William Godwin (1756-1836)
William Godwin, Things As They Are; or, -Caleb Williams, 3 vols., B. Crosby,
London, 1794. Rpt. Oxford University Press World's Classics, 1982, ed. David
McCracken; Penguin Classics, 1988, ed. Maurice Hindle
William Godwin, St. Leon: a Tale of the Sixteenth Century, 4 vols., G. G. & J.
Robinson, London, 1799. Rpt. Oxford University Press World's Classics, 1994,
ed. Pamela Clemit
William Godwin, Fleetwood; or, the New Man of Feeling, 3 vols., Richard
Phillips, London, 1805
Godwin, William. Political and Philosophical Writings of William Godwin, ed.
Mark Philp. 7 vols. London: William Pickering, 1993
Ford K. Brown, The Life of William Godwin (London: J. M. Dent and Sons,
1926).
Grylls, R. G, William Godwin and His World (London: Odhams Press, 1953)
Don Locke, A Fantasy of Reason. The Life and Thought of William Godwin
(London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980)
Peter H. Marshall, William Godwin (New Haven, GT: Yale University Press,
1984).
Politics and Novels in the 1790s
•
By 1800, the novel had become one of the major battlefields in the British war of ideas
provoked by the French Revolution.
•
The 1790s saw not only a remarkable increase in the numbers of political novels published,
but also a burgeoning of the varieties and methods authors adopted to get their ideological
convictions across. Yet the vast majority of these novels remain almost entirely unknown
today, especially those aligned with the anti-Revolutionary cause. While this remains the
case, the profusion and cogency of this literary response to the French Revolution crisis will
be underestimated, and a vital cache of evidence about the attitudes to politics of a normally
silent section of British society will lie unused.
•
two fundamental Problems.
–
–
•
What qualifies a text as political?
How many political novels were published
What are then two different groups of political novels?
=> Jacobin and anti-Jacobin novels
Quotation from Grenby, Matthew O. "Politicised Fiction in Britain 1790-1810:
An Annotated Checklist." The European Messenger 9,2 (2000), 47-53.
See also: Gary Kelly, The English Jacobin Novel 1780-1805 [Oxford, 1976]
William Godwin St. Leon (1799)
I can recollect no sensation in the course of my life, so unexpected and surprising as what
I felt at that moment. The evening before, I had seen my hair white, and my face ploughed
with furrows; I looked fourscore. What I beheld now was totally different, yet altogether
familiar; it was myself, myself as I had appeared on the day of my marriage […]. I leaped
a gulf of thirty-two years. […] one of the advantages of the metamorphosis I had
sustained, consisted in its tendency, in the eyes of all that saw me, to cut off every species
of connection between my present and my former self.
Godwin has St. Leon conclude: "the whole vegetable system contains in it a principle of
perpetual renewal, man alone, – the ornament and lord of the universe, man, – knows no
return to youth."[1] Reginald cries out, "With what a melancholy sensation does the old
man survey his decaying limbs! […] The useless wish of the old man, the object of his
hopeless sigh, was mine."[2] In opposition to the ageing, the young man is oblivious to
his advantages: "The young man squanders the endowments of youth, and knows not to
prize them. If the young man had once been old, if the old man could again be young,
then,
and
then
only,
they
would
justly
estimate
their
wealth."
[1] Godwin, St. Leon, p. 351.
[2] Ibid.
Edward Dubois‘ Parody of St. Leon
•
Edward Dubois, St Godwin: A Tale of the 16th, 17th, and 18th c. (1800), ed.
by Robert Miles. In: Anti-Jacobin Novels, ed. by Philip Cox et al. Vol. 9.
London: William Pickering, 2005.
•
It is a measure of the degree of hatred the figure of William Godwin evoked
amongst the anti-Jacobins that he and, more particularly, his novel St Leon: A
Tale of the Sixteenth Century were singled out for special satirical treatment in
this novel. Killing two Revolutions with one stone, Dubois’s satire is a
brilliantly witty parody of Godwin’s ‘radical’ change of tack from the
uncompromising rationalist that wrote the Enquiry and Caleb Williams to the
champion of the domestic economy and the ‘affections of the heart’ that wrote
St Leon . Though inaccurate, the parody is highly entertaining.
Intertextual References in William Godwin and Mary Shelley
•
What St. Leon says about the relationship of body and mind is reminiscent of what
Godwin says in the Enquiry into Political Justice:
"What was most material, my mind was grown young with my body.“ (352) Ageing is a
matter of the mind at least as much as of the body. This invigoration of his life,
however, does not make the wanderer happy. Like Frankenstein's creature, he regards
himself "as the most execrable of monsters“ (353) – even worse, "as a monster that did
not deserve to exist.“ (363) Like Frankenstein's monster he is "a new man". (368) For
him, "the laws of nature are suspended". (163) Therefore, in opposition to what Burke
and Ricardo say, he will "become familiar with the rise and fall of empires." But all this
has a price: "I found myself alone in the world". (164)
Compare this with Mary Shelley’s analogies in Frankenstein to another famous work of
Godwin:
Frankenstein reflected not only the political and societal issues of Godwin's Caleb
Williams, but the chase and flight structure of the book as well.
When and where came the story into being?
As Mary Shelley records in her 1831 introduction to Frankenstein, a single evening's
conversation at Villa Diodati in June 18 16 over the so-called principle of life
prompted two of the period's most famous monsters: Frankenstein's creature and the
Byronic vampire.
