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Between Prometheus and the monster: Gender configurations in Romantic revolutionary poetics

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Between Prometheus and the monster: Gender configurations in Romantic revolutionary poetics

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Content INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type of computer printer. The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand comer and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. 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BETWEEN PROMETHEUS AND THE MONSTER: GENDER CONFIGURATIONS IN ROMANTIC REVOLUTIONARY POETICS by Young-ok An A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (English) August 1996 Copyright 1996 Young-Ok An Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UMI Number: 9705067 Copyright 1996 by An, Young-Ok All rights reserved. UMI Microform 9705067 Copyright 1996, by UMI Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. UMI 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, MI 48103 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY PARK LOS ANGELES. CALIFORNIA 90007 This dissertation, written by under the direction of hfi.C...... Dissertation Committee, and approved by all its members, has been presented to and accepted by The Graduate School, in partial fulfillm ent of re quirements for the degree of D O CTO R OF PHILO SO PH Y Dean of GraduatziStudies D a te. DISSERTATION COMMITTEE Chairperson Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Young-ok An Ph. D. in English University of Southern California Advisors Peter J. Hanning, Professor ABSTRACT Between Prometheus and the Monsters The Politics of Gender in Romantic Revolutionary Poetics My dissertation traces the inscription of gendered subjectivity in the radical poetics of the post-French Revolutionary era. By the term Romantic revolutionary, I indicate that the subjects of my inquiry, William Blake, Mary Wollstonecraft, Percy Shelley and Mary Shelley, all examined the destabilized power relations of the turbulent times and engaged in the discursive struggles configuring and displacing the Revolution. In their writings they often captured not only the radicalism of the "spirit of the age" through the discourse of annihilation, parricide, and apocalypse, but also the sense of void, monstrosity and anxiety that accompanied "progress" and instability. While expounding the topos of "the new man," or the Promethean Romantic male subject, I investigate the theoretical and critical questions posed by the Romantics themselves and their readers thereafter— e.g., questions concerning Prometheanism and "annihilation" of the self, monstrous and excessive other, figurations of the feminine, and authorial subjectivity. I locate the writers' self-exposure to and self-implication in constructions of power and change in revolutionary democratic struggles, and I articulate the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. obscured or latent desire of the female revolutionary subject with all its contradictions and paradoxes. The questions involved in the historical topography of Promethean/Revolutionary subjecthood, with its challenges to the existent forms of social and textual relations and its ingrained ideology of masculinism, lead me to investigate Blake's ferocious systematization of "female will" in Milton and Shelley's ambivalent treatment of Beatrice Cenci's Medusan monstrosity. I also examine, through Frankenstein. Mary Shelley's critique of the masculine subjectivity that comes through a fantastic invention of the male monster. Blurred boundaries between Prometheus and the monster, human and machine, organic and inorganic in this text also attest to a complicated psychic spillage between author and characters, suggesting the complexity of authorial subjectivity. I relate these critical insights to the effects of fragmented female desires that can be refigured through feminist critical practices. I envision a constellation of desiring Promethea(s) emerging in an anti humanist, anti-masculinist space. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Acknowledgment s In moments of Romantic indulgence, I drift into feeling as though on a Promethean journey myself. The always already excessive desire for an inscription in the Symbolic realm, once sparked, pushes one on, even without her knowing where it leads to. Closure or fulfillment of the pursuit in that sense would be an impossible task, and thus one would only be obliged to pause for self-reflection with all its own blindness (and insight). Looking back, I feel very fortunate to have been surrounded by inspiring, caring and patient guides and fellow travelers. Their intervention was bolstering, their concern calming. I am particularly grateful to Donna Landry, Peter Manning, Meg Russett and Yumi Yang for their invaluable help. My thinking through the issues and readings (of which this dissertation is but a part) was sparked and sustained by their stirring suggestions, comments, and encouragement. Donna Landry was, and still is, a mentor and friend, whose intellect, politics, and grace have been a constant source of inspiration; Peter Manning, my exemplary advisor, a remarkable combination of tradition and innovation, showered me with cheerfulness, gentleness and humor, and provided constant intellectual stimulation and generosity; Meg Russett, through her supplementary reading and immanent criticism, has made this work as it is: her full-armored intellectual rigor— manifested in her unselfish, painstaking, and often illuminating reading— is paralleled only by her disarmingly heartening friendship; Yumi Yang, in a sense, has started it all, helped me move forward, and throughout, has been a measure for my pursuit. Other teachers at USC who gave me the gift of their time: Paul Alkon, Vince Cheng, Don Freeman, Peggy Kamuf, Jay Martin, Tania Modleski, and Hilary Schor. My thanks go as well to my friends and colleagues, old and new, for their friendship, confidence, and support during my long graduate career: Among the many, Claire Peterson, Lawrence Driscoll, Wayne Rothschild, David Ramsey, Myung-sook Choi, and Kristianne Lee-Yahang. Finally, I am indebted to my family and relatives, especially my parents from afar— who have turned out to be tremendously patient— and my cousin, Hyunsun Lee, for their steadfast support and caring. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS § Introduction: Prometheus Unmanned..............................................................1 § 1. Between Female Quixotes and Promethea: Gender and/ in Romantic Revolutionary Discourse.................................. 28 § 2. Banishing/Vanishing Female Voices in Blake..........................................108 § 3. Drawing the Female Prometheus in Percy Shelley, or the Mystery of the Medusan Gaze.........................................................168 § 4. The Double Move of Mary Shelley: The (Un)making of the Modem Prometheus............................................235 § Epilogue: Promethea in the Poetic V eil..........................................................340 § Selected Bibliography.......................................................................................350 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Illustrations 1. William Blake, Milton, pi, 18.......................................................................... 161 2. William Blake, Vala, p. 4 4 ................................................................................162 3. George Romney, "Milton and His Daughters".............................................163 4. William Blake, Visions of the Daughters of Albion, pi. 3 ...........................164 5. William Blake, Milton, pi. 4 9 ......................................................................... 165 6. William Blake, Milton, pi. 4 2 .......................................................................... 166 7. William Blake, Milton, pi. 5 0 .......................................................................... 167 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 Introduction Prometheus Unmanned: The Politics of Gender in Promethean Poetics You [Prometheus] . . . are, I presume, the bitter, too bitter, intellectual who committed crimes against the Gods, who gave their glory away to things that live and die, the one who stole our fire! — Hermes in Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound. 1449-1454.1 Our unsex'd female writers now instruct, or confuse, us and themselves, in the labyrinth of politics, or turn us wild with Gallic frenzy. — T. J. Mathias, The Pursuits of Literature2 "But once put out thy light,/ Thou cunning'st pattern of excelling nature,/ I know not where is that Promethean heat/ That can thy light relume. When I have plucked the rose,/ I cannot give it vital growth again" (Othello. V. ii. iAeschylus, Prometheus Bound, trans. James Scully and C. J. Herington (NY and Oxford: Oxford UP, 1975). 2From a note in The Pursuits of Literature (7th edition, p. 238). A prominent anti-feminist, Thomas J. Mathias also mocks Wollstonecraft in The Shade of Alexander Pope on the Banks of the Thames (1799): "Fierce passion's slave,/ She veer'd with every gust/ Love, Right, and Wrongs, Philosophy, and Lust." Mathias is the addressee of Richard Polwhele's anti-feminist poem, "The Unsex'd Females: A Poem, Addressed To The Author Of The Pursuits Of Literature." Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 10-14). In the critical pre-murder soliloquy in Desdemona's chamber, agonizing Othello likens the soul (life) of Desdemona he is about to extinguish to the prime example of nature's work enkindled by Prometheus. Juxtaposed to "chaste stars," a self-illuminating source, and the lamplight ("a flaming minister") under Othello's control, Desdemona's life- light is considered to be something in the middle, an indicator that betokens the Titan's gift to fire-like human life. Thus, as both nature's most intricate pattern and the embodiment of human knowledge endowed by Prometheus, Desdemona is situated at the precarious middle point: while subjugated to Othello's extinguishing power, she cannot be relit by the all-too-human Othello. Yet Desdemona's imagined adultery— her all-too-human sin— soon becomes to his reckoning "the just cause" for murder: "else she'll betray more men." Precisely the difference in this "all-too- humanness" of both characters locates the familiar divide between genders: Prometheus presumes to be the avenger for mankind, and Desdemona's sin turns out to be none other than the frailty of woman (a conclusion to which Hamlet also immediately jumps). The Titanic masculine figure in agony from the torture of Zeus's agent, the eagle, against the background of the time-defying Caucasus rock, Prometheus has been one of the most enduring cultural icons in the West, connoting an aspiration for political liberation on the collective level Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 3 and for self-redemption on the individual level. As Linda Lewis chronicles, from Aeschylus through Dante, and Milton to the Romantic writers— Blake, Byron, the Shelleys, as well as Goethe and Fredrich von Schlegel— and further to the later generation that includes Elizabeth Barrett Browning3 and Charles Baudelaire, Promethean desire captured and haunted the imagination of many writerly minds.4 At the same time and 3S o m e of the most obvious references are as follows: Goethe, Faust; S. T. Coleridge, "On the Prometheus of Aeschylus"; Charles Baudelaire, Promethee enchaine. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, translations of Prometheus Bound. Also, Nietzsche, Kafka, and Canetti all utilized Promethean iconography. Goethe's remarks in his autobiography, "The fable of Prometheus became living in me. The old Titan web I cut up according to my measurements" (Truth and Fiction Relating to Mv Life f Dichtuna und Wahrheit]. in Goethe' s Popular Works 2: 211; qtd in Lewis, Promethean Politics, p.2) shows a desire for refashioning as well as the cultural effect of Prometheanism on him. Byron considered Prometheus an "influence over all or any thing that I have written." (The Works of Lord Bvron: Letters and Journals 4: 175; qtd in Lewis, p.2). Also see Raymond Trousson, Le Th&me du Prom6th6e dans la Literature EuropSenne. 2 vols. (Gen&ve: Libraire Droz, 1964), Paul A. Cantor, Creature and Creator: Myth making and English Romanticism, p. 77 Harold Bloom, "Prometheus Rising," The Visionary Company: A reading of English Romantic Poetry (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Anchor Book ed., 1963). ^Stuart Curran sums up the function of the Promethean trope in literary history: As the giver of fire, [Prometheus] is easily conflated with the sun, and as a pagan sun god whose name means foreknowledge and who is said to have created men, he appears as one of many manifestations of Jehovah created through the dispersal of the human family. The father of Deucalion, who with Pyrrha repopulated an earth laid waste by floods, he is easily equated with his son and thus with the new parents of the human race, Noah. To Christian allegorical commentators Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. more implicitly, Promethean iconography carries a gender- specific construction of the subject-other relation, as Shakespeare's version of the above demonstrates. Prometheus the Titan, the super-human champion of liberty, knowledge, arts and sciences, light, and rebellion, is naturally male; and such a depiction of the masculine soul-giver/artist and feminized objective function has often been visually codified in iconic form. Although the Titan's gender seems neutral in the Shakespearean construction, the parallel of Othello- Prometheus and candlelight-Desdemona makes clear the underlying dynamic of gender, especially when followed by the image of Othello's plucking the rose-Desdemona: masculine soul-giver (and by extension, soul-taker) and feminine soul- receiver; active male and passive female. What does it mean, then, that the recipient of Prometheus's fire, the "cunning1 st pattern of excelling nature," has a sex? In this symbolic configuration, the figure of woman stretches to the representative of human knowledge, a cipher-like figure who perilously links nature to culture. This iconography does not Prometheus stands for intellect, Nous; to Neo- platonists he is construed as the daemonic mediator between heaven and earth; to the medieval intellectual his story symbolizes the mental sufferings incumbent upon contemplation; to the Renaissance humanist he represents good will and right reason in man; and to the Regency Whig gentleman, he is a lover of liberty and a martyr to the external forces of despotism. (Shelley's Annus Mirabilis: The Maturing of an Epic Vision [San Marino, CA: Huntington Library, 1975], p.45.) Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 5 register woman as an authority-defying rebel (as shown in Desdemona's action against her father's order) or a potential creator/originator of life. Prescription of gendered subjectivities as well as the Promethean ethos is in orperation in another constitutive moment in literary history: as the most powerful predecessor of the British Romantics, Milton appropriates and (re)invents the "originating" moment of the male-female relationship. Utilizing the Promethean iconography in various ways (in depicting the prototypical relationships between God and Satan, God and the prototypical new man, and man and woman),5 Milton's Paradise Lost constitutes an aesthetically powerful gender configuration to which later writers made allusions over and over again.6 Before the Fall, Eve never questions the 5Milton's reference to Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound, especially the Promethean trait in Satan, has been pointed out by critics such as E. M. W. Tillyard (The Miltonic Setting! and Cecil Maurice Bowra (From Virgil to Milton!. In her work that explores the Promethean politics in Western literature, especially focusing on Milton, Blake, and Percy Shelley, Linda M. Lewis sees Promethean traits in Milton's Satan (an evil Prometheus) and Adam (a good Prometheus) but does not link Eve to Prometheanism. See The Promethean Politics of Milton. Blake and Shelley (Columbia and London: U of Missouri P, 1992), especially chapter 3, pp. 55-110. 6Mary Wollstonecraft in her Vindication of the Rights of Woman refers to Milton's phrase "this fair defect/ Of nature" in describing the social condition of women: Pleasure is the business of woman's life, according to the present modification of society, and while it continues to be so, little can be expected from such weak beings. Inheriting, in a lineal descent from the first fair defect in nature, the sovereignty of beauty, they have, to maintain their power, resigned the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 6 patriarchal ideology based on her unconditional and voluntary subjection to Man at the most blissful prelapsarian moment: My Author and Disposer, what thou bidd'st Unargue'd I obey; so God ordains, God is thy law, thou mine: to know no more Is Woman's happiest knowledge and her praise. (IV. 635-38)7 After "the original sin," unforeseen problems arise to the gender relation between Man and his Woman because Eve now starts to be aware of her unequal status. However, even in this new configuration, Eve's thinking process is already mediated through Adam's eyes: But to Adam in what sort Shall I appear? Shall I to him make known As yet my change, and give him to partake Full happiness with me, or rather not But keep the odds of knowledge in my power Without copartner? So to add what wants In female sex, the more to draw his Love, And render me more equal, and perhaps natural rights, which the exercise of reason might have procured them, and chosen rather to be short lived queens than labour to obtain the sober pleasures that arise form equality. Exalted by their inferiority (this sounds like a contradiction), they constantly demand homage as women, though experience should teach them that the men who pride themselves upon paying this arbitrary insolent respect to the sex, with the most scrupulous exactness, are most inclined to tyrannize over, and despise, the very weakness they cherish. (See A vindication of the Rights of Woman, ed. Carol H. Poston [NY and London: Norton, 1988], chapter IV. p. 55.) For Milton's influence on Blake and Mary Shelley, see chapters 2 and 4 of this dissertation. 7John Milton: Complete Poems and Major Prose, ed. Merritt Y. Hughes (NY: Macmillan Publishing Co, 1957). Hereafter line numbers will be incorporated into the text in parentheses. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 7 A thing not undesirable, sometime Superior: for inferior who is free? (IX. 816-825) Eve's Promethean action of decentering the locus of power by "Usurping . . . sovran Reason" (IX. 1130), and her disruption of the hierarchy constructed by God, is in fact considered by Adam as "sinister" (VIII. 886), evil, and unruly— traits which are from then on linked to essential femininity (female narcissism, female vanity, woman's moral weakness, etc.).8 Further, he contrasts "Spirits Masculine" with Eve's partial, inferior femininity in which the Fall originates: ®Kote Adam's attack on Eve after committing "sin" in Paradise Lost. IX, 1182-1186: Thus it shall befall Him who to worth in Woman overtrusting Lets her Will rule; restraint she will not brook, And left to herself; if evil thence ensue, Shee first his weak indulgence will accuse. I disagree with Joseph Wittreich's interpretation of Paradise Lost as a poetry of "planned subversion" of the orthodox politics of gender and class (Feminist Milton [Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1987], p. 75), and Milton as feminist ("Milton is of Eve's party and knows it full well," p. 98). Even if we accept Milton's relatively "progressive" views of marriage, and the favorable responses to his work amongst women writers of the eighteenth and nineteenth century (including Anne Finch, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Hannah More, Catherine Macaulay, Mary Walker, Margaret Collier, Eliza Haywood, Mary Shelley, and Phillis Wheatley), that does not make Milton a feminist (even less, a fully conscious one). Further, I would argue that it is the very hermeneutic density of Paradise Lost (which Wittreich highlights as the basis of feminist Milton) that also produces the incoherence of the ideological content, since the ideology is "present in the text in the form of its eloquent silences, its significant gaps and fissures" (Terry Eagleton, Criticism and Ideology [London: Verso, 1978] p. 14; Against the Grain: Essays 1975-1985 [London: Verso. 1986], pp. 16-18). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 8 0 why did God, Creator wise, that peopl'd highest Heav'n With Spirits Masculine, create at last This novelty on Earth, this fair defect Of Nature, and not fill the World at once With Men as Angels without Feminine, Or find some other way to generate Mankind? this mischief had not then befall'n, And more that shall befall, innumerable Disturbances on Earth through Female snares, And strait conjunction with this Sex: (X. 888-898) In Adam's words. Eve is the "fair defect/ Of Nature" and "all but a Rib/ Crooked by nature, bent, as now appears" (X. 891- 2; X. 885-6). In this logic, Eve is both a part of nature ("crooked by nature"; inherently marked by "female snares") and a substance beneath nature (a "defect of nature"). In any case, aspiring to more than the given— i.e., being created "for God in him [Adam]"— would be a transgression of law. This premise naturalizes the gender construction that is the basis of the whole creation myth, overriding women's power of procreation ("Woman is her Name, of Man/ Extracted" [VIII. 496-7]). The logic also reaffirms her subjectivity at the margin: depicted as both surplus ("too much ornament outside") and lack ("inward less exact") she exists between imperfect nature and the fuller, superior, nobler male subject derived from Spirits. In Adam's words: . . . on her bestow'd Too much of Ornament, in outward show Elaborate, of inward less exact. For well I understand in the prime end Of Nature her th'inferior, in the mind And inward Faculties, which most excel, In outward also her resembling less Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 9 His Image who made both, and less expressing The character of that Dominion giv'n O'er other Creatures; . . . (VIII. 537-546) More importantly, feminizing original sin is not limited to the perspective of a dramatic character, Adam, but informs the overall effect of the sexual/textual politics of this epic drama. One of the most revealing moments comes precisely when Eve rejects her unquestioned identity as Adam's inferior other after she acquires knowledge and power. In this new configuration, Eve is tormented by her now ontological limit as a mortal being, which manifests itself in the form of jealousy of/as the other (always already as the object of Adam's desire): This may be well: but what if God have seen, And Death ensue? then I shall be no more, And Adam wedded to another Eve, Shall live with her enjoying, I extinct . . . (IX. 826-829) Echoing the previous moment of her self-mirroring, Eve cannot escape self-objectification and self-denial even after she gains supposed "equality" through knowledge. In fact, Adam also insinuates that even if Eve is "Flesh of Flesh, Bone of Bone," God could create another Eve were he to afford another Rib (IX. 911-912). In this (profoundly unequal) symbolic constitution, Eve's Promethean desire has to be held in check. Some feminist readings of the epic, as well as other interpretations that argue for Milton's "feminism," take, for example, Milton's elaboration of the felix culpa (fortunate Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 10 fall)— encapsulated in the lasting image of the fallen Man and Woman "hand in hand" walking out of Eden towards the new world— and highlight it as the basis for a new egalitarian relationship between the two. Or, they consider Milton's Eve as the Satanic "hero" of Paradise Lost, the initiator of the movement from the eternal temporality of Eden to "human" history. However, such points do not counter the persistent sexual politics of the text or necessarily affirm Eve's transgression. Shakespeare's and Milton's references to the Promethean creation myth provide a reference point with almost scriptural authority to which later writers reach back, and the inscribed gender relationship along with the androcentric Promethean ethos is carried through the literary tradition and imagination. Further, in historical moments of instability and change, the Titanic figure struggling against tyranny becomes a particularly appealing topos to the writers with political desire. Thus when this ethos is addressed by British Romantic poets, Prometheus strips himself from the taint of evil which Milton continuously inscribed and becomes an endearing cultural icon. The core of Romantic Promethean subjectivity became inseparable from the topos of "the new man" (or, "true manhood"— honndte homme) as the agent for regeneration as well as for annihilation. The Prometheus that the Romantics highlight is new in the sense that he is a man of sensibility mobilized by an aspiration for new learning— Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 11 especially in the sciences— combined with political impetus for challenging and changing the hegemonic structure. Byron posits just such a hero in a poem called, in fact, "Prometheus": "Thy Godlike crime was to be kind,/ To render with thy precepts less/ The sum of human wretchedness,/ And strengthen Man with his own mind" (35-38).9 From Milton's casting of the Titan as the thief of divine light, Byron's Prometheus is not only redeemed in his spirit, but his action ("crime") turns godly. In canonization, the Prometheus-identifying narrator invokes his (human/male) subject hung in suspense between the divine and the mortal: Thou art a symbol and a sign To Mortals of their fate and force; Like thee, Man is in part divine, A troubled stream from a pure source . . . (45-48) Marked by "suffering," "wretchedness and resistance," with "a firm will and a deep sense," the Byronic Prometheus is not far from the Wordsworthian "sensitive, creative soul" (The Prelude, XI: 256),10 the core of the egotistical sublime. Byron also sheds light on the split subjectivity of this sensitive, desiring, "troubled" existence that "his Spirit [itself] may oppose." This iconography, extended in Manfred 9Bvron: The Oxford Authors, ed. Jerome J. McGann (Oxford and NY: Oxford UP, 1986), pp. 264-266. Hereafter, the line numbers provided in parentheses refer to this edition. lOThe Prelude— 1799. 