end! there we meet again." 
Evadne' s contradictory words form the prophetic message at the heart of the novel.13 In 
The Last Man prophecy is genuine and authoritative--Evadne's words, though confusing, 
are full of power, and the narrative itself is emotionally convincing--but Shelley 
foregrounds the problems of prophecy throughout: it is notoriously difficult to decipher 
and likely to go unheeded. Shelley suggests that inspiration may convey truth, but 
unframed by reason, truth is unintelligible. This unintelligibility fosters an awful mixture 
of hope and doubt. The novel repeatedly contrasts an ambivalent message of no hope on 
earth with a wistful hope for some kind of afterlife; this ambivalence can be seen here 
when Evadne "cast[s] her arm up to heaven" through the strength of "frenzy"--that is, her 
belief in heaven is at least partially fue11ed by madness. Evadne's death itself is a 
protracted experience, occurring repeatedly ("Many living deaths") but it also occurs 
"now" ("now I expire"). She buys Raymond with her death, and she has sold herself to 
death. She is Raymond's victim, yet "there is no safety for [him]!" Through her frenzy, 
Evadne communicates one thing clearly: she and Raymond are Jinked together by their 
love affair--whether Raymond realizes it or not. The meaning of the Plague again asserts 
itself, making clear the vital centrality of human relationships as well as the ramifications 
of neglect. 
Although Evadne's curse does not initiate the plague--it is known to exist in 
Constantinople before she utters her prophecy-her curse is convincing to Raymond: "She 
13 Samantha Webb argues that The Last Man d~onstructs its own prophetic . 
nature: "Rather than framing the SibyJiine text as a wammg ~d as a prophesy, the editor 
frames it th.rough its gathering and assimilates it to a personali.zed p~t rather than to a 
tenifying generalized future. [The frame] is a resis!ance to usmg ~1s ~x!, as prophesy, a 
refusal t? frame the text as powezf~l, divin~ly inspire~. and au~o~~tive (132). 
GoldsD11th also delivers a long and interesting exegesis of the Vtrgilian ~t~cy of the 
Cumaean Sybil and the inaccuracy of portraying her as a symbol of femm1st power, due 
to her enslavement by the god Apollo. 
206 
has said nothing but what I knew before - though this is confirmation" (147 [Il. 41]). 
Raymond acknowledges the whole truth of Evadne's utterance in a way he was unable to 
earlier. Yet the reader may still be baffled: why should the end of love be destruction? 
For Evadne, Raymond, and Perdita, love leads to destruction because it is merely 
passionate love, still what Wollstonecraft calls "those emotions which disturb the order of 
society," untempered by the ideals of utopian domesticity which reconfigure passion 
Within a new social order. Evadne is allowed to perish on the battlefield, dressed as a 
soldier, appearing like an inanimate object, dehumanized; Perdita is tossed by her 
conflicting emotions, refusing to be comforted or to forgive, until it is practically too late; 
Raymond vacillates between personal romantic attachments and seeking after glory, 
remaining constant neither to individuals nor to public duty. 
Beatrice and Evadne are both figured as improvisatrice, and their creative powers 
contribute to their formation as Byronic Romantic heroes. For Beatrice, the power of 
prophecy was a sham, symptomatic of her poor education and leading to her fatal trust in 
Castruccio. Her vacillation between faithful belief and heresy indicates the failure of her 
inspiration to lead to truth. Evadne, on the other hand, speaks the truth, but still in such a 
way as to mingle hope and despair. Mathilda also appears as a creative woman writer, 
trapped by passion in a position of isolation and unable to imagine a way out. Shelley 
places all these figures in positions of great stress as their Byronic characteristics push 
them out of society's framework. As a result, their pronouncements do not 
unproblematically reflect truth. The restrictions of society have harmed these women, 
and, as a consequence, their power to create and to accurately convey truth has been 
Warped. Shelley even critiques herself as a Romantic woman writer, conveying her own 
doubts as to her ability to accurately reflect truth in the Preface of The Last Man, where 
she states the limitations of the editor to translate and reassemble the Sybilline leaves from 
which the narrative is constructed. Importantly, however, women's constructions of 
207 
"truth " 
, however garbled, are not silenced in Shelley's work, and their limitations are 
clearly shown as social constructions in dire need of being rectified. 
The association of pestilence and death with the sexually transgressive female is 
pervasive in Shelley's work and arises from women's treatment within restrictive 
domestic and sexual relationships. Katherine C. Hill-Miller examines Plague in The Last 
Man as a female force which "like other manifestations of the female in Western culture 
' 
robs man of his ability to rise above the physical" (134), and has identified the association 
of pestilence with the sexually transgressive female in several of Shelley's writings.14 
Hill-Miller does not mention, however, the close association of the Plague with the 
sexually transgressive Evadne, whose dying words seem to curse Raymond and to 
promote the spread of Plague. Evadne has transgressed societal boundaries, and 
Shelley's characters have failed to reconfigure society in order to reintegrate Evadne 
amongst themselves, causing Evadne's dramatic social slippage from Princess and 
creative genius to foot-soldier and vindictive prophet. Like Beatrice, her class position, 
tied to gender constraints, is precarious and evanescent, but her creative powers of 
inspiration remain, though perverted by her tortured experiences. Evadne' s abandonment 
leads to her dehumanization, and her dehumanization is aligned with the release of 
inhuman forces; her passionate love becomes frenzy, and her frenzy directs this twisted 
yet powerful emotional force back at the object of her desire. In her frenzy, Evadne 
becomes the vector that transmits pestilence. This vector of pestilence is not created by 
14 Hill-Miller, arguing that this association .springs _!rom t!1e i?cest d):'n~c at 
work within the patriarchal nuclear family, first poi~ts ~ut 1':1athilda s descnption of 
h.er~elf as a 'Jiving pestilence"' (Mathilda 239, qtd m Hill-Mil.le; 104), and shows the 
smularities between Mathilda's speech and that of Frankenstem s Creature, another 
offspring rejected as "unnatural." Hill-Miller goes on to ~ention Valpergf!,'s Wil?elmina 
of Bohemia and Beatrice of Ferrara as sexually trangressive females identified with 
pestilence: "Wilhelmina's beliefs and behavior are described as 'a living pestilence' 
(2:27)" while Beatrice "connects herself to the 'disease, plague, famine, leprosy [and] 
fever' (3:45) that are evil's manifestations" (132). 
208 
Evadne alone, but also by Raymond, her desire and her abandoner. 
Evadne's frenzied passion (like Beatrice's) must be recognized as the Byronic 
Romantic hero's egoistic passion, but for the female Byronic hero, societal risks are 
much greater than for the male. The passionate risks undertaken by men are valorized 
even when they fail, but for the women of Shelley's day to risk acting passionately was 
to be both unsexed and sent into a slide from class position from which their was no 
recovery. John Morillo, in his discussion of enthusiasm, gives a quotation from 
Girondiste Jean-Baptiste Louvet, illustrating how men may culturally validate even 
passions the culture finds suspect or dangerous: "It is not easy to command our passions 
in the time of a revolution: there is indeed no instance of one accomplished without their 
assistance. Great obstacles are to be overcome; and this cannot be effected without an 
ardour, and a devotion to the causes, bordering upon enthusiasm, or tending to produce 
it" (49-50). Men like Louvet may couch ungoverned passion in terms that suggest it may 
produce beneficial social change, but Shelley shows that passionate action not strictly 
tempered by reason would lead to rejection and abandonment in an unreformed society, 
as it does for Evadne or Beatrice. 15 For Shelley, such passionate characters challenge 
society and may contribute to a greater good even through their destruction by revealing 
what flawed society cannot accommodate. 
Whereas the masculine Byronic hero perceives isolation from a disapproving 
society as an inconvenience--if indeed he does not actively seek it out--the female Byronic 
hero perceives it as punishment. For example, Mathilda's anguish is triggered by her 
father's passionate love and abandonment through suicide; Beatrice's madness is 
15 In the case of Euthanasia, even her reasonable ~ction_s _are interpre~ed as 
passionate and condemned. In the case of the Creature, ~s .pos1tton as supplicant aligns 
him with Shelley's vulnerable women characters, and he 1~ mterpre~ed first as a 
dangerous creature of ungoverned passions, ~d secondarily as a wily reasoner whose 
very power to reason is condemned as deceptive. 
209 
triggered by Castruccio 's abandonment and by her discovery that her supposed holy 
powers are a sham. Even the Creature 's rage is triggered by Victor's abandonment. These 
characters share the vulnerability to abandonment that differentiates them from most men 
in Shelley's milieu--even though their initial potential (for love, service, creativity or 
passion) is not differently gendered from men's in Shelley's eyes. Being abandoned 
causes the female to seek a reason for 'her exile, and her identification of her anger at and 
fear of society may cause her to perceive herself as internally corrupt and a vector of 
pestilence. 16 In Catherine Decker's terms, "women treated ... as mad or immoral may 
become mad or immoral." 17 
In The Last Man (as in Frankenstein), Shelley's goal seems to have been to make 
this perception of abandonment and sense of internalized pestilence universally 
understood. 18 The contemporary critic who complained that Shelley's novel should have 
been about "the last Woman" who "would have known better how to paint her distress at 
having nobody left to talk to,"19 perceived abandonment as a feminine condition even as 
Shelley attempted to demonstrate that it is not necessarily so. Isolation and abandonment 
are two sides of the same coin: Raymond's self-exile results not only in his own death but 
16 Michael Eberle-Sinatra states that "Woman (in the person of Evadne) identifies 
herself with destruction and 'enacts the revenge of female power against control' [Anne 
Mc Whir, introd. The rd.st Man, xxv]" (99). Shelley arg~es against the necessary equation 
of Woman with destruction, but also demonstrates why 1t often turns out that way. 
17 See my discussion of Beatrice in Chapter Four on Valperga. 
18 Pamela Clemit agrees that in The Last A:fa.1;.• "the monster's experience of 
cosmic victimization has become that of all mankind (185). 
19 Review of The Last Man, London Literary Gazette, 4_74 (1~ Feb. 1826), 103, 
qtd in Clemit 188. Bennett (149) gives a longish extract from this review and from 
others. 
210 
-- ~- -
in Perdita's and Evadne's as well. Although isolation may be chosen, its detrimental 
effects are made more forcefully clear when it is portrayed as abandonment: abandonment 
has a more devastating appearance because it is not chosen, and the Plague emphasizes 
the horrors of isolation through its portrayal of large-scale abandonment. 
In a move typical of Shelley's tendency to complicate her portrayal of gender, 
Verney also perceives Raymond's figure as transmitting the Plague: 
Methought I had been invited to Timon's last feast; I came with keen appetite, the 
covers were removed, the hot water sent up its unsatisfying steams, while I fled 
before the anger of the host, who assumed the fonn of Raymond; while to my 
diseased fancy, the vessels hurled by him after me, were surcharged with fetid 
vapour, and my friend's shape, altered by a thousand distortions, expanded into a 
gigantic phantom, bearing on its brow the sign of pestilence. (160 [II. 79]) 
And to further implicate masculine characters as sources of pestilence or disease, both 
Victor Frankenstein and Castruccio suffer from fevers, Castruccio dying of his rather 
than from any military attack. 
Shelley develops Perdita and Idris as overly sentimental characters, educated in a 
strongly gendered fashion.20 Perdita suffers from her overly sentimental nature by 
contributing to the destruction of her own domestic happiness. Evadne plays her part in 
the destruction of Raymond's domestic happiness with Perdita, but Raymond resorts to 
omission and outright falsehood when confronted by Perdita about his doings with 
Evadne: 
. 20 As Lynn Wells rightly notes, "Perdita personi~es w~manly self-s~crifice and 
acquiescence to male domination a cultural stereotype with which Shelley trtes to come to 
tenns through the creation of an ~xaggerat~d version of women'~ predicam~nt" (221-
~22). However Wells's description of Idris as a perfected version of Perdita (222-223) 
ignores the exc~ciating wony that debilitates Idris as the Plague threatens her family. 
Lionel views Idris as "the admired type of feminine perfection" (qt~ i~ Wells 2~3) 
because Lionel loves Idris, not because Shell~y do~s. Alth_ough Idris 1~ a ~upenor type to 
Perdita, Shelley portrays her as painfully restrtcted m her tight domestic circle. 
211 
He forgot each word he spoke was false. He personated his assumption of 
innocence even to self-deception .... He spoke with pride; he felt injured .... 
He had sinned against his own honour, by affinning, swearing to, a direct 
falsehood .... His passions, always his masters, acquired fresh strength, from 
the long sleep in which love had cradled them. (98-99 [I. 265-66], 100 [I. 270, 
271] 
The narrator condemns Raymond for deceiving Perdita, but Perdita is also condemned for 
her inability to forgive Raymond. Her devotion is understood by the narrator to be 
excessive: "I own that I did not see her misfortune with the same eyes as Perdita," says 
Verney; "At all events methought that the wound could be healed; and, if they remained 
together, it would be so" (112 [I. 309]). 
Verney's perception of the excess of Perdita's emotions is Shelley's way of 
C.. . 
ntiqumg the weaknesses of such overly sentimental characters. The Plague is a 
· mechanism of cruelty, showing the futility of a mother's wony over her children, who 
Will always be subject to mortality. The fate of Perdita, however, is a direct result of her 
own total dependence on her husband, and on Raymond's corresponding inability to 
control his own self-centered passions. Perdita's excessive devotion to Raymond is first 
shown as destructive when she awaits the outcome of his bid to become Lord Protector. 
lier emotions vacillate wildly between despair at leaving England should Raymond be 
defeated, and joy at the thought of consoling him herself: 
Perdita had anived with her child at Dartford, weeping and inconsolable ... . 
[She] passed se:veral hours in acute suffering. Sometimes she hung over her 
child, tracing her resemblance to the father, and fearful lest in after life she should 
display the same passions and uncontrollable impulses, that rendered him 
unhappy .... She figured to herself their life in the Greek isle . . . her task of 
soothing him, her care for the beauteous Clara, her rides in his company, her 
212 
dedication of herself to his consolation. The picture then presented itself to her in 
such glowing colours, that she feared the reverse, and a life of magnificence and 
power in London; where Raymond would no longer be hers only, nor she the 
sole source of happiness to him. (83 [I. 216-17]) 
Perdita's d · evot10n to Raymond takes a possessive turn, as she begins to prefer having 
him all to herself. She does not imagine herself as a political helpmeet but fears that 
Raymond's political life will divide them. Although this need not be the case--a maniage 
of equality would be up to the task, and Perdita could develop her own role in public 
aff airs--she turns out to be right. 
Raymond's arrival is accompanied by a sad example of the inability of the lovers 
to communicate effectively, a portent of their future estrangement; 
That he should come to her alone, wetted by the storm, careless of every thing 
except speed, what else could it mean, that, vanquished and solitary, they were to 
take their way from native England? ... The knowledge of his success had 
become so much a part of himself, that he forgot that it was necessary to impart it 
to his companion. She only felt in his embrace a dear assurance that while he 
possessed her, he would not despair .... He kissed her brow, but the wayward 
girl, half sony at his triumph, agitated by swift change of thought, hid her face in 
his bosom and wept. He comforted her; he instilled into her his own hopes and 
desires; and soon her countenance beamed with sympathy. (83-84 [I. 218-19)) 
RaYmond is cruel and careless with Perdita's emotions, ma.king her wait alone for news 
of their fate. Shelley, s dry tone in stating that Raymond "forgot that it was necessary to 
impart it to his companion" emphasizes his carelessness and his lack of sympathy with 
her hopes or fears. Raymond then "instilled into her his own hopes and desires" so that 
Perdita becomes less and less her own person and more a mere reflection of Raymond. 
Audrey Fisch also points out that while Raymond's inability to communicate effectively 
213 
with Perdita does not point to any immediate inability to lead the country, ultimately his 
inability to handle his domestic affairs does lead to his abandoning his post (274).21 In 
Such scenes Shelley develops her criticism of patriarchal domesticity, showing how mere 
romantic love is unequal to the task of creating utopian domesticity when equality and 
&espect are absent. 
Wollstonecraft spends much of her Vindication of the Rights of Woman deploring 
th
e way women are educated only to please men. Perdita describes her own character 
fonn · · ation m language Wollstonecraft would have recognized: 
"I was a poor, uneducated, unbefriended, mountain girl, raised from nothingness 
by him . .. . I devoted my self to him ... I One only return did he owe me, even 
fidelity. I earned that; I deserved it." (113 [I. 309-11]) 
He, she thought, can be great and happy without me. Would that I also had a 
career! Would that I could freight some bark with all my hopes. energies, and 
desires, and launch it forth into the ocean of life--bound for some attainable point, 
With ambition or pleasure at the helm! But adverse winds detain me on shore. 
(126 [I. 351]) 
Mellor, in quoting these passages, points out that the women characters of The Last Man 
exist strictly in relation to male characters, "never self-centered or self-sufficient" (155-6). 
Perdita's character has been developed from childhood as intelligent but waxy and 
sensitive; her impoverished upbringing, largely separated from her brother, was more 
difficult for her than for him because she was kept more confined due to her gender and 
her employment in domestic service. Thus a seemingly unhealthy bent toward 
• 21 Fisch interestingly suggests that it is the insul~_ty of England tha!, Sheller f nng~ down by the Plague--an island nation run by amb1t1ous men, whose spl~n~~ 
solation . .. is a specious assertion of safety and a dangerously false ~d .chauvm1stic 
attempt to displace danger and responsibility onto an exernal and hence different' group" 
(277). 
214 
introspection was fostered in Perdita, and she did not develop the love of books adopted 
by Lionel after Adrian befriended him. Shelley clearly shows how Perdita 's childhood 
a
nd 
education are woefully mismanaged, resulting in her overwhelming identification 
With her role as wife. 
As Samantha Webb compellingly argues, Perdita resists Lionel's attempts to 
i~terest her in scholarship. According to Webb, Perdita's refusal to be educated by 
Lionel "marks the limit of that educational process and denies him the authority he needs 
to succeed in his project. In this way, Mary Shelley calls into question any totalizing 
process or epistemology that offers a 'panacea' for individual or social ills, be it 
education, 'civilization,' domesticity, or love" (127). While not entirely taking into 
account Perdita's restrictive background as a domestic servant (while Lionel freely 
roamed the hills), which must in Godwinian fashion have formed her character at least in 
Part, Webb's argument acknowledges Shelley's sophisticated understanding of the 
Standard solutions usually proffered by progressive ideologies. Michael Eberle-Sinatra 
quotes Perdita' s response to scholarship: "her own character, which formerly she fancied 
that she thoroughly understood, became the first in rank among the terrae incognitae, the 
pathless wilds of a countzy that had no chart" (123-4, qtd 104); he goes on to describe 
Perdita as "a Byronic heroine to whom love is 'woman's whole existence ' and this is the 
cause of her death" (104). Neither Webb nor Eberle-Sinatra note that while Lionel finds 
(masculine) companionship among the great thinkers of the world, Perdita is unable to 
relate her own self-knowledge to what she finds in books. Perdita's gendered-ness repels 
her from study, and this repulsion creates a vicious circle that genders her further. 
Perdita wishes that she had "a career" but she does not see that her complaint is not a 
WoUstonecraftian desire for public utility, but is perilously close to that which led Evadne 
to destruction--the use of her powers for "ambition or pleasure." Finally, Shelley holds 
Perdita to a Godwinian standard, demanding that she offer Raymond forgiveness rather 
215 
than regardi h 
ng er relationship to him as utterly destroyed. Eventually, Perdita does 
forgive R 
aymond, but not long before both are ki11ed--Raymond, by an explosion during 
an ill-advised · ·d .. 1._ • • victory n e uuough Constantinople, and Perdita, through suicide after she 
is taken away from Raymond's burial place.22 
Buth Perdita and Idris suffer greatly from the fear of being separated from their 
loved ones, by the Plague or by other circumstances. Idris' s emotional intensity is, 
Unfortunately, a direct result of Lionel's own directives, demonstrating that his desire to 
keep his ~ife safe (not just for her benefit, but for his own and his children's) supersedes 
her charitable outreach to others: 
Maternal affection had not rendered Idris selfish; at the beginning of our calamity 
she had, with thoughtless enthusiasm, devoted herself to the care of the sick and 
helpless. I checked her; and she submitted to my rule .... she at length agreed 
not to go beyond the inclosure of the forest. Indeed, within the walls of the 
Castle we had a colony of the unhappy, deserted by their relatives, and in 
themselves helpless, sufficient to occupy her time and attention, while ceaseless 
anxiety for my welfare and the health of her children, however she strove to curb 
or conceal it, absorbed all her thoughts, and undennined the vital principle. (215 
[II. 243-4]) 
Lionel plants the seeds of wony within Idris that ultimately lead to her wasting death, 
though he does not mention this until after he has begun describing Idris as sick with 
Wony. Further, he "checks" her community-building impulses, so stifling the dimension 
of utopian domesticity, which depends on openness as opposed to exclusion, indicated 
22 Perdita is the only one of The Last Man's main characters t? commit suicide, 
and must remind the reader of Mathilda's father, who also drowned himself as a result of 
?Ver}y passionate love. Drowning deaths had a biographical resonance with passion and 
;rrationality for Shelley. Mary Wollstonecraft twice attem~ted to drown herself due to 
J:_Ve affairs gone bad, and Percy Shelley's first wife, Harn~t Westbrook Shelley, 
owned herself, with rumors that she was pregnant at the time. 
216 
by the Castle's hospitality to victims of the Plague, though as stated earlier, it is left 
unclear how open the Castle really is. 
Forgiveness is a central theme to utopian domesticity, for Evadne, Perdita, and 
Raymond, but another figure who earns forgiveness is the mother of Adrian and Idris 
' 
known as the ex-Queen. Angry with her husband for leaving the throne, angry with 
Lionel because he, instead of the ambitious Raymond, marries Idris, the ex-Queen treats 
Idris harshly, refuses to meet Lionel, and scorns Adrian for his lack of ambition to regain 
the throne for himself. When Idris dies without reconciling with her, the ex-Queen is 
spurred to acknowledge her mistakes to Lionel as they stand by Idris's corpse: 
· · . She placed her wrinkled hand on my arm, exclaiming with tremulous accents 
"Lionel Verney, my son!" This name, applied at such a moment by my angel's 
mother, instilled into me more respect than I had ever before felt for this 
disdainful lady. I bowed my head, and kissed her shrivelled hand .... She said, 
for excuse, "How did I treat her? Wounding her gentle heart with savage 
coldness; I had no compassion on her in past years, does she forgive me now? 
Little, little does it boot to talk of repentance and forgiveness to the dead ... " ... 
The overpowering knowledge, that love and life were the true emperors of our 
mortal state; all, as a tide, rose, and filled her soul with stonny and bewildering 
confusion. It fell to my lot, to come as the influential power, to allay the fierce 
tossing of these tumultuous waves . ... She turned to me. The hard, inflexible, 
persecuting woman, turned with a mild expression of face, and said, "If our 
beloved angel sees us now, it will delight her to find that I do you even tardy 
justice." (280-282 (Ill.100-106])23 
23 Jane Blumberg cites this scene, but interprets i! as makin~ the ex-Queen "suffer 
for ~er crime" (125). Blumberg does not see the end-?f-hfe conversion o~ the ex~Queen 
as significant. This is however at least one instance m The Last Man which belies what 
Blumberg calls "Sheliey's certainty of humanity's inevitable failure to achieve happiness 
217 
' 
Several influences are at work in this scene. On the biographical level, this scene 
undoubtedly represents Mary Shelley's fantasy of seeing Sir Timothy Shelley, her 
dead husband's inflexible, condemnatory parent, chagrined and repentant. But the 
scene is more important to the understanding of the characters and Shelley's 
theory of justice in utopian domesticity. The ex-Queen comes to realize that her 
priorities should not have been focused on worldly ambition all these years, but 
on love for her children and fellowship with their families. The ex-Queen had 
been so harsh to Idris as to attempt to drug and ship her to Austria, there to be 
manied against her will. Her acceptance of Lionel is a profound change of heart, 
and leads to a measure of happiness for her and for her surviving family, even 
though Idris is already dead. Even more important, the scene represents Lionel in 
a shining moment as an example of the Shelley an Romantic hero. Seeing his 
mother-in-law's true repentance, he puts aside the years of mistreatment he faced 
at her hands and even focuses on her resemblance to his beloved wife (281 
[Ill. I 04]) rather than holding a justified grudge over the pain she had caused Idris 
all these years. Lionel cheers the old woman by reminding her that her son Adrian 
and grandson Evelyn are still alive, and, as Euthanasia does for Beatrice, does his 
best to create a family circle for her. Although utopian domesticity barely exists in 
The Last Man, and is elusive even in Lionel's blissful marriage due to the lack of 
roundness in the character of Idris, the qualities of justice, forgiveness and re-
education required for utopian domesticity do exist here. 
As I indicated earlier, some critics interpret Shelley's tragic narrative and 
exploration of the weaknesses and strengths of various iterations of the Romantic hero as 
her abandonment of the radicalism and/or Romanticism of Percy Shelley. Mary Poovey 
?r live up to an ideal" (140); though it is a small-scale and qualified happiness, it is an 
unportant achievement in tenns of justice. 
218 
couches The Last Man unequivocally as Shelley's "final abandonment of Percy's 
aesthetic ideals" (146), arguing that "the disappointment and grief that characterize The 
Last Man actually condemn his political and personal optimism" (149) because the fate of 
humanity is "a hideous equality before death" rather than "the political equality Percy 
dreamed of' (152). As Poovey acknowledges, "like all of her early novels, The Last Man 
dramatizes the way that egotism threatens domestic hannony" (149). Poovey is right to 
focus on the threat to domestic harmony in the book. Shelley is careful to show how 
Perdita, Raymond and Evadne are destroyed not by the Plague but by their inability to 
establish utopian domesticity. The "hideous equality before death" faced by Lionel and 
his friends is understood by him not in political but in personal tenns. The deeply 
personal loss of loved ones, especially the hope of being survived by children or other 
family members, seems immeasurably more consequential than leaving behind great 
Writings or public works (both of which are specifically found lacking in Verney's final 
pages). But this is not necessarily a refutation of Percy Shelley's "dreams of political 
equaiity"--political equality is shown to be a necessity even in the last days. In fact, the 
use of the Plague for political ends by the False Prophet in Paris is portrayed as the most 
monstrous sequence of events in the novel. 24 Here, political equality must be taken in 
Percy's terms as the destruction of tyranny, but not as the levelling of class differences, 
Which Shelley seems to be at some pains to preserve. 
The most glaring example of Shelley's preservation of class difference is her 
Portrayal of servants still assisting their masters to cross the Alps after humanity has 
dwindled to a few dozen. At the most basic level of narrative; this portrayal serves her 
" 24 Morton Paley takes the episode of the false prophet ~ proof of the irrel~v~ce 
of the religious paradigm" (118) and as a further stab at Godwm, whose early religion 
had been a strict Calvinism. Paley's study ofmi11enni~ in The Last Man focus~s more 
on the literary resonances of millennium than on the polttical, and does not delve mto on 
the local utopia of domesticity. 
219 
purpose of emphasizing the importance of fidelity and the preservation of human ties--
even when those ties are based on economic disparities and class differences which 
should have become meaningless. 25 Critics who have made connections between 
Shelley's philosophy and Burke's have identified her preservation of class differences 
and her focus on aristocracy as the most conservative elements of Shelley's utopian 
domesticity. On the one hand, her preservation of class derives from her Godwinian 
commitment to gradual change through education instead of sudden or violent revolution. 
On the other, her focus on aristocracy may derive from the fact of the aristocracy's 
control of material resources in the fonn of land (if not capital) which enables them to 
provide the necessities of life for their dependents. As Godwin argues in Political Justice, 
tbe fact that property is concentrated in the hands of a few is an evil that could be 
improved only by an intolerable violence. 26 But Godwin goes on to argue that property 
owners "hold their wealth only as a trust, that they are strictly accountable for every atom 
of their expenditure, that they are merely administrators, and by no means proprietors in 
chief;" he also asserts that it is not enough for them to dispense "clemency and charity" 
instead of adopting "a system of justice" (708 [Book vm, Chap. I, "Preliminary 
Observations"]). · Godwin believes that eventually, society will generally acknowledge 
25 Paul Cantor and others have noted Shelley's comfort with valorizing an 
aristocratic mode of life in The Last Man, but as Cantor re~zes, it is only "to the extent 
~at an aristocracy can be conceived on the model of a family, Shelley seems to endorse 
Its l~adership and way of life" ("Apocalypse _of Empire" 203). C:antor states o~ Shelley's 
utoJ?Ian domesticity that "For Shelley, the ultI~ate human g<><:>d IS to be found m the ,, 
family, or at Jeast in a small circle of human bemgs who genwnely care for each other (199). . 
26 Godwin concedes that "property, with all its inequalities, such as it is 
sanctioned by the general sense of the members of any state ... should be defended" 
(717 [Book vm, "Of Property," Chap. II, "Principles of Property"]). 
220 
supertJuity to be a crime, 27 resulting in an equalized distribution of property and general 
societal improvement. 28 The utopian domesticity portrayed by Shelley in her novels 
comprises a Godwinian project of "general illumination"29--an attempt to convince 
readers of the desirability of Godwinian simplicity as a component of utopian 
domesticity. 
In her portrayal of the cottage way of life, Shelley demonstrates the value of 
simple agrarianism as opposed to the luxury attached to aristocracy--even though her 
characters (like her audience) are generally members of the middle and upper classes. 30 
27 Godwin' s utopian ideal , resulting from an equal distribution of property, 
Iesembles Shelley's in its agrarian simplicity: "If superfluity were banished, the necessity 
b 0: the gr~ater part of the manual industry of mankind would be superseded; and the rest, 
emg amicably shared among the active and vigorous members of the commmunity, 
Would be bUrthensome to none. Every man would have a frugal, yet wholesome diet; 
eyery !,Uan would go forth to that moderate exercise of his corporal functions that would 
gi_ve hilarity to the spirits; none would be made tozpid with fatigue, but all would have 
~isure to cultivate the kindly and philanthropical affections, and let loose his faculties in 
e search of intellectual improvement" (730 [Book VIII, Chap. ill, "Benefits Attendant 
~n a System of Equality"]). Godwin does not go into the bases for community 
efonnation focused on by Shelley. 
. 
28 Godwin claims that equalized distribution of prope~y would result in more 
leisure for the laboring classes: "Half~ hour a day employed m J?anual la~~ur.?y every 
member of the community would sufficiently supply the whole with necessities (746 
f~ook VIIl, Chap. VI, "Objections ... from Allurements of Sloth" ]). Godwin repeats this claim a few pages later (753 [Book VIII, Chap. VII, "Objections .. . from Benefits 
of Luxury"]) and Percy B Shelley refers to it in a note to Canto V of Queen Mab 0813). ' . 
29 Godwin writes that ''The motives for a rich man to live as if he were a poor one 
he very inferior now to what they would be when a general sympathy upon this subject 
ad taken place and a general illumination had diffused itself' (738 [Book vm, Chap. 
IV, "Objections' . . . from the Frailty of the Human Mind"]). 
30 Some characters of Shelley' s who mig~t be deem~~ ~orkin~-class include Old 
Barnet, a fishennan from Maurice or the Fisher s Cot; Gwrugi, wamor turned fanner in 
Valperga. Heman~ Faro, otphan turned warrior and mariner in Perkin Warbeck; and 
Fanny Derham, impoverished but scholarly daughter of a deceased clergyman in Ladore. 
221 
Such a tension was for Shelley carried out somewhat in her own life: she had manied 
Percy Bysshe Shelley, himself a member of the landed aristocracy, who had something 
of a blind spot concerning his own biases in favor of his segment of society, as what 
Donald H. Reiman terms an "agrarian reactionary."31 Still, Reiman argues, P. B. SheIIey 
advocated for reform which would ensu.:e the necessities of life for members of a 
CUITently "wretched populace;" his utopian scheme of reform is sketched, for example, in 
The Mask of Anarchy (Reiman 12-13). The ideal of the English freeholder, with a 
cottage and ·a small plot of agricultural land, is at the root of Shelley's vision of perfected 
society throughout her works and is common to the early nineteenth century middle 
classes, as Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall have shows. James P. Carson theorizes 
as "radical agrarianism" the idea that valorizes "independent peasants, who labor on small 
farms that they either own outright or hold on long and secure leases" (170). This ideal, 
as Reiman perceptively notes, is a complicated mixture of nostalgia and utopia (14)--
reactionary and radical at the same time. A similar tension is reflected in the contrast 
between SheIIey's aristocratic characters and the laboring peasants referred to by 
Godwin. Authors like Godwin, Wollstonecraft, and the Shelleys tended to resolve this 
tension, for good or m, by aiming their critique at middle and upper class readers, in the 
hopes of effecting reform through a beneficial "trickle-down" type of effect. She11ey is 
less likely to portray "levelling" as a result of revolution and more likely to show 
characters voluntarily adopting a simpler lifestyle, usually in conjunction with other 
elements of utopian domesticity. 
The plot of The Last Man, especially the figuration of the Plague as a destructive 
force of Nature and Necessity, resonates strongly with Percy Bysshe She11ey's Laon and 
31 After Percy Shelley's death in July 1822, She11ey's portrayal of the necessity 
of landowners to deal justly with their dependents may also ~ave been prompted ~y her 
severe treatment at the hands of Sir Timothy She11ey, who tned to control her actions by 
threatening to withdraw the maintenance necessary to her and her son, Percy Florence. 
222 
Cythna, or, the Revolt of the Golden City (1817). In it, the attainment of utopia is 
contrasted with the horrors of tyranny, and the direct result of tyranny is the spread of 
Plague. The first canto of Laon and Cythna depicts a battle between the forces of good 
and ·1,/: 
evz 1 or supremacy on earth, and the reader learns that supremacy is held by evil, in 
tbe fonn of an impressive eagle, which has forced good to be taken for a serpent. In the 
remaining cantos, the visionary of the first canto is told the story of the two heroes, 
brother and sister, who try to overthrow the power of the tyrant of the Golden City. They 
achi eve a momentary success, but the people's fear of the tyrant destroys them. Laon and 
Cythna are executed on a pyre by the order of the tyrant and a hideous priest, who 
accuses them of spreading the Plague which was clearly a result of the tyrant's 
bloodthirstiness. Laon and Cythna do not experience the agonies of the pyre but instead 
are transmuted to paradise, where Laon relates their story to the visionary. 
Mary Shelley's novel invokes Laon and Cythna in several key themes. The contrast 
of childhood innocence with the depredations of tyranny and Plague are present in Laon 
and Cythna, and the culpability of superstition, masking as religion, in perverting human 
nature in times of stress is also common to both works. The scene of the death feast 
encountered by Lionel, a terrible parody of domesticity, calls up the horrific scene in 
La.on and Cythna in which a mad woman has arranged a pile of moldy loaves as a feast 
for a roomful of dead babies: 
I returned to the first chamber, wondering what sightless host had spread the material 
for my repast, and my repose. I drew a chair to the table, and examined what the 
viands were of which I was to partake. In truth it was a death feast! The bread was 
blue and mouldy; the cheese lay a heap of dust. I did not dare examine the other 
dishes; a troop of ants passed in a double line across the table cloth; every utensil 
was covered with dust, with cobwebs, and myriads of dead flies . .. Tears rushed 
into my eyes; surely this was a wanton display of the power of the destroyer. . . . I 
223 
had hoped in the very heart of despair .... (351 [III. 315-316] 
In La.on and Cythna, the comparable scene (canto 6, stanzas 46-53) is included to 
illuStrate the horrors of tyranny in deranging the peasantzy from their wholesome nature. 
But in Shelley's scene, the emphasis is on the horror Lionel derives from his imagination, 
Which tries to convince him that he is not alone. The death feast is a honible substitute 
for the companionship (companion literally meaning someone with whom to break bread) 
for Which he longs. Blumberg reads the scene as a reminder of "the false security the 
comfortable family offers" (133). To the contrary, the scene yields such torture precisely 
because the domestic scene would successfully have rendered the comfort the Last Man 
so desperately seeks. 
The key difference between Mary's story and Percy's poem is that nothing directly 
causes the Plague, per se, in The Last Man. English society has become a Republic, far 
from tyranny, governed by predominantly well-meaning and capable men. After the fall 
of Constantinople, the world knows universal peace for the first time. But the Plague 
appears anyway, canying with it the grim and inescapable fate of death. Mellor has 
.., 
concluded that Shelley uses the Plague to emphasize the ultimate inutility of all ideological 
belief systems. Similarly, Jane Blumberg, in an interesting exploration of Burkean 
Philosophy, concludes that neither Percy Shelley's style of radicalism nor Burkean 
conservatism could hope to withstand the calamity of the Plague (134-5; 140-147). I 
Would argue, along a slightly different line, that the Plague collapses all belief systems, 
bringing them to the same level so that comparisons can be made as to what is really most 
important.32 Clearly, it is the centrality of human relationships that is crucial to human 
32 Barbara Johnson points out that The Last Man "does indeed contain a series of 
Critiques ... of the projects of refonn dear to her father William Go~'Yin and her 
husband Percy Shelley ... , but there is no relation between these cntiques and the train 
of events" (264). In other words, the devastation of the Plague cancels out the trials of 
refonn philosophy offered by the political actions of the characters. 