Mary Shelley on returning to Villa Diodati, where she, Percy Shelley, and Byron
sojourned during the fateful summer of 1816:
Was I the same person who had lived there, the companion of the dead? For all were
gone: even my young child, whom I had looked upon as the joy of future years, had
died in infancy -- not one hope, then in fair bud, had opened into maturity; storm, and
blight, and death, had passed over, and destroyed all. While yet very young, I had
reached the position of an aged person, driven back on memory for companionship
with the beloved; and now I looked on the inanimate objects that had surrounded me,
which survived, the same in aspect as then, to feel that all my life since was but an
unreal phantasmagoria -- the shades that gathered round that scene were the realities -the substance and truth. (1:140-41)
Mary Wollstonecraft = William Godwin
(Right of Women)
(Caleb Williams)
Mary Shelley = Percy Bysshe Shelley
(Frankenstein) (Prometheus Unbound)
Frankenstein The Modern Prometheus
A Sample Outline of Frankenstein's Architectonic Design (Behrendt 1990)
Letter 1 Walton Looks for a ship, recalls his life's events
Waltons Letter 2 He describes his crew
Narrative Letter 3 His voyage of discovery begins
Letter 4 He sights the Creature, meets and talks with Victor
Chapter 1 Victor's parents' history; Elizabeth is adopted
Chapter 2 Victor's happy childhood; his interest in science
Chapter 3 His mother's death; to Ingolstadt; Krempe and Walduran
Chapter 4 Work on the Creature; he neglects his family
Victor's Chapter 5 The Creature awakens; Victor's illness and recovery
Narrative Chapter 6 Elizabeth's First Letter; Victor's decision to return to Geneva
Chapter 7 His father's Letter (William's death); his return home
Chapter 8 Justines trial; prison visit; Justines death
Chapter 9 Mourning and guilt; Victor's journey in the Alps
Chapter 10Victor meets the Creature an Mont Blanc
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Chapter 11The Creature's journey away from Ingolstadt
Chapter 12The Creature discovers the De Lacey family
The
Chapter 13Safte arrives; the Creature learns langvage
Creature's Chapter 14The De Laceys' family history
Narrative Chapter 15The Creature's books; he throws himself an the mercy of M. De
Lacey: he is driven away by Felix
Chapter 16The Creature's revenge, flight, and suffering; his killing of
William; his revenge an Justine
•
Chapter 17Victor's argument with the Creature; his promise to create a female
creature
Chapter 18Procrastination; his father's worries; to England with Clerval
Chapter 19To Orkneys; work an female creature
Victor's Chapter 20Misgivings and destruction of the female; the Creature's rage;
Victor is arrested
narrative Chapter 21Imprisoned for Clerval's murder; saved by his father
Chapter 22Elizabeth's second Letter; their marriage
Chapter 23The wedding night
•
Chapter 24Confused search for the Creature; his father's death and Victor's
visit to magistrate; journey to Arctic
Waltons Letter 4
Waltons ship in peril; his decision to turn back;
Victor's
Narrative (cont.)
death; the Creature's final appearance
It is no exaggeration to say that Frankenstein is the most
famous work of Imagination from the Romantic era.
1) intersection of interlocking cultural concerns
2) the claims of humanity against scientific exploration
3) the relationship between "monsters" and their Creators
4) the questionable judgments by which physical difference is termed monstrous
5) the responsibility of society for the violent behavior of those to whom it refuses
care, compassion, even basic decency
6) the relationships between men and women, and parents and children
7) the psychological dynamics of repression, doubling, and alter egos.
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft. Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus, ed. by Susan J.
Wolfson. New York and San Francisco: Longman, 2003.
Creation of Life
It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld the accomplishment
of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected
the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being
into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was already one in the
morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle
was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished
light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard,
and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs.
How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate
the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavoured
to form? His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features
as beautiful. Beautiful! Great God!
Benjamin Franklin, who attempted to tap electrical
energy from lightning, earned the title of
"Modern Prometheus."
The ancient Greek god Prometheus was the first to
bring fire from heaven, but his story is a
complex reference. The god's actions prefigure
those not only of Milton's Satan (like him,
punished for disobeying divine law), but also of
Christ, especially in the political perspective of
Shelley's age: the benefactor of humanity
martyred for his compassion. But if in his role of
would-be benefactor, Prometheus patterns both
the scientist Victor Frankenstein and his
Creature, one of the surprises of the novel to
those reading it for the first time is that
"Frankenstein" is the name of the scientist only
and not his creature, who never has a name"
(Wolfson 2003, xxii)
"The Modern
Prometheus"
Prometheus Bound, 1611-1612
Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640)
Photographic reproduction of an oil painting
The Granger Collection, New York
Science in Frankenstein
Biographical and Imperial Magazine for June, 1790. London: printed for C. Stalker; ..
E. and T. Williams ...: and sold by all Booksellers, Stationers, &c. in Town and
Country, 1790.
BL P.P.3859;
The Electric Shock, A Test of remaining Life. Reports of the Humane Society.
The Baron de Hupsch, has discovered, that a human body, apparently dead, may be
resuscitated by being electrified. The idea is so simple, and so easily put in practice, that it
would ne wasting words to paint the merit of the discovery, or to recommend it to general
employment. [...] The clergy, no doubt, will concur in establishing the use of so important a
preservative; and no supposed corpse ought to be interred without an attestation of its having
been electrified, especially if the reputed death was sudden. (340)
a) Mary Shelley, Preface, 1831
I busied myself to think of a story . . . One which would speak to the mysterious fears
of our nature, and awaken thrilling horror.
b) from: Preface to the Second Edition of Lyrical Ballads by S.T. Coleridge and
W. Wordsworth (1800)
"The man of science seeks truth as a remote and unknown benefactor; he cherishes
and loves it in his solitude: the poet, singing a song in which all human beings
join with him, rejoices in the presence of truth as our visible friend and hourly
companion." (19)
c) from J.B.S. Haldane, Daedalus, 1923
“The chemical or physical inventor is always a Prometheus. There is no great
invention, from fire to flying, which has not been hailed as an insult to some god.
But if every physical and chemical invention is a blasphemy, every biological
invention is a perversion.”
Ostracised and Rejected:
The Miserable Creations of Pride and Arrogance
Shelley, Frankenstein, p. 110: "Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so
hideous that even you turned from me in disgust? God, in pity, made man
beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of
yours, more horrid even from the very resemblance. Satan had his
companions, fellow devils, to admire and encourage him, but I am solitary and
abhorred."
Gregory Maertz speaks of "the intertextual dialogue forming Frankenstein".
Maertz interprets St. Leon as "a dialogic partner in the struggle for selfexpression"
(Gregory Maertz, "Family Resemblances: Intertextual Dialogue between Father and
Daughter Novelists in Godwin's St. Leon and Shelley's Frankenstein," University of
Mississippi Studies in English NS 11/12 [1995], 303-320; here 317)
Compare Frankenstein’s misery with that of Caleb Williams:
"I could no longer consider myself as a member of society." (247)
"I was a monster with whom the very earth groaned! ... The old man
was in a perfect agony with the recollection. ... I was inexpressibly
affected at the abhorrence this good and benevolent creature
expressed against me." (249)
CW: "I cursed the whole system of human existence." (251)
Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay
To mould me man? Did I solicit thee
From darkness to promote me?