1805. 1850. ed. Jonathan Wordsworth, M. H. Abrams, and Stephen Gill (NY: Norton, 1979). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 12 and also explored in Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, epitomizes the Romantic reconstruction of Prometheanism: the aspiring, suffering, divided, wandering, male subject who is also dependent for his identification upon the exclusions and projections of "other" subjectivities— most prominently women, children, and the insane, but also including the colony, the foreign, and the subaltern. These supplements to the Romantic self serve as the fantasy space which are necessary for the egotistical sublime to function. It is interesting to note that after he evoked Prometheus solipsistically, Byron then needed to address Augusta to project his ego-ideal, the missing other of the masculine subject.11 As Barbara Johnson points out, the problematic of such subjectivity lies not so much in the uncontainable contradictions of selfhood per se, but in a cultural imperative embedded in its gender arrangement: "While the story of a man who is haunted by his own contradictions is representable as an allegory of monstrous doubles," self- contradiction in women has been vigorously repressed.12 I will address this issue more fully later when I discuss the desiring subject of Promethea. 13-The "Epistle to Augusta" was written in 1816, following "Prometheus." 12Barbara Johnson, "My Monster/Myself," A World of Difference (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins UP, 1987), p. 153. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 13 In Percy Shelley's exploration of Promethean subjectivity, the interrelationship between male Prometheus, the knowledge endower, and its (ideal) female recipient is sketched out as follows: . . . women, . . . gentle radiant forms, From custom's evil taint exempt and pure; Speaking the wisdom once they could not think, Looking emotions once they feared to feel, And changed to all which once they dared not be, Yet being now, made earth like heaven (Prometheus Unbound. III. iv. 153-58; emphasis added)13 In Shelley's rendition, women (now plural vis-A-vis the single male subject), through Prometheus's initiation, now get liberated and become a kind of text signifying something. But have Shelley's women indeed transformed themselves into something other than figures for the male subject who projects his desire onto reflective beings? Have they become speaking subjects indeed? The Promethean subjectivity constructed and proliferated by Romantic revolutionaries involves, at its fundamental level, a gender configuration as well as a dialectic of the oppressed. While the Romantic's Prometheanism championed emancipatory discourse, it also fostered the gendering of revolutionary subjecthood and (re)produced discourses of power that perpetuated male 13Shelley's Poetry and Prose, ed. Donald H. Reiman and Sharon Powers (NY and London: Norton, 1977). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 14 hegemony, through modalities of representation as well as foreclosure of female subjects of speech. What happens, then, when women writers enter the realm of Promethean discourse? I suggest that while the gender of the writer does not determine the sexual politics of her text (or, for that matter, any text), the pervasive (economic, political, and symbolic) condition for women writers needs to be taken into account in the reading process, precisely because one cannot rise above the discursive condition but has to negotiate it. All subjects are indeed culturally, historically and textually bound. In this light, it is important to note that for women in the eighteenth century to enter the realm of writing and publishing at all was "by definition a transgressive and potentially liberating act . . . a penetration of the forbidden public sphere."14 Women writers' steadfast efforts to "live by the pen" were met with suspicious condescension as well as ambivalent admiration. Moreover, amid the expansion of female authorship as well as readership in the mid- to late eighteenth century, some female authors explicitly aspired to the enlightened state that they believed should improve their social (and political) status. Further, when Promethean desire is specifically directed to female readership, women's writing— Vivien Jones, "Introduction" in Women in the Eighteenth Century: Constructions of Femininity, ed. Vivien Jones (London and NY: Routledge, 1990), p. 12. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 15 because of its different position with respect to the male- centered symbolic economy— evokes a more complicated relationship with the Promethean trajectory. For example, as early as 1774, Mary Scott (Taylor) wrote The Female Advocate: a Poem Occasioned bv Reading Mr. buncombe's Feminiad (1774). With a strong proto-feminist energy, Scott chronicles notable women, saluting other women writers' lives and works and investing her own Promethean desire in them: Whilst LORDLY MAN asserts his right divine, Alone to bow at wisdom's sacred shrine; With tyrant sway would keep the female mind In error's cheerless dark abyss confin'd? Tell what bright daughters Britain once could boast, What daughters now adorn Her happy coast. Employing an oppositional logic between the sexes in the power struggle, Scott points out the poignant lack that looms large in her contemporary literary scene, characterized by male domination. Such a problematic is then displaced with an ideal past in which "the daughters" (literary women) were nourished by the motherland, Britain. If this affective scenario does not fall into a sentimental idealization of the past, it is because its focus is not on the overvaluation of the past per se but on a critical assessment of the present. In fact, when the "motherland" was most often evoked to "adorn" male-centered nationalism, putting "the daughters" at center stage seems in itself to be an act of symbolic significance. Scott then invokes Promethean desire in refiguring the female literary tradition: Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 16 In ages past, when learning's feeble ray First shone prophetic of a brighter day, The female bosom caught the sacred flame, And on her eagle-pinion soar'd to fame. In this vivid image of the eagle-pinioned woman soaring with fiery desire, the Muse stops being an auxiliary figure for a (usually male) poet and becomes the poet (ess) in her own right. In her salute to Aikin, Scott recognizes her Promethean spirit of female resistance so wholeheartedly that woman seems to have taken a leap from the self-contained Eve of Paradise Lost: Thy sex apprize of pleasure's treach'rous charms, And woo them from the Syren's fatal arms; With thee, the paths of science to explore; With thee, the open book of Nature scan, Yet nobly scorn the little pride of Man. Man, seated high on Learning’s awful throne, Thinks the fair realms of knowledge his alone; But you, ye fair, his Salic Law disclaim: Supreme in Science shall the Tyrant reign1 When every talent all-indulgent Heav'n In lavish bounty to your share hath giv'n? Thus a feminized Promethean desire that challenges gender norms manifests itself decades before "the rise of feminism" proper. Through the critique of science and learning based on a masculine symbolic economy, Scott seems to suggest what is "other" in female endeavors. Such paths were followed by Mary Hays (Female Biography. 6 vols. [1803]), Matilda Betham's Bioqraphyical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Acre and Country (1804), and Felicia Hemans (Records of Women Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 17 [1828]). Note Hays' remark, for instance, in the preface to Female Biography; "My pen has taken up in the cause, and for the benefit of my own sex. "1 5 Women writers of the period resorted to self-inventive strategies to negotiate the literary cultural norms that mainly excluded them. Some of them, for example, adopted female Greco-Roman names as their aliases or used them for their imaginary addressees; this, when neoclassicism was in the air, fueling the desire to produce an idealized version of the new male subjecthood for cultural regeneration. Thus along with daughterly names circulating as the titles of women's stories, e.g., Pamela, Cecilia, Evelina, and Clarissa, women writers found names— perhaps out of necessity or following convention— such as "Lactilla," "Eusebia," "Sophia," "Egeria," or "Hortensia." These acts of self invention reflect the gendered subjectivity of one's fantasies as well as a creative strategy in envisioning a new reading community. Ann Yearsley used the name "Lactilla" in her early work to personify herself, as a "milkwoman." Under the pseudonym of "Eusebia," Mary Hays published her pamphlet, Cursory remarks on an Inquiry into the Expediency and Propriety of Public or Social Worships (1791), a response l^Mary Hays, Female Biography, Or Memoirs of Illustrations and Celebrated Women, of All Ages and Countries, vol. 1, p. iii; qtd in Margaret Ezell, Writing Women's History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1993), p. 69. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 18 against Gilbert Wakefield's attack on nonconformist modes of worship. "Sophia, a Person of Quality" identified the author of Woman Not Inferior to Man: Or A short and modest Vindication of the natural Right of the Fair-Sex to a perfect Equality of Power, Dignity, and Esteem, with the Men (1739), in which the author exposes oppressive customs for women and advocates women's right to professions, including the military.16 Maria Jane Jewsbury wrote of Felicia Hemans as "Egeria" in her Three Histories (1830). Catherine Macaulay addresses "Hortensia" in her Letters on Education.17 The feminine— and perhaps (proto-) feminist and certainly anti- masculinist— desires inscribed in their writing seem to point to a configuration that encompasses female intellectual energy, proto-feminist radicalism, and aspirations of women writers for different spaces than those then available to them. When Promethean desire became more explicit in women writers of the late eighteenth century, such as Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Mary Robinson, Charlotte Smith, Helen Maria Williams, Anne Years ley, and Mary Hays, it met with vehement 16The Sophia pamphlets started as a direct response to the attacks on women's rights made by Lyttelton and Chesterfield's Common Sense: Or# the English Men's Journal. The name "Hortensia" is derived from a Roman woman who made a successful speech in the Roman Forum— an extraordinary act of intelligence and courage— against the imposition of special taxes on women's property. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 19 attacks by self-designated moral guardians of the period, who condemned them as "the unsexed females" going against "NATURE'S law" (in Richard Polwhele's terms). Conservative male writers often resorted to the (traditionally always already male) literary canon as well as classical, biblical, and mythological allusions to buttress their moralistic arguments that support, above all, the patriarchal symbolic economy. Shakespeare's illustration of Promethean life- kindling power, along with the Miltonic modality in Paradise Lost, for example, finds an interesting echo in Polwhele's "The Unsex'd Females" (1798), an infamous mockery that vilifies Wollstonecraft's sexual/textual transgressions. Alas! in every aspiration bold, I saw the creature of a mortal mould: Yes! not untrembling (tho’ I half ador'd) A mind by Genius fraught, by Science stor'd) I saw the Heroine mount the dazzling dome Where Shakespeare's spirit kindled, to illume His favourite FUSELI, and with magic might To earthly sense unlock'd a world of light! Full soon, amid the high pictorial blaze, I saw a Sibyl-transport in her gaze: To the great Artist, from his wondrous Art, I saw transferr'd the whole enraptur'd Heart; Till, mingling soul with soul, in airy trance, Enlighten’d and inspir'd at every glance, And from the dross of appetite refin'd, Down from the empyreal heights she sunk, betray'd To poor Philosophy— a love-sick maid! ("The Unsex'd Females," 11. 124-145) In Polwhele's mapping of positionalities— the magisterial narrator "I," Wollstonecraft, Fuseli, and Shakespeare— the most influential woman writer of the period is skillfully foreclosed from a point of enunciation. As a female character Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 20 of a pitiful narrative, Wollstonecraft here goes through various object positions— as a mortal creature (vs. God Almighty), "the Heroine" (vs. masterful Shakespeare who kindles Fuseli's art), and "a Sibyl" (vs. Fuseli, "the great Artist")— while all at the same time remaining an object of the narrator's watchful gaze. Furthermore, Polwhele's Wollstonecraft is seen to be enacting a dramatic Eve-like fall, from the object of the narrator's (half-)adoration to the irreparably love-sick maid, from active "mounting" to a "sunken" state.18 Moreover, Shakespeare's spirit-kindling power is not directed to her at all but (exclusively) to Fuseli, the proper artist who is remarkably left unscathed from any of Polwhele's sharp parody, despite his inter- "mingling" with Wollstonecraft's "unsex’d" (thus unsexing?) soul. Polwhele's reaction to and animadversions on Wollstonecraft and non-traditional women writers, whom he calls "the blasphemous band of Wollstonecraftians" or "the Amazonian band— the female Quixotes of the new philosophy,"19 18Polwhele makes a note in which he quotes Paradise Lost. V. 432 ff. (line 143). l^See Polwhele's note to the line 12-14 where he makes an allusion to Amazons: "A female band despising NATURE'S law,/ As 'proud defiance' flashes from their arms,/ And vengeance smothers all their softer charms." On the "NATURE's law" Polwhele writes: Nature is the grand basis of all laws human and divine: and the woman, who has no regard to nature, either in the decoration of her person, or the culture of her mind, will soon 'walk after the flesh, in the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 21 attest, in effect, not only to the trend that those women writers of the period set, which contributed to the "wavering" of traditional "politics and even religion,"20 but to the inevitable gender struggle that was forged in sexualizing terms in this tumultuous period. What is quite striking in Polwhele's configuration of the "unsex'ed females" is his reconstruction of unconventional female thinkers/artists as over-charged sexual beings,21 which prepares for the reverend's familiar moralism of gender norms as the next logical step. These "female Quixotes of the new philosophy"22 certainly pondered the implication of the Promethean myth for lust of uncleanness, and despise government' [2 Peter 2: 10] . 20The second epigraph of this section, a passage from Thomas Mathias’s The Pursuit of Literature, is used as the epigraph of Polwhele's "The Unsex'd Female" with the following note: In my opinion, the Author of 'the Pursuits of Literature' has discovered, in his animated Satire, a true poetical genius. And (as a writer, who had very little pretensions to the character himself, observes) 'a true poet is a public good.' The satire in question, seems to have produced effects, resembling those which distinguished the poetry of Greece and Rome. For I can assert, on the best authorities, that many in this country, whose politics and even religion have been long wavering, are now fixed in their principles by 'The Pursuit of Literature.' 211 thank Meg Russett for her comments which led me to explore this point further. 22charlotte Lenox (1729-1804) used the term, albeit ironically, in the title of her novel, The Female Quixote, or The Adventure of Arabella, ed. Margaret Dalziel (Oxford and NY: Oxford UP, 1989). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 22 themselves and inscribed their different positionality vis-A- vis the central position of the discourse of power.23 Even those who were generally considered to be more oriented towards "domestic affections," such as Laetitia Elizabeth Landon (known as L. E. L.), reveal radical vigor in depicting gender-specific struggles and sufferings. Laetitia Landon composed lengthy poems to mark the life and work of Felicia Hemans. The poem that bears her "soul friend's" name ("Felicia Hemans") presents the female poet's predicament as well as her talent: Yet what is mind in woman, but revealing In sweet clear light the hidden world below, By quicker fancies and a keener feeling Than those around, the cold and careless, know? What is to feed such feeling, but to culture A soil whence pain will never more depart? The fable of Prometheus and the vulture Reveals the poet's and the woman's heart Unkindly are they judged— unkindly treated— By careless tongues and by ungenerous words; While cruel sneer, and hard reproach, repeated, Jar the fine music of the spirit's chords.24 23Elizabeth Berrett (Browning) not only translated Prometheus Bound but in Drama of Exile (1844), her sequel to Paradise Lost, she inscribes Promethean desire in the postlapsarian Eve. 24Alfred H. Miles, the editor of The Poets and the Poetry of the Nineteenth Century: vol. 9. Joanna Baillie to Jean Inaelow. lists Laetitia Landon under her married name, McLean, but Landon is the more commonly used name. "Felicia Hemans," in the above anthology (London: George Routledge & Sons and NY: E. P. Dutton & Co, 1891), pp. 110-11. Also see Landon's "Stanzas on the Death of Mrs. Hemans" (1835), Romanticism: An Anthology, ed. Duncan Wu (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1994), pp. 1092-1095. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 23 Landon employs the Promethean icon to relate to Hemans' s public as well as private struggle, and then subverts the traditional Promethean iconography. Reinscribing female resistance against the dominant condition and female desire for the other space, she rewrites the Promethean myth to point out the woman poet as a heroic victim in struggle. At the same time, the mythological notion that the Titan's betrayal of God has resulted in humanity's loss of heavenly music— a cause of Milton's bitter condemnation of the Titan25 — is displaced by a modality in which the poet is the generator of fine music. The symbolic inscription and libidinal expenditures involved in this writerly endeavor may project Landon's own Promethean pursuit of becoming the writing subject and sexual difference. The effect of Landon's signifying efforts amounts to "Adonais" regendered, the Byronic hero subverted, or, Prometheus unmanned as well as unbound. A comparison of the same subject, Felicia Hemans, dealt with by Wordsworth, may illustrate the case in point. Wordsworth's mourning of Hemans's death, occasioned by his 25in Prolusions Milton says: "The fact that we are unable to hear [the heavenly music] seems certainly to be due to the presumption of that thief Prometheus, which brought so many evils upon men, and robbed us of that happiness which we can never enjoy so long as we remain buried in sin and degraded by brutish desires" (The Complete Prose Works of John Milton, ed. Don M. Wolfe et al. vol. 1: 289 [New Haven: Yale UP, 1953-82]). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 24 "Extempore Effusion Upon the Death of James Hogg," highlights her untimely passage with the metaphor of a ritualistic, seasonal cycle, which is then displaced to the main subject— Hogg: Mourn rather for that holy spirit, Sweet as the spring, as ocean deep; For Her who, ere her summer faded, Has sunk into a breathless sleep. No more of old romantic sorrows, For slaughtered Youth or love-lorn Maid! With sharper grief is Yarrow smitten, And Ettrick mourns with her their Poet dead.26 The underlying thread linking the two stanzas is the femininity Hemans evokes. Associated with "Slaughtered Youth" and "love-lorn Maid," Hemans impels Wordsworth the master poet to move from the (objects of) romantic clichds to the proper artist— Hogg. In other words, the poet's sorrows are displaced from a supposedly lower grieving mode associated with the familiar Romantic objects— in which Hemans happens to fit— with sublime natural images. But then, the sustained metaphor from the beginning in these natural images— the "Yarrow smitten" and Ettrick (objectified vis-A-vis Hogg, the "Ettrick Shepherd")— are in turn feminized when linked to Hogg. The poem thus shows that the "old romantic sorrows" are 26william Wordsworth, "Extempore Effusion upon the Death of James Hogg" (1835), Wordsworth, ed. Stephen Gill (Oxford and NY: Oxford UP, 1984), p. 371. Here Wordsworth mourns the recent deaths of James Hogg (1770-1835), Walter Scott (1772-1832), Coleridge (1771-1834), Charles Lamb (1775- 1834), Crabbe (1754-1832), and Hemans (1793-1835). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 25 both sublimated and sustained through the unacknowledged mediation of the feminine. So far, I have discussed various figurations of the feminine that are related to male-centered Promethean iconography. Against the backdrop of the concurrent texts of Byron, Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Mary Scott, and Laetitia Elizabeth Landon, I will now discuss, in the main, Romantic writers who were self-consciously engaged in constructing and displacing revolutionary subjects and who raise intertwined questions of subjectivity and gender. Rousseau and Wollstonecraft provide a framework for more substantial discussion of Blake, Percy Shelley and Mary Shelley, as well as for "the rise of feminism" and its accommodation and suppression in the course of the Revolution. My reading of radical Romantic writers' construction of revolutionary subjects— from Blake's Milton to Percy Shelley's Beatrice Cenci to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein— focuses on the ways in which these writers' revolutionary Romanticism intersects with gendered constructions of literary subjects. I start by examining the historical formation of Romantic revolutionary subjecthood and addressing the mark of gender in Romantic revolutionary poetics. While tracing the configurations of female desire in excess during the revolutionary period of 1789-1795, I also investigate the masculinist ideology that often bases itself on suppressing Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 26 and subjugating the subversive and revolutionary energy of feminine desires. I explore the gender issues in England and France that informed and impelled Wollstonecraft' s Vindication, and raise the possibility of the displacement or subversion of Prometheanism in the figure of a female Prometheus— or, Promethea. This Promethea figure necessarily conveys a contradictory effect, partly coming from its subversive (dis-) orientation to the master-trope of Prometheus. In other words, Prometheanism is both a masculinist construct, and at the same time, a counterdiscursive endeavor. In the same vein, Promethea is revolutionary as an excess of meaning rather than as an identity or a person in a positivist sense, and thus we could trace desiring Promethea through reading the texts "in an inverted form," reading the fragments that lie "in the form of unfinished, incomplete, and fragmented allusions."27 Refiguration of female desire invokes the perspective from which to criticize the subject-other relationship embedded in literary constructions of gender relationships, especially in politically conscious Promethean poetics. Precisely by pointing out the limits and contradictions as well as potentials and promises of the master-trope, the Promethea 27Pierre Macherey, The Object of Literature, trans. David Macey (Cambridge, NY and Melbourne: Cambridge UP, 1995), p. 235. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 27 figure leads us to open up a new space and explore its contradictions and incongruities. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 28 Chapter 1 Between Female Quixotes and Promethea: Gender and/in Romantic Revolutionary Discourse 1. Nature, Culture and Homan: Competing Ideologies of Gender in the Romantic Period There is no nature, only effects of nature: denaturation or naturalization. Nature, the meaning of nature, is reconstituted after the fact on the basis of a simulacrum (for example, literature) that it is thought to cause. — Derrida, Given Time: 1. Counterfeit Money1 Simon Schama begins his epic-like narrative history, Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution, by refiguring the rising "New Men"— the to-be revolutionary leaders such as Talleyrand-Pdrigord and Lafayette— in the decline of monarchical France. Schama depicts the cultural moods of new male subjects and their self-fashioning based on the ideologically driven (rather than biologically given) father- son bonding in the pre-revolutionary age of the Enlightenment. The cultural heroes for this new kind of "citizen" in France ranged from the Enlightenment ideal, Voltaire; to the military leader (the "God-like Hero") George Washington, the model of the citizen-soldier fighting for 1Jacques Derrida, Given Time: 1. Counterfeit Money, Trans. Peggy Kamuf (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago P, 1992), p. 170. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 29 liberty; to the popular civic figure Benjamin Franklin, a combination of noble savage, iconoclastic scientist and harbinger of liberty (representative figure of the newly born Republic— the United States); and Cicero and Junius Brutus, resurrected Roman heroes.2 Schama explains that Cicero's concept of "homines novi— new men" was readopted to indicate "those who rose by virtue of their sound civism and eloquence," and who "provided the generation of the 1780s with their own collective badge of merit" so as to create "a powerful bond of identification between ancient and modern republicans" (Schama 170-171). In the case of Benjamin Franklin, Schama collects both written and visual narratives showing the formation of "the Franklin cult," which idolized him as a scientist of popular electricity (against the French academic establishment) and as an "old farmer. . . with a noble air" and (freedom- seeking) "American virtues": "Turgot may have coined the famous epigram Eripuit Coelo Fulmen, Sceptrumque Tyrannis (He seized lightening from the heavens and the sceptre from tyrants) as an innocuous play on words, but it very rapidly became a kind of byword for Franklin's role as the harbinger of liberty" (Schama 44). The undercurrent of Prometheanism in 2see the first chapter, "New Men," of Simon Schama, Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution (NY: Vintage books: 1989), pp. 21-49. All further page references in text. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 30 the Franklin cult may be detected in Franklin' s command of electricity, a modern version of Promethean fire. These revolutionary "new men" in France thus include a rather various group, as the most intense period of the Revolution (1789-1795) saw different groups of leaders and power struggles amongst them. In that sense, "the new man" is a somewhat fluid term, as the core of the "citizen" goes through redefinition from the leaders of the "rGvolte nobilaire” to the Third Estate (bourgeoisie aligning with urban masses and peasantry) to the Jacobin revolutionaries alike. From a culturalist perspective, Schama points out that in the crucial pre-Revolutionary decades, "the public . . . read Rousseau, listened to Diderot's 'bourgeois dramas' at the Comddie-Frangaise and saw [Jean-Baptiste] Greuze's paintings of domestic bliss and sorrow in the Salon" (Schama 147), all of which amounted to the "antithesis of rococo court culture with its wasteful indulgence in decoration, its insistence on wit and manner, graciousness and style" (Schama 147/150)— a new cultural ethos. These bourgeois cultural products, appreciated by the aristocrats and bourgeoisie alike, indeed contributed to subverting the values of the Old Regime even before the revolutionary upheavals (155). The new manhood that fired up citizens Talleyrand and Lafayette was also in vogue in England among the intellectual and cultural "men of letters"— such as Richard Price, Thomas Paine, William Roscoe, and even Edmund Burke. If they Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 31 comprise a group of diverse political orientation, they shared the stamp of intellectual merits and qualities (rather than bloodline) that led them to membership in the upper echelon of society, forming the professional bourgeoisie aligned with the landed gentry.3 Energized by the Protestant Reformation and bolstered by the fundamental shake-up in the absolute authority of God and King in the seventeenth century, "the Age of Reason" fostered new cultural ideas about "the new men." Alongside other members of the urban middle class— bankers, stockbrokers, merchants, large manufacturers— professionals such as writers, lawyers, journalists, scientists and medical doctors consolidated their force against the Crown, court, high clergy and aristocracy. Like their counterparts in France, these new men who penned the "rights of man" became active participants in the discourse of Enlightenment and sensibility, emphasizing freedom over discipline, a core human identity over customary privileges and social hierarchy. Phrases such as "Tyranny of Laws and Institutions," or "Laws, and Priests, and Kings" reigning over "man . . . the free heir of Nature's wide ^See Gary Kelly, Revolutionary Feminism; The Mind and Career of Mary Wollstonecraft (London: Macmillan, 1992), p. 85. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 32 domain" became the clichds of the period, waved by the progressives and their mocking counterparts.4 As in other paradigm-shifting phases in discursive history, the central issue in articulating the new ethos for the new subjectivity that emerged from the intermixture of court culture and bourgeois culture was the relationship between nature and culture. Further, at the heart of the discourse of nature/culture lay the imbricated issues of gender. While both aristocracy and bourgeoisie employed neo classical rhetoric in casting their ideal subjectivity and the gender paradigm, a conflict among their ideologies surrounding manners and virtues arose over the questions of (ideal) femininity, especially over whether woman epitomizes culture or nature. Since the bourgeoisie in the public sphere expanded their power with what they saw a transition from "barbarism" to commerce, intellect, and civilization, the focus in cultural discourse shifted to cultivation and "manners" over a primitive, "virtue"-oriented warrior mentality.5 ^All the phrases are from George Canning and William Gifford, "The Progress of Man: A Didactic Poem in Forty Cantos" (published in Anti-Jacobin. 19, Feb. 1798), a parody of Richard Payne Knight's The Progress of Civil Society, a Didactic Poem in Six Books (1796). See Jerome McGann, Romantic Period Verse, pp. 135-137. 5This part of the discussion is mostly informed by J. G. A. Pocock's introduction to Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France. The term "manners" could be linked to moeurs in French, derived from the Latin mores (morals). Pocock cites William Robertson's "A view of the Progress of Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 33 The "chivalric ethos,” a neoclassical adaptation of medieval chivalry, was often evoked as the model by the court-influenced nobility and the gentry as well as the clergy. Concern for woman became the crucial part of this overvaluation of manners and decorum, since the encounter between the genders became the testing ground for courtesy, morality, or etiquette.6 According to this view, woman is seen as the apotheosis of the culture and civilized manners of ["modern"] times. Hence the epitome of elegant femininity is used as an alibi for the conservatives to uphold the status quo— the court-culture of the old regime— and fend off any disruptive new ideas. For some bourgeois intellectuals, the chivalric ethos of gallantry— the cultural product of courts and monarchies— proved useful both for aligning themselves culturally with higher orders and in appropriating them. Thus Burke idealizes it as the norm, and Hume "embourgeoizes" it further for the purpose of "national culture." They redefine Society in Europe from the Subversion of the Roman Empire to the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century," History of the Reign of the Emperor Charles V (1769), and Adam Ferguson, History of the Progress and Termination of the Roman Republic (Edinburgh 1799), Vol. V. in his discussion of Burke's conceptualization of chivalry. See Pocock, "Introduction" to Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett, 1987), p. xxxii. Also see Pocock's Virtue. Commerce, and History: Essays on Political Thought and History Chiefly in Eighteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1985). 6See Pocock's "Introduction" to Burke's Reflections. p. xxxiii. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 34 the "modern" gender-relationship in terms of courtly woman, emphasizing the "virtuous" women's polishing influence in modifying the "natural harshness" in men.7 According to their view, women, sophisticated yet virtuous, serve as the embodiment of culture men have achieved by conquering nature. This notion competed with the Rousseauist objection to the public, courtly woman, and his criticism of chivalry, gallantry and coquetry as the problem of a "modern" court society full of folly, hypocrisy, and waste. While the chivalric ethos highlighted the cultivation of woman based on the chivalric code and the courtly woman, "progressive" bourgeois value more and more anchored itself in femininity as the essence of a nature, not to be contaminated by corrupting cultural forces. The aristocracy, who already possessed cultural capital and prestige, made every effort to distinguish themselves from the bourgeois 7David Hume, "Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences" (1742); qtd in Kelly, Revolutionary Feminism, pp. 18-19. Kelly also observes: By the early eighteenth century much courtly literature depicted subjectivity as true personal merit in the face of the merely public, social, political rank of court personages, a refuge from and a critique of mere courtliness. Significantly, court literature often embodied this subjectivity in a heroine. For a woman could represent anyone, man or woman, subject to domination, courtship or seduction by another— usually more powerful and male. Such a model of subjectivity could also appeal to the non-courtly classes, whether gentry or bourgeoisie, lower down the chain of court patronage or frustrated in attempts to infiltrate other patronage systems. (Kelly, p. 11) Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 35 newly rich— the champions of the market-driven economy— especially through the cultivation of manners. On the other hand, the presupposition of natural femininity "untainted" by culture could serve the progressives in attacking the problematic social order itself. These contesting views obviously coexisted for a while; yet by all indications, by mid-century the bourgeois model of gender relations was firmly rooted in France and England as well as in other parts of Europe, if with some ambivalence between courtly women and domestic women.8 The growing bourgeois domination drove aristocratic chivalry into the background, and yet at the same time, aristocratic tastes and sentiments for "modern chivalry" became, to a certain extent, coveted, fetishized, and commodified.9 While the relationship between nature and culture, along with its intersection with gender issues, reached the point of cultural obsession, humanist and 8Kelly, p. 18, following French Women and the Age of the Enlightenment, ed. Sarnia I. Spencer (Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 1984), part 5. 8See, for example, Peter J. Manning, "Wordsworth in the Keepsake. 1829," ed. John 0. Jordan and Robert L. Patten, Literature in the Marketplace: Nineteenth-centurv British Publishing and Reading Practices (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995). The British annuals of the 1820's catered to the rising bourgeois female consumers; the front page often sported the plates of "fashionable women whose dress and attitudes held up to the audience the model of taste .... In such specular acts the beholder beheld herself as she wished to be" (57). "Fashionable" more often than not connotes an aristocratic taste, if sometimes punctuated by idealized, iconic peasant class figures. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 36 anthropomorphism assumptions underlying the naturalized world went unexplored. In other words, in the maelstrom of destabilization and the (re)generation of subjecthood and social relations, the gender norms were not overhauled but consolidated by revolutionary leaders. The case of Marie Antoinette illustrates the contesting views of femininity poignantly. In Burke's famous eulogy of the dethroned Marie Antoinette, he makes the chivalric ethos the essence of a culture, which is then encapsulated as the quintessential femininity of the queen: It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then the dauphiness, at Versailles, and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in— glittering like the morning star, full of life and splendor and joy. Oh! what a revolution! and what a heart must I have to contemplate without emotion that elevation and that fall! Little did I dream when she added titles of veneration to those of enthusiastic, distant, respectful love, that she should ever be obliged to carry the sharp antidote against disgrace concealed in that bosom; little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers. I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone.10 No wonder that aristocratic women, especially the Queen as the epitome of the woman in power, became a specific target of the growing resentment of the French people (and thus, lOBurke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, p. 66. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 37 "the enemy of the French nation, La Nation"),11 and that court culture became equated with feminine erotic excess.12 Towards the end of Louis XVI' s rule, the wife of Louis Capet became the target of endlessly vehement sexually-charged tropes by French anti-Royalists, especially through underground pamphlets and prints. The vilification of Marie Antoinette ranged from "Austrian she-wolf," "arch-tigress," or "Furies of France,"13 to a "monster who needed to slake her thirst on the blood of the French . . . [who] wanted to roast alive all the poor Parisians . . . who caused the massacre at Nancy of the first soldiers for liberty";14 "the ferocious panther who devoured the French, the female monster whose pores sweated 11 In this case, Lynn Hunt notes that while the queen was often used as the antonym of the nation ("La Nation") in French revolutionary rhetoric, the feminine qualities in La Nation were minimized or displaced with a "masculine mother," something equivalent to a father capable of giving birth to the new regime of fraternity. See Hunt, The Family Romance of the French Revolution (Berkeley: UCP, 1992), pp. 98-9. 12This point is made over and over by Rousseau and Wollstonecraft. See my discussion of them for a detailed examination of this issue. Robert Darnton argues that the charge of sexual sensationalism that Enlightenment writers brought against the Old Regime in their underground pamphlets was a means of debasing the entire establishment— the court, the church, the aristocracy, the academies, the salons, and the monarchy itself. See Darnton, The Literary Underground of the Old Regime (Cambridge, Mass, 1982), p. 29. 13Frdron of the Jacobin and Cordelier press depict her as Furies (See Schama, p. 555). l4Schama, p. 796; Schama's sources are Acte d 'Accusation and the Bulletin of the Tribunal Rdvolutionnaire (p. 903). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 38 the purest blood of the sans-culottes";15 mauvaise fillef mauvaise Spouse, mauvaise mdre, mauvaise reine, monstre en tout" [bad daughter, bad wife, bad mother, bad queen, monster in everything]" (emphasis added).16 It is significant to note the gender provocation and oversexualization underlying the anti-Royalist discourse of the Queen. We see within bourgeois rhetoric "the equation of the woman with rococo profligacy and extravagance."17 The bourgeois campaign against the rococo had as its major feature "a denigration of the style as frivolous, morally tainted, erotic, and 'feminine,' in contrast with the heroic, virtuous, manly neoclassical" (Gutwirth 135). The political tenor of the bourgeois class, in other words, is increasingly geared to recapitulating, reinstating, and reauthorizing 15Hector Fleischmann, Marie-Antoinette libertine: Bibliography critique et analvticaue des pamphlets oolitigues. aalants. et obsc&ne contre la reine: Pr£c£d£ de la Louis XXI (Paris 1911), p. 76; quoted in Hunt, 1992, p. 112. l^See Lynn Hunt, The Family Romance, p. 110-111. The source materials ares Tetes k orix. suivi de la Liste de toutes les Personnes avec lesauelles la Reine a eu des liaisons de debauches. 2nd ed. (Paris, 1792); Liste civile suivie des noms et qualit£s de ceux gui la composent, et la punition due & leurs crimes ... Et la liste des affidSs de la ci-devant reine (Paris, n.d.). 17Madelyn Gutwirth, The Twilight of the Goddesses; Women and Representation in the French Revolutionary Era (New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1992), p. 112. All further page references are in text; see also Dena Goodman, The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1989). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 39 sexual separation according to the reappropriated mode of antiquity; and "ultimately, the move to a stark sexual division of men from women, emotional and physical, was espoused by many men of the rising bourgeoisie as a key to regeneration" (Gutwirth 210). It is not surprising, then, that the gender-specific Jacobin subjecthood of the new man was elaborately constructed by differentiating itself from the notoriously demonic public woman, the scoundrel queen. Compare, for example, anti-queen rhetoric with that of the ideal manhood depicted in Sylvain Mardchal's apocalyptic drama Le Dernier Juaement des Rois (The Last Judgment of the Kings): an old male sans-culotte is staged as "a free man, a patriot par excellence . . . they are pure citizens . . . who eat their bread by the sweat of their brow; who love work, who are good sons, good fathers, good husbands, good relatives, good friends, and good neighbors. . . " (Schama 797-8). Indeed, the operating subject in the philosophical and social discourse of the "Rights of Man" proved gender-bound as well as race- and class-specific. The writings of Burke, Locke and Paine confirm Rousseau's idea of the democratic social contract, with its exclusion of women from the political arena. Woman was defined in relation to man, but only as a lesser, "imperfect man." The notion of the state's rule over an individual was similarly interwoven with that of a naturalization of inequality between the genders: the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 40 individual's relinquishing of natural liberties to the government is equated with the wife's relinquishing her right of decision-making to her husband. The suspended or "covered" status of women during marriage— the "coverture" of the British Common Law— was certainly unaffected by the revolutionary turmoil in the Continent, in fact, women's limited legal and economic status, as well as the foreclosed opportunity for rigorous, formal intellectual education of women (especially in Latin and Greek), could be seen as a fundamental block for women to fully develop their intellectual capacity throughout the Romantic period.18 A peculiar intersection of class and gender is found in the role of women who mediated Old Regime and Enlightenment ideas. The space of the eighteenth-century French salon culture run by upper-middle class talented women shows that 18This is the diagnosis given by Irene Tayler and Gina Luria in "Gender and Genre: Women in British Romantic Literature" in Marlene Springer, ed. What Manner of Woman: Essays on English and American Life and Literature [NY: NYUP, 1977], pp. 98-99). They cite Sir William Blackstone: "The husband and wife are one person in law; that is, the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage, or at least is incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband: under whose wing, protection and cover, she performs everything" (Blackstone, Commentaries of the Laws of England. Book the First [Oxford, 1765]), p. 442. Taylor and Luria add: "Women could. . . receive the protection of premarital contracts, or trusts, which were, however, likely to be negotiated on their behalf by their families. But even then their legal status was subsumed to that of their husbands, though their property might be protected" ; See also Mary R. Beard, Woman As Force in History (NY, 1947) and Leo Kanowitz, Woman and the Law: The Unfinished Revolution (Albuquerque, 1969). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 41 the exclusion of the lower (peasant) class coincided with the generous inclusion of women. As Madelyn Gutwirth elucidates, in the salon gathering a social blend of female with male was possible, during which "a vital segment of public life combined the genders in such a way as to produce in both a heady charge of energy, a polymorphous delight" (Gutwirth 86). In salon society men and women of the aristocratic and bourgeois classes shared "the tortures of a fascinating limbo," a "work-free aristocratic void" (Gutwirth 94) where there was a high degree of verbal and intellectual freedom (albeit shaped by rhetorical formulas) accorded each sex in communicating with the other. Relatively speaking, it was also devoid of a strictly prescribed social hierarchy, in contrast to "the patriarchal immobilism of peasant life": "the idea of the salon offers, especially to the sex most restricted by tradition, the promise of change, novelty, alterations in style, adventure, even escape" (Gutwirth 112). Dominique Godineau points out that even in the days of the National Assembly, politicians from the opposing camps found the salon to be a "strategic" meeting place for political debates and intellectual arguments, because of its "semi private, semi-public character.1 , 1 9 The women's prominence in 19Dominique Godineau, "Daughters of Liberty and Revolutionary Citizens" in Genevieve Fraisse and Michelle Perrot, eds., A History of Women in the West, vol. 3. Emerging Feminism from Revolution to World War (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, The Belknap Press of Harvard UP, Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 42 the salon, on the other hand, elicited "the marked masculine and lower-class resentment" (Gutwirth 135), most strongly encapsulated by Rousseau's antagonism toward Salon women. To the peasantry, "salon men emanate the fecklessness or effeminacy they despise, while the [salon man] completely ignores the vast majority of the populace [85 percent] as barbaric" (Gutwirth 112).20 The British equivalent of French saloni&res were the Bluestockings, who also "inaugurated salon entertainment and facilitated female intellectual visibility, a social and literary phenomenon."21 Intellectually oriented, the upper and 1993 [Translation of Storia delle donne in Occidente originally published in 1991]), pp. 21-22. 20According to George Rudd, who makes a meticulous calculation of the population of Paris at the dawn of the Revolution, the most reliable estimates range between 524,000 and 660,000. Rudd cites Ldon Cahen, who interrogated the social composition of mid-eighteenth century Paris, and concluded that "the clergy numbered about 10,000, the nobility 5,000, and the financial, commercial, manufacturing, and professional bourgeoisie about 40,000; the rest— the great majority— were the small shopkeepers, petty traders, craftsmen, journeymen, labourers, vagrants, and city poor, who formed what later became known as the sans-culottes" (The Crowd in the French Revolution [London, Oxford, and NY: Oxford UP, 1972 {1959}], p. 12). Consider the following remark by Madelyn Gutwirth on the element of gender- provocation by the Salon women: "Fear and rage felt by the lower orders against the upper have to be counted in some significant degree as a sign of terror at a class of men who could not, or refused to, contain 'its' own women who, from a peasant perspective, were 'out of control'" (Gutwirth 112). 21-Moira Ferguson, First Feminists: British Women Writers 1578-1799 (Bloomington and Old Westbuty: Indiana UP and The Feminist Press, 1985), p. 35. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 43 middle class backgrounds, the bluestockings held gatherings for like-minded men and women, and, if they carried politically conservative (monarchical) convictions, they also exchanged their non-traditional social views, especially on marriage and slavery. Among them were Bathsua Makin, Mary Astell, Catherine Trotter, Damaris Cudworth, Lady Masham, and Elizabeth Elstob, Elizabeth Carter and Catherine Macaulay. Moira Ferguson notes that they "wrote, translated, gave charitably to and in all senses patronized the poor, encouraged ingdnues, and attacked forced marriage and slavery. Several of them enjoyed a wholesome independence from men. Despite their political conservatism, the Bluestockings proved that women had publicly arrived."22 As the republican struggle continued in France, Jacobin revolutionary discourse forged the notion of the new man and his citizenship in the new nation through evocations of "enemies" against which the ideal could be set. Similarly, the new male subject gained its identity through differentiating itself from feminine attributes and subjugating women to men. The roles of women attendant upon the new manhood were thus constructed as supplements to the new masculine self, in the form of the domestic wife and nurturing mother— hence the notion of the "republican 22jjbid., p. 35. Also, it is important to note the existence of Bluestocking women for Mary Wollstonecraft's intellectual pursuit. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 44 mother." Rousseauist virtues— emotional truth, domesticity, candor and naturalness, and rustic labor— against the court culture, and patriotism against enemy nations (which can be linked to a more established bourgeois regime with strengthened status apparatuses) led to the paradoxical status of "citizenhood" in the new Republic. 2. The Gender Trouble with Rousseau We are far more in love with our own fancy than with the object of it. If we saw the object of our affections exactly as it is, there would be no more love on earth. When we cease to love, the person we used to love remains unchanged, but we no longer see her with the same eyes; the veil of illusion falls, and love disappears. But when I supply the imaginary object, I have control over comparisons, and I am able easily to prevent the illusion of real objects. — Rousseau, Emile . . . look on One, whose dust was once all fire, A native of the land where I respire The clear air for a while— a passing guest, Where he became a being,— whose desire Was to be glorious; 'twas a foolish quest, The which to gain and keep, he sacrificed all rest. — Byron, Child Harold's Pilgrimage. III. 7623 The most original thinker and influential disseminator of domestic woman, as well as a most effective opponent to 23Bvron: The Oxford Authors, ed. Jerome J. McGann, canto III, stanza 76, p. 127. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 45 the public and political woman/ was Jean-Jacques Rousseau. If the Romantic Prometheus takes the forms of dissenters, outcasts/ outlaws, rebels and even monsters, nobody incorporated all of these aspects more than Rousseau, who made the single most significant contribution to the construction of a new subjectivity in this revolutionary era. His self-definition in the Confessions seems to encompass a unique mixture of the most sublime humanist and monstrous devil. "I am like no one in the whole world. I may be no better, but at least I am different,"24 Rousseau says in his famous beginning, and further admits to being "vile and despicable" as well as "good, generous, and noble" (17). David Hume called him "a monster" (in his letter to Baron d'Holbach) after having fallen out with him,25 if in a different context from Rousseau's own admission of his "diabolical" side.26 By such peculiar self-monsterizing, and through his extraordinary attention to the split-subjectivity of himself, Rousseau paradoxically became a "most virtuous man" and the 24jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Confessions. trans., J. M. Cohen (London: Penguin Books, 1953), p. 17. All further page references in text. 2^Matthew Josephson, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (London, 1932), p. 464. 26See for example, his confession of his own "diabolical audacity" and Marion's "angelic sweetness" in the stolen ribbon incident (Confessions 87). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 46 cultural icon of the new era, creating followers and "a community of young believers" in "the possibility of a collective moral and political rebirth" through consoling those "tormented" egos (Schama 161). Burke's condemnation of the French Revolutionary Constituent Assembly (1789-91) attests, if cynically, to the extent of Rousseau's influence upon the revolutionaries: there is a great dispute, among their leaders, which of them is the best resemblance of Rousseau. In truth, they all resemble him. . . . Him they study, him they meditate; him they turn over in all the time they can spare from the laborious mischief of the day or the debauches of the night. Rousseau is their canon of Holy Writ; ... to him they erect their first statue.27 In the tortuous exploration of the realm of his subjectivity, however, Rousseau inscribes deferred desires and sublimated maternity as the core Republican virtue, while pitting them against socialized women in the public domain, whom, he often equates with the Rococo frivolity. While Rousseauist virtues and the cult of sensibility seem to preach for a purification of the self by effacing the self and highlighting modesty, the male subject, as a citizen, attains an ascension as the exclusive organizing force of the new Republic and requires the full attention of "his" domestic woman in the private space. 27Burke, "Letter to a Member of the National Assembly" in Reflections on the French Revolution, p. 262. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 47 Rousseau's conceptualization of ideal femininity, ("natural femininity," in Rousseau's terms, or, a feminine nature based on "natural" sexual difference) reverses the Christian perspective shown in Milton. According to Rousseau, woman was the human archetype, but "having lost the state of nature, she had become a worldly, factitious and artificial being, in order to regenerate herself, she would therefore have to learn to live in a way that was consonant with her real origin" (emphasis added).28 This view leads to the cultural and moral inequality of women vis-A-vis intelligent and reasoning men and thus to the conclusion that "any acquisition on her part of a 'culture' would make her manly, artificial and unsuited to procreation" (Roudinesco 15). Along the way, Rousseau strips power from the socially prominent "women of Paris"— the quintessence of socialized womanhood— and pours it onto the imaginary figure of domestic, virtuous motherhood. In The Confessions, the critical juncture of Rousseau's departure from (Mme. de Warens's) home to the city (Paris, society, the "republic of letters") comes when he realizes that he has lost her undivided attention, because of the existence of another man. Rousseau abhors being reduced to a 28Elizabeth Roudinesco, Madness and Revolution; The Lives and Legends of Thdroiane de Mdricourt. trans. Martin Thom [London and NY: Verso, 1991], p. 14; Also see Carol Blum, Rousseau and the Republic of Virtue: The Language of Politics in the French Revolution (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1986). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 48 "cipher" when he faces a formidable challenger, which finally leads him to part with his "mamma" (Confessions 251). Rousseau's intense interactions with women— e.g., Marion, Mme. de Warens, Thdr&se Le Vasseur, Mme d'Epinay and Elisabeth-Sophie d’Houdetot— locate a continuous struggle on his part to discipline and rearrange desires through displacing his [never attainable] Woman with its containable version of femininity. In this process, he distinguishes two attributes that can be identified. One, the love object that inspires the bottomless pit of passion and that finds identification in a person: "I was intoxicated with love that lacked an object. My intoxication enchanted my eyes, my object became identified with her ..." (Confessions 410); further, "it was love, love with all its strength and all its violence. I will not describe the agitation, the tremblings, the palpitations, the convulsive movements, or the faintings of the heart which I continually experienced" (414). The other, the menacing and uninterested (thus uninteresting) social or masculine women, those domineering, immodest Paris society women and saloni&res, whose rule demean, corrupt and ultimately feminize (or emasculate) men29: "Nothing is achieved in Paris except by help of the ladies. They are, so 29For instance, he speaks of "the fashionable Paris jargon, full of diminutives and subtle little allusions, which afforded poor Jean-Jacques little chance of shining" (Confessions 272). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 49 to speak, the circumference to which learned men, like so many asymptotes, draw ever nearer, yet which they never touch" (Confessions 272). Thus comes the mandatory boundary between the genders in his mapping of the new republic; Rousseau concludes that women's potential power over men needs to be held in check by the new social relation. The same logic gains a political dimension when he argues, "Whether a monarch governs men or women ought to be rather indifferent to him, provided that he be obeyed; but in a republic, men are needed."30 Rousseau analogously sets up binary oppositions between the country and the city (Paris), nature and culture, and the (reconstructed) Greco-Roman republicanism and French Rococo monarchism, pursuing them to the ultimate necessity of the purging of the latter for the reconstitution of the former. Through The New Hdloise and the fifth part of Emile.31 he demonstrates the precondition of sexual segregation for a development of ideal manhood and constructs the tableau of 30j. j. Rousseau, Politics and the Arts: Letter to M. D'Alembert on the Theatre, trans. Allan Bloom (Ithaca, NY, 1988), pp. 100-101. This ostentatious masculinist advocacy, not surprisingly, has drawn some feminists' attention, including Gutwirth (127) and Lynn Hunt, The Family Romance of the French Revolution, p. 90. 31Joan Landes explores Rousseau's construction of an opposition between "the ironic specularity of the Old Regime" and "the textual and legal order of the bourgeois public sphere" in Women and the Public Sphere in the French Revolution (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1988), p. 67. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 50 the mother surrounded by her children as a most enchanting emblem of autonomous harmony and ideal femininity. If the novel (The New Hdloise) that approximates his own experience with Elizabeth-Sophie d'Houdetot cannot lead the pursuer to the union with his ideal love, it is imperative to make the union feasible in a more doctrinaire version, Emile. In Emile. Rousseau presents an eye-witness account of a young girl as a negative example, a story both intriguing and disturbing: I once knew a young person who learned to write before she learned to read, and began to write with her needle before she could use a pen. At first, indeed, she took it into her head to make no other letter than the 0: the letter she was constantly making of all sizes, and always the wrong way. Unluckily, one day, as she was intent on this employment, she happened to see herself in the looking-glass; when, taking a dislike to the constrained attitude in which she sat while writing, she threw away her pen, like another Pallas, and determined against making the 0 any more . . . ,32 Illustrating a literal self-referentiality, the little girl's passage from insisting upon 0 (the missing mother?) to 32Emile. p. 332. One of Wollstonecraft's specific comments on Rousseau deals with this anecdote: [Rousseau's] ridiculous stories, which tend to prove that girls are naturally attentive to their persons, without laying any stress on daily example, are below contempt.— And that a little miss should have such a correct taste as to neglect the pleasing amusement of making 0's, merely because she perceived that it was an ungraceful attitude, should be selected with the anecdotes of the learned pig. (3. 43) In a different context, Wollstonecraft points out the status of woman in front of the law— the woman is represented by the husband, being "reduced to a mere cypher." Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 51 becoming 0 (absorbed into the prescribed role of nobody) through the looking-glass of the symbolic order seemed to disturb both Rousseau and Wollstonecraft, though in completely different ways. This enigmatic story of a perfect cipher, compact of her own loss, with a compulsive desire to hold onto symbolic nothingness, locates the place of woman who travels from nowhere inside language to the outside of language. Her visual embodiment of the missing other becomes contained in the symbolic realm that literally molds her female subjectivity. It is important to note that Rousseau's rhetoric of the absolute naturalness of female modesty cannot completely disperse his recognition of its constructive nature. In fact, he preaches on the cultivation of women's timidity in domestic retirement. As Gutwirth convincingly argues, "Rousseau means by 'tr6s naturel' that apparent lack of artifice that was the age's greatest of all artifices" (Gutwirth 123). Gutwirth points out the ideological dimension of Rousseau's ideal femininity in the following terms: When Rousseau adverts to the separatist mores of the ancients as an antidote to the threat presented by women in the cities, he pointedly manipulates two prime ideological factors that will merge in the gender history of the Revolution: the first is class conflict, and the second is the issue of the remote past passing the baton of authenticity to the present. Appealing nakedly to an atavistic, precultural, male supremacist idyll of rural existence, to which men of all classes might resonate, he calls out of the shadows, into which cultivated life had partially repressed it, the energy of the ancient and infinitely renewable resentment against women. . . . A return is what he calls for, to Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 52 the simple family hierarchy of a presumably less sublimated culture. . . . (Gutwirth 126) "Why [do] women like Rousseau?" Wollstonecraft asks in the second Vindication (5. 103-4), when she mentions Mm. de Stael's deep appreciation, apparent in her eulogy of Rousseau. Obviously, the question evokes endless critical speculations, not the least of which would include Rousseau's exploration of the complex realm of the (M)other, fantasy and subjectivity, with which critics have been grappling to this day. Wollstonecraft's version is vigorously simple and yet politically insightful: . . . he admits the passion of love. It would require some ingenuity to show why women were to be under such an obligation to him for thus admitting love; when it is clear that he admits it only for the relaxation of men, and to perpetuate the species; but he talked with passion, and that powerful spell worked on the sensibility of a young encomist. 'What signifies it,' pursues this rhapsodist, 'to women, that his reason disputes with them the empire,— but equality, that they should contend for. Yet, if they only wished to lengthen out their sway, they should not entirely trust to their persons, for though beauty may gain a heart, it cannot keep it, even while the beauty is in full bloom, unless the mind lend, at least, some graces. (5. 104) Since Rousseau madly idealizes the woman from whom he nervously dissociates himself, does his debasement of and antagonism toward women seem tolerable, or even embraceable? Interestingly enough, Wollstonecraft's analysis finds an echo in the writing of Condorcet ("Letters of a Resident from New- Haven to a Citizen of Virginia" [1787] and On the Admission Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 53 of Women to Rights as Citizens of a State [1789]). Condorcet realizes that his unmythical discourse about women's "rights rather than their reign" lacks appeal to women readers: Since Rousseau has earned women's approbation by saying they were made only to take care of us and good only to torment us, I have no hope they will end up approving of me.33 As he ironically predicted, Condorcet's exhaustive argument for equal rights for women was ignored by the public and Jacobin revolutionaries alike. Gutwirth comments: "Even among the liberal Girondists, whose party he was to support until his death under the Terror in 1794, the article of women's rights would never prove popular" (Gutwirth 204). Indeed, while Rousseauvian idealization of the (domestic) woman and "natural" femininity appealed to a large female audience, including female intellectuals, it also proved to be a most effective deterrent to the advancement of women's rights. 3. Early Feminist Struggles in Revolutionary France Lady Macbeth. WhatI quite unmann'd in folly? — Macbeth III. iv. 72. Seyton. The Queen, my Lord, is dead. Macb. She should have died hereafter: 33jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat Condorcet, Letters of a Resident from New-Haven to a Citizen of Virginia (Lettres d'un bourgeois de New-Haven; 1787) in Filippo Mazzei, Recherches historiques et politiaues sur les Etats-Unis de 1 'Amdriaue septentrionale. par un citoyen de Virainie (Paris: 1788), p. 187; Gutwirth, p. 204. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 54 There would have been a time for such a word.— — Macbeth V. v. 16-18. The French Revolution, with its ruptures, insurrections, and voids, brought a sense of profound change to a significant number of women. The Enlightenment discourse advocating equality among citizens opened up the discursive condition in which the notion of feminist equal rights became available.34 In the feudal system, women— like other minorities defined by class (serfs, actors), race or ethnicity (Blacks, Jews), or religion (Protestants)— did not occupy the position to question the 34Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe highlight such a discursive condition in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics (London and NY: Verso, 1985), p. 154. Elizabeth Roudinesco makes a similar comment: "The Revolution therefore represented the symbolic birth certificate of French feminism, although it gave women merely a civil semi-equality and no political equality at all" (Madness and Revolution 17). But at the same time, it is important to note that as early as 1673, Cartesian intellectual Frangois Poullain de la Barre wrote 1 'Eaalitg de les deux sexes. Through his rationalist empiricism, Poullain de la Barre investigates the nature of social construction and the operation of law and religion in the cultural indoctrination of women's subjection, and by doing so marks a significant moment in the examination of gender norms. Its English translation, The Woman as Good as the Man: Or. the Equality of Both Sexes by A. L. (Archibld Lovell?) was published in 1677. (See Gerald M. MacLean, "Introduction," The Woman as Good as Man [Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1988], p. 11-52). Mary Astell in 1694 (A Serious Proposals to the Ladies) and also in 1697 (A Serious Proposals to the Ladies Part IH made an equally significant, if less radical, step towards protofeminism by proposing that upper class women (ladies) pursue an education in Christian doctrine and the classics in retreat (in nunneries and seminaries). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 55 inferiority prescribed to them. Lower class or otherwise marginalized women, therefore, were in a double bind, first because of their gender and then because of their group identity, such as class, ethnicity, etc. Further, Social inequality so prevailed over sexual inequality that it tended to mask it; rather than accentuating the specific injustice which women suffered, it served to reinforce a sense of class division. Women also identified themselves with the political ideals of the groups to which they belonged, before recognizing themselves in a formation in which their own particular identity might be enshrined.35 In the revolutionary void in France where age-old privileges seemed to have been swept away at a stroke, some women faced the opportunity of questioning their identity and the civic— political— role of women. It seems that in the streets of Paris women figured not just as somewhat passive objects endowed with hope for a better time but as more active seekers of it, and sometimes en masse. Then, how much did the political and cultural status of women change in the wake of the Revolution? Indeed, were there feminist struggles that could be termed revolutionary? What are their characteristics, and how did they become accommodated? Women's (spontaneous or organized) insistence on entering the discussion, as well as the expanded possibilities for an awareness of their identity, self- determination or self-representation drew tremendous ^Elizabeth Roudinesco, Madness and Revolution, p. 17. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 56 resistance from all male quarters: "To discover that women can play a political role is not the same as to give them one. Such a scandalous possibility may even have made those who raised it recoil in horror, thus inspiring a reactionary discourse on women rather than the innovations one might have expected."36 Not only did the change in women elicit conservatives' mockery, condemnation, and resentment against "the unsex'd females," but the Enlightenment thinkers and revolutionaries also armed themselves with the doctrine of women's domestication and the distribution of power along gender lines. This problematic might explain why there is a parallel between the Jacobin-Revolutionary discourse surrounding the rights of men and its blind spot pointed out by women writers such as Germaine de Stael, Olympe de Gouge, and Mary Wollstonecraft and the class-conscious historiography of the French Revolution (Furet and Michelet among others) and the feminist critique (Gutwirth, Hunt, Godineau) of them. Feminist critics of today seem to share the skepticism of women writers of the French Revolutionary era who pointed to the gender disparity in the revolutionary discourse. They ^Elizabeth G. Sledziewski, "The French Revolution as the Turning Point" in Fraisse and Perrot, eds., A History of Women in the West, vol. 3: Emerging Feminism from Revolution to World War, p. 34. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 57 diverge from the standard historical narrative and querry with paradoxes or incongruities in the revolutionary democratic discourse. What propelled, for example, the consistent pattern of essentialist representations of femininity throughout the period— by Jacobin-republicans (especially through the Rousseauist doctrine against public women and their suppression of women's participation in the political arena), reemerging Royalists (who associated the Revolution with the fallen woman), and the anti-Royalists (especially against Mme. du Barry and Marie Antoinette) alike? Germaine de Stael's highly enigmatic and ironic comment, "Since the Revolution men had thought it politically and morally useful to reduce women to the most absurd mediocrity"37 provides an insight into the paradoxical status the Jacobin government instituted for women. Furthermore, while Rousseau and Burke took opposite poles in construing ideal social relations, especially in their views of desirable government, they looked at female transgressions with the same horror. Rousseau's Sophie, the "new Eve" in the "original," natural state, is just as cipher-like as Burke's Marie Antoinette in the sense that 37This statement by Germaine Necker de Stael in On Literature (1800) functions for Madelyn Gutwirth as a "intriguingly gnomic" paradox that seems to have impelled her to explore the situation of French women during the French Revolutionary Era. See The Twilight of the Goddesses, p. xvi and p. 383. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 58 both of them mirror the male values invested in her, and neither is historically concrete or participating. They embody the values those men hold onto or the changes they helped spark and usher in, as the complementary form for aristocratic or bourgeois masculinity. However, in the ruins of revolutionary eruptions, we detect radical feminist desire and women's resistance against gender-specific power imbalances. What are the desires underlying the revolutionary activism of poissardes (fish wives and market women),38 female sans-culottes,39 the 38The market women and fishwives of Paris, those working class women had a ceremonial, representative role in the Old Regime, when they visited the queen in the palace on the feast day of Saint-Louis, August 25. These lower class women spoke the speech of the markets— poissard. (See Schama, pp. 456-459.) 39Sans-culottes used to mean the small property-owners and wage-earners of town and countrysides . .. in its Parisian context, the small shopkeepers, petty traders, craftsmen, journeymen, labourers, vagrants, and city poor. Contemporaries tended to limit its application to the more politically active among these classes or to extend it to the "popular" leaders, from whatever social class they might be drawn. Historians have frequently used the term in this political sense. (George Rud€, The Crowd in the French Revolution, p. 257). In Paris, the female sans-culottes who "thronged the political arena managed to give a national dimension to their activities. Their practice as militants depended in large part on their ambiguous status as citizens without citizenship" (Dominique Godineau, "Daughters of Liberty and Revolutionary Citizens," in A History of Women in the West, vol. IV. p. 19). For depictions of female sans-culottes in 1790's political prints, see David Bindman, The Shadow of the Guillotine: Britain and the French Revolution (British Museum Publication, 1989), pp. 122-127; Lynn Hunt, The Family Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 59 organization of La Femme Libre (later, La femme Nouvelle) and women's clubs, the Saint-Simonieuis,40 and the Female Owenites in England?41 What compelled the "heroines" of the period, such as Etta Palm d'Alders, Olympe de Gouges, Thdroigne de Mdricourt and Claire Lacombe to organize, write, fight, and thus feminize the Revolution? What moved the anonymous revolutionary female crowd in the revolutionary theater "when the stage was set for a struggle for the recognition of women's civil and political rights" (in Roudinesco's phrase)? Romance of the French Revolution: Robert Darnton and Daniel Roche, ed. Revolution in Print: The Press in France 1775-1800 (Berkeleys UCP in collaboration with the NY Public Library, 1789). 40see Claire Goldberg Moses, French Feminism in the Nineteenth Century (Albany: SUNY Press, 1984), esp. chapters 3, "The Saint-Simmonian Vision," and 4, "The Birth of an Autonomous Women's Movement"; for studies on women and the French Revolution, see also Darlene Gay Levy, Harriet Branson Applewhite, Mary Durham Johnson, eds., Women in Revolutionary Paris. 1789-1795 (Urbanas U of Illinois P, 1979); Joan B. Landes, Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of the French Revolution (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1988), and Linda Orr, Headless History: Nineteenth-Centurv French Historiography of the French Revolution (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1990). Also see the annotated anthology of documents by Arline Cay Levy, Harriet B. Applewhite, and Mary D. Johnson, Women in Revolutionary Paris (Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1979); Les Femmes dans la Revolution Frangaise. 2 vols. (Paris: Edhis, 1982). 41See Barbara Taylor, Eve and the New Jerusalem: Socialism and Feminism in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Pantheon Books, 1983). Taylor charts the course of women followers of the Utopian socialist Robert Owen (such as Anna Wheeler, Emma Martin and Fanny Wright) in their aspirations to sexual equality and eliminations of class and private property. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 60 What are the effects of those women who challenged through their activism, as well as their writing, the prevailing assumptions of gender relationships? From 1789 on, women participated in numbers in public action, either organized or in semi-spontaneous mob actions. Reports of the October revolt (1789) show that it started simultaneously in the central markets and the Faubourg Saint-Antoine; in both cases women were the leading spirits; and, from numerous and varying accounts, it appears that in the activities that followed women of every social class took part— both fishwives cind small-holders of the markets, working women of the faubourg, smartly dressed bourgeoises, and 'des femmes i t chapeau'. In the markets, according to a Chatelet witness, the movement was started by a small girl, who set out from the District of Saint- Eustache beating a drum and declaiming against the scarcity of bread; this drew together a large crowd of women, whose numbers rapidly increased.42 Amongst them were lower-class crowds of poissardes or dames de la halle— fishwives and market women— who formed prominent forces in marching to Versailles on October 5, 1789. They were galvanized by the need for bread at the end of Louis XVI's reign and staged protests, forming a spontaneous insurgent crowd.43 No wonder Hannah More, upon hearing about 42ceorge Rudd, The Crowd in the French Revolution, p. 43Schama's reconstruction also shows the prominence of the crowd of women: Early on the fifth, the tocsin was rung from the Church of Sainte-Marguerite and, led by a woman beating a drum, a march formed, the crowd shouting the title of the latest pamphlet, When Will We Have Bread? As they marched, they recruited women from other districts, many of them carrying cudgels, sticks and knives. By the time Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 61 the event, commented, "the throne of the grand monarque ha[d] been overturned by fisherwomen! "44 Burke's diatribes against the unruly female in Reflections. for example, highlight the gender provocation, resorting to the anti-Jacobin rhetoric that equates revolutionary disorder with female sexual rage or licentiousness. Burke sexualizes and debases female revolutionaries who participated in the National Assembly, saying that they were born out of "the polluted nonsense of their most licentious and giddy coffeehouses."45 He deplores public institutions "deformed into monsters:" They act like the comedians of a fair before a riotous audience; they act amidst the tumultuous cries of a mixed mob of ferocious men, and of women lost to shame, who, according to their insolent fancies, direct, control, applaud, explode them, and sometimes mix and take their seats amongst them, domineering over them with a strange mixture of servile petulance and proud, presumptuous authority. As they have inverted order in all things, the gallery is in the place of the house. This assembly, which overthrows kings and kingdoms, has not even the physiognomy and aspect of a grave legislative body— nec color imperii, nec irons ulla senatus ("Neither the appearance of authority not the look of a senate"). They have a power given to them, like that of the evil principle, to subvert and destroy, but none to construct, except such machines as they had converged on the H6tel de Ville the crowd was some six or seven thousand strong. (Citizens 460) 44William Roberts, Memoirs of the Life And Correspondence of Mrs. Hannah More. 4 vols. (London: R. B. Seeley and W. Burnside, 1834), II, p. 189. 45Burke, Reflections, p. 59. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 62 may be fitted for further subversion and further destruction. (60) Extending the metaphor of the body to the political body, Burke formulates the dichotomy between ideal femininity, a vehicle for the cultivation of manners and style and the deformed and monstrous unruly. When women seem beyond control, exhibiting an uncontainable excess, they symbolize to Burke the biggest disruption of the social order, the disruption in the sexual order that personifies the class disorder.46 These female crowds played "the role of firebrands" in Dominique Godineau's phrase47— that is, agitators and galvanizers in insurrectional events, "mediators between 4®A century later still, H. Taine, "the former Liberal of 1848, soured by his experiences of 1871," epitomizes a typical conservative historian of the late nineteenth century: The women of the Palais Royal . . . add washerwomen, beggars, shoeless women, fishwives enlisted in the last few days with payments in cash . . . the troop gathers up the women it meets, porter's wives, seamstresses, housewives, and even women of the bourgeoisie. Join with these vagrants, tramps, bandits, thieves, all these dregs that are piled on top of each other in Paris and float to the surface with every violent jolt. . . this is the refuse of the street that swirls back and forth with the popular current. 47See Godineau, Citovennes tricoteuses. Les Femmes du peuple & Paris pendant la Revolution (Aix-en-Provence: Alinda, 1988). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 63 activists and the populace"48— particularly because gender reversal signifies the world turned upside down. In October 1789, May 1793, and May of 1795 in France, women participated in the revolutionary crowds and called men to. action; and in some cases, the rhetoric they used to agitate men to action (e.g., calling the hesitant men "cowards")49 evokes Lady Macbeth's gender-provocation before the murder of Duncan.50 Out of the multitude emerged some "heroines" of the Revolution— activist leaders of egalitarian struggle, who acquired iconic status. Through the October days Thdroigne de Mdricourt became so prominent that people made her into an image of the revolution. Mdricourt was called the "Amazon of Liberty" because of her advocacy of women's armament, and became the prototype of "Marianne": "When she donned her 'amazon's costume'— her riding habit— which distanced her from her own condition as a woman, she was in her own fashion establishing a 'location' for herself, as if she were becoming the 'warrior' of the Revolution, the lover of an 48Godineau, "Daughters of Liberty and Revolutionary Citizens," p. 17. 4^Godineau, ibid., p. 16. 50But what role does Lady Macbeth play after usurpation? Or, what really is there to act on, hadn't she dissipated to nothing? Had she lived on, wouldn't a power- hungry queen be a threat to Macbeth's kingship, once they completely consolidate their power? The temporality of "hereafter" in his enigmatic response to the announcement of her death seems to suggest such anxiety: "She should have died hereafter." Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 64 'idea'" (Roudinesco 73-4). While she did not call for women's political equality, her claim for women's armament against the foreign enemy led later to the militant feminism of Pauline Ldon and Claire Lacombe, who advocated ''regiments of women against the enemy within" (Roudinesco 87). Mdricourt raised the possibility of "Legions of amazons," and thus inaugurated "the second phase in the history of original feminism — 'warrior' feminism." (87) Olympe de Gouges was relentless and militant in a different way: taking a pen to draft "The declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Citizen" ("Declaration des droits de la femme et de la citoyenne”; September 1791), she pursued a decisively feminist polemic vis-ci-vis the universalist rhetoric (silent on women's rights) in the Declaration of August 1789. Addressing the queen and all women, she intreats them to be the agents of egalitarian struggle and not to subject themselves to men's decision-making power. Exposing the representatives' decision in the September 1791 Constitution to exclude women from equal rights (which were given to Protestants and Jews), de Gouges tackled the latent problematics in the 1789 Declaration itself. Through her version of the "Declaration" she came up with . . . a pastiche based point by point upon the famous Declaration of Rights of Man and the Citizen, with an identical number of articles, the very same vocabulary, etc. The only exception was article X, which contained the following astonishing and prophetic sentence: 'A woman has the right to climb Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 65 the scaffold, and she should therefore also have the right to climb the rostrum [tribune].* (Roudinesco 90) While de Gouges indeed paid the ultimate price for her political convictions, what she envisioned— a universal suffrage— did not come to realization for more than a century.51 As shown in de Mdricourt's call for "legions of amazons" and de Gouge's call for women’s independent unity, some women activists began to realize the necessity of an organizing structure for themselves. Despite their participation, and despite the existence of a few mixed popular societies, women were not admitted to full membership in revolutionary organizations, institutions, assemblies, committees, or political clubs and societies. Because of the lack of organization, "relations between the sexes changed as the insurrection evolved: whereas women played a galvanizing role in more or less spontaneous uprisings, they were relegated to the sidelines as soon as revolutionary associations took control of events. . . .”52 5101ympe de Gouges was tried and found guilty of treason under the Terror for publishing a pamphlet that called for a popular referendum on the form of government. She was guillotined on November 1, 1793. At the victory of Valmy, on September 2, 1792, the Convention granted women civil, not political, right. (After continuous feminist struggles, despite setbacks and repression, a truly universal suffrage bill passed the Chamber of Deputies in 1919, but was held up by the Senate until 1944.) 52Godineau, "Daughters of Liberty," p. 18. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 66 Feminist historians such as Godineau, Roudinesco, Gutwirth, and Hunt all recount the rise and fall of women's clubs and their struggle for women's equality during the Revolutionary period.53 Between 1791 and 1793, there were about fifty women's or mixed popular societies and political clubs all over France. While men's clubs were in full gear, the first women's clubs was founded in Paris in March 1791 by Dutch feminist Etta Palm d'Aelders— the Soci6t6 patriotique et de Bienfaisance des Amies de la Vdritd (Patriotic and Charitable Society of the Women Friends of Truth; 1791-92). A women's auxiliary to the Abbd Fouchd's Friends of Truth party, it aimed at educating poor girls and favored divorce and political rights for women. An articulate moderate, Palm d'Aelders and her nuanced but militantly feminist discourse enjoyed support by local men's clubs. The Girondist journalist Louise Keeralio had joined with her husband, Frangois Robert, to form a mixed political club. Such activities gained in intensity day by day. A number of these were charitable associations devoted to aiding poor women, and some had more extended and politically engaged projects: "The members of these clubs, many of whom were relatives of prominent revolutionaries, met regularly to discuss the laws ^^Specific passages come from the following: Godineau, "Daughters of Liberty," p. 20; Roudinesco, Madness and Revolution, pp. 86-88; Gutwirth, Twilight of the Goddesses, p. 289; Lynn Hunt, The Family Romance, p. 187. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 67 and newspapers, to debate local and national political issues, to engage in philanthropic activities, and to defend the constitutional clergy to other female citizens" (Godineau 19-20). Although most women in the clubs proclaimed their adherence to the ideal of patriotic and republican motherhood, their politicization eventually provoked attacks. In March 1792 Pauline Ldon went to the Legislative Assembly with a petition bearing 319 names asking for women as citizens to be enabled to bear arms. Among its signers became members of The Club des Citoyennes Rdpublicaines Rdvolutionnaire (The Club of Revolutionary Republican Women), which was established on May 10, 1793. Comprising about one hundred and seventy, it had about one hundred active members. It was an association of militant women of the people (shopgirls, seamstresses, and industrial workers). Closely associated with the sans-culotte movement, the club was intensely active in the conflict between Girondins and Montagnards and in the political debate of the summer of 1793 before being proscribed, along with other women's clubs, by the Convention on October 30, 1793. The new political space opened up for women by the Revolution was closed by male leaders of the Revolution who imposed growing restrictions on women's political participation. Early feminism in these burgeoning women's clubs even elicited rage on men's part and became "the target for patriotic attacks, which were Rousseauist in inspiration" Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 68 (Roudinesco 87). The most extreme position was that of Louis Prudhomme, the founder of Les Revolutions de Paris, one of the best-selling patriotic papers between July 1789 and February 1794: In the name of the fatherland they love with all their hearts, in the name of nature from whom we must never take leave, in the name of good domestic morals of which women's clubs are the plague because of the dissipation they bring with them, we implore the good citizenesses to stay home.54 Leading Jacobins began to turn their attention to public women, especially after Charlotte Corday assassinated Marat in July 1793. Claire Lacombe, the president of the Club des Citoyennes Rdpublicaines RSvolutionnaire, was attacked in the newspaper Feuille de salut public on 24 September 1793. On 7 October she protested the assimilation of her activities with the crimes of Corday: "Our sex has only produced one monster [Corday], whereas for four years we have been betrayed, assassinated by innumerable monsters produced by the masculine sex."55 Th6roigne M6ricourt, Charlotte Corday, and Olympe de Gouges were thus often lumped together (sometimes even accompanied by Marie Antoinette or Mme. Roland) on the ground of their gender-transgression and monstrosity— as 54ies Revolutions de Paris 47; qtd in Gutwirth, p. 324. 55Dominique Godineau, Citovenes tricoteuses. p. 137; Paule-Marie Duhet, Les Femmes et la Revolution frangaise (Paris: Juillard, 1791), p. 145 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 69 usurpers of male prerogatives, who betrayed the natural/ideal womanhood. On October 20, 1793, all the clubs of female membership were outlawed, and in the document that introduces such a decision, one deputy, Amar, declared with a moralist tone: "It is not possible for women to exercise political rights." Although women continued to play a political role in the streets and as tricoteuses at public galleries, as well as in various insurrectional movements, the National Assembly banned women from all aspects of public life in May 1795. One particular aspect of women's activism throughout their struggle seems troubling, if inevitable: intra-sexual quarrels amongst women of opposing opinions. The divisions within women at first came along class lines, and they often clashed in the streets. Infighting on the streets was dismissed by the male public as none of their business, encouraged by the politically motivated Jacobin leaders to suppress women's club activities, or condemned altogether as unwomanly by anti-feminists. One of the famous incidents was a riot over the red-bonnet, the symbol of Republicanism: whether women should wear them was a point in contention amongst women as well as men. Pierre Chaumette of the Commune chided those women who had gone into the streets urging other women to wear the red bonnet, saying that they were just "soiling" the symbol of the Revolution: "Imprudent women, who Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 70 want to be men, haven't you enough already?"56 In the same light, the Revolutions de Paris advises all women in its article on the riot: Keep yourselves in clothing appropriate to your habits and occupations, and always go on punishing as bravely as you have just done any misdemeanor that would tend to disorganize society, by the switching of the sexes or by indecently merging them, out of anticivic and perfidious intent.57 The agitation or internal division among women is notable in the paper as early as February 5, 1791. In an article entitled "On the influence of the Revolution upon women" the anonymous reporter of Les Revolutions de Paris (who may have been Prudhomme) launches a campaign against political women and reproaches the "bourgeois women" for "having found the sight hard to stomach, by contrast with the women of the people, who were genuine citizens of the motherland. ..." (Roudinesco 87-8). The incidents of marketwomen's and poissardes' spanking nuns or women's club members in 1791 and some divisions within female Jacobins later in 1793 (Gutwirth 312; Schama 800) present problematics more generally involved in feminist struggles. From a historical vantage point, the most vulnerable aspect of French women revolutionaries was the 56-Le Moniteur universal. Reimoression de l'ancien Moniteur . . . (mai 1789-novembre 1799) 32 vols. (Paris: 1840-1845), vol. 18 (1793), 450; Gutwirth p. 324. 