224 
existence. For Shelley, it is important to topple tyramy, but it is more important to create 
and preserve utopia on the local and immediate level Volume One of The Last Man 
presents a story of stereotypical romance. Perhaps i: offers little that is really new. But 
even if Verney's delineation of the errors of his frieuds and relations approaches tedium, 
these relationships are more important to Verney tha1 the whole history of the human 
race. Not only the highborn Windsors, but every chi.racter Shelley introduces is 
presumed to have a similar story to Lionel's, and as the novel progresses through 
Volumes Two and Three, Shelley spends several diµessions relating their stories as well: 
a daughter who will not leave her decrepit mother; mother daughter who is found playing 
the organ for her blind father even as she expires from the Plague; a mother held hostage 
to a mad prophet by the love of her child; even the madness of Merrival who ignores his 
family until it is too late.33 The centrality of humau relationships is the one tenet of The 
Last Man that cannot be questioned. Ironically, Li01el's humanistic education, which 
required him to rethink himself as contributing to the well-being of others, has become 
pointless, and it is this that makes his narrative arc from wild, self-sufficient shepherd to 
solitary Crusoe figure so poignant. 
33 Albright notes how the narrative returns several times to the stories of Juliet 
and Lucy Martin. 
225 
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Gen. Ed. Linda Hutcheon and Paul Perron. Buffalo: U of Toronto P, 1991. 9-21. 
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Mary Shelley's The Last Man." Romanticism On the Net 13 (February 1999) [10-
01-01 J <http://users.ox.ac. uk/-scat0385/perdita.htm1> 
Bennett, Betty T. "Radical Imaginings: Mary Shelley's The Last Man." Wordsworth 
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Blumberg, Jane. Mary Shelley's Early Novels: "This Child of Imagination and Misery." 
Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 1993. 
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of Mary Shelley's Birth. Ed. Syndy M. Conger, Frederick S. Frank, Gregory 
O'Dea, and asst. Jennifer Yocum. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 1997. 
193-211. 
---. "Mary Shelley and the Taming of the Byronic Hero: 'Transfonnation' and The 
Deformed Transfonned." The Other Mary Shelley: Beyond Frankenstein. Ed. 
Audrey A. Fisch, Anne K. Mellor, and Esther H. Schor. New York: Oxford UP, 
1993. 89-106. 
Canuel, Mark. "Acts, Rules, and The Last Man." Nineteenth-Century Literature 53 
(1998): 147-70. 
Carson, James P. "'A Sigh of Many Hearts': History, Humanity, and Popular Culture in 
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Fredericks. Frank, Gregory O'Dea, Jennifer Yocum (assistant ed.). London: 
226 
Associated University Presses, 1997. 167-192. 
Cleznit, Pamela. The Godwinian Novel: The Rational Fictions of Godwin, Brockden 
Brown, Mary Shelley. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. 
Davidoff, Leonore and Catherine Hall. Family F~rtunes: Men and Women of the English 
Middle Class, 1780-1850. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1987. 
Eberle-Sinatra, Michael. "Gender, Authorship and Male Domination: Mazy Shelley's 
Limited Freedom in Frankenstein and The Last Man." Mary Shelley's Fictions: 
From Frankenstein to Falkner. Ed. Michael Eberle-Sinatra. Introd. Nora Crook. 
New York: Macmillan; Houndmills, England: St. Martin's, 2000. 95-108. 
Fisch, Audrey A. "Plaguing Politics: A.IDS, Deconstruction, and The Last Man." The 
Other Mary Shelley: Beyond Frankenstein. Ed. Audrey A. Fisch, Anne K. 
Mellor, and Esther H. Schor. New York: Oxford UP, 1993. 267-286. 
Franci, Giovanna. "A Mirror of the Future: Vision and Apocalypse in Mazy Shelley's The 
Last Man." Mary Shelley. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House 
Publishers, 1985. 181-91. 
Godwin, William. Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and its Influence on Modem 
Morals and Happiness. 1793, rev. 3d ed. 1798. Ed. Isaac Kramnick. New York: 
Penguin, 1976. 
Goldsmith, Stephen. "Of Gender Plague and Apocalypse: Mazy Shelley's Last Man." 
Yale Journal of Criticism 4 (1990): 129-73. 
Johnson, Barbara. "The Last Man." The Other Mary Shelley: Beyond Frankenstein. Ed. 
Audrey A. Fisch, Anne K. Mellor, and Esther H. Schor. New York: Oxford UP, 
1993. 258-266. 
Mellor, Anne K. Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters. New York: 
Methuen, 1988. 
Middleton, Victoria. Elektra in Exile: Women Writers and Political Fiction. New York: 
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Garland Publishing, 1988. 
O'Dea, Gregory. "Prophetic History and Textuality in Mary Shelley's The La.st Man." 
Papers on Language and Literature 28 (1992): 283-304. 
Paley, Morton D. "The Last Man: Apocalypse Without Millennium." The Other Mary 
Shelley: Beyond Frankenstein. Ed. Audrey A. Fisch, Anne K. Mellor, and 
Esther H. Schor. New York: Oxford UP, 1993. 107-123. Previously published 
as "Macy Shelley's The La.st Man: Apocalypse without Millennium." Keats-
Shelley Review 4 (1989): 1-25. 
Poovey, Macy. The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer: Ideology as Style in the Works 
of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen. Chicago: U of Chicago 
P, 1984. 
Reiman, Donald H. "Shelley as Agrarian Reactionary." Keats Shelley Memorial Bulletin 
30 (1979): 5-15. 
Shelley, Macy W. The Last Man. 1826. Ed. Jane Blumberg, with Nora Crook. The 
Pickering Masters: The Novels and Selected Works of Mary Shelley. General 
Editor Nora Crook with Pamela Clemit, Consulting Editor Betty T. Bennett. Vol. 
4. London: William Pickering, 1996. 
Snyder, Robert Lance. "Apocalypse and Indetenninacy in Mary Shelley's The Last 
Man." Studies in Romanticism 17 (1978): 435-52. 
Sterrenburg, Lee. "The Last Man: Anatomy of Failed Revolutions." Nineteenth-Century 
Fiction 33 (1978): 324-47. 
Thomas, Sophie. ''The Ends of the Fragment, the Problem of the Preface: Proliferation 
and Finality in The Last Man." Mary Shelley's Fictions: From Frankenstein to 
Falkner. Ed. Michael Eberle-Sinatra. Introd. Nora Crook. New York: Macmillan; 
Hound.mills, England: St. Martin's, 2000. 22-38. 
Webb, Samantha. "Reading the End of the World: The Last Man, History, and the 
228 
Agency of Romantic Authorship." Mary Shelley in Her Times. Ed. Betty T. 
Bennett and Stuart Curran. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2000. 119-133. 
Wells, Lynn. "The Triumph of Death: Reading Narrative in Mazy Shelley's The Last 
Man." Iconoclastic Departures: Mary Shelley after Frankenstein: Essays in 
Honor of the Bicentenary of Mary Shelley's Birth. Ed. Syndy M. Conger, 
Frederick S. Frank, Gregory ODea, and asst. Jennifer Yocum. Madison, NJ: 
Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 1997. 212-348. 
Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Ed. Carol Poston. 2d ed. 
New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1988. 
229 
Chivalry and Utopian Domesticity in The Fortunes of Perkj.n Warbeck 
In The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck (1830), Mary Shelley revisits ideas from her 
pol'. Jtical novels of the 1820s, Valperga and The Last Man, but expands her exploration of 
utopian domesticity as the ideal social structure by situating it alongside the code of 
chivalry. Utopian domesticity contrasts vividly with the horrors of war and reveals the 
hollowness of the chivalric virtues of honor, ambition and glory. It is not that the code of 
chivalry celebrates only bankrupt virtues, but it valorizes hollow ideals (such as military 
glory for men, or a stainless reputation for women) that inspire men and women to try to 
protect their fame rather than to further human advancement; Shelley follows Godwin in 
her condemnation of this kind of Jove of fame. 1 In this novel Shelley portrays Richard, 
Duke of York (historically known as Perkin W arbeck, a Dutch pretender to the throne, 
but according to Shelley, the uncrowned Richard N), as the ideal chivalric hero. Richard 
is a good man and is acknowledged to be the rightful heir to the English throne, but his 
quest is shown as unendurably destructive at both the national and personal levels. 
Shelley contrasts political ambition ~ot just with personal happiness, but with the national 
Well-being of England, Ireland, Scotland, and parts of Spain and France. The destructive 
. 
1 Godwin showed how the Jove of his reputation, in a similar framework of 
c~valry~ destroys Falkland in Caleb Williams, ~d explains how f!le love of fame is a 
nustake m Political Justice: "The Jove of fame 1s no doubt a delusion: ... ~ether the 
b7n7fit which is added to the common flock proceed .from you or me 1s a pitiful 
distinction .... It is impossible we should want motives, so long as we see clearly how 
multitudes and ages may be benefited by our exertions, how causes and 7ffects are 
connected in an end.less chain so that no honest effort can be Jost, but will operate to 
good, centuries after its autho; is consigned to the grave" (748, 749 [!3ook VIII, "Of 
Property," Chap. VI, "Objections . .. from the Allure~ents o~ Slo~h ]). , 
William D. Brewer gives an excellent clo~ reading delineating Shelley s 
exploration of chivalry and the influence of God~m and Wollsto~ecraft on lher though~ 
about chivalry, but presents Shelley as more ambivalent ~bou~ chivalry than she really 1s: 
though showing Richard as a virtuous man within the chivalric system, she nevertheless 
demonstrates how chivalry functions to pervert men from benevolence to a search for 
glory, ambition and personal honor. 
230 
personal ambitions of the virtuous Richard are pitted against the beneficial peace that has 
begun to heal war-torn England, even though the source of that peace is a king portrayed 
as personally cruel and politically merciless, even tyrannical. 
Like The Last Man, Perkin Warbeck is a tragedy of attrition, and as such, it 
VOrtrays utopian domesticity as fragile and evasive. Richard's marriage to Katherine 
Gordon is less a portrait of utopian domesticity than an idealized pairing of romantic 
lovers. In a kind of second chance, Katherine forms a relationship with Richard's sister 
that has more of the hallmarks of utopian domesticity: it is a bond of true, disinterested 
friendship; it is fonned by affinity, not by ties of blood or politics; and it reaches out into 
the community to do good--Katherine hopes her influence will benefit Prince Arthur, the 
son of her friend Elizabeth of York and her husband, Herny VIl. 
Another possible site of utopian domesticity centers around Hernan de Faro and 
his daughter Monina, who take Richard in and become his devoted supporters. Monina 
de Faro, reminiscent of Beatrice especially in her inspirational speech, is passionate but 
virginal, remaining chastely devoted to Richard until death. Hernan de Faro, her father, is 
an intriguing cross-cultural figure. Born a Moor, he is raised by Christian monks in 
Andalusia, and marries Madeline Warbeck, a Flemish woman who shelters the fugitive 
Prince by offering him the identity of her deceased nephew. Though a mariner, De Faro 
bears important resemblances to Guinigi, the utopian farmer of Valperga, and his ship, 
the Adalid, represents rescue, freedom, friendship and even hope itself, a kind of mobile 
utopian domesticity. The loving father/daughter relationship of De Faro and Monina is a 
close partnership that provides a revealing contrast with De Faro's chivalric allegiance to 
Richard. 
In Valperga and The Last Man, Shelley explores the contrasts between the 
Shelleyan and Byronic Romantic heroes and pursues how such characterizations enact 
gender. In Perkin Warbeck, Shelley's exploration of how the Romantic hero is gendered 
231 
is overshadowed by the gendering effects of the code of chivahy. Shelley continues to 
use comparison to drive her characterizations, developing and contrasting Richard's 
character with those of his allies and enemies.2 but while Richard incorporates many 
positive features of the Shelleyan hero, including mercy, fellow-feeling, and a capacity 
for selfless love, his warlike nature and insistence on his right to be king detract from his 
Shelleyan potential. 3 The loyal Edmund Plantagenet, who tutors Richard in war, and the 
imprisoned Warwick, Richard's cousin, are virtuous adherents of chivahy, not exemplars 
of Shelleyan philosophy; Frion, Richard's secretary, and Robin Clifford, his childhood 
friend, are studies in treachery and degradation, yet lack the noble_ ambitions of the 
Byronic hero. Shelley creates an impressive range of women characters in Perkin 
Warbeck, though they do not reach the Shelleyan ideal of Valperga's Euthanasia or the 
Byronic passion of Beatrice or The Last Man's Evadne. In Richard's wife, Katherine 
Gordon, Shelley creates a woman who embodies domestic perfection--even to the extent 
that she threatens to become a model for the restrictive, traditional domesticity Shelley 
generally criticizes. 4 Shelley balances her portrait of Katherine, the ideal wife, with 
S ~ Lisa Hopkins, in her discussion of charact~rs and .their opposites, calls 
"heUey s contrast of virtuous and degraded figures m Perkin Warbeck a 
characterological chiaroscuro" (263). Jane Blumberg notes how Richard's "saint-like 
char~cter shines in comparison to Henry's corruption, cruelty and,peed" (217): Lidia 
Garbm recognizes many characters as "Shakespearean prototypes (153). R~bm Clifford 
seems especially Shakespearean in his combination of ltght-hearte~ess and sickness at 
heart; he also resembles the duplicitous Orsino from Percy Shelley s markedly 
Shakespearean drama, The Cenci. 
. 3 Shelley uses a typical trait of the Byronic hero to indicate Richard's flaw: his 
lips were "a little curled can we say in pride, or by what more gentle word can we name 
a feeling of self-elevatio~ and noble purpose, joined to benevolence and sweetness?" (76 
[I. 180]). 
4 The descriptions of how ~atheri~e consoles I_ochru:d ~er his many losses (274 
rnr. 15-16]) and considers herdestmy as irrevocably tied with his (2~6 [ill. 20-21]) 
invoke ideas of the Victorian "angel in the house," a woman whose pnmary duty in life is 
to create for her husband a haven from the hectic public world. 
232 
Monina, the ideal sister, with whom Richard spends his youth and who becomes his 
most avid partisan, even though she suffers personally for his political goals. Shelley 
demonstrates the high costs of traditional domestic arrangements and how these 
arrangements are politically freighted, in the persons of Princess Elizabeth of York, who 
becomes wife of Tudor Henry VII, the novel's arch-villain, and the ruined and repentant 
Jane Shore, forgotten mistress of Edward IV, Richard's father. In Monina, the Yorkist 
Partisan Lady Brampton, and Richard's aunt Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy, Shelley 
continues to portray women's involvement with political ambition. 
The relationship between Katherine and Richard is idealized, but in chivalric 
rather than utopian terms--that is, it represents a system which may be idealized but which 
readers already understand to be flawed and outmoded rather than a new system which 
offers the potential to reform society.5 Richard and Katherine experience great happiness 
in their union, but they do not form an open family which welcomes others or which 
serves a greater community for good. 6 Initially theirs is a marriage of political 
expedience, consolidating Richard's power by allying him by blood to the Scottish king, 
James IV. Richard immediately acknowledges Katherine's great beauty and her many 
virtues, in true chivalric fashion, and treats her with the respect due a lady, as a true 
knight should. Though Richard's love for Katherine is portrayed as ideal in chivalric 
-
5 Lidia Garbin, in her comparison of Perkin Warbeck with Scott's Ivanhoe, notes 
that both novels as romances "are set in a remote past and relate the adventures of a 
Young man whd is disposses;ed of what is his own by rightH (154). Garbin also notes 
that Richard of York has "a chivalrous and naive nature" and is "the representative of an 
obsolete chivalry" (155). In its idealization of the past and its close connection wi~ the 
~enre of the romance, chivalry is always already obsolete. !ts stan~ds C?f JX:rfection are 
impossible to attain, making adherence to its code appear either naive or rroruc. 
. ? As Betty Bennett states, "Katherine simP!Y sugge~ts ~otal abandonment of 
Richard s public role, thereby offering him a lo~e 1deal ~hich 1_s personal and restricted 
rather than general; an ideal which is as insufficient for him as 1t would have been for 
Shelley" (367). 
233 
terms, their maniage is based on political maneuvering, and never seems more passionate 
than his earlier attachment to his foster sister Monina. 
As in Valperga, Shelley concentrates the reader's interest not on the title character, 
Richard, but on the women of her story. Katherine, then, becomes a central witness as to 
the nature of utopian domesticity in Perkin Warbeck. Katherine's fidelity is her greatest 
virtue, both according to the expectations of chivalry and in Shelley's own estimation. 
Katherine is loyal to Richard to the end, comforting him when he is in the stocks and 
visiting him in prison (365-7 [III. 257-63], 392-4 [III. 331-38]). Unfortunately, this 
virtue stifles her pacifist (and domestic) response to Richard's ambition: 
It was strange that a girl of royal birth, bred in a palace, accustomed to a queen-
like sovereignty over her father's numerous vassals in the Highlands, should aim 
at restricting the ambitious York to mere privacy .... The Lady Katherine saw a 
vain mask in all the commonplace pomp of palaces; she perceived that power 
failed most, when its end was good; she saw that in accomplishing its purpose in 
the cottage, or in halls of state, felicity resulted from the affections only. It was 
being an actor in different scenes, to be a potentate or a peasant; the outward garb 
is not the livery of the mind: the refinement of taste, which enables us to gather 
pleasure from/ simple objects; the warmth of heart which necessitates the exercise 
of our affections, but which is content when they are satisfied; these to her mind, 
were the only, but they were the complete ingredients of happiness; and it was 
rarer to find, and more difficult to retain them, among false-hearted, ambitious 
courtiers, and the luxury of palaces, than among simple-minded peasantry, and a 
plain natural style of living. There was some romance in this idea; Katherine felt 
that there was, and subdued herself ... (290-1 [III. 59-61]) 
Accustomed to power, Katherine judges that "felicity resulting from the affections" is 
superior, whether "in the cottage, or in halls of state." She further argues that a peasant 
234 
may be as much an "actor," or wielder of power, as a potentate, only "in different 
scenes." She delineates two central aspects of utopian domesticity, that is, the preference 
of sim 1· · P 1c1ty to luxury, and preference for "simple-minded" honesty rather than the 
duplicity of "false-hearted, ambitious courtiers," echoing standard critiques of the 
ariStocracy made by working-class and middle-class radicals. But Katherine "subdues 
herself' from trying to convince Richard of the validity of her idea. The system of 
chivalry, which focuses on both allegiances to regal power and reflections of the use of 
power in tenns of glory, prevents Katherine from contemplating the useful action she 
understands is possible at the "cottage" level. She does not have a clear idea here as to 
how she and Richard would achieve any other goal but personal happiness, and it is for 
this reason that Shelley signals Katherine's idea as the desire for "mere privacy." 
Katherine's dream of private domesticity with Richard is mere wishful thinking and does 
not provide a real alternative which would make use of Richard's many virtues and 
talents. 
Just before his final defeat in Cornwall, Katherine tries to persuade Richard to 
give up his quest: 
"What is there in the name or state of king, that should so take captive our 
thoughts, that we can imagine no life but on a throne? . .. Could I put fire into/ 
my weak words - my heart's zeal into my supplicatozy voice - persuasion would 
attend upon me, and you would feel that to the young, to two united as we are, 
our best kingdom is each other's hearts; our dearest power that which each, 
without Jet or envy, exercises over the other[, t]hough our palace roof be the 
rafters of a Jowly cot . .. I almost think that, with words like these, I might draw 
you from the uneasy throne to the downy paradise of Jove." (302 [III. 88-89]) 
Katherine here attempts to move beyond her somewhat restricted domestic role as 
comforter and haven from the rough world, to convince Richard that to retire from his 
235 
PUrsuit would b 
e a greater good than to continue. But Richard will not be persuaded, 
argUing that he must recover his good name, though he will relinquish his claims upon 
the thr 
one. He promises that once this is accomplished, they will retire peacefully to his 
adopted ho . 
me m Andalusia. But this, of course, never comes to pass. 
The most stinging rebuke to Richard's ambition comes when he seeks an ally in 
Lord Sum 
ey, an old Yorkist. Surrey acknowledges Richard's claims,7 but rejects 
chivalric systems of allegiance by refusing to take part in his cause. Both Jane Blumberg 
(217-18) and w·1 . 1 l1a.m D. Brewer (198-199) recognize Shelley's own pacifism in Surrey's 
speech. Clearly evident in Surrey's defense of his pacifist position are the tropes of 
Uto . 
Pian domesticity, which he privileges over chivalric power hierarchies and the love of 
''h ono0r": 
". · · My lord, the Roses contended in a long and sanguinary war, and many 
thousand of our countrymen fell in the sad conflict. The executioner's axe 
accomplished what the murderous sword spared, and poor England became a 
Wide, wide grave. The green-wood glade, the cultivated fields, noble castles, and 
Smiling villages were changed/ to churchyard and tomb: want, famine and hate 
ravaged the fated land. My lord, I love not Tudor, but I love my country: and 
now that I see plenty and peace reign over this fair isle, even though Lancaster be 
their unworthy viceregent, shall I cast forth these friends of man, to bring back 
the deadly horrors of unholy civil war? By the God that made me, I cannot! I 
have a dear wife and lovely children, sisters, friends, and all the sacred ties of 
humanity, that cling round my heart, and feed it with delight; these I might 
sacrifice at the call of honour, but the misery I must then endure I will not inflict 
on others; I will not people my country with widows and orphans; nor spread the 
Wh 7 The Duchess of Norfolk Surrey's kinswoman, attests to the fac~ that Richard is 
0 he claims to be, as he had m~ed her daughter in a childhood wedding. 
236 
plague of death from the eastern to the western sea." (195 [II. 146-71) 
Shelley call . 
s up tropes and images from her previous political novels, Valperga and 17ze 
last Man t ·11 . 
' 
0 1 
ustrate Surrey's condemnation of war: "want, famine and hate," "deadly 
hon-ors " a d " 
' n the plague of death" are all the fruits of war, in comparison with the 
Pastoral im S 
age urrey presents of England. Surrey's bucolic images of "the green-wood 
glade the 1 · 
' cu tivated fields, noble castles, and smiling villages" are a standard happy 
description of Eng1and;8 his devotion to "a dear wife and lovely children, sisters, friends" 
is a Sim.il 1 
ar Y standard chivalric attitude. But when Surrey focuses on the "cultivated 
fields" 
a
nd peoples the pastoral landscape with "friends, and all the sacred ties of 
human·t . 1 Y, that clmg round my heart, and feed it with delight" he begins to suggest the 
foUndations of utopian domesticity that the benevolent Richard, despite the legitimacy of 
his Chiv<>J..: . 
u.1.uc claims, cannot refute. 
In The Last Man, Shelley creates a similar picture of the survivors' last winter in 
England, in Which she connects chivalry and "patriarcha1"9 simplicity (Last Man 240 [II. 
318
-
19]). In both cases, the simple life she pictures is contrasted with horrors--in The 
last Man, With the Plague, and here, with civil war. In The Last Man, Shelley was 
Willing t d d hi hi al 0 suggest that chivalry, even with its restrictively gendere an erarc c 
aspects, Ill.ight play a part in such simplicity. But in Perkin Warbeck, she argues that 
Chivalry · ·.c. f G d . ' S. Le can be only destructive to peace. Marguente, the w11e o O wm s t. on, 
often re · Ii · f garded as a tribute to Mary Wollstonecraft, argues that the s1mp city o peasant 
life if · d · · t 1 d 
' combined With refinement of taste and intellectual stu Y, is supenor O uxury an 
-------------
En 8 ~ee for example similar language in Felicia He~ans 's ~m, "The Ho!Iles of 
gland, published in Records of Woman (1828), and discussed m Chapter Eight. 
bier: ~ Shelley seems to use the term "patriarchal" not so much to ~escribe a 
hu archi.caJ social structure but to indicate its resemblance t~,th~ soc!al. structures o~ early 
· man history God . ' th t " atn'archal simplicity with s1m1lar connotations in the 8 • wm uses e enn p peech of Marguerite quoted below. 
237 
Chivalry; 
"Le 
t us at length dismiss artificial tastes ... Here we are surrounded with sources 
of happiness. Here we may live in true patriarchal simplicity. What is chivalry, 
What are military prowess and glory? Believe me, they are the passions of a mind 
depraved, that with ambitious refinement seeks to be wise beyond the dictates of 
sentiment or reason! ... The splendour in which we lately lived has its basis in 
oppression; and ... the superlluities of the rich are a boon extorted from the 
hunger and misery of the poor! ... How cumbrous is magnificence! The 
moderate man is the only free ... . I put in my claim for refinements and luxuries, 
but they are the refinements and purifying of intellect, and the luxuries of 
uncostly, simple taste .... There is no character more admirable than the patriot-
Yeoman, who unites with the utmost simplicity of garb and manners an 
understanding fraught with infonnation and sentiment and a heart burning with 
th
e love of mankind." (85-87)10 
-Marguerite argues against military prowess, glory and ambition, and for the cultivation of 
k:nowleda · · · · In thi G d · l:)e 10 an environment conducive to a simple existence. s passage, o wm 
seeks to . 
encapsulate the positive aspects of domesticity he felt were revealed to him by 
Mary Wollstonecraft; and this lesson is well-learned by Mary Shelley, as exemplified in 
Sun-ey's speech. 
Even the dowager queen, Elizabeth Woodville, Richard's mother, who tutors him 
With her final instructions to seek the throne of England, yearns for the kind of simplicity 
advocated by Marguerite: "Ah! were I a cottager . .. I should collect my young ones 
around me, and forget sorrow. I should toil for them, and they would learn to toil for 
-----------
tow 10 Jlrewer calls attention to this speech in his discussion ?f She!ley's attitude 
frornard chivalry, but he argues that Marguerite, though cond~mnmg chivalry, benefits the respectful attitude toward women that it engenders m St. Leon C1 99-2oo). 
238 
Ille. How sw t h 
ee t e food my industry procured for them, how hallowed that which their 
maturer stre th 
ng would bestow on me. I am the mother of princes. Vain boast!" (46 [I. 
102]). Wood ·11 ' 
vi e s speech reveals the most basic structure of utopian domesticity--the 
bo
nd
s of love that unite individuals in selfless, shared labor--but in this instance, perhaps 
due to herd 
eeply entangled political past, her labor is less selfless than Shelley's ideal, 
andshedes .b 
en es more of a reciprocal, almost contractual, agreement. It is this sort of 
tutelage th 
at ensnares Richard, through the chivalric bonds of honor and respect, to 
Illaki . 
ng his claims for the throne, even though the majority of the ''friends" whose wishes 
for a Yo :lei . 
r st king he attempts to fulfill, are killed as a result. After his disastrous alliance 
With th
e Scots, Richard realizes the mistakes of his upbringing: "Oh, my mother, my too 
kind friend 
s, why did ye not conceal me from myself? Teaching me lessons of 
humbleness · · · · · ld h 
, reanng me as a peasant, consigning me to a cloister, my m1unes wou ave 
died With . . 
me, and the good, the brave, the innocent, who have penshed for me, or 
through 
me, had been spared" (258 [II. 3161). 
Richard's answer to Surrey, perhaps his most damning moment, exhibits the 
Worstp · . 
nnciples of chivahy: 
"By my fay!" he cried, "thou wouldst teach me to turn spinster, my lord: but oh, 
cousin Howard! did you know what it is to be an exiled man, dependant I on the 
bounty of others; though your patrimony were but a shepherd's hut on a wild 
nameless common, you would think it well done to waste life to dispossess the 
usurper of your right." (195-6 [II. 147-8]) 
In this an · 'f " t[· J rti " h swer, Richard insists that his "right" would even JUSti Y was mg 1 e -- e 
does not specify whether he means others, or his own. His "right" would justify such a 
Waste not only in the case of the ruling of a .kingdom, but even if his inheritance were 
lllerely "a shepherd's hut on a wild nameless common"--an echo of the savage state of 
Lionel Vemey who lived as a shepherd and rogue before his restoration to civilization by 
239 
Adrian Ri h 
· c ard also unconsciously refutes the benefits of the common--he must control 
his propen 
Y solely, not share it with others in community. Even his oath, a degradation 
Of "b 
y my faith," is inferior to Lord Surrey's heartfelt "by the God that made me." 
Fina11y h . . 
' e implies that to be a spinster or a dependant--that is, to slip from the masculine 
Position de 
manded of him by the rigidly gendered chivalric system--would be unbearably 
degradin Thr 
g. oughout the novel, Richard blindly refuses to accept his lack of real 
Power, and wastes life in repeated futile attempts to seize the throne. His horror of his 
own "fi .. 
emmized" position prevents him from acknowledging the truth to himself, thus 
Perpetuating his ambitious schemes. Shelley usually portrays cross-gender characteristics 
as reaJ str th . . . . 
eng s m her characters (for example, the mothenng tendencies of Adrian or 
GerardN . . . . . 
eviUe ); such a refusal to contemplate his sllp from a traditionally masculme 
genderp ·. 
osition may be Richard's greatest weakness. 
After his Scottish allies lay waste to several English villages near the border, 
Richard b . 
egins to repent of his designs on the throne. 
It ranks among the most painful of our young feelings, to find that we are justly 
accused of acting wrong. Our motives _ we believed them disinterested or 
justifiable .... Richard would have stood erect and challenged the world to 
accuse him _ God and his right, was his defence. His right! Oh, narrow and 
selfish was that sentiment that could see, in any right appertaining to one man the 
excuse for the misery of thousands .... His track was marked by ruin: the words 
of Lord Surrey/ were fulfilled. (252 [Il. 299-3001) 
Richard' · 1 · 'dl be th s idea of right here is painfully destroyed, as Shel ey VIVI y ars ou er 
husband's interpretation of the ramifications of the English Revolution in A Philosophical 
View ,-I' B · h b t 1 · 0J Reform: "A man has no right to be a King or a Lord or a 1s op u so ong as 1t 
is for the benefit of the People" (968). Richard's progress across the border is conflated 
With th th "hi " fi e progress of War itself--it even becomes unclear whether e pronoun . s re ers 
240 
to War or to Richard. 
In a scene · di · . 1mme ately following, the Monk who reared Richard's cousin, 
EcunundPJ t . 
an agenet, 1s found in a church in one of the ruined villages, and in an echo of 
Evadne's cu 
rse upon Raymond in The Last Man, curses Perkin Warbeck as a destroyer 
of England· "th ·11 
· e 1 -nurtured Perkin, to whom God in his wrath has given such a show of 
right. G 
· · od of my country, oh curse, curse him and his cause" (253 [II. 303]). This 
CUrse "utt 
ered by the murdered man was even then breathed before God, and accepted" 
(
253 
fll. 303]). In these passages Shelley radically destabilizes the idea of God by 
depJoyin . . 
git With multiple meanings. Richard's concept of God is deeply embedded in the 
Code of chi !! I ... , 
v-..J, which ensures him that his right to the throne is God-given; Richard 
sees God. 
in tenns of his own justification. Lord Surrey, on the other hand, sees God as a 
creator t . . . . 
' 
0 Whom he owes responsible stewardship of his subjects; this God supports a 
Peaceful . 
' utopian England, but also allows tyranny to remain unchecked upon the throne. 
Themonk. . 
'ironically, has the most negative vision of a wrathful God of curses; a 
'Y orkist, he had killed his own twin brother in civil war and become a monk to expiate 
thi 
s Crime Hi · · · h · L 
· s religion, then, is one of penance but also of partisan sc emmg. ater, 
though . . 
repentant, Richard still perceives God as part of the chivalric code that demands 
h· 
is right: "a Prince may not palter with the holy seal God affixes to him" (258 [II. 317]). 
~~ti· a1i ple deployment of the idea of God shows how Shelley refuses to gn herself 
With the · · · · f . h d conservative notion of an ultimate, supposedly divme arbiter o ng tan wrong, 
and· 
is a subtle sign of her prevailing alliance with radicalism. 
Katherine's friendship with Richard's sister, Elizabeth of York, is a second 
~~~ 1 • ~ 
or her to develop utopian domesticity. 1 Indeed, it is her practice at prov1 ng 
-----------in an _II ~nn M. Frank Wake recognizes that "female comI!1unity.sus~~ns these women 
perce~ten, impersonal environment in which their only ro~e is ~litical. Wake also 
(''sav IVes Katherine's love for Elizabeth, but submerges ~s motive beneath other goals 
e face, remain in Henry's court without shame, and, importantly, protect her dead 
241 
Comfort to her husband (but also at providing advice to her cousin, King James) that 
lllakes her su h 
c a good companion for the care-worn Elizabeth: 
The life of the Scottish Princess had been spent in administering balm to wounded 
minds: the same soft eloquence, the same persuasive counsels, that took the sting 
of remorse from her royal cousin's conscience, was spent upon the long-hidden 
sorrows of the neglected wife, the humbled woman. From her own sensitive 
mind she culled the knowledge which taught her where and how peace and 
resignation were to be found. The piety that mingled with her talk was the 
religion of love; her philosophy was mere love; and it was the spirit of love, now 
kindling the balmy atmosphere of charity to many, now concentred in one point, 
but ever ready to soothe human suffering with its soft influence, that dwelt upon 
her lips, (345-6 rm. 204-5]). 
Ratbenne still focuses on resignation instead of action. 'To soothe human suffering" is 
her only goal, but it is the same as Adrian's highest aim in The Last Man. Shelley insists 
th
at Rathe · • · · · d" h · h d nne s ministry of love comes from "her own sensitive mm --t at 1s, s e oes 
not dep . . . 
end upon external, possibly biased, systems of religion or philosophy to tell her 
how to a t T f 1· · 'deal c · his is important because of Shelley's destabilization o re 1g10us 1 s, 
exemplified by different characters' apprehensions of God in Perkin Warbeck, and by 
Beatrice' . · · · h · Vi l B s conversion from superstitious mysticism to Patenn eresy m arperga. y 
allowing Katherine to develop her code of conduct from within, Shelley attempts to 
shelte . f f d 
r It rom the stigma of political bias--even though an internal code o con uct can 
ProbabJ . 
Y never be completely free of ideological blinders. 
-----husband~.------- h"l ·fi · h s reputation") · th t K therine ''fulfills a duty to others w 1 e sacn 1cmg 
lll~~Wn desire" (249). ·B~f~~°Jie caon:ary, Katherine states, "I must love and be loved. I 
Wan feel that my dear and chosen friends are happier through me. When I ha"'.e 
lacte der~d out of myself in my endeavour I to shed pleasure around, I mus)t agam ret_urn 
has fu Wtth ~e gathered sweets on which I feed and live~' (400 filI: 35341 · Kathenne 
und fnends in the hostile court, and happiness amidst her gnef. 
242 
Another point of similarity between the friendship of Euthanasia and Beatrice in 
Va!perg d 
a, an that of Katherine and Elizabeth, is Elizabeth's bitterness at having lost her 
true love th E 
' e arl of Warwick, and having spent years manied to the cold and cruel King 
lfenry El' 
· Izabeth echoes Beatrice's Paterin heresy when she says, 
"G . 
od has delivered the innocent into the hands of the cruel; the cruel to whom 
mercy is as unknown, as, methinks, it is even to the awful Power who rules our 
miserable lives .... It is a bad world ... I am not pure, not innocent; much you 
mistake me ... Wicked, impious thoughts harbour in my heart, and pollute my 
soul··· Sometimes I hate my beautiful children because they are [Henry's]; 
sometimes in the dark hour of night, I renounce my nuptial vow, and lend ready, 
Willing ear to fiendish whisperings which borrow [Warwick's] voice ... "(387 
rm. 316]) 
Elizabeth has the advantage over Beatrice that her mind has not been destabilized by 
superstiti 
on, but the disadvantage that she is linked for life to a cruel husband who has 
Powero h h B 
ver er and her children. But Katherine has the power to console er. Y 
convers· . · Ing and finding fellowship with Katherine, Elizabeth's bitterness 1s poured out: 
''I t Was 'f Kath · 'th as 1 she emptied a silver chalice of its gall, to be refilled by enne WI 
heavenly dew" (346 [2051). Although Elizabeth's bitterness recurs, and her predictions 
of lfenry• · · d · de d s refusal to be merciful are accurate--W arw1ck and Richaz; are m e put to 
death--Katherine refuses to desert her, and still hopes that some good may come of her 
Presenc · 
e m the Tudor court. 