Lines from John Milton's Paradise Lost
From the title page of Frankenstein;
or, The Modern Prometheuse, 1818
In Frankenstein, the intelligent and
sensitive monster created by Victor
Frankenstein reads a copy of Milton's
Paradise Lost, which profoundly stirs
his emotions. The monster compares
his situation to that of Adam. Unlike
the first man who had "come forth
from the hands of God a perfect
creature," Frankenstein's creature is
hideously formed. Abandoned by
Victor Frankenstein, the monster
finds himself "wretched, helpless, and
alone."
Paradise Lost
The Expulsion from Eden, 17th century
Artist unknown
Photographic reproduction of a line engraving
The Granger Collection, New York
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/frankenstein/frank_modern_2.html#paradise
a) Mary Shelley, Preface, 1831
I busied myself to think of a story . . . One which would speak to the mysterious fears
of our nature, and awaken thrilling horror.
b) from: Preface to the Second Edition of Lyrical Ballads by S.T. Coleridge and
W. Wordsworth (1800)
"The man of science seeks truth as a remote and unknown benefactor; he cherishes
and loves it in his solitude: the poet, singing a song in which all human beings
join with him, rejoices in the presence of truth as our visible friend and hourly
companion." (19)
c) from J.B.S. Haldane, Daedalus, 1923
“The chemical or physical inventor is always a Prometheus. There is no great
invention, from fire to flying, which has not been hailed as an insult to some god.
But if every physical and chemical invention is a blasphemy, every biological
invention is a perversion.”
Chapter 16 [Speaker: Monster]
"Cursed, cursed creator! Why did I live? Why, in that instant, did I not extinguish the
spark of existence which you had so wantonly bestowed? I know not; despair had not
yet taken possession of me; my feelings were those of rage and revenge. I could with
pleasure have destroyed the cottage and its inhabitants and have glutted myself with
their shrieks and misery.
"When night came I quitted my retreat and wandered in the wood; and now, no longer
restrained by the fear of discovery, I gave vent to my anguish in fearful howlings. I
was like a wild beast that had broken the toils, destroying the objects that obstructed
me and ranging through the wood with a staglike swiftness. Oh! What a miserable
night I passed! The cold stars shone in mockery, and the bare trees waved their
branches above me; now and then the sweet voice of a bird burst forth amidst the
universal stillness. All, save I, were at rest or in enjoyment; I, like the arch-fiend, bore
a hell within me, and finding myself unsympathized with, wished to tear up the trees,
spread havoc and destruction around me, and then to have sat down and enjoyed the
ruin.
"But this was a luxury of sensation that could not endure; I became fatigued with
excess of bodily exertion and sank on the damp grass in the sick impotence of despair.
There was none among the myriads of men that existed who would pity or assist me;
and should I feel kindness towards my enemies? No; from that moment I declared
everlasting war against the species, and more than all, against him who had formed
me and sent me forth to this insupportable misery.
William Shakespeare, The Tempest
Caliban to Prospero:
„When thou camest first, Thou strokedst me and madest much of me,
wouldst [...] teach me how/ To name the bigger light, and how the less,
[...] then I loved thee/ And show'd thee all the qualities o' the isle,/ [...]
I am all the subjects that you have,/ Which first was mine own king:
[...] you do keep from me/ The rest o' the island“.
To whom thus Eve, recovering heart, repli'd.
Adam, by sad experiment I know
How little weight my words with thee can finde,
Found so erroneous, thence by just event
Found so unfortunate; nevertheless,
Restor'd by thee, vile as I am, to place
Of new acceptance, hopeful to regaine
Thy Love, the sole contentment of my heart,
Living or dying from thee I will not hide
What thoughts in my unquiet brest are ris'n,
Tending to som relief of our extremes,
Or end, though sharp and sad, yet tolerable,
As in our evils, and of easier choice.
[…]
Why stand we longer shivering under feares,
That shew no end but Death, and have the power,
Of many wayes to die the shortest choosing,
Destruction with destruction to destroy.
John Milton.
Paradise Lost:
Byron, Cain
„I sought not to be born; nor love the state/ To which that birth has
brought me“ (p. 453)
„Why do I exist?/ Why art thou wretched? why are all things so?/ Ev'n he
who made us must be, as the maker/ Of things unhappy! To produce
destruction/ Can surely never be the task of joy,/ And yet my sire says
he's omnipotent:/ Then why is evil-he being good?“ (p. 480)
Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound: „the sacred Milton was, let it ever be
remembered, a republican and a bold inquirer into morals and religion.
The great writers of our own age are, we have reason to suppose, the
companions and forerunners of some unimagined change in our social
condition or the opinions which cement it“ (206).
Frankenstein = Monster?
No one can conceive the anguish I suffered during the remainder of the
night, which I spent, cold and wet, in the open air. But I did not feel
the inconvenience of the weather; my imagination was busy in scenes
of evil and despair. I considered the being whom I had cast among
mankind and endowed with the will and power to effect purposes of
horror, such as the deed which he had now done, nearly in the light of
my own vampire, my own spirit let loose from the grave and forced to
destroy all that was dear to me.
Frankenstein = Faust?
I was formed for peaceful happiness. During my youthful days
discontent never visited my mind, and if I was ever overcome by
ennui, the sight of what is beautiful in nature or the study of what is
excellent and sublime in the productions of man could always interest
my heart and communicate elasticity to my spirits. But I am a blasted
tree; the bolt has entered my soul; and I felt then that I should survive
to exhibit what I shall soon cease to be -- a miserable spectacle of
wrecked humanity, pitiable to others and intolerable to myself. (1818:
133)
Frankenstein is hunted by the „monster“
... immersed in a solitude where nothing could for an instant call my
attention from the actual scene in which I was engaged, my spirits
became unequal; I grew restless and nervous. Every moment I feared
to meet my persecutor. Sometimes I sat with my eyes fixed on the
ground, fearing to raise them lest they should encounter the object
which I so much dreaded to behold. I feared to wander from the sight
of my fellow creatures lest when alone he should come to claim his
companion.
Chamounix
I passed the bridge of Pelissier, where the ravine, which the river forms,
opened before me, and I began to ascend the mountain that overhangs
it. Soon after, I entered the valley of Chamounix. This valley is more
wonderful and sublime, but not so beautiful and picturesque as that of
Servox, through which I had just passed. The high and snowy
mountains were its immediate boundaries, but I saw no more ruined
castles and fertile fields. Immense glaciers approached the road; I
heard the rumbling thunder of the falling avalanche and marked the
smoke of its passage. Mont Blanc, the supreme and magnificent Mont
Blanc, raised itself from the surrounding aiguilles, and its tremendous
dome overlooked the valley.
