University of Tennessee, Knoxville
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Doctoral Dissertations
Graduate School
8-1972
The Influence of William Godwin on the Novels of
Mary Shelley
Katherine Richardson Powers
University of Tennessee - Knoxville
Recommended Citation
Powers, Katherine Richardson, "The Influence of William Godwin on the Novels of Mary Shelley. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee,
1972.
http://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/1599
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To the Graduate Council:
I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by Katherine Richardson Powers entitled "The Influence
of William Godwin on the Novels of Mary Shelley." I have examined the final electronic copy of this
dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in English.
Kenneth Curry, Major Professor
We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance:
Galen Broeker, Edward W. Bratten, Bain T. Stewart
Accepted for the Council:
Dixie L. Thompson
Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School
(Original signatures are on file with official student records.)
July 6 , 1 9 72
To the Graduate Council :
I am submi t ting herewith a disser tat i on writ ten by Katherine
Richardson Powers entitled "The Inf luence of William Godwin on the
Novels of Mary Shelley . " I recommend that it be accep ted in par tial
fulfillment o f the requirements for the degree of Do ctor of Philosophy ,
w i th a maj or in English .
Maj or Professor
We have r ead this dissertation
and recommend its accep t ance :
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Ac cepted for the Council :
Vice Chancellor for
Graduate S tudies and Research
7
THE INFLUENCE OF WILLIAM GODWIN ON
THE NOVELS OF MARY SHELLEY
A Dissertation
Presen ted to
the Graduat e Council of
The Univer s i ty o f Tennessee
In Part ial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Degree
Doctor of Philosophy
by
Katherine Richardson Powers
Augus t 1 972
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to express my appreciat ion to Dr . Kenneth Curry ,
the chairman of my commi t tee , and to
Dr.
Bain T. Stewart , chairman
o f the Department of English and member o f my commi t tee , f or their
invaluable aid and encouragemen t ; to Dr . Edward W. Bratton of the
Dep ar tment of English and Dr . Galen Broeker of the Depar tment o f
His tory f o r serving as members of my commi t tee ; to the l ib r ary s taff
o f the Hoskins Library of the Univers i ty o f Tennessee ; and to my
b r o th er , Dr . John S . Powers Jr . , and his wife and all tho s e o thers
who helped .
ii
ABSTRACT
The pas t f ew decades have s een a revival of interes t in the s o cial
philosophy of William Godwin and a revaluation of his works .
Although
Godwin has b een viewed as a power ful influence on the works of Words­
worth , Coleridge , and Shelley , l i t tle notice has been t aken o f his
influence on the work of his daughter , Mary Shelley .
I t has , on the
contrary , been p opular to attribute Mary ' s Frankens tein to the influence
of her husb and , Per cy Bysshe Shelley .
Many cri tics have reco gnized
a close connec tion b e tween the works of Godwin and Mary , but the
comment s are limi ted and general ; and mos t s tudies of Mary ' s novels
use a biogr aphi cal or critical approach .
The primary purpose o f this s tudy o f Mary Shelley ' s novels ,
however , is to trace the influence that her father and his works had
upon her wri ting .
A writer and his work are s o closely inter twined
that it is no t always possible to separate the one from the o ther .
This is especially true of Godwin and Mary because the novels of
b o th are filled with autob io graphical and b iogr aphical elements which
mus t be accounted for in o rder to reveal the influence they had on
each o ther .
For this r eas on , the s tudy begins with a biogr aphical
ske t ch of the f ather and daughter wi th emphasis placed upon those
events and cir cums t ances in their lives whi ch had an ef fect on their
writing of fiction .
The present-day reader who is not familiar wi th Godwin ' s
philos ophy would not not i ce the mos t prevalent s imilar i ty b e tween
the two :
the ideas--the philosophies --run very nearly parallel
iii
iv
throughout their nove ls .
The compar ison between the two thus begins
wi th Godwin ' s ideas and shows how they are carried out in his novels
and also in Mary ' s .
The maj or s ource used f or de termining Godwin's
ideas is his formal treatise , Enquiry concerning Political Jus tice
and Its Influence on Morals and Happiness ( 1793) .
Their aes thetic
t e chniques are next analyzed by widely known and used cr itica l
criter i a .
I n conclus ion , the s tudy reveals a s tr iking s im�l ar i ty
b e tween both their ideas and techniques , thereby subs tantiating the
claim o f the author of this work tha t Godwin ' s ideas , as s e t forth
in Political Jus t i ce , and the literary techniques of his fi ction
f orm the foundation on which his daughter ' s novels res t .
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER
I.
II.
III .
IV .
GODWIN AND HIS AGE
VI I .
•
.
. .
.
.
r
.
•
.
THE ROLE OF EDUCATION IN THE NOVELS
1 €('
35
THE ROLES OF REASON , BENEVOLENCE , AND JUSTICE IN
66
.
AESTHETI C CONS IDERATIONS OF GENRE , POINT O F VIEW ,
SETTING , AND PLOT
VI .
.
THE LIVES OF WILLI AM GODWIN AND MARY SHELLEY
THE NOVELS . . .
V.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
•
.
•
86
AESTHETIC CONS IDERATIONS OF CHARACTER , STYLE ,
AND TONE .
112
CONCLUS ION .
143
B IBLIOGRAPHY
148
VITA
156
. . . .
v
CHAPTER I
GODWIN AND HIS AGE
Wi lliam Godwin lived mos t of his life during the reign of
In the year o f the acce s s i on
Geo rge I I I , who came to the throne in 1 7 60 .
of George I I I , Thomas Gray and Samuel Johnson were at the zen i th of
their li terary careers ; Hume was at temp ting to dis tinguish b e tween
s en timen t and j ud gment ; Burke had j us t wri t ten his Or igin of Our Ideas
concerning the S ub l ime and the Beautiful ; and Rous seau , having comple ted
his Nouvelle He lois e , was s oon to p ub lish his Con tr at Social .
Walp o le ,
Pe rcy , Goldsmi t � , Sterne and Sheridan were sho r t ly to con tribute their
maj or works .
In Ameri ca Franklin had dis covered electricity , Jonathan
Edwards had presented his dis courses on Freedom o f the Will and the
Doctrine of Original Sin , whi le William Bartram was exp loring the Amer i­
c an wilderness and obse rving i ts inhab i tants .
Such was the intellec tual
spirit of the times as Godwin grew to manhood and began to conduct his
own investigat ions of h is age .
But there were o ther forces at work whi ch were closer to the
common man and to th e e veryday experiences of Godwin and his contempo­
raries .
It was these condi tions that chal lenged Godwin and o ther like­
minded individuals to attemp t to ref orm the ir age .
A,t i ts beginning , the e ighteenth cen tury is des crib ed as " a
b rutal , b awdy , f i l thy , st inking age .
uncer tain . . .
II
. in whi ch life was terribly
The death rate was s o high that the populat ion' of
London in 1700 was 6 74 , 350 and in 1 750 only 6 76 , 250 .
infan t deaths was s taggering and terrib le .
1
The numb e r of
Thomas Gray ( 1716-1 7 71 ) ,
2
the p o e t, for examp le, was the only surviving ch ild o f twelve .
Epi demics
Workhouses for the poor and
swep t away the poor by the thous ands .
indi gen t are descr ib e d by Geo r ge Crabbe as con t aining o rphans, p aren t s
s e p ar a ted from their ch i ldren, f o rs aken wives, unwed mo thers, widows,
the a ge d, the l ame, the b l ind, and by far, the happ ie s t of the lot,
" The mop in g idiot an d the madman gay . "
1
The poor were con s i de red
indi s pens ab l e to the n at i on as workers and were to be granted only
a s ub s i s tence level o f l i f e s ince more would demoral i z e them .
Th is
at ti tude was rooted in the h e lp lessness o f the unprop e r t i e d, wh o could
n o t vo t e, and the dominance of th e privileged c las ses .
The exp loi ta tion
of lab o r was a v i t al p art o f the English sys t em of economics .
The
Church was atr oph ied and decaden t, o ffering a r e li gion of e l e gance and
l e arnin g to the upp e r c las s es, b u t to the new indus trial populat ion
th ronging in the ci ties it o f fered n o th ing .
crimes were punishab l e by de ath .
More than two hu�dred
If an o f fens e b ec ame common, an attemp t
was made to s top i t by making it cap i tal .
The man who s to le twelve
and a half p ence f rom a pocke t, or cut down trees in an avenue or
g arden, or coun t e r fe i ted coin was h ange d .
On the other h and, mans l aughter
was me re ly a f e l ony un t i l 1822 an d an attemp t to commi t murder only a
common l aw mi s deme anor .
Condi t i ons in the p r i s ons con tinued to be b ad
th roughout th e century, even though the Gaol Dis temp e r Ac t, p as s ed in
1 7 7 4, required th at p ri s ons be cleaned and ven t i lated and th at e ach
p ri s on h ave a warm and cold b a th and s e p arate rooms f o r the s ick .
Th is act, neve r theless, was s e ldom ob s e rve d .
1
oscar She rwin, "Cr ime and Punishmen t in En gland i n the Eigh t een th
Cen tury, " Ame rican Journal of Economics and S ocio logy, 5 ( 19 45- 4 6 ) , 1 6 9 - 1 9 9 .
3
By the midd le of the century , however , many improvements were
under way .
Progress of this s o r t was slow , but i t gave hope and was the
inspiration for new reforms .
The Gin Ac t o f 1 7 5 1 has been hailed as a
turning point in the social his tory o f London after the incredible
orgy of gin-dr inking during the thirty year s preceding the act , s ince
it imposed res tric tions on the s ale of liquor and made small tippling
deb ts irrecoverable by law .
The death-r ate b e gan to fall , crimes of
violence declined , the b rut ality of the lower classes d ecreased , and
London became a heal thier , safer place than i t had ever b een befor e .
Some care for the s ick, the young, and the old was being provided by
hospitals , even though the sanitary conditions wer e frequent ly so poor
tha t many died as infect ious diseases swep t through them .
The appoint-
ment of the novelist Henry Fielding in 1 7 4 9 as chief magis trate for
Wes tmins ter was ano ther turning po int in English social his tory .
years later he was succeeded by his brother John .
police court b ecame an organ of so cial r e form .
Five
Between them , the
Juvenile o ffender s were
treated as cases to be cured rather than as criminals to be hanged .
John also laid the foundations for a permanent , salaried police for ce
to replace the swarm of info rmer s and bullies who ins t i gated cr ime in
order to r eveal i t .
With the spread of education and the civ ili zing
influence o f evangelical religion there was a growing s ense o f
respons ib i l i ty o n the par t o f the ordinary citi zen .
On rare occasions ,
punishment was me ted ou t to the aristocra t who attacked a commoner .
1 7 60 Lord Ferrers was pub licly hanged for the murder of his s teward .
2
R. J . Whi te , The Age o f George I I I (London :
pp . 1 8-19 .
In
2
Heinemann , 1 9 6 8 ) ,
4
When George the Third b e came Kin g o f England in 1760 , London was
the ri chest and mos t p rogres sive cap i tal in the Wes tern world , though
i t was , a t the s ame time , a c i ty o f crude and tragi c cont ras ts .
The
gove rnment cons idere d its funct ion to be mainly j udi cial and execut ive
rather than le gis lative , and i t took very l i t tle par t in ins t i tuting
we l fare legislation or social s e rvices .
Ch ildren worked in mil ls , such
as the s ilk mill Godwin des cribed in Fle e twood , for four teen hours a
day , and were o ften killed or maime d by the machines when they fe ll
as leep on the i r fee t .
And in s ome areas not fo rtunate enough to have
magistra tes l ike John and Henry Fieldin g , lawles snes s was rampan t .
Finally , in the 1 7 80 ' s , a long overdue re form movemen t was
b e gun .
Unde r Rockingham and P i t t , corrup tion in government was reduced
and i ts exploitative finan cial p o l i cies cur tailed .
Much agi tation and
deb ate arose to alleviate the condi t ions of s l aves , p risoners , and
paupe rs .
But with the erup tion of the Fren ch Revo lution in 1789 , the
re form movemen t came to a complete halt .
As the Terror spread in
France , anar chy and even change were rep res s ed in Engl and .
From 1 6 8 8
until about 1 760 the maj o ri ty o f Bri tish p o l i t i cians h e l d n o poli ti cal
conv i ctions or doctrines for whi ch th ey we re willing to figh t .
Their
main concern was to maintain the s ta tus quo , to keep thems elves in
lucr a t ive offi ces .
It was thi s s ta tus quo tha t Godwin hoped to shake
w i th his Pol i t i cal Jus tice .
His mes s age was a cry for the r i ghts o f
the average man to engage i n ar gumen t wi th the aristo cracy , to have a
vo i ce in the government .
Godwin mus t have hoped that en franch isement
fo r the midd le clas ses was ne ar , for his her o in Cloudes le y ( 1830)
was a man of the middle classes to whom he frequently refers as " the
5
English yeoman . "
Als o pub lished the s ame year was Mary ' s Perkin Warb e ck ,
whose her o was executed as the s on o f a Dut ch money-lender .
The Great
Reform Bill o f 1 832 disen fran chis ed the "rot ten" boroughs , i t almo s t
doubled the electorate , and i t gave the maj o ri ty vote t o the middle
classes .
A gre at victory for the people of Engl and had been won .
From
this point on , all of England ' s Calebs could hope fo r a fair chan ce in
cour t agains t the Falkl ands of the l and .
The ide a of perfectib i l i ty flourished among the "enlightened"
men of the e i gh teen th century ; it was p art of the century ' s con cep t o f
p rogres s .
S cien t i fi c development during the eighteen th century had
contributed greatly to man ' s we l fare , and th e eighteenth century looked
to th e improvement o f his moral and spir i tual s tate .
Two new methods
for achieving th is improvemen t we re well under way by 1 7 50 :
was re ligious and the second was philosoph i cal .
the fir s t
The term Me thodis t
was the name given to a group o f Oxford men in cluding John and Char les
Wes ley and George Whit e field , who b e gan mee ting fo r religious exe rcises
in 1729 .
Since they res olved to conduct their lives and reli gious s tudy
b y "rule and me thod , " they and thei r s o cieties , whi ch began to spread
throughout Engl and , were given the n ame Me thodis ts .
Their obj e ct was
s a lvat ion , cont inuing self-improvement , and evangelism .
John Wes ley
ins is ted that reas on had a valid but very res tricted role in inte gra ting
the s cat tered for ces of a man ' s personal life .
But if the indivi dual
wished to be a "whole" man and improve in the Chris tian virtues , he
mus t l ook to his fai th in God and the support of his Chr is tian b r e thren
for help .
Under the influence o f Methodism the Chur ch o f England b e gan
to reform itself.
By 1 790 near ly five hundred clergy s uppor ted Wes ley ,
6
whereas only s ix o r seven had done s o in 1 7 50 .
3
Thous ands o f peop le ,
espe cially from the new working clas ses produced by the Indus trial
Revolution , had been conver ted to Me thodism .
One of the par ticular
tene ts of the ir b e lief was th at man should con tinually s trive to
improve in Chris tian love and b enevolence and avo id s t anding s till , or
even worse , "backs liding . "
Such was the new religious method for
attaining a more advanced s tate of perfe ctib il i ty .
Seve ral philosophical s chemes aimed at the improvemen t o f man
emer ged during the cen tury , b u t the mos t arden t and pers is tent advocate
of s uch a s cheme was William Godwin .
The os tensible func tion o f the
Chur ch has always b een more limited in s cope than the fun c tion of the
government s ince the Church p roclaimed perfec tibility and s alvation
fo r the individual , while governmen t proclaimed per fectib i l i ty and
pres ervation of s o cie ty as a whole .
Godwin fe l t that s in ce the Chur ch
had failed in its mis s i on to improve individuals , not only had the
individuals b e come corrup t , but they had allowed their ins ti tutions
to b e come corrup t as well .
He ther e fore looked to a ph ilos ophy
dominated by reas on to accomplish what fai th had no t been ab le to
achieve .
The s o ur ces o f Godwin ' s philos ophy have been carefully
examined by a numb er of s cholars ; but to des crib e them briefly , they
res emb le nothing s o much as a b r i ghtly colored patchwork quilt whos e
p i e ces are fi t ted toge ther from the wri tings o f such men as Lo cke , Hume ,
Helve tius , Rouss �au , Hartley , Halb a ch , and Rob ert Sandeman .
The grea t ,
gold s tar o f Reas on gleams from the qui lt ' s cen ter , and all i s en cir cled
3
Po d�ra y, ed,, Godwin and the Age of Trans i ti on ( London :
Harrap and Co . , L td . , 19 52 ) , p . 19 .
A. E.
George G .
7
by the pris tine white b order of Chr is tian brotherly love . Godwin had
drawn from the usual s our ces o f his day , but his synthes is of them was
sys tematic and unusual .
Educa tion , the firs t s tep in his sys tem ,
p repared man to us e his reason-- that is , to carefully cons ider and
unders tand the under lying causes of a given s i tuation .
On ce reason
was app lied , benevolen t action would fo llow , and the man would be ab le
to deal j us tly wi th o thers and hims e lf.
This chain of mental and
phys ical ende avor would inevi tab ly lead man into a more advan ced s tage
o f per fe ctib ility.
In the pages of Godwin we see fai th in the per­
fe ct ib ility of man shining at its brigh tes t and pushed to i ts utmo s t
limits .
No poli tician in a s tate o f perfe ct ib i l i ty would be ab le to
h o ld his seat in Parliamen t wi thout accep t ing the res pons ib ility of
b r inging j us t i ce to all the peop le in England .
With his Political
Jus t i ce ( 1 7 9 3 ) Godwin hoped to rouse the th inking men of England to
act ion agains t the inj us tices of a government that had r emained
relative ly unchange d for more th an a cen tury .
In his dis cuss ion of government , s ocie ty , and the individual
in Po litical Jus t i ce , Godwin at tempts by the pro cess o f clos e analysis
to expose the defe cts in the tr aditions , laws , and opinions that have
c ontrolled man and his world , and in so doing to compel the reade r to
see his world no t throu gh a film of illus ion and prej udice but as i t
appears t o a man of reason who cle ar ly s e e s " things a s they are . "
Governmen t and society as a whole he des p airs of.
Since he can th ink
o f no form o f governmen t that is without s erious faul ts , he recommends
tha t s o ciety maint ain as l i t tle governmen t as poss ible .
Bu t the
individual who acquires knowledge and whose voluntary actions and
8
considered op inions are controlled by reas on will eventually be led to
hold b enevolent atti tudes whi ch will enab le him to act j us tly toward
his fellowman .
I t is only as more and more memb ers of a given so cie ty
b e come benevolent and j us t that any real advancemen t can be made wi thin
tha t s o cie ty .
The basis for this proposed plan o f pers onal development is
knowledge .
Indeed , in writing Poli tical Jus tice , Godwin ' s purpose
was to con tr ibu te to the knowledge of his readers by showing them , as
h is title indi cates , how government and poli tics affe ct not only the
morali ty and happiness of men b u t also their chances for s urvival .
I t is truly a s o ciologi cal and psychologi cal documen t as we ll as a
p o l i tical and philos ophical one .
Given the proper s o r t of edu cat ion or knowled ge , the individual
will then be capab le of reason and will re fuse to be mis led by emo tion
or harmful pas s i on .
His j udgmen ts and opinions will b e founded in fact
and influenced by those thinkers who have b een p roved through the ages
to be the mos t ab le , the mos t ne arly corre c t , and the mos t nearly j us t .
Under this influence , he will b e imb ued with a spiri t o f disinteres ted
b enevolen ce .
His princip al aim in h is con tacts with o thers will be
to do no evil (caus e no pain) to any one and to do good (give pleasure)
to as many as p os s ib le .
He is " to love his neighbor as himself . "
He
is no t to be benevolen t from any ul terior mo t ive or b e caus e o f pers onal
ties or p referen ces , and he is no t to expect good in r eturn .
It is
only as he s eeks to attain this high degree of developmen t that he will
b e come more ab le to deal j us tly wi th other men and wi th hims elf.
he will find h ims e lf in a happy s tate of perfe ct ib ili ty which will
Thus
9
continue day by day , and year by year , and will no t cease unt i l the
d ay of his death .
The cont inuous pro tection and improvemen t o f the individual was
for Godwin the only j us tifiab le reason for government .
failed in this purpose , it should be chan ged .
When governmen t
Men who conduct their
affairs in a s tate o f perfe ct ib i l i ty will cons tan t ly inspect and
analyze their government to detect any necess i ty for change that may
b e approachin g .
In s o doing they aver t anar chy and revolution by a
s low and j udi cious introduct ion of the required ch ange .
I t was this
function that Go dwin hoped to perform for his country--to show the
need for change and poin t the way to it .
Upon comp le ting Political Jus tice , Godwin next turned to fi ction
in order to support himself financially and to lend fur ther suppor t
to his ideas in Poli t i cal Jus tice .
In wri ting Caleb Williams Godwin
a chieved something very diffi cult in the nove l .
"He . . . found
a human s i tua tion to parallel the imper son al issue o f revolution:.
no t a replica of i t in miniature , but a psychological analogue .
Some-
thing whi ch , unlike the ab s trac t issue , does no t frus trate our
symp athies at every turn . " 4
His aim in this novel as in all his o thers
was to give living reality to his theories and in so doing point the way
to perfectib i li ty , an aim whi ch his daugh ter Mary carne , in t ime , to
share wi th him .
4
P . N . Furb ank , "Godwin ' s Novels ," Essays in Cr it icism , 5
(July , 1955) , 2 1 8 .
CHAPTER I I
THE LIVES OF WILLI AM GODWIN AND MARY SHELLEY
Wi lliam Godwin was b orn in 1756 into a respec tab le mi ddle- clas s
family res iding near Norwi ch , a ci ty wh ich had long b een an impor tant
e ccles ias tical and commercial center and had enj oyed the s ame libe rties
as London since the time of Ri chard I.
A concern for the rights of the
working man be came a p art of its tradi tion be cause o f the uns ucce s s ful
peas an t revo l ts of 1 3 81 and 1549 , and the righ t of reli gious dissen t
was e s t ab lished when groups o f its ci ti zens wi th arden t Pur i t an convi c­
tions migrated to Amer i ca early in the seven teen th century .
During
Godwin ' s day it was a thr iving cul t ural , reli gious , and indus trial
cen ter , and it continued to be noted for reli gious and political
unres t .
Wi lliam ' s father , John Godwin , was a dis s enting minis ter and a
devout Calvinis t , and the p revai ling tone of the Godwin home was pious
and reli gious .
The family was frequen tly fo rced to move from one par ish
to another b e cause of the father ' s invo lvement in theo lo gical disputes .
Befo re the age o f e i ght Wil l i am was not only pos s essed by a des ire for
knowledge , b u t he showed a marked in te res t in mor al and s piri tual
prob lems and was de termined to be come a dis s en ting minis te r , like his
fathe r .
One dominant trai t whi ch all his b io graphers s tress is his
extreme desire to exce l , to make some wo rthwhile cont rib ution to
s o cie ty fo r whi ch he would be Ie cognize d by his contempor aries and
r evered by p os te ri ty .
Every Sunday afternoon he mounted a child ' s
10
11
high ch air and p reached in his mo ther ' s kitchen , indi fferen t to the
pers ons p resent and undisturbed by their coming and going .
1
When he was eleven years o f age , his s choolmas ter advised h is
p aren ts that the ir ch ild was precocious and in need o f a more learned
teach e r .
Af ter chose observation of his ab ili ties , the p arents sent
"the li ttle Solomon , " as his mo ther called him , to Norwi ch , whe re he
b e came the s ole pup il of Samuel Newton , the minis ter of the Independent
congregation .
Newton was a rel igious bigo t and a Sandemanian .
Sande-
manians , a small Presbyter ian s e ct , followed the example of the early
Chris tian chur ch in believing tha t all possess ions we re common proper ty
to be shared by all members of their fai th .
They were opposed to
national chur ches and civi l in terference in religious mat ters s ince
neither was au thorized by the Scriptures .
Many years later Godwin
used New ton as one of h is mo de ls for the Reverend Hilkiah Bradford in
Mandeville , whom he treated in a satiric manner sof tened by o ccas ional
p a the tic pass ages .
Af ter four years of clas s i cal s tudies wi th Newton
and a year as as s is tan t to his former s choolmas te r , young Godwin , a t
the age of s ixteen , was ab le t o chart his own life wi th gre ater freedom
b e cause o f the de ath of his overb earing father in 1772.
In
1773 he
enro lled at the fine lib eral Dissent ing academy at Roxton where , under
the influence of Dr . Andrew Kipp is , a famous philologis t and clas s ical
s cholar , he began to question the doctrines of Calvin .
Throughou t his
youth and mos t of h is adult life he was an indefati gable s cholar , and
in later ye ars he da ted the years at Roxton as be ginning his sear ch
1
George Woo d cock , William Godwin, a Biographical S tudy (Londo n :
The Porcupine Press , 1946) , pp . 3-9 .
12
for truth .
His fo rmal education came to an end when he left Roxton .
His career as a minister las ted les s than four years .
2
When he
accepted his fir s t appointmen t at Ware , he was a Sandemanian in
theology and a Tory in politics .
But his religious and political
convict ions be gan to undergo such a change that he resigned from his
se cond appoin tment at S towmarke t in Suf folk and took up res idence in
London , where he began to wri te , p artly "spurred by the wan t o f money "
and p artly urged by his lib e ral fr iend the Reverend Jos eph Fawce t .
3
Af t er th is time , 1 7 82 , he had no conne c tion wi th any church and earne d
h is living solely by his pen .
In p oli t i cs h e was no longer a Tory ,
b u t he was not a thorough going memb er o f any poli tical par ty .
He moved
freely in politi cal cir cles , espe ci ally rad i cal ones , and even wen t s o
far a s t o dra f t an address of congratulat ions from Engl ish Republi cans
to the French Revolu tion on the fall of the Bas t ille .
His firs t
publi cat ions date from 1 8 7 3 , when he was twen ty-seven years o f age , and
include Damon and De lia , I talian Let ters , and Imogene-- three short
novels ; The His tory of the Life of William Pitt , Ear l of Chatham ; and
e s s ays on var ious his torical sub j e c ts .
In 1 7 85 he con tributed art i cles
to the new Whig review , The Polit i cal Her ald , but de clined the ed i torship for fear that membership in one par ty would limi t his freedom o f
j udgmen t .
In 1 7 89 he was well known and respected by printers and
publ ishers in London .
2
3
In 1 791 he severed his conne ction wi th the
Ib id . , pp . 10-15 .
Ford K . Brown , The Life of William Godwin (London :
and Sons , Ltd . , 1 9 2 6 ) , pp . 14-16 .
J . M . Den t
13
New Annual Regis ter--a libe ral periodi cal for wh ich he wro te historical
art icles--in order to begin wr i ting his gre at treatise on political
j us t ice , wh i ch he comple ted in 1 79 3 .
In 1 79 7 , the year in wh i ch Godwin mar r ie d Mary Wollstonecraft
and the year in whi ch their daugh t e r Mary was born, Godwin was indeed
famous .
He had not only comple ted h is Poli t i cal Jus t i ce and Caleb
Williams , but he had res cued his friends of the London Corresponding
So cie ty--Thomas Hardy , Horne Tooke , and Thomas Holcro ft--from a char ge
o f treason by means of his ar t i cle " Cursory Strictures o n the Charge
Del ivered by Lord Jus t i ce Eyre to the Grand Jury , " publ ished in the
Morning Chroni cle , October 20th , 1 7 9 3 , immediately reprinted as a
pamphle t and dis tributed throughout Englan d .
At firs t , Godwin ' s
authorship o f the art i cle was kep t secre t ; but when i t be came known ,
the radi cals were grateful for h is t imely intervention .
He was hailed
by the cons erva tives as a sage and as a champion o f reform by the
r adi cals , who ignored , for a t ime , his admoni tions agains t has te and
anar chy .
4
Be tween 1 79 3 and 1 7 9 7 Godwin had be come " an oracle in an
ever-widening circle o f fr iends , " p rosperous , and exalted in spir i t .
"Socie ty was for a moment in timidated by the b oldness o f his at tack"
and had not ye t "recovered i ts bre ath and turned to rend h im . "
5
Th e year 1 79 7 marked the culmination of his career , but i t was a1so the
year in wh ich he los t h is beloved wife , Mary Wollstonecraft , shortly
a fter the b ir th of their daugh ter Mary .
4
For a de tailed accoun t o f the even t see Woodcock , pp . 102-111.
5
H . N. Brailsford, Shelley , Godwin and Their Cir cle (London :
Oxford Univer s i ty Press , 1913) , p . 142 .
14
Godwin , who for many year s had b een oppos ed to marr iage on th e
grounds that i t cons ti tuted a form of slavery and monopoly , was left
deso late by his wif e ' s death .
According to his own s tatemen t , they had
b een as happy as it is pos s ible for human beings to b e .
His ideas
con cerning marriage had changed , and he no longer felt that man ' s
private affections should b e disregarded and suppres s ed .
In the months
f ollowing her death he devoted himself to wri ting his Memo ir s of the
Au thor o f the "Vindication of the Rights of Women . "
I t was undoub tedly
a cons olation to him to write of her , but he also felt i t was his du ty
t o reveal her true me ri t to the pub l i c , a duty he exp lains in the
introduction .
"Every b enefactor o f mankind i s mo re o r less influenced
by a liberal passion f or fame ; and survivors only pay a deb t due to these
b enefactors , when they assert and es tablish on their p ar t , the honour
they loved . "
6
How shocking and ironical i t mus t have seemed to Go dwin
when the pub l i c did no t view the Memoirs in this manner but cons idered
h is revelation o f his wif e ' s naive af fair wi th Gilber t Iml ay a s candal
and disgr ace not to b e borne by decent people .
It was this publi cat ion
that turned public opinion agains t Godwin and rendered him and his family
ob jects of s corn and contemp t .
In the Memoirs Mary Wolls tonecraf t is
r evealed as being , as John Middle ton Murry says , as "lovely in heart
as in featur e . "
7
One o f the closing remarks of the wo rk is represen-
tative of the res trained tenderness with whi ch the entire piece is
6
william Godwin , Memoirs of Mary Wolls tonecraf t , ed . John
Middle ton Murry (New York : Richard R. Smith , Inc . , 1930) , p . 5 .
7
John Middle ton Murry , ed . , Memoirs o f Mary Wolls tonecraft , by
William Godwin (New York : Richard R. Smi th , Inc . , 1930) , p . 1 .
15
p ermeated :
"This ligh t was len t to me for a very shor t period , and
is now extinguished forever ! "
8
I t was th is concept of his wife that
Godwin cul tivated in her two young daughters , Mary and Fanny Imlay ,
9
who was four years old at the t ime of her mo ther ' s death .
In addition to providing a b eautiful and remarkab ly ob jec tive
b iography o f Mary Wo lls tone craf t , this li ttle volume furnishes ins igh t
i n t o the more int imate facets o f Godwin ' s charac ter which a r e n o t s o
dis cernib le i n his o ther works--h is gre at capacity f o r love and f riendship .
"To have b een the inspiration o f Coleridge and Wordswor th in
one generation , and of She lley in the next ; to h ave won the unb roken
f r iendship of Lamb and the life-long reverence of Hazlit t , is not the
fate of the commonplace rat ional is t , or of the calculating sponger
Godwin is so o f ten repres ented to have been . "
10
All of the children
in his home , including those of Mrs . Clairmont , his second wife , loved
him wi th loyal ty and devot ion .
Such s trong family ties could never
have deve loped had the children no t s ensed in him a deep affect ion and
con cern f or thems elves .
A rationalis t he cer tainly was , but not the
cold , unfeeling rationalis t he is sometimes mis t akenly though t to have
b een .
His one r e ques t of Mary She lley and the second Mrs . Godwin
concerning his death was that he b e buried as close as pos s ible to
Mary Wolls tone craf t .
Li ttle is known of the life of Godwin and the two lit tle girls
8
eodwin , Memoirs of Mary Wolls tone craf t , p . 126 .
9
eodwin never legally adop ted Fanny , but she was always known
to fr iends and the pub l i c as Fanny Godwin .
10
Murry , ed . , Memoirs of Mary Wolls tone cr af t , p . 1.
16
who made up his family during the years from 1 7 9 7 to 1 801 , but he was
aware from the very f ir s t that everything that happened to the ch ildren
was of great importance in their deve lopmen t .
One o f his f avorite
theories wh ich is espe cially emphas ized in The Enquirer ( 179 7 ) was that
"educat ion cannot begin too e ar ly , and that in the very dawn o f
infancy the futur e character be gins t o deve lop . "
11
When Mary was near ly three years old , Godwin visi ted Ire land
a t the invi tation o f his friend John P . Curran , who lived in Dublin .
While there h e corresponded wi th James Marshal , in whose care h e had
left the children .
His long let ters to Marshal des cr ibed his
e xperiences , the people he me t , their ide as , and the countrys ide ,
b u t he always included a p ass age concerning the children or mess ages
to them. ( The affectionate dome s tic tone of these le tters clearly
indi cates how deeply he felt about the l i ttle girls and how se rious ly
he took the responsib ility of rear ing them .
On July 11 , 1 800 , he
wro t e to Marshal :
I received your le tter this morning , four days from its
date . I forge t now wha t I said in my l as t l e t te r ab out the
poor little girls , but in this l e t ter I will be gin with them .
Their ta lking ab out me , as you s ay they do , makes me wish to be
with them , and will p rob ab ly shorten my vis i t . I t is the f irs t
time I have b een serious ly separ ated from them s ince they lo s t
their mo ther , and I feel i t was very naugh ty in me to have come
away so far , and to have pu t s o much land , and a r iver sixty
miles br oad , b e tween us , though , as you know , I h ad very s trong
reas ons for coming . I hope you have go t Fanny a proper spe lling­
b ook . Have you examined her at all , and dis covered wha t improve­
men t she has made in reading? You do not tell me whe ther they
have p aid and re ceived any vis i ts . If i t does no t take much room
in your next le t ter , I should b e very glad to hear o f tha t . Tell
11
c. Ke gan Paul , William Go dwin : His Friends and Contemporaries ,
I (London : Henry S . King and Co . , 1 8 76 ) , 2 89 .
17
Mary I will not give her away , and s he s hall be nobody ' s little
girl but papa ' s . Papa is gone away , but papa wi ll very soon come
back again , and see t he Poly gon across two f i e lds f rom t he trunks
o f the t rees at Camden Town . Will Mary and Fanny come to mee t
me? I will wr ite them word , if I c an , in my next let ter or t he
le t ter after t ha t , when and how it s hall be . Next Sunday i t
will be a fortnight since I lef t them , and I s hould like i f
12
pos s ible t o see them on the Sund ay after Sunday 2 0 t h July . .
