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Mary Shelley and Utopian Do:Mesticity

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Mary Shelley and Utopian Do:Mesticity ABSTRACT Title of dissertation: MARY SHELLEY AND UTOPIAN DO:MESTICITY Melissa Jo Sites, Doctor of Philosophy, 2002 Dissertation directed by: Professor Neil R. Fraistat Department of English In her seven novels and other writings, Mary Shelley critiques traditional restrictive domestic ideology while developing a feminist utopian vision of domesticity. She begins with Wollstonecraft' s prescription for women's education and adds Godwin' s ideas of simplicity, frankness, and forgiveness. Domesticity fosters these very conditions. Ernst Bloch's theory of the utopian function within ideology shows how the false consciousness of domestic and Romantic ideology can bear a utopian impulse. To provide a historical context of domesticity in feminist and reform thought, I discuss the emphasis on education, the importance of community, and the life of the mind in companionate marriage in Mary Astell, Sarah Scott and Margaret Cavendish; I then show how Adeline Mowbray by Amelia Opie and The Empire ofthe Nairs by James Lawrence illustrate the effects of putting Godwin's and Wollstonecraft's theories into practice. I look at Shelley's exploration of Romantic ideology in Frankenstein while countering prevalent critical misreadings of its nascent ideal of utopian domesticity. I then explore how Mathilda, Midas, Proserpine, and Maurice, or the Fisher's Cot develop contrasting ideas of utopia and dystopia around isolation and community. In her political novels, Valperga, The Last Man, and Perkin Warbeck Shelley developed Wollstonecraft's feminist theories and focused on women's relation to political power. Valperga's Euthanasia exemplifies the powerful Wollstonecraftian citoyenne and Shelleyan Romantic hero. The Last Man illustrates the priority of personal over public concerns, while Perkin Warbeck questions the legitimacy of political ambition. In her domestic novels, Lodore and Falkner, Shelley creates utopian domesticity by modifying Godwin's political system and by revising the Byronic Romantic hero; in Falkner, she rewrites Godwin's Caleb Williams according to a feminist idea of social justice. I conclude by looking at Persuasion by Jane Austen, Records of Woman by Felicia Hemans, and Helen by Maria Edgeworth, which demonstrate awareness of the potential benefits and drawbacks of domesticity, but were less concerned than Shelley with feminist critique. MARY SHELLEY AND UTOPIAN DO.MESTICITY by Melissa Jo Sites Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2002 Advisory Committee: Professor Neil R. Fraistat, Chair Professor Jane Donawerth Professor Susan Sniader Lanser Professor Claire Moses Professor Donald H. Reiman Professor Orrin N. C. Wang DEDICATION To Ian Blackwell Rogers and James Raven Rogers-Sites ... and thus are we Most fortunate beneath life's beaming mom; And these delights, and thou, have been to me The parents of the Song I consecrate to thee. --Percy Bysshe Shelley, from the Dedication to Laon and Cythna ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to acknowledge Professor Neil Fraistat for his guidance through my graduate career and for his excellence as a reader. Thanks to Professor Jane Donawerth, Professor Susan Lanser, Professor Donald H. Reiman, Professor Orrin Wang, for their patience and invaluable assistance, and to Professor Claire Mose~ for her services as Representative for the Dean of the College. I also wish to acknowledge the many fine mentors and friends who have helped me along my scholarly path: in Franklin, West Virginia, where I began my schooling; at the West Virginia Scholars Academy; at Hollins College in Roanoke, Virginia; and at the University of Maryland in the Creative Writing Program, the Department of Women's Studies, and the Department of English. My greatest debt is to my parents, Michael and Nancy Sites, of Upper Tract, West Virginia, for their unfailing love and support. Thanks to my sister, Michelle Clark Sites, and to my parents-in-law, Hugh and Ruth Blackwell Rogers, for their encouragement and assistance. To my son Jamie, I offer a simple apology that this work kept me from him sometimes; perhaps he'll forgive me and even look it over some day. To my husband Ian, I give my thanks and undying love. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Dedication n Acknowledgements ru Mary Shelley and Utopian Domesticity: Introduction 1 1. Domesticity in Early Utopian Feminism and Fictional Explorations of Philosophical Reform 28 2. Frankenstein and the Possibility of Utopian Domesticity 75 3. The Development of Shelley's Utopian Thought from Mathilda to Maurice 112 4. Foundations of Utopian Domesticity in Valperga 149 5. Locating Utopian Domesticity in The Last Man 186 6. Chivalry and Utopian Domesticity in The Fortunes ofPerkin Warbeck 230 7. Utopian Domesticity as Social Reform in Shelley's Domestic Novels: Lodore and Falkner 260 8. Austen, Hemans, and Edgeworth: Contemporary Views of Domesticity and Feminism 311 List of References 354 iv Mary Shelley and Utopian Domesticity: Introduction Mary Shelley's feminist critiques in Frankenstein of Romanticism and of women's position in society have been recognized and explored by many scholars. Her other novels, however, have not yet received sustained critical attention. 1 In them, Shelley examined two of the dominant ideologies of her time, domesticity and Romanticism, developing over time a model for social reform I describe as utopian domesticity. While revising the theories of her parents and husband, Shelley developed a vision of women in society that is both feminist and utopian. Utopian domesticity is a model for social reform entailing radical reorganization of the most basic level of society, the family, and centering around the home. In utopian domesticity, woman are not restricted to the home, nor is the home considered best for them alone. Men and women are educated as equals and work together for social justice--a situational justice based on individual judgment, not on the expectations of the unreformed world. Relationships are based on friendship, not necessarily on romantic/marital entanglements or familial bkxxi ties. Both men and women shoulder the responsibilities they bear toward their intimates rather than pursue glory, ambition, or individual rights; this attitude of responsibility is then turned outward to affect the larger community through benevolent actions and by I For example, Mary Poovey, in her highly influential The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer, briefly mentions Falkner and does not discuss Lodore at all. Anne Mellor, in Mary Shelley: Her LJ/e, Her Fiction, Her Monsters, devotes only the final chapter to Matlulda, Valperga, Lodore and Falkner, "those works .. which most strikingly manifest the contradictions inherent in Mary Shelley's idealization of the bourgeois family" (xiii). The 1993 collection entitled The Other Mary Shelley: Beyond Frankenstein contains fourteen articles, only two of which (by Barbara Jane O'Sullivan and Kate Ferguson Ellis) discuss Lodore or Falkner. Pamela Clemit, in The Godwinian Novel, does not discuss Lodore or Falkner, only mentioning that they "show an increased conformity to social and financial pressures" (139 note). Recent collections, includinglconoclasticDepartures (1997, ed. Syndy Conger, Frederick Frank, and Gregory O' Day), Mary Shelley in Her Times (2000, ed. Betty Bennett and Stuart Curran), and Mary Shelley's Fictions (2000, ed. Michael Eberle-Sinatra), have begun to reflect increasing scholarly interest in the rest of Shelley's work. 1 example. Such virtuous examples of utopian domesticity affect not only their fictional surroundings, but serve the Godwinian purpose of illuminating the truth, thereby educating readers and gradually improving the real world. One of the hallmarks of patriarchal culture is the attempt to restrict women to domesticity. Shelley saw that a perfected human society could be developed around a model of domesticity, but she was also well aware of the pitfalls of the restrictive domesticity prevalent in her day. Restrictive domesticity posits the home as a feminized haven in which idealized women provided a relaxing retreat for men who strive in the hectic public world.2 This idea of "separate spheres," which by the Victorian period had strongly taken hold, is reinforced in restrictive domesticity: women are denied entry to the public world, while men are supposed to excel outside the home. 3 In her earlier career, 2 For a succinct description of restrictive domesticity, see Marlon Ross (117). Eve Tavor Bannet argues that Matriarchal feminists, such as Hannah More, used the supposedly restrictive ideology of domesticity to further their own feminist goals: "with their studied conventionality and their cautious, step-by-step and sphere-by-sphere approach, [Matriarchal feminists] often succeeded in carrying points which had originated among the more impatient, openly ambitious, and sweeping revolutionary Egalitarians... and successfully implemented every plank of the seventeenth-century egalitarian platform" (9). Although Shelley used the concept of domesticity as her basis for reform, she followed Wollstonecraft in its egalitarian implementation. 3 Jane Aaron succinctly sums up critical understanding of Victorian separate spheres ideology as follows: According to Davidoff and Hall, this developing segregation had become entrenched by the 1830s: 'it was recognised that men would be preoccupied with business, and domesticity had become the "woman's
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