The following quotations are taken from:
Behrendt, Stephen C., ed. Approaches to Teaching Shelley's Frankenstein. New
York: The Modern Language Association of America, 1990.
The Woman Writer as Frankenstein Marcia Aldrich and Richard Isomaki
Teaching Frankenstein from the Creature's Perspective Paul A. Cantor and
Michael Valdez Moses
Feminism/ Gender Studies:
Reading mothers and lovers
My point here is not that a lesbian subtext is "really there" or that
Frankenstein is a "lesbian novel," It is, rather, the converse: the
absence of erotic bonds between women is constitutive both of Mary
Shelley's text and of straight feminist readings of the novel. Such
bonds are, in other words, marginalized by the homophobic and
heterosexist paradigms both critiqued and constructed by the novel and
by the critical perspectives that replicate or exacerbate those patterns.
Many such readings have interpreted the creature as coded female, and
in doing so have elided male homosocial relations in the novel, or even
reinscribed homophobic paradigms. Reading the novel as a critique of
male homo-sexual panic, however, helps reveal the ways in which that
critique depends on the absence of erotic relations between women.
Differences between the 1818 and 1831 versions; biographical approach;
from „Choosing a Text of Frankenstein to Teach“ by Anne K. Mellor
Turning now to the differences between the first and second published editions of
Frankenstein, we must recognize that between 1818 and 1831, Mary Shelley's
philosophical views changed radically, primarily as a result of the pessimism
generated by the deaths of several family members; and by her severely straitened
economic circumstances. These events convinced Mary Shelley that human events
are decided not by personal choice or free will but by an indifferent destiny or fate.
The values implicitly espoused in the first edition of Frankenstein - that nature is a
nurturing and benevolent life force that punishes only those who trangress against its
sacred rights that Victor is morally responsible for good but driven to evil by social
and parental neglect, that a family like the De Laceys that loves all its children
equally offers the best hope for human happiness, and that human egotism causes the
greatest suffering in the world — are all rejected in the 1831 version.
In the 1818 version, Victor "Frankenstein possessed freej will: he could have abandoned
his quest for the "principle of life," he “could“ have cared for his Creature, he could
have protected Elizabeth. But in the 1831 edition, he is the pawn of forces beyond his
knowledge or control.
Gender Studies: What gender does the Monster have?, from Teaching
Frankenstein from the Creature's Perspective by Paul A. Cantor and Michael
Valdez Moses
… we go on to explore the larger issues of gender raised in Frankenstein. In
particular, we use the novel to raise the question of the extent to which gender is
socially constituted. To be sure, the Creature is created as a male, and on one
level of interpretation it might even he said to embody — and eventually to act
out — the masculine aggressiveness of its creator. Hut from an other point of
view, throughout the novel the Creature may he said to be genderless or at least
searching to establish a gender for itself. That desire of course is the point of the
Creature's urging Frankenstein to create a suitable mate. It realizes that it can he
truly male only in binary opposition to a female of its own kind.
In the absence of a mate, the Creature is forced to lead an existence that in terms
of gender is profoundly indeterminate. As masculine as it may appear to be, at
many points it is cast in a role that in the nineteenth century would have been
viewed as feminine. The Creature, after all, in a curious way ends up speaking
for the value of domestic life in opposition to Frankenstein, who, in his heroic
quest as a creator, rejects the ties that would bind him to a conventional family.
It is no exaggeration to say that Frankenstein is the most
famous work of Imagination from the Romantic era.
1) intersection of interlocking cultural concerns
2) the claims of humanity against scientific exploration
3) the relationship between "monsters" and their Creators
4) the questionable judgments by which physical difference is termed monstrous
5) the responsibility of society for the violent behavior of those to whom it refuses
care, compassion, even basic decency
6) the relationships between men and women, and parents and children
7) the psychological dynamics of repression, doubling, and alter egos.
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft. Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus, ed. by Susan J.
Wolfson. New York and San Francisco: Longman, 2003.
The following quotations are taken from:
Behrendt, Stephen C., ed. Approaches to Teaching Shelley's Frankenstein. New
York: The Modern Language Association of America, 1990.
The Woman Writer as Frankenstein Marcia Aldrich and Richard Isomaki
Teaching Frankenstein from the Creature's Perspective Paul A. Cantor and
Michael Valdez Moses
Differences between the 1818 and 1831 versions; biographical approach;
from „Choosing a Text of Frankenstein to Teach“ by Anne K. Mellor
Turning now to the differences between the first and second published editions of
Frankenstein, we must recognize that between 1818 and 1831, Mary Shelley's
philosophical views changed radically, primarily as a result of the pessimism
generated by the deaths of several family members; and by her severely straitened
economic circumstances. These events convinced Mary Shelley that human events
are decided not by personal choice or free will but by an indifferent destiny or fate.
The values implicitly espoused in the first edition of Frankenstein - that nature is a
nurturing and benevolent life force that punishes only those who trangress against its
sacred rights that Victor is morally responsible for good but driven to evil by social
and parental neglect, that a family like the De Laceys that loves all its children
equally offers the best hope for human happiness, and that human egotism causes the
greatest suffering in the world — are all rejected in the 1831 version.
In the 1818 version, Victor "Frankenstein possessed free will: he could have abandoned
his quest for the "principle of life," he “could“ have cared for his Creature, he could
have protected Elizabeth. But in the 1831 edition, he is the pawn of forces beyond his
knowledge or control.
Feminism/ Gender Studies:
Reading mothers and lovers
My point here is not that a lesbian subtext is "really there" or that
Frankenstein is a "lesbian novel," It is, rather, the converse: the
absence of erotic bonds between women is constitutive both of Mary
Shelley's text and of straight feminist readings of the novel. Such
bonds are, in other words, marginalized by the homophobic and
heterosexist paradigms both critiqued and constructed by the novel and
by the critical perspectives that replicate or exacerbate those patterns.
Many such readings have interpreted the creature as coded female, and
in doing so have elided male homosocial relations in the novel, or even
reinscribed homophobic paradigms. Reading the novel as a critique of
male homo-sexual panic, however, helps reveal the ways in which that
critique depends on the absence of erotic relations between women.