He probab ly refers to Mary and Fanny as " the poor little girls "
b e cause he f e l t himse l f inadequate to re ar them and had b een trying
i n his dire c t and b lun t way t o marry s omeone who would b e a good mo t her
to t hem .
In the let ter o f August 2 , he as s i gned the care of t he garden
to Fanny and Mr . Collins , the gardene r , ins tru �t ing her that he wis hed
" to find i t spruce , croppe d , weeded , and mowed at my return . "
He
promis ed her s ix kisses if s he would s ave him a few s tr awb e rr ies and
beans .
"But then Mary mus t have s ix kisses too , because Fanny has s ix . "
On the same day , Augus t 2 , he wro te ano t her let ter which concludes :
And now wha t s hall I s ay for my poor li ttle girls ? I hope
they have no t forgo t me . I think of t hem every d ay , and s hould
be glad , if the wind was more favourable , to blow them a kiss
a-p iece from Dub lin to the Polygon . I have seen Mr . Gra t tan ' s
l i ttle girls and Lady Mountcashe l ' s li ttle girls , and they are
very nice chi ldren , but I have seen none t hat I love half s o
well o r t hink half so good as my own . I thank you a thous and
times for your car e of t hem . I hope next summer , if I s hould ever
again be ob l iged to leave t hem for a week or two , that I s hall
wr ite long l e t ters to Fanny in a fine print hand , and t hat
Fanny will b e ab le to read them to hers elf from one end to the
o t her . That will be the summer of 1 801 . 13
As t he vis it drew to a clos e he explained that he was br inging eac h
o f the children a p resent from t he ir two aun ts .
" I love Aunt Bis hop
as much as I hate (you mus t not read that word) Aunt Everina . "
He
ins truc ted Fanny twi ce to "Look at t he map " in order to explain t o
12
Ib id . , I , 364-365 .
13
Ib id . , I , 36 7- 3 7 1 .
18
her ab out t he "river" tha t was s ix ty miles wide and prevented him from
coming home to her as soon as he wis hed .
14
The primary accomp l i s hment he obvious ly hoped for in his relations hip wi th t he children was to make t hem feel loved and s e cure , to teach
t hem to b e indus trious and respons ib le , to educa te t he m , to inspire them
w i t h a concern for o t hers and a pos i tive at t i tude toward o t hers , and to
develop in t hem an inquiring mind-- "Look at t he map . "
Wi t h such wis dom
and affect ionate c once rn guiding the rearing of t he c hi ldren , much o f
t heir suf fer ing and t ragedy mi ght have b een avoided had Go dwin been
wiser in his choice of a s e cond wif e , whom he married four years after
t he death of Mary Wolls tone craf t .
Mrs . Mary Jane Clairmont , a widow wi th two children by a previous
marriage , followed t he pat tern o f t he typ i cal " Cinder ella" s tepmo t her .
S he was p artial to her own chi ldr en and unkind to b o t h Fanny and Mary .
Her bad temper was kept frequently on edge because o f her jealousy o f
Godwin ' s friends and her anger at the ir lack of inte res t in her
coque ttis h ways .
Brailsford ' s summary o f her effect upon t he hous e hold
may be an exaggerat ion , but t here seems to be much tru t h in i t .
No one can
read the do cuments whi ch this s trange household
left behind , wi thout feeling t hat t he parent of the disas ter in
t heir lives was no t their p hilos ophi c fat her , but this common ­
place "womanly woman , " who flat tered , in trigued , and lied . l 5
.
.
•
Bu t Godwin hoped at the outs e t t hat he had found a good mo ther for his
children and a pleas ant wife and companion for himself .
His le tters
to her a t tes t to t he f act t hat he had a genuine affec t ion for her and
treated her wi t h cour tesy and cons ideration.
14
Ib id . , I , 3 7 3 .
15
Two years af ter the i r
Brai ls ford , pp . 169-170 .
19
marriage their s on William was born and the family cir cle was complete .
As the children matured , Godwin supervised their reading closely .
On one o ccas ion when Mrs . Godwin , Charles ( the e ldes t chi ld ) , and Mary
were at the seas ide , Char les expressed a des ire to read Thomas Paine ' s
Age of Reason .
Godwin sen t a book on the sub jec t , but he ob jected to
Charles 's reading Paine .
It [ The Age of Reas on ] is writ ten in a vein o f banter and
impudence , and though I do not wish the young man to be
�he slave of the religion o f his country , there are f ew things
� hate more than a young man , wi th his lit tle b i t of knowledge ,
s e t ting up to turn up his nos e , and elevate his eyebrows , and
make his s orry j oke at every thing the wises t and bes t men in
England ever produced have treated wi th veneration [ s ic ] .
Therefore I preferred a work by Anthony Collins , the friend of
Locke , wri tten with sobr iety and learning , to the b r oad grins
o f Thomas Paine .
Observe , I to tally ob ject to Mary's reading in Charles 's book.
I think it much too ear ly for him , but I have been driven . .
from the s tanding o f my own j udgment by the improper conduct
o f T . T [urner ] . l 6
What a change had come over the man who , wi th Thomas Hol crof t , revised
Paine ' s Righ t s o f Man in order that it b e accepted f o r pub l i ca tion
twenty years earlie r !
In the year following ( 1 81 2 ) we have a glimps e of the Godwin
household at its b e s t when Mary was fif teen years of age .
Aaro n Burr
vis i ted London , dined wi th the Godwins , and made the following entry
in h is Journal for February 1 5 , 1812 :
Had only time to ge t to G [ odwin ] 's house where dined . In the
evening , William , the onl y s on of W [ illiam ] Godwin , a lad of
about 9 years old , gave his weekly lecture ; having h eard how
Coleridge and o thers le c tured , he would also lecture ; and one of
his sis ters (Mary , I think) writes a lecture , wh ich he reads
16
Paul , I I , 185 .
20
from a lit tle pulpit which they have erec ted for him . He went
through i t wi th great gravity and decorum . The sub je c t was ,
"The Inf luence o f Governments on the Charac ter o f the People . "
Af ter the lecture we had tea , and the girls s ang and danced an
hour , and at nine came home . l 7
Thes e weekly lectures undoub tedly reminded Godwin of h is weekly s e rmons
in his mo ther ' s kitchen when he was a lad .
In fact , he may have
mot ivated the children to carry out this activity , wh ich evidently
made an impress ion on the dis tinguished American vis itor .
When Mary was approaching her sixteen th birthday , she was s en t
t o S c o tland at the invi tation of Go dwin ' s friend Mr . Bax ter , who
invi ted her to live with h is fami ly in Dundee in exchange for o ccas ional
vis i ts of his own daugh ters to London .
In these years o f her
adoles cence Mary could not ge t along wi th her s tep-mo ther , and this
arrangement was deemed best for her and the f amily .
On
the day after
her depar ture Godwin wrote to Baxter concerning her welfare but explained
too tha t he did not consider himself a perfect judge of her character .
I believe she has nothing o f what is commonly called vi ces ,
and that she has cons iderab l e talen t .
. I am anxious that
she should be b rought up (in this respe ct) like a philos opher ,
even like a cyni c . It will add greatly to the s tr ength of
her char acter . I should also add that she has no love o f
diss ipat ion , and will b e p er f e c t ly sat is fied wi th your woods and
your mount ains . I wish too , that she should be excited to
indus try . She has occasionally great pers erverance , but
occas ionally , too , she shows great need to b e rous ed .
Her s tay at Dundee las t ed almo s t two years , and while there she b e came
a ccus tomed t o a quie t and conten ted home atmosphere such as she had
no t known before .
" I f the t alk
.
•
.
lacked s omething o f the lus tre
whi ch she knew at Skinner S tree t , i t was compens ated for by the
17
R. Glynn Grylls , Mary Shelley , a Biography (London :
Univers ity Press , 1 9 3 8 ) , p . 1 7 .
Oxford
21
h app iness o f the hous ehold in gener al .
The inf luence of this is
important , as it explains a good deal o f her outlook af terwards and
especially tha t ' conventionality ' wh ich her crit i cs s ay she pursued
in later years . "
18
During th is period her interes t in wri ting grew r apidly in the
manner des cribed in her Introduct ion to the 1 831 edition of
Frankens tein .
I lived principally in the country as a girl , and pas s ed a
cons ider able time in Scot land .
. . . I wrote then--but in a
mos t co mmon-place s tyle . I t was beneath the trees of the
grounds b elonging to our hous e , or on the b leak s ides of the
woodless mount ains near , that my true composit ions , the airy
flights of my imagination , were born and fos tered . I did no t
make myself the heroine of my tales . Life appeared to me too
common-place an af fair as re gar ded myse l f . I could not figure
to myself that romantic woes or wonderful events would ever be my
lot ; but I was no t confined to my own iden tity , and I could
people the hour s wi th cre ations far more interes ting to me
at that age , than my own s ens ations . l9
When Mary re turned t o Skinne r S treet e arly in May , 1814 , she was a lmo st
s even teen years o f age and a beautiful young woman .
Since the relat ion-
ship b e tween her and Mrs . Godwin continued to be s trained , she soon
began a dai ly walk to her mo ther ' s grave in S t . Pancras ' churchyard ,
where she pondered the subj ects her father and his f riends dis cussed ,
read , and buil t her cas tles in the air .
b e came acquainted wi th Shelley .
It was a t this time that she
In his vis i ts to Skinner S tree t ,
She lley s oon found out ab ou t her retreat and me t her the re d aily .
When Shelley asked Godwin ' s p ermission for his union wi th Mary ,
18
19
Ib id . , pp . 1 8- 19 .
Mary W . Shelley , Frankens tein , ed . M. K . Jos eph (London :
Oxford Univers i ty Press , 1 9 69 ) , pp . 5-6 . Here af ter cited in the text .
22
Godwin made desperate e f forts to re con cile Shelley and Harriet and
f o rb ade Shelley his house .
Bu t i t was too late .
On July 2 8th , the
two eloped t o France accompanied by Claire (Jane) Clairmon t .
Af ter
a leisurely tour which las ted until their funds were exhaus te d , they
r e turned to London in mid- Sep tembe r , where the financial s truggle
to live b egan in earne s t .
_
_
Their reception by the Godwins was hos tile .
There was communi-
c ation b e tween them and J ane was permitted to come to Skinner Stree t ,
b ut the She lleys were not welcome there .
Many conj e ctures concerning
Godwin ' s ob j ec tion to this union have b een made .
One sugges ts that
Godwin was a thinker who had won a dis ciple , Shelley , who was a doer ,
but the feelings of the f ather about his daugh ter may no t have been in
20
agreement wi th the spe culations o f the philosopher.
Another sugges-
tion points to the f a c t that Godwin frequently maintained tha t pub l i c
ins ti tutions should n o t be flaunted f o r private reasons , but only to
promo te the public good .
It is also well to remember the s torm of
abuse that Godwin ' s candid presentation o f the facts of Mary Wolls tonecraf t ' s affair wi th Cap tain Gilbert Imlay in his Memo ir had brought
down upon the entire f amily .
Bu t wha tever his reasons , i t seems
relatively cer tain that he never f ully forgave She lley for this
s educ tion of his young daugh ter .
It is also equally cer tain that
She lley ' s admir ation of Godwin was shat tered be caus e of Godwin ' s
hos tile reac tion to his union wi th Mary , espe cially s ince i t did
20
E lton Edward Smi th and Es ther Greenwell Smi th , William Godwin
(New York : Twayne Pub lisher s , Inc . , 1 9 6 5 ) , p . 73 .
23
no t long deter Go d ��n from at temp t ing t o extort money from him .
21
Mos t o f Shelley ' s efforts at this time were con centrated on
nego tiating for an income wi th his solici tor and to avo id being arres ted
for deb t .
The S helleys ' fir s t child , a daughter , was born premature ly
in February , 1 815 , but lived only a few days .
The year 1 816 was filled wi th impor tant deve lopments in the
Godwin and Shelley hous eholds , s ome of which were tragi c .
I t began
propi tious ly with the birth o f the Shelleys ' firs t s on , William , who
was a thriving , heal t hy child .
The break b e tween the Godwins and the
Shelleys began to mend when Godwin walked over from Bracknell , where
h e was vis i ting , to see the Shelleys , who were at ne arby Binfield .
From this time o n there was frequent communi cat ion b e tween t hem.
An examination of Godwin ' s Journal reveals that s carcely a mont h went
by that did no t contain s everal entries of let ters written to
"P . B . S . "
22
In May the Shelleys and Claire went to Swi t zerland and
took a co ttage near Lord Byron's vi lla , where they vis i ted frequen tly .
Here Mary conce ived the idea for Frankens tein and began her greates t
work .
They returned to England in Septemb er and wer e at Bath when Fanny
Imlay commi tted suicide .
I t was She lley who rushed to Swans ea , af ter
Mary re ceived a frightening l e t ter from he r , to dis cover that Fanny ,
a t the age of twenty- two , had deliberately taken an over dose of
laudanum .
Two mont hs later t he body o f Har riet S helley was found in
t he Serpen tine , apparen tly another sui cide .
21
22
The year came to a close
Ib id .
william Godwin 's Journal , in the Shelley-Godwin Collection o f Lord
Ab inger , the manus crip t on mi cro film in th e Duke Univers i ty Lib rary .
24
w i th the marriage o f Mary W . Godwin and Per cy B . Shelley on December
2 9 th ( Godwin places i t on the 30th) at tended by Mr . and Mrs . Godwin ,
s atis fied wi tnes ses to the ceremony .
The tragic event s o f 1 816 being pas t and the Shelleys now
legally married , 1817 was a year of comparative calm , b roken only by
the disappointment of Shelley ' s failure to gain cus tody of his two
children by Harrie t .
Mary ' s firs t publ ished work appeared in 1817 ,
wi th the ti tle , His tory o f the Six Weeks Tour through a Par t of France ,
Swi t zer land, Germany and Ho lland :
with Let te rs Des cript ive of a Sail
round the Lake of Geneva, and of the Glaciers of Chamouni , a thin
vo lume compiled from her own and She lley ' s journal of their travels .
Desp i t e the cumbersome title , the wor k had s imp l i ci ty and charm and
"made a pleasant lit tle s t ir in the literary world . "
23
Dur ing this
year she continued to work on Frankens tein , wh ile her fathe r comp l e ted
Mandeville .
Mary comple ted Frankens tein no t long af ter the birth of
her dau gh ter , Clara Everina , in September .
Shor tly af ter her com-
p l e tion o f the nove l , her father sugges ted that she b egin anoth er .
While Shelley was in London attending to th e publica tion of " The Revol t
o f Is lam , " Mary wrote to him :
By th e bye , talking o f authorship d o get a sketch o f Godwin ' s
plan from him-- I do not think that I ough t to ge t out o f the
hab i t of writing and I t hink that the thing he talked of would
jus t sui t me . I told you that after what had passed he wou�d
be p ar t i cularly gracious . 2 4
23
Eli zab e th Ni t chie , Mary Shelley, Author of Frankens tein
( 1 9 5 3 ; rp t . Wes tpor t , Conn . : Greenwood Press , 19 70) , p . 1 43 .
24
The Le t ters of Mary W . Shelley , e d . Frederick L . Jones , I
(Norman : Univers i ty of Oklahoma Press , 1944) , no . 34. Hereaf ter
ci ted in the text by volume and numb e r o f the let ter .
25
S ince their house in Marlow , where they had moved in Mar ch , was damp
and unhealthy , Mary and She lley were con templat ing a move to the sea­
shore or to I t aly .
Mary urged Shelley to make up his mind s oon and
tell her father immedi ately "as these things are always b e t ter to b e
t alked o f some days before they take place . "
She concluded , "Give
my love to Godwin--when Mrs . G [odwin ] is no t by or you mus t give i t to
h er too and I do no t love her " ( I , no . 35 ) .
Financial mat te rs were
evidently very critical in Skinner S tree t , for one of Mary ' s pr imary
concerns before they lef t for I taly was tha t " Godwin mus t not be l e f t
unprovided" ( I , no . 41) .
On March 11 , 1 81 8 , they depar ted for I taly , from which Shelley
and their two children were never to re turn .
the same day .
Frankens tein was pub lished
While in I t aly they moved fre quently , some times to b e
n e a r friends or to find a bet ter doctor or a more heal thful climate for
the chi ldren .
The inf an t Clara , only one year old , died in Sep temb er
o f tha t year ; and lit tle William , age three and a half , died in June
of the fo llowing year (1819 ) .
Mathilda , an obvious ly autob iographi cal
novel e t te wri tten a f te r the deaths of Wi lliam and Clara , reve als the
deep depress ion of spir i ts into whi ch Mary fell .
In
this s tudy Mary
thinly veils the iden t i ty of her father by giving �athilda ' s father an
ar is tocratic background and indulgen t par en ts .
t rue to Godwin ' s na tur e :
But the portrait was
he was "extravagant , generous , vai n , dogma tic ,
and r igid " in holding to his convictions o f wha t was r ight and jus t .
Through the influen ce o f his wife , Diana , a fictionalized por trait o f
Mary Wolls tone cr af t , he came to unders t and t h e true purpose of l i f e and
26
b ecame a dis tinguished member o f society .
25
In this account , Mary
a t tribu ted the decline in his popular ity and greatness to the de ath o f
Mary Wolls tone cra f t .
On Novemb er 1 2 , 1 819 , the Shelley ' s las t child ,
Per cy Floren ce , was born , but Mary continued to b e melancholy and
depressed .
In this ye ar Godwin ' s Journal records many more letters to
Mary than usual , s ome of which indicate that he was at temp t ing to
r e concile her to the loss o f her chi ldren and encourage her to write .
When Mary did begin t o write again in 1 820 , s h e chose the subj ect
her father h ad sugges ted immediately after she comp le ted Frankens tein .
This was the h is to r i cal novel Valperga .
During the lat ter par t o f 1 8 2 1
she had spent a gre at deal o f time correcting and copying i t , and on
January 25 th , 1 822 , she r e corded in her Journal that she had f inished .
26
In a let ter t o Maria Gisb orne , a fr iend of h e r f athe r ' s who had turned
down his propos al of marriage but remained on fr iendly terms with the
f amily , Mary wrote on Feb ruary 9 , 1 822 :
I have s ent my novel to Papa-- l long to he ar more news of i t-­
as wi th an author ' s vanity I want to s ee it in print & hear the
prais es of my f riends--l should like as I s aid when you went
away--a Copy of Mathilda--it might come out with the desk
( I , no . 1 3 2) .
By Apr il Go dwin was readin g the novel h e called Cas trucc io ,
which Mary had asked h im to have published ; but he was to make whatever
changes he though t necess ary and keep the pro ceeds of the s ale for
h imself .
25
26
He was in the process o f re-reading portions o f the nove l ,
N.1t ch le
' , p . 91.
Mary Shelley ' s Journal , ed . Frederick L . Jones (No rman :
Univers i ty o f Oklahoma Press , 194 7 ) . Hereafter cited in the text .
27
probably wi th an eye to revis ing it , when the news of Shelley 's death
arrived and he suspended work on i t .
27
Mary was no t only crushed b y the death o f Shelley , b u t she was
also very app rehens ive ab ou t her own financial secur i ty and that o f her
child.
She consulted her father , Lord Byron , and other fr iends , all of
whom tried to ass is t her .
Peacock wrot e on Octob er 1 8 , 1 822 :
Your father has communicated to you his op1n1on tha t a personal
application from Lord Byron's s o licitor to Whit ton [Sir Timo thy
Shelley's s olicitor ] on the sub ject o f a permanen t provision for
you and your child will b e the mos t advisable cours e .
. . . In
this opinion I en tirely concur ( I , no . 154n) .
Byron had wr it ten to his solicitor John Hanson on October 23 , giving the
above ins tructions as Godwin advised.
Sir Timothy did not reply unt i l
February 6 , 1 8 23 ; he of fered no h e l p at a l l t o Mary and only t o the chi ld
if she would give him up and place him under Sir Timothy ' s protection
( I , no . 1 6 8n ) .
Godwin took up Valperga again in October and worked on it until
mid- January 1 8 23 .
On February 14 , h e wrote to his daugh ter , who was
s till in I taly :
Your novel is now fully pr inted, and ready for pub l i ca tion . I
shall send you a copy either by the cock ' s parcel or John Hun t 's .
I have taken great liber t ies with it , and I f ear your amour propre
will be proportionab ly sho cked. I need no t tell you that all the
mer it o f the b ook is conc lus ive ly your own . The whole of what I
have done is nearly confined to the t aking away things that mus t
have prevented its succes s .
. . . I am promised a character o f the
work in the Morning Chronicle & the Heral d , & was in hopes to h ave
sent you the one or the o ther by this time . I also s en t a copy o f
the book to the Examiner for the same purpose . 2 8
27
william Godwin ' s Journal , 1822 .
28
william Godwin ' s Let ter � , in the Shelley-Godwin Collection o f
L o r d Ab inger , the manus cr ipt o n micro film in the Duke University
Lib rary .
28
Mary arr ived in London on Augus t 25 , 1823 , and was me t at the
whar f by her father and William Jr .
Some days later she wr ote to
Leigh Hun t :
I h ad a very ·kind recep tion in the S trand [ the new lo cat ion o f
the Godwin home ] and all was done that could be done to make me
comfor table . . . .
But lo and behold ! I found myself famous ! --Frankens tein h �d
prodigious success as a drama and was about to be repeated for the
2 3rd night at the English Opera Hous e .
On the s trength o f the drama my father had pub lished for my
b enefit a new edi tion of F [ rankens tein ] and this seemed all I had
to look to , for he despaired u t terly of my doing any thing wi th
S [ ir ] T . S [he lley ] (I , no . 19 4 ) .
Mary wrote to Sir Timo thy , however , telling him that she h ad arrived ;
and his s olicito r , Whi t ton , invited her to call .
When she and her
father met with Whi t ton , he gave her one hundred p ounds and t old them
that Sir Timo thy would probably make an annual s e t tlement of one hundred
p ounds each on b o th Mary and her s on , Percy .
With this added financial
s e curity , Mary lef t her father's house and took private rooms for herself
and Per cy (I , no . 9 4 ) .
She renewed old acquain tances and was gracious ly welcomed back to
her accus tomed place in the cir cle she had known before leaving London ,
b u t she cons idered herself unhappy and an exile from I taly.
From this
poin t on throughout her life she s t ayed in clos e touch wi th her fathe r ,
e i ther by letters or through vis its .
When she wrote on June 13 , 1 82 4 ,
to Marianne Hunt tha t her father ' s first volume o f The His tory of the
Commonwealth had come out and was s e lling well , i t is appar ent that
his success had kindled her interes t , for she hoped by next spring
to publish herself ( I , no . 2 0 9 ) .
S o close was the ass ociation b e tween the two , par ticular ly in
29
regard to their writings , that it is dif ficul t to be precise ab out the
exten t o f their influence on each o ther .
S ince there are f ew entries
in her Journal a f ter She lley ' s death and s ince Godwin was no t given
to enter ing personal mat ters in his , it is no t possib l e to trace the
d e t ails of their relationship af ter her ret urn to England in Augus t ,
182 3 .
The let ters are als o sparse .
But they were mutually dependen t
on e ach o ther for love and inspiration in their writing .
In addi tion ,
Go dwin b ecame more dependent on Mary for money as he grew older , while
she was dependent on him for moral s tamina and fortitude .
The timing o f the appearance of her novels is not unlike tha t o f
her father ' s .
He h ad wri t ten his Memoir of Mary Wolls tonecraf t and
b rough t out a new edit ion of her Le t ters from Norway immediately af ter
her death .
Mary was prevented from writing a b iography of Shelley
b ecause her f inancial agreemen t wi th Sir Timo thy demanded her silen ce ,
b u t she edited his unpublished manus cripts as Pos thumous Poems (182 4 )
shortly after h e r re turn to England .
Godwin had eased his grief and
made public his b elief in marriage by writing S t . Leon and creating the
peerless wife of S t . Leon , Marguerite de Damvi lle , as a tribute to
Mary Wolls tonecraf t .
He doub tless encouraged Mary to f ind comfort
in The Las t Man by creating her mos t comp le te biographi cal ske t ch of
Shelley in the char acter of Adrian .
Whe ther or no t the ir contemporaries
recognized these portraits was no t ess en tial , but the healing power o f
the wri ting helped res tore Mary t o a more normal frame o f mind that
p ermi tted her to func tion ef fe ctively again .
Godwin finished his
His tory o f the Commonwe alth in 1 8 2 8 and then began work on an his tor ical
novel s e t in the early eigh teenth cen tury .
This work , Cloudesley , he
30
f inished in 1830 .
I t is s ignificant tha t during this s ame period when
Godwin was at work on Cloudesley , Mary was at work on her second
historical nove l , Perkin Warbeck , also published in 1830 .
In 1832 when
Mary had occas ion to write to the publisher John Murr ay concerning
informa tion ab out Lord Byron that he hoped to ob tain from her , she took
the opportuni ty to make a plea for her fathe r .
You apparen tly cons ider the closing o f your "Family Library"
as conclus ive , on the sub je c t o f my fathe r ' s wri t ing to you .
Is this nece s s ary? You are but too well aware o f the evil days
on which li terature has fallen , and how d i f f i cult i t is for
a man , however gif ted , whose existence depends on his p en , to
make one engagement su cceed ano ther with sufficien t speed to
answer the calls of his s i tuation . Nearly all our literati have
found but one resour ce in this--which is in the ample s cope
afforded by pe riodic als . A kind of literary pride has prevented
my father f rom mingling in these ; and , never having pub lished
anything anonymous ly , he feels dis inclined to enter on a
new career .
I feel persuaded tha t he would render his proposed "Lives o f
t h e Necromancers " a deeply interesting and valuab le work . There
is a lif e and ener gy in his wr itings which always e xalts them above
those of h is contemporaries . If this sub ject , whi ch seems to me
a for tunate one , does no t p lease you , there are many o thers which
would offer themselves , were he cer t ain that you would accede to
him and give him that encouragement wh ich he has been accus tomed
h i ther to to find . He had though t of the "Lives of the English
Phi losopher s . " I should cer tainly b e glad that the publisher
of Byron and Moore , and all the bes t writers , added the name o f
Godwin t o the lis t ; and i f upon cons ideration you find that your
views do not oppose an engagement wi th him , you will perhaps invite
him to further communication on the sub ject . 2 9
.
•
•
At the time this l e t ter was writ ten (May 4 th , 1832) , Godwi n was at work
on his las t novel , Deloraine , and Mary was at work on Lodor e , b o th of
which resemble each o ther in many ways .
Godwin was evidently looking
for ano ther sub je c t on whi ch to begin , as was his cus tom , when he
29
samuel Smiles , A Publisher and His Friends , Memoirs and
Correspondence o f the La te John Murray , I I (London : J . Murray , 1 8 9 1 ) ,
3 2 8- 3 2 9 .
31
finished De loraine .
He had inve s t igated the possibility of wri ting for
periodi cals , but the editors had required his anonymity which he
rej ec ted .
Mur ray refus ed to pub lish the Lives of the Necromancers ,
which was no t well re ceived b ecause of its irreligious character , a
pos ition Murray could not tolerate in spite o f his kindly f ee ling
toward Godwin .
I t was , howeve r , published--h is las t work , wr i t ten at
the age o f seventy-eigh t .
The le t ter cited above as well as o thers in
the correspondence of the father and daughter reveals their mutual
con cern for each o ther ' s liter ary e f for ts .
If either had diff iculty
in finding a subj e ct or having a work pub lished , the o ther came f or th
i mmedia tely with aid and counsel .
In 1835 Mary followed his example
in wri ting biography with her Lives of the Mos t Eminent Li terary and
S cientific Men o f I t aly and in 1 8 3 8 wi th Lives o f the Mos t Eminent
Li terary and Scientific Men of France .
Their concern for each o ther was no t , o f course , limited to their
li terary works but included almos t every facet of their lives .
When
Godwin ' s publishing bus iness went into bankrupt cy in 1 825 , Mary wrote
to Leigh Hunt that she was employed in raising money for her maintenance
"of which he mus t p ar ticipate" ( I ,
no .
225 ) .
From
Mary ' s l e t ters
to
Jane Williams Hogg and Trelawny we also learn that Go dwin was with h er
.
when she was r e cuperating from smallpox in June , 1 828 and that she was
p aying him a lengthy visit in April , 1 829 ( I I , nos . 3 1 2 and 3 2 9 ) .
When
his las t novel came out , Mary wro t e to Maria Gisbo rne on January 1 6 ,
1 83 3 :
Poor dear fellow ! It is hard work for him-- I am in all the tremor
o f fearing what I shall get for my novel [ Lodo re , published in
1 8 35 ] , which is nearly finished--His and my comfor t depend on it--
32
I do not know whether you wi ll like i t--I cannot guess whe ther
it will succeed--There is no writhing interes t--no thing wonderful ,
nor tragic--Will it be dul l ? Chi lo s a ! We shall see--I shall
of course be glad if it succeeds ( I I , no . 424 ) .
As the Godwins advanced in age , Mary be came increasingly attentive
to b o th her father and s tep-mo ther .
She and Mrs . Godwin nursed
Godwin during his f inal illness , one sleeping or res ting while the
o ther attended him .
Af ter a sho r t illness (probably pneumonia) h e
died a t the age o f eigh ty o n April 7 , 1 8 36 .
At the time o f Godwin's death Mary was at work on her novel
Falkner , published in 1837 , and i t was her las t .
For a time after this
she worked wi th She lley 's poe t ry to whi ch she added b iogr aphical and
cri tical notes .
Th is work and his Es says , Le t t e rs from Abroad ,
Trans lat ions and Fragments were published in 1839 and 1 840 .
Al though
she l e f t several unfinished and unpublished works , her only publi cat ion
af ter this was Rambles in Germany and I taly (1841) , wh ich re counts her
exper ien ces while traveling wi th her son , Percy , and his friends .
Cer tain events o f Mary 's life after the de ath of her fathe r
clearly indi cate that he had been a s tab ili zing influence on her life .
Wi th the removal o f th is influen ce , her impuls iveness and l ack of
judgmen t involved her in an indis creet fr iendship with a young Italian
in P aris , an exiled member of the Carb onar i to whom Claire introduced
her .
She be came the patron of this penniless , ingratiating young
man , Gat t e s chi , by finding pup ils for him and by emp loying him to
compile the political facts for her Rambl es .
She wrote him reckles s ly
s en timental l e t ters abo ut her life and inmos t though ts until she
dis covered that Gat tes chi had found a r i cher patron in L ady Sus sex
Lennox ,
Af ter the death of Sir Timo thy Shelley in 1 844 , when Percy
33
Florence inheri ted the Shelley t itle and es tates , Gatt e s ch i at tempted to
b l ackmai l Mary by thre atening to reveal or even publ ish her l e t ters .
S i r Percy ' s fr iend Alexande r Knox repor ted Gat t e s chi ' s s e cr e t poli t i cal
activities to the French police and persuaded the p re f e ct , by means
o f a cons ide rable sum of money , to seize Gat tes chi ' s papers for polit i cal
r e as ons .
Mary ' s l e t ters were thus re trieved ( I I , no . 5 54n) .
O ther
unsuccess ful attempts at b lackmai l harr assed her , but she would probab ly
have b een spared the ordeal of the Gat te s chi af fair h ad her f ather
b een alive to advise her .
In 1 8 4 8 S ir Percy mar ried Jane S t . John ,
a young widow who proved to be an e xce llent wife to him and the rare
d aughter-in-l aw who truly loves her husb and ' s mo the r .
30
The clos ing
years of Mary ' s l i fe were h appily and peacefully spent wi th the young
couple .
She died af ter a sho r t illness on Feb ruary 1 , 1851 , surviving
h er father by only f i f teen years .
The t ies wh i ch bound Godwin and Mary we re very clos e , closer
perhaps than those of the typi cal f a ther and daughte r , and there were
many circums t an ces whi ch drew them toge ther more and mo re as the
years went by .
Their mutual love and r everence for Mary Wolls tone-
craf t was a s trong bond b e tween them , especial ly s ince Mary and the
s e cond Mrs . Godwin were never ami cab le unt i l af ter the death o f
F anny Imlay .
The portrai t o f Mary Wolls tone cr af t , whi ch hung over
the fireplace of Godwin ' s s t udy as long as he lived , he b e queathed
to . Mary .
Res emb l ing her mo the r in both appearance and d isposi tion ,
Mary was reared by Godwin to b e like he r ; and af ter Shelley ' s
30
.;.;.o.:.l.. l s t on=
e­
Mur ie 1 Sp ark , :...:C;:;
h;.::;i:.::l:..:d:...
: o:...:
...:: f:...L::..:
...:: i;:,.<g::>.:hc;.t::.
, -'a
..z... ::_::.
R:::.
_ e.::
.: a:::.
s:::.
s-=
e-=s-=s.::.:m;.::e:.;;:n::..:t::...o:...:
....: f::...Ma
=
....: r::.y. W
<---:- �7-='-='"7
cr af t Shelley (Hadleigh , Essex : Tower Bridge Pub l i ca t ions Ltd . , 1 9 5 1 ) ,
p . 119 .
34
death she provided him wi th the in telle ctual comp anionship and gen tle
a f fe c tion of wh i ch Mrs . Godwin was not capab le .
Mary ' s life as a young
widow was a model of propri e ty , and even though the Ameri can actor
John Howard Payne b e came her devo ted sui tor , she preferred to remain
the widow of Percy Bysshe Shelley than to b e come the wife of the
a t tractive b u t improvident Payne .
At the t ime of Shelley ' s death ,
Godwin was s ix ty-s ix years of age and Mary nearly twenty�si x .
They
had lived through two sui cides and three natural deaths together ; they
had a ls o known the s corn and abus e of the world .
At h is f i r s t mee ting
wi th She lley , Trelawny was sho cked to find a b e ardless , gentle youth-­
n o t the mons ter at war with the world that Shelley was reputed to b e .
Mary and Godwin had had enough o f infamy and b o th grew cons ervat ive .
Within a few years af ter her re turn to England , Godwin was virtual ly
unknown ; but Mary became a well-known and highly respe cted memb er o f
s o ci e ty .
She enj oyed the as soci ation with uppe r-clas s acquaintances
t o such an e xten t that s ome of her crit i cs have called h er a snob .
Mary had not the d ar ing and freedom o f h er mothe r-- traits
whi ch b o th Godwin and Shelley at temp ted to cul tivate in he r , and she
was in no sense a feminist l ike her mo ther .
She always maintained her
own res idence ap art from the Godwins and enj oyed an act ive social
l i f e af ter her return to England .