Before Richard, s execution, Katherine and Elizabeth visit Richatid in jail, and 
Elizabeth asks Richard to grant her Katherine's company as his last boon: 
"Years of peace, almost of happiness, in exchange for a life of bitter loneliness 
and suffering. you, my dearest Lord, .know the celestial goodness of that fair 
ll7L1·te R · d . d ·i have known 1·t· - I amidst the cold deceits n- n ose; m a vers1ty an pen you ' 
243 
of a court Sh h . 
· e as vowed never to return to her native land, to bear a questioned 
name among her peers; or perhaps to be forced by her father to change it for one 
abhorred. Though she must hate me as the wife of her injurer, yet where can she 
better be than with your sister? . . . On my knees do I implore you to bid her not 
to leave me, a dead-alive, a miserable, bereft creature, such as I was ere I knew 
her love." (393-4 [III. 335]) 
With this . 
speech, Elizabeth rewrites the tragedy of Beatrice. Instead of repining over the 
Wreck ofro . 
mantic love, Elizabeth relies upon female friendship. Katherine does not 
respond in words to Elizabeth's request, but gives her hand, as in token of marriage; 
Elizabeth 
responds, "you are mine forever" (394 [ill. 336]). Despite Euthanasia's loving 
friendshi . 
P, Beatnce suffers insanity and death, unable to recover from the many betrayals 
and abuses she has suffered. Elizabeth, however, survives. Shelley notes that ''The King 
underrated th . . 
e talents of Elizabeth. This hapless woman had perce1ved that contention 
~~. . 
ss, she therefore conceded every thing without a struggle. Her energies, spent 
Upon endttt b K th · d 'th ance, made her real strength of mind seem tameness; ut a enne rea w1 
clearer " 
eyes (346 [ill.207]). Elizabeth gains a friend in Katherine of far greater worth 
than husb d · k uld an or lover: Elizabeth notes than even her true love, Warw1c , wo expect to 
finct so . . 
meone she no longer resembles, while Kathenne recogruzes her strengths and 
console h h · b f h 
s er for her weaknesses. Furthermore, Elizabeth grants Kat enne a oon o er 
own. In begging Katherine from Richard, Elizabeth provides her with a home and 
remov h · b h f. th es er from the masculine exchange economy--she will not be given Y er a er 
to a new man. 12 
The relationship of Katherine and Elizabeth within the code of chivalry embodies 
a contradiction that Elizabeth has to negotiate: as sisters-in-law the customs of chivalry 
hers _12 Katherine has already vowed never to return to Scotland, where, she would put 
elf Into her "ambitious father's hands, to be bartered away to anotber' (3o3 [III. 911). 
244 
establish them ki . . 
as n, g1vmg them the right to associate, but they should be regarded as 
enemies ace di 
oi ng to those same customs because Elizabeth's husband is the mortal 
ene.rny ofK th . ' 
a enne s. The code of chivalry breaks down, and Elizabeth fonnulates a new 
bond the te . 
' nns of which chivalry does not dictate, based on the older (patriarchal) model 
of .rnam 
age. aut this a new, re-envisioned maniage predicated on the bond of woman-to-
Wo.rnan ti . ds . 
nen hip, a freely chosen bond of affinity which overturns chivalry to establish 
Uto · Pian domesticity. 
Once Elizabeth and Katherine are joined, Shelley significantly revises history to 
i.rnply utopian p ·b·1· · · · ed 13 Th ti · d hi · d oss1 1 1ties, some that m reality never occlll!i . e nen s p enJoye 
by the two women crucially expands to effect good for the larger community in which 
th
ey live th · gh · · 1503 f 
-- e nations of England and Scotland as well (throu the union m o 
Elizabeth' 
s daughter Margaret with Katherine's cousin James IV as noted below). The 
histonca1 K th . . p ki 
a enne Gordon remanied three times after her first marnage to er n 
Warbeck b t th' · th •i.&. "Kath · 
' u 1s Katherine will not--she belongs to Elizabe 1orever. enne 
explains . th . . . . ~ 
in e final chapter that she feels her nature to be divided between gnevmg 1or 
her lost h b · th h gh · us and, and continuing to do good while she lives. She states at, t ou 1t 
Illight be p · · h " ' d ati· n " erce1ved as a weakness, or as merely due to er womans e uc O , 
SY.rnpathy with others is the most sacred human duty: "Call it love, charity or sympathy, it 
is the be . . 1 h 'th 
st, the angelic portion of us .... The more entirely we mmg e our emouons w1 
those of others, making our well or ill being depend on theirs, the more completely do we 
ca
st 
away selfishness, and approach the perfection of our nature" (398 fill. 348D· 
I(athenne remains with Elizabeth and sympathizing with her, becomes a kind of co-
Parent: 
------------
ide 131/topian feminist writers often use the realm of 5<::ie~ce fiction to explore their 
kn as, and m SF this type of divergence from historical reality is commonplace and 
0
Wn as "alternate universe" fiction. 
245 
"together we turned to fulfil our duties. She had children; they became as dear to 
me as to her. Margaret I cherish as the betrothed bride of my ever-dear cousin, the 
Ki 
ng of Scotland; and, when I endeavour to foster the many virtues nature has 
implanted in the noble mind of Prince Arthur, I am ... doing my part to bestow 
on the England [Richard] loved, a sovereign who will repair the usurper's crimes 
a
nd bestow happiness on the realm." (399-400 fill. 3511) 
The hi . st
oncal prince Arthur dies in 1502, only three years after Richard's death in 1499, 
but I(athe . 
nne states that "years have past since then" (399 [ill. 3501); as editor Doucet 
Devinp· h 
Isc er states, "The retrospective character and reflective tone of [Katherine's] 
confession suggest that it was made many years after Warbeck's death in 1499" (399 
note), 1
4 
Unlike Euthanasia and Beatrice, Katherine and Elizabeth together survive the 
death of th . . . . 
e man whose story brings them together. And Shelley 1magmes England m an 
age of. . . 
Justice ruled by a king appropriately named Arthur, who has been reared according 
to the 
precepts of utopian domesticity by his mother and her friend, instead of by a father 
depicted b 
Y Shelley as cruel and tyrannical. 15 
Other women characters in the novel are far less passive than the resigned and 
sadden d K al f . 
e atherine and Elizabeth, yet they do less to promote the go s o utopian 
domesti · · · hi · Sh · bl city. Lady Brampton is a fascinating figure of political mac nations. e 1s a e 
to befriend Elizabeth Woodville despite her euphemistic "friendship" with Edward N , 
and is a ti · · · f Ri h d to reless Y or.kist partisan, even figuring m the mtroduction o c ar 
I<athe · furth h · 
nne. Despite her loyalty to Richard, she is one of the figures who ers is 
dest:ru ti . fi h 
c ve ambition. The repentant Jane Shore is another recumng igure w 0 
-------------
I<ath . 14 ~isa Hopkins notes the discrepancy be twee~. tone ~d histf~cal fa~!· (~13)ng 
enne s hopes in contributing to Arthur's rearing the bttterest O trorues · 
15 Inter:esti' 1 b · · · Arthur as Herny VII's successor, Shelley writes out "D- ng y, y wntmg m . d al h · 
.qenry VIII, famous for disposing of the wives who fatl to pro uce m e eirs. 
246 
repeatedly offi . 
ers refuge to Richard, in order to "atone" for her affair with Richard's 
father. Jane' h 
s ovel on the Shore of the Thames seems to appear almost magically when 
R.ichard tw· 
ice seeks refuge after escaping from the Tower (190-192, 352-59). Although 
Jane has dee 1 · . . 
P Y internalized her sense of wrong-doing, these mtervals are most 
significant b . 
ecause Mo~una. and Lady Brampton offer no accusation to her for her offense 
against Ri h , 
c ard smother, a form of forgiveness Jane craves. 
Jane's hovel is also significant as an ironic comment on the ideal of the English 
cottag --h . 
e ers is the only English hospitality Richard can rely upon. It acts both as a site of 
Utopian d . . . 
omestic1ty--a place where Richard's adoptive "family" of supporters, mostly 
Women, can meet in order to plan and cany out the ideas which they believe are best for 
England--and a mockery of the very concept: because Richard has no real support in 
England th 
' e schemes of his supporters to place him on the throne threaten to upset the 
Stability and · · · d h peace of England to no good effect. Utopian domesticity 1s represente ere 
as an achievable ideal--it would be possible for Richard to devote his talents to social 
good, Were he to renounce his ambitions and rely on his friends for support outside the 
country. But the bonds uniting his friends are politically motivated and tenuous--they 
reJy on th · ffi al fi · 
e very misplaced hopes that fashion Richard as an me ectu tgure--corrupting 
the Uto · Ptan scene in its very heart. 
Monina de Faro is by far Richard's most active supporter. Devoted to Richard's 
cause, she is willing to sacrifice her own deeper feelings for him in order that he may wed 
I(athe · · d 
nne to advance his political hopes. Monina travels, arranges meetmgs, an 
constantly hazards her own safety for Richard, throwing into question the gendered 
assumptions of chivalry regarding women's need for protection. Like Lady Brampton, 
She takes political agency into her own hands, but this serves only to encourage Richard's 
ambition. 
The character of Monina exists not just to act as Richard's partisan, but to reveal 
247 
the diffi 
erences between Richard and Clifford. Clifford resembles Castruccio in his false 
attempts to . . 
wm the innocent maiden:16 "What such men as Clifford feel is not love: he 
had no real f . . 
nendsh1p for the innocent girl .... she spoke ... of his duties to God and 
man · 
' violated but t . . 
no irretrievably, and with soft persuasion entreated him to spare those 
Whose live h . 
s ung upon h1s ,•1ord" (169 [II. 761). Monina resembles Beatrice in her 
enthusiasti 
c speech: " let me be a voice only," she says to Clifford as he attempts to woo 
her With th 
e semblance of courtly love. 17 Monina's resemblance to a prophetic oracle 
lllakes Clifford painfully aware of her spiritual truthfulness, causing him to feel the 
oracular effects himself: ''The melodious voice of Monina, attuned by the divine impulses 
of hers . . 
Ptnt, as the harp of the winds by celestial breezes, raised a commotion in his 
lllind,such 
as a prophetess of Delphi felt, when the oracular vapour rose up to fill her 
w· 1th 
sacred fu.ry" (151 [II. 261). Although Monina is gentle, the corrupted Clifford feels 
battered by h . . dri hi . . 
er virtue, which is at least part of the goad that continues to ve m m his 
down 
Ward spiral. The sacred fwy of the oracle should remind Shelley's readers not only 
Of Beam 
ce, but also of the Sybilline frame of The Last Man, as well as Evadne's 
ass0ciar · 10ns W1th the oracular when she prophesies the Plague. 
It is key to Shelley's political system that Monina offers Clifford forgiveness and 
achan .&. • 
ce to repent, but instead he attempts to cany her away by force. Ai ter this, she 
------------
Ce . 16 Cl!fford also resembles the corrupt priest Orsino of !'ercy Sh_ell~y's play, The 
pe~cz, especially in his attempt to leave his identity behind: ''.Like all eVJ1-dispos_ed 
ret; ons, _he had no idea of purging himself from the foul stam by frank confession. and 
tar::!TUation: his project was to begin a new career in a new country: to go where his own 
tshed reputation was unknown" (198 [II. 155]). 
drew 17 Monina responds generously to Clifford's unwelcome ~dvances: "Monina 
adher back, replying, gently, 'I am the partizan, the vo~ed conspirator for a cause, whose 
b ents Walk as over/ the thread-broad bridge spannmg an unfathomable gulph · · · I 
y~seech you, as you are a gentleman, reserve your fair speeches for the fortunate ladies of Ill: native land. I will be a beacon-light to guide you, a clue for your use throu~ a 
Onl :,~ landmark to point your way; meanwhile forget me as I am; let me be a vo1ce 
y, (142 [Il. 4-5]) 
248 
refers to hi " 
mas unworthy man" (169 [II. 771) and "that bad man": when Clifford 
attempts to blackm.,,;1 th . . . . hi ld d M 
= e conspirators mto givmg m both go an onina, she 
answers 
' 
"M Y father Will make my ransom good . . . . Answer that bad man ... thus: 
Monina will wed death, rather than crime and treason .. . . It were enough to 
dri 
ve a poor girl to eternal vows and a convent, to dream that such words are 
spoken of her, and if I do not take that refuge, it is because I will not desert my 
dear, fond, bereaved father." (199 [II. 157-8]) 
Dnderth . 
e Code of chivalry, Monina must be protected by some man or another and relies 
Upon her father; Clifford mocks this system of protection by using it falsely. Although 
.R.i 
chard hates Clifford for his insults to Monina, he is not her protector. Because of 
por. 
itics, she can be no more to Richard than his partisan. Monina attempts to equalize the 
benefit she · · hi ·th hi d receives from her father's protection, creating a partners p wi man 
reaffimung their bond of love by providing him with her companionship; of course, the 
Only other h · · " fu " f" al c 0 ice chivalry offers her is the decidedly less attractive re ge o etern 
vows and a convent" or even death. 
In the love between Richard and Monina, Shelley recapitulates the Romantic 
f ascinati · f 1i · 'Th h d li d on with sibling love, but this love is quelled because o po tics: ey a ve 
n(j 
i e near relations from their childhood; that were sufficient to raise the flame that shed so 
bright 1 · gh f S . h a ight over her soul: that he was a prince, and she the dau ter O a parus 
lllafiner, forbade their union" 045 [II. 131). Under the code of chivalry, Richard is 
Praise · · hi liti al al Worthy for overcoming his love for Monina and subdwng it to s po c go s. 
Thou h ~ "li · rt g she assents to this, Monina is nevertheless shown to suuer; vmg i e near 
reJati ' r . . . 
ons ' is a stronger argument for love, in Shelley's eyes, than po itics are agamst it. 
Beca · a1ri od M · · Use of her unrequitable love for Richard within the chiv c c e, oruna is a 
Perpetual maiden, and her self-image denies physicality, even to the point of prophesying 
249 
her own death "f Ri 1 chard should die. In her oracular speech and her passionate love for 
Richard Mo . 
' runa resembles the Byronic heroes Beatrice and Evadne, and in her suffering 
and prophes. f 
Ies o her own death she resembles Mathilda in the role of improvisatrice. But 
Unlike these characters, Monina submits her love to the controls of reason and is not 
given overt 0 madness. Monina 's death is indirectly reported and left in a degree of 
doubt· thi 
' s chance for her survival is perhaps because she has never suffered outright 
abandon 
mentor betrayal by her beloved. To this extent, Shelley allows, chivalry 
Structures s · . . . 
ociety sufficiently to allow a passionate attachment that does not end m the 
Woman's . . . . 
vict1.nuzat1on and complete destruction. 
The love between Monina and Richard, though based on a sibling-like bond, is 
glaringly . . 
one-sided and susceptible to defeat by mere ceremony, while the love of her 
father offi 
ers a measure of partnership. Although Monina travels alone all over Europe, 
Weaving he lf · F · th hi rse mto and out of perilous clandestine plots, De aro recogruzes at s 
daughte . " 
r IS unprotected" and fears to leave her behind in Scotland when he attempts to 
Voyage west (207 [II. 178]). Monina would prefer to remain with Richard, but convinces 
herself th . . . . . . 
at she nught find happiness JOurneymg with her father. Focusmg on her service 
to her father in giving him "delight,,, Monina promises herself the rewards of his joy; 
"I shall give delight to my dear father by accompanying him over the untrod 
Watery deserts .... The name of De Faro will be added to the list of those who 
bestow a new creation of supernal beauty on our out-worn world. He will call me 
the Partner of his glory: and, though that be a vain word, his dark eyes will flash 
With joy. My dear, dear father! Should the Prince succeed and ascend his rightful 
throne, more impassable than that wide sea would be the gulph which ceremony 
Would place between us." (207 [II. 180]) 
In co · • 1 · hi 'th Ri h d ntrast to the conditional and unreliable nature of Monina s re anons p w1 c ar ' 
the 1 th 'b'lity f anguage linking De Faro and his daughter repeatedly denies e poss1 I o 
250 
desertion 18 Wh' . 
· lle chivalry generally accords power to the man, who protects the 
Wo.rnan, and D F . 
e aro certamly makes his love for Monina concrete by daring rescues in 
addition to c . . . . . . 
anng attention, Moruna also figures herself m a position of power in their 
relationshi b . 
P Y asserang her own volition in accompanying her father for his benefit. 
Heman de Faro resembles the war.for farmer Guinigi in his enlightened love of 
Peace andh' . 
is devotion to a simple, hard-working way of life. De Faro, a Moor reared by 
Christian 
monks, has a horror of civil war and refuses to fight: "more humanity than 
belonged t th 0 at age, wanned his heart. He remembered that he was a Moor: whenever he 
saw a Moslem prisoner in chains, or a cavalgada of hapless women driven from their 
native towns to slavery, the blood in his veins moved with instinctive horror" (88 [I. 
209
]). The De Faros' home, Alcala-la-Real, is a mountain stronghold in Andalusia 
depicted b . . Y Shelley as a natural paradise and something of a haven from the fightmg 
between Chri ti. · 'bl · f · s ans and Moors in Spain. Alcala-la-Real remams a possi e site o utopian 
retreat in Rich d' b th . . . 
ar s eyes, but its utopian potential is undercut y e trammg m war 
Richard · . . . 
receives m Andalusia, under the tutelage of his cousm Edmund Plantagenet, and 
by the d 
eath of Madeline de Faro who is killed when fighting suddenly intrudes there. 
Unfortunately, De Faro is convinced to swear a chivalric oath of allegiance to 
.Richard, taking up his sword in Richard's defence (82 [I. 1951). In his bloodiest moment 
De Faro appears at Richard's side in the attack on the Irish city of Wate.rforcl: 
A blow was struck at Richard which felled him; he lay stetched at De Faro's feet. 
Ere it could be repeated, the head of the assailant was cleft by a Moorish scymitar. 
With furious strength, De Faro then hurled his weapon among the soldiers; the 
unexpected act made them recoil; he lifted up the I insensible fonn of Richard with 
----------this f. 18 After his wife is killed, De Faro states, ''Thou wilt not desert me; we will leave 
s ,, ated spot: and th M . .11 ail for ever with thy father on the less barbarous ea (9S [I. 2291). ou, oruna, w1 s 
251 
th
e power of an elephant; he cast him into the near waves, and leapt in after .... 
He reached the Adalid ... his own men raised Richard revived, now, but feeble 
' 
~h . 
er worn deck; and he [De Faro] on board her well-known planks, felt superior 
to every sovereign in the world. (286 [ill. 47-8]) 
Despite th b 
e loody nature of the passage, De Faro's primary function here is to rescue 
Richard 
' and De Faro comes to represent retreat from war even as he is understood to be 
an aweso · . 
me, 1rres1stible wanior. Using his large size, power, and uncanny swiftness, De 
Faro makes three impomi:nt rescues striking in their similarity. First, De Faro saves 
Monina fr, Cl. . 
om 1fford as he attempts to kidnap her, and second, he rescues Richard from 
the defe di 
n ng forces at Waterford. The third time, attempting to save both Monina and 
Ri 
chard from Clifford's treachery, De Faro successfully rescues Monina but not Richard. 
These repe ted . ·1 
a rescues emphasize that Monina and Richard occupy a s1mz ar, protected 
Position 'th · . h d 
wi m the codes of chival.zy--the ve.zy position of dependancy Ric ar 
expostuJ t · d D O ' a es against so vehemently in his response to Surrey. In the en , e raro s real 
love for h" da · · lfh 
. Is ughter outweighs his chivalric oath to Richard. The oath 1tse as 
lrOnica]J . ' .c. th Y overshadowed the fact that De Faro is actually Richard s foster-1a er--a 
~~ . . 
c bond undercutting and weakening the utopian potential of a bond created m 
SY.rnpathy.19 
De Faro's ship, the Adalid, represents a nearly ever-present option of retreat, 
highJigh . . al d hi tran ting Richard's stubborn insistence upon striving for his go an s s ge 
Optilllism that success is somehow near. De Faro and the Adalid appear time after time to 
save I) ~ h · b f 
'-'JC ard, to bear him or his supporters away. The Ada11d appears as a eacon o 
Safety •• "I have ever found best safety on the wide ocean sea" states De Faro (289 [III. 
-------------
'd 19 The De p , h b . f Richard was of course made necessary by his 
J entity as the aros ~ onng o e ossible by Madeline Warbeck de Faro's 
sylllpath fi sought-for Prince, but was mad p . d d h of her deceased nephew Whose . Y ~r the homeless and hunted boy, who re.mm e er 
Identity he assumed. 
252 
56D--thou h it i · . 
g s sometimes fleeting and evasive. 20 The sea has always before in 
Shelley's novels b l"nk . . . 
een 1 ed, 1f not with outright death, then with troubled uncertainty. 21 
But the ve dan 
1Y gers Shelley associates with the sea emphasize the peace and 
Coznpanionship ffi d . . 
p O ere by the Ada11d m contrast to Richard's constant wannaking. De 
aro creates a t . . . . 
u opian respite m the Adalid that is al\.\-ays threatened by the hostile 
elenient, Yet al . 
. ways survives. The Ada.lid offers safety and comraderie, but is most often 
S1znpl y an escape ro t Th . . 
u e. 1s 1s not to suggest that the utopian domesticity represented by 
the .A.rl ~ 1. · 
U<llld is " · " 
. escapist --to the contrary, the ship represents an "out" for Richard, offering 
h1ni an alt . 
ernative to war that he persistently misuses. 
The fate of De Faro and Monina is uncertain. Though Monina decides to travel 
WithDep 
aro, they return to England because she falls ill. Their final departure takes 
----- ------
Michael~o When Katherine awaits news of Richard's Cornish campaign on Saint 
Burgund s.~(runt, Monina anives on "the safety-Jade_n Adali~ t~ bear her to the shores of 
Unfortun Y 33 filI. 1721), or to Beaulieu, where Richard lies m sanctuary, but 
by lie ~tely a sudden wind drives the caravel out to sea and Katherine is taken prisoner 
When ~ s men. Katherine openly states the safety and ut~pian potenti_al of the Adalid 
enibark: lllpared to the doomed Cornish campaign upon which Richard 1s about to 
~'The narrow decks of yonder caravel were, methinks, a kindlier ~ome [than 
I ngland]: may we go on and prosper; but, if we fail, my Lord will pardon ( me, if 
Welcome the day when I embark again on the Adalid; to find, when the w1de 
;~proves false, safety and happiness on the free waves of ocean." (295 [ill. 
Even Ri J) . 
United . chard finally gets the picture: ''The Adalid and safety are 1mages most fmnly 
''be he)i my mind;" he begs Monina to find Katherine if he fails and allow the Adalid to 
ome and refuge" (304 [III. 94-51). 
darkn 21 Vict?r Frankenstein perishes aboard ship, and the Creat~ vanishes in 
hj8 icee~ and di_stance in the Arctic Ocean, promisi~g to iI!1Illolate _hi~lf on a pyre on 
Northe oe, wh1le Walton is met with mutiny and disappointment 1~ his ~earch (or a 
Euth rn. se.a passage. Mathilda• s father commits suicide by drowru_ng himself m the sea. 
last t:asia 1s exiled to an island but drowned in a stollll en r?ute. L1?n.el Verney loses his 
for a se companions to a sudden stonn, and then disappears mto (!bliVJon as he prepares 
.B,,.. . a voyage. Lord Lodore though not threatened by the sea, is an unreformed J.1.0n1c fi ' hi ak ta 1 Wate:rf ~gure whose passionate nature is reflected by s names e, a spec . cu ar 
F'aJkn all m the Lake District· Niagara Falls figures as a virtual backdrop to his fatal duel. 
er loses his beloved Allthea to the tides. 
253 
Place after th f. ·1 
ey ai to make good Richard's final escape attempt, and the only further 
infonnatio 
n we learn about their fate afterwards is based on hearsay. Indeed, Shelley 
reports the fate of the De Faros twice, once before Richard's death and once some time 
later. Shell 
ey shrouds the circumstances of Monina 's death in mystery and casts some 
doubt upo · 
n its occurrence. Katherine is told by Edmund Plantagenet that a sailor told him 
that he was " h 
s own an humble tomb, half-defaced; her dear sacred name is carved upon 
it, and half 
the date, the 14-- ... She could not have/ survived our Prince many months; 
Probably she died before him, nor ever knew the worst pang of all, the ignominy linked 
~thhi . 
s beloved memory" (397 fill. 344-51). The fact that the year has not been filled in 
casts a . . . great deal of doubt on the reality of Monma's death. Monma has certamly suffered 
becaus fh 
e O er enforced separation from Richard and avowedly longs for death (374 [IlI. 
282]) but Edm · f M . ' de th b 
' und 1s perhaps too quick to believe the report o onma s a , ecause 
of his com 1 . M . ' . P ete subscription to the code of chivalry. For him, oruna s existence must 
SUrely 
come to a close along with that of her Prince, her foster brother, whom she loved. 
But as Lisa Hopkins reports (271 ), the tomb of the historical Katherine Gordon was built 
in Swan . 
sea even though she was never buried there; and Shelley herself had expenenced 
th
e mystery of graves when she had attempted to have her husband's ashes interred with 
th
e remains of her son William in Rome, and those remains could not be found. 
De Faro is "almost forgotten" but is reported to have "sailed for the Western 
~~ . 
es, and was never heard of more" (397 [III. 344]). His search for the West Indies 
Paral1 1 · d th de · · e s the desire of the Creature to create a utopia in South Amenca, an e scnpaon 
of the islands is distinctly paradisical, in contrast with the strife in England: "What more 
had th · · bl ·1ty · 1 d? [D e Moorish mariner and his daughter to do with this Jlllsera e, gw is an · e 
Faro] resolve[s] finally to quit the eastern world for the golden islands of the west" (374 
nn. 27l]). De Faro's desire to explore is in accord with his original claim to fame, as an 
exp1 · f th · rta1 
orer With Diaz: "De Faro's whole soul was set upon becoming one o ose immo 
254 
Pioneers wh 0 opened new paths across the unexplored West" (207 [Il. 178]). De Faro's 
association w'th 1 . . 
i co orualism casts a shadow of suspicion over his character, as does his 
daughter's · . 
Interpretation of his voyages with the desire for glory. Monina attempts to 
recuperate De Faro's . . b l'nki . 'th . . al ad h mission y i ng 1t w1 miss10nary ze , to spre er religion 
and to ''soft 
en, as best I may, the cruel Spaniard, and save the devoted people from their 
barbant " ( Y 374 [ID. 2721).22 By referring to the colonizers as "the cruel Spaniard" 
Monina u · . 
nwittmgly associates them in the reader's mind with her father. Metaphorically, 
Shelley 
connects De Faro with the elephant, as though she wanted to link him with this 
P0Werful natural inhabitant of the India he sought. As both Moor and Spaniard, fierce 
wazn 
or and tender parent, colonizer and mute (animal) native laborer, De Faro is a bundle 
of contradi . Ctions, and one of Shelley's most fascinating characters--certainly the most 
COfo.rful f h . 0 er characters to embrace many (though not all) of the tenets of utopian 
dornesticity. 
In Perkin Warbeck, Shelley presents her most nuanced response to the challenge 
Posed by t th Ri hard' Yranny to those advocating gradual refonn. Shelley agrees at c s 
stru
ggle for the throne is technically legitimate, but she uses her narrative to convey the 
rnessage that even legitimate claims to power may conupt. She complicates her novel by 
Portraying Heruy VII, Richard's rival, as cold and cruel--more so than historical records 
support. In pitting Richard against Herny Vil, Shelley pits an apparently virtuous hero 
against an apparently vicious tyrant. But Henry's policies, though vicious, do not create 
the havock and tunnoil around the country that Richard's do. Shelley might seem to argue 
that peace is Worth any cost, even the endurance of tyranny. But as Percy Bysshe Shelley 
Wrote· h ti' in A Philosophical View of Reform, "war, waged from w atever mo ve, 
extinguishes the sentiment of reason and justice in the mind" (1063). In her novel, 
--------------22 Shelley fu M . , yntax to cast some doubt on whether "barbarity" is 
a trait f con ses onma s s 1 S . d " 0 the "devoted [ doomed] people" or of ''the crue paruar · 
255 
Shelley su . 
ggests alternatives to war that can prevail against tyranny. The response of 
I<atherine a d Eli 
n zabeth, mediated by the restrictions placed on them by the gender roles 
Of the ti · . 
me, 1s to attempt to create utopian domesticity within the vezy household of the 
tYrant--a resp & •• 
onse 1anul1ar to us from the laudable example of Euthanasia, who attempted 
the same w·th h . 1 
er fnendship with Beatrice after the fall of Valperga. The response of 
IIernan de Faro, mediated by his training within the code of chivalry that urges its 
adherents toward war, is a position of defense and ready flight. He is pledged to serve 
Ri 
chard and does so loyally, but in general he retrieves Richard from warlike aggression 
ra
th
er than enc · · · · · · b ed h' b 1· f · hi ouragmg him m 1t. Richard's own acaons, as on 1s e 1e m s 
personal right to rule as king, rather than in response to the will of the English people, are 
Portrayed as both futile and ultimately wrong. Katherine's attempts to restrict Richard 
even to a m 1 1 hi · d d di · ere Y private domesticity are seen as preferab e to s continue e cation to 
Wazfare--both for his intimates and for the public at large. Surrey, who recognizes the 
legitimacy of Richard's claim, refuses to join him, basing his public policy on local, 
intimate · d · ·t concerns recognizable as the foundations of utopian omesticJ Y· 
Dtopian domesticity has its basis at the local and intimate level. As such, it is 
Often on a different scale from the problem of national tyranny and may seem like a retreat 
from public involvement, or like an unduly passive, rather than pacifist, response to 
Unten bl h 'd al' d · a e social conditions. And clearly, the home, no matter ow 1 e ize , is 
susceptible to violent destruction, as Richard learns to his dismay when his Scottish allies 
ravage the English villages near the border. But utopian domesticity is not painted in 
Perk'm · h Rth 't ' zn rrarbeck as merely a conservative reaction to revoluaonary c ange. a er 1 1s a 
rejection of both Richard's and Henry's petty schemes to power, and a system that 
overturns the ideas upon which chivalry is based. At the intimate level, Elizabeth's quiet 
end &&. • f · Urance of Heruy's cruelty and coldness exemplifies the suuenngs o women m 
restrictive domesticity. Her passivity is markedly relieved by the introduction of 
256 
Katherine . 
mto her world, and the utopian domesticity they fonn allows her to find new 
strength d 
an new hope that she may be able to effect change. Herny remains a tyrant, but 
his Power does not quell the possibility of improvement fostered by the two women in 
their ho e . . 
P s to rearm Arthur a more just successor. At a more public level, Surrey retreats 
froin war 
not because he supports Herny, but because he wishes to act for the good of his 
People. He does not believe Richard would be a better king than Herny simply because 
his Claiin . . .. 
is technically superior. He has witnessed the ravages of c1VJ1 war and sees no 
goOdreas ~ 
on 1or such destruction to begin again. 
Shelley is also willing to explore in Perkin Warbeck the possibility of a utopian 
doinesti . . . 
city based not on a traditionally fixed idea of the home, but on the 1tmerate 
ramblings f th Chri · · d M · 0 e mariner De Faro and his daughter. De Faro, a stiaruze oor, 1s 
•• 
UJUnoored" from his national origins and refuses to take part in the Spanish wars. Even 
as the chi .... ,..: · h' hi lf Vcu.uc values of his age shape him into a wamor, he refas 10ns mse as a 
figUre of defense, and his interventions pull Monina and Richard back from the brink of 
destruction several times. The Adalid, though threatened by the dangers and hardships of 
th
e sea · · al t · b 
, survives, and Monina and Hernan de Faro, m another terna e umverse, ecome 
figures f · 1 d th 0 potential hope, possible intercessors between the Western peop e an e 
Spaniard, Whose familiar cruelty they might be able to soften, or prevent. 
257 
Bennett, Betty T. 
"The Political Philosophy of Mary Shelley's Historical Novels: 
WORKSCITED 
Valperga and Perkin Warbeck." The Evidence of the Imagination: Studies of 
Interactions between Life and Art in English Romantic Literature. Ed. Donald H. 
Reiman, Michael C. Jaye, and Betty T. Bennett, with the assistance of Doucet 
Devin Fischer and Ricki B. Herzfeld. New York: New York UP, 1978. 
354-371. 
Blumber J 
g, ane. Mary Shelley's Early Novels: "This Child of Imagination and Misery. " 
Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 1993. 
Brewer w·ir 
' 
1 1am D. "William Godwin, Chivalry, and Mary Shelley's The Fortunes of 
Perkin Warbeck." Papers on Language and Literature 35 (1999): 187-205. 
Garbin L'di 
' 
1 a. "Mazy Shelley and Walter Scott: The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck and the 
Hist0rical Novel." Mary Shelleys Fictions: From Frankenstein to Falkner. Ed. 
Michael Eberle-Sinatra. Introd Nora Crook. New York: Macmillan; Houndmills, 
England: St. Martin's, 2000. 150-63. 
Godwin w ·11 · 
' 
1 1am. Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and its Influence on Modem 
Morals and Happiness. 1793, rev. 3d ed. 1798. Ed. Isaac Kramnick. New York: 
Penguin, 1976. 
--- St le 
· on. 1799. Ed. Pamela Clemit. New York: Oxford UP, 1994. 
flop.kins, Lisa. "The Self and the Monstrous." Iconoclastic Departures: Mary Shelley 
after Frankenstein: Essays in Honor of the Bicentenary of Mary Shelleys Birth. 
Ed. Syndy M. Conger, Frederick S. Frank, Gregory O'Dea, and asst. Jennifer 
Yocum. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson VP, 1997. 260-74. 
Shelley, Mary W. The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck, a Romance. 1830. Ed. Doucet Devin 
Fischer. The Pickering Masters: The Novels and Selected Works of Mary 
Shelley. General Editor Nora Crook with Pamela Clemit, Consulting Editor Betty 
258 
T. Bennett. Vol. 5. London: William Pickering, 1996. 
Shelley, Percy Bysshe. A Philosophical View of Reform. Transcribed and edited by 
Donald H. Reiman. Shelley and His Circle VI. Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard UP, 
1973. 
Wake, Ann M. Frank. "Women in the Active Voice: Recovering Female History in Mary 
Shelley's Valperga and Perldn Warbeck." Iconoclastic Departures: Mary Shelley 
after Frankenstein: Essays in Honor of the Bicentenary of Mary Shelley's Birth. 
Ed. Syndy M. Conger, Frederick S. Frank, Gregory O'Dea, and asst. Jennifer 
Yocum. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 1997. 235-59. 
259 
Utopian Dom a· . S . . 
es city as oc1aI Refonn m Shelley's Domestic Novels: 
Lodore and Falkner 
M . 
azy Shelley's last two novels, Lodore (1835) and Falkner (1837), are the 
clearest exam 1 . 
P es m her canon of utopian domesticity. Over the course of her career 
Shelley devel ' 
c . . oped a complex understanding of the utopian potential of domesticity, 
ntica11y ada . 
Pting and expanding upon the theories of Wollstonecraft and Godwin, and 
revising th . . 
e Romantic ideals, including the ideal of universal or Promethean love, 
exemplified . 
In the works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. 1 Through utopian domesticity, 
Shelley m d . . . 0 els a society m which both women and men focus the1r energy not toward 
aznb· · 
Ition and public power, but toward responsibilities within communities based on 
Personal rel . . 
ationsh1ps. Shelley rejects the idea that men and women should move in 
,, 
separate sphe.z;e " f · · ' · fl d b · · di s o power and mfluence, with men s m uence an am 1tion rected to 
th
e PUblic sphe11e d · · · d 'th th h U · thi an women's mfluence bemg contame w1 e ome. smg s 
refonn ideal, Shelley countered the restrictive patriarchal ideas of traditional domesticity, 
anct th 
e personal ambition, alienation and narcissism of masculinist Romanticism, while 
showin h . 2 g ow these ideological complexes may be revised to create utopia. 
Shelley demonstrated her understanding of the problems of traditional 
domestic · . . 
Ity In tragic works such as Frankenstein (1818) and Mathilda (c. 1819). She 
------------
Shene ,1 ¥Y understanding of the importance of Mary Shelley's engagement with Percy 
especi Y s Ideal of Promethean love is heavily influenced by the ~or~ of ~etty T. Be~nett, 
book :,y her article, "The Political Philosophy of Mary Shelley s Histoncal Novels and 
' ary Wollstonecraft Shelley: An Introduction. 
the tra ? _Ernst Bloch, in his monumental study, The Prjnciple _of Hope (195?), revises 
Uto . ditional Marxist critique of utopia to theorize that ideologies m~~ contam the seed of 
s0c:a, Utopian thought surpasses mere "wishful thi~n( b.y pro~1ding a goal for 
Ro ty !o. work toward. Such utopian thought may exist w1~n an ideology (su~h as 
une~~c1sm or domesticity), even though the ideology contams other problematic and 
a.ll]ined elements. 