Gender Studies: What gender does the Monster have?, from Teaching
Frankenstein from the Creature's Perspective by Paul A. Cantor and Michael
Valdez Moses
… we go on to explore the larger issues of gender raised in Frankenstein. In
particular, we use the novel to raise the question of the extent to which gender is
socially constituted. To be sure, the Creature is created as a male, and on one
level of interpretation it might even be said to embody — and eventually to act
out — the masculine aggressiveness of its creator. But from an other point of
view, throughout the novel the Creature may he said to be genderless or at least
searching to establish a gender for itself. That desire of course is the point of the
Creature's urging Frankenstein to create a suitable mate. It realizes that it can he
truly male only in binary opposition to a female of its own kind.
In the absence of a mate, the Creature is forced to lead an existence that in terms
of gender is profoundly indeterminate. As masculine as it may appear to be, at
many points it is cast in a role that in the nineteenth century would have been
viewed as feminine. The Creature, after all, in a curious way ends up speaking
for the value of domestic life in opposition to Frankenstein, who, in his heroic
quest as a creator, rejects the ties that would bind him to a conventional family.
Mary Shelley (1797-1851)
Mary Shelley
-
Frankenstein
The Last Man
Valperga
Her Mother
Mary Wollstonecraft, The Wrongs of Woman; or, Maria, a fragment, vols.1-2 of The
Posthumous
Works of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, etc., J. Johnson, London,
1798. Rpt.
Penguin Classics, 1992, ed. Janet Todd; Oxford University Press
World's Classics, 1976, ed. Gary Kelly
Her Father
William Godwin
Caleb Williams
St. Leon
The Great Day of His Wrath by John Martin
c1853 Tate Gallery, London
John Martin. (1789-1854) painter
John Martin earned the name "Mad Martin" from painting apocalyptic landscapes
and biblical scenes of destruction. Martin began his career as a painter of coaches. In
1823 he started print-making. In 1825 he illustrated an edition of Paradise Lost and in
1831 of the Bible. (Exhibition) He published the "Seventh Plague of Egypt" (1824)
which could have been a correction of Joseph Turner's "The Fifth Plague of Egypt."
(Although Turner's painting was about the seventh plague, he titled it the fifth.) During
the 1830's Martin worked on "The Deluge", possibly reacting to Turner's showing of
his "The Deluge" in 1813. (Paley 138) This painting represented a shift in his work,
for rather than showing architectural destruction he focused on natural catastrophe. In
1851 he painted revelation subjects again, creating the mezzotint "The Opening of the
Seventh Seal" and "The Last Judgment." Also during this time he engraved illustrations
for the Martin-Westall New Testament. (146)
Bibliography
John Martin. Exhibition (on-line tour) [http://www.thinker.
org/legion/exhibitions/martin/tour/1.html] 28 Jan 1998.
John Martin's Last Man (1849). (on-line) [http://www.luc.
edu/depts/english/lm/jmartin.html] 28 Jan 1998.
Paley, Morton. Apocalyptic Sublime. New Haven: Yale UP, 1986.
The Great Day of His Wrath 1851-3
This is the third picture in Martin's great triptych, known as the Judgement Series. Along with the other two vast
panels, The Last Judgement and The Plains of Heaven (Tate T01927 and T01928), it was inspired by St John
the Divine's fantastic account of the Last Judgement given in Revelation, the last book of the New Testament.
Martin's aim in producing this series was highly Romantic: to express the sublime, apocalyptic force of nature
and the helplessness of man to combat God's will. Of all Martin's biblical scenes, this presents his most
cataclysmic vision of destruction, featuring an entire city being torn up and thrown into the abyss.
The Book of Judgement is sealed with seven seals. As each seal is broken, mysterious and terrifying events occur,
culminating in the breaking of the sixth seal:
and, lo, there was a great earthquake' and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood; |
And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a
mighty wind. | And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island
were moved out of their places. (Revelation 6:12-14)
Martin follows the biblical description closely, but adds his own sensational effects. A blood-red glow casts an eerie
light over the scene. The mountains are transformed into rolling waves of solid rock, crushing any buildings that
lie in their wake. Lightning splits the giant boulders which crash towards the dark abyss, and groups of helpless
figures tumble inexorably towards oblivion.
The three pictures in the triptych became famous in the years after Martin's death and were toured throughout
England and America. They were described as 'The most sublime and extraordinary pictures in the world valued
at 8000 guineas' (quoted in Wilson, p.76). Many mezzotints of the pictures were sold, but the vastness and
theatricality of Martin's visions now appeared outmoded to the mid-Victorians, and the paintings themselves
failed to find a buyer. By the twentieth century, Martin's work had fallen into obscurity and he became known
as 'Mad Martin'. In 1935 the triptych was sold for seven pounds and the separate panels dispersed. It was
reunited by the Tate in 1974.
Further reading:
Simon Wilson, Tate Gallery - an illustrated companion, London 1990, p.76.
Christopher Wood, Victorian Painting, London 1999, pp.19-20, reproduced p.20, in colour.
Frances Fowle (December 2000)
Plot of Mary Shelley‘s The Last Man
The Last Man describes the merciless progress of the plague from Asia to
London. This progress of pestilence cannot be stopped and people
simply await death. England, the nation of progress and wealth, has
become a country in which everyone has to yield to the "progress of
destruction". (200)
The apocalyptic vision is written down by the only survivor, Lionel
Verney.
The Last Man is an adult fairy-story of plague-destroying deaths, graphic
battle-scenes, and impassioned love, in which Mary Shelley reinvents
what she lamented in the loss of in much literature of the day.
Mary Shelley's 1826 novel, The Last Man
… has been characterized as
- a rejection of Shelleyan Romanticism and of Shelley himself
- an agenda for the nuclear family in opposition to a larger, political
agenda
- grief work
- an example of the problems female authors of the era faced
- roman à clef
- apocalyptic vision without determinacy or millennium.
Contemporary Critics wrote about The Last Man …
The Literary Gazette considered the futuristic setting as "affording scope for much matter
not connected with the catastrophe, and enabling the writer to indulge in every possible
(and impossible) flight of her anticipative imagination, touching the nature of human
society, and of all other mundane matters, a hundred and fifty years hence!" This
reviewer concludes: "When we repeat that these volumes are the production of a
female pen, and that we have not ceased to consider Mrs. Shelley as a woman and a
widow, we shall have given the clue to our abstinence from remarks upon them. . . .
Why not the last Woman? she would have known better how to paint her distress at
having nobody left to talk to: we are sure the tale would have been more interesting"
(February 18, 1826).