But the s tab i li z ing force in her
l i f e and work was her fathe r , who , with do gged d e terminati on , never
laid down his pen except in death and never p ermi t ted Mary to lay
h e rs down whi le he lived .
The maj or ideas set fo rth in Godwin ' s
Enquiry concerning P o l i t i cal Jus t i ce and i t s Influence on Morals and
Happiness are inculcated in his novels , and it is no accident that his
ideas with whi ch Mary concurred are also set forth in hers .
CHAPTER I I I
THE ROLE OF EDUCATION IN THE NOVELS
The only hope for mankind , according to Godwin , lay in
involving as many individuals as possib l e in a ques t for their own
p erfectib il i ty .
The prob lem of inj us t i ce , as set for th in my intro­
duction , does no t originate in so ciety and its ins t i tut ions , but in
man h ims e lf .
S in ce the emphas is in Po l i t ical Jus t ice is placed on
showing what is unj ust in s o c i e ty and how this inj us t ice af fects the
individual , this p aper will appr oach i ts thesis by at temp t ing to
demons trate that Godwin app lied the theories of Pol i t i cal Jus tice
in his novels by dep i ct ing characters under the influence of the
inj us t i ces of his d ay .
He does no t limi t the s cope of e ither
Pol i t i cal Jus t i ce or the novels to eighteen th and nine teen th- century
Engl and , but constantly reminds his readers that many inj us t i ces h ave
exis ted for centur ies .
In Pol i t i cal Jus tice he shows the timelessness
o f inj us t i ce by c i t ing examples from the histories o f many dif feren t
pers ons , coun t r ies , and cen turies ; in the novels he uses this same
devi ce and o thers as well .
The audience for whom Pol i t i cal Jus t i ce was intended was the
in telle ctual elite , who were b e s t sui ted , so Godwin though t , to lead
the peop le in reform to a b e tter so ciety .
This small group--Go dwin
calls them "men of s tudy and reflection "--were the true agen ts of
improvement .
In spite o f the h i gh cost o f the b ook , thr ee guineas ,
i t s old well ; and a se cond edit ion was b rough t out for four teen
35
36
sh i l l ings in 1 7 9 6 .
1
But Godwin was real i s t i c in his asses smen t o f
the s i tua tion :
Books have by their very nature but a l imited operation ; though
they are enti tled to the foremost p lace . The number of
those th at almost who l ly ab s t ain from reading , is exceed ingly
great . 2
Th e nove l had b e come one of the mos t popular forms of l i t e rature in
England , and with this in mind Godwin began to proj ec t plans for
a work of fi ct ion as soon as he comp leted Pol i t i cal Jus tice .
He
had not writ ten a novel s ince 1 7 8 3 , a period of ten years , and in
r e turning to f i ction he hoped n o t only to increas e his income but
to give l iving reality to h is theore tical princip les in a genre th at
would appeal to a l arger numb er of readers .
That his novels were
novels of purpose is rare ly ques tioned , and the consensus of
o p in ion is that each of his novels , in cluding the ear l i es t ones
b e fore Po l i t ical Jus tice , clearly shows Godwin deliberate ly fashioning characters and events to i llus trate his convi ctions and theories
ab out th e d l. l emma o f man ln
. an unJ. us t s o cle
. ty .
3
Upon comp l e ting
Pol i t i cal Jus t i ce , he had a wr i t ten s tatement o f his theories whi ch
h ad been in the process of developing for many years , and he was
careful in his at temp ts to adhere to them in all the works which
1
Burt on R. Po l l in , Educat ion and Eniightenmen t in the Works of
Wil liam Godwin ( New York : Las Amer icas Pub l ishing Co . , 1 9 6 2 ) , p . 1 6 9 .
2
william Godwin , Enquiry Con cerning Poli t i cal Jus tice and I t s
Inf luence on Morals and Happiness , I ( 1 7 9 8 ; rpt . 3 vo ls . , Toronto :
Univer s i ty of Toronto Press , 19 4 6 , ed . F . E . L . Pries tley ) , 2 9 4- 2 9 5 .
Hereaf ter cited as PJ in the text .
3
Harold Victor Weekes in "Godwin as Novel ist " (Dissertation ,
Univers i ty of Toronto , 19 6 1 ) expresses an opinion no t in agreemen t
wi th th is j udgment .
37
followe d .
There are excep tions , o f course , b ecaus e h i s ideas about
s ome mat ters changed , t h e mos t obvious b eing his denouncemen t of
marr iage and the personal s en timents o f man .
His very concep t of
perfectib i l i ty j us ti fies the righ t of a man to change his mind , for
this is the inevitab le cons equence of a s in cere quest for perfec tion .
Caleb Williams ( 1 7 9 4 ) , the novel writ ten immediately af ter Polit ical
Jus t i ce , follows more clos ely perhaps than any of the o thers the
p rinciples of the treatis e .
A brief res t atement of the s teps in Godwin ' s plan for the
a t t ainment of a s tate of perfectib i l i ty should b e mad e b e fore b eginning
a d is cus s ion of their app li cation in the novels .
reason , b enevolence , j us t i ce , and perfectib i li ty .
They are :
education ,
In ef fect , they
cons t i tute a circle ; for when one h as arrived at a more advanced
s tage of perfectibi lity he is ab le to advance in knowledge , reason ,
and the o thers , un til he has comp le ted the cyc le again .
To Godwin ,
reason was man ' s b as i c quality , and s ince i t is susceptible o f un�
limited impr ovemen t , this quali ty is the key to man ' s per f e c t ib i lity .
But reas on cannot b e improved wi thout knowledge , and b e caus e o f this ,
education is an underlying theme in all of his works and one whi ch he
never fails to emphasize .
In fact , educa tion is the corne rs tone o f
h i s theoretical s tructure , the key to j us t i ce and perfectib i l i ty .
By the term education le t us assume tha t Godwin does no t mean formal
educat ion alone but rather anything that cont ributes to the knowledge
of man .
And he cons idered that this educa tion b e gan a t b ir th .
No thing , in his opinion , was more important in d e termining the
38
ch ar acter o f man th an the e ar ly ye ars o f h i s l i f e .
4
B u t e du cation does
not s t o p with youth .
Education , in one s ens e , is the af f ai r o f youth ; but in a
s t ri c te r and mo re accurate s ens e , the education of an
in te lle ctual b e ing can te rmin ate only with h is l i fe .
Every
in ciden t th at be falls us , is the p aren t of a sen t imen t , and
e i the r con f i rms or counteracts the p re con cep tions of the
mind (PJ , I I , 2 1 ) .
In Caleb Wi lliams , i t b e comes clear r ather e ar ly in the s to ry
th a t the f l aw in Mr . Falk l and ' s charac te r , wh i ch is respon s ib le
f o r all his crime s , is a resul t o f only one mi s t ake in his e du cat ion .
In all respe cts excep t th is one , Falkland ' s b a ck ground h ad caus ed him
to be r at ional , b enevo len t and j us t .
Fa lkland h ad a cquired an
e xcess ive admi r at i on for ch ivalry and kni gh t ly honor .
His goal of
p e r f e c t ch ivalry h ad made him the idol o f near ly all who knew h im .
As Godwin might h ave s aid :
h e b e came a ver i t ab le en gine o f b ene-
volen ce and j us t i ce through out the commun i ty .
The app r oval and
admirat ion o f the communi ty were everything to him , and he was determined t o preserve his honor at any co s t .
Caleb Wi lli ams , a poor young
o rphan emp loy e d as his s e cr e t ary , a t temp ted to l e ave his s e rv i ce
b e cause he frequently los t h i s s e l f- cont ro l and ven ted his anger on
Caleb when th at young man arous ed his gui l ty cons cience with p robing
ques tions and ove r- ze alous curio s i ty .
Falkland ' s err a t i c b ehavior ,
in t urn , made Caleb suspi cious and eage r to find out the r e as on b eh ind
it.
Upon le arning th at C aleb desired t o l e ave , Falkland rave d menacingly :
"Do you n o t know , mis e r ab le wre t ch ! " added he , s udden ly a l tering
his t one , and s t amping upon the ground wi th fury , " that I h ave
sworn to p res e rve my repu tation whatever be the expens e , that
4
P aul , I , 2 89 .
39
I love it more than the whole world and i ts inhab i t an ts taken
togethe r ? And do you think that you shall wound i t ? Begone ,
and ce as e to con tend wi th ins urmoun t able
mis crean t !
rept ile !
powe r . " 5
In fact , an e ar lier at tack upon Falkland ' s honor is res pons ib le
·,
f o r the awes ome s e cr e t tha t he is at temp t ing to con ce al from the
world .
S quire Tyre ll , a c on ce i ted and e go tis t ical bully , be came
madly j e alous of th e gent lemanly Falkland .
When the Squire learned
th a t h is young cous in Emily Me lvi lle , an o rphan unde r his p ro te ct ion ,
was in love with Falkland , he de t ermined to s ubdue and humi li ate her
by mar rying her t o a rough f armhand name d Grimes .
was ab out to b e for ced on he r , she ran away .
Wh en the mar r i age
She was caught , however ,
and put in p ri s on on f alse charges that Tyrell brough t a&ains t her .
Before her trial could take p l ace , she die d .
The en tire neighb o rhood
was arous ed a gains t Tyr ell and treat ed him with con temp t .
In an
at temp t to re- ins tate h ims elf in the commun i ty , he a t t ended the
a s s emb ly .
S ince i t had b een agreed upon unanimous ly tha t Tyrell was
t o be re fus e d admi t tan ce , an e f fo r t was made t o p reven t h im f rom
en terin g .
Bu t h is deme anor was s o f ie rce and commanding tha t no
one h ad the coura ge to s top him.
At th is moment Falkland entered and
ordered him to l e ave in a leng thy Godwin i an s p e e ch wh i ch concluded :
"Go , shr ink into your mis erab l e s el f !
b l as ted with your s i gh t again . "
Be gone , and let me never b e
Tyr ell lef t , b u t re turne d af ter a
sho r t time and kno cked Falkland to the floor , ki cked h im , and at temp t ed
to drag h im from the room .
5
The o ther men p re s ent s e i z e d Tyrell and
wi lliam Godwin , Caleb Wi l l i ams , ed . David McCracken (London :
Oxford Unive rs i ty Pre s s , 1 9 7 0 ) , p . 15 4 .
Hereafter cited in the text .
40
and threw him o u t of the h al l .
When the mee t ing f inally adj o urned s ome
time l at e r , Tyrell was found murdere d near the as semb ly h al l .
h ad commi tted the murder but was tried and acqui t ted .
Falkl and
A f ew months
l at e r an inn o cen t farmer and his s on , who s e l ives Falkl and could h ave
s aved , were f ound gu i l ty and h an ge d .
Th is , then , was the s e cr e t f o r whi ch Caleb was s e ar ching and for
wh i ch Mr . Falkl and was to pursue him th roughout the res t of the book .
H aunted and tor tured by his cons cience , Falkland did no t wish to
c ommi t ano ther murder but wishe d only to keep Caleb comp l e t e ly in
h i s p ower s o that the t ru th co uld no t b e dis cove red by the res t o f
the wo rl d .
In wo rking o u t the p at tern o f cau s e and e f fe ct in the act ions
of th e Squire and Falkland , Godwin ' s principle o f ne ces s i ty p lays
a maj or role .
Falkland , wi thout r e al i z in g i t , was a th reat to Tyrell ' s
s up rema cy in the commun i ty ; and under th is p re s s ure Ty rel l ' s actions
b e came more an d mo re unr e asonab l e and b r u t al .
Bo th were very j e alous
o f their honor , but Tyrel l ' s charac ter was f ar less p e r f e c t than that
of Falk l and .
Tyre l l ' s condi tion was a d i r e c t resul t o f his e arly
l i fe an d educa tion .
The only ch ild of a widowed mothe r , he had
b een s p o \ l e d and indu lged s i n ce e arly ch ildho o d .
Eve ry thing and
everyb o dy mus t give way to h is wishes ; he was not even made to learn
to read and write we l l .
B e c aus e o f his s e l f- conf i dence , a th l e t i c
f i gur e , and l ar ge e s t a te , h e b e came the mo s t popular young man at
the weekly a s s emb l ies and was much admired by the ladies .
But wi th
the coming o f Falkland , all th is was changed ; for in comp ar i s on the
young s quire appeared to be exac tly wha t he was - -b oo rish , uneduca t ed ,
41
spoiled.
His p opular i ty waned , wh ile tha t o f Falkland increas ed .
Every new s uc ce s s of Falkland ' s was a ch allenge and insult to Tyr e l l ,
even though none was intende d .
Falkland was ab le t o con trol hims e l f
and keep pe ace unt i l Tyr e l l phys i cally a t t a cked him.
The two men ,
s o much a like in temp erament b u t d i f fe ren t in b a ckground and e du ca­
t ion , woul d inevi tab ly clash for the highes t p l a ce in the c ommunity .
Violence and murder ensued--of ne ces s i ty .
S t . Leon , a Tale of the S i xteenth Cen tury provides many
ex­
amp l e s o f the des truc t ive ef fects of a f au l ty education upon the
l ives of ind ividuals .
Here a gain , a f a l s e s ense of hono r , ins tilled
in S t . Leon s ince ch ildhood , is the cause of great mis ery and suffe ring .
S t . Leon los t his ent ire fortune , as we l l as that o f his wife , in
gamb l ing .
For ced into a s imp le l i fe of p over ty and hard wo rk , the
f amily f inds happ ine s s and pe ace unt il an aged , dying man come s
to their iso lated co t t a ge and o f fers S t . Leon th e ph i l o s o phe r ' s
s tone and the e lixir o f life .
This s tr anger , S i gno r Zampieri , has
s uf f ered so much and so long tha t he wishes to die and l e ave his
treasures wi th S t . Leon .
Seeing the mi s e rab le condition o f Zamp i eri ,
S t . Leon fears the gi f t , b u t he a c cepts i t b e caus e he wishes to
res tore h ims e l f an d his family to a p l a ce o f honor in France .
He
r ea cquir e s the los t e s t a tes and provides l avishly for his f ami ly ,
b u t his neighb ors and friends b e come suspi cious o f him .
l o s e s the respect and conf idence of his w i fe and s on .
He even
I t b e c omes
imp os s ib le for him and his family to remain long in one p l ace b e caus e
he is inevi tab ly s us p e c ted o f inf amy .
On one o c casion he is thought
to be an evil magi cian be c au s e of s cien t i f i c expe riments he was
42
conduc ting i n a cave near h i s home .
The ignorance and s up e rs t i tu tion o f
the mas s e s i s demons tra ted wh en the towns people mar ch o n his home ,
b urn i t to the g r ound , and murder his inno cen t b l ack s e rvant .
He
l earns too late that the love of weal th and hono r , wh i ch was bred
into him as a par t of his ar is tocr a t i c he rit age , has des troyed his
f ami ly .
Af ter the death of his wife , he is made a prisoner o f the
S p anish Inquis i tion .
In o rder to e s cape b e in g burned at the s take ,
he mixe s and drinks the e lixir o f immo r t al i ty , wh i ch trans forms him
f r om a midd le-aged man to a you th o f twen ty .
As he l ives thr ough
one and a hal f l i f e- t imes , almos t all the con cepts o f honor and
weal th that he had b een t augh t are p r oved to be wrong .
The next novel , Fle e twood , or the New Man of Fee l ing ( 1805 ) ,
is an a t t ack upon the over-emph asis on s ensib i l i ty in p o l i t e
s o c i e ty .
Ch ildr en should b e taugh t to b e s ens i tive , but no t
unre as on ab ly s o , nor should they b e shielded too long from the
r e a l i t i e s of s o c i e ty .
Their sens i b i l it i e s should no t b e unduly
deve loped to appre c i ate thos e th ings th at will b e of no advan tage
in
d a i l y l i f e and c on t a c t s
wi th
o th e r p e o p l e .
Nature
are s p lendid but they are no s ub s t i tute for man .
and
s o l i tude
"The magn i f i can ce
of natur e , a f t e r a t ime , will produce much the s ame e f f e ct upon him ,
as i f I were to s i t down a hungry man to a s ump tuous s ervi c e o f
p la te , whe re all th a t presen ted i t s e l f o n every s ide was mas sy s i lver
and b urnished gold , but ther e was no f oo d . , .
6
6
wi lliam Godwin , Fleetwood , S t andard Novels , no . 2 2 ( London :
Ri chard Bentley , 1 83 2 ) , p . 199 . Her eaf ter cited in the te x t .
43
The novel shows p re ci s e ly and in de tail how a mis anthrope o f
s en s ib i l i ty is f o rmed .
Le t him be the only s on o f a me l­
an choly , grieving father , and live amids t wi ld and magn i f i cen t
s cenery in Wal es . Make him a s o l i t ary wanderer , a c l imbe r of
moun tains .
Give h im a t utor he can r e s p e c t b u t no t l ove , and
s urround him with peasants whom he may s ave from drowning but
with whom he can s car cely iden t i fy h ims e l f . 7
Next le t him go to Oxford whe re his s t ronge s t recollect ion wi l l b e
o f a cer tain Wi thers whose r i d i cu lous ep i c poem on the f i f th l ab o r
o f Her cules made him the ob j e c t of a crue l , p r ac t i cal j oke devised
by his f e l l ow s tudent s .
The p a the t i c al ly naive and s ens i t ive p oe t-
au thor was so c rushed by the exp e rience that he drowned h ims elf in
the I s is .
Dis gus ted by the callous insens i tivi ty of his c lassmates and
the immo r ali ty and hyp o crisy o f the Fr en ch cour t , where he next
j ourneye d , he wandered ove r Eng l and and Europe s eeking t r ue fr iendship and a sense o f use fulnes s .
Finally at f o r ty-five , a d i s i l lus ioned
mis anthrope , he found a fr iend in Macne i l , a Rous s eau i an l over o f
mankind , and married his younges t daughter , Mary .
Be cause o f his
excess ive s ens ib i l i ty , many t rivial circums t an ces thr e a tened the
h ap p iness o f the mar r i age .
In the mi ds t o f the s e tr i f l in g worries ,
a young fortune-seeking s coundrel imp l i cates Mary in suppo s ed inf ide l i ty
w i th his own b r o ther , and Mary is cas t out by her husb and .
The t ru th
is finally dis closed and Fle e twood and Mary are r e-united .
The ev il
b r o ther i s executed while the inn o cent one i s given a four-hundred-pound
annui ty j us t b e f ore his wedding day .
"Af ter an extraordinary complexi ty of
trials , Fleetwood , the mi san th rop e , finally r e j o ins the human r a ce . "
7
smi th and Smi th , p . 9 7 .
8
Ib i d . , pp . 9 7 -9 8 .
8
44
Mandeville (181 7 ) , Godwin ' s f our th nove l , makes use o f the s ame
theme of s en s ib i l i ty and mis an thr opy , b u t with gre ater power and
ar tis t ry .
I t is a b r i l l i an t s tudy o f the e f f e c t s of educat ion and
envir onment on the lives o f men , b ut b e caus e o f i ts morb idi ty and
preo c cup ation wi th the psy cho logical an alysis o f characte r , i t was
not as p opular as Caleb Wi lliams an d S t . Leon .
The two p rincipal
ch ar a c te rs are a nephew , Charles Mand eville , and his un cle Aud ley
Mandeville .
The s to ry op ens in I r e l and with the reb e llion of the Irish
agains t the i r Engl ish oppres sors in 1641 , when the en tire f ami ly o f the
three-ye ar-old Char les we re mas s ac re d .
Char les was s aved by his I ri sh
nur s e and then taken by a P resby terian minis ter to En gland to l ive wi th
h i s un cle , the h e ad of the Mandevi lle family .
The hous e of the unc le
w as l oc ated in a r emo t e s p o t of wes t e rn Eng l and by the s e a .
P ar t o f
i t was in ruins , and the uncle was a comp l e t e re cluse i n the port ion
of i t tha t w as hab i t ab l e .
The minis ter who had br ough t Charles from
I re l and was employed as the chil d ' s t u tor .
The elder Mandeville
was in th is neuro t i c s t ate as a result o f the crue l ty and s tup i d i ty
o f h is father , Commod ore Mandeville , a dar in g s e aman who had s ailed
twi ce wi th Sir Francis Drake around the worl d .
He was p r o f i cient
in h is p ro f e s s ion , "b u t in all o ther matters he was as i gnoran t as
a Ho t t en t o t " and held every kind of knowledge and r e f inement with wh i ch
h e was un acqua1n
con temp t .
. te d 1n
.
9
Char les ' s un cle , Audley , b o rn
p rematurely , was n o t s trong and was de formed .
9
He was desp i s e d and
william Godwin , Mandevi lle :
a Tale of the Seventeen th
Cen tury in Engl and , I (London :
Longman , Hurs t , Rees , O rme and Brown ,
1 8 1 7 ) , 5 2 . He reaf ter cited in the text .
45
neglected by his fathe r , but loved and tende rly reared by his mothe r .
A cous in o f th e s ame age , Ame lia Mon t for t , his mo th er ' s o rphaned niece ,
was also reared by his mother .
The two ch i l dr en grew up toge ther and
even t ua lly f e l l ve ry mu ch in love .
The mo the r died and the Commodore ,
in order to p revent a marr iage , s en t Aud ley to London and mar r i ed
Ame l i a to a dis ab led s e aman .
When Aud l ey r e turned and l e arned of the
marr iage , he was so enraged that he b e came tempo rarily ins ane , lingering
for mon ths b e tween life and death .
When Ame l i a died in ch i ldb i r th ,
he re tired into h is person al quar ters and never came o u t again .
Godwin main t ained that the heal th o f an indiv i dual af f e cted
his characte r , and in the por trayal of Audley we are led to b e l ieve
th at h ad he been phys i c ally s tron g , the out come of the s to ry would
have b een entirely d i f feren t .
He was no t wel l , he had b een overly
shel tered by his mo the r and abused by his fathe r , his s tudies had
cons i s ted of theoreti cal and roman tic works --all the s e produced an
e xce s s ively sens i t ive young man compl e tely incapab l e o f cop ing wi th
life .
Af ter young Ch ar les came to the Mandevi ll e home , the r e ader
is not given any further ins i ghts into the thinking of Audley .
He
was a quie t , comp l e tely b roken man who s e interes t in l i f e was no t
s tirred by the coming o f his young nephew into his househo ld , even
though he is des cribed as b e ing rational .
Into th is dark , unwholes ome a tmo s ph e re the thr ee-year-old ch ild
came .
The n ovel is narr ated in the firs t p e r s on by Charles Mandevi lle ,
who wro t e i t af ter the con cluding episodes o f the book .
He r e calls
th at as he b e g an to grow up he fell into hab i t s o f r everie and loved
a hazy r ather than a s unsh iny d ay .
He loved " th e p atter ing o f the r ain ,
46
th e r oaring o f the waves , and the p e l ting o f the s torm . "
The s igh t
o f a b ar e and gl oomy he ath fas cinated and deligh t ed h im mor e than
tha t of a green and fer t i le me adow .
Godwin felt that con cen t ra t ion
upon such Roman ti c e lement s as th ese was inj ur ious to char acter .
n arra tor con tinues :
and unwo r thy to l ive .
The
"Perhaps al l this proves me to b e a mons ter ,
I canno t h e lp i t .
The purp o s e o f the s e p ages
is , to b e made the record o f t ru th " (I , 113-114) .
Love of the Go thic
and th e s trange h ad come very e ar ly into the l i f e of the l ad and was
t h e b e ginning o f a mis anthrop i c a t t i tude that was t o dominate his adu l t
years .
His e arly educat ion , pres ided over by the s tern , emac ia ted
Bradfor d , he des cribes as
d i s tor ted ,
h ad b rough t h im to Eng l and .
like th at of his tea cher who
Brad ford ' s char ac ter had b een f o rmad
by col l e ges and b ooks , monas tic dis cipline , and theological deb ates ;
and it was th erefore unnatur a l , s tr ained , and ar t i f i cial .
The
inf luence of this glo omy , an ti- Catho l i c , mar tyr - l ike individual was
cut short by the dea th o f Brad ford when Ch ar l e s w as e leven year s of
The boy was then s en t to Winches ter Coll ege , wh ere he me t youn g
age .
L i on e l
C l i f f o r d , who was a t t r ac t ive i n every w ay a s w e l l a s
and benevolen t .
laughed
gay , w i t ty ,
He came o f a poor b r anch o f a good family b u t
at p ove r ty and d e c lar e d tha t the r i ch man was a s l ave , one
of Godwin ' s f avo r i t e themes ( I , 2 3 9 ) .
For
a
t ime Char les delighted
in the f r iendship o f Clifford and l e arned a humane and b enevo lent
philos ophy from him .
In a dis cu s s ion con cerning inheri ted wealth
and nob il i ty , C li f ford , the mou thpiece o f Godwin , decl ared :
There is b u t one true nob i l i ty , and tha t is b es towed by the
I t has i ts s e at in the s o ul .
Almighty ruler o f the univer s e .
47
I t is tha t insp i r a tion , that makes the generous man , the in­
ven t o r of ar ts , the legis l ator o f the mind , the s p i r i t formed
to a c t gre a tly on the the atre of the wo rld , and the p o e t who
records the deeds of the s e spirits ( I , 2 5 1 ) .
But Charles , who held the s ame convi ct ions as Cli f f ord , " could no t
p u t [his ] s oul into [hi s ] tongue " and b e gan to grow envious o f
C l i f f ord .
The envy grew and , aggravated by o ther unfavor ab l e cir-
cums tan ce s at s choo l , it f inally developed into hatred , a h atred s o
morb id that Char les imagined tha t Clif f o rd was h i s enemy .
A very evi l young man , appr opr iat ely n amed Mallison , s tarted
a mal i cious rumor tha t Ch arles was a Whig s py and could no t b e
trus t e d .
When Charles heard o f th is lie , h e b e came hys t er i cal ,
wandered o f f into the woods , and los t cons ciousnes s .
When he • re-
gained cons ciousne s s h e was in " a r e cep t a.cle f or lun at i cs , " and his
s i s ter Henr i e t t a was by h is s i de .
The exis tence o f th is s is t e r
w a s no t reve aled un til well into the book .
Henrie tta w a s as
charmin g , swee t-s p i r i t ed , and good as her mas culine coun t e rp a r t
Clif ford .
She had b een s aved from the mas s acre of 1641 b e caus e
she was wi th a friend of her mo ther ' s , a Mr s . Wi llis , the wife o f
a r e tired s ailor , and they h ad reared Henr i e t t a i n their mo de s t
c o t t age .
In re tro s p e c t Char les s e e s the co t t age and i ts inhab i tants
as for tunate and happy .
I could not be ins ens ible to the quie t con tentmen t , the
cheer ful t one , and the alacr i ty of kindnes s , of B e aul ieu
Co t t age , so oppo s i t e to every th ing I could rememb er to have
s e en ( I , 202) .
. . . Oh , had I spent my early years at
Beaul ieu , had I passed a p ar t o f every day wi th Mr s . Willis ,
a woman who s e eve ry word w as a s park de tached from the s to re­
hous e of wis dom , whos e every look was b enevolence , who had
that grace f orever attend ing her , that won your conf idence ,
48
and wi th an irre s i s t ab l e p ower drew f o r th your s oul , --had
I l ived wi th my Henrie t t a , h ad I asso ciated wi th the nob l e
s c i on s o f the hous e o f Mon t ag u , and the respec tab le f amily
tha t dwel t at the pr iory , [neighb ors and friends of the
Wil l is es ] I should have b e en a human creature , I should h ave
b een the memb er of a community , I should have lived wi th my
f e l low mor t al s on peaceful terms , I should have b een as
f r ank , as I now was invincib ly r eserved , susp icious , and
forever disposed to r e g ar d my neighb o r with though ts o f
hos tility ( I , 209 - 2 10 ) .
Dnder the kind , wholesome influence of Henr i e t t a and her
f r iends , Char les re gained his s an i ty .
Henr i e t t a ' s conve r s at ion
r evealed a r e l i gion of love , b u t H i lkiah ' s [ Bradford ] r evealed a
r e l i gion of h a tred .
Unfor tunately th is as s o ci a t ion w i th Henr i e t ta
and the Will i s e s soon came to an end .
When Char les h e ar d that the
rumor th a t he was a s py had reached the king in France , he s e c luded
h ims e l f in a farmhouse , where his hatred of Clif ford r e turned .
The
news tha t Clifford and Henr ietta were to b e mar r i ed inf lamed i t ,
and h e a t temp ted t o kidnap Henr ie t ta .
However , h e was prevented
from ac comp l i shing thi s by C li f ford who , in def ending Henr i e t t a ,
s lashed Charles ' s face wi th his sword .
a gap ing s car was l e f t on the cheek.
gr in .
" I t ate into my soul .
.
.
The lef t eye was gone and
The s car was l ike a perpe tual
. Even as cer t ain tyr annical planters
in the Wes t Indes have set a red-ho t iron upon the negroes they have
pur chas ed , to denote that they are irremediab ly a proper ty , s o
Cl i f f ord had s e t h i s mark upon me , as a t oken tha t I was his
forever " ( I I I , 3 6 6 - 3 6 7 ) .
The troub les and dis tres s e s o f the young Mandevilles obvious ly
e x ceed the bounds of prob ab i l i ty , but there is enough real truth in
e a ch s i tuat ion to enab l e Godwin to make his p o in t .
These young men
were des t royed , o f nece s s i ty , b e c au s e o f their l ack of knowledge
49
and b e c ause o f th e crue l and inhuman tre a tment they received in
ch ildhood and you th .
s lave of apathy .
Char les b e came a s lave of p as s ion , Audley a
One was in flamed by the inj us t i ce done h im , the
o ther crushed by i t .
The theme o f the impor t an ce o f educat ion is
a dominant one in this nove l , for there is s car cely an individual in
th e s tory whos e char a c ter is not revealed to be a dir e c t resul t o f
h is e ar ly l i f e and educat ion .
The maj o r les s on to be learned here
is tha t adequate amo un ts o f knowledge and b enevolence at work in
th e l ives o f the young will even tually lead to a swee t and equitab l e
reas onab lene s s a s they matur e , the p os s ib l i ty o f p er f e c tib i l i ty . Be­
caus e of this lack of b enevo len ce in their environment and educat ion ,
t ragedy s talked them throughout their live s .
The con temp o rary reviewer s of Mandeville would have a greed
with John Wi l s on Croker ' s opinion that it was " a very dull novel
and a very clever b ook .
Mandevi lle is one of those unhappy b e ings
who s e minds ar e s o irri tab l e and l i ab l e to diso rder , as never to b e
clearly and s e curely r at ional , nor , except i n an oc cas ional par­
oxysm , wholly and dec idedly mad . "
Tho s e of us who are o f mo re
s ob er sense cannot comprehend the oper ation o f minds of this class
"nor explain by wha t s trange p ervers ion o f int ellect they see in
all mankind a cons p iracy agains t them . "
Such a char ac t �r , however ,
i s only too common in Engl and and Mr . Godwin ' s delineation is
admirab le-- " f a i thful in its conce p t ion , f o r cib le in i t s exp re s s i on �
and , in a word , the mos t lively and tangib le image wh i ch we have
ever s een of the waywardness of a self ish tempe r and the wander ings
50
o f a depraved unders tanding . "
lO
One o f the chief arguments that Harold V. Weeks presen t s in
" Godwin as Nove l is t" in . defense of h is _p� i t_i on th at Godwi n ' s novels
_
are no t novels of purpose is tha t Godwin ' s theory concerning educat ion i s not ob s e rved in them .
He mainta in s tha t the educa t i on o f
Falkland , o f S t . Leon , o f Mandevi l l e did not p repare them t o cope
w i th th e experiences tha t were to come .
We have seen that this is
t rue , b u t i t is t ru e b e cause there was at l eas t one maj or f l aw in
the edu cat ion and e ar ly environmen t o f e ach o f the thre e men .
With
Falkland and S t . Leon the f l aw was their concept of honor , with the
Mandevilles the f l aws were many but convincin g .
I t h ardly s e ems
pos s ib l e tha t Godwin could have shown the dele terious e f fects of an
improper educa t ion mo re clear ly in a negative way !
For examp le s o f
educa tion that i s adequate to produce good results , w e can turn to
the minor f i gur e s :
Mr . C lare in Caleb Wil l i ams , Mar guer i te in S t .
Leon , and Henr i e t t a and Clif ford in Mandeville--all o f thes e i l lust r ate the devel opment of s ound and b eautiful char acter under the
influen ce of good educat ion and environment .
To f ai l to s e e this
i s to mis s the main point o f the novels .
When Mary b e gan work on Frankens tein dur ing the s ummer of 1 8 1 6 ,
she h ad r ead Poli tical Jus tice , Caleb Will iams , and S t . Leon .
Even
though she was greatly under the influen ce o f She lley at th is time ,
her f ather was a succes s f ul noveli s t , wh i ch She l l ey was no t , and
she re-read all three of the s e works as well as many o thers while
10
John Wil s on Croker , rev . of Mandevi l l e : A Tale o f the
S even teen th Cen tury in Engl and , Qua r terly Revi ew , 1 8 ( 1 81 7 ) , 1 7 6 -1 7 7 .
51
she was wr i ting her f ir s t nove l .
was a t work on Mandevi lle .
At the s ame time , her f a ther
The s trength o f Godwin ' s inf luen ce on
the wr i t ing o f Frankens tein is no t immediately obvious , a s i t uation
wh i ch has led s ome cr i t ics to s ta te tha t his inf luence on that novel
was l e s s than tha t wh i ch he had on the s ub s equent ones .
But the
ideas concerning educa tion tha t appear in the work dis t inc tly
p arallel tho s e o f Godwin .
At the b e g inning o f Vi c to r Frankens tein ' s narr a ti on of his
l ife-s tory to Rob ert Wal ton , he des crib e s hims e l f as having a great
deal o f cur i o s i ty ab o u t the c aus e s of things :
"While my companion
[ E l i zab e th Beaufo r t ] contemp lated wi th a s e r ious and s at i s f i ed s p i r i t
t h e magn i f i cen t appearan ce s o f th ings , I deligh ted i n the inves ti gat ing their causes . "
He was "mo re deeply smi t ten with a thir s t for
knowledge , " than h is dear Elizab e th .
The s ame th irs t for knowledge
is exhib ited in b o th Frankens tein and Wal t on as that wh i ch exi s ts in
b o th Caleb and Mr . Falkland in Caleb Wi l l i ams .
Henry Clerva l ,
ano th er fr iend o f Fr ankens tein ' s , has the s ame in tellectu al inter e s ts
and mo t ivation as Falkland and S t . Leon .