260 
expanded her . . . . 
cntigue to mvesttgate the conflicts between domestic responsibilities and 
Public ambiti 
on for both men and women in her historical novels, Valperga (1823), The 
La
st 
Man 0826), and Perkin Warbeck (1830). In the 1830s, as the Victorian ideal of the 
" angel in the hou " . . . 
se was gammg cultural hegemony, Shelley used the radical theories of 
Wollstonecraft and Godwin in her last two novels to revise domesticity in order to create 
a utopian d 
mo el for society. Close readings of Lodore and Falkner will show how 
Shelley transfonn th "d 1 · "d ·t d · · d R · · · s e 1 eo ogies we now 1 entl y as omesttc1ty an omantic1sm m 
Order to b. 
nng about a perfected society with utopian domesticity at its core. 
Although Mary Shelley studies have enjoyed tremendous growth in recent years, 
Lodore and F. z,,__ h . . . al . 3 M . . h 
a ,veer ave only begun to receive cnttc attention. any cnttcs ave 
disregarded Ladore and Falkner as conventional domestic novels, perhaps due to a 
Prevalent perception that Shelley abandoned the radical challenges to contemporary beliefs 
that ch . ~ . 
aractenze her earlier work. For example, in his 1990 Approaches to Teaching 
Frank . 
enstezn, Stephen C. Behrendt gives the following synopses for Lodore and Falhzer: 
Lodore . ... A sentimental and loosely autobiographical novel written, apparently, 
to illustrate, within the workings of a social circle that includes recognizable 
members of Mary Shelley's own set, the author's stated view that the primary value 
of human life is to be found in "the genuine affections of the heart." 
Falkner . ... Another illustration of the primacy of the affections of the heart, the 
novel traces the history of a would-be suicide and the six-year-old orphan girl who 
prevents his self-destruction through a series of adventures in which natural 
benevolence triumphs over personal guilt to lead to separate, but related, lives for 
-----------V 3 The excellent editions of Lodore by Fiona Stafford (Picke:i!1g, 1996).and Lisa 
argo (Broadview, 1997) have already begun to encourage more cnttcal attention. 
261 
both · · pnnc1pal figures. 02_13)4 
Behrendt's 
synopses portray Shelley's final two novels as less than exciting even 
sub-literary. M . . . ' 
co ary Poovey m1tiated modem critical discussion of Falkner, seeing it as a 
nfinnation of Sh ' . 
elley s eventual confornnty to the propriety of the Proper Lady, while 
acknowled . . 
gmg the resistance and subversion Shelley is able to encode within the novel. 
she does not di ' 
scuss Lodore. Pamela Clemit, in her study of the Godwinian novel does 
not discuss Sh 11 ' ' . 
e ey s later novels, asserting that they "show an increased confonnity to 
social and fi . 
M: Inancial pressures" (139 note). The four most recent collections of essays on 
ary Shelley c · . Ontam rune articles between them discussing Lodore or Falkner, five of 
theserea hi 
c ng publication in 2000. 5 
Unfortunately, Lodore and Falkner have often figured as endpoints in a critical 
nao-ative of Sh 1 ' 
e ley s devolution away from radical intellectual engagement and toward 
conventi . 
onaltty and conservatism. In this narrative, Percy Shelley's influence was vital to 
the radical . 
content m Frcmkenstein, as well as to some extent in Mathilda and Valperga, 
and later n 
ovels became more and more conservative as time passed after Percy Shelley's 
-----------
Behren;t In h}s frank praise of Vargo's Broadview edition, appearing on the back cover, 
so.znetim revises his earlier statement: "Not the one book author that Frankenstein 
Whose es makes her seem Mary Shelley was a complex and committed social thinker 
dYnarzu~ovels reveaJ her d~p concern with the imI?act of~~ eme~ging Victorian social 
the com 1UP?n the lives of women ... This except10na1 edition will alert readers anew to P exity and sophistication of Shelley's mind and art." 
contaj s zne 1993 collection entitled The Other Mary Shelley: Beyond Frankenstein 
Fergu: 0 ui:teen articles, only two of which (by Barbara Jane O'Sullivan and Kate 
elsewh n Ellis) discuss Lodore or Falkner. Charlene E. Bunnell, who has also published 
F'alkne:re on Lodore (see Herrera et al, eds., 1997), contributed~ articl~ on Ladore and 
fro.zn the to the 1997 collection, Iconoclastic Departures. Lodore is conspicuously absent 
Assoc. . 2000 collection of essays drawn from the 1997 conference of the Keats-Shelley 
contn~~tion of ~erica, Mary Shelley in Her Times, while Be~y Be~nett there . 
Mary S~es ~ article that attends to Falkner. Michael ~rl~-Smatra s 2000 .collection, 
Shene , lley s Fictions: From Frcmkenstein to Falkner, indicates new attention to 
A.Hen Y s late novels, with two articles about Falkner b):1 Julia ~aunders ~d Graham 
'and three about Ladore, by Richard Cronin, David Vallms, and Fiona Stafford. 
262 
death. Schol · · 
ars mcluding Poovey and Anne Mellor have read the domesticity valorized in 
the later no 1 
ve s as a move toward a more conservative "separate spheres" domestic 
ideology R . 
· eading over Shelley's oeuvre could suggest an increasing acceptance of 
contempor:irv d . . 
-J omesac ideology, as Poovey and Mellor argue, or a continued strong 
negative c ·t· 
n ique of domesticity, as Kate Ferguson Ellis argues. However, neither of 
these nan t' . . 
a ives 1s entirely accurate. Richard Cronin has pointed out that Shelley 
con · 
ceived of maniage as "a hybrid, both a sentimental state, and an institution embedded 
ins ·a1 
oci and economic practices" (48). A committed idealist, Shelley remained politically 
engaged, and her espousal of domesticity differed appreciably from the dominant, 
separate spheres ideology identified by these critics. Shelley did not regard domesticity as 
a separat h 
e sp ere appropriate only for women or gendered specifically to them. As Ellis 
suggests, "The radical reading of Shelley ... depends on the now-widespread feminist 
Perception of the family as a 'mode of government' whose operations affect us all" (233). 
Joseph W. Lew asserts that as Shelley began her writing career, many women who 
hadp . . 
reviously been active in literary and religious spheres were sI1enced (165). It makes 
sense th th . fi ' 1· 'th' 
' en, at Shelley would eventually seek a foundation or women s 1ves w1 m the 
Private sphere; if women's contributions were portrayed within the private sphere, where 
Women were expected to excel, they might be more easily accepted and valorized in the 
Wider culture. As Barbara Jane O'Sullivan states, "By domesticating female power, 
Shelley finally finds an acceptable way to write about it" (154). Even the refonnist 
attitudes of her philosophical forebears might more easily be accepted if inserted within 
these culturally approved narratives. Katherine C. Hill-Miller has noted that ''the 
sentimentality of Falkner can be read as a deliberate artistic strategy" encoding sexual 
de . . 
sire (186). And indeed the conventional sentimentality of both Ladore and Falkner 
' 
may deflect the reader's eye from their radical political content: the modelling of utopian 
don-. 'b'li · d 4
,,esticity, a simpler society for both men and women based on respons1 1 ties an 
263 
genuine ties of afti . 
ecaon, freed from the constraints of divisive and artificial gender roles 
anct the presc "b d . . 
n e societal nonns of luxury, appearances and self-serving ambition. 6 
As Betty T. Bennett has stated, "Mazy Shelley cannot be properly read or 
Understood . th . . 
WI out recogruzmg the pivotal role that politics play in all her novels" (qtd in 
Vargo 12) S 
· helley read and reread the writings of her parents, and they influenced her 
deveJopin 
. g concept of utopian domesticity. 7 Shelley follows Wollstonecraft in believing 
mwoman• . 
s nght to become an enfranchised citizen by becoming well educated. 
WoUstone ati 
er t, however, only hints at what the citoyenne would do: she mentions 
several o . 
P tential careers, but demonstrates to her primarily male audience the benefits they 
Will recei v fu 
e om women's becoming better wives and mothers, promising that educating 
Women wold . . . . 
u result m a happier, more efficiently managed domestic sphere. Shelley 
fleshes o W 
ut ollstonecraft's profile of the citizen's duties by responding to the ideas of 
GOcfw· 
m, Whose plan of societal simplicity implies a domestic mode of life based not on 
indi · 
vidua1 rights but on personal relationships and responsibilities within community. 
A.cqll.i . 
sition of wealth, one of the primary factors which spurred the Victorian man to 
leave his angel safe in the house, is condemned in the Godwinian system. The 
-----------
Which d 6 lo<j,ore may have suffered from its categ~rization among silver-f?rk novels, . 
A.s p · escnbed the manners and pastime of the anstocracy and were considered escapist. 
silve 1~na Stafford shows however Edward Bulwer, who was a leading author of the 
an in1- 0rk novel, argued that the g~nre ''was by no means frivolous escapism, but rather 
dem erently political genre" ("Present" 185). Shelley, indeed, uses the genre to 
ar.ist onstr~te her utopian system in that the life of Lord Lodore, unredeemed from his 
of hi 0 iratic_ and chivalric belief ~ystem, is forfeited, while Cornelia, _who ;ejects the values 
and g society, is rewarded by the establishment of a new commumty with her daughter 
new husband. 
and O 
7 I_re,fer primarily to Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights o/Woman (1792) 
intJ odwm s Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793). Shelley was als~ strongly 
llnfi~~~ced by her parents' other works, especially the novels: Wollst~necraft s 
Goctw· h~d, posthumously published The Wrongs of Woman, o~ J,fana (1798), and 
Leon·~ s Things as They Are,· or, The Adventures of Caleb Willzams (1794) and St. 
· Tale of the Sixteenth Century (1799). 
264 
Gociw· · Intan attitude . . . . toward wealth and the Just distribution of resources is key to 
Understandi . . 
ng the stgruficance of Cornelia's actions in Lodore. 
lodore 
In Shelley' 1 d . 
s ate omesttc novels, the values of domesticity within community bring 
about personal h . 
appmess and demonstrate society's improvement toward utopia. 
Nevertheless Shelley retai· h th . d . . . 
' ns er awareness at utopian omestictty ts precarious. 
Maznag · . 
e ts eastly ruined, and mere domesticity is not utopian. 8 For domesticity to 
achj 
eve its uto · ptan potential, women must benefit from Wollstonecraft's paradigm of 
practical th 
' orough education. If women continue to be educated according to a different 
Standard f 
rom men (what Shelley calls a "sexual education"9), a marriage--or a society--
based on 
mutual understanding and respect could never occur. Lodore follows several 
characte b 
rs, 0 th men and women, as they progress toward a more complete 
Understandi 
ng of the utopian potential of domesticity, based on shared community 
-----------
Woman 8 Shelle~ doubtless drew on Wollstonecraft's unfinished n.o~el, The Wrongs of 
Wollst ' or Mana, for her understanding of the dangers of domesttc1ty. In 
Darnfo o~ecraft' s novel, marriage leads to the madhouse, and even the sympathetic lover 
Ade/in \;,eems finally to betray Maria. As I discuss in C~apter One, Amelia Opie's 
Godw·e owbray (1805), responding directly to the theones of Wollstonecraft and 
one min, Was_another cautionary tale in which the heroin~ i~ destrored because she loves 
an outside the bonds of marriage and is betrayed within mamage by another. 
Woll 9 Shelley refers to the "sexual education" of Ethel in Lodore (218 [III. 211). 
by th st~necr~'s idea of a sexual education, described ~oughout her work, is illustrated 
e 01~0 wmg quotation from her Vindication of the Rights of Woman: 
With respect to women when they receive a careful education, they are either 
made fine ladies, brimf~l of sensibility, and teeming with capricious fancies; or 
mere notable women. The latter are often friendly, honest creatures, and have a 
shrewd kind of good sense joined with worldly p~dence, that often render them 
more useful members of society/ than the fine se~ttmental lady, th~ugh they . 
possess neither greatness of mind nor taste. The mtellec~al world ~s shut agam_st 
them. (Chap. JV, "Observations on the State of Degradation to Which Woman 1s 
Accordi Reduced by Various Causes," 66). . . 
genct ng to Wollstonecraft, even a "careful education" falls short when 1t 1s bound by 
er expecta~; wons. 
265 
responsibilit 
Y as opposed to worldliness and dedication to the primacy of self. 
In Shelley's novels, men experience the effects of their bad choices in maniage, 
th
ey are seen as culpable in their relationships with women, and they are held responsible 
for the Well-being of their children. 10 The primacy of the familial bond is not inscribed 
for the fe al . 
m e alone: m Lodore, the duties of a father toward his child are heavily 
reinforced Th 
· e father's attentive education of the daughter prepares her for her future life 
(although domesticity is not the only option, as I discuss below) and gives her a chance to 
become th . 
e equal of her husband, who has usually had all of society's advantages. In 
addi · 
tion to the novel's primary focus on Lodore 's education of his daughter Ethel, we 
also see how a bad father can nearly ruin the life of his son: Edward Villiers, Ethel's 
husband . . 
' is plagued by debt and has no way to raise money because h1s father squanders 
th . 
e Income f th · · th b · · f 0 e1r entailed estate, neglecting to send him even e are mm1mum o 
necessary funds. Villiers himself must relearn his priorities, accepting that a shared life 
With Eth 1 · . 1 
e 1s superior to the fashionable life to which he was previous y accustomed, and 
he must b · d · a andon his chivalrous urge to protect her from his lessene circumstances. 
In her novel, Shelley works to revise the ideologies of domesticity and 
.Romanticism in order to create utopia. Her fonnulation of the character of Lord Lodore 
may be read as a commentary on the Byronic hero but should not be taken as an attack on 
.R.omant· · · d bli 'd f icism in general. Lodore represents the wild, passionate, an su me s1 e 0 
.Romanticism, which is both attractive and dangerous. Lodore takes its title from a 
Waterfall in the Lake District that was a popular tourist destination in Shelley's day. The 
epigraph of lodore clearly sets out the opposition between the tempests of Romantic 
Passion and th . . . 
e calm rewards of utopian domesticity. 
-----------10 A M 1 afi , " thic of care . . . required one to take full res .s . . e lor observes, Wollstonecr ts e f 's thoughts and actions for all 
the Chil~~ns1b1l1ty for the predictable consequence~ 0 , 0f~~ ,. 285) ' Yl"en of one's mind and body" ("Women Didn t 1 e · 
266 
In the tunnoil of our lives, 
Men are like politic states, or troubled seas, 
Tossed up d d . 
an own with several stonns and tempests, 
Change and variety of wrecks and fortunes; 
Till, labouring to the havens of our homes 
' 
We Sfruggle for the calm that crowns our ends. (2 [title page])11 
The title ch . 
aracter, Herny Fitzheruy, Lord Lodore, tempestuous and passionate like the 
Waterfall aft . . 
er which he 1s named, has reminded several readers (including Claire 
Clainnont) f 0 Byron. In her letter to Mazy Shelley of 15 March 1836, Claire refers to 
th
at <beastly> modification of the beastly character of Lord Byron <Which you> of 
Which you have composed Lodore. I stick to Frankenstein merely because the vile 
Spirit does not haunt its pages as it does in all Y,Our other novels, now as 
Castruccio, now as Raymond, now as Lodore. Good God to think a person of 
Your genius, whose moral tact ought to be proportionably exalted, should think it a 
task befitting its powers to gild and embellish and pass off as beautiful what was 
the merest compound of Vanity, folly, and every miserable weakness that ever met 
together in one human Being. . .. I shall be curious to see if <your new> the hero 
of Your new novel [Falkner] will be another Beautified Byron. Thank Heaven you 
have not taken to drawing your women upon the same model: Cornelia I like the 
least of them--she is the most like him because she is so heartlessly proud and 
selfish, but all the others are angels of light. (Clainnont Co"espondence II, 341) 
This res bl d . . em ance is perhaps Jess important biographically an more unportant as 1t 
e
stablishes Lodore as a type of the Romantic poet: "Like a Corinthian column, left single 
----~-------
from 11 From John Ford, The Lover's Melancholy (1629), _v. I. 4-9. All quotations 
Selec lodore refer to Fiona Stafford's 1996 edition, volume six of The /l(o_vels aTlfl. 
Vol ted Works of Mary Shelley. Volume and page numbers from the ongmal edition (3 
s., Lond0n: Richard Bentley, 1835) are given in brackets. 
267 
amids 
t 
th
e ruder forms of the forest oaks, standing in alien beauty, a type of civilization 
and the 
arts · · · Refined to fastidiousness, sensitive to morbidity, the stranger was 
respected ·th . 
WI out bemg understood, and loved though the intimate of none" ( 14 [I, 27-
B]). Lodore · · 
IS attractive, and a loving father, but as a "Beautified Byron," his overly 
Passionate · . 12 
nature Is his downfall. As a young man, he dissipates his energy on the 
Co f 
n tnent in an affair with a Polish countess, Theodora Lyzinski. His attempt to re-enter 
Bntish society fails . A combination of jealousy, rage and impatience results in his leaving 
England and spending the rest of his life in North America, where he is finally killed in a 
dueJ, appropriately near Niagara Falls. Lodore remains, as Cronin points ~ut, morally 
untransfonned (49); he is never able to achieve "the calm" for which he struggles, and the 
noveJ is pri ·1 f hi · hi "ti C · man Y taken up with describing the effects o s actions on s WI e, ornelia 
Santerre, Lady Lodore, and his daughter, Ethel Fitzhenry ViIIiers. 
SheIIey sets up the plot of her novel in a way that clearly pits the values of the 
Byronic h d · · H · ero against an idealized (but as yet unrefozmed) omest:Jcity. avmg returned 
froni the Continent, tired of "society women," Lodore is pleased to find the unspoiled 
Cornelia Santerre living with her mother in retirement in Wales. Lodore seeks in Cornelia 
a perfect haven, not an equal. Unfortunately Cornelia's mother, Lady Santerre, sees her 
daughter's marriage to Lodore primarily as the key to her own :financial well-being. 
Accordingly, she drives a wedge between husband and wife, always asserting herself as 
Cornelia 's closest confidante. Lodore is estranged from his wife, and because of pride, 
never attempts to become closer to her. Lady Santerre educates Cornelia to value social 
-----------B 12 Mari Ki S ki nds that "Falkner was indeed a 'Beautified 
N~ron "' (II, 34~). s~!5:i~~ J:es~J.1~~~11, Jr., "Byron ~d ~e Byroni.c Hero !n the 
S Vels ff Mazy Shelle ," and William D. Brewer, "Unnat:J~nalize~ Englishm~n m Mazy 
C~ell~y s Fiction." Ladore as a Byronic figure has a c~mplicated lme~ge, as Richar? 
ch onin argues: SheIIey seems to have been influenced m her fozm~ation of Lod~re s 
B aracter by Edw d B 1 , p l'L -- which was itself probably mfluenced by 'the Yron f a1i u wer s e num, 0 the country house cantos of Don Juan" (44-). 
268 
appearances ab all 
ove else, and Cornelia leads an active social life. The resulting lack of 
Understandi b . . . 
ng etween the mamed couple, leading from m1sery to tragedy, illustrates the 
irnportance of a woman's education to the happiness of a marriage. 13 They marry on 
Cornelia's · . 
sixteenth birthday, when Lodore is thirty-four; the great gap in their age and 
experience al . 
so contributes to divide them from one another, and although Lodore sees 
Cornelia a " hi 
s w te paper to be written upon at will, ... a favourite metaphor among 
those rne h . 
n w O have described the ideal of a wife" (41 [I, 108]), he never succeeds in 
replacing her moth ·th h. lf c 1· ' · · H · · er w1 1mse as orne 1a s pnmary mstructor. owever, 1t is 
Lodore ' . . . . 
s 0 Wn passionate nature, not Cornelia's superficial social behaviors, that results 
in Lodore 's disgrace and self-imposed exile. His old lover, Countess Lyzinski, appears 
in England With their son, Count Casimir. Just a little younger than Cornelia, Casimir 
becornes t:n·end ·th · 1 · · fl· · s wi Cornelia, and she, un.knowmg y, engages m mnocent 1rtation with 
Lodore' . 
s son. Lodore is enraged by jealousy, strikes the Count, and 1s forced to flee to 
av · 
oid a duel that would pit father against son. Cornelia is urged by her mother not to.yield 
to Lodore 's request to join him in exile, and Lodore takes his three-year-old daughter 
E
th
el With hirn to live in the wilds of the Illinois.14 Cornelia is left alone to resume her 
------------
13 n · · fi · Ch 1 ror more on the effects of education on women m Rom~tic e~a 1ct1on, s.ee Fie~~~.~ E. Bunnell, "Breaking the Tie that Binds: Parents and Children m Romantic 
se 
14 This situation may possibly reflect on that of Queen Caroline, who was 
hu~fated from her child, Princess Charlotte, and accuse~ of adultery by George IV, her 
the and, ~ho did not wish her to be acknowledged as his Que~n when he asce~ded to 
radj~<;>ne m 1820. Cornelia is an anagram of Caroline. According to Joan Perkin? 
difti alism was often reflected by sympathetic treatment of the Queen (37). Corn~lia 
Ethers tnarkedly from Queen Caroline in that she suffers greatly oyer ~er separation f~m 
a . e~ (the Queen was sometimes rumored to be indifferent to the situation), and her social 
j~tivity is above reproach (the Queen was not found guilty of adultery but was not 
eproachable in her conduct). . 
r Strangely enough ( ·ven Shelley's fear that she had an unwanted gift fo! 
~~Phesying tragic outcom~ in her fiction), the situation seems even more ~pp~cable to 
Loa of Caroline Norton, a friend of Shelley's: in 1836 (a year after the .f?Ubllcation of 
ore) Caroline Norton, s husband accused Lord Melbourne of seducaon, and even 
269 
Untazn.ished s "aJ · · . 
oci position, while Lodore flees romantically into the wilderness to raise 
his Child 
as a more petfect companion for himself. 
As a Byronic Romantic hero, Lodore is considerably less flawed than his earlier 
counterparts, Victor Frankenstein or Castruccio Castracani. Lodore's attachment to his 
little dau h 
g ter, though not selfless, is loving. Still, he is unable to content his passionate 
nature With thi 
s calm loving relationship: 
· · · Governed by a fevered fancy and untamed passions, Fitzhenry forgot the 
tranquil lot which he had learnt to value and enjoy; and quitting the haven he had 
sought, as if it had never been a place of shelter to him, unthankful for the many 
happy hours which had blessed him there, he hastened to reach the stonnier seas of 
life, Whose breakers and whose winds were ready to visit him with shipwreck and 
destruction. (27 [I, 66-671) 
Flis Willing · · · · h ness to reject utopian domesticity results m his re-entry mto society, w ere, 
foregoing 1...: d1 · · h 
JuS responsibilities to his daughter in favor of worl Y opmion, e soon 
involve hi . . . 
s mself m a duel to regain his lost honor, and is killed. 
In Ladore, Shelley explores the strong Romantic emphasis on passion. Although 
se.x is prominent in Shelley's tragic earlier novels (Frankenstein, Mathilda, Valperga, and 
The Last Man), her later novels (Perldn Warbeck, Ladore and Falhzer) engage the sexual 
in a les · · tr th s open, Jess confrontational manner. As utopian domesticity grows s onger, e 
Visibility of sex diminishes. In cases where sex is overt and central, signifying the 
donun . . . 
ant presence of Romantic passion, it usually leads to tragic consequences. m 
Mathilda, a father 's admission of passionate love for his daughter leads to both their 
deaths; in Valperga, the downfall of Beatrice is doubly sexual, first when she is seduced 
--------------
hthough theJ·nru fo d . uf:'fi . t "dence Norton was denied access to her children by er hu b -J un ms icien evi ' tal . the 1839 passage of 
the I s and. Her lobbying for mother's rights was instrumen m 
nf ant Custody Act. 
270 
by CaStruccio and then when she is driven mad while held captive by a ring of sadists; in 
The Last M. E . 
an, as 111s notes (26), Raymond's sexual and emotional transgressions 
against dom . . . 
estic affections are directly linked to the Plague. Ladore follows these 
examples. Lodore 's affair with Countess Lyzinski is ruinous for him. Not only does his 
bact expe . . 
nence with the Countess lead to his selecting a bride who is too young and 
Unfonned t · 0 Judge between the conflicting advice of her mother and husband, it 
eventually leads to his death in a duel. Because he cannot seem to control his passion, he 
is sa -6 
en ICed to it. Similarly, Clorinda, Horatio Saville's Italian bride, falls prey to her 
Insane jealousy of Cornelia. Although Horatio has made an effort in good faith to forget 
Cornelia and to devote himself to his marriage with Clorinda, Clorinda is unable even to 
conte:rnplate the possibility of his returning to England. Her passionate desires, pitted 
ag. 
atnst his social duty (he has become the heir to an important political seat), destroy their 
.lllaznage rather than reinforcing it. Mellor concludes that ''Denouncing sexual passion, 
~~. . 
wnters urge their readers to embrace reason, virtue, and caution . ... [they] call 
not for sensibility but for sense, not for erotic passion but for rational love, a love based 
on Understanding, compatibility, equality and mutual respect" (Mellor, Gender 60). 
Inas.lll 
Uch as sex is a force which drives characters (either male or female) to make selfish 
choices · · · · Wh al' · 
, It ts hanntul to the concept of a cooperative domesticity. en sexu tty 1s made 
Part of love rather than instigating untamed Romantic passion, it reinforces the bonds 
between loving couples or is made visible as the resulting babies who act as metonyms 
for ha · ki h lf · · Ppy domesticity. Interestingly enough, Countess Lyzms erse remams immune 
to any ill effects from her affair with Lodore. Though we are given only a brief sketch of 
her ch · · tan ak aracter, her ability to remain calm in the midst of passionate crrcums ces m es 
her a figure of swprising power-retaining not only considerable emotional sway over 
Loctore, but also her hold on political and monetary power. In the Countess, Shelley 
Paints a radical portrait of a woman who is able to experience Romantic passion without 
271 
being sacrificed to ·t L . . . 
i · yzmski is a somewhat startling mirror, writ miniature, of 
Cornelia, s ab .li . 
i ty to survive her own unfortunate attachment to Lodore. 
In contrast t th . 0 e passionate Lodore, Horatio Saville represents a significant 
revision of th R . . 
e 0 mantic ideal. Horatio represents the Shelleyan hero, still very much a 
Romantic hero, but a utopian one: "Horatio Saville was a being fashioned for every virtue 
and disting · h 
uis ed by every excellence ... He was one of those who seem not to belong 
to this 
World, yet who adorn it most; conscientious, upright, and often cold in seeming, 
because h 
e could always master his passions ... His desire was knowledge; his passion 
truth'' (113 [II 
, 20, 211). Horatio has not been purged of a passionate nature, but has 
lllastered it· h . . 
• is passion is truth. In his virtue and excellence he represents a utopian 
example fi th 
or e rest of society to follow. In the figure of Horatio, the grosser elements of 
th
e Romantic figure are purged away, to leave a moral ideal: "he added the living spirit of 
Poetry to their sensations, and associated the treasures of human genius with the sublime 
beauty of nature. He had a tact, a delicacy, a kind of electric sympathy in his disposition, 
that endeared him to every one that approached him" (169 [ll, 1891). His upright moral 
qualities ar · b · P S e combmed with a physical appearance somewhat resem ~mg ercy helley 
a
nd 
associated with sensibility. is Horatio's penchant for self-sacrifice is high, and 
indeed des · h" · · 'th" th 1 H · · 
' pite is good intentions, leads to complications WI m e nove . oratio IS 
Willing t · di v·11 · 0 sacnfice his own happiness for Cornelia's welfare by sen ng 1 1ers as an 
ellli 
ssa.zy to Lodore to attempt their reconciliation, so that Cornelia may be reunited with 
------------l5 S . ' h . fl h "th sen "b. . ee Stafford 113 note a, for the association of Horatio s ectic us w1 
Pre si ility. As Mrs. Jillian (Florence) Marshall noted in 1889, "Most of Mary's novels 
of ~:nt the co1_1trast of the Shelleyan and Byronic types" (qtd i? Vargo_ 19), th~t is, types 
and Romantic poet who have either devoted themselves to higher philosophical goals, 
thou Present as frail, ethereal, and otherworldly, as Shelley was often descn~d, or w~o, 
love9~ devastatingly handsome, are self-destructive, c~less of f!te well-bemg ot their 
Valli ,nes, and overwhelmed by passions, like the ~y~1c Byroruc persona. pav1d . 
its d/s. s exploration of Coleridge's and Wordsworth s mfluence ~n Lodore 1s valuable m 
Shell tail, but nevertheless misidentifies Saville as a figure of Colendge rather than as a 
eyan figure. 
272 
herchild E 
· Ven Horatio 's · th mamage to e tempestuous Italian, Clorinda, represents his 
w·1 1 lingness to 
attempt to find happiness in compromise. 16 
Mary Shelley rtr · . po ays three important female characters m Lodore: Cornelia, 
Lodore 's wife . 
fj . • Ethel Fttzheruy, their daughter, and Fanny Derham, Ethel's philosophical 
nend· Ettel re . . . . presents both an 1deal1zed portrait of a lovmg father's gift of thorough 
education to hi 
s daughter, and the dangers of the gendered nature of that education. 
Dncter Lodo , . 
re s tutelage, Ethel receives a "sexual education," as Shelley overtly states 
(218 fIII 2i]) 17 
· · Reared in the isolation of the American wilderness, Ethel focuses all 
herdevoti 
. on upon her father and is molded to satisfy his every whim: "Fitzheruy drew 
his chief i . . . deas from Milton's Eve, and adding to this the romance of chi vahy, he satisfied 
himself th . 
. at his daughter would be the embodied ideal of all that is adorable and estimable 
In her sex" (18 [I, 38]). As noted.by editor Fiona Stafford, Shelley's reference to Eve is 
designed 
to call to mind Wollstonecraft's "attack on male tyranny" in the second chapter 
of her Vind: . 
---- zcatzon (18 note b). Shelley also criticizes Lodore's education of Ethel overtly: 
Clorin~6 Believing that Cornelia cannot be his, Horatio tries to find happiness with 
• Whom he rescues from a convent: 
· · · Clorinda was shut up in this convent through the heartl~ss vanity of her . 
mother ... to wait there till her parents should find some swtable match, which 
te ~uch instantly accept, or be doomed to se~lusi_on f~r ever. . . . He .dec!ared 
. at his love for her was not an absorbing passion like his first, but a mmglmg of 
pity, admiration and that tenderness which his wann heart was ever ready to 
bestow. He des~ribed her as full of genius and s~nsibility, ~ creature .o[ fire/ and f0 ~er, but dimmed by sorrow, and struggling with her chains. He v1s1ted her 
gam; he tried to comfort, he offered to serve her ... . he could rescue her from 
Man an unworthy fate, and make her happy. (164-5 [II, 174-Sp . . . 
Shel[ readers have noted the similarity between Clorinda and Enulia V1VIant, whom the 
qUaJi~Ys met while she was living in a convent. Shelle}'.'s po~yal of C~orinda~s good 
Peli es and Horatio's kind (but ultimately ill-advised) intentions reflect mteresttngly on (ls~} Shelley's attachment to Viviani, for whom he wrote the passionate Ep~sychidion 
~orn~ ~heUey is sympathetic to both parties, but fav?rs the refined and rev1s~d 
tic figure (the Shelleyan Horatio) over the passionate, ungoverned Clonnda. 
Produ 17 Lisa Vargo succinctly glosses Shelley's statement ''Ethel's educatio;11 is a 
Oth c! of a culture that would separate men and women; Shelley would have 1t 
erwzse" (3S). 
273 
A lofty sense of independence is, in man, the best privilege of his nature. It cannot 
be doubted, but that it were for the happiness of the other sex that she were taught 
more to rely on and act for herself. But in the cultivation of this feeling, the 
education of Fitzheruy was lamentably deficient. ... In mind she was too often 
indolent, and apt to think that while she was docile to the injunctions of her parent, 
all her duties were fulfilled. She seldom thought, and never acted, for herself. (19 
[I, 40, 41]) 
In the ch 
aracter of Ethel, Shelley shows how Lodore creates a perfect woman, not a 
Pelfected h . . . 
uman bemg. Because Ethel's feelmgs are pure, the effects of her actions are 
always good, as far as she is capable of talcing independent action. 18 Her pwpose in the 
novel is to demonstrate to the more worldly characters, Villiers and Cornelia, how 
superior the affections are to standards of worldly success. By learning to love Ethel, and 
by becoming more like her, both Villiers and Cornelia mature into a proper appreciation 
Of the p t . 0 enaal for utopian domesticity. 
Lodore 's concern to make Ethel "all that is adorable and estimable" is a worthy but 
Unenlightened goal, limited as it is to "the embodied ideal of .. . her sex." Lodore's 
educati . . d 
on of his daughter is well-intentioned but dangerous, because 1t oes not endow 
her With th · ti 11 e capacity to support herself. Throughout the novel, she 1s care u Y transferred 
from O . .c ·1 f Mrs r - ·11 ne caretaker to the next: from Lodore, to the English iami y o . uiev1 e, to 
her aunt Elizabeth Fitzhemy, and finally into the rums of Edward Villiers. Even once she 
is supposedly secure in the arms of her husband, she receives valuable assistance from 
the two independent women of the novel, her mother Cornelia, and Fanny Derham, the 
---- -------
of I8 Vargo notes the idealization of Ethel's characte~ and identifies Shelley's ~roject 
gJ0rtraying the effects of a sexual education: "Some reviewers s?ggest that Ethel 1~ too 
ere/· to be a credible character, yet this is consistent with ~helley s pwpo~e. ~~ she is 
h ting a character h b di the ideals of the domestJc ... , Shelley 1s cntical of ow su h fi w o em o es . ·ty" (31 2) 
c gures embody male fantasies of female passivi - · 
274 
Philosophi al d 
c aughter of Lodore 's childhood friend. Cornelia, over time, revises her 
earJy edu ti 
ca on, and in effect, educates herself as Lodore was unable to do. Fanny 
receives a h ·1 . P 1 osophical education that Shelley explicitly compares to Ethel's: 
Lord Lodore had formed his ideal of what a woman ought to be, of what he had 
Wished to find his wife, and sought to mould his daughter accordingly. Mr. 
Derham contemplated the duties and objects befitting an immortal soul, and had 
educated his child for the perfonnance of them. The one fashioned his offspring to 
be the wife of a frail human being, and instructed her to be yielding, and to make it 
her duty to devote herself to his happiness, and to obey his will. The other sought 
to guard his from all weakness, to make her complete in herself, and to render her 
independent and self-sufficing. . .. Religion, reason, and justice--these were the 
landmarks of her life. She was kind-hearted, generous, and true--so also was 
Ethel; but the one was guided by the tenderness of her heart, while the other 
consulted her understanding ... . (218 [ill, 21, 22]) 
Both Fan d · · · · · t · t Eth 1 d · ny an Cornelia are shown acting on their own m1t1aave o ass1s e , an m 
fact Work together to effect her removal from debtor's prison, a feat which Villiers 's 
see.rn.ingly more powerful male relatives are unable to accomplish. Fanny and Cornelia 
cooperate according to the dictates of utopian domesticity--acting on the bonds of love, 
friendshi · · · d th · P, and responsibility rather than according to social expectat:Ions--an err 
actj 
ons show how this utopian model spreads outward from the model of family upon 
Which 't · . 1 a· h' 1 is based to encompass and re-order all commuruty re a ons ips. 
When Lodore is .killed, Ethel transfers her affections to his second, Edward 
Villiers. Ethel marries Villiers, and they become a model devoted couple, but the 
Potential for domesticity to fall from its utopian potential into tragedy does not go 
unnti , · be~ C li' o Ced. Ethel and Villiers are actually reduced to debtor s pnson iore orne a s 
Self-sacrificing transfer of her wealth to them effects their release. Recalling an earlier 
275 
radical Wom . ' 
an wnter s commentary on wealth, marriage, law, and true love, Charlotte 
Smith's Th 
e Old Manor House, Lodore calls the sufficiency oflove into question before 
. ' 11l'Unediate1y b · h . . 
ng terung the circumstances. Lodore's gendered education of his daughter 
leads to h . 
er manymg a man with no means to support her, and having no means to 
support herself: if the novel had been planned by Shelley as a tragedy, it is easy to see 
how the . 
circumstances could have turned out very badly. Villiers quotes from The Cenci, 
Percy B . . 
ysshe Shelley's study of parental tyranny, and Shelley credits the play m her 
footnote. Villiers states 
' 
"M Y father is unworthy of his name--the animal who destroys his offspring at its 
birth is merciful in comparison with him: had he cast me off at once, I should have 
hardened my hands with Jabour and earned my daily bread; but I was trained to 
"high-born necessities," and have all the "wide wants and narrow powers" of the 
heir of Wealth" (230 fill, 56]). 
