Mary Shelley, The Last Man

Introduction

Mary's idealization of domestic, family -- challenged by deaths of children: -- Clara, Sept 24 1818; William, June 7 1819 -- her grief, isolation, blames Percy in part (especially for Clara) -- and her withdrawal from him after William's death, writing of Mathilda -- Woodville episode, a kind of Percy Shelley

then Percy's attraction to Emilia Viviani, Jane Williams; but his sudden death -- pushes her into idealizing Percy: first her marriage:

It is not true that this heart was cold to thee. Tell me, for now you know all things -- did I not in the deepest solitude of thought repeat to myself my goodfortune in possessing you? How often during those happy days, happy though chequered, I though how superiorly gifted I had been in being united to one to whom I could unveil myself, & who could understand me. (Journal, Oct 2 1822)

but soon recuperates his character: Preface (1839), MSR, p. 377 -- Shelley seens as divine, etc. as if of another world, hence --

at same time, in Last Man, Mary challenges the efficacy of the Romantic ideals pursued by Shelley; -- but her self-blame, guilt over withdrawal from him -- unable to acknowledge her anger, falls into deep depression, -- often wishes to pursue him by her own death:

A long dreary winter is coming -- and where shall I be next year. If a sybil said, in my grave, she were the foreteller of joy. I never, in all my woes, understood the feelings that led to suicide till now -- When the blank grave appears a rest after this troubled dream, or any change preferable to this monotony of heaviness. (Journal, Oct 26 1824)

Mary saying that she lives only for the sake of Percy Florence, the surviving son --

"My child; -- so many feelings arise when I think of him, that I turn aside to think no more" (Journal, Oct 2 1822)

-- heroic but self-destructive endurance of motherhood

Frankenstein: isolation of monster, especially as Frankestein won't create a mate for him, hence his murders; principle of destruction -- and now in Last Man, Lionel's final isolation after deaths produced by plague

Mary's predicament:

so in Last Man: her own grief on a universal scale; Romantic style, to universalize, to point to the end of Romanticism (B. Johnson), its vision as untenable

The last man! Yes, I may well describe that solitary being's feelings, feeling myself as the last relic of a beloved race, my companions extinct before me. (Journal, May 14 1824)

And only a few months after Percy's death, her isolation:

When I meditate or dream on my future life, one idea alone animates me -- I think of friends & human intercourse - if I do not say, "how flat & unprofitable!" -- I weep to think how unstable all that is. Those I most loved are gone for ever. Those who held the second rank are absent . . . (Journal, Oct 2 1822)

so for whom does she write the novel? -- as if last survivor, Lionel speaks to future reader, seen as a "solitary being," p. 399 -- is this the editor who rescues the papers from the cave at Cuma?

death of Evelyn, repeats that of William by malaria in June 1819, p. 434-5

fears of Idris, after loss of one child, p. 226; she never really recovers from this; her fears harrow her increasingly until she dies

Perdita's story most closely reflects Mary's: Bishopsgate house where she lives with Raymond is close to that of actual cottage of Mary and Percy, p. 90 -- her grief at Raymond's infidelity, then her idealization of him after his death, the tomb at Hymettus, etc. -- and her guilt at his suffering in Turkish imprisonment, as though she is to blame, p. 169

Lionel and Idris rest together, talk of love and death, p. 338-9 against background of son Alfred's death, Lionel's fear of his own; -- what Mary's relation with Percy should have been?

Gender politics:

Adrian: a portrait of Shelley, e.g., p. 91 -- that he never marries, never takes political leadership until near the end, suggests impossibility of finding the ideal -- narcissistic of flaw Raymond: a portrait of Byron, p. 48 -- cf. ambition to win Greek war, conquer Asia, p. 57 (note admiring reference to Napoleon, as Romantic hero) -- his libertinism after breakup with Perdita, p. 149 (cf. Byron in Venice)

Men tend to destroy illusions of love, p. 118 (ironic, because this is just what Raymond will shortly do)

Contra "Epipsychidion" love divided is love destroyed, p. 129-30

Perdita: her whole life devoted to serving Raymond, p. 91-2 -- her despair at Raymond's infidelity: barren, chained on a rock, etc., p. 134-5 -- she has no existence of her own, only in the circle of his love, p. 144-5

cf. Mary's Journal (cf. "Epipsychidion"):

moonshine -- that is the name they gave me. Sometimes I think he [Percy] may inhabit the boat like moon he loved. And I am then moonshine, having no existence except that which he lends me, & through his influence glimmering on the earth, known & sought through the light he bestows on me. Thus would I endeavour to consider my self a faint continuation of his being . . . (Journal, Oct 10 1822)

cf. other stories of woman who live through their relationships alone: Lucy's story, married to a violent innkeeper, p. 347-8; story of Juliet, lives only for lover, then child, p. 387-8

Clara near end of story: more interested in parent's graves in Greece than in being the mother of a renewed human race, set sail for Greece, p. 439

Romantic imagination:

Wordsworth (and Rousseau) view of natural man, contradicted by Lionel's youth, p. 18

-- or cf. Adrian's (Shelley-like) hymn of praise for nature, p. 74-5 -- "the will of man is omnipotent," p. 76 cf. "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty"

-- but at Chamonix, the illusion of nature as spirit is destroyed, p. 424 vs. Percy's "Mont Blanc" -- nature actually inimical or indifferent to mankind

-- and Lionel's invocation of ruin on nature, because of this indifference? p. 437

Whether man's nature parallel to that of nature: Raymond and Lionel debate, nature as passion driving us; no free will? p. 66 -- both assume human life driven by human passions, aims, hence understandable -- overlooks incomprehensible mechanism of plague

Vision of nature's beauty from Jura to Lake Geneva, etc., p. 418-9

Raymond's tomb chosen by Perdita, Hymettus: recess overlooking a chasm, p. 208 cf. site of vision in "Alastor," "Triumph," etc.

Political action rejected as folly: Lionel's tirade against "life" vs. retirement, p. 218 -- but, of course, not safe here from the plague; the domestic also doomed, untenable, a false paradise, sustainable only by an illusion

Burke vs Godwin, etc.:could England give up its aristocracy, p. 222; -- imagination as root of Burkean vision, organicism of, e.g., Lionel, p. 227-8 -- still holds the minds of the majority; cf. Ryland's speech on Republican virtues, p. 59 -- Godwinian

all distinctions of rank now mere folly in the face of the plague, p. 293 all united in fear and death, a parody of the universalizing One Life

Fate or nemesis: as if envious of domestic happiness, p. 258

Guilt: Plague as punishment, but not known for what; cf . Frankenstein's guiltless guilt (and Coleridge's Mariner)

Orientalism:

plague: its origin on the Nile and in the east, at Constantinople, p. 175

England secure from plague: it is native to the east, p. 233

Negro that infects Lionel, p. 336 (who had otherwise been invulnerable)

the plague only encountered in Constantinople; the end of Raymond's dream of conquest, of bringing light of civilization to barbarous East; gets universalization of plague -- death

at end, Lionel to voyage beyond Europe, p. 469; but only after mankind is no more

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Document prepared November 22nd 2003