He l oved en terpris e , hardship , and even danger , for i t s own
. . . He composed her o i c s ongs , and b e gan t o wr i te many
s ake .
a tale o f ench an tment and knigh t ly adven ture . He tried to
make us act p lays , and to enter in to mas querades , in wh i ch
the char acters were drawn f r om the heroes of Ron cesvalles , o f
the Round Tab le o f King Ar thur , and the chivalrous train who
shed their b lood to redeem the holy s epulchre from the h ands
of the inf idels ( p . 3 7 ) .
All of this came as a r esul t o f his b e ing "deeply read in b o oks o f
chivalry and roman ce . "
The p r incipal s ub j e c t , however , wh i ch s o
a t tr a c ted and fas cinated b o th Frankens tein and Walton was s cience .
52
This interes t is obvi ous ly mo re clos e ly a s s o ci a ted w i th Shelley ,
who had great intere s t in and cons iderab l e knowled ge of s cience ,
than it is wi th Godwin .
Al though Godwin manif es ts an in tere s t in
s cien ce , he appears to know very l i t tle ab out i t .
S t . Leon ' s
favor i te hobby was conducting s cien t i f i c exper iments , which wer e
viewed wi th s uch suspi cion by th e neighbors tha t he conduc ted them
in a s e cr e t p l a ce ; and we are given an int er e s ting des crip t ion o f
S t . Leon ' s mixing t h e e lixir o f l i f e and trans f orming hims e l f from
During his
a f i f ty-ye ar-old man t o one who is twen ty year s of a ge .
early year s of s tudy , Vi ctor Frankens tein s e ar ched for the ph ilo s opher ' s s tone and the e lixir of l i fe , b u t s oon abandoned them .
There is an in terweaving o f Godwinian details o f this kind througho u t Frankens t e in wh i ch Mary adap t s to her purpo s e s in various ways .
These , however , are ins i gn i f i can t when one examines the mo s t
dominan t examp les o f Godwin ' s thoughts on education-- the educat ion o f
th e mons ter .
The intelle c tual development o f th is b l i gh ted b e ing
is proj e cted in true Lo ckean fashion on a tabula ras a :
f ir s t c on-
fused , then dis t in c t s ensat ions ; next s oc ial a f f e c tions ; and f inally ,
mor al and int e l l e c tual j udgmen t s .
11
He b e g ins his tale to Fr anken-
s tein by des cr ib ing h is phys i cal adj us tmen t to life immediately
after h is creat ion .
His s o ci a l development b e gan with his fir s t
con tacts wi th men , who shr ieked and ran when they s aw h im .
o c cas ion a whole vill age was arous ed by th e s i gh t of him :
On one
" s ome
f led , s ome a t t acked me , un t i l gr ievous ly bruised by s tones and
11
M. A . Go ldb e r g , "Mo r al and My th in Mr s . She l l ey ' s Fr ankens te in , " Keats- Shelley Journal , VI I I ( 1 9 5 9 ) , 2 7 .
53
many o ther kinds o f mis s i le weapons , I es caped to the o p en coun try ,
and f earfully took refuge in a l ow hove l , qui t e b are , and mak ing a
wre t ched app e ar an ce af ter the palaces I h ad b eheld in the vil l age "
(p . 106) .
Th rough a small chink in the wall be tween the hut and the
c o t tage he was ab l e to ob s e rve the d aily l ives of the inhab i tants
o f the cot tage .
The DeLaceys --f ather , s on , and daugh ter--were a
good French f ami ly fal len on h ard t imes b e caus e of the ir e f f o r ts
to s ave a Turkish inhab i t ant o f Paris f rom unj us t execution .
Fr om
these persons , he learned a s imp l e , a f f e c t ionate , cour teous way o f
l if e .
When h e dis covered that they wer e s o poor that they did no t
h ave enough f ood , he ceased s tealing from them , s e cr e tly p rovided
them with wood for the f ir e , and helped wi th the d ai ly chores .
During the winter months , the young man f r equent ly read to his
f ather and s i s te r , the mons ter l i s tening at the chink .
When the
b eautiful Turkish girl , S afie , arr ived , the son ins tru cted h e r in
French and in Volney ' s Ruins of Empires ( a favor i t e of b o th She lley
and Godwin ) , and the mons ter was ab l e to learn Fr ench , his tory ,
p o l i t i cs , and governmen t .
"While I lis tened to the ins tructions
whi ch Felix b e s t owed upon the Arabian , the s tr ange sys tem of human
s o cie ty was exp l ained to me .
I heard of the divis ion o f p r op e rty ,
o f immens e weal th and s qualid pover ty ; o f rank and descen t , and _nob le
b lood" (p . 120 ) .
He later accident ally f ound copies o f three of
Godwin ' s favo r i te b o oks :
P arad i s e Los t , a volume of Plutarch ' s Lives ,
and The Sorrows o f Wer t er , wh i ch he re ad with great a t tention .
Af ter a l ong , s o l i t ary res idence in the hove l , he longed f o r human
companionship and at temp ted t o r eveal h ims e l f to the DeLaceys .
The
54
b l ind f a ther a c cep ted him kindly ; b u t when the 9hildren r e tu rned
and s aw h im , the d aughter f ainted , the Turkish girl r an shri ekin g
o u t o f the hous e , and the s on at tacked him .
never s aw them again .
all :
They moved away and he
He had learned th e mos t terrib l e l es s on of
s o ciety had r ej e cted him , and his i s o la t i on f rom human love
and compan ionship was pe rmanen t .
His lone l ine s s and frus tr a t ion led
h im to try to capture a small b oy t o b e his f riend , but the terr i f i ed
child resis ted h im .
In an ef fort t o s i l en ce the l i t tle b oy , Frank-
ens tein ' s b r o th e r William , the mons ter acciden t al ly choked h im to
death .
This incident marked the b e ginning o f his vio lent and
mur de rous caree r .
Toward the con clus ion o f his t ale , h e b e gged
Frankens tein t o fashion a mate for him , exp laining tha t the love
and companionsh ip of anothe r b e ing l ike hims e l f would make h im benef icen t and good .
"My vices are th e ch i ldren of a for ced s o l i tude tha t I
abhor ; and my vir tues will necess ar i ly ar i s e when
munion w i th an equa l " (p . 1 4 7 ) .
I
l ive in com-
The mons ter ' s u gly deeds were a
r e s u l t of Godwinian neces s i ty j us t as Tyre ll ' s at tack of Falkl and
was a neces s i ty when Falkland a t temp ted t o drive the s qu i re f r om
the As s emb ly and alienate him from his f e l l owman .
At his cr eation
the mons t e r ' s l i f e was a p la in page on wh i ch e i ther good or evil
could be wr i t ten . 1
2
His educa t i on prepared h im to be good b u t his
envir onmen t , his recep t ion by his f e llowman , p roduced evi l .
Mary ' s s e cond nove l , Valperga :
or The Life and Adventures o f
Cas truccio , P rince o f Lucca , should be viewed as a p ar t i al collabor at ion wi th Godwin s ince he provided her with a plan for i t in 1 81 7
1 2 N 1. t ch 1e
. , p . 34 .
55
and r evis ed and edi ted it af ter i t s comp l e t ion .
h i s tor i cal nove l , was s e t in I t aly .
This , her f i r s t
The f o l lowing tran s l a t i on o f
a b i o gr aphical excerp t t aken f rom a n I talian s ource was included
in the Preface .
Cas t ruccio Cas tracani , one of the mos t celebrated cap tains
o f his time , l ived in the four teenth cen tury . He was of the
f amily o f · the Ant eminelli o f Lucca ; and , having a t a very early
age b orne arms in favour of the Ghib e l ines , he was exiled
by the Gue lphs . He s e rved not long af ter in the armie s of
Phi l i p king of France , who made war on the Flemings .
having j o ined Ugo cc ione Faggiuo la , chief o f the Gh ib e l ines
o f Tus cany , he reduced Lucca , P is toia , and s ever a l o ther
towns . He b e came the ally of the emp eror Louis o f Bavaria
[who ] g ave h im the inves t i ture of Lucca under the
denominat i on of Duke , t o ge th er with the t i t l e of Senator of
Rome . Nothing s e emed ab l e to oppose his courage and good
for tune , when he was t aken o f f by a p remature death in 1 330 ,
in the f o rty-seven th year of his age .
The ti tle Valperg5 was the n ame o f the es tate b e longing t o the
b e au ti ful Eu thanas ia , whom Cas truccio loved and wished to marry .
Cas truccio was e leven year s o f a ge when his f amily was
dr iven by th e v i c tor ious Gue lphs f r om their home , Lu cca , and
f o r ced t o seek p r o t e c t ion in the mo ther ' s native city .
On the
j ourney the ch ild s aw many of his dear e s t friends broken and hearts ick in their exile , and he "b e c ame inflamed w i th rage and des ir e
f o r vengeance . "
The author p o ints out the e f f e c t o f the s e cir cum-
s t an ces on i t s vi c t ims .
I t was by s cenes s u ch as the s e , that p ar ty s pi r i t was genera ted ,
and b e came s o s t rong in I ta ly .
Ch i ldren , wh ile they were yet
too young t o feel their own dis grace , s aw th e mis ery o f their
p ar en ts , and t ook e ar ly vows of imp lacab le hatred a gains t their
p e r s e cutor s :
the s e were r ememb ered in a f ter t imes ; the wounds
were never s eared , but the f resh b lood ever s treaming kep t
a l ive the f ee l ings o f p as s ion and anger wh i ch had given r i s e
to the f ir s t b low . l 3
13
[ Mary Shelley ] , Valperga , I (London :
1 8 2 3 ) , 1 2 . Her e a f ter c i t ed in the text .
G . and W . B . Wh i ttaker ,
56
The deare s t pleasure o f C as t rucci o ' s father was the educa t i on o f
h i s s on , who "was a n ap t and s p r i gh t ly b oy , b o l d i n action , careless
of cons equences , and governed only by his af fec tion for his p aren ts "
(I , 13) .
The f ather encouraged h i s adven turous s p iri t , b u t s aw that
h e was trained and dis ciplined in all the ar ts and duties o f a
s oldier .
His f avor i t e p as t ime
was to s tage a mock b at tle with an
enthus ias t i c troop o f lads , b e s e iging an ima ginary cas tle .
His
e ar l ies t years h ad b een s p ent in Lu c ca , where his clos e s t comp anion
was the daugh ter o f the mas ter of Valperga .
toge ther f rom e ar ly ch i ldhood .
They h ad b een educ ated
" They had wandered hand in hand
amon g th e wild moun tains and ches tnut woods that surrounded her
mo ther ' s cas tle .
Their s tudies , their amusemen ts , were in common ;
and it was a terrible blow to e a ch when they wer e s e p arated
.
.
•
"
(I , 26) .
The fami lies o f the two ch ildren b elonged to opposin g p o l i t i cal
p ar t ie s , b u t b ec ause of the p e aceful , magnanimous s p ir i t o f
Euthanas ia ' s f a ther there was f r iendship b e tween them .
Af ter the
depar ture of Cas tru c cio and his f amily , the fathe r , a s tudious ,
s chol ar ly man , b e g an to go b l ind ; and even though much of Eu thanas i a ' s
t ime was o c cup ied with th e p r i e s t who was engaged to tu tor her , she
s p ent many hour s , s ome t imes whole days , in reading to her father .
The e f f e c t o f th is education on her mind was advan t ageous and
memorable ; she did no t a cquire that n arrow idea o f the p re s en t
times , as i f they and the world were the s ame , wh i ch char ac ter­
i z e s the unlearned ; she s aw and marked the r evolu tions th at had
b een , and the present s e emed to her only a p o int o f res t , from
whi ch time was t o r enew his f l i gh t , s ca t t e r ing change as he
wen t ; and , i f her vo i ce or act could mingle augh t of good in
the s e change s , th i s i t was t o wh i ch her imaginat ion mos t
She was deep ly p ene t rated by the acts and
arden tly as p ired .
57
though ts of tho s e men , who despised the s p i r i t of p ar ty , and
grasped the univer s e in their hopes o f vir tue and indep endence
( I , 2 8-29 ) .
Her f ather had allied h ims e l f wi th the Gue lphs "becaus e he though t
h e s aw in the des i gns and p r inciples o f i t s l eaders the germ o f
future independence f o r I t aly" ( I , 2 9 ) .
As h e t alked t o his
daugh t er , he o f ten forgot her youthfulne s s and s p oke as to an
adu l t in "h i gh s t r ains of th at ennob ling s p i r i t wh ich he f e l t in
h i s inmos t heart .
Eu thanasia hear d and unders tood
•
Her young
•
though t s darted into futurity , to the hope of freedom for I ta ly , of
r evived le arning and the r e i gn of p eace f o r all the wor ld
.
•
.
"
( I , 30) .
Af ter a f ew ye ars Cas truccio and Euthanasia me t again in
Flo ren ce and even t ually were b e tro thed to each o ther .
was t o b e no marr iage f or thes e two .
But th ere
Even though they l oved each
o th er deeply , the ir l oyal ties and convi ct ions were comp l e t e ly
oppos ed .
Sin ce ne i ther would compromis e his p o l i ti ca l p o s i t i on ,
they grew farther and f ar ther apa r t as the years went by .
C as truc-
c i a b e came the tyr anni cal leader of his p ar ty , and Euth ana s i a one
of the chief advisors o f hers .
Even though he was amb i ti ous and
warl ike , his , love for Euthanas i a made h im willing on s ever al
o c cas ions to r e ach a compromis e .
He even t r i ed t o exp l ain to her
tha t i f she were a lways by his s ide th at he would b e kinder and
more gener ous in all his ways .
But Euth anas i a would not yield and
she b e came s o power ful in her p ar ty that when Cas truccio ' s p ar ty
gained con tro l , his associates asked for her exe cu tion .
He p leaded
with Eu thanas i a t o marry him and ac cep t his p ar ty , for in th is way
58
he could s ave her life and b e uni ted wi th her .
When she r e fused ,
she was put in a small boat th a t was to s a i l to S i ci ly , wher e
But the b oat was los t and Euthanas ia
she would live in exile .
drowned .
P arty loyalt ies , conceived in youth , deprived these two
o f any p e rs onal happiness .
The au thors make it very clear throughout the th ird volume
o f the novel that neither p ar ty a c comp lished any good f or the peo p l e
and t h a t the ul timate aim o f b o th p arties was pract i ca lly th e s ame ,
even though Euthanas i a ' s p ar ty claimed falsely to be r epub l i can .
There were trai tors and dedi cated men , devo ted to the we l far e o f
t h e people , in b o th gr oup s .
"At no time did e i ther p ar ty cle arly
4
r epresent any p ar t i cu l ar politi cal d o c t r ine or s o cial c lass . " 1
In f a c t , Euthanas ia ' s p ar ty s p l i t and her in fluen ce then coun ted
for l i t tle .
Her inab i lity to compromi s e cau s ed her unnecess ary
anguish and led her to her death .
She s a cr i f i ced her self f or an
ideal which could never in rea l i ty b e a c comp l ished .
Her educa t i on
h ad led her to exp e c t the imp o s s ib le , which th e author d e s cr ib e s as
a "wi ld dream" ( I , 3 0 ) .
Her life and inf luence , as well as th at o f
C as truc cio , woul d have counted f o r much more had she marr ied Castruccio and j o ined forces w i th h im .
Mary f inished Valperga in January 1 82 2 and Shell ey w as
drowned the f o l lowing July .
Th e L as t Man , un til 1 82 6 .
She did not comp lete her next nove l ,
Three o f the i nt ervening f o ur y ear s
b e tween the two novels she had s p en t in London in close a s s o ciation
p . 830 .
1 4 "Guelphs and Ghib e l l ine s , " Columb i a Encycloped i a ( 9 5 0 ) ,
1
59
with her father .
Th e imp or t an ce of educ a t i on is eviden t in The Las t
Man , th e events of wh i ch were s e t in the twenty- firs t cent ury , but
ther e is less d ir e c t emphasis upon it than in any of the o ther
The narrator , for examp l e , b r i e f ly s tates th at his s is ter
nove l s .
Perdi ta has cold and repuls ive manners b e cause she grew up in
p over ty , negle cted and unloved , and she r e s p onded to this l ack of
k 1n
. dness w1. t h d 1" s trus t an d s 1" 1 ence .
15
The fulles t dis cus s i on o f
education o c cur s i n the narrator ' s des cript ion o f hims el f .
He ,
L ione l Verney , was emp loyed as a shepherd and learne d to a c cep t
hardship and responsib i l i ty .
He o r gani zed a f r iendless group o f
shepherd boys into a b and and alone endured the punishmen t f o r many
o f their pranks .
" In such a s chool my dis pos i t ion b e c ame r ugged ,
b u t f i rm" (p . 9 ) .
When the youn g crown p r ince , Adrian , carne to
vis i t his es t a te in the vicinity o f Verney ' s home , Verney ' s
j ea lousy o f h im was l ike th at o f Charles Mandev i lle for Lionel
Cl i f ford .
But when Verney was caugh t poaching on the royal e s tate ,
Adrian was s o humane and under s t anding th a t Verney ' s outlook on l i fe
comp l e t e ly changed .
His p over ty and lack o f oppor tun i ty had made
h im mor e l ike a s avage young animal than a man .
th e love and unde r s t anding of Adr i an res cued h im .
From this s ta t e ,
H e no l onger
h a t ed the world or hims e l f .
I n this novel Mary a gain p i cks up a maj o r theme o f Valperga-th e harmful e f f e c t s of pol i t i cal p ar t ies , and in so doing introduces
Godwinian ideas on educa t i on .
15
By the time Verney reached manhood ,
Mary She l l ey , The L as t Man , ed . Hugh J . Luke , Jr . (Lincoln :
Uni­
Her eaf ter cited in the t ex t .
ver s i ty o f Neb raska Press , 1 9 6 5 ) , p . 10 .
60
England had b e come a repub l i c through the vo lun tary ab di cat ion o f
Adrian ' s f a ther a t the peacab le sugge s t i on of h i s s ub j ec t s .
England
was ruled by Parliamen t and a Lord Protector elected by Parl iamen t .
Al though the two hous es o f Parliamen t had mer ged , there we re thr ee
f a c tions wi thin i t :
r oyalis t s , ar i s t o crats , and repub l i cans , e ach
o f wh i ch was "v iolen t , acrimonious , and unyieldin g . "
Many memb er s
were eager t o r e s tore the monarchy b e cause they longed f or the
t ins e l and f a l s e show of royal ty they had learned to love in their
youth .
The leader of thi s group was Lord Raymond , " the sole
r emnan t o f a nob le b u t impover ished f amily .
From early yo u th he
had considered his pedigree wi th comp lacen cy , and b i tterly l amented
his wan t of we alth .
His f ir s t wish was ag grandi s ement ; and the means
tha t led towards this end were s e condary cons iderations " (p . 2 7 ) .
I f the monarchy were res tored , he though t , he would b ec ome weal thy
b e caus e the poorer nob les would be given preferment s to in crease
the i r
f o r t unes .
The pover ty and ob s cur i ty o f his chi l dhood had
t au gh t h im to put we alth b ef o r e every th ing e ls e .
In tr a c in g mo tiva­
t i ons in this manner education b e comes an underlying inf luence
throughout the nove l , but i t is t aken for gr an ted and th e emphas is
p l a ced upon o ther ma t ters .
Mary wrote only two his tori cal nove l s , and the s e cond of the s e ,
The For t unes of Perkin Warb e ck , was pub l ished in 1 8 30 .
I t is to b e
noted a t the outs e t tha t the author exp lains i n her Pr e f a ce " that
P erkin was , in rea l i ty , the los t Duke o f York . "
She evi den t ly was
convin ced th at her hero was Edward the Four th ' s younger s on , Richard ,
Duke o f York , who was imp r i s oned in the Towe r wi th his brothe r , b o th
61
of whom were repor ted to have been murdered s o th at their un cle could
as cend the throne as Richard the Th ird .
Perkin is reared in Spain
by a middle- class mo ther , a Flemin g , who s e Mo orish hus b and DeFaro ,
is a seaf aring man .
The memb e r s of the f ami ly present in S pain are
the mo ther , her beauti ful daugh t er , and Ri chard ' s older cousin ,
Edmund P l an t agene t , s on of Ri chard the Third .
Edmund , a model o f
goodnes s , uns e l fishnes s , cour tesy , and kindne s s , had b e en reared
f a r from court in an is ola ted pri ory by a pries t who had former ly
b een a kn igh t .
Thi s rus ti c , devou t atmo s phere and the comp ani onsh ip
of the b r ave , dedicated pries t had p roduced a young man who was a
p ara gon o f vir tue and b ravery .
In the modes t DeFaro home in Spain ,
youn g Richard h ad a l s o b een b r ou gh t up to value the s imp le vir tues
and the s imp le , hone s t li f e .
P l an tagene t had t augh t him the art o f
war and the nob l e s s e ob l i ge o f ar i s t o cr acy and roya l ty .
Neither o f
the s e two youn g men ever forgo t tha t the ir ultimate d u t y was t o
r e ins t a t e Ri chard as t h e h e i r t o t h e throne o f England , a commi tmen t
wh i ch was to p rove d i s as tr o us f or b o th o f them .
Godwin held that
"every king is , by unavoidab le ne ces s i ty , the enemy o f the human
r a ce" (PJ , I I , 2 3 ) .
He d i d n o t cons ider the l i f e o f a king to b e
an enviab le or happy one , and the more p ower a monar ch a cquired ,
the mo re corrup t he b e came .
Had Perkin b een older and wiser , he would
have lived out his l i f e as a s imp le , private c i tizen .
However , Mary
Shelley does no t emphas ize th is point , p e rhaps b e c au s e it would make
her novel unp opul ar or it would make Perkin less hero i c , but she
p r ovides him with the lovely commoner Monina de Faro , whom he cannot
marry and for whom he longs all the rest o f his life .
The cr own ,
62
needless to s ay , was not worth the sacrifice Richard made in his
e f f o r ts to ob tain it ; but this is a Godwinian point tha t Mary fails
to bring out in the work .
Godwin ' s last novel , Delo raine ( 1 8 3 3 ) , concerns the t ragic
life of a man o f feeling who , b ecause of his unwise marriage to
a young girl whom he knows does no t love him , commi ts a crime of
violence .
Al though there is l i t tle here that is new , there is one
emphasis , new in his f ict ion , to whi ch he devoted one chap ter in
Political Jus tice :
"promises and compa cts are in no s ense the
founda tion of morality .
(PJ , I , 194-195 ) .
The foundation o f morality is j us t i ce "
The keep ing o f promis es " tends t o the welfare o f
in telligent beings , " b u t i t should not blindly b e adhered to if i t
w i l l be inj urious to either par ty .
The effect o f this lack o f
knowledge upon individuals provides Godwin with an opportuni ty to
in troduce an in tricate interweaving o f a tremendous var iety of
promis es between individuals which results in much trouble and
s uf ferin g .
Two years later , Mary ' s f i f th novel appeared , bear ing through­
out the marks of her father ' s influence .
Lodore ( the Ameri can title
was The Beau tiful Widow) deals with a man of f eeling , is set in
contemporary London , and is remarkably simi lar to Godwin ' s Flee twood
( 1 805 ) .
Young Lord Lodore , a high spirited man , had been indulged
and spoiled in his youth and had lit tle concern for anyone ' s wishes
but his own .
He learned from a s chool friend of calm and gen tle
disposition to disregard the opinion of the pub l i c , but it was an
a t t i tude that his nature was no t sui ted to b ear .
Af ter wandering
63
through Europe seeking a reason for living , he returned to his coun try
est ate at age thir ty- two and marr ied a beaut iful , unsophist i.c ated
young gir l , whom he thought was also mature and sincerely in love with
him .
"And here his error began ; he had married one s.o young , that
h e r educat ion , even if i ts foundation had been good , requi red finishing ,
and who , as i t was , had everything to learn . "
16
She was a shallow ,
though t less s o cial but ter f ly , who was emo tionally dependen t on her
mother and cared l i t tle for her husband or infant daugh ter .
Af ter a
comp l i cated s er ies of dis tres s ing even ts caused by his wif e ' s youth
and his excess ive s ens ibility , he left for Amer i ca with his three-yearold daughter , where he lived for twelve years in solitude .
Here he
carried out a p lan " to educate his daugh ter to all the per fec tion
o f which the feminine charac ter is s us cep tible . "
p as s i on , he wished to preven t :
sweetness , honor , and in telligent
unders tanding he worked to cultivate .
f rom Mi l ton ' s Eve (p . 2 8 ) .
Vanity and petty
His chief ideas were drawn
His success was remarkable indeed , but
he did no t l ive t o accompany E thel to England .
His hot temper
c aus ed him to figh t a duel in whi ch he was ki lled . The lovely E thel ,
h owever , re turned to London and unde r the beni gn influence of her aun t
was happily mar ried and united wi th her mother , now a wiser and a be t ter
woman .
Many more aspects o f Godwin ' s ideas on education are explored
here than are s e t for th in any of Mary ' s o ther novels .
Individuals
of all d i f feren t ages--from three to sixty- three--are depi cted in the
process of acquiring knowledge that is b enef i cial to them .
16
The change
Mr s . Percy B . Shelley , The Beau tiful Widow (Philadelphia : T . B .
Pe ter s on and Br o thers , n . d . ) , p . 4 8 . Hereafter cited in the text as
Lodore .
64
in Lady Lodore is worked ou t more car efully than that o f the o ther
char acters , and her reunion wi th her daughter does no t take p lace
un til the clo s ing p ages o f the book .
Th is novel resemb les Mandeville
in that every chara cter is dep icted as being as he is because o f his
education .
Falkner was b egun before the death of Godwin , whi ch o c curred
in 1836 , but Mary did not f inish it un t i l 1 83 7 .
o f her novels .
England .
I t was the las t
The s e t ting is pr imarily rural eighteenth- cen tury
The later novels o f b o th Mary and Godwin introduce lit tle
tha t is new but tend to be variat ions on old themes and o ld t e ch­
niques .
The idea of con tinuing education is emphas ized in the re­
gener at ion o f a man who has commi t ted a cr ime and in the forgiveness o f h i s vengeful pursuer .
The author painstakingly reveals each
character to b e the resul t of e i ther good or b ad elements in his educa­
tion and exper ience .
Again she presents a large variety of charac- .
ters of many different ages .
Mary ' s ideas concerning education dif fered very li ttle at
any period o f her l i fe from thos e of her father .
Her emphas is upon
the law of necess i ty is no t so per s is ten t as Godwin ' s , however , excep t
in the development of her young characters who are growing in to maturity .
Mary seems to imp ly in her novels after Valperga that a mature individual
should exer cise some con trol over his act ions in spite of the law
o f nece s s i ty .
Her
Verney , in The Las t Man , sees his weaknes s es in
education and character and reforms under the inf luence of Adr ian ;
but even though Godwin ' s Charles Mandevi lle in Mandevi lle s ees his
weaknes ses , he does no t resis t the law of necess i ty and reform under
65
the good influences ava ilab le to him , but submi ts to a permanently
mis erab le and psycho tic existen ce .
In her character Lodore Mary
demons t rates that s ome pers onali t ies are so badly damaged by their
educat ion that they never free themselves from i ts influence , but
there are few maj or characters in her later novels who do no t even tually
manage to rise ab ove their suf fer ing to refute , to s ome exten t , the
law of ne ces s i ty .
In working out their ideas concerning education , it b ecomes
eviden t to the reader that Godwin and Mary drew from their per sonal
experiences with each other .
Eu thanas ia ' s educat ion in Valperga
and E thel ' s in Lodore are analo gues of Mary ' s education under Godwin .
And Godwin ' s Fleetwood and Deloraine le arn valuab le less ons concerning
love and human under s tanding from women young enough to be their
dau ghters j us t as Godwin hims e l f came to be influenced by Mary ' s ideas
ab out neces s ity from Cloudesley , in whom the law did no t oper ate ,
on to Deloraine .
I t is also eviden t that they worked and conferred
clos ely toge ther in their trea tment of education af ter 1 830 , for they
le arned that the i r reader s were no t fully comprehending the message
they were trying so hard to impar t-- that education was only the f i rst
s t ep toward per fectib ility , which was a lif e-long pursui t .
For this
reason , the las t two novels of ea ch author emphas ize charac ters o f
a more matur e age i n the process of acquir ing s t ill more educat ion in
order to correct the ir errors and bring greater j us t i ce and happiness
to themse lves and to o thers .
CHAPTER IV
THE ROLE S OF REASON , BENEVOLENCE , AND JUSTICE IN THE NOVELS
Of all the Godwinian concepts , r eason is probably the mos t
complex , and , a s pointed o u t earlier , Godwin cons idered i t the key
to perfectib i l i ty .
as they are . "
To Godwin , i t mean t the ab ility t o see " things .
Th is definition , however , is an overs implif ication ·
that requires exp lana tion .
One def ini tion o f reason sub s cr ib ed to ,
more or less , by many ph ilosophe rs is th at i t is " the capacity to
b ehave cons cious ly in terms of fhe nature o f what is no t o urse lves .
.
.
. reas on is the capacity to b ehave in terms o f the natur e o f the
ob j e c t , that is to s ay , to b ehave obj e c t ively .
cap ac i ty for ob j e ct ivi ty . "
!
Reason is thus our
Reason ' s task is to tes t thinking by
all the knowledge that can be br ought to b ear upon a given s ubj ec t .
A vivid example o f the reasoning process is provided by Caleb
Williams when Caleb , in an effort to educate h imself , inqui red
of his honorable and highly educated mas ter , Mr. Falkland , "how
came Alexander of Macedon to be s urnamed the Great ? "
replied :
"How came it ?
Falkland
Did you never read his his tory ? "
[ Caleb ] : Yes , s i r .
[ Falkland ] : Well , Wi lliams , and could you f ind n o reas on there ?
I could f ind reason why he
[ Caleb ] : Why , I d o no t know , sir .
should b e s o famous ; but every man that is talked of is no t
admired .
Judges d i f fer ab out the mer i t s of Alexander .
Doctor Pri deaux says in his Conne ctions that he deserves
only to be called the Grea t Cut throat ; and the author o f
Tom Jones has wr i t ten a volume , t o prove that h e and all o ther
conquerors ought to be classed wi th Jonathan Wild .
1
John MacMurray , Reason and Emo tion ( London :
Century Co . , 1 9 3 8 ) , p . 19 .
66
D. Apple ton
67
. . . Was ever mortal s o com­
[ Falkland ] : Accursed blasphemy !
p letely the rever se of everything engross ing and s e l f ish?
He formed to h imself a sub l ime image of excellence , and his
only amb i tion was to realize it in his own s tory .
Rememb er
his giving away every thing when he set out upon his grand
expedi tion , . . . reserving for himself nothing but hope .
. . . Examine for yourse lf , and you will f ind Alexander a
model o f honour , gener os i ty , and disinteres tednes s , a man
who for the cul tiva ted liberality of his mind and the
unp ar alle led grandeur o f his projects mus t s t and alone the
spec tacle and admira tion o f all ages of the world .
[ Caleb ] : Ah , s ir !
. . . Was not he the common dis turber of
mankind ? Did not he over run nations that would never
have heard o f him , but for his devas tations ? How many
hundreds o f lives did he s acrifice in his career ? What mus t
I thirik o f his cruelties ; a whole tribe mas s acred f or a crime
commi t ted by their ances tors one hundred and f if ty years
b e fore ; f i f ty thousand s o ld into slavery ; two thousand
crucif ied for their gallan t defense of their country ? Man
is s urely a s trange s o r t o f creature , who never praises any
one more hear tily than him who has s pread des truction and
ruin over the face o f nat i ons !
The way o f thinking you express , Williams , is
[ Falkland ] :
natural enough , and I cannot b lame you f o r i t . But let me
hope that you will be come more lib eral .
The death o f a
hundred thousand men is at f irs t s i gh t very sho cking ;
but what in reality are a hundred thous and such men mo re
than a hundred thousand sheep ?
It is mind , Wi lliams , the
generation of knowledge and virtue that we ough t to love .
This was the p roj e c t o f Alexander ; h e s e t out in a gr eat
undertaking to civilise mankind . . . and , though he was cu t o ff
in the mid s t of his career , we may eas ily per ceive th e vas t e f f e c ts
of his proj ec t .
Grec ian literature and cul t iva t i on . . . followed ,
in nati ons wh i ch be fore had been sunk to the c ondit ion o f b rutes .
Alexander was the builder as no toriously as the des troyer of ci ties .
[ Caleb ] : And yet , s i r , I am afraid that the p ike and the bat tle
axe are not the r i gh t ins trumen ts for making men wise
( Caleb Williams , pp . 110-111 ) .
As they dis cus sed the character o f Alexander , i t be comes evident that
Falkland ' s code of honor prejudiced his opinion and made him unab le to
view Alexander obj ec tively .
Falkland ' s des i re to retain a belief to
wh i ch he has a strong emo tional attachment has b l inded him and preven ted h im from seeing Alexander as he was .
Caleb ' s f inal j udgmen t , that Alexander ' s purpose was good but
his me thod o f achieving i t diab o l i c , i llus trates ano ther pro cess
68
involved in reas oning-- the ab ility t o see the general in the p ar t i cular .
When Caleb ci tes Dr . Pr ideaux and Henry Fieldin g , he points to two
generalizations that are no t completely valid and which illus trate
Godwin ' s theory that all generali zations are only par t ially true .
Human nature and cir cums tance are so diverse that no two individuals
can be accurately pl aced in the s ame general cate gory .
Cer t ainly
Alexander was a great cut- throat and deserved to be classed with
Jonathan Wild , but these clever and amusing s tatemen ts ignore the
fact tha t Alexander had a worthy , if mis gui ded , purpose .
There is yet another important conne ct ion be tween reas on and
Falkland ' s prej ud i ce :
his prej ud i ce was a nece s s i ty becaus e i t
h as b een ins ti lled in him b y his education .
The. en tire chain o f
the thoughts o f an individual and of the resul ting chain o f ac tions-­
whe ther good or b ad , wise o r unwis e--are the produc t o f neces s i ty .
" Trace back the chain as far as you please , every a c t a t whi ch you
arrive is necessary" (PJ , I , 3 7 8 ) .
In his las t nove l , Deloraine , Godwin makes a s i gnifi cant
demonstration concerning this doctrine whi ch he may have felt was
indispens able to a more complete under s t anding of the law .
De loraine ,
a widower in his fort ies , had marr ied a beaut i ful you�g girl whos e
parents had preven ted her marr iage t o a young man in their nei ghb or­
hood in order to restore fhe f ami ly honor and for tune .
The daugh ter ,
Margare t , was s o hear t broken that the p aren ts re lented at the las t
moment and called off the marr iage .