These are the words of Giacomo (The Cenci, II. ii. 8-12), whose father brings about his 
Penury and turns his wife and children against him; as a result, Giacomo cooperates in his 
father' J · 
s murder and is executed. Villiers, however, has been taught by Ethe to recogruze 
as a "h . . Oard of luxury and wealth" the simple room they mhab1t together, and, though he 
StjlJ lll.i tak &~ 'J de . Gi s enJy equates "luxury" with happiness, he does not uu to sparr as acomo 
did. 
It is Cornelia• s redemptive recognition of Ethel's devotion to her husband which 
convinces her of the supremacy of loving attachments, 19 and it is mother love (which was 
turned against Lodore and Cornelia in their own marriage) which enables a happy ending. 
Not only does Cornelia survive her first marriage to Lodore, she is able to leave the bad 
---- --------
th l 9 As Ch 1 B 11 t "For [Ethel] domestic happiness is more important ~ self-interest 8:n~ne b~nne : esj sson that c~rnelia fortunately learns in time to 
en.,oy tbe remainder Jier tre3!,ith ~e: daughter'' ("Illusion" 283>· 
276 
example of her . . . . 
own mother behind her, sacnficmg her own financial security for the 
higher good f 0 the welfare of her daughter (and her daughter's newborn). Cornelia 
re-evalu t h 
a es er social and familial priorities and places herself in a community context 
based on real (1 . 
ovmg) rather than artificial (polite) bonds. Her re-education as a woman 
citizen and . 
as a mother 1s according to Wollstonecraftian goals, added to which, the 
Godwinian 
program demonstrates that her happiness cannot be achieved without taking 
responsibT . . . . 1 ity to others mto account. The Godw1ruan agenda also mcludes the ideal of an 
informed and chosen simplicity which Cornelia adopts, sacrificing her wealth and social 
Position t be 0 nefit her daughter. 
Before she rejoins society, Cornelia meditates on the benefits of her withdrawal 
froni th e WOrJd: 
" · .. nature is the refuge and home for women: they have no public career--
no aim nor end beyond their domestic circle; but they can extend that, and make all 
the creations of nature their own, to foster and do good to. We complain, when 
shut up in cities of the niggard rules of society, which gives us I only the drawing-
room or ball-room in which to display our talents, and which, for ever2° turning the 
sympathy of those around us into envy on the part of women, or what is called love 
on that of men, besets our path with dangers or sorrows. But throw aside all 
vanity, no longer seek to surpass your own sex, not to inspire the other with 
feelings which are pregnant with disquiet or misery, and which seldom end in 
mutual benevolence, turn your steps to the habitation which God has given as 
befitting his creatures, contemplate the lovely ornaments with which he has blessed 
the earth;--here is not heart-burning nor calumny; it is better to love, to be of use to 
0ne of these flowers, than to be the admired of the many--the puppet of one's own 
-------------
20 I amend "every" to "ever," following Lisa Vargo's edition of Lodore (443). 
277 
vanity." (309 [UI, 297-81) 
At the literal le 1 C . 
ve , ornelia muses that being able to appreciate and to take care of the 
flowe · rs m natuii · · . 
e Is supenor to engaging in the meaningless activities of society. Shelley 
follows the m . . . . . 
a.,onty of fem.mist utopian writers both past and present by modelling her 
Utopia on na 
ture and natural beauty. 21 But she also makes canny judgments about the 
diVision of s . . 
OCtety mto separate spheres. She notes that women "have no public career:" 
there is no 
outlet for public ambition in a country where women do not even have the 
right to vot Sh 
e. e then contrasts the idea that women have "no aim nor end beyond their 
dome . Stic circl " .th " . e WI the mggard rules of society, which gives us I only the drawing-
room 
. or ball-room in which to display our talents," exposing the polite world of society, 
In Which 
women's concerns move beyond their domestic sphere, but to no useful effect. 
She clan.fl 
Ies that to "seek to swpass your own sex" is for women to regard themselves 
Priman.1 Y as sexual beings, which turns human "sympathy" into "envy on the part of 
Women" 
and leads to "what is called love ... feelings which are pregnant with disquiet 
Or · 
Illisery, and which seldom end in mutual benevolence," perhaps remembering her 
innocent · . . . 
actions as the basis of Lodore'sjealous violence toward Casimir. She concludes 
that ''it · Is better to love ... than to be the admired of the many--the puppet of one's own 
----
~------
of Mill 21. Such writers would include, as I discuss in Chapter One, Sarah Scott, author 
SOciet enzum Hall (1762), in which women retreat together into a country estat~_to fonn a 
Worn Y based on charity and community responsibility rather than sexu_al defi~tions of . 
comzn~?od, Their bo~nteous and well-planned es.tate reflects the utopian quality of therr 
form rnty. Male utopianists tend to follilulate an 1deal commonwealth and to focus on 
Sheu s of g~:>venunent rather than on the bounty and beauty of nature. (Percy Bysshe 
Unbo?· W!th the utopian gardens in his Que_en_M~b, ~on and Cythna, and Prt:metheus 
separatind, 1.s a notab~e exception.) Another s1~lanty w1th Sco~,fllld ~1!1er utopian 
stati sts is Cornelia's wish that she could retire to a convent. In givmg up fortune and 
fou ~n, she would have placed herself under the guardianship of a commuruty; and have 
JUst: frot~ction and security, to compensate for poverty and slavery" ~2.64 [III,_ 1631). 
inclu ew important modern examples of the centrality of na~ t~ femm1st utopias 
ofn de Charlotte Per.kins Oilman's Her/and (1915), Marge Piercy s Woman on the Edge 
Leo:J~,(1976), Sally Miller Gearhart's The Wanderground (1978), and Ursula K. 
s Always Coming Home (1985). 
278 
Vanity" even 'f th 1 
e only object of love is "to be of use to one of these flowers." Cornelia 
thus espous 
es, near the close of the novel, a preference for shunning worldly society and 
rejects the 
gendered/sexual roles imposed by society for more benevolent ties based on 
love ands . 
ervice. These attitudes fonn the basis of Shelley's model for utopian 
do.rnesticity. 
At the end of Lodore, Cornelia is rewarded with utopian domesticity in her marriage 
to the . 
revised figure of Romantic excellence, Horatio Saville. Horatio has also survived a 
bad .rnazn 
age, and recognizes the true worth of Cornelia even before she sheds her social 
st
ation. As Mellor points out, because Horatio "acknowledges that the claims of a child 
can take precedence over the claims of a husband .... Mary Shelley subtly follows her 
lllofuer' s revolutionary political vision by implying that the primary claim upon both a 
Wo.znan• 
s and a man• s heart and mind is not the authority of the father or husband but the 
Welfare of the child" (Gender 69-70). More specifically, Shelley emphasizes the priority 
of relatio hi H · · ·11 · ns ps based not on authority, but on love. Furthermore, oratio 1s w1 mg to 
let Com 1· . h 
e Ia, as a mature and responsible adult, acknowledge her affections onestly, 
accordi 1 f th 1 b ng to Godwinian principles of forthrightness. At the c ose o e nove , y 
lllarn,· ~ .. Jing Horatio, Cornelia becomes "Mrs. Saville," whom we remember as Walton's 
sister · · 'bl · 
' an important signifier of interpersonal connection--and possi e utopian 
do.znesti . . 
city- in Frankenstein. 
The story of Fanny Derham in Ladore shows that Shelley does not consider 
tnarnage to be the well-educated daughter's only option. Many utopian paradigms fall 
short f · 1 di "thi th · 0 convincing because of their lack of diversity. By me u ng wi n e commuruty. 
an. 
Independent, self-supporting woman such as Fanny Derham, Shelley strengthens her 
Uto · 1 . F . Pian system. Devoting her considerable talents to the StudY of c assicS, anny is a 
Scholar, but also a practical and devoted friend, who "possesses the most discriminating 
Understanding of human motivation and the strongest capacity to act in support of others" 
279 
Cliill-Miller 143) F · . 
· anny IS not Imagined by Shelley within the heterosexual framework 
C01lln:Jonl y as . d . . . . . 
sociate with domesttcity, but expands Shelley's VISion of loving based on 
the domesti 
c model even though she does not share ties of blood or marriage with her 
friends: 
Such a 
woman as Fanny was more made to be loved by her own sex than by the 
opposite one. Superiority of intellect, joined to acquisitions beyond those usual 
even to men; and both announced with frankness, though without pretension, 
fonns a kind of anomaly little in accord with masculine taste. Fanny could not be 
th
e rival of women, and, therefore, all her merits/ were appreciated by them. They 
love to look up to a superior being, to rest on a firmer support than their own minds 
can afford; and they are glad to find such in one of their own sex, and thus destitute 
of those dangers which usually attend any services conferred by men. (214 [10-
111) 
Because of her numerous gifts, Fanny is not fitted for the "masculine taste," but this 
ti~~ . . 
on Is not related as a handicap. Instead, she will have numerous women friends, 
Who".:... . ,, . 
-e glad to fmd such in one of their own sex. Shelley pomts out that Fanny, 
because of her talents and her existence outside the heterosexual framework, defies the 
scope Of th . 
e nmeteenth-centwy novel: 
· · · it is not in a few lines that we can revert to the varied fate of Fanny Derham ... 
· in her lofty idea of the dignity of her nature, in her love of truth and in her 
integrity, she will find support and reward in her various fortunes. What the events 
are, that have already diversified her existence, cannot now be recounted; and it 
Would require the gi.ft of prophecy to foretell the conclusion. In after times these 
may be told, and the life of Fanny Derham be presented as a useful lesson, at once 
to teach what goodness and genius can achieve in palliating the woes of life, and to 
encourage those, who would in any way imitate her, by an example or calumny 
280 
refuted by patience, errors rectified by charity, and the passions of our nature 
Pllrified and ennobled I by an undeviating observance of those moral laws on which 
all human excellence is founded-a love of truth in ourselves, and a sincere 
sympathy with our fellow-creatures. (313 [Ill, 309, 10-111) 
Fannyn h 
er am represents freedom for talented women, not only intellectually but also 
materially More si·gru·fi tl h · · H · s ·11 th · · · 
· 1can y, s e Joms oraao avi e as ano er important rev1S1on of 
the.Rom ti .. 
an c ideal: "Her beauty was all intellectual" (205 [IlI, 2931). Hers is a character 
of high Virtue stri · aft · · 11 b · · · 1 
, vmg er philosophical exce ence, ut remammg m c ose contact--
,, 
SYinpathy"--with the human community. Fanny becomes a new model for the Romantic 
intellectual n t h · · ·fi d d bl d" th · · 
, o avmg purged, but having "pun e an enno e e passions. She is 
the Shell . 
eyan hero, and though Shelley never went on to tell her story, her sister character 
is Elizabeth Raby, the hero of Falhzer. 
In Shelley's own experience as daughter of intellectuals and mother of an eventual 
baronet (her son Percy Florence), both .knowledge and material circumstances were 
inherited B 11 ali God · ' · 
· Y earning her living as a writer, however, She ey re zes wm s utopian 
Scheme f . f . 0 gradual improvement of society by education. In her portraits o utopian 
dornesticity, this element of economic self-support is absent; characters overwhelmingly 
rely upo · · G d · ' h n inherited wealth and not upon their own labor to survive. o wm s sc eme of 
educatj al . d . 1 . d 'al on improvement is open to the criticism that stu y reqwres eisure an maten 
resou.lic ' t · 'd als d t es which only the wealthy possess, and Shelley s own u opian i e o no 
entirely overcome class boundaries. Fanny Derham is an important exception: by 
PUrsuing her intellectual endeavors, she carries out the Godwinian scheme (although, by 
the end of the novel, Fanny's paternal relatives, seeing that she has become a part of 
society, establish her and her family in economic independence). 
281 
In Falkner, her last novel, Shelley continues her project of imagining a utopian 
SOCial stru t h 
c ure s ared by men and women in both their personal and public lives. 
Shelley h +i.-
as uuee related goals in Falkner: first, to present utopian domesticity as a 
refonned 
model of the personal and public social order in response to Godwin's most 
Well-know 
n novel, Things as they Are,· or, The Adventures of Caleb Williams (1794); 
second, to 
present a reformed masculine Romantic hero, based on the education and 
refonn of the characters of Rupert Falkner (a Byronic hero)22 and Gerard Neville (a 
SheUeyan hero); and third, to present a fully fonned image of her domestic heroine in the 
education d . . . . . 
an life of Elizabeth (Raby) Falkner, a "womanly" yet mdependent-mmded and 
idealistic heroine. 
In this novel, Shelley uses language, characterization, and plot to destabilize gender 
associati 
ons so that utopian domesticity can be developed. At the level of language, 
Shelley n ti' " 'al· " f 0 ceably turns toward what we would now call an essentl 1st treatment o 
gendered characteristics: many desirable characteristics, such as gentleness, devotion, and 
empathy, are indentified as "womanly" or properly belonging to woman. At the level of 
charact h · · d b'li · th er, owever, Shelley complicates the gender association, esta 1 z~ng e easy 
assocfati· · · · 1 dabl " an1 " on of gender with certain characteristics by ass1grung au e worn Y 
characte · · · 1 1 · ·ts tral nstics to male characters. Fidelity, the quality the nove c rums as 1 cen 
concezn · d · Hi d equally by 
' is never assigned to one gender or the other an 1s exemp 1 e 
Falkner, his adopted daughter Elizabeth, and Gerard Neville. At the level of plot, Shelley 
goes farther to undermine the expectations of gendered behavior by having both male and 
female characters disregard their prescribed gendered behavior when acting or planning to 
act. This is especially true of the two young characters through whose attitudes Shelley 
----~-------
22 Falkne . t d B . b critics such as Hill-Miller (179). Falkner may be 
bautobiographica1T is erme d yr?thruEc d!ard Trelawny ( as by Poovey [160], for example), ut TreI Y connecte w1 
awny was himself a Byronic figure. 
282 
expresses the . . 
utopian leanings of her imagined social order, Elizabeth (Raby) Falkner and 
Gerard Neville. 
Mary Poovey' s discussion of Falkner intends to reveal Shelley as an example of the 
Way in wh · h 
IC women writers were forced to confonn the ideology of the proper lady, 
even Whe . . 
n attempting (consciously or unconsciously) to subvert it: "Mary Shelley's last 
three 
novels reveal the way in which stereotypical feminine propriety could disguise--and 
even accommodate--the kind of unladylike aggression she had expressed in the 
Productions of her youth" (159). Poovey attributes Shelley's conscious political 
marn 
PUlations of plot and character to an "unladylike aggression" Shelley is supposedly 
Strug 1" 
g mg to conceal--although, for Poovey, this makes Shelley more interestingly 
complex R di · f h 11 ' 1 · hi · 
· ea ng Falkner primarily as an illumination o S e ey s re anons p with 
Godwin, Poovey concedes that "ostensibly [Falkner] is about fidelity" (160) and even 
elabo 
rates on Shelley's execution of this theme (162-3) but goes on to argue that Shelley 
Uses the narrative to punish Godwin by having the daughter, Elizabeth, "punish" Falkner 
for his · 
cnmes. Poovey does, however, feel that this punishment allows women to 
,, 
retaliate against their legal superiors" as "legitimate agents for socializing men" (169). 
th
us "despite" her acquiescence to the ideology of the "proper lady," Poovey argues, 
Shelley . B · th succeeds m modelling a kind of social power for women. oovey recognizes e 
face Value moral of Shelley's novel--"Thus for--and through the example of--Elizabeth's 
love, two men master their strong passions and narrowly avert the crisis" (163)--but she 
submerges Shelley's utopian project in a morass of biographical facts ~anged to support 
noti 
ons of revenge and muddled ideology. 
,, 
Mellor follows Poovey in reading Elizabeth's "repressed anger'' and 
unacknowledged resentment," placing Elizabeth in "the same role in relation to Falkner 
.that Godwin's Caleb Williams played in relation his employer and father-figure Falkland: 
tnnocent persecutor and revenging fury" (Monsters 203). In order to support her 
283 
argument that Er 
izabeth feels resentment toward Falkner (she does, but only when he 
separates h. lf . 
zmse from her in order to seek his own death), Mellor skews the events of 
the novel fi 
' as or example when she states that "Falkner has no right to deprive Elizabeth 
Raby of all . 
contact with her natural family" (203). Actually, the Raby family, devout 
Catholics h 
' ave cut Elizabeth off because her father married outside the faith, so that 
When Falkn fi 
er Inds the orphan she is literally in rags; when Falkner tries to convey 
Elizabeth' 5 Worth to them, the old head of the family again rejects her as an 
,, 
embarrassment" (142). Eventually, when the old man becomes senile, a kinder woman 
rises to the head of the family and opens her anns to Elizabeth, by this time a grown 
Woman. Mellor also misreports Elizabeth's education: she argues that Falkner deprives 
Elizabeth f " . . . . 0 an education appropriate to a grrl of her breeding. The latter defect 1s 
Partially remedied by . .. a cold and discreet woman who teaches Elizabeth self-
discipline and needlework" (203). Actually, Elizabeth learned diversified habits of study 
SiJll.il . . . 
ar to Shelley's own and is regarded with wonder and admiration by Falkner, who 1s 
hi 
rnself less learned than Elizabeth. Nowhere does Elizabeth "feel the want of female 
soc· 
Iety and friendship" (203), except when she is tending Falkner in Greece; later, she is 
cheered by the friendship of Lady Cecil, an attachment which Falkner encourages. It is 
hard to read Elizabeth's professions of love for Falkner, which are applauded by the 
narrator as examples of openness and sincerity, as examples of "resentment of Falkner's 
CaJfou · d . . fh s unconcern with her needs and sufferings, of his complete ommation ° er 
etjstence" (203). Mellor reads Falkner's refonnation as character death: ''The overt 
narrative conclusion . .. sentimentally redeems Falkner to live happily ever after in the 
household of Elizabeth Raby and Gerard Neville. But inherent in this conclusion is a 
transfonnation of Falkner's character that effectivly kills off the Byronic hero whose 
histozy of passionate love, crime, remorse, and misguided self-redemption we have been 
reading. In this sense, Falkner has been entirely destroyed by Elizabeth" (204). But in 
284 
Caleb Willia . 
ms, the actions of Caleb actually do bring about Falkland's destruction--his 
Physical w ti . . . . 
as ng away and his conviction for murder--whereas m Falhzer, Elizabeth's 
actions brin th . 
g e Inherent goodness of Falkner's character forward and allow for the 
forgivene fi 
ss or Falkner that Caleb feels Falkland also could have deserved, had the two 
of them o 1 
pen Y dealt with their grievances with one another, as Shelley's characters do. 
Elizabeth d 
oes not destroy, but allows Falkner at last to redeem himself, to live, instead 
of seeki " 
ng an honorable" suicide. 
Countering the readings of Poovey and Mellor, Bennett states that in Falhzer ''the 
female as the model of courage, dedication, and intellectual accomplishment takes center 
stage" (l 
ntroduction 97) and that 'Through Elizabeth Raby, the novel focuses on working 
out Pers al 
on affections against the challenge of erroneous beliefs, appearances, and the 
meaning of justice" (100). Rather than viewing Elizabeth as an angry, repressed mirror of 
Shelley B · Eli beth 
' ennett asserts that Shelley created an admirable character m za , and that 
her ston, refl. . 1i 'th th f 4
J ects progressive political and personal values m ne w1 ose o 
Wollst 23 . 
onecraft, Godwin, and Percy Shelley, not opposed to them. In order to give 
Fallen · 
er Its due, the psychological/biographical reading favored by Poovey and Mellor 
niust fall away, replaced by a political understanding such as Bennett espouses, and such 
asJarg · · d · · 24 Fi h 1 ue In reading Shelley• s work in tenns of utopian omest1c1ty. ew sc o ars 
------------
Goctw· ~3 "Clearly.'' states Bennett, "Falkner's acquittal and acceptance works out 
th In s concept of personal reconstruction rather than the legal vengeance portrayed at 
G~dco!]~lusion of Caleb. But this novel, like Mary Shelley's o~er novels, goes ~yond 
re Wi~an exploration to Romantic resolution in its demonstration of ways of taking 
re spons1bility and ways of loving" (Introduction 102); "both Lod01:e and Falhzer . 
n Pz:esent fusions of the psychological social novel with the educat1?nal novel, resuJang 
eJ~ In romances but instead in narratives of destabilization: the _heroic pro~µomsts are 
cated women who strive to create a world of justice and uruversal love (104). 
. 
24 In "Not thi 0· y · t , .. Bennett contrasts Elizabeth Lavenza of Frankenstein With ,.,. s me, ic or. . th 1 Eli beth tro 
ralkn.er's Elizabeth Raby, arguing that Shelley gives e atter za as n&"er 
rasp 0n_.worldly reality than the sheltered, controlled Lavenza had, and a stronger will as 
result· 't:.re, .. bett d . J:. •1.al d J:.onnal eventually empowers her to become • .a.i .. ere ucat1on, 1am.I 1 an 11 , 
285 
have taken u th . . . . 
P e challenge to reconsider Shelley's domesac novels ma political light. 25 
There are two reasons why critics might have trouble identifying Shelley's utopian 
feminist project in Falkn p· t. . 1 . . . d . 
er. irs 1s s1mp y 1ts categonzation as a omesttc novel--a genre 
not usuaJl 
Y explored by critics in terms of feminist potential. Second, and even more 
strongly th fi . . 
' e enurust reader might feel uneasy when frequently encountering what looks 
like essential . . . . . 1st language m this particular novel. For example, Elizabeth's education must 
include " 
needlework [and] the careful inculcation of habits of neatness and order; [lest she 
lack] tho "' . . 
se ienurune qualities without which every woman I must be unhappy - and, to a 
cettain d 
egree, unsexed" (40 [I. 116-17]). Shelley's adoption of essentialist-seeming 
language and the fulfillment of certain traditional expectations in the character of Elizabeth 
lllay be in Part a defensive strategy. Perhaps thinking of attacks such as Richard 
Polwhele's upon her mother as an example of the "unsexed" feminist, Shelley creates in 
Er 
IZabeth a heroine who could not be faulted by traditional critics for any lack of 
,, 
Wolllanly" skills--later in the novel she sets up her embroidery frame in Falkner's 
Prison- but h · " · 1 di hi t b' 
- w o also is taught the "more masculine studies me u ng s ory, 10graphy 
and a general "love of knowledge" (39 [I. 113]). Shelley's outline of the thoroughness 
---the dee--· -. ------ . 
uto . 1s1on maker often times for both Falkner and herself' (11). I use the 1d~a of focit1: ~omesticity to situate the social behaviors and structures Shelley u~es m 
ating the philosophy of social and gender refonn Bennett also descnbes. 
readin 25 Katherine c. Hill-Miller in My Hideous Progen_y giv~s a str~ng feminist 
reading of Falkner, but confines herself to a psychoanalytic~iographicaI argument. ?er 
p 1. . g of Falkner is more focused upon the book's sexual/mcestuous overtones than 1ts 
F~/icaJ ramifications and continues in the vein outlined by. J:>oovey 8.!ld Mellor. Ka!e 
wor1uson Ellis, on the other hand, puts forth a valuable poli~cal re.ading of Shelley s 
Uto . ' alth.ough she finds a skeptical mistrust of the bourgeois ~amily ~here I read a 
anl1an reinvention of it. Charlene Bunnell gives a careful social reading ?fboth Lodore 
rec F aliener in tenns of the conventions of the novels of manners an? sentiment. More 
Ille entlr, Graham Allen looks at Falhter as it impinges upon Shelley s attempt to 
Mo1:1ona1ize Godwin without re-awakening the scandal around ~e figure of he; mother. 
reha~ .u_seful for this study is Julia Saunders ' s cautious intezpretatlon ?f 8.helley ~ 
. 
1litation of the 'd f th re. •1 as "a reconciliation of progressive ideas with the Possible" (222). I ea o e iami Y 
286 
of the educati . . 
on provided to Elizabeth by Miss Jervis gives pride of place to the ,, 
masculine st di " b . . 
u es y ment1orung them first. Shelley carefully details Miss Jervis 's 
" 
one hard, defined, unerratic line," describing her personality as "precise, and fonnal, 
and silent d . 
'an quiet, and cold"--all characteristics more likely to be thought of as 
masculine Sh 11 
· e ey goes on to say that Falkner's "mind was strong in its own elements 
but these 1 ' 
ay scattered, and somewhat chaotic. His observation was keen, and his 
imagi . 
nation fervid; but it was inborn, uncultivated, and unenriched by any vast stores of 
reading'' (39 [I. 113])--characteristics one might associate with the feminine. Through 
e.xposure to the combined influence of these two personalities, Elizabeth develops a well-
balanced mind: "the two served to fozm Elizabeth to something better than either. She 
leazned from Falkner the uses of learning: from Miss I Jervis she acquired the thought and 
e.xp . 
enence of other men" (39 [I. 113-14], emphasis added).26 Gender distinctions tend to 
blur in this d · · · fl th ·c1ea f escnption, serving to distance Elizabeth's education rom e 1 o gender 
Until the end. It is at this point that Shelley pulls back to divide the "more masculine 
studies''~ 
uom "those feminine qualities." The distance Shelley establishes between 
Elizabeth' d fun · · · s education and the expectations surrounding gender shoul ction to mitigate 
our ini . 
tial- and appropriate--critical alazm: Shelley's language emphasizes the extent to 
Which E1· b fh da b d iza eth canies the strengths proper to both genders o er Y, ut oes not 
-------------
silllil 26 Wollstonecraft herself, in her Vindication ofthe Rights of~oman, us~s a 
lllan''~ non-gendered turn of phrase to describe her ability to converse as man w1th 
I have conversed, as man with man, with medical ~en, o~ anatomical subjects, 
~d compared the proportions of the human body with artists--yet such modesty 
did I meet with that I was never reminded by word or look of my sex, of the 
absurd rules which make modesty a pharisaical cloak of weakness . . And I am 
persuaded that in the pursuit of knowledge women would neyer be msulted by 
sensible men, and rarely by men of any description, if they did not by mock. 
modesty remind them that they were women . . . . Men are not always men m ~e 
company of women, nor would women alway~ remember that ~ey are worn~~· 1f 
they were allowed to acquire more understanding. (Chap. vn, On ModestY, 
123 n7) 
287 
atte.rnpt to attrib · · . 
ute certain qualities to Elizabeth as "natural," as most essentialist language 
tends to do. 
Shelley uses similarly essentialist language to describe Elizabeth's situation when 
FaJkn 1 
er eaves her alone in Greece while he fights in the war: 
There was no help or hope, and she must early learn the woman's first and hardest 
lesson, to bear in silence the advance of an evil, which might be avoided, but for 
th
e unconquerable will of another. Almost she could have called her father cruel, 
had not the remembrance of the misery that drove him to desperation, inspired pity, 
instead of selfish resentment. (59 [I. 1781) 
liere, what sounds like essentialist language--the age-old, oppressive patriarchal dictum 
that Wom h . ' 
an s ould suffer in silence--is shown to be the outcome of Elizabeth s personal 
and soc ·a1 . 
i circumstances. Actually, Elizabeth has not been silent or passive: she has 
str
ongly protested Falkner's intent (to die honorably in the war) and has insisted that she 
acco.rnpany him to Greece. She has, however, conceded to Falkner that she will not 
follow hi . . 
m mto the very camp of war, and this separation has resulted m her present 
silence Th . . beth . . . 
· e narrative condemns this situation, showmg Eliza contmwng virtuously 
to occup h '-'kn ' · k · h Y erself and to study, even as her knowledge of Fm er s ns womes er. 
Falkner' " " 1 "hi · 1 · th s unconquerable will" is acknowledged to be crue , s mvo vement m e war 
,, 
an evil" born of "the misery that drove him to desperation." Elizabeth struggles to feel 
,, . 
Pity, instead of selfish resentment"--but the reader, sympathizing with her, does not 
indentif A Y her opposition to Falkner's will as selfish or as resentment. s a woman, 
Elizabeth is excluded from the scene of war, and powerless either physically or legally to 
restrain her guardian from his fool-hardy and suicidal wish. What looks at f1rst like 
essentialist language becomes a poignant example of how restrictively gendered behavior 
fonns obstacles to Elizabeth's right-minded and sympathetic goals . 
.Education is central to the foundational gendering of character in Shelley; indeed, 
288 
Shelley ofte . 
n Introduces characters by describing their education. Elizabeth's is well-
Illanaged by Falkner. Contrary to the practices of Lord Lodore in Shelley's 1835 novel, 
Falknerd . 
oes not insulate his adopted child from society, but travels with her (though they 
travel throu h .- . 
g 1ore1gn lands, they often meet with other English people) and hires a 
capable governess, Miss Jervi s, who sees that Elizabeth's education is strict and 
complete nTL 
· n nereas Ethel, the heroine of Ladore, is given a strongly gendered education, 
taught to d 
a apt herself to her father's every mood and never learns to apply herself 
dir 
igent1y to solitary study, Elizabeth is just the opposite. Taught by Miss Jervis always 
~~ . 
s ve for perfection, she is well able to manage her own studies independently and so 
can surv· . 
ive (though not contentedly) outside her father's presence (unlike Ethel, who 
always 
seems to require the presence of her father or a male surrogate). Throughout the 
novel, Elizabeth ·considers her father's welfare a paramount reason for not leaving his 
side, When Falkner wishes to restore Elizabeth to her Raby relatives in order that he 
Il1i 
ght go to Greece and die in the war, Eliza'beth will not allow it: 
"My dear, dear father! - my more than father, and only friend - you break my heart 
by speaking thus. If you are miserable, the more need that your child - the creature 
you preserved, and taught to love you _ should be at your side to comfort - I had 
almost said to help you. You must not cast me off! Were you happy, you might 
desert me; but if you are miserable, I cannot leave you - you must not ask me - it 
kills me to think of it!" (51 [I.1521) 
Elizabeth often refers to Falkner as her "more than father," emphasizing that bonds of 
Choice rather than bonds of blood have joined them together. 27 The voluntary nature of 
------------
27 J 1i s . · th t Shelley has reimagined the bonds Uni . u a aunders 1s correct to pomt out a 1 · h · Sh ting members of a family: "Usually family ties depend on blood re at10ns ,!PS .. . . 
h e~ley replaces blood with atitude" (214). Saunders goes on to assert. that Falkner 
s as bought' the freel ·ven~evotion of his adopted daughter throug~ his care ~d 
h ~PPort - doubly so Jcfuse he extended his protection to an o~han w1~ no claim. on 
IIn. Gratitude forms ties thicker than blood" (216). Saunders s emphasis on gratitude 
289 
their associatio . 
. n renders It stronger rather than weaker: Elizabeth "felt herself bound to 
hun by stronger th fil'al . 
an I 1 ties. A father peri'onns an imperious duty in cherishing his 
Child; but all h 
ad been spontaneous benevolence in Falkner. His very faults and passions 
lllade his sa 'fi 
D en ice the greater, and his generosity the more conspicuous" (55 [I. 166]). 
topian do . . . 
mest1c1ty 1s enhanced as a model for society when, as here--and as in 
Shelley's ut . 
opian short story, Maurice, or the Fisher's Cot--characters join together in 
Voluntary u . . . . . 
ruon out of this f eelmg of mutual benevolence. This utopian model is also 
demonstrat d . 
e , not qwte as conspicuously, in the companionate marriages featured in both 
lodore (th . 
e mamage of Ethel and Edward Villiers, and the marriage of Cornelia and 
lioratio S ·1 
avi le) and Falkner (the marriage of Elizabeth and Gerard Neville). 
Also unlike Ethel, rather than adapting her own reactions to the mood of Falkner, 
Elizabeth 
constantly challenges him to modify his own mood, preventing his attempted 
Silicide wh 
en they are first brought together (19 [I.471) and continually bringing him back 
both Ph . 
Ysically and mentally from the verge of death by her assiduous care. Elizabeth is 
much less of a bending reed than Ethel; although she embodies the "womanly virtues" 
adzni 
red by Shelley, she possesses·anindependent mind and the ability to fonnulate and 
adhere to he · b th · · · r own plan of action. In the same scene, Eliza e ms1sts on accompanymg 
Fa1kn 
er to Greece; 
"No dear father, you will not leave me behind. I am not unreasonable - I do 
not ask to follow you to the camp _ but you must let me be near - in the same 
----
~th~e-·_k______ . 1. 
of e.xc ns of transforming a cooperative commuruty of benevo en~e mto an e~onomy 
she 1o:ange. Elizabeth refers to Falkner's benevo~ence as proof of his_ ~efonnatJon; but 
fideli ks u.pon her own devotion to him as a duty mcurred bJ: her familial bo~~ of. 
duty ~ t~ him, not as repayment for his benevolence. According to the G?dwm1an 1~ea of 
to o~e ne s actions should produce the greatest good for all, n?t necess~ly redounding 
(Goef s.elf--gratitude is not involved as any benefit to oneself 1s a mere side-effect. 
se1f_1:n dis~usses benevolence in book N, chap. ~ of Political Justice, arguing tha! Dto . e, While sometimes a factor in benevolence, JS not a necessary co~ponent of It). 
sub Pian domesticity is created when individuals' personal benefit and gratitude are 
sumed Within a larger sense of duty and mutual benefit. 
290 
country as yourself." 
"You force me to yield against my better reason," said Falkner. ''This is not 
right - I feel that it is not so - one of your sex, and so young, ought not to be 
exposed to all I am I about to encounter .... " (53 [I. 157-8]) 
Elizabeth . 
prevails, although Miss Jervis must be dismissed, and her proximity to Falkner 
results in h . 
er saving his life for the second time when he is wounded and catches a deadly 
fever It· . 
· Is Important to note here, that in obeying the dictates of "fidelity" (not necessarily 
awoman1 . 
Y VIrtue, but here closely tied to filial duty and love for the father) Elizabeth 
di 
sregards any question that her sex should detennine her actions, and the narrative 
supports the correctness of her decision. 
Essentialist language occurs most often in Falkner when Shelley intends to praise 
th
e good qualities of a character. For example, in nursing Falkner, Elizabeth "brought that 
discernment and tact of which only a woman is capable" (63 [I. 192]). Again, when 
Gerard Neville witnesses Elizabeth's care of Falkner, he "listened as if an angel spoke ... 
· none but woman could feel thus, but it was beyond woman to speak and to endure as 
she did" (71 [I. 281, 2191). This second example especially sets off warning bells, as it 
Prefigures the Victorian "angel in the house" that became such a repressive model for 
Women's behavior. 28 Yet Gerard Neville himself is described in similar language in the 
stlrr0
unding passage. Though still a "stranger" to them, Neville has given aid to Falkner 
and Elizabeth when Falkner suffers a relapse while travelling: 
· · . she found a couch had been prepared for her with almost a woman's care by 
the stranger . ... It was a new and pleasant sensation to the lone girl to feel that 
-----------
h 28 Julia Sa d & • t notes the resemblance of Elizabeth to the angel in t eh un ers, 1or ms ance, ,, S d .. _1, __ th 
cau · ouse; While arguing that this is a "superficial appearance, au~ ~~ ~ e . 
re tious position that Elizabeth's characterization is "Wollsto~~~an m Its potential to 
E fonn the family but less so than the "extreme liberated feIDimruty of Fanny Derham or 
Uthanasia" (221). 
291 
there was h . . 
one s anng her task, on whom she might rely . ... I He greeted her with 
extreme kindness. I . . . acting, without question, as if he had been her brother, 
guessing, as if by instinct, the best thing to be done, and perfomting all with 
activity and zeal. Poor Elizabeth, cast on these difficult circumstances, without 
relation or friend, looked on him as a guardian angel, consulted him freely, and 
Witnessed his exertions in her behalf in a transport of gratitude. He did every thing 
for her · . .. they were in a manner already intimate, though I strangers .. . . It was 
impossible not to be won by her new friend's gentleness, and a/most feminine 
delicacy of attention, joined to all a man's activity and readiness to do the thing that 
Was necessary to be done. "I have an adopted father," thought Elizabeth, "and this 
seems a brother dropped from the clouds." (70, 71 [I. 214, 21S, 216,217], 
emphasis added) 
Elizabeth · "all ' · · not only admires Neville's help in masculine tenns-- a man s activity and 
readines t d . 1 ua1 . . . 
s O o the thing that was necessary"--but finds his man Y q 1ties especially 
achnira ble for the very reason that they are ')oined" to his "gentleness, and almost 
feminine d 1 · ' " M · rtantl e icacy of attention" and "almost a womans care. ost 1mpo Y, even as 
Neville sees Elizabeth as something of an angel, Elizabeth also sees Neville as a guardian 
angel--helping to disassociate the metaphor from the disturbingly gendered and restrictive 
ties in hi f N ·11 ' w ch it later comes to be entangled Again, the voluntary nature o ev1 e s 
benev 1 · · h · h 1 · 0 ence is insisted upon as a quality of the utopian domesticity e is e pmg to create: 
rather than interpreting Neville's actions as those of a potential mate, and therefore an 
interested Party, she perceives him as a brother and places him with Falkner as a member 
of her elective family. 