The Ladies' Monthly Museum wished the "highly-talented writer" would "exercise her
powers of intellect on subjects less removed from nature and probability" (March,
1826).
The Monthly Review dismissed the novel as the "offspring of a diseased imagination, and
of a most polluted taste. We must observe, however, the powers of composition
displayed in this production, are by no means of an ordinary character. They are indeed
uncontrolled by any of the rule of good writing; but they certainly bear the impress of
genius, though perverted and spoiled by morbid affectation
Place and characters
Time: twenty-first century, final generation of human beings on earth
destroyed by an uncontrollable plague
Place: London (Italy, Constantinople)
six characters:
The narrator and sole survivor, Lionel Verney
his sister, Perdita [= Mary Shelley], who marries
Lord Raymond, adventurer, hero, nobleman, and, eventually, head of state [=
Lord Byron];
Adrian, Earl of Windsor, son of the last King of England (England is now a
republic governed by an elected Lord Protector) [= P.B. Shelley];
Adrian's sister, Princess Idris, who defies her mother (the Countess of Windsor)
and marries Verney;
Evadne, a Greek princess, loved by Adrian, but rejecting him in favor of her
passion for Raymond, which results in an adulterous affair.
Genre: Holocaust and After
Apocalyptic literature/sicence fiction/ post-holocaust
there is some overlap between this entry and
ADAM AND EVE (many sf tales deal with a second genesis after catastrophe),
ANTHROPOLOGY (the emphasis is often on tribal patterns forming in a brutalized and
diminished population),
EVOLUTION and DEVOLUTION (evolutionary change has since the 18th century been
linked with natural catastrophe),
ENTROPY (holocaust is one of the more dramatic aspects of everything running down),
HISTORY IN SF (human-inspired disasters are often seen as part of a Toynbeean or
Spenglerian process of historical cycles),
END OF THE WORLD (holocaust on a major scale),
ECOLOGY (interference with nature is often seen as the bringer of disaster),
MEDICINE (the agent of holocaust is often plague),
MUTANTS (the use of nuclear weapons is often seen as leading to massive mutation in
plants, animals and humans),
NUCLEAR POWER (the most popular agent of holocaust in fiction since WWII),
OPTIMISM AND PESSIMISM and SURVIVALIST FICTION (which is all too often
written by men for men, featuring men shooting other men after civilization's convenient
collapse).
History of this sub-genre
The catastrophe variants are summarized under DISASTER. The many stories‘
focus is not so much the disaster itself but the kind of world in which the
survivors live, and which they make for themselves.
The aftermath of holocaust may be the most popular theme in sf; this encyclopedia (Encyclopedia of
Science Fiction) mentions at least 400 examples at novel length. The genre is as old as sf itself: a
convenient starting point is Mary SHELLEY's second sf novel, The Last Man (1826), in which
plague crosses Europe from the Middle East, leaving one survivor in Rome who is possibly the
last man. Natural catastrophe, too, strikes in Herrmann LANG's The Air Battle: A Vision of the
Future (1859), in which European civilization is destroyed by flood and earthquake, but a
benevolent North-African federation brings peace to the world, Black leading White back to
social order.
The novel in which the post-holocaust story takes on its distinctive modern form is Richard
JEFFERIES's After London (1885), in which the author's strategy is to set the novel thousands of
years after the catastrophe has taken place; in this way an interesting, alienating perspective is
gained. The hero takes his own society (as in most later stories in this vein it is quasimedieval) for
granted; he endeavours to reconstruct the nature of the fallen civilization that preceded it, and also
the intervening years of barbarism.
Brief history of Sf telling the aftermath of holocaust
Ever since Jefferies's time the post-holocaust story has tended to follow this pattern; for every book
whose hero lived through the holocaust itself -- John CHRISTOPHER's The Death of Grass (1956;
vt No Blade of Grass US), filmed as NO BLADE OF GRASS (1970), and Robert MERLE's Malevil
(1972 France; trans 1974), filmed as MALEVIL (1981), being examples -- there are several whose
story begins long after the disaster is over but while its effects are still making themselves felt.
Though such stories continue to fascinate, there has been surprisingly little variation in the basic
plot: disaster is, in the average scenario, seen as being followed by savage barbarism and a bitter
struggle for survival, with rape and murder commonplace; such an era is often succeeded by a
rigidly hierarchical feudalism based very much on medieval models. When the emphasis falls on
struggle and brutality, as it very often does, we have in effect an awful-warning story. But often the
new world is seen as more peaceful and ordered, more in harmony with Nature, than the bustle and
strife of civilization. Such stories are often quasi-UTOPIAs in feeling and PASTORAL in their
values. There is no denying the attraction of such scenarios: they tempt us with a kind of life in
which the individual controls his or her own destiny and in which moral issues are clear-cut.
In mature versions of the post-holocaust story there is usually an emotional resonance developed from a
tension between loss and gain, with the simplicities of the new order not wholly compensating for
the half-remembered glories and comforts of the past. This is the case with George R. STEWART's
EARTH ABIDES (1949), and may explain why, despite its occasionally fulsome prose, that novel
has attained classic status.
Raymond’s battle
…. a short letter now and then from Raymond told us how he was engrossed
by the interests of his adopted country. The Greeks were strongly attached to
their commercial pursuits, and would have been satisfied with their present
acquisitions, had not the Turks roused them by invasion. The patriots were
victorious; a spirit of conquest was instilled; and already they looked on
Constantinople as their own. Raymond rose perpetually in their estimation; but
one man held a superior command to him in their armies. He was conspicuous
for his conduct and choice of position in a battle fought in the plains of Thrace,
on the banks of the Hebrus, which was to decide the fate of Islam. The
Mahometans were defeated, and driven entirely from the country west of this
river. The battle was sanguinary, the loss of the Turks apparently irreparable;
the Greeks, in losing one man, forgot the nameless crowd strewed upon the
bloody field, and they ceased to value themselves on a victory, which cost
them--Raymond.
[at the end of Vol. I Raymond is believed to be dead]
Roman-à-clef:
Personal and domestic interests are superseded by political exigencies
Political exigencies are superseded by an uncontrollable plague that
engulfs the human species.
Mary Shelley herself noted that in The Last Man could be found "in Lord
Raymond and Count Adrian faint portraits . . . of B. [Byron] and S ---but this is a secret" (MWSL, I, Letter to Teresa Guiccioli, Aug. 20,
1827).
Wasserman regarded The Last Man as demonstrating Mary Shelley's
"parody of Shelley's optimism" (p. 262) rather than a retelling of the
fable with the same objectives.