They also wro te to William ,
Mar garet ' s cho i ce , t o re 1:urp. to EIJ.gland f rom Canada , where h e had
gone to seek a new life and forget Margare t .
He returne d , bu t his
69
ship was wrecked as i t approached the English coas t .
gar e t and her p aren ts watched the s inking of the ship .
In fac t , MarAlthough
William was res cued by ano ther ship and surv ived , Margare t and her
p aren ts thought he had drowned .
Some t ime l ater , Deloraine met
Mar gar e t and married her , even though he knew that she did no t love
William finally succeeded in ge t t ing b ack to England , lo cated
him.
Margare t , and learned of her marriage .
Before leaving her forever ,
h e was at temp ting to ge t one las t glimpse of her without her knowledge
when they ac ciden tally came face to face .
Mar garet dropped senseles s
to the gr ound and William kne lt bes ide her to revive her .
When
Deloraine arrived on the s cene , the two were s i t ting on the grass
gazing happ ily a t each other and talkin g .
and sho t William fatally .
He leaped from h i s hor se
Mar gare t exp ired immediately , and Deloraine
was haunted by this cr ime and chas ed by English author i ties and
Wi lli am ' s ven geful friend unt i l the end of the novel .
He eventually
f ound peace and s e curi ty in Holland , where his young fr iend Thornton
a ttemp ted to pers uade him that his crime was no crime at all because
i t was
an irres is t ible ne ces s i ty , and f lowed from an uncon tro lab le
impulse .
There was no alloy of mal i ce or forethough t .
It
had in i t n o mixture of infirmi ty o r weaknes s , but merely
s t amp ed me a man in the true s t and mos t honourab le s ens e .
Deloraine , however , was not deceived by this ar gument .
I t is no t that I was for a momen t dece ived by the gener ous
s oph is try of Thorn ton [his friend and s on-in-law ] .
. . . I
knew that the s t a te o f a moral b ein g admits not of an excuse
f ounded on the idea of his b eing hurried into an act perni­
This
cious and des tructive , wi thout the power of resis tance .
doctrine I was we ll aware would open th e door to endless and
profl igate abus e . An accountab le crea ture mus t learn to b e
wat ch ful over h i s s teps , t o b e dis trus t ful of himse lf , and t o
70
b e at all times upon his guard as agains t an enemy eager to
lead him astray .
. . . It is incredib le how much may b e effect­
ed by a hab i t o f vigilance and dist rus t ; and he who does no t
practice this hab i t , mus t expect to fall in to deplorab le and
unpardonab le errors . He who allows himself to talk o r t o
dream of a resis tless temp tat ion , by s o doing enters a t once
in the catalogue of living b eings for a b eas t , rather than
a man . 2
As Deloraine p onders his conversation with Thornton , we are made
aware that Thornton ' s kind and toleran t view of the crime has made
i t easier for Deloraine to live wi th i ts memory , but he maintains
until the very end tha t no enlightened man of reas on should of
necess i ty commi t a cr ime agains t his fellow man .
Benevolence , the next s tep in Godwin ' s s cheme , is also
governed by the law of necess i ty .
Reason , in i tself , can no t be
trans lated in to action since i t is merely a comp arison and b alancing
o f differen t fee lings .
However , by the f orce of the emo tion aroused
by the recognition o f the true s tate of things , the reasoning
individual is inheren tly compelled to unders tand and love his fellow
b e ings .
When this love and unders tanding move the individual to take
b enevolen t act ion in behal f o f his fellowman , he has arrived at the
s tate o f benevolence .
3
Disinteres ted b enevolence ("disin terested"
meaning the lack o f sel fish mo t ives ) is thus the immediate result
o f reas on .
Once an individual is in possession o f knowledge and has
learned to view life without undue concern for himself , he is on the
high road to pe rfec tibili ty .
2
william Godwin , De loraine , a Tale , I I I (London :
1 8 3 3 ) , 2 3 1- 2 35 . Hereaf ter cited in the tex t .
3
John Middle ton Murry , Heroes o f Though t (N . Y . :
Messner , Inc . , 1 9 3 8 ) , pp . 2 49-250 .
T . Thomas ,
Julian
71
An excep tionally c lear example o f this process occurs in
Mary ' s Fortunes o f Perkin Warbeck .
Ri chard , the p retender , was
in England , pursued by Henry IV ' s agen ts .
He had j us t es caped the
tower and was wandering on foo t near London when he came upon the
hut o f Jane Shore .
Three o ther friends who were plo t ting to free
him f rom the Tower were in the hut when he arrived .
The sound of the
dawn p atrol was heard approaching , and they all urged Richard to
t ake the one avai lab le horse and es cape to the sea where a ship was
wai t in g to take him away from Engl and .
Richard took the horse , but
ins tead of going toward the sea he wen t toward the sound o f the horsemen .
He at temp ted to reveal himself to the King ' s forces and be
taken so that they would no t con tinue searching and capture his
f riends in the hut .
In spite o f his efforts , the sound died away
and he was no t cap tured unt i l later in the day .
As a resul t o f this
b enevolen t a ct ion , he was not ab le to reach the ship and event ually
lost his life .
The s ta te of Go dwinian b enevolence is one of the mos t difficul t s t ates to at tain becaus e i t involves man ' s ambivalent at titude
toward his fellowman .
" I f s elf-in terest and benevolence pull him
in dif ferent direc tions , how is he to de cide b e tween them? " 4
Godwin
readi ly acknowledges that all men are interested in thems elves and
that this is natural and no rmal .
But when self -interes t is dominant
and gre atly exceeds a man ' s in tere s t in the wel fare o f o ther men ,
i t is d amaging to the char ac ter and endangers the happiness o f those
4 n . H. Munro , Godwin ' s Mo ral Philos ophy :
William Go dwin (London :
an In terpret a t i on o f
Oxford Univers i ty Pres s , 1 9 5 3 ) , p . 40 .
72
wi th whom he comes in contact .
Some men may even be benevolent in
order to give themselves p leasure by ob taining the approval o f
s ociety .
They are also able to avoid the anguish of a gui l ty con­
s cience .
Mr . Falkland in Caleb Williams is a case in poin t here .
He was thought by nearly all who knew him to be the mos t b enevolent
His kindness of spir i t originated from two mo tives :
of men .
his
s incere love for his fellowman and his in tens e l ove for his own
honor .
Since his self-love was the s tronger o f the two , he was thrown
into a blind r age whenever his honor was threatened .
Had Deloraine
arrived at a s tate of dis in teres ted benevolence , he would never have
c ommi t ted his crime and has tened the de ath o f his wife .
When he
f ound William and Mar garet together , he would have dismounted and
inquired calmly into the mat ter .
He would have learned the identity
of William and would have remembered that thes e two young people had
been separated by Margare t ' s proud and amb i tious par ents .
Whatever
the outcome of the tale from this point on , Del oraine would have
taken a toleran t and benevolen t attitude toward this compromis ing
episode had he thought of Mar garet ' s wel fare before he though t of
h is own .
Again and again bo th Godwin and Mary show that p as s ion and
sel f- love are two of the maj or barriers to reas on and b enevolence .
Every maj or male character in Godwin ' s novels , wi th the excep t ion
o f S t . Leon , commits a crime caused by his p ass ionate self-love .
Mary ' s Frankens tein was also del4ded by p as s ion , but his was a
p as s ion for knowledge .
He wished to bene f i t the world , i t is true ,
but his passionate devo tion to learning the s e cre t o f life emanated
73
from his desire to b ring glory and honor to himself .
He tells his
sad and horri fying tale to Robert Wal ton , who is searching for the
Northwest Passage , in an effort to warn Walton agains t the over­
zealous pursuit of knowledge .
Frankenstein also exer cised Go dwinian
benevolence when he destroyed the monste r ' s mate .
Perhaps the two
uns i gh tly crea tures might have brou ght good , not ill , to mankind ,
as Frankenstein intended they would ; but s ince he was no t assured
of this happy outcome , his benevolence cons is ted in the fact that
he refused to risk the safety and happ iness of the whole human race
for the happiness of the unfor tunate being he had created .
Les t a
race o f malevolent ti tans be unleashed upon the world , he d id not
give life t o the mate and s ank her body in the o cean .
Once reas on has been put in to effect by an act o f disin terested
benevolen ce , j us t i ce immediately follows ; and the individual who has
progressed this f ar finds j oy , peace , and self approval in knowing
that he has done a kindness and made a s tep toward perfection .
Al though the des t ru ction of the mons ter ' s mate enabled Frankenstein
to deal j us tly with the world , he was never to know this j oy becaus e
h i s injus tice to the mons ter , the mons ter ' s vict ims , and hims elf was
irrevo cable .
The momen t of tru th for Frankens tein came when he s aw
the creature come to life .
horror and fled .
He himself , the creat o r , was fi lled wi th
From this t ime on he realized tha t the poor being
would be hunted , reviled , and treated worse than an animal .
When he
fir s t beheld its uglines s , he did not realize that the o uts ide
appear ance did no t indicate its real nature .
No t until af ter the
murder of li t tle William and the fiend ' s accoun t of his own life and
74
development did the s cien tist unders tand that his crea tion was indeed
like man , longing for human comp anionship and earnes tly des iring
to be a good and useful member of s o ciety .
The more Frankenstein
learned o f his creat ion , the more his agony incre as ed ; for he had
thoughtle s s ly put in to mo tion a living force he could no t control .
He alone was respons ib le for the welfare of this being , and he had
no t had the fores ight or the power to p rovide for i ts future .
"In
a f i t o f en thus ias tic madness I created a rational creature , and
was bound towards him , to assure , as far as was in my power , his
happiness and well-being" (p . 2 1 7 ) .
This terrible tragedy for the
mons t e r and all his victims had to be enacted before Frankenstein
had suf f i cien t knowledge to see the si tuation as i t was .
gradually pene tr ated his thinking :
The truth
his pride had led him to at tempt
more than was humanly pos s ib le , and in s o doing he had brought
suffering and death to all those he loved .
Neve rtheless he took a
further s tep toward perfe c tion in attemp t in g to show his fatal
mis t ake to ano ther man very like himsel f , the exp lorer Robe rt
Walton , who was ab out to sacrifice the lives o f his crew by going
on to the Nor th Pole .
The men obj e cted to proceeding any further
in the search , and had Walton cont inued , he would not only have
violated their right of private j ud gment but all would probably
have l o s t their lives .
Frankenstein , in a thoroughly perfectible
s t ate j us t before his death , was success ful in enabling Wal ton to
make the decision to deal j us t ly with his crew by turning the ship
toward England and home .
Concerning j us t ice , Godwin held that s o ciety ' s ins t i tutions
75
are the greates t enemy of j us t ice .
damaging is governmen t .
Of these ins t itutions the mos t
In their novels bo th Go dwin and Mary deal
primarily with the evils of monarchy and aris tocr acy , but Godwin
main tained that no form of government is good and only the mos t
necessary laws should b e enacted and enforced .
We have s een that
the maj or weaknes s of many of the characters in these novels is a
highly developed s ense o f aristocratic honor .
A sense o f honor is
des irab le and necess ary , but to be obsessed by it and defend i t at
any cos t brings to his des truct ion one charac ter af ter ano ther in
the novels .
Monar chy and its accompanying aris t o cracy are respons ible
for this unre as onab le striving af ter honor .
Duellin g , wh ich Godwin deplored , was one me thod that privileged
men used to de fend their honor .
Falkland , in Caleb Williams , had
cul t ivated his character to such a high s tate that he refused to
f ight a duel during his s t ay in I t aly .
Because of his refusal ,
tragedy was aver ted and happiness and friendship were the outcome
for all concerned .
But such was no t the case with Lodore in Mary ' s
Lodore , o r The Beau tiful Widow .
The maj or reason for Lodore ' s
flight to America with his daughter , E the l , was his dis grace for
having refused a challenge to duel .
He would no t fight be cause his
challenger was his own unacknowledged s on , Coun t Cas imir .
Lodore
thus wi thdrew for twelve years into " the wi lderness of the Illinois"
before deciding to re turn to Engl and.
On the return trip , Lodore
and E thel s topped in New York , whe re a crude , b lus tering army
o f f i cer reco gnized Lodore and shamed him pub l icly for refus ing the
challenge .
Af te r s t riking the o f f i cer , Lodore was killed in the duel
76
whi ch followed .
In this par t i cular ins t ance the principal victim
was Lodore himself .
His only years o f happiness were those spen t
in his fores t co ttage wi th E thel , his books , and three b lack s ervants .
Because o f his pass ionate nature and overwrought sensibility , ano ther
resul t of aris tocratic tradition , he was no t fit ted for life in
s o ciety .
He was , in f ac t , incapab le of dealing j us tly with hims elf .
Godwin.' s f i f th novel , Cloudesley , is a s tudy of the evil ef fects
of the aris to cra tic sys tem on the ar i s t o crats themselves .
The open-
ing remarks in Pol i t i cal Jus tice to the chap ter enti t led " The Moral
Effects o f Aris tocracy" are relevant here .
The features of aris tocrati cal ins titution are p rincipally
two : privilege , and an aggravated monopoly o f weal th
(P J , II , 9 3 ) .
The maj o r portion o f Cloudes ley concerns the life of Lord
Danvers , a younger s on who came into the family title and es tates
upon the death of his elder brothe r , Ar thur .
Like Prince Ar thur o f
old , this Arthur was from ch ildhood a paragon of vir tue , wisdom ,
and manly trai ts .
Richard , the younger bro ther , did no t hate or
envy him be caus e o f the mutual love and respect they shared .
But
Richard was made cruelly aware of the difference between them , whi ch
he explains to his s e cretary , Meadows .
My f a ther and mother direc ted all their a t ten tion to the
welfare and advan tage o f their eldes t s on . I was s eldom j udged
wor thy to be made the sub j ect of a smile , a caress , the small­
est encouragemen t . I seemed only t o s tand in the way , t o be a
being that had intruded himself into a world where he was not
wanted .
I t seemed as if we [ the two b r o thers ] were born of different
cas tes . He was to be the lord of the palaces ; I was to be
launched in life at the expens e of two or three thous and
pounds , or to languish out my exis tence on an annuity o f a few
77
hundreds ; and even that reluctantly torn f rom the vas t heaps ,
whi ch were carefully laid up for this exclusive favouri te
of my parents and o f for tune . S
Both young men wen t with Lord Marborough to aid Pr ince Eugene of
Arthur
Aus tria defend his country from the Turkish invaders .
married at the end of the campaign , but was killed in a duel before
the b irth of his s on .
The mo ther , Irene , also died .
Richard now
s aw his oppor tunity to inherit the t i tle and es tates o f his f amily .
He persuaded C loudesley , their manager and Irene ' s guard , to marry
Irene ' s maid , Eudo cia , and accep t the respons ibility for Julian ,
Arthur ' s infan t s on .
Richard then re turned to England and inher-
i ted the title and proper ties of his brother , but mis for tune and
gui l t made him miserab le to the end of his days .
Primogeni ture
is the maj or obj ect of Godwin ' s a t tack .
In the meantime , Cloudes ley and Eudocia p roved to b e excellent
parents to Julian .
They lived the simple life o f farmers , but when
Julian grew o lder Cloudes ley moved the family in order to place
Julian in a more appropriate s chool environment and give him a
b e t ter education .
Julian is one o f the f ew Godwinian characters to
r e ce ive an education that f i t ted him for life .
His tutor was a
univers ity s tuden t , but his friends came from all walks of l i f e .
When Cloudesley fir s t came o n the s cene , h e was i n prison f o r
a deb t no t h i s own , and he had been released through Arthur ' s inf luence .
Cloudes ley ' s only backward s tep away from perfectib il i ty
o ccurred when he conspired wi th Richard to cheat the infant s on o f
5
william Godwin , Cloudes ley : A Tale , I (London :
and Richard Ben tley , 1830) , 1 1 8 , 121 .
Henry Colburn
78
Ar thur out of his b ir thright .
As Julian app roached manhood and showed
s i gns of being a splendid and admirable young man , Cloudes ley re turned
t o England to try t o persuade Richard t o res tore the ti tle and proper ty
to Julian .
Richard no t only refused but endeavored to place the b l ame
for the crime on Cloudes ley .
Af ter Cloudes ley ' s return to I taly ,
Richard relented and sent Meadows , his s e cr e t ary , to inform Julian
o f his iden t i ty .
In his efforts to find Julian , Cloudesley was
killed ; but he had brough t j us tice to Julian , repentance to Richard ,
and new love and hope to Borromeo , a b lun t , uncompromis ing , middleclass mis anthrope , who declared :
Yes , the true sys tem for governing the world , for fashioning
the tender spirits of youth , for smo o thing the pi llow of age ,
is love . No thing else could have made a Cloudesley ; n o thing
else could have made a Julian . I and Lord Danver s have been
the de linquents ; he for b ase and selfish ends ; I from an
erroneous j udgmen t ( I I I , 342-343 ) .
This novel provides one o f the cleares t examples o f the
operation of all the s teps in Godwin ' s s cheme of perfect ibil ity .
The suf fering and hardsh ips o f these individuals was s e t in mo t ion
by the inj us t i ce done to Richard by his p arents and by the law o f
p rimo geni tur e .
But goodness i s made to come out o f evi l through
the developmen t of Cloudes ley ' s charac ter .
His quie t , cons is tent
b enevolen ce , p ract i ced over a long period of years , b rought happiness into the lives of all thos e who were close to him .
If monar chy and aris tocrary were inj urious to the aris tocrats ,
how much more damaging were they t o the common people !
Becau$e he
was a commoner , Caleb Williams was seldom given an hone s t hearing
when he was brough t into court .
The poor farmer Hawkins and his
son were exe cu ted for Falkland ' s cr imes on the f lims ie s t of
79
circums tan tial eviden ce .
The evi ls of an ar istocratic s o ciety are an
ever-re curring theme in Godwin ' s novels .
But i t was Mary who deal t
wi th the idea o f inj us tice on a broad and comprehens ive s cale .
Her
novel The Las t Man , written pr imarily as a tribute to Shelley , p resents the fullest portrait of Shelley in her novels in the character
Adr ian .
The s tory begins in England a t a t ime o f great p o l i ti cal
unres t and at a t ime when rumors of plague come from various p ar ts
o f the world .
The f ir s t vic tim of the p lague to die on English
s o il arrived on an American vessel shipwrecked j us t o f f the coas t .
" I t was whispered that he had d ied o f the p lague " (p . 1 5 7 ) .
The
nature of the p lague is , at first , enigmatic ; but as it moves from
the far Eas t , to the Mediterranean , to Amer i ca , to Ireland , to
Fran ce , and finally t o England , the reader realizes tha t this plague
is inj us tice , espe cially politi cal inj u s t i ce .
The Amer ican who
perished on the English coas t represen ts England ' s oppress ion o f
Amer i ca and war with h e r colonis ts .
This interpre ta t ion o f the plague is not immediately obvious
and requires explanation .
The disease , we are told , was no t
communi cable but was caused by infection in the air .
When Lionel
Verney , the narrator o f The Las t Man , was prepar ing to go to the
aid o f a man who was dying of the plague , the by-s tanders warned
him agains t it because they thought it was con tagious .
Verney
replied :
"Do you not know , my friends , . . . tha t the Ear l himself , now
Lord Pro te c tor , vis its daily , no t only tho s e prob ab ly infected
by this diseas e , but the hosp i t als and pest houses , goin g
near , and even touching the s i ck? y e t he was never in b e t ter
heal th . You labour under an entire mis take as to the nature
80
o f the p lague ; but do not fear , I do not ask any o f you to
accomp any me , nor to believe me , until I r e turn s af e and s ound
from my patient" (p . 1 87 ) .
In Valperga , the novel preceding The Las t Man , the dis illus i oned
prophetess makes the following speech to Euthanasia :
Lis ten to me , wh ile I announce to you the e ternal and victo­
rious inf luence o f evil , whi ch circulates like air about us ,
clinging to our f lesh like a poisonous garmen t , eating int o
us , and des troying us . Are you blind , that you s ee it no t ?
. Look around . I s there n o t war , violation o f treaties ,
and hard-hear ted crue l ty ? Look at the s ocie ties of men ;
are no t our fellow creatures tormen ted one by the other in
an endless cir cle of pain ? Some shut up in iron cages , s tarved
and des troyed ; ci ties float in blood , and the hopes of the husband­
man are manured by his own mangled limb s . . . ( I I I , 44) .
Of the many incidents in the book that conf irm this interp re tation of the plague , the mos t s triking one takes p lace in
London , where Verney has gone to aid Adrian to comfort and help
the stricken peop le .
He had worked tireless ly until late at night .
Upon returning home , he found a frightened crowd gathered before
his door .
Wi th swi f t alarm , afraid to ask a s ingle ques tion , I leapt
from my horse ; the spe c tators s aw me , knew me , and in awful
s i len ce divided to make way f or me . I sna t ched a light , and
rushing up s tairs , and hear ing a groan , without reflection I
threw open the door o f the f irs t room that p resented itse l f .
I t was quite dark ; but , as I s tep t within , a pernicious s cent
ass ailed my s enses , producing s i ckening qualms , whi ch made their
way to my very heart , while I felt my leg clasped , and a groan
repeated by the person that held me . I lower ed my lamp , and
s aw a ne gro hal f clad , wri thing under the agony of disease ,
while he held me wi th a convulsive grasp . With mixed horror
and impatience I s trove to disengage mys el f , and fell on
the sufferer ; he wound his naked fes ter ing arms round
me , his face was close to mine , and his breath , dea th-laden ,
entered my vi tals . For a momen t I was over come , my head was
b owed wi th aching nausea . . . (pp . 244-245 ) .
Brit ish human i t ar i ans had f ought for many years to abo lish s lavery .
In 1 80 7 , the British slave trade was made illegal , but i t was no t
81
until 1 8 3 3 , seven years af ter the publi cation o f The Las t Man , that
s l avery was offi cially abolished in England and all its possess ions .
The above excerp t clearly demons t rates the loathing with whi ch
Mary viewed the ens lavement of the b lack people .
The pollution
in the air wh ich caus ed the p lague was inj u s tice--evil .
Throughout the novel , almo s t every f orm of inj us t i ce is exposed , among all classes .
The inhumane condi tions o f the p risons
and hospitals are des cribed , and a comp ar ison of inj us t i ce in the
c i ty is made with that in the country .
The plague was no t in London alone , i t was every where . . . .
When once the dis ease was introduced into the rural dis tricts ,
i ts ef fects appeared more horrible , mor e exigent , and more
d i f f i cult to cure , than in towns . There was a companionship
in suffering there , and , the neighbours keeping cons tant
wat ch on each o ther , and inspired by the active benevolence
o f Adr ian , succour was aff orded , and the path of des truction
smo o thed . But in the country , among the s cat tered farm­
houses , in lone cot tages , in f ields , and barns , tragedies
were acted harrowing to the s oul , uns een , unheard , unno t i ced
(p . 1 9 3 ) .
The at t i tudes of the peo p le toward inj us t i ce are briefly exp lained as falling into three ca tegor ies .
The firs t group was com-
posed o f thos e "who b owed the ir heads in res ignation , or at leas t
in obedience" to P rovidence .
The next grot>.p treated i t casually
and s o ugh t to harden thems elves to it by indulging in enter tainment or licentiousness .
The members of the las t group--the good ,
the pruden t , and the wise--labored benevolen tly to r elive suffering
and inj us tice (p . 19 7 ) .
As
the tale draws to a close , all the prin cipal charac ters
s till alive and a few o ther survivors begin their j ourney to I taly ,
where they feel they will have a b e t ter chance to live .
In France ,
82
however , religious dissent causes a divis ion b e tween them , f ight ing ,
and fur ther loss o f l ife .
"During the whole progress o f the p lague ,
the teachers o f religion were in possess ion o f great power ; a power
o f good , if r ight ly directed , or of incal culab le mis chie f , if
fana ti cism or in toleran ce guided their ef forts " (p . 2 7 3 ) .
On the way
to Swi t zerland and I taly , all the members of the little group
p erish , one by one , except Verney and Adr ian , who are immune to the
p lague .
Adrian , however , was drowned , and Verney alone was left to
tell the tale .
The Las t Man is by far the mos t comprehens ive and impress ive
trea tment of the subj e c t of j us t i ce to be f ound in any of the novels
of e i ther au thor .
Caleb Williams .
Go dwin , however , opened the way to this theme in
His great concern to show the fallib il i ty o f all
men and the need for j us ti ce a t all levels of s o ciety is evident
throughout the work , and especially in the fact that he wrote two
conclus ions for the nove l .
I n one , Caleb was defeated i n his
confron t ation in cour t wi th Falkland ,
In prison Caleb f inally los t
his memory and could no t unders tand why s o many people came t o tell
him that Falkland was dead .
The conclus i on tha t Godwin evidently
preferred and used depicts Falkland ' s confess ion o f his crime ,
h is repentan ce , and death .
Bu t Caleb lives on , tor tured by the
realiza tion tha t his curios i ty and des ire to dis tinguish himself
have caus ed the death o f a man who is more benevolent and j us t than
himsel f .
Caleb cons idered Falkland a great man , who swerved from
the p ath of per fectib il ity only once .
His guil ty cons cience alone
was sufficien t punishment , and Caleb ' s pursui t of him had des troyed
83
one o f the fines t agents of j us ti ce in the land.
Godwin lamented the deaths of all truly great men and felt
that the graves o f such persons should have s ome inexpens ive but
dis tinguishing mark to remind thos e who pas sed by to remember and
imi tate their goodness .
I t is impossible to calculate how much o f good perishes , when
a great and excellen t man dies . I t is owing to this calami ty
o f dea th , that the world for ever is , and in some degree for
eve r mus t be , in i ts infancy . 6
It is imp o s s ible to es timate how much Mary learned from her
father about life and human personality , but her deb t to him was
very great .
Bo th were dedicated and commit ted to the purpose of trying
to bring about j us tice in the land.
p roblem of j us ti ce was reas on .
Godwin felt that the key to the
He himself had the s ame relen tles s
curios i ty tha t mo tiva ted young Caleb Williams to a t temp t to uncove r
F alkland ' s secre t .
Godwin was possessed by pass ionate desire to
know the mo tivations behind the act ions of men , and he f e l t that once
these mo t ivations were under s tood , benevolence would be the inevi table
result s ince individuals themse lves are se ldom respons ible f or their
mo t ivations becaus e o f the l aw o f nece s s i ty .
Take , for examp le , Mary ' s Lodore , who was killed in a duel
by an Ameri can army o f f i cer .
This officer had been educated to
tre a t all cowardly individuals with violence and disrespe c t , and he
cons idered Lodore a coward .
The o f f i cer did no t know , however , that
Lodore s truck the young man who challenged him to a duel f or flir ting
6
p . 10 .
william Godwin , Es s ay on Sepulchres (London :
W. Miller , 1809 ) ,
84
with his wife .
Furthermo re , the o f f i cer did not know tha t the young
man was Lodore ' s own s on , a suf fi cient reas on for Lodore ' s rej ection
of the challenge .
Both Lodore and the off i cer were men who could no t
control their pass ions , s o they fought and Lodore was killed .
Godwin ' s
pronouncemen t on this si tuation would have been that they fought
b e c ause neither unders tood the o ther or his mo tivations .
Had they
unders tood or s topped to consider that there might be o ther r eas ons
than those immediately obvious , they would no t have f ough t .
On the o ther hand , Mary ' s respons e to her characters would have
b een dif feren t .
She would have reasoned that i t is seldom possib le
for people to unders tand each other well enough to a ct j us tly ,
especially upon shor t acquaintan ce .
Because o f tqis ever-present
lack o f knowledge , love mus t come before r eason , not af ter i t .
In
o ther words , man mus t learn to love his fellowman even when he
canno t unders tand the reasons for his ac tions .
If Lodore had
possessed the spir i t o f b r o therly love , he would have ignored the
r idiculous insult of this p e t ty , ho t-headed o f f i cer and refused to
f i gh t him since the duel endangered the lives of b o th .
Some crit i cs
mi ght sugges t that this aspect o f Mary ' s philosophy was derived. from
Shelley ' s influence , but I do no t think this is a f air es timate of
her mind and spirit .
Mary did not have the lo gical , rational
mental s e t of her father ; she would not require an explanation before
she felt benevolence for her fellowman nor would she r equire i t o f her
character s .
To put love before reason was a thoroughly natural pos i t ion
for her to t ake and one whi ch was also imp l i cit in her mo ther ' s
wri tings .
In this regard only did Mary ' s philos ophy concerning reason
85
and benevolence differ from her father ' s .
She did not dis count
reas on ; she simply felt that it was no t the key to per fectib ility-­
the ult imate goal of b o th the f ather and daughter .
CHAPTER V
AESTHETIC CONS IDERATIONS OF GENRE , POINT OF VIEW ,
SETTING , AND PLOT
It has been demons tra ted that b o th Godwin and Mary wrote
their novels wi th a definit e purpose in mind whi ch Godwin exp ress ed
in his preface to Caleb Williams
•
. . . i t was proposed in . . . the following work , to comprehend ,
as far as the progress ive nature o f a s ingle story would allow ,
a general review o f the modes o f dome s t i c and unrecorded
despotism by which man be comes the des troyer o f man . I f the
author shall have taugh t a valuable lesson , without sub tracting
from the intere s t and pass ion by wh ich per formances for this
s ort ought to be charac teri zed , he will have reason to congratu­
l a te himself upon the vehicle he has cho s en . l
As a widely r ead man , Godwin was well aware what the requirements
for a novel ,
"
a
performance of this s or t , " ough t to be .
The idea
was no t new , for his friend Thomas Holcrof t had illus trated his
political ideas in a novel Anna S t . Ives in 1 7 9 2 , and there were
few novels wri t ten up to this t ime wh ich were not to some degree
novels of purpos e .
But Godwin and his daughter were unique in
that their basic ideas had been s t ated f ir s t in a formal treatise
and much later in the highly imaginative poe try o f Shel ley .
Bo th
father and daughter cons cious ly aimed at a more democratic form
in making a s incere , though not always success ful , effort to appeal
to " the corrnno n reader . "
Since Godwin ' s earlies t novels , writ ten ten
years be fore Caleb Williams , had had lit tle success , Politi cal Jus tice
1
William Godwin , Caleb Williams (London :
Richard Ben tley , 1 8 3 1 ) , pp . xix-xx.
86
Henry Colburn and
87
was his fir s t success ful work o ther than arti cles and columns he had
wri t ten for periodicals .
b een long and hard .
His s truggle for success as a writer had
Bo th he and Mary had als o b een witnesses to
Shelley ' s sear ch for an audience
2
and were keenly aware of the dif f i culty
o f commanding a large reading pub lic .
Thus , from the beginning , they
were highly cons cious art i s t s who r ealized that their t e chniques were
as impor t ant as their themes in attrac ting reader s .
By the time Mary
b egan to write Frankenstein in 1 816 , Godwin had three successful
novels in print and was at work on a f our th .
He had already developed
h is own aes thetic values regarding fiction and had attemp ted many
techniques to accomplish his ends .
Godwin lef t no work espe cially des igned to explain his techniques as a wri ter of fiction o ther than the pref aces to his novels ,
comments in l e t ters , and o ther prose works .
However , Edward Bulwer-
Lyt ton , a younger con temporary who owes much to the novel techniques
of Godwin , wrote in 1838 "On Art in Fiction , " an ess ay dealing exp l i ci tly with the various p ar ts o f the novelis t ' s craf t , s ome of
whi ch he had obvious ly observed in the works o f Godwin .
Ar t in f i c tion , as Ly tton s aw i t , was for the sake o f making
the wri ter ' s inten tion clear to the reader . Such an a t ti tude
towards the ar t of fiction as is f ound in Per cy Lubbo ck ' s
Craf t of Fi ction would b e incomprehensible t o Ly t ton . In The
Craft of Fi ction , though the author tries to avoid i t , the
emphasis leads one to b elieve that Madame Bovary is a greater
book than War and Peace because the French novel is superior
in form to the great Russ ian one . 3
2
I an Jack , "The Poe t and his Pub lic-- I I I : Shelley ' s Sear ch
for Readers , " The Lis tener , 5 8 (June 6 , 1 9 57 ) , pp . 917�9 1 8 ,
3
Harold M. Wat ts , "Lyt ton ' s Theories of Pros e Fic tion , " PMLA ,
5 0 (193 5 ) , 2 7 4-2 7 5 .
88
Godwin ' s j udgment in this ins tan ce would have b een the s ame as
Ly t ton ' s .
Since Godwin believed that vir tue was virtue only s o
l ong as the motive prompt ing i t was virtuous and moral , he excluded
from the realm of art any imaginative efforts that did not s erve the
i deal-- that did not have the r igh t moral tendency .
Bu t i t is to Flee twood that we mus t turn in order to s ee what
a careful , cons cious literary artis t Godwin was .
When Fleetwood
w as fir s t pub lished in 1805 , it contained a pre face in which the
author class ifies his three exi s t ing novels in three different
categor ies .
He s ta tes tha t his reason f or wr it ing these different
types of novels was to avoid repeat ing hims el f .
Caleb Williams was a s tory o f very surpr 1s 1ng and uncommon
events , but whi ch were s upposed to b e entirely within the laws ·
and es tab lished course o f nature .
. . The s tory of S t . Leon
is of the miraculous class ; and its design to "mix human
feelings and pass ion with incredib le s ituations , and thus
render them impressive and interest ing . " 4
•
Dur ing the five-year interval be tween S t . Leon and Flee twood , he
had learned f rom s ome "fas tidious readers "
. . . that both these t ales are in a vicious s tyle o f wri tin g ;
. . . that the s t ory w e canno t believe , we are . . . called
upon to hate ; and that even the adven tures o f the hone s t
s ecre tary , who was fir s t heard of ten year s ago , a r e s o much
out o f the usual road , that no t one r eader in a million can
ever fear they will happen to hims e l f .
The third category , Fleetwood , " consis ts o f such adventures , as f or
the mos t part have o ccurred to at leas t one half of the Englishmen
now exis ting , who are of the s ame rank of life as my her o" (pp . xiv-xv) .
4
Godwin ' s quo tation marks prob ab ly ind i cate a quo tation f rom a
conversation wi th Co leridge , who was a f requen t vis itor in the Godwin
home , or from a lecture he had heard Coleridge deliver .
89
The one category omit ted from Godwin ' s clas s i f i ca tion s cheme
is that which he had not yet at tempted and into which Mandeville
and Cloudsley fit--the his torical novel .