Neville 's good qualities are the product of a careful education--the early loving 
treatznent of his mother, his own "better nature," and the care taken by his step-sister 
Lady Cecil to retrieve him from the bad treatment he suffered at the hands of his father. 
292 
After the lo f h. 
ss O 1s mother, Neville is wild, full of grief, and angry at the blow to his 
lllother' s . 
reputation when Sir Boyvill Neville divorces her by act of Parliament. Neville's 
early des . . . 
pair is descnbed in tenns reminiscent of the Creature in Frankenstein: "You do 
not know th 
e usual unhappy tenor of my thoughts, nor the cause I have to look on life an 
an unwe1 
come burthen ... . as a boy [this unhappiness] drove me to solitude - to 
abhon-en I f . . ce o the sight of man - to anger against God for creatmg me" (74 [I. 228-91). 
I-Ii 
s zno
th
er tom from him, his father unjust, he, like the Creature, is spiritually orphaned. 
WhenE1· 12abeth and Falkner first encounter him, he is sullen and a savage: "She 
rellleznbered him as she first saw him, a boy driven to wildness by a sense of injury; she 
rezneznb d . 
ere him when reason, and his better nature, had subdued the selfish portion of 
his feer . . 
Ing - grown kind as a woman - active, friendly, and sympathizmg, as few men 
are" (8 . . . . 6 [I. 2681). Lady Cecil's intervention, and his own ms1ght that he nught be able to 
clear hi ' . . . 
s mother s name, allow Neville to recover his humaruty, and mdeed, to 
incorporate admirable characteristics (kindness, friendliness, sympathy) the narrative 
ass · 
oc1ates With "woman." 
Falkner too has been a savage due to mistreatment at the hands of men and is driven 
to find kindness in the care of women. After his mother's death, Falkner was mistreated 
by his father, his uncle, and his school-masters in succession. Like Neville, Falkner had 
been a "h . . 1 
eedless, half savage boy, who listened with wonder, yet conv1ct1on to essons 
of Virtue" at the feet of Alithea, s mother, a distant relation of his own dead mother He 
grows to love Alithea, but she regards him as a brother. Falkner, however, is unable to 
frame a familial (platonic) domestic model for relationship with Alithea, resulting in 
tragedy. In contrast to the voluntary benevolence of Neville 's brotherly assistance to 
Eliz b th li · t · a eth, Falkner's feelings toward Alithea change from bro er ness mo romantic 
Possessiveness; 
"At first I had felt dissappointed and angzy; but soon imagination shed radiance 
293 
over what had d h ·11 . . 
seeme c i y and dim . .. . I heard her sweet voice repeat again and 
again her vow never to forget her brother, her more than brother, her only friend; 
the only b . 1 fi . . 
emg e t her to love ... The memory of this affection grew into a 
conviction that I was loved, and a belief that she was mine for ever." (171 [II. 
2131) 
When Falkner finally returns after ten years in India to find Alithea manied to the jealous, 
v· 
am, and ins · · . . . 
ensitive SJr Boyvill Neville, he resolves to "rescue" her. Falkner is unable 
to Provide Al 'th . i ea with kindness, friendliness, or sympathy- the "womanly" qualities 
Gerard Neville has cultivated in order to become qualified as a suitable "brother'' and 
Partner in utopian domesticity. A type of the hyper-masculine, commonly identified with 
Shelley' "B 
s yronic" Romantic heroes and biographically associated with Edward 
TreJawn F: . Y, a.lkner brings Alithea sadness instead of comfort m her unfortunate maniage. 
After he . 
cames her away by force, she drowns in an attempt to return to her son. 
Sir Boyvill, Alithea's husband and Neville 's father, is the villain of the novel. In 
the follo · · 
wing passage, Sir Boyvill 's disrespect for women fonns the centezpiece of 
FaJkne ' 
rs accusations against him: 
He was cold, proud, and sarcastic, withal a decayed/ dandy, turned cynic - who, 
half despising himself, tried wholly to disdain his fellow creatures. A man whose 
bosom never glowed with a generous emotion, and who took pride in the sagacity 
Which enabled him to detect wonns and conuption in the loveliness of virtue. A 
P0or, mean-spirited fellow, despite his haughty outside; ~d then when he spoke of 
Women, how base a thing he seemed! his disbelief in their excellence, his 
contemptuous pity, his insulting love, made my blood boil. To me there was 
something sacred in a woman's very shadow. Was she evil, I regarded her with 
the pious regret with which I might view a shrine desecrated by sacrilegious hands -
the odour of sanctity still floated around the rifled altar; I never could regard them as 
294 
mere fellow-creatures - they were beings of a better species, sometimes gone astray 
in the wo Id' 'ld 
r s w1 erness, but always elevated above the best among us. For 
Ali th ea' s sake I respected every woman. How much good I knew of them!/ 
Generous, devoted, delicate - their very faults were but misdirected virtues; and this 
animal dared revile beings of whose very nature he could fonn no conception. (175 
[II. 226-8]) 
Sir Boyv·11 1 
serves as a countezpoint to Falkner's chivalric tendency to place women on a 
PedeS ta}. Ironically, Falkner's own worship of Alithea, and not Sir Boyvill's insulting 
love b · 
' nngs about Alithea's destruction. Shelley commonly uses the tenn "fellow 
creatures'' whe J: • • th d . . d . . . all .. 
n re1emng to 1ssues of sympa y an Justice, an agam, 1roruc y, 1t 1s Sir 
BoYVill. 
1n whose eyes women are "fellow creatures," whereas Falkner "never could 
regard them as mere fellow-creatures." Falkner "elevates" women to a "shrine" and 
''altar" and thi ks f · · al 'de th n them "a better species" because o empmc evi nee-- e generous 
treatment he had received at the hands of Alithea's mother leads him to exclaim, "How 
lllUch good I knew of them!"--but his image of "a shrine desecrated by sacrilegious 
hands" all . . 
ows women no agency of their own. He does not allow Allthea the choice of 
Sta ' 
Ying in her bad maniage, even though he recognizes "the delicate forbearance that 
filled h . . . 
er noble mind. She thought of her virgin faith plighted - long years spent at [Srr 
Boyvill 's] side ... her fidelity, which if it had ceased to cling to him, had never 
wandered" (179 [II. 2411). 
Shelley uses Falkner's chivalric attitudes to deepen and complicate her portrayal of 
Utopian domesticity. The attitude of Falkner towards Alithea is a good example of what 
Ernst Bloch has tezmed "abstract utopia"--the mere imagining of perfection. What Bloch 
terzns "concrete utopia" is an imagined ideal that people struggle actually to create in 
society--a process that parallels the Godwinian notion of the "perfectibility" of 
huinankind. Despite his lofty attitude towards Alithea, Falkner disregards her right to 
295 
detennine h 
er own future: "I was shocked to see so much of the slave had entered her 
sou1. I told h · 
er this; I told her she was being degraded ... I told her that she must be 
free· , 
· · · · · · · Would you not with transport escape from your jailor to a home of love 
and freedom?"• ( 
· 180 [II. 2451) Falkner imagines himself somehow able to escape the 
bonds est bl" 
a lshed by society--whereas Alithea herself would have joyfully renewed the 
bonds off. . 
nendship that had previously linked Falkner to herself: 
"If I have in my intercourse with [Sir Boyvill] regretted that lively, cheering 
interchange of sentiment which I enjoyed with you - you are now here to bestow it, 
and my life, hitherto defective, your return may render complete. I: .. Let us be 
friends, Rupert, such as we once were, brother and sister; I will not believe you are 
retumed only to pain and injure me - I am happy in my children - stay but a little, 
and You will see how foolish I have been to complain at all. You also will love my 
boy." (180 [II. 244, 2461). 
Alithea spe ... 1,~ • d · · d · ~ to Falkner in the now familiar tenns of utopian omesticity: espite her 
lllaztiage to another man, the father of her child, ties which she cannot imagine breaking, 
sh · 
e intends to expand the boundaries of her domestic situation to include Falkner--"such 
as We once were, brother and sister. ,,29 She imagines that Falkner will be capable of 
reassllllling his voluntary, brotherly ties to her, and that these ties of voluntary love will 
extend to her son as well--"You also will love my boy." Falkner has no practicable 
scheme to effect Alithea, s freedom; his is the talk of a wild revolutionary--an abstract 
Uto · Pian--contrasting "slavery" with "freedom." By stealing her from her husband, he 
dreazns that he will set her free. Falkner's inchoate plans seem to evoke the plans of the 
-----------
are !9. Alithea 's plans to treat Falkner as family, u~~er tJie very nose of her husb~d, 
lie relll.iniscent of the establishment of utopian domes~city m _the house of the tyranrucal 
in nry VU by Queen Elizabeth and Catherine Gordon m Perkin Warbeck. In both stances the exp ta . f th ld are disregarded and bonds of Jove are seen as Par~- ' ec t10ns o e wor • 
-.iiount. 
296 
Creature to tak hi 
. e s mate to the wilds of South America, or Lord Lodore's attempt to 
S1n..;J 
·•.u arly evad · ·1 · · · 
e c1v1 1zatton m the wilds of the Illinois: " ... away from him, I would 
cl · aun no sh · 
are m her myself. I would place her in some romantic spot, build a home 
Wofthy ofh 
er, surrounded with all the glory of nature, and only see her as a servant and a 
slave" (1 8 5 fll.2591). Although Shelley's portraits of utopian domesticity often do feature 
a Siil]jJ . 
ar location within "the glory of nature," this vision is regarded even by Falkner 
himself a · 
s improbable: ''the very acme of my hallucination; it might be - I cannot tell" 
(185 cn.2591). Falkner overlooks what Shelley must have intended: the grammatical 
Stzuctur th 
e at allows Falkner to believe that he would only have encroached upon Alithea 
,, 
as a servant and a slave" actually seems to admit that he would "only see her as a servant 
and a slav " . . 
e --and m fact, he has already admitted as much to her face. Alithea, though 
see · 
Illingly naive as to the extent of Sir Boyvill's jealousy, prefers to attempt to restore her 
friendship With Falkner within the bounds of civilization because the theory of utopian 
domesticity always includes the possibility of its realization in concrete, not abstract, 
tenns. 
After Elizabeth's care brings Falkner back from the brink of death in Greece, 
Falkner 'th Eli b th' · h Th · agrees no longer to seek death in accordance w1 za e s wis es. eir 
honest conversation, in which Falkner alludes to his feelings of guilt and Elizabeth insists 
that hi thi ·1 · · f s repentance and his benevolence to her should assuage s gw t, is a portrait o the 
benefits · ~;al t t · accruing from the openness of communication that 1s essenu o u op1an 
domesticity: 
This interchange of heart-felt emotion did good to both .... There is a magic in 
sympathy, and the heart's overflowing, that we feel as bliss, though we cannot 
explain it. ... Their hearts had united; they had mingled thought and sensation, and 
the intimacy of affection that resulted was an ample reward to her for every 
suffering. She loved her benefactor with inexpressible truth and devotedness, and 
297 
their entire d fi 11 . 
an u mterchange of confidence gave a vivacity to this sentiment 
wh· h · Ic of itself was happiness. (65 [I. 199, 2001) 
B . esides foe . 
using on the emotional benefits of openness, this passage also emphasizes the 
characteri . 
Stic sense of mutual benefit that parties derive from utopian domesticity. 
Although El. 
Izabeth has just brought Falkner back from the brink of death by a 
combinaf . . 
Ion of vigilant nursing and persuasive argument, she continues to see him as her 
"be 
nef acto ·" h " 
r, er suffering" the wony and care of his illness results in an "intimacy of 
affection" h 
s e considers an "ample reward." 
Elizabeth's education is key to her ability to remain by Falkner's side despite 
Worldly advice to the contrary. Shelley explicitly discounts the gendered arguments that 
Would bar Eli beth ~ ' 'al d · · za 1rom the public sphere of Falkner s tn an impnsonment, or from 
the acqu · . . 
isition of evidence on her behalf. Though Elizabeth is carefully presented 
through . 
out the novel as respectably feminine, the following passage wondezfuily rebuts 
any restrictively gendered notions of proper behavior that might keep Elizabeth from the 
fu~ . . Illent of her goals. After citing her extensive travels with Falkner, and previous care 
Ofh· im, she asks, 
was she to adopt a new system of conduct, become a timid, home-bred young lady, 
tied by the most frivolous rules, impeded by fictitious notions of propriety and false 
delicacy? Whether they were right, and she were wrong- whether indeed such 
submission to society _ such useless, degrading dereliction of nobler duties, was 
adapted for feminine conduct, and whether she, despising such bonds, sought a 
bold and dangerous freedom, she could not tell; she only knew and felt, that for 
her, educated as she had been, beyond the narrow paling of boarding-school ideas, 
or the refinements of a lady's boudoir, that, where her benefactor was, there she 
ought to be; and that to prove her gratitude, to preserve her faithful attachment to 
him amidst dire adversity, was her sacred duty - a virtue, before which every minor 
298 
,, moral faded and disappeared. (234 fill. 991) 
Propriety ,, th 
. ' e Watchword of the developing idea of prescriptive gendered behavior is 
~ 1 ' ng ed out h 
ere as the bearer of "fictitious notions" and associated with "frivolous rules . 
. . and false d r 
e Icacy." Despite Mazy Poovey's arguments to the contrary, Shelley 
explicitly di 
sregards "propriety" as the correct basis for a woman's action in her novel. 
Even Nev]l . , . 1 e argues that Elizabeth's "age and sex wholly prevent' her travelling to 
Americai 
n search of Falkner's witness, but Elizabeth shrugs off his argument by 
asseiting h 
er own familiarity with travel: ''I have not the common fears of a person whose 
life has bee . 
. n spent m one spot; I have been a traveller, and know that, but for the fatigue, 
it is as ea 
sy to go a thousand miles as a hundred" (259 [III. 1811). She refuses even to 
~~WJcn . 
ac ow ledge any impropriety pertaining to her gender. Startlingly, as though 
again to f. . . 
re ashion the anti-feminist metaphor before it has even come mto play, Shelley at 
this mo 
ment again refers to Elizabeth as an angel: "She looked as beautiful as an angel, as 
She 
I 
spoke; her independent spirit had nothing rough in its texture" (259 [ill. 181-21). 
Thisan . . 
gel is markedly not of the house, nor it is conf"med to actions of gendered 
Propriety d · · . · · d · · b b th 
• an 1t 1s impelled not by the restrictions of traditional omestic1ty, ut y e 
f~domand . . . 
voluntary ties of love characteristic of utopian domesticity. 
Finally, Elizabeth refutes even the advice of Falkner when he invokes gendered 
Propriety and worldly opinion as a guide for her actions: "Daughters, when they many," 
observ d . 
e Falkner, "leave father, mother, all, and follow the fortunes of their husbands. 
'You must submit to the common law of human society" (278 [III. 2441). Elizabeth 
counters With the invocation of fidelity, the centerpoint of the novel: ''We are not parent 
and Child . fid f ty . 
· · · but we have a strong resemblance on one pomt - 1 e 1 is our 
Characteristic" (278 [III. 2471). Elizabeth also rests assured that Neville will adapt to the 
Unusual · f · te al 
. domestic circumstances--both because of his supenor sense o m lperson 
Justice and perhaps also because of his demonstrated ability to cross the expectations of 
299 
gendered behav· . . 
tor m his actions of gentleness and sympathy. 
. .At the levels of language and characterization, Shelley establishes that both sexes, 
grven an a . 
ppropnate education, are able to embody the same desirable virtues. At the level 
of plot, Shell . 
ey contmues to enlarge upon utopian domesticity by responding to her 
father's first d 
an most well-received novel, Things as They Are, or, Th.e Adventures of 
Caleb Wil[· 
zams. In Caleb Williams, Godwin shows how Falkland's love for his own 
reputati 
. on causes him to hide the guilt of a murder he committed in rage, suffering two 
innocent . . . . 
People to die. He then hounds Caleb Williams, who has discovered his secret, 
Until Caleb . . . . 
' m despair, bnngs him to trial. There, upon seemg the wasted body of 
Falkland C . . . 
' aleb pours forth his heartfelt regret for bnngmg the charge agamst Falkland, 
but because of hi · d ·1 d hi · · 
s smcerity, all are convinced of Falklan 's gw tan s reputation 1s 
finau 
y deStroyed. Caleb, too, considers himself destroyed, since his despairing attack 
Upon hi fi 
s 0 .nner master has destroyed a man he believes to have been noble and good at 
heart. So de · fth de h · ed 
' spite the fact that Falkland is at last convicted o e mUii r e comrrutt , 
both lllen an d · · b ell · · d 
e estroyed and justice, as Godwin would define 1t, 1s a Y IlllScame . 
Shelley clearly signals her intent to revise Caleb Williams, first by using the name 
Falkner for her hero, and second, by focussing on the attempts of Gerard Neville to 
discover th . u1 . . 
e secret of his mother's disappearance and to clear her reputation, res tmg m 
the trial 
of Falkner for the murder of Alithea, Neville's mother. Falkner, however, when 
~~~ hi . 
. n d With Neville, s intention to go to America in search of Osborne, s accomplice 
_1n the abduction, confesses his guilt and puts himself at Neville's mercy. Neville at first 
tn~nds to rneet Falkner in a duel, and both men expect that Falkner will not defend 
himself. But Neville 's vengeful and low-minded father, Sir Boyvill, instead brings 
Charg . h' 
es against Falkner, paralleling the actions of Caleb Williams agamst IS master 
Falkland. 
Shelley's key revision of Godwin's plot is the interposition of Elizabeth, who 
300 
because of her 1 . . . 
ong association with Falkner, knows of his heartfelt remorse and 
repentance and . 
' also trusts m the fact that Falkner is innocent of murder, though not of 
abduction El . . 
v· . · izabeth stays with her adopted father in prison, much as Ethel does when 
illiers is d . . 
eta.med m debtor's prison in Ladore. Elizabeth refuses to listen to worldly 
w· isdom Whi h 
' c attempts to convince her that she should abandon Falkner, 
dissassoci . 
ating herself from him by returning to the Raby family that had abandoned her 
as a child Th . . 
· e opiruons of the world are expressed by the sympathetic and well-meaning 
Lady Cecil, Neville 's step-sister and Elizabeth's friend: 
"Yet," said Lady Cecil, "he cannot be wholly innocent; the flight, the 
catastrophe, the concealment of his victim's death; - is there not guilt in these 
events?" [The importance of the appearance of guilt to worldly judges continues to 
echo Caleb Williams.] 
"Much, much; I will not excuse or extenuate ... . It is not for me to speak, 
nor to hear even of his past errors; never was remorse more bitter, contrition more 
sincere. But for me, he had not survived the unhappy lady a week; but for me, he 
had died in Greece, to expiate his fault. Will not this satisfy his accusers? 
"I must act from higher motives. Gratitude, duty, every human obligation 
bind me to him. He took me, a deserted orphan, from / a state of miserable 
dependence ... he brought me up as his child; he was more to me than father ever 
Was. He has nursed me as my own mother would in sickness . .. when I knew not 
that one of my father 's family would acknowledge me. Shall I desert him now? 
Never!" [Elizabeth's fidelity to Falkner, in response to his kind treatment of her, 
revises Cal b' . b'l' t. F.'A'kJand, who had treated him well before Caleb e s ma i ity to trus m w 
began to suspect him.] 
"B t h 1 hi " 'd Lady Cecil· "he must be tried by the laws u you cannot e p m, sm ' 
of his country. I hope he has not in truth offended against them; but you cannot 
301 
serve him." (232 [Ill. 91-21) 
Lady Cecil · 
th points out that Falkner appears to be guilty, that the trial must go fozward, and 
at Elizabeth . 
can do nothing. But Elizabeth disagrees. Her own fidelity to Falkner is 
Paraznount in her mind· sh . h t . be 'd hi m.ti hi . hi 
, e w1s es o remam s1 e m, to co ort m m s distress 
ciild Voluntaril ' 
Y to return the benevolence he has long extended to her: in short, to 
conti 
nue to sust · · 
run utopian domesticity around him even as he languishes in prison under 
the shadow . 
of a homble accusation. 
' Lady Cecil represents the far Jess utopian but completely reasonable viewpoint. She 
had never bee . 
n convmced that Alithea had not been in fact guilty of the adulterous 
conduct With hi 
w ch her husband had accused her in the Parliamentary divorce. Lady 
Cecil's . 
Pnmary concern is to ameliorate the long-term suffering of Gerard Neville, and to 
convince hi . 
m to abandon his attempts to clear his mother's name. Now, she tries to 
convince El. 
izabeth to cut her own losses in much the same way. But the very future that 
lady Cecil is t ... ,· · fGe d dEliz beth · 
... Jmg to protect--the intended future mamage o rar; an a --1s 
~~~ . the sympathy of heart between Elizabeth and Neville that grew out of 
Elizabeth, . . 
s admiration for Gerard's fidelity to his mother. Elizabeth states, 
''I 
sympathise with Mr. Neville; and I cannot help saying, though you [Lady Cecil] 
scoff at me, that I think that, in all he is doing, he is obeying the most sacred law of 
our nature, exculpating the innocent, and rendering duty to her who has a right, 
liv· Ing or dead, to demand all his love." (135 [II. 93]) 
Shelley at thi . . . th 1 
s point sets up the concern with justice that 1s pnrnacy m e nove · 
Elizabeth . . ' . 1 h 1 
sides against the worldly viewpoint to support Neville s seenung y ope ess 
Project, though Lad C ·1 • hl rts that her notion is "romantic." This complaint 
. y ec1 peev1s y asse 
18 
sillliJar to the so . di . f ''utopian" to describe a wishful scheme. l3 mettmes sparagmg use o 
Ut Elizabeth, s O • . ded t . "wishful thinking" but in the concrete p1mons are groun no m 
actions she reaf:fi th h n Neville seems to have reconciled himself inns evecy day. So en, w e 
302 
to Falkner's tri . . 
al, Elizabeth points out in very Godwinian language the contradiction 
between hi 
"I h 
s professed belief in the defense of innocence and the prosecution of Falkner: 
ave heard you lament that crime is so hardly visited by the laws of society. I 
have heard you say, that even where guilt is joined to the hardness of habitual vice, 
th
at it ought to be treated with the indulgence of a correcting I father, not by the 
cruel Vengeance of the law" . . . . Neville could not hear this without the deepest 
Pain. (237 [III. 108-91) 
It is NevilJ , . 
e s pain that signals to us that Elizabeth has awakened the sympathy which will 
eventua11 . . . 
Y bnng him into the circle of utopian domesticity. In Caleb Wz1liams, the 
" . 
sincerity" 
of Caleb's avowals that he would not disclose Falkland's secret is what causes 
PaJkiand to break down and confess his crime. Had this sincerity been exercised 
Privatel __ . . . 
Y as Shelley asserts within the domestic crrcle--the destruct.ton of Caleb and P. ' 
alkland might have been avoided. Neville admits that he believes Falkner to be innocent, 
but hi 
s fear of Worldly condemnation for associating with his mother's destroyer 
contin 
Ues for a While to rule his actions: "Can I take my mother's destroyer by the hand, 
and live ·th . . &. 
Wi him on tenns of intimacy and friendship? . . . can I - may I - so 1ar forget 
the WorJd' d1 
s censure, and I may say the instigations of nature, as unreserve y as to 
forgive?" ( · kn h b · 
. 295 cm. 3011) Still at the questioning stage, Neville ows e can ut is not 
SlJre he · fl f both hi 1 may forgive Falkner. He must overcome the base m uences o s ower 
natUre (th . k ) 
e desire for revenge) and the world (the expectation that he see revenge to 
acc0Il] 1. . P ish the Godwinian moment of justice: forgiveness. 
Eventually, Nev.me does achieve Godwinian forgiveness and is rewarded by his 
oWn sense of interior approbation: ''I do right in my own heart. It is a godlike task to 
reward the penitent. In religion and morality I know that I am justified: whether I am in 
the COde of Worldly I honour, I leave others to decide; and yet I believe that I am" (298 
fIII. 313-4]) Hi ddi . d . th the becomes part of the domestic circle of 
· s a tional rewaz; is a 
303 
''s 
Falkner and Er 
izabeth. Importantly, Neville here revises Lord Lodore, the Romantic hero 
of SheUe 's . 
Y earlier domestic novel. Lodore is never able to overcome the sense that he 
shouJd cond . 
uct himself according to the opinions of the world--dying in a duel to protect 
his hon 
or rather than remaining alive to protect his young daughter. Neville, in forgiving 
Falkner b.r aks 
' e the code of chivalry at the heart of so many tragedies: Lodore's death on 
tbe duelling field; Falkland's crimes on behalf of his reputation; and Falkner's worship of 
Alithea Whi h 
c created an unrealizable, phantom paradise that led him unwittingly to 
destroy her Ne ·11 • dmi · · · · · · 1· ·t1 · all d · 
· vi e s a ssability to utopian domestlc1ty 1s exp 1c1 y sign e m 
Elizabeth' 
s statement, "I go with my father because he is suffering; Neville may join us 
because h .. 
e Is innocent" (286 [III. 271]. 
Shelley's ideal, the Shelleyan Romantic hero, reaches its apex in the portrait of 
GerardN, . . . 
. eville. The witness of Elizabeth's relative, Mrs. Raby, proVIdes, as 1t were, an 
llllpartiaJ corroboration of Elizabeth's recognition of Neville's virtuous, even angelic 
qualities: 
No one could see Gerard Neville without feeling that something angelic - something 
nobly disinterested _ unearthly in its purity, yet, beyond the usual nature of man, 
sympathetic, animated a countenance that was all sensibility, genius, and love. (284 
CIII. 266]) 
ensibility, genius, and love" are strong code words identifying Gerard as a Shelleyan 
hero-- til f th B · h Pre . s 1 passionate, but without the dangerously self-centered tum o e yroruc ero. 
Vious incarnations of the Shelleyan hero were not without their flaws. Adrian, in The 
last Man, though b 1 . 1 1 character of negative actions; he refuses the enevo ent, 1s arge y a 
crown, he avo ·d d . .11 fLodori'LJ incorporates aspects of the Shelleyan i s eath. Horat.10 Sav1 e, o "' 
hero in his love of learning and his ability to see the virtue in Cornelia's heart, but he is 
too dispas · . . t a good marriage with his first 
sionate when he overestimates his ability to crea e 
Wife, the Italian Clorinda. But Gerard Neville, like Falkner, undergoes a trial by fire, 
304 
PUr · ging away hi 
gOod s savage aspects, turning his energies from self-destruction to active 
ness. We see . 
Stru most closely mto his psychological workings, learning of the 
ggles he go rm 
wo 1 es ough as he attempts to re-adjust his belief systems away from the r dly cod 
w e, and toward justice, even when this shift affects him in the most personal 
ay, Neville tri 
qu . . umphs as a Shelleyan Romantic hero because he is able to allow his 
alzties of" 
sens'bT 
re 
1 1 tty, genius, and love" to come to the forefront and rule his character 
SUlting in h. . ' 
c Is utopian union with Elizabeth, the real hero of Fa/bier. In achieving the 
apacity for n . 
Uto . orgiveness, Neville understands true justice and is enabled to help create 
P1an domesti· . C1ty. 
h Falkner, Who begins like Lodore, Victor Frankenstein, Castruccio, or Raymond, as 
Yl>er.lllasc li 
he u ne, aloof, pained, defensive, and self-destructive--a Byronic Romantic 
ro...unde 
Sh rgoes not only a mental but a physical transfollllation from the Byronic to the 
e1Jeyan type: 
lie grew, indeed, paler and thinner_ till his handsome features stood out in their 
~~p . . 
ress1ve beauty; he might have served I for a model of Prometheus - the will 
Unconquered - his mi.nd refusing to acknowledge the bondage to which his body 
Was th 1'hi e prey. (242 fill. 128-91) 
s Physical .... th h · al · f F uansfonnation of Falkner at first seems parallel to e p ys1c wasting o 
alklanct . 
m Caleb Williams--but with the invocation of Prometheus, Shelley explicitly 
Praises th 
e laudably refonned Falkner by paying tribute to her husband's poem. By the 
end of th 
1 e novel, Falkner's wild and tempestuous youth, even savage at some points and eadi 
ng to tr · · 1·1, th fti · agedy, has been atoned for and forgiven. His suffenngs, IAe e su enngs OfJ>r0 
b llletheus, have pared away his harsher emotions, leaving him a creature of 
enevolenc 
e and goodness. 
l The refonnation of Falkner must not be understood as a punishment of the father. 
nsteact . 
' It lllust be seen alongside the refollllation of Neville (and even the deathbed 
305 
repentance of Sir Boyvill) as exemplifying the potential for forgiveness, justice, and 
Godwiruan perfectibility. The ability of masculine heroes like Falkner to purge their 
impetuous, chivalric, and essentially selfish belief-structures, and instead to embody the 
gentler Virtues traditionally associated with women, is key to the possibility of social 
refonn. modelled in utopian domesticity. 
Shelley teases out the possibilities for social improvement hidden by the ideological 
fonnations of Romanticism and traditional restrictive domesticity. By revising 
domesticity, Shelley is able to couch her ideas for refonn in an existing, real-world social 
stru
cture. Every individual, she argues, benefits from creating bonds of love to fonn 
family and community. She emphasizes the possibilities of education as a way of 
gradually refonning the world, especially by casting aside the restrictions of gendered 
behavior for men and women, and denies the validity of worldly opinion (especially 
traditionally masculine notions of honor, glory, and chivalry) placing the priority of 
individual judgment within the boundaries of responsibility and duty. Unchecked selfish 
Passions lead to disaster, whereas refonned passion, harnessed by reason, leads in 
Wollstonecraftian fashion to improvement and benevolence. These ideas are made 
IllaJtifest in the contrasts between the unrefonned Byronic Romantic hero and the 
refonned and perfected Shelleyan hero as they are portrayed in the men and women 
characters of Lodore and Falhter. 
306 
WORKS CITED 
Allen, Graham "Pub . . 
· lie and Private Fidelity: Mary Shelley's 'Life of William Godwin 
and Falkner." Mary Shelley's Fictions: From Frankenstein to Falkner. Ed. 
Mi chael Eberle-Sinatra. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000. 224-242. 
Behrendt S 
' tephen C., ed. Approaches to Teaching Shelley's Frankenstein. New York: 
Modem Language Association of America, 1990. 
Bennett B 
' etty T. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley: An Introduction. Baltimore: Johns 
Hopkins UP, 2000. 
-...... '''N 
· ot this time, Victor!': Mary Shelley's Reversioning of Elizabeth, from 
Frankenstein to Falkner." Mary Shelley in Her Times. Ed. Betty T. Bennett and 
Stuan Curran. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins VP, 2000. 1-17. 
---. ''The Political Philosophy of Mary Shelley's Historical Novels: Valperga and Perkin 
Warbeck." The Evidence of the Imagination: Studies of Interactions between Life 
and An in English Romantic Literature. Ed. Donald H. Reiman, Michael C. Jaye 
and Betty T. Bennett. New York: New York VP, 1978. 354-71. 
Bloch, Emst. The Principle of Hope. 1959. Trans. Neville Plaice, Stephen Plaice and 
Paul Knight. Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell Ltd, 1986. 3 vols. 
Brewer w·1 · h 11 ' p· . " 
' 1 liam D. "Unnationalized Englishmen in Mary S e ey s icoon. 
Romanticism on the Net 11 (August 1998) 
<http://users.ox.ac.uk/-scat0385/mwsfiction.html>. 
Bunnell, Charlene B. "Breaking the Tie that Binds: Parents and Children in Romantic 
Fiction." Family Matters in the British and American Novel. Ed. Andrea O'Reilly 
Herrera, Elizabeth Mahn Nollen, and Sheila Reitzel Foor. Bowling Green, OH: 
Bowling Green Popular Press, 1997. 31-53. 
---. ''The Illusion of 'Great Expectations': Manners and Morals in Mary Shelley's Lodore 
and Ral''-- ., T , • D rtu""'"' Mary Shelley after Frankenstein,· Essays in Mter. lCOnoc,astic 'epa , .,..,. 
307 
Honor of the Bicentenary of Mary Shelley's Birth. Ed. Syndy M. Conger, 
Frederick S. Frank, and Gregory O'Dea. Asst. Ed. Jennifer Yokum. Madison: 
Fairleagh Dickinson UP, 1997. 275-92. 
Clenu 
t, Pamela. The Godwinian Novel: The Rational Fictions of Godwin, Brockden 
Brown, Mary Shelley. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. 
Cronin Ri 
' chard. "Mary Shelley and Edward Bulwer: Lodore as Hybrid Fiction." Mary 
Ellis 
Shelley's Fictions: From Frankenstein to Falkner. Ed. Michael Eberle-Sinatra. 
New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000. 39-54. 
' Rate Ferguson. "Subversive Swfaces: The Limits of Domestic Affection in Mary 
Shelley's Later Fiction." The Other Mary Shelley. Ed. Audrey Fisch, Anne 
Mellor, and Esther Schor. New York: Oxford VP, 1993. 220-234. 
GOd . 
win, William. Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and its Influence on Modem 
Morals and Happiness. 1793, rev. 3d ed. 1798. Ed. Isaac Kramnick. New York: 
Penguin, 1976. 
Ifill-Miller, Katherine c. "My Hideous Progeny": Mary Shelley, William Godwin, and 
the Father-Daughter Relationship. Newark: V of Delaware P, l995. 
Lew, Joseph W. "God's Sister: History and Ideology in Valperga." The 0ther Mary 
Shelley. Ed. Audrey Fisch, Anne Mellor, and Esther Schor. New York: Oxford 
DP, 1993. 159-181. 
Loven, Emest J., Jr. "Byron and the Byronic Hero in the Novels of Mary Shelley . ., The 
University of Texas Studies in English 30 (1951): 158-83· 
¼eUor, Anne K. Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters. New York: 
Methuen, 1988. 
---. Romanticism and Gender. New York: Routledge, 1993· 
---. "Why Women Didn't Like Romanticism: The Views of Jane Austen and Mary 
Shelley." The Romantics and Us: Essays on Literature and Culture. Ed. Gene W. 
308 
Ruoff. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1990. 274-87. 
0 'Sullivan B 
' arbara Jane. "Beatrice in Valperga: A New Cassandra." The Other Mary 
Shelley. Ed. Audrey Fisch, Anne Mellor, and Esther Schor. New York: Oxford 
VP, 1993. 140-158. 
Per.kin, Joan. Women and Marriage in Nineteenth-Century England. Chicago: Lyceum 
Books, 1989. 
Poovey M 
' ary. The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer.· Ideology as Style in the Works-
of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen. Chicago: U of Chicago 
P, 1984. 
Saunders, Julia. "Rehabilitating the Family in Mazy Shelley's Falkner." Mary Shelley's 
F: . 
zctzons: From Frankenstein to Falkner. Ed. Michael Eberle-Sinatra. New York: 
St, Martin 's Press, 2000. 211-223. 
Shelley ~1r 
' .Lv1ary W. Falhzer, a Novel. Ed. Pamela Clemit. The Pickering Masters: The 
Novels and Selected Works of Mary Shelley. General Editor Nora Crook with 
Pamela Clem.it, Consulting Editor Betty T. Bennett. Vol. 7. London: Pickering & 
Chatto, 1996. 
---. .lo dore. Ed. Fiona Stafford. The Pickering Masters: The Novels and Selected Works-
of Mary Shelley. General Editor Nora Crook with Pamela Clemit, Consulting 
Editor Betty T. Bennett. Vol. 6. London: Pickering & Chatto, 1996· 
--- .lo 
. dore. Ed. Lisa Vargo. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 1997. 
Shelley, Percy B. The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Ed. Mazy W. Shelley. 
London: Edward Moxon, 1839. 2d ed. 
Stafford, Fiona. "Ladore: A Tale of the Present Time?" Mary Shelley's Fictions: From 
Frankenstein to Falhzer. Ed. Michael Eberle-Sinatra. New York: St. Martin 's 
Press, 2000. 181-193. 
StOcking, Marion Kingston, ed. The Clairmont Correspondence: Letters of Claire 
309 
Clairmont, Charles Clairmont, and Fanny Imlay Godwin. Baltimore: Johns 
Hopkins VP, 1995. 
Vailins Dav·d "M 
' 
1 
· ary Shelley and the Lake Poets: Negation and Transcendence in 
lodore." Mary Shelley's Fictions: From Frankenstein to Falkner. Ed. WchaeJ 
Eberle-Sinatra. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000. 164-180. 