57Paule-Marie Duhet, Les Femmes et la Revolution franqaise , p. 213; Qtd in Gutwirth, p. 330. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 71 lack of bonding between the leaders of the women's movement (middle and upper class women motivated by ideas) and the crowds of anonymous women and ddclassdes radicalized by their economic and social conditions and status. Thus when they were repudiated by male revolutionaries and pitted against one another, intra-sexual clashes were ignited, and their revolutionary energy dissipated from the political scene. But this infighting was considerably due to male revolutionaries' agitation and solicitation of class antagonism, possibly as a strategy of containment in purging the excesses surfacing from the revolutionary struggle. It might be important to recognize their conditions of disorientation, what Mich&le le Doeuff termed the "historically specific collective disarray"58 with which women had to come to terms even after a historically specific collective uprising. While the political actions and demands of women revolutionaries were attacked and condemned in the post- French Revolution era, there occurred, at the same time, gender accommodation in the form of the emblematization of femininity. The cultural production of feminine images and icons (of liberty, light, peace; or at the other extreme, of 58Mich61e le Doeuff, Hipparchia's Choice: An Essay Concerning Women. Philosophy, etc.. trans. Trista Selous (Oxford, UK and Cambridge, Mass: Blackwell, 1991 [1989]), p. 207. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 72 corruption or monarchy) proliferated in late eighteenth- century France, with a backdrop of a long history of bifurcation throughout patriarchal culture— an Eve/muse/virgin topos, on the one hand, and female monsters (in the Faerie Queene. for example) on the other— feminine iconography reached an unprecedented point during the last decade of the Old Regime and throughout the revolutionary period. The topos of figural femininity, appealing to the conventionlly established allegorical dimension linked to femininity, typically came in two modalities, "the disembodiment inherent in allegorism and the hyperembodiment characteristic of naturalism, which are in fact two sides of the same representational coin."59 Feminine symbolism— femininity linked with visuality, figurality, and the symbolic function— was utilized by major political factions to serve their own ideological purposes: from the anti- Royalists' pornographic depiction of Marie Antoinette to S^Naomi Schor, "Triste AmGrique: Atala and the Post- Revolutionary Construction of Women," Bad Objects: Essays Popular and Unpopular (Durham and London: Duke UP, 1995), p. 133. Schor writes, "Kaja Silverman . . confirms my conflation of disembodied and hyperembodied female figures, by emphasizing the political uses to which images of female nudity were put in France from Delacroix's Liberty Guiding the People to Courbet's Origin of the World. The diaphanously veiled Nana is the literary equivalent of this recurrent figure of the revolutionary prostitute" (Schor 186). See Silverman, "Liberty, Maternity, Commodification," New Formations 5 (Summer 1988): 69-89. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 73 symbolize the corruption of the court;60 to revolutionary metaphors for the counterrevolutionary force as the female with many bodies (the hydra); and to the Royalists' equation of the Revolution with the fallen, ugly, diseased woman.61 Revolutionary women were depicted in an ambiguous manners heroic and demonic characterizations overlap in the guise of sexual mystique. A sense of bafflement about women's "effrontery” is strongly manifested when the female revolutionary crowd is represented from a male perspective. Often mythic female figures such as Medusa, the Maenad, harpies, the virago, the hydra, and the chimera,62 along with historical figures such as Catherine de Medici or Elizabeth of England, were called upon to fuel the ideological warfare. 6°See Lynn Hunt, The Family Romance of the French Revolution. 6!as an example of the Royalist's representation of the Revolution as woman, see Frangois Beaulieu's depiction of Thdroigne de Mdricourt in 1801: At the end of her career she had lost all her charms. She was livid, blotchy and emaciated. Finally, she was the walking image of the Revolution. Brilliant at the outset, frenzied as it pursued its course, it presented a disgusting spectacle of muck and blood after 10 August. (Qtd in Elizabeth Roudinesco, Madness and Revolution, p. 114) 62cf. "The Goncourts, building upon J. -N. Bouilly's memoir, Mes R6capulations. describe Germaine de Stael as a Maenad whose words, coming from such a hideous body, could scarcely be credited as human: "a human with leonine face, purplish, pimpled, dry of lip, coming, going, sudden in her movements and ideas, making masculine gestures, tossing off in a boy's voice a robust or inflated sentence"' (Gutwirth 338). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 74 The conflation of the feminine and the state gradually took shape in the figure of Marianne, the emblem of liberty and of the French Republic.63 This arrest of revolutionary energy into an icon shows the process of gender accommodation, as Gutwirth keenly suggests: Welcome as the configuration of woman was as allegory to the Revolutionary sensibility, so unwelcome did real women become. That female activism that turned into such a core of gender anxiety for the Revolutionaires would be transmuted by its symbolism into Female Energy, since our vocabulary of signs allows us to codify forces seen as external to men only by tagging them as female.64 One striking example of the Revolutionary government's efforts to contain the force of revolutionary energy and the political desire of women is the way in which "The festival of Unity and Indivisibility" (August 10, 1793) was orchestrated to provide an "alternative to the spontaneous disorders and acts of violence which the Jacobin leadership 63Lynn Hunt traces the evolution and implications of the most famous feminine allegory produced by the French Revolution. Marianne did not gather consensual status as the icon of national sovereignty when it first appeared in 1792, but it became increasingly powerful as a visual source of legitimation for the successive revolutionary regimes until it reached the present status as the official symbol of the state. (Hunt, "Engraving the Republic: Prints and Propaganda in the French Revolution," History Today 30 (October 1980), 14. (11-17); Also see her Politics. Culture, and Class in the French Revolution (Berkeley: UCP, 1984), pp. 87-119. Maurice Agulhon, Marianne into Battle: Republican Imagery and Symbolism in France. 1789-1880. trans., Janet Lloyd (Cambridge: Cambridge Up, 1981). ^ G u t w i r t h , The Twilight of the Goddesses, p. 323. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 75 found increasingly distasteful even when they profited from them" (Schama 749). Schama concurs with Mona Ozouf in pointing out the reifying effect of the ceremonial image- building project: . . . the second 'station' of the ceremonies was a triumphal arch erected on the boulevard des Italiens. In deliberate repudiation of Caesaro-monarchist victories, the celebrated warriors were the women of October 5, 1789, who had brought the King from Versailles to Paris. But the disturbingly potent image of belligerent poissardes astride their cannon had been carefully neutralized in conformity with standard Rous seauan-Jacobin doctrine on the wife-mother role for women patriots. The authentic women of October were replaced by prettified actresses whose brows were crowned with laurel and who were told, "0 women! Liberty attacked by the tyrants has need of heroes to defend it. It is for you to breed them. Let all the material and the generous virtues flow together in your maternal milk and in the heart of the nursing women of France." (Schama 749) with such monumentalization, Jacobin leaders— those new men of the new era— instituted Rousseauist gender separatism and the division of labor according to the age-old gender divide.65 Women were caught in discursive as well as political battles of symbolic self-constitutions through which the rising new subjects defined themselves. While having gone through hardships under the Old Regime and participated in 65"This eternal return of the binary gender opposition deprived the culture of the passionate capacity of its women so as to return to its men their prized conception of their sexuality as a tool of force analogous to the pikes and cannons they were using to wage war. Representation literally placed knives in the hands of women so as to prove the ever- ready charges of treachery against them, and thus provide the warrant for men's monopoly over the wielding of arms" (Gutwirth 338). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 76 political struggles in the revolutionary uprising, women were gradually displaced into figures and objects, women became the scapegoats who must be cast out if the male-centered community was to be reproduced and reinforced. Thus "the first wave" of feminist struggles of remarkable fortitude— insurgent women— was contained by new (bourgeois) men. 4. Mary Wollstonecraft and "Revolutionary Feminism" Contending, therefore, that the sexual distinction which men have so warmly insisted upon, is arbitrary, I have dwelt on an observation, that several sensible men, with whom I have conversed on the subject, allowed to be well founded; and it is simply this, that the little chastity to be found amongst men, and consequent disregard of modesty, tend to degrade both sexes; and further, that the modesty of women, characterized as such, will often be only the artful veil of wantonness instead of being the natural reflection of purity, till modesty be universally respected. — Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. XIII. 193. I have seldom met with views more enlarged, more just, more truly patriotic; or with political reasonings more acute, or arguments more forcible, than in the conversation of Theroigne [de Mdricourt] and the writings of Miss Wollstonecraft. Let the Defenders of male Despotism answer, (if they can) "The Rights of Woman." — Thomas Cooper (1792)66 66A Reply to Mr Burke's Invective against Mr Cooper, and Mr. Watt, in the House of Commons, on the 30th of April. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 77 Throughout the revolutionary period, Mary Wollstonecraft, as a Republican thinker, embraced the promise and hope which the discourse of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution brought. As a woman, she had to struggle with the challenge and hindrance the pervasive Rousseauist discourse and bourgeois gender outlook simultaneously imposed.67 The paradoxical condition that the Revolution entailed for French women became painfully clear to the Enlightenment rationalist woman over the channel, which led her to pen the most elaborate feminist manifesto of the time. Wollstonecraft describes somewhat poetically what impelled her Vindication of the Rights of Woman as the overwhelming power of (and her desire to find a "niche," free from) historical time, the "rolling stream of time, that silently sweeps all before it, into the shapeless void called— eternity.— For shape, can it be called, 'that shape hath none? 1 "68 1792 (London and Manchester, 1792), p. 81n; qtd in Kelly, p. 136-137. 67As I have been trying to show, Rousseau's influence on Wollstonecraft and other "English Jacobin writers"— such as Godwin, Thomas Holcroft, Robert Bage, Elizabeth Inchbald, Mary Hays— cannot be overemphasized. In the latter part of this section, I will discuss Wollstonecraft' s ambivalent attitude towards Rousseau. 68a Vindication of the Rights of Woman, ed. Carol H. Poston (NY and London: Norton, 1988), chapter 9, p. 148. Hereafter, chapter and page references will be incorporated into the main body in parentheses. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 78 With a realization of such constraining condition, especially as/for a woman, comes her excessive, self transcendent, and transformative desire to be "the first of a new genus." In her famous letter to her sister, Everina, Wollstonecraft expresses her desire to traverse a new territory that is obviously oppositional to conventional (gender) norms: "I am then going to be the first of a new genus. . . . You know I am not born to tread in the beaten track— the peculiar bent of my nature pushes me on" (1787).69 Such Rousseauist desire for self-invention and transgression impelled her to "become"— i.e., speak as— a bourgeois masculine subject (through the Vindication of the Rights of Men) and then explore the other side of its logic (through a vindication of the Rights of Woman). In her first vindication, in other words, she speaks as a part of the proper subjecthood— the rational male subject, and the norm and the purveyor of meaning (note the plural form of the noun, men)— and later, she renegotiates the rules of discourse by speaking to "several sensible men" (i. e., Talleyrand-Pdrigord and other republicanists), constructing the voice of the representative, constitutive, (and solitary) woman. S^The Collected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft. ed. Ralph M. Wardle (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell UP, 1979), pp. 164-5. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 79 Obviously, we cannot overemphasize the socio-historical condition of women under which Wollstonecraft' s transcendentalist maxim, the "mind is of no sex," attained currency and justification: the prevailing oversexualization and overfetishization of women (the crux of her argument in chapters two to four of the second Vindication) through which women were denied their "thinking powers"70 and their right to civic, political alliance. Placed outside of language, women were in fact denied the position of subjectivities and assigned to overloaded identities (as a mother, daughter, wife, spinster, etc.). In a society where one misstep in sexual norms was a man's lesson and woman's destiny, Wollstonecraft needed to strip herself of the baggage of oversexualization that hung over "one half of the human species" (Wollstonecraft's terms in A Vindication of the Rights of Men) or "the oppressed half of mankind" (in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman). Thus Enlightenment principles— i.e., the belief in human perfectibility and equal rights— become consistently important to her. Analyzing 7Owollstonecraft stresses in the "Advertisement" of Marv. A Fiction that "in an artless tale, without episodes, the mind of a woman, who has thinking powers is displayed . . . . in a fiction [in contrast to empirical reality], such a being with [an "arduous employment" of thinking] may be allowed to exist; whose grandeur is derived from the operations of its own faculties, not subjugated to opinion but drawn by the individual from the original source." See Marv and The Wrongs of Woman, ed. Gary Kelly (Oxford and NY: Oxford UP, 1976). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 80 how wollstonecraft attempted to blaze trails continuously through writing "within that tradition while reshaping it for the feminine voice,"71 is the task at hand in this section. In so doing, I would like to stress that we are dealing with not just an individual writer's achievement and limit but the limits of the literary period which had an "influence on individuals who lived within its purview."72 The most famous of Wollstonecraft's works, A vindication of the Rights of Woman, registers her desire to revolutionize female manners, reform female education, and reach for equal civic rights. Certainly, as a social thinker, educator, philosopher, reviewer, and novelist, her discursive struggle against the grain of patriarchal imperatives marks a decisive "rise" of feminism. If her ground-breaking second Vindication is problematic from a contemporary feminist's perspective, which values a gender-specific subject position based on sexual differences rather than the fundamentally male-identified logic of oneness and equivalence,73 her motto of "a revolution in female manners" still reverberates as a 71-Mar Ion B. Ross, The Contours of Masculine Desire: Romanticism and the Rise of Women's Poetry (NY and Oxford: Oxford UP, 1989), p. 8. 72ibid., p. 6. 73See, for example, Cora Kaplan's Sea Changes: Culture and Feminism (London: Verso, 1986), especially chapters "Wild Nights: Pleasure/Sexuality/Feminism" and "Pandora's Box: Subjectivity, Class, and Sexuality in Socialist Feminist Criticism." Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 81 compelling social critique today. I think it important to note that Wollstonecraft gradually extends her own writerly endeavor as a pioneer to other women who face the shapeless space of time and history, beyond the gender-bind of feminizing customs, manners and mores. In the second vindication. Wollstonecraft clarifies her notion of writing by implicitly establishing a connection between herself and Catherine Macaulay, an exemplary female intellectual in her mind: [Macaulay] was an example of intellectual acquirements supposed to be incompatible with the weakness of her sex. In her style of writing, indeed, no sex appears, for it is like the sense it conveys, strong and clear. I will not call hers a masculine understanding, because I admit not of such an arrogant assumption of reason; but I contend that it was a sound one, and that her judgment, the matured fruit of profound thinking, was a proof that a woman can acquire judgment, in the full extent of the word. Possessing more penetration than sagacity, more understanding than fancy, she writes with sober energy and argumentative closeness; yet sympathy and benevolence give an interest to her sentiment, and that vital heat to arguments, which forces the reader to weigh them. (A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. 5. 105-6) As a social critic Wollstonecraft avowed the notion of equality between men and women (and thus has a tendency to confirm the always already masculine standard), but considering the rigid prejudices against such a concept, it is clear that the notion of equality itself marks a radical departure from the patriarchal socio-political framework which prescribed and then condemned women's difference-cum- inferiority. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 82 Wollstonecraft:'s transgressive desire at first led her to launch a counterargument in Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790) against Burke's Reflections. focusing especially on his promotion of courtly value, gallantry, and his emphasis on sensibility over reason. The reversal of gender norms that she enacted by writing for/as a man certainly disputes the entrenched notion of the oversexualized woman on the one hand, and propriety and gender decorum on the other. She plays into the expectation of the rational man-of-letters of the period, by demonstrating her capacity for passing as a progressive middle-class man. Certainly, her gender transgression did not go unnoticed. When a male author spoke for women about their (or common) virtues, morals and values, as conduct book writers often did,74 the inevitable element of gender crossing did not make a stir, because the masculinity of the gender was presupposed under the guise of universality or neutrality. But when a woman crossed the gender divide, she stepped on the presupposition of the very male- centeredness of the "generic" noun, man. William Roscoe ^^Wollstonecraft approvingly cites Thomas Day’s Sandford and Merton. 3 Vols., a didactic book on the ideal education of a daughter Ivindication of the Rights of Woman, ch. 3), and critically appraises the highly popular conduct books of Dr. James Fordyce, Sermons to Young Women (1765); James Harvey, Meditations and Contemplations; and Dr. John Gregory, A Father's Legacy to His Daughters (1774) in chapter 5 of the second vindication. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 83 from the progressive camp (who, like other radicals, had been distressed by Burke's inconsistent political standing) saluted Wollstonecraft as a daring Amazon, intellectually taking on Burke: . . . lo, an Amazon stept out, ONE WOLSTONECRAFT her name, Resolv'd to stop his mad career, Whatever chance became.75 On the other hand, the response of the Gentleman's Magazine exemplifies an antagonistic reaction: The rights of men asserted by a fair lady I The age of chivalry cannot be over, or the sexes have changed their ground. We should be sorry to raise a horse-laugh against a fair lady; but we were always taught to suppose that the rights of women were the proper theme of the female sex; and that, while the Romans governed the world, the women governed the Romans.76 Clearly annoyed by her open transgression of the public sphere of rational discussion and the gender norm, as well as by her representative posture of speaking for all mankind, the reviewer of the professional middle-class magazine makes clear the implicit maleness of the "general" noun at the time. The Gentleman's Magazine essay ends with a bang, prescribing the proper place— home— for the woman to exercise her power upon her husband if she can. This customary 75Roscoe, "The Life, Death, and Wonderful Achievements of Edmund Burke" in George Chandler, William Roscoe of Liverpool (London: Batsford, 1953), p. 389; qtd in in Kelly, p. 144. ^ Gentleman's Magazine, vol. 61 (February 1791): 151; Qtd in Kelly, p. 102. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 84 condescension towards women's acquisition and practice of linguistic power (which is not, and should not be, hers) bespeaks the underlying masculine assumption behind the universal and neutral "human." Such gender norms are obviously what Rousseau advocates in Emile and what Wollstonecraft trenchantly critiques throughout the Vindication of the Rights of Woman: "Let not men . . . in the pride of power, use the same arguments that tyrannical kings and venal ministers have used, and fallaciously assert that woman ought to be subjected because she has always been so" (3. 45). Furthermore, Wollstonecraft turns The Gentleman's Magazine's classical reference upon itself: those women "depraved by lawless power" were like the "irrational monster[s]" of Roman emperors (3. 44), because "[w]omen, . . . obtaining power by unjust means, by practicing or fostering vice, evidently lose the rank which reason would assign them, and they become either abject slaves or capricious tyrants" (3. 45). Thus the famous passage: "It is time to effect a revolution in female manners— time to restore to them their lost dignity— and make them, as a part of the human species, labour by reforming themselves to reform the world" (3. 45). Wollstonecraft addresses her interrogation of the gender bind in the second Vindication directly to progressive, rational men (who appreciate "the progress of those glorious principles that give a substance to Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 85 morality"), evoking "the firm tone of humanity" and pleading "for [her] sex— not for [her]self" ("Dedication"). Obviously, she did not doubt (enlightened) women's support of "legitimate" equal right. Certainly there were other women who shared the desire to address the concern of "the other half"77 that was often ignored by the advocates of the rights of men. Wollstonecraft observes that It is a melancholy truth; yet such is the blessed effect of civilization! the most respectable women are the most oppressed; and, unless they have understandings far superior to the common run of understandings, taking in both sexes, they must, from being treated like contemptible beings, become contemptible. How many women thus waste life away the prey of discontent, who might have practised as physicians, regulated a farm, managed a shop, and stood erect, supported by their own industry, instead of hanging their heads surcharged with the dew of sensibility, that consumes the beauty to which it at first gave lustre . . . (9. 