His preface to Cloudesley
(1830) cont ains a statemen t regarding his tory in whi ch he main­
tains that men undoub tedly ob tain s ome knowledge of nat ions from
his tory but "of the character o f individuals almost no thing . "
Fur thermore , " individual his tory and biography are mer ely guesses
in the dark . "
His torical fi ction is mor e truth ful and dependab le
than that which is "drawn from s ta tements , do cuments and l e t ters
wri t ten by tho s e who were actually engaged in the s cene , " expecially
when the fiction is writ ten by a "mas terly hand " ( I , vi-vii ) .
Mary ' s novels f all into similar categories , al though she com­
b ined Godwin ' s types a t the outset o f her career .
Frankens tein
not only belongs to the miraculous class o f St . Leon , but i t is
also , like Caleb Williams , a surpr ising s tory o f uncommon events
operating according to the laws of nature .
Once we have accep ted
the fact tha t Fr ankens tein has f ashioned and given life to a
mons trous human being , we are no longer called upon to exer cise "a
willing suspension of disbelief " b e cause the f o r ces affecting the
characters are a ll too true to l i fe .
i lar pattern :
The Las t Man f ollows a sim­
after we admi t the s e t ting o f the twenty-f irs t
century and a plague that is to exterminate the human race , the
natural and s o cial laws o f nineteen th- century England determine
nearly all o ther aspects of the nove l .
Valperga and Perkin Warbe ck ,
b o th his tori cal novels , are more near ly what is today called
fictionali zed b i ography than Godwin ' s Mandeville and Cloudes ley ,
90
whi ch represen t their his torical periods faithfully but do no t include
any his torical figures among their maj or characters .
Mary ' s l as t
two novels , Lodore and Falkner , are o f the same typ e as Godwin ' s
Fleetwood and Deloraine , whi ch deal wi th the contempo rary s o cial
s cene of England ' s upper classes developed by " common and ordinary
adventure s " that "mul titudes of readers o f his own day have exper ienced . "
In class i fying the works o f Godwin and Mary in twentie th-century
cri tical terms , Nor throp Frye ' s dis cus s ion of prose fict ion is
expe cially relevant .
5
The term novel , he says , has be come a cat ch-
all term des ignat ing a work having a plot and di alogue that is no t
"on" s ome thing .
Three dis tinct types-- confession , anatomy , romance--
comb ine wi th e ach o ther and make possible six different novel f orms .
Pure examples o f any one type do not exis t ; in fact , as Frye s ays
and Godwin knew , " the popular demand in fi ction is always for a
mixed form . . .
II
The confes s i on , according to Frye , is voiced by
s tylized rather than na turalis tic char acter s who are the mouthp ieces o f the ideas they represent--a definition whi ch can be
applied to Godwin ' s novels , all of whi ch are confess ions of this
sort .
His novels also mee t Fry ' s requirements for the anatomy
s ince they dissect or analyze human so cie ty in t erms of a given
intellectual pat tern--in Godwin ' s case , the principles of Political
Jus tice .
" The romancer , " Frye tells us , "does no t at temp t to
create ' real people ' s o much as s tylized figures which expand into
psychological ar chetyp es .
5
I t is in the romance that we f ind Jung ' s
Northrop Frye , Anatomy o f Cr iti cism : Four Essays (Pr ince ton :
Pr ince ton Univer s i ty Press , 1 9 5 7 ) , pp . 303-314 .
91
libido , amina , and shadow reflected in the hero , heroine , and villain
respectively . "
The characters in a romance are ideali zed ; they are
extreme examples of the ar che types they represen t .
Although Godwin
calls Caleb Williams a novel wi thout a her o , b o th Falkland and Caleb
are highly idealized , exag gerated character types ; and while Falkland
is no t a romantic hero , he is a tragi c hero whose sense o f honor
is his hamar t i a .
I n this sens e , therefore , Caleb Williams is a romance
as are S t . Leon , Fleetwood , and all the res t .
We have now come full
c ir cle and mus t conclude that Godwin ' s novels fulfill all the dis­
tin c tions o f Frye ' s types , as Godwin probab ly intended they should
so that his novels would be at trac tive to a var iety of tas tes .
Mary ' s novels also fulfill the same requirements wi th the exception
o f her his torical romances Perkin Warbeck and Valperga , which canno t
b e class ed as confess ions .
In fact , the confess ional element in all
of Mary ' s works , excluding Frankens tein and The Las t Man , receives
much less emphasis than it does in Godwin ' s novels .
In summary , then ,
we mus t use the cat chall term novel as the only label for the prose
f i c ti on of Godwin and Mary Shelley .
On every hand Godwin s ough t help in the compos i tion o f his
novels .
When a new edi tion o f Flee twood was to be pub lished in The
Standard Novels Series ( 1 83 2 ) , the editor and pub lisher , Richard
Bentley , reques ted Godwin to write an account of the composi tion of
Caleb Williams , wh ich explains his method in considerab le detail .
Before beginning the novel , he dis cuss ed his purpose and plans
with friends whose opinions he valued .
Once he had determined on
the main purpos e of his s tory , he gathered about hims elf productions
92
of former au thors that were relevant to his subj e c t .
He never feared
the accusation o f plagiarism because he felt that his vein o f think­
ing was unique and would preserve him from "servile copying . "
In
preparation for the wr iting of Caleb Williams , "no works of f i ction
came amiss to [him ] , provided they were wri tten with energy " (pp . xi­
xii) .
The novel , a s a li terary genre , was s till in a p eriod o f experi­
ment when Godwin b egan to write toward the end of the eigh teenth
century .
The p ress was f looded with novels o f many typ es from which
Godwin borrowed techniques , modifying and adap ting them to his own
use .
His borrowing was s o widespread and diverse that i t can be
trea ted only in summary f orm .
Bu t this diversity o f s ources led him
to write novels tha t are composi tes of many types .
Following his
example , Mary borrowed from many s our ces , among whi ch Godwin f igures
mos t prominent ly .
Bo th Caleb Williams and Frankens tein , for examp le ,
can be labeled as s ociological , psychologi cal , and sentiment al .
There are also s trong gothic elements in both .
In addition , Caleb
Williams has been called the firs t detec tive s tory , and Frankens tein
marks the beginning of s cience f i ct ion .
To the generation o f great writers of fiction immediately
preceding his own--Swif t , Defoe , Richa rdson , Smolle t t , and Fielding-­
Godwin owed many of the bes t traits of his li ter ary ar t .
Other
treas ured sour ces o f inspiration were English folk b allads and
Charles Perraul t ' s tales o f Ma Mere L ' Oie (Mo ther Goose ) ; Shake­
speare , whose tragedies Godwin r ead and re-re ad ; and the classic
writers o f " the Greek and Roman Republics . "
Nor did he neglect
93
the liter ature o f his own day .
His Journal entr ies indicate that
he was frequen tly reading two or more works s imul taneous ly--one
con temp orary , the o ther a famous work from the pas t .
On February
1 7 , 1 7 9 3 he was reading Horace ' s Odes and Mackenzie ' s The Man of
Feeling ( 1 7 7 1 ) .
He was famil iar with the works of Wordswor th ,
Coleridge , Lamb , and Ha zli t t , who were his personal fr iends ; he had
read the go thic novels of Anne Radcliffe , Mat thew Gre gory Lewis ,
and Charles Bro ckden Brown ; and he knew well the sociological novels
and dramas of Thomas Ho lcrof t and the satiric romances of Robert
B age .
I t was , in fact , to Man as He Is and Man as He is No t , or
Hermsprong that Godwin was indeb ted for the sub ti tle o f The Adventures
o f Caleb Williams , or Things as They Are .
A sincere admirer of b o th
the man and his works , Godwin made a special trip to the village where
Bage lived in order to vis i t him .
In a l e t ter to his f ir s t wife ,
Godwin des cribes B age as "A very remarkab le ins tance , in my opinion ,
o f great in tellectual refinement , attained in the bosom o f rus tici ty . "
In summary " Godwin gathered in all the techniques of novel wri ting
that had been deve loped to his time , .
he is above all represen-
tative of his age , . . . the con tributions that he made to the
novelis t ' s profess ion wer e o f genuine value and impor tance .
his
success as a novelist was the product less o f temperamen t than of
in tellectual endeavour . "
7
When the actual wr iting of a novel be gan , Godwin recognized
very quickly the impor tance of point o f view .
6
Paul , I , 261-263 .
In his shor t fiction
7
Weekes , p . 7 3 .
6
94
( 1 783) he had exper imented with the third pers on in Imogene and the
epis tolary technique in I talian Le t ter s .
He began Caleb Williams
in the third pers on but very soon changed to the firs t when he had
difficulty in a chieving his purpose wi th the thir d .
In all s ubse­
quent works o f fiction , he used a firs t per son narrator .
Wi th the
excep tion of Cloudesley , each narrator examined his own life and
actions to assess and atone for his mis takes , a sort o f Rousseaui s t i c
confession o f a guilt ridden "her o " who has come t o s ee the error o f
his ways .
This poin t of view permit s a loose s tructure that is ,
a t the s ame time , unif ied because no thing is included that does no t
in s ome way relate to the pro tagonist and his problems .
These
gloomy spir i ts , wro te John Wilson Croker in reviewing Mandeville ,
are "no t only unamus ing but pain ful .
. ' Falkland , ' ' S t . Leon , '
and ' Mandeville ' are members o f the same family , and their portraits
are pain ted with the same melancholy f orce and dis gus ting
accuracy . .
"
8
Mary also used the fir s t person in Fr ankenstein ,
but Frankenstein is not hims elf the narrator .
The author created
a frame for the narration , whi ch is done in the fir s t per s on through
Rober t Wal ton ' s letters to his sis ter .
The epistolary technique
is no t cons is tently maintained throughout the novel , but it enabled
the narrator to survive b o th of the maj or character s , to des cribe
the conf ession and death of Frankenstein , and the impending end
of the mons ter .
In this manne r , Mary brought her s t o ry to a closed
ending s o far as the maj or char a c ters are concerned and Frankenstein ' s
8
Croker , 1 8 , 1 7 6-1 7 7 .
95
tragic tale puts him in the same family wi th Falkland , S t . Leon ,
and Mandeville .
Godwin ' s one depar ture from his favor i te point of view is in
Cloudes ley .
Here , a s in Caleb Williams , the narrator is a young
man who b ecomes the secretary of Lord Danvers , usurper o f the title
and fortune of his nephew , Julian .
But the adventures o f the young
s e cre tary , Meadows , fill near ly half a volume bef ore he mee ts Lord
Danvers , and the maj or plo t , in which Meadows p lays a minor role ,
b egins .
The narra tion of Cloudesley app ear s to b e an adaptation o f
Mary ' s point o f view in Frankenstein s ince the p lot necess itates
that s omeone survive Lord Danvers and Cloudes ley and conduc t young
Julian to England , to his inher itan ce , and to further per f ec t ib il i ty .
Af ter The Las t Man (1826 ) Mary never again used the f ir s t­
person narrator .
The novel , frankly au tob iographical , is t old by
Lionel Verney , one of the characters represen ting Mary hersel f .
He is not gui l t r idden over s ome mis t ake o r crime , as are Godwin ' s
characters , but he has their gloomy sense of isolation .
After his
dear friend ( Shelley ) is drowned , he is alone in the world writing
his memoirs and hoping that somewhere on ear th another human b eing
survives who will eventually come to rel ieve his loneliness .
Since
none of Godwin ' s mature works were writ ten in the thi rd person ,
Mary had to look elsewhere for examp les .
In her historical f iction
and las t two novels , she used a third p er s on narrator wi th omnis cience
enough to penetrate the thoughts and mo tives of the char acters .
One further po in t concerning the nar r at ors of the Godwin and
Shelley novels is that neither author hes i t ated to s t op to permit his
96
narrator to exp lain a moral or to argue either for or agains t an issue
facing the charac ters .
Their didacticism is omnipresen t , though i t
i s shorter and more restr ained in Mary ' s fiction than in her father ' s .
Neither Godwin no r Mary was as skillful in handling point o f
view as they were in choosing the set ting for their t ales .
But what­
ever period o f time they chos e and whatever location , they were almost
always writing of nineteen th-century Englishmen .
They wrote o f
contempo rary England s e t in London , in the Wes t Country , in various
small towns and rural locations , or they sele cted a par ti cular cen­
tury in the pas t .
They covered a large port ion of wes tern Europe
and the Bri t ish Is les .
Godwin also included Rus sia during the time
o f Pe ter the Grea t , and Mary explored the r egions o f the North Pole .
Her I talian and Swiss s e t tings are particularly well done s ince they
are des crip tions o f a ctual p laces where she had lived , such as Florence
and Lucca , the locations for Valperga .
Godwin had vis i t ed Ireland ,
which he describes in the opening chap ters o f Mandeville .
But in
all this variety of p lace and t ime , they appeared to have two obj ectives
in mind :
fir s t , to give accurate des c rip tions ; and second , to make the
r eader cons cious that human beings and their ins titutions are relatively
the same in any place and at any given per iod in his tory .
Godwin ' s
S t . Leon lives in seven different countries during the s ixteen th
c en tury , while Mary ' s Perkin Warbeck lives in five during the fif teen th
century ; yet b o th these pro tagonists encoun ter war , all the evils o f
aristocr a tic sys tems of governmen t , and the cunning and murderous
tac tics of ambi tious pr inces and monarchs .
It
is
very p rob able that Godvlin chose his time periods for
97
political reas ons as well as for maneuverab ility of plot .
For
example , Mandeville was set in the seventeen th century when the
rela tionship b e tween England and Ireland was not unlike that of the
two coun tries in the early nine teen th cen tury .
Mandeville opens with
one of the upris ing of 1641 , when the Irish catholics s ought to
recover their proper ty and s o cial position whi ch had b een taken f rom
them by the English.
Charles Mandeville ' s fa ther , an English officer
s tationed in Ireland , and his f ami ly were mas s ac red .
children of the family es caped .
Only two small
In Godwin ' s day , late eigh teenth
and early nine teenth cen turies , there was little figlLting b e tween the
English and Irish , but there was much unres t , especially among the
catholics , who were demanding comp le te emancipation whi ch P i t t had
virt ually pr omised them in 1800 but had failed to put into effec t .
I t was another means , as poin ted out ear lier , o f giving univers.al
meaning to a work by showing tha t no age is exempt from the destructive
and corrup ting influence of outmoded or unj us t situa tions of s o ci e ty .
A s imilar si tuation prevails in Mary ' s Valperga , when the I t alians
are torn by the four teenth- century s truggle b e tween the Gue lphs , who
advocated cons t i tu tional monarchy , and the Ghibelines , who were led
by the tyrant Cas truccid and s tood for abs o lute monarchy .
While
the out come in the novel is the revers e of tha t in English his tory ,
the Regency Period in England saw a con test between the king and
parliamen t wh i ch resul ted in more power for parliament and less for the
kin g .
I t i s the r eader ' s task t o make the analogy .
But the choice o f the twen ty-first century for The Las t Man i s o f
unique and symbolic impor tance .
The plague that des troyed all inhab i tants
98
o f the world excep t the nar rator was inj us t ice , and one o f the maj or
purposes of this novel was to refute a proposal o f Mal thus ' s theory
of population .
In Political Jus t i ce Godwin commented on Robert
Wallace ' s views concerning popula tion .
Wallace had recommended in
Various ProSpects of Mankind , Nature and Providence ( 1 7 6 1 ) the holding
o f common proper ty to remedy s o cial evils , but he was for ced to
abandon this recommendation when he calculated that the population o f
h i s ideal society would increas e s o rapidly tha t even tually there
would not be enough food for all .
agains t Wallace ' s opinion :
Godwin proposed two arguments
Firs t , the period when the ear th might
b ecome too populous for the suppor t of its inhab i t an ts was too
dis tan t to cause s erious concern s ince only three-four ths o f the
hab it able globe was under cult iva tion and many par ts under cul tivation
were capable of more intens ive cul tivation .
Second , s ince the
problem lay so far in the future , remedies mi gh t be devised "of whi ch
we may yet at this time have no t the smalles t idea 11 (PJ , I I , 5 18-5 19 ) .
Th e Enquirer :
Reflect ions on Educ ation , Manners , and Liter ature ( 1 79 7 )
contained an essay ent itled "Of Avarice and Pro fus ion" in which
Godwin s ta ted :
"Mechanical and daily labour is the deadliest foe
to all that is great and admi rab le in the human mind . "
9
Therefore ,
he recommended a sys tem that main tained an equit able balance in the
distribution of b o th money and lab our to all members of the s tate .
This sys t em-- "a s tate of cul t ivated equal i ty "-- "s trikes at the root
o f a decep tion tha t has lon g been continued , and long proved a
9
william Godwin , The Enquirer ( 1 79 7 ; rpt . New York :
Kelley , 1965 ) , p . 1 7 1 .
Augus tus M.
99
curse to all the civilized nations o f the ear th . "
10
I t was this e s s ay
that promp ted Thomas Rob ert Malthus to wri te his Essay on Population ,
pub lished the following year ( 1 7 9 8 ) .
11
Mal thus ' s thesis was that since population tended t o increase
in a geometric ratio and the food supply increased in an arithmetic
ratio , war , crime , poverty , and diseas e were necessary to keep the
p opulat ion down to the level of human subsis tence .
He fur ther
maintained that the so cie ty Godwin proposed would be reduced to
vice and misery by overpopulat ion .
Six o f the nine teen chapters in
Mal thus ' s Essay a ttacked Godwin ' s theory of perfectibili ty , on which
Godwin ' s remedy for the problem res ted :
that men in an advanced
s tage of per fe c tib ility would exer cise moral res traint as a reasonab le check to population .
Mal thus l ater endorsed this r emedy as
being one means of solving the prob lem , but by 1 819 he also advocated
the withdrawal o f poor relief and a repeal of the Poor Laws as a more
e ffec tive check .
Both Godwin and Shelley were adamant in their
oppos ition to this mos t recent proposal .
12
Godwin ' s long delayed
s e cond reply to Malthus , Of Population , app eared in 1 820 and the
controversy tha t had continued for over twenty years immediately
b ecame heated as more and more men contributed to the debate .
10
In
Ib id . , p . 1 84 .
11
In An Ess ay on the Prj nciple of Population , ed . James Bonar
( 1 7 9 8 ; rp t . London : Macmillan and Co . , 1 9 2 6 ) , p . 1 , Malthus s tates :
" The following Ess ay owes i ts origin to a conver s at ion with a f riend ,
on the sub j e c t of Mr . Godwin ' s Essay on avar ice and profus ion , in his
Enquire r . "
12
W . P. Albrecht and C. E. Pulos , "Godwin and Malthus , " PMLA ,
7 0 ( 19 5 5 ) , 5 5 4 .
100
1 82 2 Francis Place openly advocated bir th control in his reply to
Godwin ' s attack upon Malthus ' s proposal was politically
Godwin .
effective , being praised in Parliament and quo ted favorably by var ious
.
pub l 1.. cat1ons
.
13
" In a time unfavorable to liberal reform , b o th
Shelley and Godwin felt that merely keep ing the Poor Laws would be
a victory . "
14
In the light of the population controversy , The Las t Man can be
r ead as another reply to Malthus .
Inj us tice not only checked the
p opula tion , i t elimina ted the p opulation al toge ther .
The twenty�
f i r s t century s e t t ing was neces s ary to provide time for the increas e
in population and make the t ale seem credib le .
Though tful , informed
readers o f the day would have unders tood the symbol of the plague
immediately as being inj us tice .
Mary knew of Shelley ' s deep intere s t
in this ques tion , and it was a theme that would d o honor t o h i s memory .
In the character o f Adrian , modeled on Shelley , she shows a perfect
human being , dedica ted to the s ervice o f his fellowman .
The moral
res train t , whi ch b o th Godwin and Shelley advo ca ted , is illus trated
in the fact that Adrian , having been re fused by his fir s t and only
love , did not marry .
Mary ' s use o f the population theme also reveals
her support of her father ' s convi ctions and his e arlier works on the
s ame subj ect .
Yet Malthus carried the day in s p i te o f the brief
p opularity of Godwin ' s reply to him and the pub l ication of Mary ' s
novel in 1 82 6 .
" This [ the population controversy ] , probab ly mor e than
13
Kenneth Smith , The Malthus ian Controversy (London :
and Kegan Paul , 195 1) , pp . 152-15 3 .
14
Alb rech t and Pulos , p . 5 5 5 .
Routledge
101
any o ther single cause , b rought about the eclipse of Godwin . "
15
I t has b een s aid that "liter ature in every age presents itself
under one o f two forms : "
as a clear reflection o f everyday l i fe
or as a j ourney into the unus ual , away from the circums tances wh ich
s urround the reader ;
16
and we have seen that Godwin and Mary alter-
nated b e tween these two in order to create an appropriate world for
their characters and carry their point .
Ano ther way in which they
created their worlds was through the s tock techniques of s e t ting
and des crip tion such as thos e used in the go thic novel , a very
popular literary trend of the day .
The dominan t atmosphere o f their
n ovels is go thic , yet they made use o f this a tmosphere in an unusual
manner that is no ticeable in the works of Anne Radclif f e , a prominen t
p redecessor in this s tyle .
The a tmosphere is f ir s t int roduced by
the s tate o f mind of a maj or character such as Caleb Williams or
Frankens tein , who has been subj e cted over a period o f years to the
pursui t o f s ome relen tless fiend or his own cons cience .
is then f urther developed by the s e t ting .
Th e atmosphere
Caleb was vir tually a pris oner
in the gloomy home of his mas ter whi ch cont ained the mys ter ious i ron
ches t .
When he es caped and fled from place to p lace , he was shut up in
damp , hideous p risons wi th rats and condemned prisoner s , in the b izarre
res idence of the fr iendly outlaws in the ruined cas tle ; he travels through
dark fores ts , and hides in tiny apartment s in run-down sections o f
London .
The s tate of his mind is reflected symbolically in the s e ttin g .
15
16
Kenneth Smith , p . 2 7 9 .
Mon tague Summers , The Go thic Ques t (London :
1 9 3 8 ) , pp . 1 7- 1 8 .
The For tune Press ,
102
I t is not until he has resided for some time as a decent and respec table
citi zen in a remo te se ct ion o f England that he decides to turn and face
Falkland ins tead of fleein g .
Mary , t oo , appr opr iated much o f the popular t ale o f terror in
Frankens tein .
The travels of Rober t Walton take him farther and
f arther away from civilizat ion ; he is alone , in spirit , on the icy
The vas tness of the o cean ,
nor thern seas becaus e he has no fr iend .
the gloom , the ice are but phys ical reflections of the s ituation o f
plot and character .
From the beginning the predi cament o f Franken­
s tein and his mons ter are hopeless ; what bet ter way to emphasize
this hopelessness than through the s e tt ing !
The two solitary year s
Frankens tein spen t in graveyards , charnel houses , and h i s lab or atory
also contrib u te to hor ror bu t not s o powerfully as the appearance
o f the mons ter .
The Mandeville estate in Godwin ' s Mandeville is
symbolic of the mental s tate o f the family .
The hous e , s i tua ted
near a b arren s tretch of seashore , was surrounded by mis ts , fog , and
the t urbulent sea .
One wing of the house was in ruins , and the o ther
inhab i ted by s olemn unfriendly servants who imita ted the gloom of
their mas ter , a mis an thropi c recluse .
In cont ras t wi th this aris­
to crat i c ruin , the pleasan t cot tage where Mandevi lle ' s sis ter was
r eared is modes t and neat , wi th well-trimmed vines and hed ges and
f lower s b looming eve rywhere .
Beaulieu Cot tage is yet ano ther symbol
for the cheerful , well-ordered s ta te o f mind o f its inhabit ants .
The s ame can be s aid for Mary ' s Valperga .
Eu thanas i a ' s cas tle ,
Valperga , was an ancient and magnif icent for tress built upon a rock .
I t was comple tely invulnerab le , except from one approach that
103
Cas truccio and Euthanasia had dis covered in their childhood as they
p layed t ogether .
Many years later when Cas trucci o ' s knowledge of this
hidden a c cess enab led him to s torm and t ake the cas tle , we s ee tha t
the s et ting and des crip tion are n o a cciden t .
The cas tle is a symbol
o f Eu thanas ia herself--the peerles s ly b eautiful and per fe c t woman ,
vulnerab le only to love and memory .
Examples o f this kind are many :
each of their novels reveals that b o th Godwin and Mary were exper t
in handling s e t ting and us ing i t in many differ ent ways .
Godwin ' s p lan for the p l o t o f Caleb Williams , as s e t forth in
the second preface to Fleetwood , has b een o f great interes t to
critics (pp . iii�xiv ) .
He planned the volumes in reverse order-- three ,
two , one--and spent two or three weeks thinking and j o t ting down no tes
for his s tory , b u t a t the end of tha t period he " then sat down to
write [his ] s tory from �he beginning . "
Before his planning period
took p lace , he tells us tha t he read over
" Th e Adventures of Mademoise lle de S t . Phale , " a French Protes tant
in the t imes o f the f ier ces t per secu tion of the Hugenots , who
f led through France in the u tmos t terror , in the mids t o f eternal
alarms and hair-b readth es capes , having her quar ters perpe tually
beaten up , and by scarcely any chance finding a momen t ' s inter­
val of secur i ty . I turned over the pages o f a tremendous compila­
tion entit led " God ' s Revenge agains t Murder , " where the b eam o f
the eye of Omnis cence was represented a s perpe tually pursuing the
guilty , and l ay ing open his mos t hidden re treats to the light
of day . I was extremely conversant with the "Newgate Calendar "
and "The Lives o f the Pirates . "
Th is me thod o f plo tting indicates the great care with whi ch he worked
and his intens e concern for the maj or moral theme of his novel .
There
is s car cely any s ingle por tion of a novel that is of such critical
impor tance to its total signif i cance and aes the t i c imp ac t as i ts
.
ending , and i t has only recently b een brough t to the at tention of
104
the pub l i c that Godwin wrote two endings to Caleb Williams .
17
The
author o f this dis covery sugges ts numerous reasons why Godwin may
have re turned to his completed manus cript after a few days to
write ano ther ending , the one which he ul timately used .
The ending
which he preferred reveals more optimism and subs tan tiates his belief
in the principles s e t for th in Political Jus tice .
Had he used the
f ir s t ending , j us ti ce would no t have been done and neither Caleb or
Falkland , af ter all their year s o f suffering , would have taken another
s tep toward perfectib il i ty .
Although the r ej e c ted ending may be
more realis tic , Godwin ' s b iographers s tress the fact that he was
always an op timis tic man who believed until the end of his days in h is
doctrine of perfe ctibility .
Fol lowing this line of thought i t seems
l ikely that he e i ther though t his way through a new ending tha t had
no t previous ly o ccurred to him , or his faith in his philos ophy would
no t permit him to us e any o ther .
A t any ra te , b o th endings show
per s picacious workmanship , and the change ind i cates his de termination
to validate his philosophy .
By his for tunate cho i ce o f the f light-pursuit theme and the
momentum , inter es t , and sus pens e wi th which it is wri t ten , Caleb
Williams became an exciting adventure of which Hazlitt declared :
"We con ceive no one ever began Caleb Williams that did no t r ead i t
through .
•
.
11 18
The feeling o f guil t , the "eye o f Omnis cience , "
17
n . Gilber t Dumas , " Th ings as They Were : The Or i ginal Ending
o f Caleb Williams , " S tudies in English Li terature , 6 (196 6 ) , 5 75-5 9 7 .
18
(London :
The Complete Works o f William Hazlit t , ed . P . P . Howe , 11
J . M. Dent and Sons , L td . , 1 9 3 0 ) , p . 2 4 .
105
pursues Falkland almos t as relentlessly as he pursues Caleb .
Toward
the end o f the novel Caleb f inally determines to s tand his ground .
He refuses to flee and goes to the cour ts demanding that Falkland ' s
case be r e-opened and a new trial conducted .
When this new hear ing
takes p l ace , Falkland confess es , repents , and dies three days later .
Caleb is next as tounded and horrif ied when he re cognizes wha t he has
d one :
he has brought about , through his morb i d curios i ty , the
des truc tion of a man much be t ter than himself .
He , like Coleri dge ' s
Ancient Mariner , mus t tell his t ale to atone f or his error .
In fashioning his plo t , Godwin comb ined with the f light-pursui t
p at tern and the omnis cien t eye much that he had learned from Ar is totle
and the writers of Greek tragedy and comedy .
read ing Oedipus and Antigone . )
( Ear ly in 1 7 9 2 he was
All of his novels excep t Cloudes ley
have , b arring their digressions , what we call organic unity .
This
uni ty Caleb Williams possesses in an extreme degree as does Deloraine ,
which follows a s imil ar s tructural pat tern .
As a writer and s tudent
o f drama (Godwin wrote two unsuccess ful tragedies and at tended the
theatre frequent ly ) , he was familiar with the r evers al and r ecogni tion
o f Ar is to tle ' s Poe tics , b o th of whi ch he carried out in the though ts
and actions o f Caleb and Falkland in the closing chap ters o f the novel .
Caleb f le d from Falkland throughou t the novel until he finally came ,
af ter a period of ten years , to r ecognize that he woul d never have p eace
or happiness unless he b rought Falkland to j us tice.
In pas s ion . and
anger , he reverses his posi tion , r e turns to his home town , exposes
Falkland to the lo cal magis tra te , and is exoner ated of gui l t .
The
r ecognition and rever s al , however , prove false when he dis covers that
106
he has brought dea th to Falkland , a man superior to himself , and a f ar
grea ter sorrow to himself than he has p reviously known .
Falkland also
experienced recognition in the f inal s cene before the magis trate :
" I see too late the gr eatness and elevat ion of your mind .
that it is to my fault and no t yours ,
•
.
•
.
I confess
that I owe my ruin .
. . My name will be consecrated to infamy , while your heroism ,
your pat ience and your vir tues will be f orever admired " (p . 324) .
The real change in f ortune was not , however , greatness for Caleb
and ruin for Falkland-- i t was dea th for b oth .
Caleb ' s was a l ivin g
death while Falkland ' s was a f inal release in physical death .
The
Mary adopted near ly all these techniques in her novels .
f light-pursui t theme is obvious in Frankens tein :
the mons ter pur­
sues the s teps of h is creator un til the creator turns and pursues
the mons ter to the arc tic was te land .
In his anger over the mons ter ' s
murder of his b ride , Fr ankens tein was temporarily blinded to h is own
p ar t in the mons ter ' s gui l t ; but as he grows weaker and calmer ,
r ecognition comes .
He had a ttemp ted t o do more than man was ab le
to do-- to create a human being .
When he sees h is error , or crime ,
h e is success ful in r evealing i t to Wal ton and preventing him from
making a similar mis take .
Wal ton and the mons ter unde rgo recognition
and the course of the plo t is reversed when Walton turns the ship south
and the mons ter goes north to cons truct his own funeral pyre .
For
b o th Falkland and Frankens tein there is no real r ever s al of plo t , but
b oth have gained knowledge o f themselves bef ore death , and their
deaths have a f fected the plot so far as the o ther charac ters are con­
cerne d .
Th e p l o t s tructure o f Frankens tein is indeed close t o that of
Caleb Williams .
107
Another way in which Mary ' s plots resemble her f athe r ' s is in
her cons tant us e of imp rob able incidents and unlikely coincidences ,
one of the weaknesses mos t frequen tly ci ted by their critics .
It
passes the b ounds o f believability that poor , young Caleb should
mee t so many mis fortunes , so many disas trous , accidental encounters
wi th enemies .
a century .
Godwin anticipa ted Thomas Hardy by three quarters o f
In S t . Leon Godwin was not attempt ing to be realis tic
and the improbable is mul tiplied .
S t . Leon cannot walk the s treets
of any c i ty of wes tern Europe withou t being recognized or suspected
of s ome crime .
But Godwin attemp ted to supply a mo tivating force
b ehind each incident and f i t it naturally into his tale , whereas
Mary was no t always so successful in this regar d .
In Frankens tein ,
for example, the s udden flight of the DeLacey family from the cottage
adj oining the mons ter ' s peep-hole is incons is ten t wi th their charac ter ,
especially since the creature had explained his s i tuat ion to the blind
f a ther . They were intelligent , benevolen t people who could surely
rememb er that s ome kind , unknown being had helped them cul tivate
their crops , supply their wood , and shovel their paths through the
snow .
The mons t er ' s education through the chink in his hu t is ano ther
impossib il i ty as well as the p resence of " the fair Syrian" ( the title
o f one o f Bage ' s novels) in the DeLacey co t tage .
The DeLacey episode
is one o f the mos t interes t ing in the novel , but it is also one of
the mos t improbable .
Mary ' s Perkin Warbeck provides the mos t f lagran t example o f
the impr obable contrived to f i t the controllin g purpose o f the novel .
The youthful p retender Richard
sent word to Henry IV on the eve of
108
b a t tle that he has no des ire to become King of Englan d .
His only
mot ive in re turning to England was to es tab lish his identity and
his hono r .
I f Henry will acknowledge that he (Perkin Warbe ck) is
the Duke of York , he will re turn to Spain for the duration of his
life .
This incident o ccurs in Volume Three , and up to this point
the r eader has been led t o believe that Ri chard ' s obj ec t in r e turning
to England was to claim his throne .
The mes s age to Henry does ,
however , mark Richard as a more per fect man whose weakness is his
honor .
The numerous digress ions in the novels o f both father and
daughter were character is tic o f many novels o f the day , but they
are exceedingly numerous and leng thy in the Godwin and Mary Shelley
novels .
Godwin ' s Cloudesley opens with a digress ion , nearly one
hundred pages in length , which accomplishes only two ends :
the
characteri zation o f Meadows and the analysis of an abs o lute monarchy .
Th is latter accomplishment was later touched on in the des crip tion
of the Turkish government and its officials and migh t have been
elaborated to take the place o f Meadows ' exper iences in Rus sia .
Every new character who makes his appearance mus t have the s to ry of
his l ife told in great de t ai l .
Since the mino r char acters are numer­
o us and f requently unnecessary , these digressions mar the effect and
make the works tedious .
In The Las t Man , by Mary , the r e turn of
Verney and his wife Idris , to the neighborhood o f Windsor , j us t when
they were on the poin t of embarking for France , is unnecessary and
dis tracting .
However , Mary may have devised this inciden t for per­
s onal reas ons in tha t Idr is appears to resemb le Fanny Imlay , Mary ' s
109
half sis ter who commit ted suicide .
Since Godwin did no t dare claim
her b ody and give it a proper burial , the interment of Idris in the
magnificent family vault at Windsor may have pr ovided the sis ter
and s tep- father wi th s ome s tr ange s ort of comfor t .
Even though b o th Godwin and Mary were p rone to belabor portions
of their novels wi th too much exp lanation or too many examp les , i t
is interes t ing that Godwin removed sec tions of Valperga as being
unnecessary b efore having it pub lished .