Wolfson Susan J "F . . . . "LI... he • 'T' h. 
' · enumst Inqwry and Frankenstein. .npproac s ,o .1 eac. mg 
Shelley's Frankenstein. Ed. Stephen C. Behrendt. New York: Modern Language 
Association of America, 1990. 50-59. 
Wollston 
ecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Ed. Carol H. Poston. 
New York: W.W. Norton, 1988. 
310 
Austen, Hemans, and Edgeworth: 
Contemporary Views of Domesticity and Feminism 
Some of the works of the most well-regarded women writers of Shelley's day 
may reveal how Sh 11 ' . de ood ti . . d . . e ey s contemporanes un rst emJmsm, omestic1ty, and the 
Possibility f . 0 utopia. Jane Austen, Felicia Hemans, and Maria Edgeworth all published 
dU:ri 
ng the span of time in which Shelley's own novels appeared. The works chosen for 
this discu · 
ssion reveal at least some degree of feminist engagement with the fate of 
Women, serving as a useful point of comparison with Shelley's own feminism. 
Frankenstein was published in 1818, the same year in which Austen 's last completed 
novel, Persuasion, posthumously reached publication. Persuasion offers a tantalizing hint 
of Utopian do · · · d & • • bee f · ~ mestic1ty m a novel that can be rea as 1em1mst ause o 1ts respecuu.l 
Pottrayal of one woman's socially-sanctioned sufferings within a polite, upper-class 
social milieu. Persuasion does not, however, offer a program for social change that 
Would allow women to escape such sufferings. Felicia Hemans published her extremely 
Well-received volume of poetry, Records of Woman, in 1828. Records of Woman 
explores the private and public lives of women from around the world and across class, 
showing how women suffer from men 's control of culture. Hemans valorizes domesticity 
in her k · · fr; h h wor , but in a way that largely reinforces domestic1ty as an escape om a ars 
World, rather than as a alternate, feminist model for social life. Maria Edgeworth ' s last 
novel, Helen, appeared in l834, before the publication of Lodore in 1835 and Falkner in 
1837 1 · h · t1 
· Helen shows the education of two young women who earn Just ow stnc y they 
w·1 1 1 be judged by society for the smallest failures . Although Edgeworth favorably 
P0Itrays a women who talces her place beside her husband in the public scene, the novel 
as a Whole prov:·d h . f . hment for deviation from strict rules women need 1 es a r etonc o pums 
obey, Unlike Edgeworth, Hemans, or even Austen, Shelley is unwilling to forgive 
311 
society or to all 
ow women to be browbeaten, punished, or broken, without condemning 
SUch a SOCiet d . . 
Y an contrasting 1t to a feminist utopian alternative. 
Persuasio . F. , . 
n. emzmst, but not Utopian 
As the history of utopian projects has shown, a utopia is not necessarily feminist. 
Likew· 
ise, a feminist project is not necessarily utopian. Feminism takes the critique of 
injusti 
ce towards women as its subject matter, while utopianism would suggest the 
blueprint f 0 
a refonned society which would solve the problems women face. Shelley's 
co.rnplex of refi ·d · · · d · ·t · h bl · onn 1 eas, which I descnbe as utopian omest1c1 y, 1s one sue uepnnt. 
lier treatm . . . 1 
ent of marriage (only one possible fonn of utopian domesticity) demands that 
Wo.rnen' . 
s education prepare them to be independent and respected equals of men. Women 
.must be all . 
owed to rely upon their own judgment, not cater to the dictates of others. In 
turn, .men · · f b'ti· 1 must be open, not isolating themselves m purswt o am 1 on or g ozy. p· 
lnally, .men and women must work together to the benefit of their community, which is 
con· 
SJdered an extension of the home. Like-minded individuals who choose to link 
the.rnsel · · d · · Ves m bonds of friendship and responsibility fonn utopian omestic1ty. 
Dtopia--the imagination of a perfected human society--is usually systematic in 
natUre. By following the program of the utopia we should be able to get there from here. 
Dtopi · dm 1 ·t 
anis.rn, however, does not necessarily have to produce a roa ap, as ong as 1 
------------
1 Alth h do figure prominently in Shelley's Utopian ~)Ugh romantic heterosexu_al ~ate es . . Lodore the match of Elizabeth 
With N n!trratives--the match of Cornelia with Horaao ~n hi ' well as the 
disinte!:~~e in Falkner--famili~ love an.d the lov~t :;;~ ecjilJly as importantly, and 
so.me ch d benevolence of philanthropic c~arac ' tic love completely in order to 
re.rnaj aracters, such as Euthanasia, must re1ect roman 
n true to their utopian ideals. 
312 
Produces a feel' . 
. mg of possible bettennent, as Ernst Bloch has theorized.2 The utopian 
i.rnpulse can b 1 
e oosely defined in tenns of four principles which Sarah Webster Goodwin 
has extr 
acted from Bloch's work: 
1 
· The imagined utopia, the hoped-for bettennent, need not be real or realistic in 
any narrow sense, but it must be possible. 
2
· Utopian discourse does not necessarily present a paradigm or a program; it may 
also be a stance, a mode, or even something as diffuse as a feeling dispersed 
through a given context. 
3
· Although the utopian is a hopeful mode, it may also be a skeptical one. 
Indeed, it is most likely to be effective in realizing the possible if skepticism and 
hope fonn complementazy aspects of it. 
4
· Although utopia typically is apocalyptic, an imagined end, it may also be 
v· . 
isionazy, a continual process. (4-5) 
Genera1 · . . . . 
izmg from her study of Victorian feminist utopias, Nan Bowman Albmski comes 
to the concl · · th th 1 · usion that "British women utopians are refonnist ra er an revo utionary 
and de . 
' spite their outspoken socialism, are less likely than men to suggest the overthrow 
of the e · · · ak th 1 Xlsting order" (51). The reformist nature of these utopias m es em ess 
Progr;:in..- · · · u1 d 'bed b 
-
4
.uuatic, and more in line with the more diffuse utopian imp ses escn Y 
Bloch. 
It is according to such broad principles that Persuasion seems most utopian. In 
Persu · k th h di 
asion, Austen's last completed and most nearly utopian wor ' e appy en ng 
achieved by Anne and Wentworth is both realistic and possible, fulfilling the frrst 
Prine· 1 · .t:. 1i fth ip e. In tenn f th d . . 1 however the predommant iee ng o e s o e secon pnnc1p e, , 
novel, is tense d d . Th t [Austen 's realistic detail, carefully executed 
an epress1ve. e exten o 
------------
2 See my discussion of Bloch in the Introduction. 
313 
narr. 
alive inexo b T 
ra 11ty, and subtle, often ironic tone, threatens the feeling of utonia· a 
h t' ' 
opefu1, Uto . fi . . 
pian eelmg 1s achieved only after the sought-for reconciliation. 3 As to the 
third p • • 0 
nnciple, Persuasion is both skeptical and hopeful: it argues against hope, even as it 
eventually rewards it. The structure of marriage in Persuasion is likewise described in 
tenns ske . . . . 
Ptical yet hopeful. It 1s not that Wentworth and Anne Bl110t end 1~p m a marriage 
that belies . 
a utopian ending; it is that the promising future readers look forward to for 
Anne and her husband, though based on the Crofts' idealized union, is not systematically 
~~T . . 
· he ending of Persuasion is notoriously ambivalent: although 1t does not close 
down A ' . . . . . 
nne s future with an "apocalyptic" finality, neither 1s the path life lymg before her 
clear1 
y mapped out in a "visionary" way. Austen's grasp of contingency and timing, her 
lllastery of . 
narrative tension and suspense, makes the reader aware of so many near 
1lli 
ssesinA , · thi ,.,..,.. 1 · t allh nne s recovery of Wentworth that we feel that m s p"" ucu arms ance as 
gone Well b . . . d 4 A ' 
-- Ut 1t 1s a felicity to which we are not, m general, assure . usten s mastery 
of reaJis · · h O th In Is qmte different from Shelley's use of Jess-rounded c aracter types. ver e 
coUrse fh . h be 0 er career, Shelley developed a cast of characters whic ar Stfong 
reseinbJ . fB . 
ances to one another and which often fall into the categones O yroruc 
(Passionate, doomed) and Shelleyan ( enlightened, benevolent) heroes. Her project of re-
~tj~ . . h ' 
on.mg the Romantic hero, emphasizing the need for the Byroruc ero s 
!ransfonnation into the Shelleyan, is a key part of her critique of Romantic-era culture in 
general. Austen's well-rounded characters, falling less into type categories, align 
then-. f · · I thi 
.,,selves Jes di . . f ulh• .. al ideology in need o reV1s10n. n s s stinctly with aspects o c ~ui 
h 3 As M , h lusion of Persuasion, as many critics 
ave noted d ary Poovey _has stated, "f _e co~c an authoritative system of values, or 
even 'h ! oes not pro1ruse general social re 01;;1, ) 
appmess ever after' for one loving couple (234 · 
4 L . · an "act of faith" but one which has i aura Mooneyham White tenns their mamage 
nternalized "in a sense, the 'threat of divorce'" (BO). 
314 
Way, realism . 
. as a technique of storytelling may be more likely to produce a narrative that 
lS .zn ore specifi . . . 
. . IC to individual characters and circumstances and less applicable to the 
Cfltique of . 
general societal patterns--that is, less utopian. 
The extent to which Persuasion may be thought of as utopian, then, hinges on the 
de°" 
~eeofpem . 
ection that is felt to be waiting for Anne and Wentworth in their marriage. 
Marnage h b 
as een a central issue for many utopian women writers. For example, 
Charlotte Perkins 0·1 ti . d d . . . h . . d 1 man ocuses on mamage an omest1c1ty m er wnting, an as 
Doroth B 
Y erkson points out, although Gilman had identified "the traditional marriage ... 
and · 
single f p ...... ;ly d · · da · f ' · " h h ld 
w.uu omest.tc1ty [as] the foun tions o womens oppression, s e e up a 
largely dom . . . . 
esttc society as an ideal for women and uses marnage to unite the women of 
ller/andt . . . . 0 the backward young men from the United States--umting revolutionary ideas 
With the . . . 
society she hopes to change (108-109). Using a word comed m Women and 
Econo,n· . . 
zcs (1898), Gilman attempts to "maternalize" men through marnage, helping them 
to" 
reach a new and higher humanity by learning to serve and love" (Berkson 113, note 
2), Carol F: · · b U s 
arley Kessler has shown that "of some ninety-five utopias wntten Y · , 
\V 0 :rnen befi · · 74 de · ore 1970, all included the marriage relationship, while percent ma 1t a 
central . . . 
Issue" (80). Since 1970, Kessler has observed that the emphasis on mamage has 
changed, · · dri Ri h d such that the compulsory heterosexuality 1dent1.fied by A enne c an 
,, 
compulsory behaviors" such as heterosexual marriage have been ameliorated by "a 
Varj 
ety of individually selected alternatives" including both heterosexual and same-sex 
bonc:ij · · Th' · f ng, as well as . . . . d 'thout exclusive pamng. 1s expansion o societies env1s1one w1 
Woznen 's options beyond the "marriage plot" of the nineteenth-centwy novel (including , 
au of A.usten 's novels) makes it harder for modern feminists in search of utopia to 
identify. . . 
It Within the malriage plot. 
B k " emphasis on or idealization of 
er son points out some feminists' fear that an 
Woznen 's culture 'deoloaical climate that could trap women 
s could backfire and create an 1 tr 
315 
once a · . ga,m .m th . 
e pnvate, domestic sphere" (112), and elaborates on the need for 
Understandi " 
ng women's culture"; 
I thi 
nk our best chance of a truly feminist future arises precisely from an 
Understandi 
ng of women's past and present experiences. Women's culture is a 
complex h P enomenon. Some parts of it--those which repress or deny power to 
Women or limit our sense of our own possibility--we all wish to reject. It is 
a~~u~ . Y necessary, however, that we bnng forward other aspects of women's 
expe · 
nence and demand not only that they be acknowledged as valid, but also that 
th
ey be seen as [better] models for human behavior and the organization of society 
· · · (113) 
Fen-.; . 
4
=111sts Wh 0 take Berkson' s exhortation to heart should also be aware of the dangers of 
genera.Jizi . . 
ng a uruversal "women• s culture" from a tiny sample (for example, the white 
Tl:tiddJ 
e--class Dnited States women's culture--which even within it has many variables, 
such 
as sexua1 · ) h ld · onentation, age, specific cultural background, etc. , nor s ou uruversal 
generaJiz . 
at:tons be drawn from Austen• s limited milieux. Mary Poovey has argued that the 
roillanti 
c nature of the marriage plot helped to perpetuate a structlll'e of powerlessness for 
woillen co f · · ti' th 
' mpensating them with the reward of love: "in the absence o mstttu ons at 
actua11y 1' . . . 
Ink the private and the public spheres, romantic relatJ.onships, by therr vezy 
nature 
, cannot materially affect society" (237). However, Julia Prewitt Brown has 
recently · · · did h 
argued from Lawrence Stone's work that "personal choices m marnage ave 
so. CJaJ Ill ' a1ida . 'thi 
eaning" (Review 306). Poovey discounts the idea that women s v tion w1 n 
these rel · · · a· ·t b th ationships might provide them a power basis for other femm1st ac v1 y, ut e 
roillantic relationsh. t 1 but as a resource Austen's novels did focus 1p can act, not as a oo, · 
on the lives and mental activities of certain women, revealing such women's lives and 
316 
Problems t th 0 
e male-dominated culture of the time5--a legitimate feminist activity which 
autho . 
nzed the sub· · · . 
uectzvJty of middle-class British women. The recognition of Austen's 
great literary . ~ ment celebrated the realistic portrayal of women's lives as a worthy subiect 
L0fani, 'J 
stic endeavor. 
fi . Sally Miller Gearhart presents a more demanding definition of "feminist utopian 1Ction" 
as that which 
a. contrasts the present with an envisioned idealized society (separated 
from the present by time or space); b. offers a comprehensive critique of 
present values/conditions; c. sees men or male institutions as a major 
cause of present social ills; and d. presents women not only as at least the 
equals of men but also as the sole arbiters of their reproductive functions. 
(qtd in Libby Falk Jones 116 from Women in Search of Utopia 296) 
1)· ' iverging f: . 
. rom Gearhart's first principle, Austen does not present a portrait of an 
ldeaJi 
Zed Society in Persuasion. The world of the landed estate is slowly changing; this 
World is 1 
ampooned in Sir Walter's continual fawning over the Baronetage. As Gary 
l<elly Points · · · h t d " · out, one of Austen's most strongly feminist pos1tzons JS er s an against 
the s0c· lal 1 al · · · · f ' 
' eg , and economic injustice of male pnmogeruture, restnction o women s 
Propeny . . 
nghts, and female economic dependence" (1995, 24). The reader JS made to feel 
this injuso · • 1 "ft (15) th ce many times in Persuasion: at the sacnfice of Anne s year Y 81 , e 
refusa1 to . An ' . . 
cany her to London, the spendthrift ways over which ne s wise suggestzons 
haven 0 effect, the almost certain inheritance of Kellynch-hall by a cad and perhaps a 
Wozn 
an Who has schemed to become his wife. But even Anne's mother, beloved of 
llleznon, . h f. "1 
~J' does not present a facet of an idealized society, as her entrusting er ami Y to 
the care of her best friend Lady Russell has not produced exemplary results: Elizabeth is 
suPPort:AFor example, Susan Lanser shows that Austen's s~~(~~)arrative authority 
nne's argument against "men's literary advantages · 
317 
Vain 
and spoiled M . . 
World ' aty JS hystencal and pathetic, and Anne's life has gone aw.zy. The 
of Bath is des . d 
idyllic pise by Anne, and the world of Uppercross is satisfactory, but not 
Able to di f . 
re . s mgwsb between aristocracy and meritocracy, Anne comes to view the 
nting of Kell 
to Ynch-hall by the Crofts as a good thing: "they were gone who deserved not 
Stay 
' and that I( 11 the e Ynch-hall had passed into better bands than its owners"' (119), but 
World Ofth 
th e naval officers, which seems to be taking precedence over the world of 
elanded . 
111 
gentry, is not presented as idealized either. On the one hand, Monica Cohen 
akes a good 
d case that the Naval officers in Persuasion have adopted the values of 
0111estj · City h' 
. ' w 1ch is portrayed as a change and an advance over the old gentry way of 
l1fe.6 Ii . 
arville 's neat home in the boarding house, Wentworth's well-run ship, and the 
Crofts• 
C good management at Kellynch-hall all demonstrate the positive effects of what 
Ohen Calls " . . \V: profess10nalized domesticity." Further, Cohen makes a link between 
entwo.rth' . . ' . 
1 s domesticity and his attempts to act on behalf of Mrs. Smith s nghts to her ate husb 
and 's property. Still, although navy life seems cheerful, practical and 
honorabl . 
e, Its pitfalls are made clear: risky economic status, separation of loved ones, 
danger to lit; . . . . 
e and limb, over and above the adoption of military hierarchy and war as a 
Way of life I 'ti . d 
,, · n order to enjoy the benefits of such a life, Anne must sacn 1ce secunty an 
Pay the tr.~ f . · · h · 'f 'bl 
. ~ o quick alann for belonging to that profession whic 1s, 1 poss1 e, more 
distj 
nguished · · · " (237) Th 
· m 1ts domestic virtues than in its national l.Dlportance · e 
don-.e . 
••i Stic 't . . . f 11 k l y of the naval officers aligns them with women in therr appreciation o a we -
eptho . 
llle, but it does not reform the society in which they move. They remam men who 
1110st 
act at the behest f . b The men's adontion of domestic behavior--o a nation run y men. r 
.1)0 6 See Coh , .. . the Navy Home: Austen and Professional 
of hil'lesticism ,, i'n ehn spchapte~ 2, Persuadi~~ty z'n t.'he Victorian Novel (12-43), a version 
er s · • er rofesswnal Domestzcz . . 
Pnng 1996 article appearing in Novel: A Forum on Fzctzon. 
318 
primarily indicated by their ability to keep a neat house--even runs the risk of edging 
women out of their last bastion of professional expertise, as the nineteenth century 
progresses and middle-class women are seen more and more as unfit for work and in 
need of protection. 7 
Gearhart's remaining principles are not quite met either. Anne's world is 
thoroughly critiqued (as in b), but it is held up to existing ideals, not necessarily visionary 
ones. Society is shown to be less than it imagines itself to be, but it is not compared to a 
revolutionary standard of improvement. Men and male institutions (c) are not particularly 
the focus of a stunning critique in Persuasion. Although the Baronetage and the 
patriarchal values it represents are shown to be less than perfectly wise, the Navy, 
another male institution, is held up as a good example for society to follow. Finally, 
women are presented as equal in powers to men, but their reproductive freedom is 
limited.8 
Butler, in Jane Austen and the War of Ideas, seeks to define Jane Austen as a 
conservative writer, which by definition would put Austen at odds with the utopian 
project as outlined by Bloch or Gearhart. Butler explores Austen's conservatism through 
the generic conventions of the novelistic forms of her day: the sentimental novel, the 
gothic, the "Jacobin" novel, and the "Anti-jacobin." Butler finds that the sentimental and 
gothic techniques of interiority and the pitting of a superior heroine against a corrupt 
world were adopted by the Jacobins for the ideological/political expression of 
7 The idea that middle-class women should not work, including the idea that they 
should employ servants for housework and childcare, grows stronger throughout the 
nineteenth century--a central point of Davidoff and Hall. 
8 This particular criterion of Gearhart' s may not be fully applicable to pre-
twentieth-century utopian schema. Mrs. Croft has enjoyed her years at sea with her 
husband due to childlessness, but it cannot be determined if this was by choice (with birth 
control in those days being unreliable, outside sterility or complete abstinence). 
319 
revolutionary sentiments; she opposes this to the Anti-Jacobins' suspicion of high-
minded philosophical strangers and their chastisement of characters who buck their place 
In society, coupled with their reward of characters who fit properly within their societal 
st
ations. According to these definitions, Butler places Austen within the conservative 
bastions in this war of ideas: "The heroine who is fallible and learns, and the heroine who 
is Chri · Stian and exemplary, are the standard heroine-types of reactionary novels of the 
1790s. In Jane Austen's novels they confront, equally typically, the villains of the anti-
jacobin period--plausible, attractive strangers, penetrating a community from abroad" 
(294), Butler's assessments support the conclusion that in Persuasion, Anne Elliot never 
really changes, nor would it be right for her to change. As a Christian, infallible heroine, 
her original decision not to marry Wentworth was an act of "common prudence" (275), 
and it is his eventual understanding of his own mistaken ideas that lead to their 
reconcilement. 
Poovey argues that Austen presents a great deal more dissatisfaction with Anne's 
society than Butler allows, avowing that "the social and ethical hierarchy superintended 
by the landed gentry is in a state of total collapse" (224). This is taking it a bit far; 
although there would be no Uppercross for Anne, the state of society there is largely 
unchanged--perhaps somewhat foolish, but not in ruins. The conservatism identified by 
Butler may resolve into a graceful acceptance--even an embrace--of benevolent social 
changes, but in Persuasion, there is no instigation to active refonn.9 Mrs. Croft, with her 
. 9 Claudia Johnson writes with a great deal of sense that '.'M?st of the novels 
Wntten in the 'war of ideas' are more complicated and Jess doctnmure than modern 
~
0nunentators have represented. It does not suffice to den~rni~ate ,writ~rs :15 
conservative' or 'radical' according to whether they were for ~r agamst . the French 
Revolution" (xxi). Julia Prewitt Brown's argumen!, that society m Per_su::s~on has,, 
become fragmented into a "series of disparate parts (137)--that Anne 1s alienated from 
~er own home and family and must find some new place to belong (138~--supports the 
1
~ea of different elements in society rising to replace others. Gary Kelly mterprets the 
slippage of the gentry's privileged position and their replacement by "the novel's mod~l 
Professional people-the naval officers and their wives and fiancees" as "a reconstruction 
320 
insistence o ' . 
n women s mdependence and rationality, receives a lightly satirical 
coloring 10 1 0 
· n azy Kelly's tenns, Austen participates in a post-Revolutionary fonn of 
feminism · · 
' In which the Revolutionary emphasis on the rights of women had become an 
emph · 
asis on women's power within domesticity (22-23). Thus Mrs. Croft's insistence 
that wome . . . 
n are rational creatures, and that they belong on shipboard with men (68-9), is 
Positioned ·thi 
WJ n the idea that she has created the best possible domesticity with her 
husband according to these ideas. 11 The subtle discourse of Revolutionary feminism that 
remains ·thi 
WI n Mrs. Croft's speech is left behind by the primacy plot of the novel, in 
Which Anne's claims on Wentworth are based not on her rationality, but on her 
sentime tal 1 . . . . 
n c aim for women of "lovmg longest, when existence or when hope 1s gone" 
(222). Anne ''s claim situates women even more distantly from Revolutionary feminist 
discourse, positing a feminism based on respect for the powers believed to be specific to 
Women. 
Wentworth is forced by the novel to recognize Anne's good qualities, but more 
imponantly, he must come to respect her judgment. Persuasion insists on the heroine's 
right to make up her own mind--despite the fact that it stages that right within a context of 
f~ly loyalties and duties which are explicitly patriarchal-the duty she owes to her 
f~Jy and her name in tenns of Wentworth's lack of property. While demonstrating that 
?[9civil society for the Revolutionary aftennath, cente:ed c?ti~~ly on the .role of women" inh 9~, 30). ~~er critics have focused on the emphasis ofmdiVIdual ment as opposed to 
ented pnvilege, as Claudia Johnson notes (146). 
10 If Admiral Croft can readily be identified as a stock character, his wife is a 
r~Vision of both Rousseau's Sophie and Edgeworth, s Harriet Freke (M~garet !(irkham 
ck 2-3); her somewhat mannish qualities are admirable, but at the same tune a bit broadly 
awn, for comic effect. 
d 11 See Monica Cohen and Charles J. Rzepka on the Navy and professionalized 0niesticity. 
321 
the patriarchal control of property lies at the root of Anne's problems, Austen treats this 
problem as a fact of life and supports Anne's deference to practical considerations in 
terms of Wentworth's inability to support her. Yet Wentworth realizes that he would have 
been accepted by Anne if he had returned with his small fortune in the year six (233), and 
that it has been his own grudge against her that has protracted their pain for so long. 
Even if Anne was wrongly persuaded by Lady Russell, whose own judgment was in fact 
faulty, Wentworth nevertheless must respect Anne's decision. 
Although Austen's sympathetic understanding of Anne's interior conflict indicates 
a feminist understanding of women's plight in that society, nevertheless it is a plight 
through which Austen decrees Anne must struggle. Wentworth's conversion does not 
signal a utopian moment because the societal rules Anne and he obey have not changed. 
Their marriage remains within an established social scheme. Utopia, about the 
envisioning of a perfected society, is implicitly at odds with Austen's conservative vision 
of a society which, though flawed, is already progressing satisfactorily. 
Can there be a conservative utopianism? No, for the idea of utopianism posits the 
reorganization of a corrupted society into a perfected one--even if the basis of the utopia is 
drawn from the society's long-held beliefs. Can there be a conservative feminism, then, 
that although not utopian, valorizes women's experiences, ideas, and beliefs without 
positing them as revolutionary? Yes, even if that feminism is largely satisfied with the 
unperfected world, rather than prescriptive of a perfected society to come. 
Austen's non-utopian, conservative feminism, as seen in Persuasion, contrasts 
with Shelley's work in that Shelley attempts to create a utopian blueprint for change. 
Shelley's blueprint for utopian domesticity is based on values of home, family and 
women ' s traditional sphere, of which Austen would approve. Austen would probably 
also approve of certain of Shelley' s feminist critiques: for example, one imagines that she 
would have been sensitive to the plight of Elizabeth Lavenza, who is fatally shut out of 
322 
Victor' s life. Shelley's fiction communicates a desire for radical societal change, whereas 
0 
Austen relates the personal difficulties and growth of her characters without suggesting 
that society should be refonned. Shelley includes portrayals of characters who forward 
her reformist program, even in her most tragic narratives. A reader may glimpse the 
potential for utopian domesticity exemplified by the selfless, loving family life of the De 
Laceys, yet, at the same time, condemn their injustice of their exclusion of the Creature. 
Readers who mourn the socialization processes that lead to the Creature' s exclusion, or 
who empathize with his hope for a utopian domesticity with a mate in the wilds of South 
America, have grasped the heart of Shelley' s utopian project. 
Records of Woman: almost Feminist, not quite Utopian 
Felicia Hemans strove to create and publish poetry about male-dominated public 
affairs and about women who moved primarily within domesticity, while pointedly 
demonstrating the interconnectedness of home and empire. 12 Her poems express the lack 
of power held by women and show how women's lives are sacrificed to men' s rules--
with, however, a marked lack of anger, so that her poems appear with acceptably 
feminine resignation before the eyes of her masculine reviewers (see Virginia Blain 256-
259). In Records of Woman, her 1828 volume, Hemans seems to argue that women are 
capable of effecting public change, but that this should always be as a last resort; further, 
she naturalizes domesticity as women's proper realm, and shows death as a result of 
women's straying from the home. Her portrayal of domesticity as an idealized realm that 
empowers women falls short of utopian because it is static and unchanging, and does not 
move towards bettennent of society. Likewise, her feminist belief in women's power is 
12 See Tricia Lootens. Although Nanora Sweet argues that Hemans destabilizes 
imperialism by her insistence of the aesthetics of the beautiful, transient, evanescent and 
fragmentary, British imperialism is so naturalized in Hemans' s work that if it is not 
wholly supported, neither can it be seen as strongly undermined. 
323 
heavily qualified. Domesticity for Hemans is closely linked to nationalism: the welfare of 
th
e home is linked directly to the health of the nation, and if the nation demands, the home 
(along with woman's well-being) must be sacrificed. The utopian potential of domesticity 
is Stripped away, leaving only the valorization of the home as a beloved ideal which, 
instead of improving society, is always on the verge of being sacrificed to the national 
benefit. Hemans's emphasis on domesticity as a haven from public life is at odds with 
Shelley's idea that public life, as an extension of home life, should be modeled on the 
ideals of utopian domesticity, and for Shelley, the destruction of the home cannot be 
justified in terms of national welfare. 
An old platitude states that a woman's name should only appear before the public 
eye upon her marriage and upon her death. Hemans seems to have subscribed to this 
view when determining her poetic subjects for Records oJWoman; 13 indeed the last three 
Poems of the group, "The Queen of Prussia's Tomb," ''The Memorial Pillar," and "The 
Grave of a Poetess" rely on the physical monument of each woman's death for their 
inspiration. In "Pauline," in which a fire claims the lives of both mother and daughter, 
Hemans as.ks, "And bore the ruins no recording trace I Of all that woman's heart had 
dared and done?" Women in Records of Woman become public when they act on the 
centrality of interpersonal affections. The monument itself is public notice of the woman's 
existence which had hitherto been primarily domestic. 
In Records o/Woman, the collision between domesticity and the public world 
results in catastrophe, and the stories told overwhelmingly end in death. A woman's story 
13 Of course Hemans's own name had been before the public since her first 
volume of poems w;s published when she was 14. Hemans had no fear of the public 
nature of her profession. Records of Woman represents th~ w_ork of a ma~e, 
professional author who, after nearly twenty years of publication, _has attained both 
popular support and economic security; for more about her financial success, see Paula 
Feldman's valuable article in KSJ 1997. 
324 
becomes · 
matenal for poetry when she reaches a dramatic emotional crisis, which usually 
involves the disruption of the domestic scene. 14 In "Joan of Arc, in Rheims," for 
example, Hemans portrays the female warrior with admiration ("woman, mantled with 
victorious power .. . And beautiful with joy and renown") but states that in exchange for 
her power Joan has to sacrifice "The trusting heart's repose, the paradise I Of home with 
all its loves." The loss of the home catapults the woman into the public and her actions 
become the stuff of poetry. The transfonnation of a woman from domestic to patriotic 
occUrs especially clearly in ''The Switzer's Wife" when the threatened loss of her home 
impels Frau Stauffacher to prod her husband to (successful) rebellion: 
And she, that ever through her home had moved 
With the meek throughtfulness and quiet smile 
Of woman, calmly loving and beloved, 
And timid in her happiness the while, 
Stood brightly forth, and steadfastly, that hour, 
Her clear glance kindling into sudden power. 
For a Woman, Hemans seems to indicate, participation in the public world is indeed 
Possible, but extremely dangerous. Yet the promise of death is no deterrent to the women 
Hemans portrays. Rather, death is a necessary withdrawal from the catastrophic public 
World into which the women were called, and against which they found it necessary to 
make the ultimate struggle. 
Feminists, striving to effect social change, have shown that it is vital to identify a 
Ii • 14 As Lootens notes, "Throughout her career, [Hemans] ransa?ked.exte~sive 
eadings in literature, folklore, and world history for exemplary narraayes m w~c~ the 
thr~atened or actual dissolution of family ties intersected w11?, the exerc~se of_f:mmme 
national heroism" (241)· and as Jerome McGann suggests, her work 1s a v1s1on of the 
:
0?m of an order of val~es which it simultaneously, and paradoxically, celebrates as a 011d and ascendant order of things" (220). 
325 
source of p al 
erson power. In the imaginary world of her poetry, Hemans tries to avoid 
tbe Portrayal of bleak despair through reliance on religious faith. Faith is a source of 
courage for some characters: religious faith enables "The Switzer's Wife" to encourage 
her husb d , 
an to rebel: 'man must ann, and woman call on God!" For many of her 
characters, however, faith is less a source of courage than of resignation. Death seems 
like a bl d . . 
esse escape, as m ''The Grave of a Poetess" which Hemans wrote to the memory 
of Mazy Tighe, the author of "Ode to Psyche." Hemans writes, 
What seest thou then where no dim fear, 
No haunting dream, hath birth? 
Here a vain love to passing flowers 
Thou gav'st--but where thou art, 
The sway is not with changeful hours, 
There love and death must part. 
The World is portrayed as a beautiful but deceitful place, where "love and death" are 
irrevocably intertwined. 15 "Now peace the woman's heart hath found,/ And joy the 
Poet's eye," Hemans concludes ambiguously--for the reader cannot be certain whether 
IIemans refers in faith to Tighe's peace in the afterlife, or to the consolation derived from 
IIemans's reverie. In "The Indian Woman's Death-Song," the woman commits suicide 
by going over a cateract because she is no longer wanted by her warrior, and she also 
takes her infant daughter with her because she refuses to let the child grow up to a fate 
like her own; as the epigram states, ''Let not my child be a girl, for very sad is the life of a 
Woman." The injustices of life are explicitly contrasted to the joys of the afterlife. 
In some of Hemans' s poems death is at least partially averted. In "The American 
. 
15 Hemans makes a similar claim in "Edith": "O Love and Death! I Ye have sad 
meetings on this changeful earth, I Many and sad!" · 
326 
Forest Girl," a young girl saves the life of a captive English soldier and pities him 
because she had lost her brother, and in "Costanza," an anchorite nearly saves the life of 
her long lost love, and gives him her forgiveness--but a peaceful domesticity is not 
established, and Costanza and the Forest Girl are left alone with their sense of 
satisfaction. As Anne Mellor notes, Hemans is divided between belief in a domestic ideal 
and a recognition that that ideal is extremely fragile (Romanticism and Gender 124-43); it 
is this division that tips the balance between life and death in the fate of her poetic 
subjects. 
The blessedness of a faithful death is a problem for modem skeptical readers, 
who are not convinced by the assurance of eventual rewards for moral rectitude. 
Materialist critics who believe that "religion is the opiate of the masses" find Hemans' 
emphasis on death to be unhelpful, because it does not suggest a means for women's 
material improvement. 16 The lack of hope for social improvement resulting from this 
prevalence of death also lessens the utopian potential ofHemans's portrayal of idealized 
domesticity. The reliance on death in Records of Woman does, however, express a deep 
dissatisfaction with material reality as it is reflected in the poems. The deaths of the 
women in Records of Woman do not serve as exemplars for other women to go and do 
likewise; instead, they provide tragic examples in which women have had to sacrifice 
themselves because the world has left them no other choice. This aspect of feminist 
critique in Hemans's work is tempered because although Hemans could envision 
women's effective action in the public world, and was certain of their reward in the 
afterlife, she found it difficult (but not impossible) to imagine a woman who could effect 
public change and survive. Hemans's attitude differs from Shelley's, whose exemplary 
16 For example, Anthony John Harding fears that Hemans "historically 
epitomizes the way in which the temptations of self-sacrifice were exploited to persuade 
women that motherhood and self-denial guaranteed them significant lives--but only in the 
transcendent hereafter" (144 ). 
327 
public woman, Euthanasia, is killed not because she leaves domestic seclusion (indeed, 
she never inhabited such a situation), but because her republican ideals are in conflict with 
the violent powers of tyranny. 
In Records of Woman (the first half of the 1828 volume) only the violent 
disruption of the peaceful home is shown, and domesticity as such is hardly represented. 
The possibility of a utopian domesticity is demarcated by its absence: the women long for 
the domestic bliss they claim they had, or could have had. In "Madeline: A Domestic 
Tale" for instance--a rare case that does not end in death, but instead, the reunion of 
mother and daughter--the mother and daughter tell only the tragic parts of their tale and 
strictly avoid the happy parts. In ''The Homes of England," however, the first of the 
"Miscellaneous Poems" in the 1828 volume, Hemans creates a serene, idealized 
landscape; this poem, situated as it is in the center of the volume, provides a utopian 
contrast to the bleak tales of destruction surrounding it. 
Several quasi-religious references to English homes in Records of Woman 
prepare the reader for ''The Homes of England." In "Edith: A Tale of the Woods," the 
slaughter which had bereft Edith of her English companions was described as "A fearful 
scene/ For her whose home of other days had been/ 'Midst the fair halls of England;" 
likewise, in ''The American Forest Girl" the English soldier ponders his death at the stake: 
"What a tale to shadow with its gloom/ That happy hall in England." The homes of 
England, explicitly contrasted with the war-tom wilds of colonial North America, act 
almost as a totem of safety to Edith and the soldier. Edith is taken in by a charitable chief 
and his wife, and she converts the tribe to Christianity before dying. The soldier, as he 
recalls his beloved home, excites the pity of the Forest Girl and is freed by her 
intervention. Almost as if by magic, the homes of England exert a civilizing force on the 
colonial realm merely by their invocation: in collusion, the domestic ideal seizes control 
328 
and enforces its standards upon the course of events.17 Lootens points out how domestic 
and imperial ideologies are closely linked in Hemans' s patriotic/nationalistic agenda, 
based on a love of home, and an imperialist agenda, based on expansion and conquest. 