Annihilating Enlightenment and Romanticism
"So true it is, that man's mind alone was the creator
of all that was good or great to man, and that
Nature herself was only his first minister.“
“[W]e call ourselves lords of the creation, wielders of
the elements, masters of life and death, and we
allege in excuse of this arrogance, that though the
individual is destroyed, man continues for ever …
[We] glory in the continuity of our species, and
learn to regard death without terror” (LM ii v 167).
Idealized Community = „happy circle“ (LM I vi 64)
Double Marriage
Between Lionel Verney and Lady Idris
Lord Raymond and Lionel's sister, Perdita.
“Based upon passionate love rather than political, economic, or conventional
considerations, these marriages at the locus of British power hold out the hope
of revivification or rejuvenation of English society as a whole. In fact, none of
the central players in the Windsor idyll dies of the plague.“ (Lokke 118)
Conflict between Eros and Thanatos
“O wherefore are love and ruin for ever joined in this our mortal dream? So that when we
make our hearts a lair for that gently seeming beast, its companion enters with it, and
pitilessly lays waste what might have been an home and a shelter” (LM i iii 32).
Lionel Verney, the Wordsworthian and antisocial child of nature is tamed, falls in love with
the humanistic and progressive ideals of the Shelleyan Adrian, heir to the British throne,
and marries his sister Idris.
Perdita, Verney's wild and reclusive sister, a figure associated with Wordsworth's Lucy
poems, is paired off with the Byronic Raymond, who takes on the rulership of England
when Adrian's unworldliness and self-destructive love for the mysterious, eastern
Evadne [= female Byron] make him unfit to do so.
Evadne's creativity and sexuality remain uncontained by marriage and ultimately seduce
Raymond, who embarks on his conquest of the East once his betrayal has been
discovered by Perdita. Raymond's attack on Constantinople disseminates the plague and
initiates a narrative of death that will not end until the entire human race, save the
narrator, Lionel, is gone. (119)
Raymond and Evadne and the
symbolic significance of the plague
intention to rid Constantinople of Islamic, Turkish influence and to claim dominion for
Christianity and Europe over the East
⇒ unleash the plague on the entire world.
⇒ Metaphorically Raymond is already sick before he leaves England. Shelley makes clear
that his sexual union with Evadne is not the cause of his infection, portraying their
relations most sympathetically as an expression of Raymond's admiration for Evadne's
genius and compassion for her self-abasement.
⇒ It is Raymond's denial of his love affair to his wife Perdita – deceit rooted in his pride –
that draws infection to him:
[H]is spirit was as a pure fire, which fades and shrinks from every contagion of foul
atmosphere: but now the contagion had become incorporated with its essence, and the
change was the more painful. Truth and falsehood, love and hate lost their eternal
boundaries, heaven rushed in to mingle with hell … His passions, always his masters,
acquired fresh strength … the clinging weight of destiny bent him down; he was goaded,
tortured, fiercely impatient of that worst of miseries, the sense of remorse. (LM i viii 91)
The Plague
One word, in truth, had alarmed her more than battles or sieges, during
which she trusted Raymond's high command would exempt him from
danger. That word, as yet it was not more to her, was PLAGUE. This
enemy to the human race had begun early in June to raise its serpenthead on the shores of the Nile; parts of Asia, not usually subject to this
evil, were infected. It was in Constantinople; but as each year that city
experienced a like visitation, small attention was paid to those accounts
which declared more people to have died there already, than usually
made up the accustomed prey of the whole of the hotter months.
breach between nature and humanity
[Perdita's] faculties were palsied. She gazed on some flowers that stood near in
a carved vase … “Divine infoliations of the spirit of beauty, ” she exclaimed,
“Ye droop not, neither do ye mourn; the despair that clasps my heart, has not
spread contagion over you! – Why am I not a partner of your insensibility, a
sharer in your calm!” (LM i viii 96)
Critique of Judeo-Christian of humanist notions of man as the „lord of
creation“ (Lokke 117)
Hear you not the rushing sound of the coming tempest? Do you not behold the clouds open,
and destruction lurid and dire pour down on the blasted earth? See you not the
thunderbolt fall, and are deafened by the shout of heaven that follows its descent? Feel
you not the earth quake and open with agonizing groans, while the air is pregnant with
shrieks and wailings, – all announcing the last days of man?
No! none of these things accompanied our fall! The balmy air of spring, breathed from
nature's ambrosial home, invested the lovely earth, which wakened as a young mother
about to lead forth in pride her beauteous offspringto meet their sire who had been
longabsent … Where was pain and evil? Not in the calm air or welteringocean; not in
the woods or fertile fields … (LM iii i 229)
Plague has taken on man’s form
Once man was a favourite of the Creator, as the royal psalmist sang,
"God had made him a little lower than the angels, and had crowned
him with glory and honour. God made him to have dominion over the
works of his hands, and put all things under his feet." Once it was so;
now is man lord of the creation? Look at him -- ha! I see plague! She
has invested his form, is incarnate in his flesh, has entwined herself
with his being, and blinds his heaven-seeking eyes. Lie down, O man,
on the flower-strown earth; give up all claim to your inheritance, all
you can ever possess of it is the small cell which the dead require.
Plague is the companion of spring, of sunshine, and plenty. We no
longer struggle with her. We have forgotten what we did when she was
not. (LM iii i 229–30)
Dissolution of “natural” order
When death is raging among the remaining inhabitants of London, the
differences between the young and old seem to disappear:
…. ardent youth had become greyhaired; furrows deep and uneraseable
were trenched in the blooming cheek of the young mother; the elastic
limbs of early manhood, paralyzed as by the burthen of years, assumed
the decrepitude of age. Nights passed, during whose fatal darkness the
sun grew old before it rose; [...] until a whole life of sorrow had
brought the sufferer to an untimely grave (408).
The Plague – socially constructed?
The central question, then, for contemporary readers of The Last Man is
whether the plague it portrays is, as Mellor suggests, socially constructed or
whether it is a manifestation of an ultimately uncontrollable and uncontainable
impulse – death-drive? will-to-power? – at the heart of human nature.