When the novel came out ,
Godwin wrote to Mary :
I need no t tell you that all the merit of the book is conclu­
s ively your own . The whole o f wha t I have done is nearly con­
fined to the taking away things that mus t have prevented its
success . I s carcely ever saw anything more unfor tunately out
o f taste , than the long de tail of bat tles and campaigning ,
after the dea th of Beatr ice , & when the r eader is impat ien t
for the conclus ion . l9
In these novels there are doub tles s many o ther s imil ar i ties in
p lot that coul d be cons idered , but one final character i s t i c des erves
to be mentioned--the us e of unusual or highly dramatic materials ,
roughly corresponding to Ar is totle ' s requirement o f spectacle in the
tragedy .
Godwin ' s S t . Leon , based on a b izarre concep t , is unusual
in ano ther way , for Godwin sear ched the his tor ies of the countr ies
in wh ich S t . Leon travelled for authentic his torical events wi th
dramatic intens ity .
S t . Leon was impr isoned by the Spanish Inquisi-
tion , which was not offi cially abol ished unt il 1 820 .
In honor of
the r e turn of Philip the Second from England and the Ne therlands ,
an Au to de Fe was to be held on August 29 , 1 5 5 9 in whi ch S t . Leon
19
william Godwin , Le t ter s , February 14 , 1823 .
110
and twenty-nine o ther pris oners were to be pub li cly burned unless they
renounced their religion and accepted Ca tholicism.
S t . Leon was
ab le to forego this ordeal by us ing the elixir of life .
This form
of execution was f requently held in Spain , but it was vir tually unknown
in o ther coun tries during the s ixteen th century .
20
Deloraine , the
hero of Godwin ' s las t novel , used a small teles cope to iden tify the
men who were following him and his daughter up the Danube River .
In Mary ' s Valperga , Cas truccio was present when the Ponte alla Carraia
collapsed in Florence on May 1s t , 1304 .
A great May-day celebrati on
depic ting Dante ' s hell was held on the Arno River , and the crowd
whi ch gathered on the br idge to see it was s o great that it b roke in
s ever al places .
21
Many people wer e killed , and the s creams and con-
f us ion frigh tened the four teen-year-old Cas truccio so that he ran
into a nearby cathedral for sanctuary .
And in The Las t Man the narrator ,
Verney , flew in a balloon to the no r th o f England , not an impossib l e
f e a t s ince the f ir s t s e a voyage in a balloon was made a cross the English
channel in 1 7 85 .
This use o f uncommon but authentic material is now
a s to ck charac teris t i c of the novel , but i t was s ome thing o f an innovation in Godwin ' s day .
Whether Mary adop ted Go dwin ' s me thod o f planning her novels
by beginning wi th the las t volume and going in reverse order to the
f irs t is now known .
20
We do know , however , that she had Shelley ob tain
Henry Kamen , The Spanish Inquisi tion (London :
Nicolson , 1965 ) , pp . 17 7-19 6 .
21
Weidenfeld and
Edmund G . Gardener , The S tory of Florence , rev . ed . (London :
J . M. Dent , L t d . , 1910 ) , pp . 342-345 .
111
Godwin ' s plan for Valperga from him before she b e gan work on i t .
Each
o f her novels also carries out a dominant moral theme , whi ch she
undoub tedly had in mind from the b eginning and developed her p lo t and
all o ther par t s of the novel to carry out this theme .
Her command
of p l o t is no t as grea t as Godwin ' s be cause she lacked his energy and
abi li ty to carry the ac tion forward .
On the o ther hand , the p l o t o f
almo s t every novel of Mary ' s resemb les a p revious one or ones of
Godwin ' s .
The s imilarity b e tween Frankens tein and Caleb Williams
is no greater than tha t b e tween Mary ' s Falkner and Godwin ' s Deloraine ,
b o th o f which are composed of an in terminable s eries of globe-tr o t ting
incidents .
Mary does not ins is t on her theme as per s is tently as Godwin
does in r epea ting it over and over , yet in all the aspects of the novel
dis cussed here , she was heavily indeb ted to her father ' s works and
advi ce .
CHAPTER VI
AESTHETIC CONS IDERATIONS OF CHARACTER ,
STYLE , AND TONE
In beginning a s tudy of the characters created b y Godwin and
Mary , it is importan t to make a few generalizat ions before p ro ceeding
to a closer examination .
Although there are relatively few maj or
characters in any o f the novels , the fictions o f b o th authors are
l i terally swarming with minor characters , far more than are necess ary
to accomplish their purposes .
The one excep tion to this over­
population in the novels is Frankens tein .
Among the maj or figures ,
there is no true hero in Godwin ' s works , for he never attemp ted to
create one and maintained that his ido l Shakespeare " could not make
a hero . "
I t is als o well t o remember that Godwin ' s aes the tic theory
was , like his political ones , a comp romise b e tween the extremes o f
romantici sm an d realis m .
for two qualifications :
The same might b e s aid o f Mary were i t not
one , she did at temp t to create heroes in
Adrian of The Las t Man and in Perkin Warb e ck ; and se cond , she had a
much s tronger tendency to wri te in a romantic s train than her f ather .
The maj or characters in all of Godwin ' s nove ls and mos t o f those in
Mary ' s are not heroic but are developing pers onalities undergoing
change .
The minor characters , on the other hand , are frequently non­
developing and pos ses sed o f heroic quali ties in the manner of Cli f ford
and Henrietta in Godwin ' s Mandevi lle , the male and female coun terparts
o f perfec tion from the beginning to the end of the novel .
112
In Frankens tein
113
few of the minor figures such as Cle rval , E liz ab e th , and Frankens tein ' s
p arents appear to have any faults or weaknes ses .
The theory on which
such characteriz ation rest s is that to be human is to b e imperfect ,
and a close s tudy o f character wi ll inevitab ly reveal these imperfec­
tions .
All o f Godwin ' s maj or characters are , in the Aris totelian
s ens e , a comb ination o f the tragi c and the comic .
Falklan,d , o f
Caleb Wil liams , more nearly app roaches the s tature o f a tragi c hero
than any of Godwin ' s other characters .
Mary follows the s ame p at tern ,
b u t with less tho roughnes s and intensi ty than her fathe r .
Perkin
Warb e ck , the young P re tender , is her mos t s uccess ful attemp t to mold
a hero .
In depi cting character Godwin ' s ins ights int o human personality
are far deeper and are exe cuted with more thoroughness and precision
than Mary ' s .
At no t ime does she ever approach the excellence o f
Godwin ' s psychologi cal s t udy o f Audley and Charles Mandevi lle .
But
she does follow in the path of Godwin in attemp ting t o convey an
impression o f the men tal s t ate o f her characters , with varying degrees
of s uccess .
The s t ate of mind of her Falkner greatly resemb les the
s t ate o f mind o f Godwin ' s Falkland .
In developing their characters , b o th Godwin and Mary made
extensive use of literary foils .
The comp lexity of thes e contras ts
in Caleb Wi lliams is impress ive .
Falkland and Tyrell are p roud and
fearless country squires whose primary mot ivation for action is the
approval of their fellowmen , but here the resemb lance ends .
Falkland
is educated , Tyrell uneducated ; Falkland is a re fined man of sensi­
b il i ty , Tyrell b oorish and ins ens i tive to any o f the finer aspects o f
114
life ; Falkland is reas onab le and s e l f- controlled , Tyrell is neither .
Mr . Fores t e r , Falkland ' s elder half-brothe r , is also provided as
a con tr as t with Falkland .
"The character of Mr . Fores ter was in
many respects the reverse o f that o f my mas ter , " wrote Caleb of this
b lun t , kind man , who resemb les Godwin himself .
One foil for Caleb
i s Gines , who possesses the s ame curios i ty and pers everance as Caleb
b u t who lacks the virtuous mo tives and intellectual qualities of his
oppo s i te .
The p rincipal foils , however , are the pro t agoni s t and
antagonis t ( Caleb and Falkland) .
They are s imilar in that they b oth
have b enevolen t at titudes and wish to b e honored and respe cted , but
they are opposites in that Caleb , the commoner who has commit ted
no crime , mus t flee from Falkland , the p rivileged aris tocrat who
fears his grandiose reputation will be des troyed by C aleb .
Although
Mary p la ces no emphas is on contras ting characters in Frankens tein ,
Valperga ownes much o f its appeal and interes t to the fact that
C as truccio and Euthanasia are the al ter-egos of each other in child­
hood , but the politi cal persecution and b anishment of Cas truccio ' s
f amily change his character until he becomes her oppo s i te .
Beatri ce
and Euth anasis are e f fective foils as are the p arents of Cas truccio
and Euthanasi a .
I n The L as t Man Adrian provides an e f fective contras t
with all the o ther male characters in that he is a s el fless human
b eing , comple tely un touched by mot ives of pers onal greed .
Wayne C . B o o th , in his Rhe toric of Fict ion , attaches cons iderab le
s igni ficance to the difference b e tween " telling" and " showing" and
115
i t s e f fe ct on the novel .
1
He main tains that the skil lful comb ination
o f the two will accomp l ish more than emphas is on " showing , " whi ch
s o many twentie th- century critics prefe r .
Even though Godwin and
Mary " tell" much more than they " show , " they would have agreed wi th
Mr . B o o th that the comb ination o f these two me thods is more effective
than e i ther one us ed singly .
Godwin somet imes prefers to show rather
The
than tell when he b ui lds s uspense and surprises the reader .
colorful , dynamic character Bethlem Gab o r has b een thorough ly analy zed
by the narrator , S t . Leon .
When the final epis ode b e tween them
o ccurs , however , S t . Leon does not exp lain that Bethlem is going
ins ane .
The reader b ecomes more and more apprehensive over Bethlem ' s
ment al s t ate as his b ehavior be comes more and more errat ic .
I t is
not until after S t . Leon has es caped from the cas tle and B e thlem i s
dead that the reader is informed o f the Hungarian ' s madness .
One
of Mary ' s b e s t moments as a b ui lder of minor characters o c curs in
her des crip tion o f the two professors Frankens tein meets at the
universi ty at Ingols t adt .
M. Waldman listened at tentively to Franken-
s te in ' s ac count of his s tudies up to that time , smiling toler antly
at the information which M. Krempe had insultingly mocked .
The
contras t ing at titudes of the two pro fessors t oward their s t udents
and their sub j ects are vividly portrayed in this account of their
actions and speech , and Mary does very lit tle telling on this occas ion .
S ince mos t o f the maj or characters o f b o th authors were created
to rep res ent a parti cular idea and perform a didactic function , they
� ayne
C . Boo th , The Rhetoric of Fict ion ( Chicago :
o f Chi cago Press , 1961) , pp . 3-20 .
Univers i ty
116
canno t b e expe cted to b e realis t i c in the shap ing hands of novelis ts
o f mode s t talents .
by their names .
The ideas they rep resent are sometimes revealed
Caleb , a b ib l i c al name meaning " dog , " lab els Caleb
Williams as an inquisitive b usyb ody who " dogs" the s teps o f his
mas ter until he finally b ecomes a do g in a lower sense by caus ing the
death of a great and go od man .
Man deville indicates the dual nature
o f Charles Mandeville , who is par t man and p art devil .
Mary ' s
Frankens tein migh t b e trans lated literally , a frank or open man , and
more freely , a con fess o r .
A name whi ch can b e made to form a met aphor
or symb o l is a s ignal to the reader to no tice that a speci al p oint
is b eing made .
The names of the two professors ab ove s ugge s t their
b as i c qualities as p ro fess ional men .
Mr . Waldman is the genuinely
p repared and dedicated teacher ( a real fores ter or woodsman) , while
Mr . Krempe has only the s urface requirements of his p o s i ti on ( a man
who t ouches only the edge or rim o f the fores t ) .
The use o f this
t r adi tional , s to ck devi ce indicates that Godwin and Mary used every
means at their disposal to interpret their characters , once they
introduced them .
Con temporary cri tics o f Godwin and Mary noted wi th regret the
l ar ge number o f s entimental , mis an thropic characters who p opulate
their novels .
Of the maj or figures , thos e few who es cape this catego ry
are Godwin ' s C loudes ley and Mary ' s Cas t ruccio and Perkin Warb e ck .
The cultivation o f extreme s ensib i lity s o fashionab le during this
p eriod was a ridiculous hypo crisy to Godwin , who exp osed it in mos t
of his novels by making i t the main sour ce o f misery for at leas t
one well-developed ch aracter who is ab le to overcome many o f his
117
difficult ies when he recogni zes their origin .
Mary ' s Lodore and
F alkner are very nearly as ridi culous in their extreme s ensib ility
as Godwin ' s Fleetwood , who resemb les Mr . Harley , Henry Mackenzie ' s
Although one cri tic att ributes Godwin ' s populari ty
Man o f Feeling .
to the s entiment al quality of his novels ,
2
they were intended as
an attack on the cul t of s ensib ility that flourished s o long among
the middle classes in England .
In the development o f youthful
characters , b o th God win and Mary call at tenti on to nob le sentiments
whi ch exercise b enign influences on Godwin ' s Julian in Cloudes ley
and Mary ' s E thel in Lodore :
s ensitivity to the needs and feelings
o f o thers ; to b e auty in nature , ar t , and life ; to the mis carriage o f
j us t i ce and the need for j us t i ce .
"Sens ib ility was p roperly t o b e
valued as long as i t enab led its possessor t o experience life more
ful ly than could the common man , but it b ecomes dangerous when it
d evelopes int o a s o r t of mas o chism or , on the o ther hand , a s ickly
vo lup tuousness . "
3
Godwin trans formed the character who b e came a vic t im o f sensib il i ty into what was later called the Byronic hero .
S t . Leon ( 17 9 9 )
was cas t t o s ome extent in this mold , b ut the Hungarian nob le in the
s ame novel meets the requirements more adequately .
A mili tary leader
and a p as s ionate , taciturn man by nature , Bethlem Gabor was more than
s ix feet in s t ature , "and yet he was built as i f it had b een a colossus ,
2
sprague Allen , ''William Godwin as a S entimen t alis t , " PMLA ,
3 3 ( 19 1 8) ' 1-29 .
3
Weekes , p . 5 8 .
118
des t ined to s us t a:!.n the weigh t of the heavens . "
After his wife and
children had been murdered by a b and o f marauders , "He cursed their
murde rer s , he cursed mankind , he rose up in fierce defiance o f eternal
p rovidence ; and your b lood curdled within you as he spoke . . .
In
the s choo l of Bethlem Gabor , I became acquainted wi th the delights
of mel ancholy
. o f a melan cho ly that lo oked down upon the world
with indignation , and that relieved its s e cret load with curses and
execration.
We f requently continued whole nights in the participation
o f these b i t ter j oys . . . . " Gab or even came to hate his friend S t .
L eon b e cause he t urned the o ther cheek and would not f igh t and h at e .
When Gabo r ' s end came , he re fus ed to b e taken prisoner and died
fightin g .
"His self-b alanced and mighty soul could not s ubmit to the
condition of a p risone r ; he was nothing , if he were not free as air ,
and wil d as winds" ( IV , 1 15-131) .
Frankens tein ' s mons ter also develops
Byronic trai ts when he rebels against his creator and his crimes increase his sense o f allienation and gu ilt .
His final speech finds him
in such a Faus tian agony that he cries :
. I shall die , and what I now feel b e no longer felt . Soon
these burning miseries wi ll b e extinc t . I shall as cend my funeral
p ile triumphantly , and exult in the agony of the torturing flames .
The light o f that conf lagration will fade away ; my ashes will b e
swep t into the s e a b y the winds (p . 2 2 3) .
After S t . Leon , a mis an thropic , Byronic character makes his
appear ance in all Godwin ' s novels ; and after 1 816 b o th Godwin and Mary
frequent ly used Lord Byron himself as a model for men o f this type .
Godwin ' s Charles Mandeville and Mary ' s Lodore are p ar ti cularly representative of this group , and Mary ' s Beatrice in S t . Leon may very well be
one o f th e first Byronic heroines in prose fi c tion .
119
I t is no t easy to trace the influence o f Godwin ' s portrayal
of women in Mary ' s works excep t in Franken s tein , where each portrait
i s high ly ideali zed and unrealis t i c , clearly res emb ling the ladies
in S t . Leon and Flee twood .
For in wri t ing Valperga and later novels ,
Mary introduced e lements o f realism in her characteri z ation , and
her women no longer "be come insens ib le" at the sligh t es t s ign of
s tres s .
From Godwin she inherited the woman who is a p aragon of
virtue and beauty .
Bo th o f the maj or female characters in Frankens tein ,
for examp le , are modeled after Godwin ' s Marguerite de Damville in
S t . Leon , that "mos t excellent of women" and a highly idealized portrait
o f Mary Wollstonecraf t .
h e r art .
B ut Mary went b eyond him in this aspect o f
Lady Bramp ton in Perkin Warbe ck is a woman o f good character ,
but c lever , daring , and interes ted in p o litics .
Beatrice in Valperga
o f fers herself to Cas truccio , be comes his mis tres s , and suf fers the
t ragi c consequences of her youthful indis cretion .
But the mos t
realis t i c portrayal i s that o f Cornelia S anterre , the beauti ful sixteen­
year-old girl whom Lodore married .
She changes f rom a frivo lous
s o ci al b utterfly , dependent on her mother and inattentive to h er
h usb and and inf an t daughter , into a charming , mature woman who is
finally
years .
re-united wi th her daughter after a separation o f twelve
No such women as these inhab it the p ages of Godwin ' s fict ion .
Mary excelled him in her portrayal of women j us t as he excelled her
in the portrayal of men .
Fictional characters are derived from three s ources :
works of other au thors , and ob servat ions o f real life .
his tory ,
In wri t ing
his b io graphies and his tories , Godwin had learned the importance of
1 20
accuracy and the necessity for careful research .
Profes s or F . E . L .
Pries t ley , edi tor o f the only comp l e te edition o f Poli tical Jus tice ,
pointed out that :
"He [ Godwin ] was the fir s t b iographer o f Chaucer
to dig out original do cument s , and added more documents than any
o ther b efore or since , especially the S crope-Grosvenor documents . "
4
Whi le Godwin was at work on his His tory o f the Commonweal th , Crabb
Rob inson recorded in his j ournal on July 8 , 1 82 4 : "Godwin called to
inquire where he could ob tain informat ion about the appointment of
the Jud ges during the Commonwealth . "
5
These res earch techniques
Godwin passed down to Mary , who used them especially when wo rking
on her historical novels .
In a le t ter to Peacock in Novemb er 1820 ,
Shelley wro te :
Mary is wri t ing a novel [ Valperga ] , illus trative o f the manners
of the Middle Ages in I t aly , which she has r aked out o f fifty
old books . I promise myslef s uc cess f rom i t ; and cert ainly , if
6
what is whol ly original will succeed , I shall no t b e disappointed .
In re- creating the lives o f the tyr an t Cas truccio and the P retender ,
Perkin Warbeck , she did not find enough h i s torical information to
develop their characters , s o she drew f rom the characters o f o ther
literary works and from her own ob servations of life .
These varied
s ources she filtered through the alemb i c of her imagination to produce
e ach character as she conceived him to b e .
4
Because of the variety o f
Ibid . , p . 29 .
5
niary , Reminis cences , and Correspondence of Henry Crabb
Rob inson , ed . Thomas S adler , I (London : Macmillan and Co . , 1 869 ) , 311 .
6
Comp le te Works of Percy B . Shelley , e d . Roger Ingpen and
Walter E . Peck , The Julian Edition , 1 0 (London : E rnes t Benn Limi ted ,
19 2 6 ) , 223 .
121
s o ur ces that she and all novelists use , i t i s unreliab le and s peculative t o maintain that Byron was the exclus ive model for Cas truccio
or Shelley the only model for Perkin Warb eck .
of many models .
Each i s a synthesis
The mons ter in Frankens tein has the s ame power and
s avage anger of Godwin ' s Bethlem Gabor , but the unfor tunate creature
has o ther characteri stics that Gabor does not posses s .
Despi te the f ac t that Mary never developed any ch aracter
s olely f rom the original , her cri tics at temp t t o as s oci ate her
characters wi th persons that she knew .
I t has only recently b een
shown that Godwin ' s novels might b e appro ached from the s ame viewIn 19 55 P . N . Furb ank wrote :
p o int .
To put i t b rie fly , the novel [ Caleb Williams ] is a highly
dramati zed symb oli cal pi cture o f Godwin hims elf in the act o f
wri t ing Political Jus t i ce . I think i t is importan t to p oint
this out at once , for some of the brillian ce and originality
o f the concep tion is missed i f we fail t o realize i t . 7
In 1 9 6 3 James T . Boul ton propos ed that Godwin ' s novels are intimately
connected with E dmund Burke and his Re flections on the French Revo lut ion
( 1790) , a work which cal led forth such responses as Mary Wolls tonecraf t ' s
Vindication o f the Rights of Men ( 17 9 1 ) and Thomas P aine ' s Rights of
Man ( 1 7 9 1) .
P ro fessor Boul ton als o ci tes D . H . Monro ' s interpretation
that the character Falkland symb o l i zes the idea of hono r :
spirit of Monarchy made visib le . "
8
"He is the
Whi le b o th Monro and Furb ank made
excellent j udgment s , B oulton pushes the argument fur the r by s ugge s t ing
7
P . N . Furb ank , " Go dwin ' s Novels , " E s s ay s in Criticism , 5 ( 19 55 ) ,
215 .
8
J ames T . Boulton , The Language of P oli tics in the Age of
Wilkes and Burke (London : Routledge and Kegan P aul , 19 63) , pp . 2 26-232 .
122
that the original insp irat ion for Falkland was Edmund Burke , who , in
his Re fle cti ons betrayed the rights o f the common man .
The tone o f
b o th C aleb Williams and Politi cal Jus ti ce , h e argues , i s the s ame :
" p ro found admiration for certain quali ties and regre t for their
mis us e . "
t o B urke :
Godwin dire cted the following p as s age in Poli tical Jus tice
"We know
•
.
.
you refuse t o be her ally .
that truth wil l b e triumphan t , even though
We do not fear your enmi ty .
But o ur
hearts b leed t o s ee such gallantry , talents and vir tue emp loyed in
p erpe tuating the calamities of mankind . "
While the 1 7 9 6 edi tion o f
Political Jus t i ce was in the p ress , Godwin re ceived news o f Burke ' s
death and added a no t e t � this p ass age indi cating that Burke was the
man to whom thes e wo rds were addressed .
In all that i s mos t exalted in talent s , I regard him as the
inferior of no man that ever adorned the face of ear th ;
His excellencies however were somewhat t in ctured with a vein
of dark and s aturnine temper ; so that the s ame man s trangely
uni ted a degree o f the rude character of his native island ,
with an urb ani ty and s us cep tib ility o f the kinder affections ,
that have rarely b een p aralleled . But his p rincip al defect
consi s ted in this ; that the false e s t imate as to the things
entitled to our deference and admiration , whi ch could alone
render the ari s t ocracy with whom he lived , unj us t to his worth ,
in some degree infected his own mind . (PJ , I I , 5 45-546) .
S everal admirab le attemp ts have b een made to interpret Mary
Shelley ' s minor clas s i c Frankens tein , to exp lain the roles o f
Frankens tein and his mons ter .
All throw s ome light on the novel
b ut fail to f ind in the ri ch undercurrent of its famous antecedents-the b ib l ical s tory of creation , Paradise Los t , Faus t , and the Promethean
myth--li ttle more than a highly signi fi cant archetyp al s i tuation o f
modern man caught i n the eternal b at t le b etween good and evil .
my purpose here to sugges t ano ther sour ce and interpretation for
I t is
123
Frankens tein that resemb les thos e worked out for Caleb Williams by
P ro fe s s ors B oul ton and Furb ank .
The introduct ion Mary p repared for the 1831 edi tion o f Frankens tein explains that her main inspiration came from a dream .
mus t be l inked to something that went b efore .
" Everything
The H indoos give
the world an Elephant to s upport i t , b ut they make the elephan t
s tand upon a t or toise" (p . 8) .
This s tatement causes the reader to
recall that the tortoise on whi ch Caleb Williams s tood was the s tory
o f B lue Beard , whose wife ' s curios i ty nearly b rought her to her death .
9
Godwin exp lained that he amus ed himsel f wi th thinking o f Caleb as
the curious wife who could not refrain from opening the forb idden
doo r in the ab sence o f her husb and .
Godwin ' s genius enab led h im to
s ee the s t rong element of s uspens e and univers al appeal o f vio lence
which the fairy t ale "Blue Beard" s atis fies symbolically .
He took
the t ale and made the raw and p r imitive act ions of B lue Beard compatib le
w i th the so cial and moral s tandards o f his own culture by p i t t ing
Falkland ' s authori ty and eminence agains t Caleb ' s curiosi ty .
When
B lue Beard was absent from home for a few weeks , the wife
was s o much pressed by her curiosity , . . . she went down a
b ack pai r o f s t airs , and wi th such an excess ive has te , tha t
she had like to have b roken h e r ne ck two or three t imes .
Upon opening the door , she could not s ee clearly :
after some moments she began to ob serve that the floor was all
covered over with clot ted b lood , on whi ch l ay the b odies o f
9
"When I wrote Caleb Wi lliams , I cons idered i t as in s ome
measure a p araphrase on the s tory o f B lueb eard by Charles Perrault . "
Godwin , Cloudes ley , I , iv .
124
several dead women ranged agains t the walls . (These were all
wives that the B lue Beard had married and murder ' d one after
another . ) She though t that she should have died for fear , and
the key she pulled out of the lo ck fell out o f her hand : . . .
1.0
Godwin has changed the incident narrated ab ove into Caleb ' s dis covery
o f the chest and his assump tion that i t contained evidence o f Falklan d ' s
gui l t .
In the fairy tale , Blue Beard ' s wi fe s en t word t o her brothers
o f her dilemma , and when her husb and returned she fled to the roof of
the house unt i l the brothers arrived , slew B lue Beard , and s aved her .
Here , then , is the fairy t ale p l o t of Caleb Williams , with the b r o thers
filling the role of the l aw and courts of England .
The dis cus s i on o f thes e comb ined elemen ts o f p lot and ch aracter
in Caleb Williams have been withheld up to this point becaus e o f their
relevance to characte r .
Mary was influen ced by a character in a German
ghos t s tory in much the s ame way that Godwin was influenced by "Blue
B eard . "
There was the t ale of the sinful founder o f h i s race , whos e
miserab le doom it was to b e s t ow the kis s o f death on all the
younger s ons o f his fated hous e , j us t when they reached the
age of p romise . His gigant i c , shadowy form , clo thed like the
ghos t in Hamlet
was s een at midnigh t , by the mo on ' s f i t ful
beams , to advance s lowly along the gloomy avenue . The shape
was los t b eneath the shadow o f the cas tle walls ; bu t soon .
he advanced to the couch o f the blooming youths , cradled in
healthy s leep . E ternal s orrow s at upon his f ace as he b en t down
and kissed the forehead o f the boys , who f rom that hour wi thered
l ike flowers snap t upon the s talk . I have not s een thes e s tories
s ince then ; but their incidents are as fresh in my mind as if I
had read them yesterday (p . 7 ) .
•
10
•
.
[ charles ] Perraul t , Histories o r T ales of P as t Times , 1 7 29 ; rpt .
in Jacques B ar chilon and Henry P e t i t , eds . , The Authentic Mo ther Goo s e
Fairy T ales and Nurs ery Rhymes (Denver : Alan Swallow , 19 60) , pp . 2 2 - 2 3 .
125
The t ale o f " the s inful founder o f his race" is the one to which Mary
directs mos t atten tion and whi ch requires ours .
o f th e s tories are s aid to be inaccurate ,
11
Although her summaries
the impress ion they left
upon her is the formative sub s t ance of her t ale , and the accuracy
or inaccuracy of the summaries is no t importan t .
Frankenstein , the
creator of the mons ter , is the founder of his r ace .
He is s inful
b ecause he has given physical li fe to a being to whom he canno t
also give so cial and spiritual li fe .
In order to prepare the creature
for the spon taneous generation o f life whi ch Shelley and Byron had
dis cussed on the nigh t of Mary ' s dream , Frankens tein had given up
all o ther activi ties and withdrawn into his laboratory .
E rasmus
Darwin , o f whom they spoke , b elieved in " the spontaneous generation o f
l i fe whe n condi tions were sui tab le and nutrients avai lab le . "
12
Two
years were required for Frankenstein t o produce these s ui tab le condit ions and b ring lif e to his creature .
The posi t ion toward which this
l ine of inquiry le ads is the identification of Frankens tein laboring
for two years in his laboratory as Godwin writing Poli tical Jus tice
for two years in his s tudy .
The beginning o f life in the mons ter is
the p ub li cation of P olitical Jus tice and its e f fe cts on the lives o f
Godwin and those closest t o him .
Prob ab ly clos er to the tru th than
any o ther interpretation we migh t make , the mons ter is Shelley .
The
maj or influence on Shelley ' s life and though t after 1810 was Godwin
11
12
Shelley , Frankens tein , "Explanatory Notes , p . 7 , " p . 235 .
Desmond King-Hele , ed . , The Essential Writings o f Erasmus
Darwin (London : MacGibb on and Kee , L t c . , 1 9 6 8) , p . 9 2n .
126
and his Polit ical J us tice .
On J anuary 10 , 1 812 Shelley wro te o f
Godwin :
I t is now
two years s ince firs t I s aw your ines timab le
book on "Politi cal Jus ti ce" ; i t opened to my mind fresh and
more extensive views ; it materially inf luenced my character ,
and I ros e f rom its persual a wiser and a b e tter man . I was
no longer the vot ary o f romance ; till then I had exis ted in
an ideal world--now I found that in this univers e o f ours was
enou gh to exci te the interes t of the hear t , enough to empl oy
the dis cu s s ions o f reason ; I b eheld , in sho r t , that I had
duties to perfo rm . l3
•
.
•
Two years later ( 1 814) Shelley maintained that in eloping with Mary ,
he was put ting Godwin ' s ideas concerning love into p ract ice .
The
elopement b ro ught down upon Godwin , Shelley , and all concerned ano the r
s to rm o f abus e .
An ugly rumor that Godwin had s old Mary and Claire
to Shelley circulated in Londo n .
L adies who recognized Mary even
drew thei r long skirts aside as they p assed her on the s t reet .
The
kiss of death that Godwin gave to Shelley was his philosophy which
Shelley attempted to put into p r actice .
In s everal let ters Mary
mentioned that Godwin did not love Shelley ' s memory b ecaus e he felt
Shelley had inj ured him and Fanny Imlay ; and w e recall that Frankens tein
abhorred his creature , became
b il i t ies .
terrified o f i t , and f le d his responsi-
The crimes o f whi ch the mons ter was guil ty canno t , o f
course , b e dup l i cated in the lives o f the originals , y e t a s ense o f
gui l t and financi al harras sment pursued b o th Mary and Shelley .
Evidence of this s ense is con tained in another ghos t s tory that s tood
out in Mary ' s memory :
" the His tory of the Incons tan t Lover , who , when
he thought to clasp the b ride t o whom he had p ledged his vows , found
13
Comp le te Works o f Percy B . Shelley , VIII , 2 40 .
127
hims e l f in the arms o f the p ale ghos t o f her whom he h ad di serted11
(p . 7 ) .
Al though Harriet Shelley was alive at this t ime , the s tory
had made its imp ac t .
"The monster is at once more intellectual and more emotional
than his maker , indeed he excels Frankenstein as much ( and in the
s ame ways) as Mi lton ' s Adam excels Milton ' s God in P ar adi s e Los t . "
The creature i s , in addition , more imaginat ive .
"The greates t
p aradox and mos t as tonishing achievement o f Mary Shelley ' s novel
is that the mons ter is more human than his creator . "
14
contras ts could very apt ly app ly to Godwin and Shelley .
Each o f these
Frankens tein ' s
relian ce upon s cience and Godwin ' s upon re ason is the error b o th
make when they ass ume that knowledge is a higher good than love and
that it can be independent of the feeling o f b r o therhood afforded by
a comp assionate so ciety .
Reas on and the s cientific approach was
the credo of Frankenstein-Godwin , b u t love was the plea o f the mons terShelley , a contras t which e s t ab lishes one o f the primary dif ferences
b e tween the e arly Godwin and the late Shelley .
In Godwin ' s work i t
is not until 1 830 at the conclus ion of Cloudesley that we hear love
exto lle d to the exclus ion of everything e l s e as the answer to the
world ' s p rob lems .
O ther cri tics , such as Miss Muriel Spark , migh t wish to see
the mons ter as Mary suf fering in her iso lation from polite , conven t ional
s o ci e ty ; and this view can also be read into the novel .
But Frankens tein
14
Harold B loom , 11Frankens tein , or the New Prometheus , " Partisan
Review , 3 2 ( 19 6 5 ) , 6 1 3 .
128
denies the mons ter his mate , fearing their o f fs p ring might terrorize
the world .
I f we as sume that Godwin is Frankens tein , his dis truction
of the mate is his obj ection to the union of Shelley and Mary and
h i s attemp t to p revent it .
Few o f Godwin ' s le t ters to Shelley survive ,
but enough evidence remains t o indi cate that his res en tment agains t
Shel ley was deep and las ting .
Ano ther and certainly feas ib le view is that the mons ter is
Godwin hims el f .
t ragi c .
The account o f p ub l ic reaction again s t Godwin is
He , l ike the mons ter , was fil led wi th a benevo lent desire
to know and l ove his fellowman , but so ciety misunders tood and misinterp reted his motives .
His too-revealing Memoir o f Mary Wolls t onecraft
began a hos tile reaction in 179 8 whi ch continued with increasing
momentum .
In 1800 Godwin decl ared in his rep ly to Dr . P arr ' s Spi tal
s e rmon :
I have now continued for some years a s ilent , not an inat tent ive ,
spectator of the flood o f rib aldry , invective and intolerance
whi ch has b een poured out agains t me and my wri tings . The work
whi ch has p rincip ally affo rded a topic for the exercise of this
malignity , has b een the Enquiry Concerning Political Jus t ice .
. its recep t ion with the pub lic was f avourab le much b eyond
my conception of its merits ; it was the specific and avowed
o ccas ion o f pro curing me the favour and countenance o f many
persons o f the highes t note in s ociety and li terature . . .
.
•
Yet i t is now tha t these persons come forth to sound the alarm ;
now they t re ad upon the neck o f the mons ter whom they regard as
exp�r�ng ; now they hold it necessary to show thems elves intemp erate
15
and ince s s an t in thei r hos tilities agains t the spirit of innovation .