But just as domesticity can be used to shore up an imperialist agenda, imperialism also 
emp!.asizes the desirability of domesticity. Taken as a whole, Records of Woman with 
its long list of tragedies does not promote imperialist expansion, but mourns the fragility 
of domesticity. Hemans is deeply conflicted about the confinement of women within 
domesticity and the risks they run when emerging into the public arena. 
"The Homes of England" represents the urge in Hemans that Sweet describes as a 
"feminization of national consciousness [that] can produce both [a] nurturing national 
identity and ... sustaining domestic institutions" (179). The first stanza presents a fairly 
generic picture of aristocratic estates: stately homes, tall ancestral trees, deer bounding 
across the greensward, and swans in the rivers. In the second stanza, the commonplace 
diction of the word "merry" in line nine revises the aristocratic imagery, and we are told 
that England consists in "gladsome looks of household love," a more domestic picture 
than the exterior image of the generic estate in stanza one. Hemans describes the cultural 
activities of the inhabitants: ''There woman's voice flows forth in song,/ Or childhood's 
tale is told,/ Or lips move tunefully along/ Some glorious page of old." None of the 
cultural activities are privileged above the others. "Woman's voice," "childhood's tale" 
and the "glorious page of old" are semantically equal within domestic bounds. Cultural 
authority is decentered as the "glorious page of old" is brought to life by non-gendered 
"lips mov[ing] tunefully" in harmony with "woman's voice." Cultural authority is 
decentered even further in stanza three, when the nature of sanctity is deeply internalized: 
• • 11_ As Marlon Ross puts it, "There i~ no _d~ubt th~t Hem~s sees her goal as the 
fenuruzation of culture at large .... her proJect 1s mtertwmed with a Tory ideology of 
state nationalism, British imperialism, religious conservatism, and feminine 
conventionalism" (292). 
329 
"the holy quietness/ that breathes from Sabbath hours" refers to no scriptural or church 
authority, but instead to the absolutely subjective experience of time. The fourth stanza 
refers to the fate of the "lowly," asserting that they sleep fearless in their Cottage Homes, 
while the final stanza invokes a patriotic fervor of protectiveness for the "free, fair Homes 
of England." 
By structuring ''The Homes of England" as a catalog, Hemans leaves the poem 
open to the criticism that it is not a complete catalog. The following homes have been 
described: the stately homes, the meny homes, the blessed homes, the cottage homes, 
and the free, fair homes. In Hemans' poem, the homes are idealized, cultural authority is 
not given unfairly to one group at the expense of others, blessedness floats into the soul 
as naturally as the sounds of leaves in the breeze. Homes that are not stately, merry, 
blessed, or free and fair, are not explicitly called into the mind of reader, and Hemans 
makes no demands that other sorts of homes be defended. Once the catalog has been 
identified, however, the insistent utopianism of the poetic voice sounds a bit desperate, 
and one begins to wonder about the fates of those persons excluded from such homes as 
Hemans describes. One is left to wony that such persons might experience fates more 
similar to those described in Records of Woman. 
Hemans' s portrayal of utopian domesticity in ''The Homes of England" is limited 
by boundaries of denial. Elsewhere, her emphasis on domesticity is restrictive and tragic. 
While her urge to concentrate on the plight of women is feminist, her insistence on the 
surcease of suffering in death conveys dissatisfaction with the current state of things but 
does not constitute a feminist call to arms. Like Austen, Hemans' s critique of an 
unsatisfactory society does not suggest how that society can be changed; but unlike 
Austen, Hemans charges that the unchanged society is deadly to women. In the end 
' 
Hemans's poetry in Records o/Womans condemns the many ways women have been 
wronged but does not suggest any possible improvements to change women's fate. 
330 
Shelley is unlike Hemans in that she avoids Hemans's strong split between an 
idealized domesticity and public life, nor does Shelley portray her heroines' emergence 
from domesticity as fatal. While Hemans' s portrait of home is glowing but somewhat 
vague, Shelley presents a utopian domesticity that, Bloch's tenns, is concrete: she 
outlines particular conditions which, if met, should lead to a more perl'ect society. Shelley 
acknowledges that her ideals may not always prevail against worldly wrongs, but these 
ideals are always portrayed as enduring in their superior virtue, even in instances when 
they have been overcome by evil. For example, Euthanasia, Shelley's most politically 
. . 
involved character, bears a surl'ace resemblance to Hemans's women heroes in that she 
dies as a result of her involvement with politics. Her detennination to save the life of her 
fonner love and political enemy Castruccio requires that she join an intrigue against him; 
because she joined the plot, Castruccio exiles her and she drowns. Shelley does not posit 
this, however, as an effect of her leaving the protective haven of domesticity. To the 
contrary, it is an effect of the corruption of Euthanasia's political environment. Her own 
politics are seen as superior, even when she is forced to choose from among several 
unappealing options. Euthanasia stands by her values, which are represented in the novel 
as Virtuous and right, even though she fails to protect her fortress, V alperga, and fails to 
save herself or Castruccio. Euthanasia's attempts to befriend the tormented and 
disillusioned Beatrice also fail--Beatrice succumbs to her rnadness--but Shelley's 
Principles of utopian domesticity ring true nevertheless. In such a way, Shelley's fictions 
cany out her reform project of introducing a superior social model to her readers, leading 
to the gradual but real improvement of society. 
Helen: Neither Utopian Nor Feminist 
Maria Edgeworth's last novel, Helen (1834), is a didactic novel focusing on 
331 
domesticit · · 18 • Y, mamage and the mamage plot. Its moral thrust 1s twofold: the necessity 
of complete truthfulness, and the confidence which must exist between husband and wife 
in order t . . 0 ensure a happy mamage. Shelley's two domestic novels closely follow the 
PUblication of Helen: Lodore in 1835 and Falkner in 1837. Unlike Shelley's refonnist 
and sometimes utopi m portraits of domesticity, Edgeworth' s domesticity is a product of 
tbe ideology of the gendered separation of public and intimate spheres, an ideology of 
Which Edgeworth approves. 19 While Edgeworth' s women retain a sense of moral 
independence--they are expected always to act correctly--they do not have a great deal of 
Power, opting instead for the more feminine "influence." Edgeworth supports 
conservative, traditional values, rather than innovation; her narrator's description of 
General Clarendon also applies to Edgeworth herself: ''The march of intellect was not a 
favoUrite march with him, unless the step were perfectly kept, and all in good time" 
(106). Although the novel ends with all things set to right, the sense that the characters 
have all been soundly punished for their actions is too strong to feel a sense of the 
Utopian: the code of truthfulness upheld by the novel is nearly impossibly strict, with the 
result that the emotional and psychologi.cal welfare of the characters is too precarious. 
Colin B. Atkinson and Jo Atkinson argue that Edgeworth's politics can best be 
described as paternalistic, involving an emphasis on duties rather than on rights, within 
18 The marriage plot need not always be restrictive, though _in this case.it is; see 
[or example, Julie Shaffer's investigation of empowered women pnor to the Victorian 
Ideal of the Angel in the House. More generally, Eve Tavor Bannet argues that women 
she describes as Matriarchal feminists created the idea of women's separate sphere in 
ord~r to strengthen women's cultural authority and used this authority successfully to 
achieve feminist goals. 
19 As Andrew Mccann arcrues at least in her much earlier Belinda (1802), 
Edgeworth demonstrates "the se;egation of private. and public spheres, on the one hand, 
and the positive unreality of utopian conjugal fantasies, on the other" (74). 
332 
an,, . 
autbontarian, hierarchical, organic, and pluralistic society. "20 They show that both 
radj 
Cals and conservatives had a similar interest in women's education: "both radicals and 
conserv ti 
a ves proposed but one suggestion to remedy women's inferior status: a better 
education, one more concerned with developing a girl's mind than with 
' 
accomplishments"' ( 112) They further argue that both liberals (including Mary 
'Wollstonecraft) and conservatives (such as Edgeworth and her father) "took it for 
granted, as did . . . all but a minute number of 'feminists', that woman's destiny was 
domesti " ( · 
c 114). While Wollstonecraft did argue that women had domestic duties, she 
d . 
enied that domesticity was women's only possible destiny, whereas, in Helen, 
Eciegworth 's political agenda is clear: women should be implicitly trustworthy and 
educated to be useful to their husbands. The extent to which Edgeworth can be shown not 
to Participate in liberal or progressive politics is clear from her other novels, especially 
from her portrayal of a ludicrous Wollstonecraftian woman, Harriet Freke, in her novel 
Belinda. It is not so much in her attention to duty that Edgeworth varies from her more 
liberal C bo di . d li . . f 0 ntemporaries, but in her insistence on the su !I1 nation an ID1tat.1on o women 
to prescribed domestic roles. 
The novel focuses on five central characters: Helen Stanley, her friend Lady 
Cecilia Clarendon, Cecilia's mother Lady Davenant, Cecilia's husband General 
Clarendon, and Helen's beau, Granville Beaucle.n:. The two men of the novel are 
Opposing types: Clarendon an older man with an unbending, strict moral code, and 
Beauclerc, his ward, generous, impetuous, and romantic. The three women represent 
three different stages of virtue: Helen is naturally good but untested, Cecilia is good but 
her character is flawed, and Lady Davenant, over time, has ove.n:ome mistakes in order to 
str
engthen her virtue. Each woman must learn to adapt herself to societal codes of 
l lSfn. 20 The Atkinsons cite David Roberts, Paternalism in .&rly Victorian England, 
333 
conduct · 
m order to ensure her happiness in life. Helen's orphan status, and the recent 
decease fh 0 er guardian, leave her as a kind of tabula rasa for the absorption of the 
novel's lessons. Helen strongly loves her friends and is too willing to sacrifice herself for 
th . 
eir happiness, which is seen as a flaw, but an amiable one. After her guardian's death, 
lfelen goes to live with her childhood friend, Lady Cecilia, who has recently manied 
Genera1 Clarendon. Cecilia's flaw is a lack of strict truthfulness, and she is afraid of the 
censures of her mother and husband. Cecilia does not reveal the entire truth about a 
roznanti . 
c involvement she once had with a Captain D'Aubigny before her maniage to 
Clarendon, entangling herself and Helen in a web of deceit. The punishment and 
repentance of Cecilia for her lack of truthfulness is the main didactic thrust of the novel. 
Three marriages are described in the novel: the Davenants, the Clarendons, and 
th
e courtship between Helen and Beauclerc that ends in maniage. In all three maniages, 
certain moral principles are at stake: confidence between husband and wife is essential; 
Ille · · . . 21 Oting her husband's esteem is vital to a wife's peace of mmd; a woman may demand 
to be trusted but only if she fully merits that trust; mistakes can be redeemed if only 
adznj tted truthfully; and, the man has the last word. In Edgeworth's novel, women are 
u
nd
erstood to be independent moral agents, but a woman's relationship to her husband is 
not one of equality. A wife must "look up" to her husband; he must be felt to have a 
superior understanding. 22 In addition to conforming to the best interests of her husband, 
a Woman's wider social reputation also depends on her strict confonnity with a severe 
code of conduct. Women's fulfillment in life is tied up in the extent to which they can 
21 Iain Topliss points out that Wollstonecraft and Edgeworth share the tenet "that 
esteem is as essential to marriage as love" (24). 
22 As Elizabeth Kowaleski-Wallace says of Lady Davenant, "she finds inner 
peace only when she submits to her husband's supervision" (Fathers' Daughters 189). 
334 
confonn to a model predicated on men's happiness, while unmarried women are to face 
their lot w1·th un 1 . . . . comp ammg sto1c1sm. 
Helen and Beauclerc have a relationship based on friendship. The trial of their 
relationship comes when Cecilia forces Helen to conceal the authorship of letters Cecilia 
Wrote to D' Aubigny: Cecilia will not admit she wrote them and makes it seem that Helen 
did. Helen is willing to sacrifice herself to save her friend, but she does tell Beauclerc 
that sh · · 
e is Innocent of any wrongdoing and convinces him to trust her. Clarendon, 
although he protects Helen's reputation, is disgusted by dissimulation and sends her 
away With his sister--but Beauclerc continues to trust her, forming the basis for a solid 
rel ti . 
a onship between them. Marilyn Butler regards Beauclerc' s character as "out of focus" 
and more "immature" than brilliant (Edgeworth 470) but Beauclerc's impulsive behavior 
ste
ms from generous impulses. These same generous impulses are what allow him to rely 
on Helen 's trustworthiness: the unfinished nature of Beauclerc 's character gives him 
leeway to respond to Helen's needs in a way that Clarendon, as a mature and fully 
fonned masculine character, can do only with great difticulty--Clarendon yields to 
reconciling with Cecilia only after the dying Lady Davenant on her knees implores him to 
do so. 
The maniage of Clarendon and Cecilia is based on strong romantic love, a love 
Which is shown not to be proof against Cecilia's penchant for fudging the truth. 
Clarendon, in response to two friends whose wives had betrayed them (26), had sworn 
that he would never many a woman who had previously loved another: "love and honour 
being with him inseparable, the idol he adores must keep herself at the height to which he 
has raised her, or cease to receive his adorations. She must be no common vulgar idol for 
every passing worshipper" (29). Butler notes that Clarendon "in his awe-inspiring 
reserve strongly resembles Lady Davenant" (Edgeworth 476), but whereas Lady 
Davenant is more tender toward Cecilia than she thinks, General Clarendon really is quite 
335 
exacting · hi 
m s expectations. In order to satisfy Clarendon's marital requirements, Cecilia 
convinced him that she had never thought of another. In reality, she had written love 
letters to D'Aubigny. Thus, their maniage is tainted by the element of deceit, which 
b' 
nngs them to the point of absolute separation, Cecilia's denials being compounded and 
her truthfulness progressively eroded until her final confession is prompted by her 
Illotber' s expected death. Lady Davenant is .finally able to convince Clarendon that 
Cecilia's confession ensures her new allegiance with the complete truth and the couple are 
reunited. Although Cecilia has repented and is rewarded with the return of her husband, 
IfeJen is shocked by the severe mental strain Cecilia has undergone, and she is never 
shoWn to recover from the "change" effected on her by her sorrow. The novel insists that 
thi
s suffering is deserved, by providing a justification of Clarendon's requirements (See 
kowaJeski-Wallace, Fathers' Daughters 190-1), and by Lady Davenant's emphasis on 
Cecilia's newly attained virtue. Cecilia's good intentions, for sparing small pains to the 
People around her, are portrayed as destroying her maniage: compare Cecilia with 
Austen's Emma, whose meddling is much less harshly rewarded. Butler praises the 
psychological tension of the novel as the situation becomes progressively worse for both 
Cecilia and Helen; but as Kowaleski-Wallace states, the suffering of the two women is 
" excruciating" (191), a portrayal of "impossibly high standards imposed on innocent 
Wo.rnen" despite Edgeworth's intention to support the trial as beneficial to the women's 
characters (190). Edgeworth's novel supports women's confonnity with societal 
standards, no matter how exacting or torturous they become. 
Mazy Jean Corbett, in her fine discussion ofEdgeworth's The Absentee (1812), 
delineates how Edgeworth's familial politics reflect those developed by Edmund Burke in 
response to revolutionary ideas. Corbett explains how Burke's central theory of cultural 
inheritance depends on masculine control of females: "Burke's confidence in the security 
of hereditary transmission depends ... on the tacit assumption of marital chastity among 
336 
Women, who act as the unacknowledged ground for familial, economic, and political 
le .. 
gitimacy. · .. no principle of transmission can be fully secure if feminine fidelity is not 
maintained" (880). 23 Although twenty years passed between the writing of The Absentee 
and Helen, Corbett's argument applies just as readily to this latter work, especially when 
th
e extremely harsh behavior of General Clarf."ndon toward the fearful Cecilia is wholly 
cond0ned by the novel. Corbett shows how in his Reflections Burke regards French 
revolutionary women as monstrous, and makes explicit the connection between Burke's 
th
eory and Edgeworth' s fiction: "Like the Reflections, The Absentee promotes the family 
as the mainstay of the orderly society .... like Burke, Edgeworth understands the 
regulation of sexuality--especially female sexuality--to be the linchpin of social order .... 
any and all irregularities in women's sexual and social identities present serious 
impediments both to the practice of domestic life and to male virtue" (882, 883). Cecilia's 
commitment to truthfulness is tested on the basis of an old love affair, which, though 
Innocent, could have prevented her maniage to the General had she revealed it. It is the 
hint of a connection between Cecilia's "honesty" and her "chastity" (two words closely 
connected) which causes Lady Davenant to fall into a fit: 
'Suspect!--wrong!' cried Lady Davenant, starting up, with a look in her 
eyes which made Helen recoil. 'Helen, what can you conceive that I suspect 
wrong?--Cecilia?--Captain D'Aubigny? What did you mean? Wrong did you 
say?--of Cecilia? Could you mean--could you conceive, Helen that I having such 
a suspicion, could be here--living with her--or--living anywhere---'And she sank 
down on the sofa again, seized with sudden spasm--in a convulsion of agonising 
pain. (292) 
C 23 This concept is also central to Lawrence's Empire of the Nairs, discussed in 
hapterOne. 
337 
Lady Davenant's pain centers around her heart--a pain emblematic of her motherhood. 24 
Cecilia's failure at complete verbal disclosure implies that her chastity might also be 
suspect. Though Lady Davenant denies that this could really be the case, her near 
hysterical response reveals that this is indeed her worst fear. This sort of reliance on the 
fanuly as an organizational tactic for controlling W<'men is far from Shelley's project in 
th
e revision of domesticity to expand its utopian potential. 
The maniage of Lord and Lady Davenant, the novel's exemplary marriage, is a 
Working Partnership, and Lady Davenant is shown throughout the novel assisting with 
her husband's affairs. Butler describes Lady Davenant as "a powerful political and 
intellectual women who is as much at home in foreign capitals as in London. . . . her 
tone is that of a highly intelligent, reasoning and feeling woman, . . . a forceful 
Personality. . . . Her manner is that of a woman who has become accustomed to 
au
th
ority" (Edgeworth 469). While Lady Davenant does maintain an important role in her 
husband's political career, her activities are narrowly and conservatively defined. Lady 
Davenant takes care to explain to Helen that while she is thought by some to control Lord 
Davenant, this is not the case, and she relates how early in her married life she attempted 
to use her influence inappropriately (to secure money for a project of her mother's) but 
Lord Davenant' s disapproval taught her the error of her ways (72-87). A well-respected 
Woman of real genius, Lady Davenant is shown by .Edgeworth to demonstrate true 
Wisdom because she assists her husband but does not interfere. In that Lady Davenant 
always Participates in her husband's political activities, .Edgeworth does not exactly 
restrict her women characters to a private domestic sphere, but the interpenetration of the 
domestic and political realms is demonstrated in a way consistent with conservative, 
traditional beliefs about women and their talents: women's roles are not significantly 
. 
24 This emblematic pain is much like the pain. of Lll;?Y Delacour' s "~a1, breast" 
discussed by Kowaleski-Wallace in her work on Belinda. ( Home Econonucs 251-253). 
338 
expanded · h 
, nor IS t e treatment of women in the novel progressive or refonnist. Lady 
Davenant learns not to feed her own ambition, but to support her husband's political 
goals. "I 1 . 
· earned, If not to be less ambitious, at least to show it less . ... D- had once 
s "d 
at 
th
at 'every public man who has a cultivated and high-minded wife has in fact two 
Selves e h h 1 . 
• ac o ding watch and ward for the other"' (87); to paraphrase the legal theory of 
coverture, in politics, the two are one and the one is the man. 
Lady Davenant's early interest in politics, when she desired to have power, 
caused her to neglect Cecilia, and Cecilia's faults are supposed to be the results of this 
neglect.
25 
Lady Davenant says, "I did not attend sufficiently to Cecilia's early education: 
engrossed with politics, I left her too much to governesses, at one period to a vezy bad 
one. I have done what I can to remedy this, and you have done more perltaps; but I much 
fear that the early neglect can never be completely repaired" (87). Mitzi Myers praises as 
"ti 
eminocentr.ic" the concentration on the relationship between mother and daughter in 
Edgeworth's Rosamond series.26 In Helen, the mother-daughter relationship is still 
central, doubled by the mirror daughters (Kowaleski-Wallace, Fathers' Daughters 189) of 
Cecilia and "surrogate daughter" Helen to the mother, Lady Davenant, and mirrored again 
in the relationship between Cecilia and General Clarendon, whose f~rbidding personality 
is very similar to her mother's and which sparks in Cecilia a similar fear of their harsh 
judgement of her. 27 Edgeworth intended that the moral for Helen should be ''that 
w· 25 As Kowaleski-Wallace points out, Lady Davenant identifies her relationship 
Ith her own mother as also beset by problems (Fathers ' Daughters 188-9). 
. 
26 In her discussion of the Bildungsroman aspects of Edgeworth' s Rosamond 
~e~es, Myers writes that "Edgeworth replaces the usual heterosexual romance script 
US1ng female self-definition with relations between the sexes by a mother-daughter 
educational narrative thematizing domestic realism and enlightened choice" (71). 
2 
27 Butler notes Cecilia's "two stern mentors, her mother and her husband" (RES 84). 
339 
mo
th
ers talented mothers [sic] should taice care not to maice their children afraid of them 
so as to prevent them from telling the truth & trusting them with their faults and secrets .. 
· In short the moral of Lady Davenant's characters is that talents should maice themselves 
ob· 
uects of Love not fear" (Maria Edgeworth to Lucy Edgeworth, 6 Jan 1836; qtd in 
Butler, Edgeworth 476). Although the novel is ''feminocentric" in that it fully explores the 
developing personality of the main character, and provides engaging studies of the 
supporting characters Lady Davenant and Cecilia, Helen demonstrates that a focus on 
Women does not by itself guarantee that a novel will be feminist. Instead of empowering 
tbe women, the novel's lessons constantly hem them in. Edgeworth's attention to the 
fonnative effects of education on Cecilia's character is similar to what Shelley's would 
be, but Edgeworth uses society's condemnation as a tool of punishment to correct 
Cecilia, rather that attempting to improve her own internal judgment. This is not a utopian 
portrait of domesticity or a feminist one: while respecting Lady Davenant as a strong 
character, Edgeworth does not try to expand the boundaries of her realm but instead has 
adopted a position which supports women's activities only as far as society condones. 
Edgeworth devotes several passages to the difference between women's power, 
influence, and intetference. In the first passage, Clarendon maices clear that women's 
Power must be constrained to influence: 
"Female influence is and ought to be potent," said the General, with an 
emphasis on influence, contradistinguishing it from power, and reducing the 
exaggeration of omnipotent by the short process of lopping off two syllables. 
"So long as ladies keep in their own proper character," said Lady 
Davenant, "all is well; but, if once they cease to act as women, that instant they 
lose their privilege--their chann: they forfeit their exorcising power; they can no 
longer command the demon of party nor themselves ... " (272) 
The narrator gives. Clarendon the ability of "lopping off' women's power, like an 
340 
amputation or, more politically, a beheading. Lady Davenant's speech is riddled with 
negatives " 
-- cease--lose--fo.rfeit-no longer." Her somewhat mysterious remark about 
" . 
acting as women" is illuminated by Wollstonecraft's injunction in A Vindication of the 
R· 
zghrs 01 Woman: "This desire of being always women, is the ve.zy consciousness that 
degrades the sex. Excepting with a lover, I must repeat with emphasis, a fozmer 
observati . 
on,--1t would be well if they were only agreeable or rational companions" (99). 
In Wollstonecraft's argument, "acting as women" is to act constantly in a socially 
Predetenruned sexual or gendered manner--which masquerades as natural--without 
consciousness of being as rational as men. Edgeworth argues that women should 
influence through their chaim and from their existing, socially determined positions. 
Edgeworth, while not advocating a reformist stance, does allow that some change 
in the place of women in the political sphere has taken place since Wollstonecraft wrote. 
Lady Davenant advises Helen that life has become too complicated for her to consider that 
Politics is no concern of women's: 
"Let me observe to you that the position of women in society is somewhat 
different from what it was a hundred years ago, or as it was sixty, or I will say 
thirty years since. Women are now so highly cultivated, and political subjects are 
at present of so much importance, of such high interest, to all human creatures 
who live together in society, you can hardly expect, Helen, that you, as a rational 
being, can go through the world as it now is, without forming any opinion on 
points of public importance .... Depend on it, Helen ... that when you are 
married, your love for a man of superior abilities, and of superior character, must 
elevate your mind to sympathy with all his pursuits, with all the subjects which 
claim his attention." (276) 
Lady Davenant's advice devolves from the position that women should understand 
Society because they are rational creatures, to the idea that they should be able to remain in 
341 
sympathy with their worldly active husbands. It is a shift from women's political action 
in· 
Its own right, to fulfill their duty as citizens as Wollstonecraft argues, to the idea that 
Women's duties as a wife demand this new ability from them--an idea that Wollstonecraft 
supports in order to bolster her larger argument for women's intellectual and political 
freedom. 
In the end, Lady Davenant draws a line between public and private involvement in 
pol'. . 
Itical affarrs that neither Wollstonecraft nor Shelley ever draws: 
Of the public dangers and private personal inconveniences that may result from 
women becoming politicians, or, as you better express our meaning, interfering 
With public affairs, no one can be more aware than I am. Interfering, observe I 
say, for I would mark and keep the line between influence and interference. 
Female influence must, will, and ought to exist on political subjects as on all 
others; but this influence should always be domestic, not public--the customs of 
society have so ruled it. (277) 
Edgeworth explicitly makes the distinction which genders the division between public 
and domestic spheres, and ordains that the domestic sphere be subordinate to the public. 
Rather than advocate the full involvement of women in politics, Edgeworth strictly warns 
Women against interfering, and leaves the final decision in politics, as in personal 
relations, with the men. 
In contradiction to Wollstonecraft's claim that education and intellectual activity 
Will make women better wives and mothers, Lady Davenant's involvement in politics has 
Partially estranged her from her daughter--she spends more time with papers than with 
her daughter, causing Cecilia to fear her as aloof and instigating her downfall. Although 
Helen is always ready to go to Lady Davenant for advice, Cecilia is too afraid. In one 
instance, Cecilia attempts to assist in the affairs of her parents (an ambassadorial mission 
to Russia has been delayed) by throwing a party for political friends and enemies alike, 
342 
sure 
th
at amity will reign (245-275). In describing Cecilia's party, the narrator focuses on 
the disturb 
ances that occur between Lady Davenant and the other women guests. As to 
themen' b . 
s usmess, the narrator pleads ignorance: 
The political conferences were held in Lord Davenant' s apartment: to what these 
conferences tended we never .knew and never shall; we consider them as matters 
of history, and leave them with due deference to the historian; we have to do only 
With biography. Far be it from us to meddle with politics--we have quite enough 
to do with manners and morality. (269) 
Although the political and the domestic clearly mix, at least in the case of the husband-
Wife team of the Davenants, Edgeworth does not wish to expand the province of the 
doznestic novel in order to investigate the political side. 
Cecilia's plan to restore her parents' political fortune does not pan out Lord 
Davenant' s setback has in reality been due to an infonnation leak, and Lady Davenant is 
suspected. This infonnation leak has an important parallel in the slanderous publication of 
Cec·li 1 
a's letters to D'Aubigny--in fact both sets of papers are copied by the same 
du r . 
P 1c1tous page, Carlos. The Portuguese page boy is doubled by another spying 
izn.rnigrant, the French maid Felicie. The two foreign spies represent an invasion of the 
do.rnestic space, an erosion of trust within the vezy home. Lady Davenant had taken the 
Young Carlos in off the street, and his betrayal is explained only inasmuch as he was 
offered money to copy the infonnation. Felicie's betrayal receives even less of an 
explanation--only that she has never seemed sincere, with her flattering French maid's 
Ways. Again any potential for a utopian domesticity in Edgeworth is undercut: her 
domesticity is a precarious space, susceptible to misunderstanding or to outright betrayal 
for reasons that seem arbitrary and insignificant. 
Although Edgeworth sh~ws Lady Davenant to have certain flaws of ambition and 
Perhaps too strict a method with her daughter, her portrayal of Lady Davenant is flattering 
343 
on 
th
e Whole. Lady Davenant's opposite is Lady Katrine Hawksby, an annoyance 
throughout the novel and finally publicly denounced as a villain (she had attempted to 
slander Cecilia and Helen with a locket from the D' Aubigny affair). In a scene involved 
""'th 1 the slanderous publication of the letters--which have been fluffed out with even more 
shocking material which Cecilia never wrote--Katrine is described by her sister as 
"blue"(th · 
at 1s, overly intellectual): 
"Deep blue! Shocking: and this is a blue breakfast, and all the people at it are blue 
bores, and a blue bore is, as Horace Churchill says, one of the most mischievous 
creatures breathing; and he tells me the only way of hindering them from doing 
mischief is by ringing them; but first you must get rings. Now, in this case, for 
Katrine not a ring is to be had for love or money." (379) 
Inspired by Madame de Stael, and with "the notion ... of being the English Corinne," 
Lady Davenant had once indulged in salon behavior, but had quickly retreated when a 
friend "repeated those two provoking lines-- 'New wit, like wine, intoxicates the brain, / 
Too strong for feeble women to sustain'" (75). 28 Katrine, however, is never described as 
carrying out any useful intellectual activity, but instead is at the heart of the publication of 
th
e slanderous letters, and her description as "blue" indicates that she only pretends to 
intellect, unlike the now-wise Lady Davenant. Katrine is also unmanied, and hates Helen 
for her engagement to Beauclerc. Edgeworth does not argue that that the only fate for 
unmarried women is to become as bitter as Lady Katrine; she argues instead that it is a 
matter of strength of mind how an unmarried woman regards her own fate. Lady 
fi 28 The lines are from George Lyttleton's poem, "Advice To A Lady," (1731) 
rom Poems (1777): 
Nor make to dangerous wit a vain pretence, 
But wisely rest content with modest sense; 
For wit, like wine, intoxicates the brain, 
Too strong for feeble woman to sustain; 
Of those who claim it, more than half have none, 
And half of those who have it, are undone. (31-36) 
344 
Davenant deplores the universal belief that all women should marry: 
dancing-masters, music-masters, and all the tribe, what is it all for, but to prepare 
young ladies for the grand event; and to raise in them, besides the natural, a 
factitious, an abstract idea of good in being manied? Every girl in these days is 
early impressed with the idea that she must be manied, that she cannot be happy 
unmarried .... it requires some strength of mind to be superior to such a foolish 
' 
vain, and vulgar belief ... Look at Lady Katrine; strength of mind on this one 
subject would have saved her from being a prey to envy, and jealousy, and all the 
vulture passions of the mind. (194) 
Edgeworth balances her portrayal of this savage old maid with the somewhat more 
favorable spinster sister Esther Clarendon--but Esther is also portrayed as brusque 
throughout most of the novel, only corning into a favorable light when she offers Helen a 
home while she is under suspicion. Esther and her Aunt Pennant have a home of their 
own in Wales, where Esther's punctilious behavior can offend no one. Her spinsterhood 
is regarded as her own choice, for at one point she admits that she abruptly left the 
Clarendons because she was beginning to feel an unrequited attachment to Beauclerc 
(453), in direct opposition to Katrine's behavior. 
In Helen, Edgeworth provides skillful interpretations of the characters of women 
and explains how they must adapt to survive in society. Helen's financial situation, given 
as the reason she must dwell with her friends in the first place, is a fitting metaphor for 
the lesson of the book: a woman's restraint is proof of her good moral nature. 
Emphatically not utopian, Edgeworth's final book does not support the feminist refonn of 
society, nor even does it point out society's flaws: just the opposite, it points out 
women's own flaws and demands their punishment and remediation before rewarding 
them with marriage. 
In her own domestic novels, Shelley canies out a very different project from that 
345 
of Edgeworth. Her characters are situated within the environments and educational 
circumstances that shaped them. In Godwinian fashion, the characters are responsible foi 
their own successes and failures, but the social realities that shaped them bear a heavy 
weight as well. Additionally, rather than dwelling on punishment, Shelley almost always 
emphasizes the opportunities for improvement that lay before the character. In Lodore, 
for example, she shows how Cornelia is able to re-educate herself after the failure of her 
marriage to Lord Lodore. Shelley shows Cornelia's suffering from her separation·from 
her daughter, but not in order to punish her; rather, Shelley tends to emphasize Cornelia's 
faulty education. Her mother manipulates her, and Lord Lodore marries her when she 
was too young then fails to get to know her or to adapt his own behavior and expectations 
to his young wife's needs. Eventually, Cornelia reforms her own values, and instead of 
acting according to the precepts of the worldly society through which she moves so 
easily, she gives up her wealth in order to come to the aid of her daughter. In her final 
lesson, she learns that she need not isolate herself because of her noble act; she is taken 
back into society, reunited with her daughter, and marries Horatio Saville, a virtuous man 
who has also learned from the mistakes of his own impulsive marriage. In the re-
education of such figures as Cornelia, Shelley shows how society may be redeemed by 
the principles of utopian domesticity. 
Throughout her work, Shelley demonstrates her commitment to social reform by 
developing an ideal I've called utopian domesticity. Shelley's program for domesticity is 
feminist because it condemns the restrictions of traditional domesticity that confine 
women in the home and exclude men from it, and utopian because it lays out a set of 
conditions that could create a perfected society. Shelley revises the traditional idea of 
domesticity to emphasize women's capacity to effect public good, as well as men's 
responsibilities within the home. Above all, Shelley uses the idea of domesticity to 
346 
emphasize the importance of interpersonal human bonds: individuals, whether male or 
female, must turn away from isolation and ambition for personal glory and toward 
responsibility, justice, and friendship. 
Other women writers, contemporary to Shelley, confronted the idea of 
domesticity without seizing on its potential as a model for utopian feminist reform. 
Austen explores the troublesome situations of her well-rounded characters with 
complexity and depth, but without attempting to critique or change the societal structures 
that place her characters in such situations. Hemans demonstrates through numerous 
examples that women can leave the domestic haven in order to affect the larger political 
world, but she tends to portray· this move as fatal. Neither Austen nor Hemans, although 
they understand and sympathetically portray women's subordination by the power 
structures of the world at large, attempts to influence those structures through their 
fiction. Edgeworth, on the other hand, argues that women should in fact be held to strict 
standards of conduct and brought back into line when they deviate. Edgeworth denies that 
women should do any more than influence the decisions of men who move in the public 
world and chastens their "interference." 
Over the course of her career, Shelley explores many different configurations of 
domesticity with a critical eye, revealing not only the negative effects of traditional gender 
structures, patriarchy and chivalry, but also domesticity's utopian potential. In 
Frankenstein, Shelley demonstrates her feminist critique of the negative effects of 
restrictive domesticity by exposing the the marginalization of female characters and 
critiquing even the De Laceys' potential utopia by condemning its patriarchal exclusivity. 
In Valperga, the rational, benevolent leadership of Euthanasia is a good example, 
contrasted with Castrucchio's cruelty, treachery, and violence; Shelley carefully explains 
the educational systems that produced these two leaders, as well as their deluded religious 
counterpart, Beatrice. In The Last Man, while focusing on the central importance of 
347 
human connections, Shelley critiques the gendered roles which restrict the lives of 
women in the book and undermine their potential for fulfillment even before the advent of 
the Plague. In Perkin Warbeck, chivalry, patriarchal legitimacy, and the concept of the 
''just war" are condemned, and women's role in the public sphere is again explored. In 
Lodore, Shelley critiques the passionate, unreformed Romantic character of the 
eponymous hero, whose estranged wife takes center stage by re-educating herself: she 
abandons wordly priorities in favor of the values of utopian domesticity--responsibility 
instead of personal rights, simplicity instead of luxury, unself-interested benevolence--
and by devoting herself to the benefit of her daughter, reunites her family and gains a 
new, like-minded husband. In Falkner, Shelley provides utopian domesticity as a frame 
that makes possible the feminist reform of justice demanded by Godwin in Political 
Justice and Caleb Williams. 
Shelley explores women's own Romantic desire both for personal fame and glory 
and for public benevolence, showing how either men or women may become ambitious 
Byronic heroes or benevolent Shelley an heroes. She investigates women's engagements 
with power in the public sphere and in the sphere of interpersonal and community 
relationships, while she also valorizes men who become more involved with family and 
community instead of selfishly seeking political or military power. As a disciple of 
Wollstonecraft, Shelley consciously demonstrates the effects of education on women and 
men characters, insisting on women's full education and their rights to become full 
citizens alongside men. As a follower of Godwin, she sees domesticity as the site where 
human interactions, at their most basic, have the greatest potential to effect revolutionary 
change. As a Romantic woman writer, whose fictions appeared between 1818 and 1837, 
Shelley investigates the powerful ideologies of her day, exposing the weaknesses of 
Romanticism and domesticity even as she reveals the possibilities they bear for perfecting 
human interactions. 
348 
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