Approaching this perhaps unanswerable question requires examination of the
political, religious, and aesthetic responses to the plague depicted in The Last
Man. And Shelley's depictions of these cultural responses reflect her own
highly ambivalent reactions to the liberal ideologies of her parents, and the
Romantic ideologies of her husband and dearest friends. (Lokke 126)
Western Imperialism and Religious Wars
Every breathing creature within the walls was massacred. Think you,
amidst the shrieks of violated innocence and helpless infancy, I did not
feel in every nerve the cry of a fellow being? They were men and
women, the sufferers, before they were Mahometans, and when they
rise turbanless from the grave, in what except their good or evil actions
will they be the better or worse than we? (LM i x 116)
Raymond … counted on an event which would be a landmark in the waste
of ages, an exploit unequalled in the annals of man; when a city of
grand historic association … which for many hundred years had been
the strong hold of the Moslems, should be rescued from slavery and
barbarism, and restored to a people illustrious for genius, civilization,
and a spirit of liberty. (LM ii i 128)
Evadne's dying curse
This is the end of love! … Many living deaths have I borne for thee, O
Raymond, and now I expire, thy victim!… [T]he 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 … (LM ii i 131)
⇒ „Power struggles between man and woman, West and East, self and other
create inseparable and mutually destructive master/slave, persecutor/victim
pairs, mimetic doubles that ultimately doom the entire human race.” (Lokke
123)
Scenes of apocalytic destruction and
Raymond‘s end
Thunderlike [the crash] reverberated through the sky, while the air was
darkened. A moment more and the old walls again met my sight, while over
them hovered a murky cloud, fragments of buildings whirled above … while
flames burst out beneath, and continued explosions filled the air with terrific
thunders…I conjured [the men] to turn back and save their General, the
conqueror of Stamboul, the liberator of Greece … I would not believe in his
destruction; yet every mass that darkened the air seemed to bear with it a
portion of the martyred Raymond. (LM ii ii 144)
The world had grown old …
Only a blind old man, who cannot see the misery and who is accompanied by his
daughter, preserves "a bright glow of pleasure". (420) They are Germans, from
Saxony, who had "formed new ties with the surrounding villagers" and who
now see all destroyed by "the mighty leveller.“ (421)
In Shelley's novel, the human species is exposed to disease and old age. The "race
of man" is nearly extinct. The gradual process of ageing seems a privilege
now:
… her children […]; young and blooming as they were, they would die, and
from the hopes of maturity, from the proud name of attained manhood, they
were cut off for ever. Often with maternal affection she had figured their
merits and talents exerted on life's wide stage. Alas for these latter days! The
world had grown old, and all its inmates partook of the decrepitude. Why talk
of infancy, manhood, and old age? We all stood equal sharers of the last throes
of time-worn nature. Arrived at the same point of the world's age – there was
no difference in us; the name of parent and child had lost their meaning; young
boys and girls were level now with men (318).
„Radical Imaginings: Mary Shelley's The Last Man“
by Betty T. Bennett [reprinted from The Wordsworth Circle 26.3
(Summer 1995), 147-52]
When Verney cries out that "the game is up! We must all die; nor leave survivor
nor heir to the wide inheritance of earth" (III, 300), he draws on that first
peopling "out of uncreative void" to disaffirm to himself that extinction:
"Surely death is not death, and humanity is not extinct; but merely passed into
other shapes, unsubjected to our perceptions" (III, 301).
The "I-author" of the introduction speaks of her writing as taking her "out of a
world, which has averted its once benignant face from me, to one glowing with
imagination and power . . . such is human nature, that the excitement of mind
was dear to me, and the imagination, painter of tempest and earthquake, or,
worse, the stormy and ruin-fraught passions of man, softened my real sorrows
and endless regrets, by clothing these fictitious ones in that ideality, which
takes the mortal sting from pain" (I, 4). Thus, the "I-author" and Verney share
the same redemptive experience: through writing, through imagination, they
reshape their sorrows into an "ideality."
Unstable World – Unstable Text
We have been guided, from the dubious Sibyl's cave, into an unstable
fictional world through an unstable text: the leaves of the manuscript
are not ordered; the manuscript's many languages require translation;
the anonymous author within the introduction admits to being "obliged
to add links, and model the work into a consistent form. But the main
substance rests on the truths contained in these poetic rhapsodies, and
the divine intuition which the Cumaean damsel obtained from heaven"
(I, 3-4). In short, we are in a world in which anything can happen,
which after all turns out to be the whole idea.
Art gives form to a fragmented and painful world
At the same time, however, Lionel's narrative does indeed survive him, as does humanity itself. In
contemplating this paradox, the reader recalls the Introduction that frames the novel and
identifies the Cumaean Sybil as the original author of this prophetic narrative that was then
deciphered and transcribed by the early nineteenth-century editor/author. Strangely, this
profoundly historical novel is thus imputed to a sacred source beyond history. The nameless
editor, neither woman nor man, who gives voice to the “divine intuition of the Cumaean
damsel” (LM i 4), source of repressed archetypal female energy, provides as well a clue to the
cultural and even political significance of art. 13 Readers who have suffered through the deaths
of all but one of the novel's characters can only vigorously assent when the editor asks, “Will
my readers ask how I could find solace from the narration of misery and woeful change?” (LM
i 4). Shelley responds with what she terms “one of the mysteries of our nature”: “that the
excitement of mind was dear to me, and that the imagination, painter of tempest and
earthquake, or, worse, the stormy and ruin-fraught passions of man, softened my real sorrows
and endless regrets, by clothing these fictitious ones in that ideality, which takes the mortal
sting from pain” (LM i 4).
This conception of art clearly identifies Mary Shelley as progenitor of and participant in the
aestheticist philsophical tradition that extends from Schiller's Naive and Sentimental Poetry
(1795–96) through Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation (1818) and
Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy (1886) to Freud's Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920). Art
sheds a comforting light on the dark world of the irrational and the Dionysian; its dreamlike
Apollonian quality gives form to the painful struggles of that abysmal and seemingly
unfathomable realm.
Mary Shelley's story, "The Mortal Immortal", the 300-year-old protagonist
comments upon this fruitful dilemma in the following words:
I often try to imagine by what rule the infinite may be divided. Sometimes
I fancy age advancing upon me. One gray hair I have found. Fool! do I
lament? Yes, the fear of age and death often creeps coldly into my
heart; and the more I live, the more I dread death, even while I abhor
life. Such an enigma is man – born to perish – when he wars, as I do,
against
the
established
laws
of
his
nature.[1]
[1] Mary Shelley, "The Mortal Immortal: A Tale," in: Collected
Tales and Stories, ed. with an introduction and notes by Charles E.
Robinson (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976),
pp. 219-230; here p. 229.