To b e sure , some o f the theories o f Polit ical Jus tice whi ch were
q ue s tionab le then are still ques tionab le today , b ut the irony o f
15
william Godwin , Unco llected Writ ings ( 1 7 85-1822) , ed . Jack
W . Marken and Burton R . P ol lin ( Gainesville , Fla . : S cholars ' Facsimiles
& Rep rints , 19 6 8) , pp . 2 8 3 , 2 9 3- 29 4 .
129
the s i tuation is that the work was created to do good , and in Godwin ' s
lifet ime i t served to p rodu ce the radi cal thinking and tragically
errat i c b ehavior of Shel ley , the lack of financial success o f the
novels and the sorrows of Godwin and Mary , and i t may even have
contributed to the s uicide o f Fanny Imlay .
"The myth exp resses the Romantic awarenes s of duality in man
as i t was to b e e choed again in Do rian Gray and Dr . Jekyll and Mr . Hyde ,
not to mention the theories of psychoanalys ts . "
16
Profes s o r B loom
s ees Frankens t e in and his monster as " the s o l ips istic and generous
h alves of the one self . "
I
17
In fit ting this concep t int o my theory
view the s cien t i s t as the rat ionalis t thinker and his mons ter as
the natural man who agonizes over his rej e c tion by the worl d .
If
this analogy is extended , Frankenstein and his mons ter migh t b e s aid
to represen t two dif ferent philosophies--the rati onal i s t and the
roman ti c , b oth of which are imp l i ci t in Godwin ' s moral philos ophy .
In
the closing p aragraph o f her pref ace to Frankens tein , Mary b egins
"And now , once again I bid my hideous p ro geny go forth and p rosper . "
She refers , o f course , to the 1 8 3 1 edition o f the wo rk in whi ch she
p resented Political J us ti ce as the hideous progeny of Godwin .
Whether
cons ciou s ly or uncons cious ly , Mary fashioned Frankenstein as Godwin
and the mons ter as a comb inat ion of Shelley , Godwin , and her s elf .
" The mons ter has n o name . "
18
16
D . J . P almer and R . E . Dows e , " Fr ankens t ein :
The L i s tener , 6 8 (Augus t , 1 9 6 2 ) , 2 84 .
17
B lo om , p . 6 1 3 .
18
P almer and Dows e , p . 2 84 .
A Moral Fab le , "
130
Numerous novels , such as the anonymous traves ty S t . Godwin ,
p ub lished at the t urn of the century were writ ten to condemn o r
ridicule Godwin .
O thers represent a cons cientious man o f good
intentions who comes to see the error of his ways .
But mo re of ten
he is a cold-b looded philosopher and a Machiavellian villain :
p roud
of his intellectual powers , contemp tuous of his vi ctims , and doing
evil sys temati cally .
19
The following excerpt from Charles Lloyd ' s
"Lines S ugge s ted by the Fas t" ( 1 79 9 ) are re- e choed in the final
confess ions of Frankens tein to Wal ton :
a spirit evil and foul ,
Who under fair pretense o f modern lights ,
And vain philosophy , p arcels the dole
O f human happiness
With lavish dis t ribution � who , with speech
Dre s t up in me taphysic eloquence ,
Arid eked out p l aus ibly with ab s tract phras e ,
W ould snat ch from God hims elf the agency
O f good and ill � 20
•
•
.
Godwin , the " father " o f his race , h ad made mons ters o f them all .
I f this interpretation of the characters o f the novel has
validity , how remarkab le it is that Mary Shelley should have written
in the s ame vein as her father and over s uch a l ong p eriod of years .
Two pos sib ilities sugges t a so lution .
Firs t , the novel should no t
b e read as a comp le te denial o f her fai th in the theories o f Godwin
and Shelley , as Muriel Spark sugges ts , bu t s imp ly as a fict ional
rep res en tation of what took p lace in the lives of Godwin and those
19
B . Sprague Allen , "The Reaction agains t William Godwin , "
Modern Philology , 1 6 ( 19 18) , 64 .
2°
Ford K . B rown , The Life o f William Godwin (New York :
Dut t on and Co . , 1 9 2 6) , p . 160 .
E. P.
131
close to him as a result of Politi cal Jus ti ce .
S econd , Mary , writing
perhaps from the dep ths o f her uncons cious , was not fully aware of
what she had wri tten , and , as the years passed , Godwin ' s growing
conservatism made it possib le for them to work in harmony with each
o ther .
From the foregoing dis cus s ion , i t b ecomes apparent that b o th
Godwin and Mary looked for the univers al in p roj ecting character
types , that they were s trongly attracted by Jungian archetypes whi ch ,
as expres sions of the col lective uncons cious , were bet ter sui ted to
reflect the cul tural forces o f the age .
In this connection i t is
intere s t ing to p oint b rie f ly to another example in Godwin ' s work .
P rofessor Boulton no tes that Godwin ' s second novel , S t . Leon , "bears
some marks of a symbolic p urpo s e" s imil ar to that o f Caleb Williams .
21
H e refers here t o the fact that S t . Leon i s a symbol o f aris tocrat i c
honor t o which h e s acrifices , one by one , every human t i e that is
dear to him .
P ro fessor Boulton also implies that B urke may have b een
the inspiration for the character S t . L eon .
However , s ince Godwin
s t ated in his preface to Fleetwood ( 1 805) that he wished to avoid
repeat ing himself , i t seems unlikely that he would use the s ame
original in an obvious way .
S t . Leon possesses many o f the s ame
characteris tics as King George the Third , a type o f character bes t
fit ted to carry the themes o f honor and weal th which dominate this
nove l .
Many facts in S t . Leon ' s life also mat ch thos e in the life
o f George the Third , whos e reign ( 1760-1820) was one o f the l onges t
21
Boulton , pp . 2 30-231 .
132
in English his tory and , in a sens e , comp ar ab le t o the ext reme length
of S t . Leon ' s life extended by his use o f the elixier vi t ae .
Leon los t his es tates and his fortunes in gamb ling .
St.
This loss ,
followed by his humiliat ion and the des t i tution o f hims elf and his
fami ly , b ro ught on an epis ode o f ins anity f rom which he did not
recover for many mon ths .
Through the politi cal chan ces the King
t ook , he gamb led and los t the Ameri can Colonies , and in 1 7 6 5 the
firs t illnes s as s o ci ated with his insanity o ccurred , fo llowed in
1788 - 1 7 89 by a more s erious at t ack in whi ch he b ecame mentally
deranged .
S t . L eon was pub l ished in 1799 b efore the King ' s illness es
o f 1801 , 1804 , and final illness which l as ted from 1 8 10-1 820 .
The
King • s madness , in the ligh t of presen t day medical knowledge , is
now recognized as a type of ins anity b rough t on by a r are phys iologi cal
diso rder not unders tood in Godwin ' s day .
22
S t . Leon was a very
active , humane man and an enthus ias tic p atron of s ci ence and the
arts--as was George the Third , and b o th were devoted to agricul ture .
At the t ime George the Third los t his reason ( 1 7 8 8) and su ffered
permanent damage from which he never comp letely recovere d , he was
f i f ty years of age--the age at whi ch S t . Leon turned hims elf into a
young man .
The King continued to reign , however , wi th the as sistance
of his son until 1810 , when his son became regen t .
S t . Leon , now in
his early twenties , met his son Charles in Hungary and was confined
in p ri s on at the close of the novel , while Charles was p romo ted to high
mil i t ary command .
22
Ano ther link is the name " S t . Leon . "
The Hous e o f
Ida Macalpine and Rich ard Hunte r , Geor ge III and the Mad­
B us iness (New York : P antheon B ooks , 19 6 9 ) , pp . xi-xv .
133
Hanover to whi ch George the Third belonged , was des cended from the
Guelphs , a repub lican bran ch o f which contro lled the medieval city
o f Florence and took for its symbol the lion .
For many years the
city maint ained a p ri ze collection o f a hundred of these b eas ts .
S ince the lion and the unicorn are the two principal animal symbols
o f the Hanover cre s t , they link S t . Leon wi th the Gue lph dynas ty whi ch
figures so p rominent ly in Mary ' s Valperga .
23
There is also another tie b e tween the novels o f these two
authors and George the Third .
In The Las t Man the f ather o f Adrian ,
who abdi cated in favor o f p arliamentary contro l , reveals the Regency
P eriod of England when great cons t itutional b at t les led to the
as cendency of p arliament ary over monarchial p ower .
Mary does a b it
o f j uggling o f historical facts here and has Adrian ' s ins anity b rought
on by th e Turkish girl Evadne ' s re fus al to marry him , when in fact
George the Third ' s firs t illness in 1 7 65 was attrib uted by his contemporaries to the fact that he was not permi t t ed t o marry an English
girl whom he loved , b u t was advis ed to wed the Aus trian P rincess
Charlo t t e S ophia .
But in The L as t Man ( 1 826) Adrian is the s on , no t
the husb and o f Queen Charlot te , a fict ional expediency necess ary to
Mary ' s p l o t .
Her inclus ion of Queen Charlotte ( died 1818) in the
cas t of characters was meant to increase the awareness of the readers
of the e fforts of Me tternich and the Emperor
Francis the Fir s t to
crush the s p read o f revolutionary prin ciples with the help o f the
23
John Brown , Memo i rs o f George the Third , L at e King of Great
B r it ain (Liverpool : The Caxton Press , 1820) , pp . 39-6 4 .
1 34
Roman Catho lic Church , whi ch formed an extensive police sys t em , o r
Spy International , necess ary to maintain the ab solutism o f the Hapsburg
Part of the intelle ctual quarantine imposed on the Aus trian
Empire .
people was literary censorship whi ch excluded thirty- two English
novels pub lished b e tween 1 820 and 1847 , even though few Aus trians
could read English .
Included in this number were nine o f S ir Walter
S cot t ' s novels , Ann Radcliffe ' s Gas ton de B londeville , and Mary
Shelley ' s The Las t Man .
Any work con taining accounts o f reb ellion
agains t e s t ab l ished authori ty in any of i t s forms was s us pect and
b anned by Met ternich and his censo rs .
24
Even though b oth Godwin
and Mary did use the Royal Family of their d ay , they wrote no thing
to contradi c t e ach o ther or to point to a clear identifi cat ion o f
the family .
I t is not at all unlikely that many o f the characters
in b o th these novels and others could be identified .
25
Lionel Verney
in The L as t Man is clearly cas t as the son , whom Mary invented , o f
the di s t inguished I rish peer and politi cian Ralph Verney , who was
financially ruined and died in p overty withou t heirs in 1 79 1 .
26
24
s ibyl White Wyat t , The English Romantic Novel and Aus trian
Reaction (New Y ork : Exposition Press , 1 9 6 7 ) , pp . 7- 8 , 1 34-1 3 8 . For
a lis t o f the b anned novels s ee pp . 175-17 6 .
25
For a comp rehensive survey of the names Godwin uses s ee :
B urton R . Follin , "The S ignif i can ce o f Names in the Fiction o f William
Godwin , " Revue Des Langues Vivantes , 37 ( 19 7 1) , 3 88- 399 . S ince I had
already not iced and verified my remarks concerning the names in Godwin ' s
novels b e fore Mr . F ollin ' s article was b rough t to my attention , I am
not indeb ted to him for these ob servations . However , I am greatly
indeb ted to him for corrob oration o f my speculation that many o f the
characters can b e linked wi th actual pers ons .
26
M[ argare t ] M [ ari a ] , [ L ady ] V [ e rney ] , "Verney , Ralph , " DNB , 20
( 19 1 7 ) , 2 65- 266 .
135
Th e father-and-daugh ter relationships in the novels of Godwin
and Mary are my f inal evidence that these two exercised a great inf luence
on e ach o ther in their portrayal of character .
Caleb Williams and
Frankens tein do not contain relationships b e tween fathers and daughters ,
but S t . Leon had three daugh ters , the youngest o f whom was Julia ,
ab out the s ame age as Fanny Imlay when the b ook was written in 1 7 9 9 .
Li ttle Julia , the darling o f the entire hous ehold and especially
devoted to her father , was undoub tedly drawn from Godwin ' s obs ervations of both Mary and Fanny , who were two and s ix years o f age ,
respectively .
Many years l ater when S t . Leon vi s i ted h is daughters ,
he found , i ronic al ly , that Julia was dead .
The firs t s ignificant
father-daughter relationship in Mary ' s work app ears in Valperga
b e tween Euthanasi a and her father .
(See Chap ter I I , pp . 5 6- 5 7 for a
S ince the name Euthanas ia
dis cuss ion o f Euthanas i a ' s education . )
means a gentle , p ainless death , there are s everal references to i ts
use whi ch sugge s t an interp retation .
In 1 7 42 Hume emp loyed i t :
"Death i s unavoidab le to the po liti cal as wel l as to the animal b ody .
Abs o lute monarchy . . . is the eas ies t death , the true Euthanas ia o f
the British cons t itution . "
And in 1 79 7 , S ir Francis Burde tt was
quoted in the Annual Regis ter as s aying :
" . . . wi thout a reform
o f P arliament corrup tion would b ecome the euthanas ia o f the cons t itu. .,
t 1.on
.
27
Euthanas ia ' s death in Valperga is the symb olic death of the
people ' s hope for a cons t i tutional monarchy .
The relationship b e tween
Euth anas ia and her father was s urely insp ired to a gre at degree by
27
"Euthanas i a , " NED , I I I ( 189 7 ) , 325 .
136
Mary ' s l i fe with her father :
they talked to gether , they read toge ther ,
they spent whole days in each o the r ' s comp any .
But she is perhap s
the mos t amb ivalent of all Mary ' s characters , and the reader wonders
if Mary ' s uncons cious was operating again to draw her b o th away f rom
and towar d her father ' s teachings .
Euthanas ia revered her father ' s
memory and his que s t for perfe ction , but when she carried out his
teachings in her own life , they b rough t her only mis ery and death .
The autobiogr aphical element is highly enigmati c here , and the
motivations of Euthan as ia are no t convincing .
Godwin ' s Cloudes ley
does not contain a well-deve loped father and daughte r , but Mary ' s
P e rkin Warb e ck , p ublished the s ame year ( 1 830) does .
The Spanish
moor Hernan de Faro , is the f ather of the beauti ful Monina , but he
only appears on the s cene in moments of extreme emergency to res cue
Monina or one of her friends .
After the exe cution o f Perkin Warb e ck ,
Monina emb arked with her father on a trip around the world b ut died
b efore the year was out of a b r oken hear t .
There is a certain likeness
here to the dual nature expressed by Frankens tein and the mons ter .
Monina--young , immature , and very b eautiful--lived only for Perkin
Warb e ck , whom she idoli zed .
Perkin , reco gnized by J ames IV o f S cotland
as the Duke o f York , married James ' s cous in the Lady Katherine Gordon ,
a calm , contro lled , mature personality and the oppo s i te o f Monina .
After the death of Perkin , Katherine went sorrowfully b ack to S co t land
and her father , a composed and cap able woman .
This contras t in
pers onal i ties implies the change that took place in Mary ' s character
after Shelley ' s death :
the death of the spiri t o f impuls ive , youth ful
love and the b eginning of a more adult p eriod of her life .
In Mary ' s
137
Lodore there are two f ather-daughter p airs , one p air invo lving the
maj or characters and ano ther involving the minor characters .
Godwin ' s
las t novel Deloraine reveals an aging man coming at las t to b e
dependen t o n his daugh ter and h e r husb and .
He has followed Mary ' s
Lodore in creating two fathers and two daughters , and there are ske t chy
indications of autob iographical allegory here , b ut they are s o carefully disguised that the clarification of them would be l ong and
tedious .
Mary ' s las t nove l , Falkner , comp le ted after her father ' s
death , contains s ti l l ano ther father and daughter , with the f ather
aged and dying .
Their persis tence in including in their cas t of
characters a father and dau ghter shows them employing a relationship
they understood and on which they thems elves relied in actual life .
Catherine in Deloraine , the mos t matur e o f Godwin 's fic tional daughters ,
is largely respons ib le for her father ' s peace and happines s in the
waning years of h is l ife .
I t is a genuine tribute which Godwin makes
to Mary in his s eventy-s eventh year .
Godwin ' s formal s tyle o f wri ting was much admired by many o f
h i s contemporaries for its clar i ty , precis ion , and power .
dis course was , o f cours e , the order of the day .
Formal
His was a deliberate ,
unhurried s tyle which Mary also us ed in her wri ting .
The kind of
s tyle that is right for a literary work depends upon the intention o f
the w r ite r ,
28
and s ince we have e s t ablished that Godwin ' s aim was
didacti c and his maj or characters were foreordained to a p redetermined
end , his elevated , p re cise s tyle is appropriate to that end .
The
28
Monroe C . Beards ley , Aes theti cs : Prob lems in the Philosophy
of Criticism (New York : Harcour t , Brace , and Co . , 1 9 5 8) , p . 2 2 7 .
138
formal essay and the sermon were never far f rom his thoughts as he
wro te his fic tion , although by us ing the firs t person he created
the impress ion of greater informal i ty and personal authori ty than
he would have had he writ ten in the third person .
all l ong-winded and excess ively repetit ious .
His speakers are
Mary ' s characters are
also long-winded , but she avoided needless repetition b e t ter than
her fathe r .
S ome times the repetition is used delib erately with
good psychological e f fect in speeches that are confessional and
whi ch show the dis turbed s t ate o f mind o f the speakers .
Charles
Mandevil le moans over and over again how different he would have b een
i f he had known love and kindness in childhood .
Such speeches reveal
his s elf-pity and his inab il i ty to b reak away f rom the mis anthrop ic
pattern o f his life to enj oy the f riends he has finally made and
the love o f his sis ter and her husb and .
Frankens tein ' s in terminab le
l ament to Walton is much in the s ame vein and serves an artis tic
purpose .
Clear as Godwin ' s s tyle is , it has l i t t le emot ional force
be cause he dis dains to us e , excep t on rare o ccas ions , words with
s t rong connot at ive meaning .
29
I t migh t also b e added that Godwin ' s
excess ive concern for thoroughness and p recis ion exhaus ts the reader ' s
p at ience and o f ten f ails t o p roduce the symp athy o r catharsis h e hoped
to evoke .
While Mary ' s s tyle lacks the vigor and power of Godwin ' s
at his best , i t also lacks what Croker calls " the dis gus t ing accuracy"
of her f ather ' s .
29
30
30
In her novels wri t ten in the third p e r s on , there
Boul ton , p . 2 12 .
Croke r , p . 1 7 7 .
13 9
i s much dial ogue , whi ch is handled especial ly well in Perkin Warb eck .
She emp loys s tyle to help her create a fi fteen th- century atmosphere
by using such archai c exp ress ions as y ' cleped , assail , and sooth ,
and by di alogue filled with met aphor and s en tence patterns typ i cal
of the writings o f Chaucer , Spenser , and Shakespeare .
When Lady
Bramp t on sees S ir Robert Clifford enter the room , his face whi te
with terror and s urp rise , she exclaimed :
·�o ly Virgin !
. what
had dres sed you r f ace , Sir Rob e r t , in this p ale livery ? what tale
o f death have you heard? "
31
Godwin makes frequent references to
l anguage not only in his es s ays but in his novels , a fact which
indicates his great intere s t in language and its us e .
S ince the
s ty le , as wel l as all other e lements of the novels of Godwin and
Mary , was determined a priori , there is l i t t le flexib ility in the
language of e i ther .
Although nearly all characters are p resented in
much the s ame manner , there are a few excep t ions such as Mary ' s
gip s ies and I rishmen in Perkin Warbeck , whose language is dif ferent
from that of the English courtiers .
In Caleb Williams , the l anguage
of F alkland is in no way comparab le with the " rude" and s imple utterances o f Tyrel l and Grimes .
B ut when Godwin tells us in S t . Leon
that he will not s toop to reproduce the native speech of the N egro
Hector , we wonder if he refrains to ennob le the character or if he
s imply did not know how such a man would speak .
Mary introduces three
Negro s ervants in Lodo re b ut does no t develop their characters or
have them conve rs e .
31
[ Mary W . Shel ley ] , The For tunes o f Perkin Warbeck , 2 (London :
Henry Colburn and Richard Ben tley , 1 830) , 49 .
140
The dominan t tone o f the novels o f b o th Godwin and Mary is
didac ti c .
It is heavily and persis tently so in Godwin ' s and there fore
an unat t rac tive qual i ty to a twentieth- century reade r .
L i t t le is
left to the imagination of the reade r , who is s eldom cal led upon
to make inferences o f his own .
The novels of both , however , are
enr i ched by the frequen t use o f i rony s cattered throughout all of
them.
The i rony is sometimes unin tentionally prophetic and t ragi c .
The death o f Julia in S t . Leon anticipates the s ui cide o f Fanny
Imlay j us t as the death o f Frankens tein ' s li ttle brother William
ant icipates the death of the Shelleys ' child William a few years
after the publi cation of Frankens t ein .
in the deliberate us e of irony .
'i
�
But b oth authors were accomp lished
Caleb Williams and Frankens tein
h ave their b as is in an ironic ques t .
Caleb was driven to expose
Falkland to the world b ecause he thought i t j us t and b enevolent .
Not
until after the exposure did Caleb realize his action was unj us t and
would haunt him the res t o f his life .
Frankens tein ' s obsess ion to
create a new man and a superior race was , he thought , a b enevolent
act unti l it was accomp lished .
o f all :
S t . Leon is perhap s the mos t ironi c
he wri tes o f his s ufferings--how terrib le and how unending
they are , never real i z ing that he b rings them all upon hims el f .
And
what an iron- twis t it is that the secret p ath int o the s tronghold
Valperga , known only to E uthanas ia and Cas t ruccio , is the means by
whi ch Cas t ruccio cap tures and des t roys the c as tle .
In The Las t Man
democratic leadership is indeed damned in the p erson o f Ry land , who
flees f rom L ondon during the plague and dies in the mids t o f his
hoarded food , while the represen tative o f ari s to cracy dies fighting
141
for Greek independence and the represen t ative o f monarchy remains in
London caring for the s i ck and needy .
Perhap s the primary influence Godwin had on the t one o f Mary ' s
novels was to p ro duce their amb ivalence .
Hers was a romantic tempera­
ment and she obvious ly wished to make a roman t i c hero out of Perkin
But in adhering t o her father ' s ideas she could no t make
Warb e ck .
P e rkin glorious in b attle , a king ' s son come to claim his throne .
His character and identity were ruined as she reluct antly f i tted them
into the Godwinian p at tern .
Mary loved her father but she did no t
who lehe artedly share his ide as .
An ever-present thread o f opt imism runs through all o f Godwin ' s
novels .
This thread is also in Mary ' s works , b ut i t comes and goes ,
s ub j e c t always to the fluctuations o f her personal feelings .
This
f luctuation is especially dis cernib le in Falkner , comp le ted af ter
her father ' s death .
The fact that she wro te no novels after this
one speaks for itself as a s trong indi cation that her mot ivation to
writ e p rose fiction died with her father .
Mary was no t the inve terate s cholar and re ader that b o th Godwin
and Shelley were .
Consequently she did no t have the vas t s torehous e
o f knowledge and awareness o f li terary techniques that they b o th
possessed .
For this reason she no t only relied rather heavily upon
Godwin ' s techniques in the novel but also upon many of the s ame
antecedents that he imitated .
Both , for example , depended upon
Shakespeare and the contemporary theatre o f their day , and there is
a s t rong dramati c quali ty in their fict ion .
S ince they were b o th
aware o f Aris to tle ' s cri t i cal p rinciples for the drama--especially
142
t ragedy-- and at te mp ted to follow many o f these principles , it is a
p i ty they did not heed Aris totle ' s caution that p i ty and fear are
p ro du ced more e f fe ctively through action rather than rhetoric .
In
mos t of their novels , the catharsis for the reader is b lurred by the
exces s ive comments or laments of one of the characters .
Perhaps one
reas on why Frankens t ein is s uperior to Mary ' s o ther novels is that
she did no t fal l into the trap of verbos i ty so completely in Franken­
s tein as in her later works .
Among her mo s t moving and p owerful s cenes
are thos e depi cting the mons ter in his suf fering with l i t t le or no
comment from him .
She produces genuine p athos as she des cribes the
lonely mons ter wat ching and learning f rom the Delaceys , b ringing
them firewood and doing any l i t t le chore he can for them .
As he
weeps over his dead creator , the only human b eing he knew and loved , and
p lunges on to the North Pole , shrieking and howling in his agony ,
Mary app ro aches real tragedy .
I t is to b e regre t ted that she did
no t b re ak away f rom the rhet orical examples wi th which her father ' s
works p rovided her .
P e rhaps the s tronges t and mos t revealing evidence w e have o f
the clos e rel ationship b e tween the two authors and their nove ls is
in the way their own lives are p roj e cted in disguise in the lives
o f their charac ters .
There is no t a s ingle nove l o f either author
that does not re flec t , if no t embody , some phas e of their own lives
or of p ersons whom they knew .
I t is ironic , however , that critics
firs t s aw this characteri s t i c in Mary ' s novels and h ave only j us t
b egun to see that i t o riginated in the novels o f her father .
CHAPTER VII
CONCLUS ION
The foregoing chap t ers have shown that the writing career o f
Mary Shelley was developed primarily under the guiding hand o f her
father .
She was an affectionate , intelligent woman , but her intel-
lectual drive and p ower to create needed the s timulus of a more galvanic
force than her own .
This force she derived from a number o f literary
friends , but esp e ci ally from Shelley and Godwin .
Wi th the death o f
Shelley , she looked chie f ly to Godwin f o r h e r inspirat ion--and to
the memory of Shel ley and her mother , Mary Wolls tone craf t .
In her "Crit i ci sm on the Novels of Godwin , " writ ten for the
S t andard Novels Edi tion o f Caleb Williams ( 1831) , Mary shows her
awareness of the maj or characteris ti cs of her father ' s philos ophy
as developed in his nove ls :
The p rincip al obj e ct of his s t udy and contemp lation is man
the enemy o f man . Do we not remember to have seen an edition
o f " Caleb Wil liams" with these lines for a mot to ?
"Amid the woods the tiger knows his kind ;
The p an ther p reys not on the p anthe l b rood :
Man only is the common foe o f man . "
As
we have seen , Godwin ' s principal ob j e ct in his novels also became
the obj e c t of Mary ' s .
The maj or portion of her shor t es s ay deals
with the aes the t i c aspects of her father ' s art , all of the comment
1
Godwin , Caleb Wil liams ( 1 831) , pp . xiv-xv .
143
144
b e ing f avorab le .
She comp liments her father on his ab i l i ty to s t ir
the emo tions of the reader , a quali ty in the wri ting that they would
b o th deem essential to accomp lish their purp os e .
She especially
c al ls at tention to techniques which she followed in her own works
and evidently admired in his :
One of the mos t remarkab le ways in whi ch the faculty o f Mr . Godwin
is evidenced , is the "magnitude and wealth" of his det ai l . No
s ingle action or event that could p os s ib ly , in such circums tances
as he imagines , heighten the effect , is omi t ted . In this he
resemb les Hogarth ; but he is always tragi cal , --producing his
end altoge ther without ludicrous con tras ts , or the intervention
of anything b ordering on the humorous . Mere mental imbecility
is not to be found in the p ictures of Mr . Godwin : his characters
are people who analyse their own minds , and who never act from
want of unders tanding , righ t or wrong . Indeed , they are too
cons cious ; l ike that young rogue , Charles de S t . Leon , for ins t ance ,
who seems t o do every thing with a truly French eye to e ffect . 2
The characters in their nove ls lived in the minds of bo th and underwent
the s crutiny of both father and daughter .
We find no humor in the
works of either author and only a very little s atire in the e arlier
nove ls of Godwin .
Mary ' s s e cond nove l , Valperga , reveals an amb ivalent at titude
toward s ome of her characters , a s trong indication that she did not
alway s follow her own inclinations in her writing .
When the time
came for Shelley ' s one surviving son to at tend s chool , his mo ther
was advised to send him to one where he could le arn to think for
h ims e l f .
"To think for hims e l f � " crie d the dau ghter o f Mary Wolls tonecraft
and William Godwin , the wife o f Percy She lley and the authoress
o f Frankens tein . "Oh my God , teach him to think like o ther
people ! " 3
2
3
Ib id . , p . xvii .
Murry , Heroes of Though t , p . 245 .
145
And this is exactly what Mary Shel ley did for her son .
He became
a model young man wi th such an even , undis t inguished temperament
that even his mother was at times dis couraged by his apathy .
The amb ivalence in Mary ' s novels result ing from her dis agreement with her f ather ' s ideas began to diminish after her return to
E ngland , as the influence they exercised on each other became mutual
and was no longer limi ted to Godwin ' s inf luence on Mary .
She was
ins t rumental in altering his convict ions ab out b o th necess ity and
reas on , wi th whi ch she did not agree .
Mary was not a skept i c and
even attended church f rom time to time , and Godwin ' s references to
a Divine Being and Creator o f the Universe b ecome more numerous as
their ass o ci ation con tinued through the years .
He even went so far
in Cloudes ley as to b e influenced by her use o f the third p ers on
narrator ins tead o f the firs t person , wh ich he had always used in
p revious works .
S ince he was no t as succes s ful as Mary w i th the
third pe rson poin t of view , he returned to the firs t person , while
she continued to wri te in the third .
All of these circums t ances
p oint to the fact that Mary h ad a mind o f her own which she frequent ly
exercised .
S ince Godwin b elieved in the righ t o f private j udgmen t , he
surely extended this righ t to h is own daugh ter �
Toge ther Mary and Godwin weathered the le an years o f their
lives , s uppor ting each other in every way they could as Godwin had
s ugges ted to her following Shel ley ' s death :
Do not , I intreat you, be cas t down ab out your worldly circum­
s t ances . You cer tainly con tain within yours elf the means o f
your sub s is tence . Your talents are truly extraordinary . Franken­
s tein is univers ally known ; and though i t can never be a b ook
146
for vulgar reading , is everywhere respe cted . I t is the mos t
wonderfu l work t o have been wri t ten at twenty years o f age that
I ever heard o f . Y ou are now five & twenty . And mos t fortunately ,
you h ave pursued a course o f reading , to cult ivate your mind , in
a manner the mos t admirab ly adap ted to make you a great & suc­
c e s s ful author . I f you cannot be independent , who should be?
You r talen ts , as far as I can at present dis cuss , are t urned for
the wri ting of fictitious adventures .
I f i t shall ever happen to you to b e placed in
. urgent
wan t of a small s um , I intreat you to le t me know immediately .
We mus t see what I can do . We mus t help one another . 4
This mutual encouragement and aid continued throughout their lives .
Even though they did no t agree in all things , they did hold
many ideas in common about which Mary wrote with ardor and conviction .
These ideas
are evident in the themes wh ich run through the novels ,
s ome o f whi ch have not been mentioned in the foregoing chap ters .
The
p rivilege and proper ty of aris t ocracy had a very personal meaning
for them s ince S ir T imothy ' s longevity and his tigh t hold on the
purse s trings of the f amily fortune dep rived Mary and her s on of all
b u t the mos t meager financial s upport .
War , poverty , s l avery , and
all of man ' s inhumani ties to man were equal ly deplored by b o th .
Benevolence gained their mutual s uppor t , b ut wi th Godwin i t was
attained through reas on .
With Mary , who desp aired o f ever thoroughly
unders t anding anyone , the way to benevolence was love .
Godwin ' s firs t
s tatement indicating that he had b een swayed in his belief in reason
by his ass o ciation wi th Mary was made in Cloudes ley when Borromeo
confesses
the true sys tem for governing the world
is love . .
I and Lord Danvers have been the delinquents ; he for b as e and
selfish ends ; I from an erroneous j udgment ( I I I , 342-343) .
.
4
Godwin , Letters , Feb ruary 8 , 1 8 2 3 .
•
.
147
In this speech Borromeo is Godwin and Lord Danvers is S ir Timothy
Shelley .
Both have wronged y oung Juli an , a comp osite figure o f
Shel ley and h i s s on Percy .
Sir Timothy has dep rived Julian o f fatherly
love , ass o ciation with his family , and his inheritance .
Borromeo
has at temp ted to force the philosophy of reas on and dis cip line upon
Julian and has deprived him o f his righ t o f private j udgment .
In
his fathe r ' s ab sence , Julian ran away and j oined a b and of rebels in
the mountains .
When his father re turned and wen t in s e arch o f Julian ,
the father , Cloudes ley , was accidentally kil le d .
Julian hims e l f would
have b een killed had it not been for the intervention of Meadows and
Lord Danvers .
In this novel and also in Deloraine , Godwin appears
to ask forgiveness for the suffering he has brought down on h is
f amily .
In addit ion , he as signs a much less importan t role to reason
than he did in his e arlier works .
With him , as with Shelley , in their
las t days , the spirit of love was the answer to the world ' s ills .
The t heme o f alienation and l oneliness that runs through the
works of both Mary and Godwin reveals how profound was their suffering
over s o ciety ' s rej e c tion of themselves .
Although b o th had always a
few loyal frien d s and a small family circle , they felt a deep s ense
of isolation from the worl d .
Both too were opp ressed by a s ense o f
guilt for the t ragedies to which they h ad unintentionally contributed .
They unders t ood each o ther and s upported each other as few f athers and
daughters ever h ave , and each attemp ted to b ring some j oy and p le as ure
out of p ain for the o ther .
How grat ify ing i t mus t have b een to b o th o f
them when Godwin ' s answer to Malthus was p raised in P arliament and Mary ' s
The Las t Man was quoted from the floor in an ardent antislavery speech
only a few years b e fore the ab oli tion o f s lavery in the British Emp ire .
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Routledge and
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155
S tevick , Philip .
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VITA
Kather ine Richardson Powers , the da�ghter of Elizab e th Richardson
and John S . Powers , Sr . , was born in Harlan , Kentucky ; r eceived her
elementary education in the pub l i c s chools of Johnson C i ty , Tenness ee ;
and was graduated f rom Dobyns-Bennet t High S chool , Kingsport , Tennessee .
Dur ing periods inter sper sed by years of teaching in the pub lic s chools
o f Tennessee , she earned the following college degrees :
the B . S .
from George Peabody College and the A. B . in L . S . from Emory Univers i ty .
After s ome years as a librarian a t the Emory Unive r s i ty Med i cal Lib rary
and Dobyns-Benne t t High S choo l , Kings po r t , Tennessee , she r eceived
in 195 7 the M . A . degree in English from George Peabody College and
has s erved as a member of the English facul ties of Wes t Texas S t ate
Univers i ty , Tennessee Polytechnic University , and the Univers i ty of
Tennessee .
She is p resently an assis tant professor of English a t
Francis Mar ion College , Florence , South Carolina.
156