149) It is through this kind of relentless demystification that Wollstonecraft takes on the norm of the domestication of 77Most notably, Catherine Macaulay Graham advocates female education in Letters on Education (1790) which Wollstonecraft endorses in the Analytical Review and in the fifth chapter of the second Vindication (105-106). The steadfast exclusion of French women from the political realm was signaled in the "French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen" (August 1789), the principle of which was reaffirmed in the French National Assembly in 1791. The latter, "Declaration of the Rights of Man," placed as the preface to the "Constitution," followed the Rousseauist model over Condorcet's (depicted in Letters of a Resident from New- Haven to a Citizen of Virginia and On the Admission of Women to Rights as Citizens of a State [1789]) in its ostentatiously universalist yet sorely masculinist logic. Olympe de Gouges wrote A Declaration of the Rights of Woman, a point-by-point response to it from a feminist perspective. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 86 women; and the over-reaching rhetoric seems to hold firm when juxtaposed with her contemporaries • preaching of conduct-book style doctrine. In fact, her first vindication also shows insights into oppression that existed across the class- divide. While criticizing Burke's fascination with and sympathy for the queen and his lack of concern for her lower class counterparts,78 Wollstonecraft also shows her empathy towards the queen, not with the Burkean tone of idealization but with a feminist insight that links the queen to the lot of other women. Wollstonecraft makes a similar point in her second vindication, quoting Anna Laetitia Barbauld's "Song V" and commenting, "A king is always a king— and a woman always a woman: his authority and her sex, ever stand between them and rational converse" (5. 56) :79 'In beauty's empire is no mean, 'And woman, either slave or queen, 78To quote her Vindication of the Rights of Men: . . . your tears are reserved, very naturally considering your character, for the declamation of the theatre, or the downfall of queens, whose rank alters the nature of folly, and throws a graceful veil over vices that degrade humanity; whilst the distress of many industrious mothers, whose helpmates have been torn from them, and the hungry cry of helpless babes, were vulgar sorrows that could not move your commiseration, though they might extort an alms. From A Wollstonecraft Anthology, ed. Janet Todd. 78Anna Laetitia Barbauld, "Song V," lines 16-18, in her Works (London, 1825), 1. 84; quoted in Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (5. 56). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 87 'Is quickly scorn’ d when not ador'd.' Later in "An Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution and the Effect it has Produced in Europe" (17 93- 94),80 Wollstonecraft also expresses sympathy toward Marie Antoinette, "the unfortunate queen," after her downfall. Portraying the queen as a "very fine person" wrongly educated by the scheming tutor, Abbd de Vennond, and corrupted by the environment of the royal palace to become a master "actress," Wollstonecraft managed to upset the moderate Horace Walpole enough for him to attack her on her criticism of the queen.01 The polemical crux of the second Vindication revolves around Wollstonecraft' s remarkable negative critique of Rousseau, especially in its questioning of Rousseau's "unintelligible paradoxes" (5. 89).82 As early as 1787, Wollstonecraft professes to her sister Everina: 80Wollstonecraft wrote the piece between late 1793 and April 1794 during Robespierre's regime but confined her discussion to the events of the 1789 Revolution. By highlighting the positive start before the heat of revolutionary violence, she seems to imply her disapproval of the current regime. 8^ - Horace Walpole's Correspondence with Hannah More, eds. W. S. Lewis, Robert A. Smith, Charles H. Bennett, XXXI (New Haven, 1961), p. 370, 373. 82Wollstonecraft quotes directly from Emile, while ironizing its instruction to Sophia: Emilius, in becoming your husband, is become your master; and claims your obedience. Such is the order of Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 88 I am now reading Rousseau's Emile, and love his paradoxes. He chuses a common capacity to educate— and gives as a reason, that a genius will educate itself— however he draws the usual conclusions that all is vanity and vexation of spirit. He was a strange inconsistent unhappy clever creature— yet he possessed an uncommon portion of sensibility and penetration.83 While Rousseau and Wollstonecraft indeed completely diverge on women's intellectual capacity to reason, their economic right to hold a profession, and their political right to representation, Rousseau's impact on Wollstonecraft is unmistakable (e.g., in her inculcation of breastfeeding, motherhood, domestic affections, and the denunciation of feminine coquetry) despite her sometimes strong disavowal. In fact, in the Analytical Review she writes: It is impossible to peruse his simple descriptions without loving the man in spite of the weaknesses of character that he himself depicts, which never appear to have risen from depravity of heart.84 nature. When a man is married, however, to such a wife as Sophia, it is proper he should be directed by her: this is also agreeable to the order of nature: it is, therefore, to give you as much authority over his heart as his sex gives him over your person, that I have made you the arbitor of his pleasure. It may cost you, perhaps, some disagreeable self-denial; but you will be certain of maintaining your empire over him, if you can preserve it over yourself. . . . (5. 89) 83Collected Letters of Marv Wollstonecraft (24 Mar. 1787), ed. Ralph M. Wardle, p. 145. 84Article XXIX, Analytical Review XI. 528 (Dec. 1791) in The Works of Mary Wollstonecraft. vol. 7: On Poetry: Contributions to the Analytical Review. 1788-1797. eds., Janet Todd and Marilyn Butler (NY: NYUP, 1989), p. 409. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 89 Indeed, Wollstonecraft's treatment of Rousseau's paradoxes is subtler and more nuanced than her often ardent polemics, as her review of Rousseau's Second Part of the Confessions shows: Without considering whether Rousseau was right or wrong, in thus exposing his weaknesses, and shewing himself just as he was, with all his imperfections on his head, to his frail fellow-creatures, it is only necessary to observe, that a description of what has actually passed in a human mind must ever be useful; yet, men who have not the power of concentering seeming contradiction, will rudely laugh at inconsistencies as if they were absurdities; but their laugh is the crackling of thorns, the empty noise of insensible ignorance.85 Wollstonecraft' s critique of Rousseau also locates her own paradoxes, both in her writing and in her life. In Maria, or Wrongs of Woman, there is a passage related to The New Hdloise: "'Rousseau alone, the true Prometheus of sentiment, possessed the fire of genius necessary to portray the passion, the truth of which goes so directly to the heart'" (89). Even considering Wollstonecraft ’ s criticism of sentiment,86 this passage reveals her ambivalence about 85Wollstonecraft, Article IV, Analytical Review VI. 386 (Apr. 1970) in The Works of Marv Wollstonecraft. vol. 7, p. 229. 86Note the following reference to Prometheus: "Man has been held out as independent of his power who made him, or as a lawless planet darting from its orbit to steal the celestial fire of reason; and the vengeance of heaven, lurking in the subtile flame, like Pandora's pent up mischiefs, sufficiently punished his temerity, by introducing evil into the world" (A vindication of the Rights of Woman. I. 13). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 90 Rousseau. Analogously, while she uses Rousseau's phrase, ”L 'exercice des plus sublimes vertus dldve et nourrit le gdnie," in the title page of Marv: a Fiction, her introductory "Advertisement" to the novel emphasizes her divergence from the iconic feminine figures of her time in proposing to create a heroine unlike those of Rousseau's Emile, or Richardson's Clarissa and Sir Charles Grandison. Further, despite her overvaluation of the controlled self, Wollstonecraft's attempt to recreate variations of herself in her fiction (as evidenced in the names of her heroines— Mary, Maria, etc.) attests to her own indeterminate or fragmented positionalities and her uncanny explorations of both lack and surplus in her subjectivity. While she blasts passion's blinding force in writing,87 she also falls its victim in her Concerning the issue of sentiment, Wollstonecraft writes: "Another instance of that feminine weakness of character, often produced by a confined education, is a romantic twist of the mind, which has been very properly termed sentimental . . . The mighty business of female life is to please, and restrained from entering into more important concerns by political and civil oppression, sentiments become events, and reflection deepens what it should, and would have effaced, if the understanding had been allowed to take a wider range" (XIII, 183; original emphasis). 87See the following passage: When women are once sufficiently enlightened to discover their real interest, on a grand scale, they will, I am persuaded, be very ready to resign all the prerogatives of love, that are not mutual, speaking of them as lasting prerogatives, for the calm satisfaction of friendship, and the tender confidence of habitual esteem. Before marriage they will not assume any Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 91 relationships with Henry Fuseli and Gilbert Imlay. In the end, society's persecution of her as a typical example of the "fallen woman" after Godwin's publication of her posthumous memoirs and works illustrates a vast difference between the social treatment of her inconsistencies and paradoxes and that accorded to her male counterpart, Rousseau. As seen in Wollstonecraft's prophetic remark, "the crackling of thorns, the empty noise of insensible ignorance" seems to have overshadowed more severely "genus" of the other half of the human species. While the historical reception of wollstonecraft ’ s seminal ideas seems to reveal the term-limit of each period's gender-paradigm,88 the feminist impact of Wollstonecraft's insolent airs, or afterwards abjectly submit; but endeavouring to act like reasonable creatures, in both situations, they will not be tumbled from a throne to a stool. (5. 104) 80The first reviews in 1792 were rather favorable if unremarkable. Yet after the appearance of posthumous works in 1797, the outrage and fury against the author's character found an identification between the immorality of the author's life and her argument for female emancipation. As for the first reviews of the second Vindication, they were split along political principles: progressive periodicals which shared Enlightenment ideas and took a favorable position towards the French Revolution approved the work. According to R. M. Janes, the positive review in Joseph Johnson's Analytical Review was followed by the Literary Magazine, the General Magazine, the New York Magazine, the Monthly Review, and the New Annual Register. These periodicals had also favorably noticed her Vindication of the Rights of Men, one of the first answers to Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 92 insights and argumentation has been carried through her writing, which inspired followers both contemporaneously69 and posthumously. Two centuries after the appearance of the Vindication of the Rights of Woman, critical assessments of its historical significance have not yet reached a consensus. Does her oeuvre illustrate a "revolutionary feminism," as Gary Kelly argues,90 or, was she a leader of the "feminine Romanticism," as Anne Mellor suggests?91 France. The single journal that had favorably reviewed her Rights of Men and ignored the Rights of Woman was the English Review. Although periodicals less politically or more conservatively committed did not in the main choose to review the work, the Critical Review attacked it in two passionate installments. (R. M. Janes, "On the Reception of Mary Wollstonecraft's A vindication of the Rights of Woman" in the Norton Critical Edition of the Vindication, p. 298.) 890n the track of feminist reformism, Mary Robinson wrote her Letter to the Women of England, on the Injustice of Mental Subordination, with Anecdotes (1799), a book on education and on the injustice of mental (not social) subordination, with the author disguised as "Anne Frances Randall," a self-proclaimed "follower of Wollstonecraft." In 1799, an anonymous work often attributed to Mary Hays, A Defense of the Character and Conduct of the Late Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, came out, with the tone of the vindication of the Rights of Woman. When the second Vindication appeared in 1792, Hays had abandoned her own feminist Appeal to the Men of Great Britain in behalf of the Women, which was subsequently published anonymously by Joseph Johnson in 1798. 9°Kelly in Revolutionary Feminism does not offer a full examination of any major conflicts or rupture between aristocratic feudalism and the new form led by "the professional bourgeoisie" in England, but posits a middle- class "cultural revolution" in the later part of the eighteenth century. Yet even by his account, there seems much Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 93 In trying to answer those questions, we should consider Wollstonecraft's own incongruities and paradoxes, which are revolutionary in the romantic sense, rather than in the classical sense. In this light, it is also important to point out that along with the revolutionary potential in Wollstonecraft's works, her advocacy of a "revolution in female manners" itself is oriented toward reform, education, and a gradual "intellectual improvement" rather than a radical break from the existing condition.92 We need to more corporation between the two classes than a conflict that justifies the term "revolution" in England. Furthermore, Kelly's depiction of Mary Wollstonecraft as the "revolutionary feminist" seems too tenuous and often tautological to sustain the whole premise of his book, even if seen from a culturalist perspective. ^Mellor divides Romanticism into masculine Romanticism and feminine Romanticism and tends to subtract masculinism or feminism from the gender of the writer. In the conclusion ("Why Romanticism?") of her Romanticism and Gender. Mellor tackles the question of canonicity and recapitulates her proposal for the split of Romanticism into two— one, the old, mainstay of "the big six" male oriented masculine Romanticism, and the other, "feminine Romanticism." Further, Mellor argues, Feminine Romanticism was truly a "revolution," in Raymond Williams' terms, in the sense that it envisioned the making of a new social order which would overthrow an old order; it was what Wollstonecraft rightly called "a revolution in female manners." It envisioned the creation of this new order through peaceful and pedagogical means, through gradual social evolution and what we would now call "consciousness-raising." (Anne K. Mellor, Romanticism & Gender [NY and London: Routledge, 1993], p. 212.) 92Wollstonecraft's view of the French Revolution highlights her indorsment of a reform rather than a revolution: the "revolution was neither produced by the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 94 acknowledge the constant importance of Enlightenment principles for Wollstonecraft, the position from which she criticized the construction of feminine sensibility, sentimentality, "private [domestic] plans," and "clinging" affections.93 There is certainly a discrepancy between Wollstonecraft's declared position and the figure Mellor posits as an initiator of the revolutionary poetics of abilities or intrigues of a few individuals; not [nor] was the effect of sudden and short-lived enthusiasm; but the natural consequence of intellectual improvement, gradually proceeding to perfection in the advancement of communities, from a state of barbarism to that of polished society, till now arrived at the point when sincerity of principles seems to be hastening the overthrow of the tremendous empires of superstition and hypocrisy, erected upon the ruins of gothic brutality and ignorance" (vii-viii of her "French Revolution") 9^For instance, Wollstonecraft argues: Females, in fact, denied all political privileges, and not allowed, as married women, excepting in criminal cases, a civil existence, have their attention naturally drawn from the interest of the whole community to that of the minute parts, though the private duty of any member of society must be very imperfectly performed when not connected with the general good. . . . The mighty business of female life is to please, and restrained from entering into more important concerns by political and civil oppression, sentiments become events, and reflection deepens what it should, and would have effaced, if the understanding had been allowed to take a wider range. (183) Women are supposed to possess more sensibility, and even humanity, than men, and their strong attachments and instantaneous emotions of compassion are given as proofs; but the clinging affection of ignorance has seldom any thing noble in it, and may mostly be resolved into selfishness, as well as the affection of children and brutes. . . . (188) Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 95 "feminine Romanticism," based on "the values of domesticity— of such private virtues as sympathy, tolerance, generosity and a commitment to the preservation of familial affections" — "the guiding program for all public action."94 But more significantly, can a single figure take the (somewhat idealized) position of a "revolutionary feminist," a term that conflates revolutionary eruption, rupture, and radicalism with the insurgence of feminism? Between her position as a solid proponent of the French Revolution (if reserved and silent about its turn after 1793) and a mold- breaking feminist thinker/writer (along with Catherine Macaulay and Olympe de Gouge, among others), has Wollstonecraft become a revolutionary feminist? Or, does the rise of feminism mark a revolutionary event in itself? I suggest in my final section how these questions can be dealt with by addressing Promethea. 5. Refiguring Promethea . . . the grander inspirations of the Muse have not been often breathed into the softer frame. The magic tones which have added a new existence to the heart— the tremendous thoughts which have impressed a successive stamp on the fluctuation of ages, and which 94Anne Mellor, Romanticism and Gender, p. 212. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 96 have almost changed the character of nations, — these have not proceeded from woman . . . — Alexander Dyce, specimens of British Poetesses (1825)95 The woman's story, never completely told, includes such conjectures, such possible changes of place and of identity. It is a story, like history ('fearful lapse of time'), 'pregnant with strange mutability,' with inconsistencies of opinion that tell of the differences within tradition, tradition's difference from itself, its ongoing displacements that we can begin to recognize in another body of writing, enabling us to see the limitations of our own construction. — Sonia Hofkosh, "Sexual Politics and Literary History"96 I have discussed feminist struggles in France during the period defined by the Enlightenment and the Revolution, focusing on, how, amidst possibilities of progress, liberation, and fulfillment, there existed limitation, suppression and containment for women. I have examined the ideal subjecthood of the "new man"— the gender-specific crux of the Romantic self— and figurations of the feminine structured by the male-centered Promethean logic of the new revolutionary regime. My analyses of discursive struggles 95Alexander Dyce, "Preface," Specimens of British Poetesses Selected and Chronologically Arranged (1825), pp. iii-iv; Qtd in Greg Kucich, "Gendering the Canons of Romanticism: Past and Present," The Wordsworth Circle. 100. 96See Sonia Hofkosh in eds. Mary Faveret and Nicola J. Watson, At the Limits of Romanticism (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1994), p. 139. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 97 during the French Revolution lead me to point out that ambiguities invested in such female figures as the liberatrix, the Amazon, and the monster are bound up with the confining as well as liberating "progress" of the Revolution for women. From the wider angle of an historico-cultural perspective, discourses of revolutionary subjectivity and femininity present us with a persistent masculinist ideology that contained the revolutionary energy of feminine desires. A close reading of individual writers such as Rousseau and Wollstonecraft, on the other hand, makes us shift our focus on their own paradoxical strategies and accommodations in relation to broader cultural discourses. For example, Rousseau explored the intricate realm of feminine desire, and stands in for a feminized position, especially with respect to his influence upon the discourse of sensibility; and yet he was the inseminator of the anti-feminist bourgeois ideal of the domestic woman based on gender separation. In the case of Wollstonecraft, she was a masculinist rationalist thinker in her refusal of sensibility, but her fragmented subjectivity, as illustrated in her fiction, is not reducible to the Enlightenment paradigm. Indeed, we should explore these contradictions and incongruities from a double perspective that incorporates both the complexity of each writer and the ideological boundary of the period. Precisely with such a double perspective, we need to guard ourselves from the tendency of idealization and thus self-limitation, Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 98 when we attempt to recuperate the "revolutionary" aspect of the feminist struggle of the period: The notion of 'revolutionary women' in Britain at the end of the eighteenth century is an impure idealization, a contradiction in terms. Not even the revolutionary potential of British social movements of the 1780s and 1790s could be said to represent an historical rupture, and the revolutionary potential of these years was itself ruthlessly suppressed by arms as well as the persuasive arts. . . . British women made different sorts of accommodations to the revolution in France, but accommodate themselves they did.97 Only through examining the process of (both forced and complicitous) accommodation as well as revolutionary change and progress will the horizon of feminist struggles become clear. At the same time, I suggest that the female resistance undercutting containment and mastery cannot be completely identified with a person, and that such historical momentum is "engendered by an impulse and a guest that the writing process carries out but that the author does not at first own."98 Thus, despite the apparently successful suppression of feminist ideas through scandalizing Wollstonecraft (after 9^Donna Landry, The Muses of Resistance: Laboring-class Women's Poetry in Britain. 1739-1796 (Cambridge, NY and Melbourne: Cambridge UP, 1990), p. 254. "This phrase is Shoshana Felman's. Though made in a different context (in explaining the impact of Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex). it seems to provide an insight into the conditions of the first wave of feminism as well. See her What Does A Woman Want? Reading and Sexual Difference (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins UP, 1993), p. 13. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 99 Godwin's publication of her Memoirs." largely due to Polwhele and his conservative cohorts), the impact of her arguments and insights could not be completely erased for the female audience, even if it was severely minimized. While emphasizing the importance of being attentive to the differences of each historically situated experience, I propose to formulate female revolutionary desire in terms of "desiring Promethea." As Alice Jardine points out, it involves the elaboration of a new theory and practice of the speaking subject. This search for a new speaking subject should not be thought of as a search for new synthesis or transcendence, but as a strategy— in the strongest sense of the term, even if that sense has been coded as "male." Only by participating in this elaboration may women remain aware of our position in the signifying chain. We know that we must avoid homologation— the inscription of "woman" into the discursive truth of the dominant order is not subversive to that order.100 Jardine proposes the term "gynema" for a "reading effect, a woman-in-effect that is never stable and has no identity" (47). Promethea could be seen as a localized gynema, a revolutionary woman-in-effect, rebellious and anti-systemic, " as my note 88 demonstrates, Godwin's publication of Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman and Maria Or the wrongs of Woman (1798) ignited scurrilous anti-feminist attacks (Polwhele being exemplary) on Wollstonecraft's character and politics— both pro-Jacobin and feminist— while reducing a significant portion of the persuaded readers of the second Vindication to silence. 100Alice A. Jardine, Gynesisi Configurations of Woman and Modernity (Ithaca and London: Cornell UP, 1985), p. 44. All further references in text. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 100 yet unavailable from the perspective centering on the traditional masculine revolutionary subject. In refiguring Promethea, I point out the historical existence of (political) women with the "new philosophy"— women who participated in shaking up the establishment in a most radical way, literary female characters who are marked by emancipatory desires that seem to exceed authorial intention, and women writers who challenged the framework of the masculinist ideology. As early as pre-Revolutionary France, for example, Journal des dames (1759-1778) was published by three female editors, and showed "vicissitudes of forthright advocacy of women at a time when women editors were a rarity."101 In particular, the first female editor of lOl-Madelyn Gutwirth, The Twilight of the Goddesses, p. 130. From a slightly different angle, in England, a multi volume periodical miscellany, The Lady's Poetical Magazine, with a subtitle, "The Beauties of Poetry," came out in the 1780s for a mainly female readership. Presenting the works of dozens of female poets such as Elizabeth Toilet, Mrs. Madan, and Mrs. Hampden Pye— along with those of Pope, Young, Shenstone, and Thomson— the book ends with Duncombe's Femineads. See Greg Kucich, "Gendering the Canons of Romanticism: Past and Present," The Wordsworth Circle XXVII. 2 (Spring 1996), 96. Kucich, through examining Alexander Dyce's Specimens of British Poetesses: Selected and Chronologically Arranged (1825) and Margaret Ezell through George Ballard's Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain: who have been celebrated for their writings or skill in the learned languages, arts, and sciences (1752) in her Writing Women's History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1993) discusses the gender ideology involved in anthology projects of Romantic women poets. As a part of the canon formation process for "female Romanticism," there came, along with the anthologies mentioned above, George Colman's and Bonnell Thornton's Poems by Eminent Ladies (later expanded and retitled Poems by the Most Eminent Ladies of Great-Britain Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 101 the journal, Mme Beamer, demonstrated a remarkable combination of intellect and passion for women's rights, which she considered the basis for social justice and Republicanism: she "crusaded for the poor and downtrodden, for social justice, religious toleration, Freemasonry, republican liberty, international peace, and equality before the law. Furthermore, she would consider the subordination of women preceding other injustices, and argued that its elimination would eventuate in harmonious equality between classes and nations."102 She also rejected Rousseau completely, considering him full of paradoxes: in her view, Rousseau put humankind back to the animal-state, instead of progressing forward. Even more astonishingly, Mme. Beamer evoked "2e si&cle des dames," claiming in 1763 that "women's and Ireland (1755) and Leigh Hunt's Specimens of British Poetesses (1847). As Kucich points out, such anthologies of women writers came out in the midst of literary canon-forming projects, partly impelled by British nationalism: Thomas Percy's Reliaues of Ancient English Poetry: Thomas Warton’s History of English Poetry: Samuel Johnson's Lives of the English Poets: Robert Dodsley's Collection of Poems in Six Volumes (1766); Joseph Ritson's English Anthology (1793); Southey's Specimens of the Later English Poets (1807); Chiswick's The British Poets (1822). See J. R. de J. Jackson, ed., Romantic Poetry bv Women: A Bibliography 1770-1835 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993); Carol Shiner and Joel Haefner, eds., Re-Visioning Romanticism: British Women Writers 1776-1837 (Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania Press, 1994). 102Qutwirth, p. 140. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 102 revolution" was "gripping the entire world."103 Such was the female desire that existed behind the revolutionary activism of poissardes, female sans-culottes, the organization of La Femme Libre (later, La femme Nouvelle) and women's clubs, the Salnt-Simonians, and the Female Owenites in England. In the same light, we could put the anonymous revolutionary female crowd along with Etta Palm d'Alders, Olympe de Gouges, Thdroigne de Mdricourt and Claire Lacombe, as well as Mary Wollstonecraft, as the instances of desiring Promethea who challenged the masculinist logic of the Revolution. In the displaced arena of literary or interpretive texts, setting up and casting out a female figure is part of the operation of stabilizing the difference between representor and represented in nineteenth century literature.104 In the same vein, Marlon Ross exposes the gendered assumption in what is often considered to be quintessential Romanticism, and tries to show how the romantic ideology of the strong poet develops out of fear of the feminine. But in attempting to assure their own sociopolitical strength by casting out and smoothing over the feminine, romantic poets only manage to repress the feminine, which returns with the full force of desire in many forms. Their romantic ideology promises an escape from the pressures of change in history— suppressing the sites of market publishing and women's writing— but unconscious desire seeps through the fissures of their ideological 103Jbid., pp. 140-141. 104see Neil Hertz, "Medusa's Head: Male Hysteria under Political Pressure," The End of the Line: Essays on Psychoanalysis and the Sublime (NY: Columbia, 1985). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 103 patterns and moves them through the current of historical change.105 Thus, configuring the tracks of muted and deformed female subjectivities involves a process of de-figuration of the established feminine figures and ideological operations ingrained in Romantic Prometheanism. It also involves tracing the female desire that has often been already blocked by the symbolic order, and deciphering what exists outside of the cycle of desire that belongs to a phallic economy. Envisioning Promethea thus provides a (feminist) reader, caught in a complex network of overdetermined operations of literary cultural history, with a peculiar allegorical possibility through which to refigure the muted desires of women revolutionaries of the time (even if they were often submerged by the hegemonic operations of gender), especially their desires for a different space— an anti-masculinist and anti-humanist space. In the following chapters, I argue that desiring Promethea emerges in different ways in Blake, Percy Shelley, and Mary Shelley. Blake's Visions of the Daughters of Albion shows a female Prometheus in the figure of cloud-borne Oothoon, "the soft soul of America." The naked female figure lying on her back receives the beak of Theotormon's preying 105The contours of Masculine Desire, p. 10. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 104 eagle, a genius-tumed-vulture. This image is seen either as a product of Oothoon's rhetorical imagination (of herself as the suffering Prometheus), or as Blake' s configuration of the state of the new nation. A similar image appears in America 13, a more trenchant depiction of the horrors of war as the scene becomes more stark, and the (attacking) eagle more ravenous.106 The bird figure can be linked not only to vulturous aggression or a punishing agent, but in a more metonymic association, to an uninhibited Promethean desire itself. In my second chapter, I will discuss Blake's radical politics in more general terms and his treatment of female sexuality in particular. Percy Shelley attempted to represent some female characters who break from traditional womanhood in embodying an initiating force for radical change. In The Cenci. Beatrice Cenci is a female Prometheus in her patricidal action as well as in her sufferings previous to and following her rebellion. Laon and Cythna or The Revolt of Islam centers on the female revolutionary, Cythna, who projects a messianic desire. In my third chapter, I investigate Percy Shelley's endeavors to represent Beatrice as a female Prometheus, along with his critique of domestic violence, the masculinist symbolic economy, and the operation of law in The Cenci. J e r u s a l e m 58 has a similar bird of prey. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 105 Mary Shelley's case leads us to question what happens if the female author embodies the Promethean act of stealing fire from literary paternity (aspiring to forbidden knowledge) and challenges the fundamental assumptions underneath the male-centered ideology of Prometheanism. Does pondering the other side of the Promethean dream amount to a subversion or rewriting of the gender-specific myth? Investigating Mary Shelley's subject position vis-^-vis Percy Shelley's ambivalent attitude towards feminine figures, my fourth chapter deals with her portrayal of the Enlightenment project together with the monstrosity of male subjectivity in Frankenstein. As a segue to the next chapter, I read a poem by Laetitia Elizabeth Landon, "Lines of Life," a telling example of the desiring Promethea. The poem, I argue, strikes the Promethean chord without a direct reference to it: "I have such eagerness of hope/ To benefit my kind}/ And feel as if immortal power/ Were given to my mind" (57-60; emphasis added).107 In "Lines of Life," grief and despair about her condition (her orphaned childhood and her life-long deprived situation) take turns with hope and the aspiration to write. The poet-narrator asks herself: 107gee Laetitia Elizabeth Landon, "Lines of Life" in Jerome J. McGann, ed. The New Oxford Book of Romantic Period Verse (Oxford and NY: Oxford UP, 1993), pp. 733-736. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 106 Why write I this? because my heart Towards the future springs, That future where it loves to soar On more than eagle wings. (73-76) Using the imagery of Promethean iconography, she projects her aspirations for the future. Yet, darkened immediately by debasing thoughts, she dwells on self-doubts: "I am but a nameless part/ of a most worthless whole." Yet again, the poet-narrator proclaims, "But song has touch'd my lips with fire,/ And made my heart a shrine;/ For what, although alloy'd debased,/ Is in itself divine" (85-88). This self reflexive poem ends with the projection of a future moment: Will the pale youth by his dim lamp, Himself a dying flame, From many an antique scroll beside, Choose that which bears ray name? Let music make less terrible The silence of the dead; I care not, so my spirit last Long after life has fled. (105-108) The poem illustrates the rewriting of the familiar opposition of Promethean heat to the "cunning'st pattern of excelling nature." Here, the lamplight is equated with a male youth (a dying reader), and the female poet seems to parody Percy Shelley's woman, "Speaking the wisdom once they could not think/ . . . And changed to all which once they dared not be,/Yet being now, made earth like heaven." If the male poet still indulges in the heavenly space opened by inspiring women for him, the wisdom-speaking female poet identifies Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. herself with the "silence of the dead/' except for the words she leaves behind. By displacing or disrupting Prometheanism, Landon facilitates a crucial moment for a necessary female reader's strategy: openning a space for women, and placing us on the threshold of a non-masculinist space. This gestures towards is the moment when the poet gestures towards the unmanned Prometheus. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 108 Chapter 2 B a n is h in g /V a n is h in g Female Voices in Blake's M ilton 1. Poetics and Politics Poetic work is a powerful condenser of unarticulated social evaluations- each word is saturated with them. — Volosinov, Freudianism.1 Poetry is a privileged metalanguage in western patriarchal culture. — Cora Kaplan, Sea Chances2 The task of this chapter involves "historicizing" Blake by letting Blake's uniquely complicated literary text speak for itself, while at the same time exploring the ideological junctures in his texts. Historicizing Blake demands more than an analogical catalogue of historical events parallel with Blake’s work or a conceptualization of Blake's notion of history by probing his statements on it. Rather, it interrogates the "more intangible historicity of the concepts and categories"3 of Blake's written and pictorial narratives. ^-V. N. Volosinov, Freudianism: A Marxist Critique, trans. I. R. Titunik (New York: Academic Press, 1976), p. 107. 2Cora Kaplan, Sea Chances: Culture and Feminism (London: Verso, 1986), p. 69. 3Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form: Twentieth Century Dialectical Theories of Literature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1971), p.9. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 109 Leftist critical practices have construed Blake as a revolutionary, visionary prophet and a cultural critic ahead of his tine, but the gender issue has been relegated to a rather subsidiary place in this assessment. That Blake’s poignantly allegorical and ambiguous poetic language explicitly and implicitly locates a morphologized sexual politics in his fundamental conceptualization of social relations indicates a most intriguing connection between his cultural critique and his gender ideology. Thus, tracing the inscribed gender politics of Blake's poetics, I investigate Blake's ideological construction of femininity in ways that see his words not as fundamental "' knowledge' but [ as ] ideology itself in all its inconsistency and partiality."4 Rather than assuming an imaginary coherence of the text, I examine Blake's "composite text" as a result of his struggle with representational narratives that are lodged in historical and cultural discourses. Drawing on insights from feminism, Marxism, and psychoanalytic theory, I reassess the poet's discursive participation in shaping the gender ideologies and the ideological closure of the "gendered" writing subject. Blake renders particular aesthetics on "the woman question," from a pithy depiction of women's condition to an elaborate construction of the female subject. In fact, 4Catherine Belsey, Critical Practice (London and NY: Methuen, 1986 [1980]), p. 128. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 110 the question about the construction of femininity in Blake's poetry unravels the formidable complexity of Blake's textf its power and pleasure, and its ultimate blind-spots: in Blake, some aspects of the cultural ideology of gender are brilliantly illuminated; some nebulously presented; and others utterly obscured or curiously rendered. The author's interaction with the prevailing discourse of gender thus opens up a space for the inquiry that follows. I begin by addressing the ways in which Blake is engaged in the discursive struggles that construct Romantic radicalism, revolving around a revolutionary male subjectivity and challenging the existent forms of social and textual relations. In particular, I suggest that Blake's radical poetics exposes and critiques the God-Priest-Father triad, warrior poetics, and the progressive discourse of the Enlightenment. Blake's revolutionary zeal, Romantic desire, and political vision put him in a position which we might call "Romantic revolutionary." When E. P. Thompson investigates William Morris as a Romantic turning into a Revolutionary, he sees Morris's text as a fulfillment of his Romantic impulses and convictions, in which the powers of dreaming and desire are a means of liberating the imagination for purposeful and creative ends by providing a vantage point from which to criticize the existing society and to "teach desire to Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Ill desire, to desire better, to desire more, and above all, to desire in a better way."5 The revolutionary vision here is understood as political desire in conflict with the social conditions of possibility, and at the same time the impetus to pursue the ultimate goal of emancipation. This politically-charged radicalism is what Jameson relates to Utopian desire.6 Perhaps re-reading the innate "political unconscious" of an openly provocative socialist writer such as William Morris is easier than reading Blake, who formulates an intricate, esoteric, personal mythic system— often called a "sublime allegory" or a "creative obscurity" (to use Jerome McGann's terms7)— that contains as much complicated Biblical allusion as revolutionary vision. Further, the question of the subject of desire for such radical change remains unexamined even in Thompson's reappraisal of a "Romantic revolutionary"— i.e., to what extent do such Romantic revolutionary aspirations involve internalized social repression and thus obscure subtle gender politics?8 5The passage comes from Thomas Vogler's assessment in "Romanticism and Literary Periods: The Future of the past," New German Critique. No. 38 (Spring/Summer, 1986): 147. ^Marxism and Form, p. 77; p.142. 7Jerome MacGann, "The Aim of Blake's Prophecies," Blake's Sublime Allegory, ed. Stuart Curran and Joseph Anthony Wittreich Jr. (U of Wisconsin P, 1978), p. 12. ^See E. P. Thompson, William Morris. Romantic to Revolutionary (Merlin Press, 1977). Regarding the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 112 When we examine Blake's poetics more closely with such critical and metacritical questions in mind, various difficulties unfold. Along with the frequently raised question of the relationship between his poetic discourse and his visual narrative, one of the immediate and prominent characteristics we confront is the discrepancy between his early poetry (including Poetical Sketches. The Songs of Innocence and Experience, and The Marriage of Heaven and Hell) and his later epic/prophetic poetry (represented by The Four Zoas, Milton, and Jerusalem). While his earlier narratives are realistic, politically specific, lyrical texts, all Blake's later poetry is built on the premise of the "Apocalyptic" condition. This end-of-the-line condition evokes a deterministic quality within a realm of mythical systems and an incongruous contortion of fragments. Entailing difficulties in historical interpretation, Blake's later works embrace abstruse dramas of social relations on a grand scale and delve into the psychical realm to the deepest degree through an evidently "stabilizing" structure. Not surprisingly, critics who have either highly valued Blake's "spontaneous creativity" (F. R. Leavis's famous designation) and "the fullness of being" of his former problematics of Thompson' s construction of the female subject in his historiography, especially in The Making of the Working Class, see Joan Scott's "Thompson's Making of Woman in The Making of the Working Class" in Gender and the Politics of History (NY: Columbia UP, 1988). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 113 poetry, or those who have sought to illuminate Blake's historical insight and his quality as a social critic (often interrelated trends), discover a "lack" in his later poetry.9 For instance, D. G. Gilham protests that "the longer poems nearly all have a factitious cast. . . . often they are simply dull or melodramatic, despite the violence of the 'dark visions of torment' depicted."10 In Gilham's inquiry, the gap between Blake's early poetry and later work is flatly accounted for as a falling out of history into a synchronous present, i.e., an ahistorical repudiation of the diachronic dimension and of the possibility for social change. On the other hand, critics who investigate Blake's "mythic system" or its psychological depth in the later poetry tend to gloss over the specificity of the historical and social junctures within his poetry.11 9In this vein, F. R. Leavis is representative: The conviction [of 'human responsibility' in his earlier poems] was a creative drive, and it led him [Blake], in his most ambitious attempts, the major prophesies, into difficulties that defeated his art. He takes up in them a challenge so formidably presented in totality of Songs of Innocence and Experience. See "Justifying One's Valuation of Blake," The Critic As Anti-Philosopher. ed. G. Singh (London: Chatto and Windus, 1982), pp. 8-13. 10D. G. Gilham, William Blake (London: Cambridge UP, 1973), p. 159. 11 An exceptional case would be E. P. Thompson's long- awaited (and posthumously published) book on Blake, Witness Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 114 A dialectical explanation encompassing these two views seems to be: even in Blake’s later poetry, political and historical allusions to freedom, religion, slavery, and emancipation are intertwined within a heavily symbolic system, and his sharp historical insight prevails in the specifics of his narratives.12 According to this strain, in so far as Blake desired to capture his age's distinctive forms of social order and human drama, he struggled to conceive its political environment. With the decline of revolutionary aspiration, the emergence of reactionary forces, and the oppressive censorship of unconciliatory writings, "Blake. . . marks an ideological conjuncture at which Romantic individualism must be raised to an elaborate mythological system if it is to survive and illuminate the Against the Beast: William Blake and the Moral Law (New York: The New Press, 1993). l^David Aers, Jonathan Cook and David Punter in the "Introduction" to Romanticism and Ideology says: Often the two terms 'literature' and 'background' are left as autonomous units arbitrarily juxtaposed. Our perspective is rather that writing is a social activity necessarily immersed in a diversity of contemporary practices, ideological forms and problems: its minute particulars articulate forms of life and outlook, imagining and displaying the writer's attitudes towards received ideology and existing circumstances by virtue of the very process of writing. See David Aers et al., Romanticism and Ideology: Studies in English Writing 1765-1830 (London: RKP, 1981), p. 2. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 115 real history which produces it."13 His intricate synchronous realm, then, can be understood as betraying his ideological contradictions by "[reducing] the contingencies of a recalcitrant history to the controlling order of myth."14 The ideological disclosure of his epics (involving an exclusion of historicity by synchronic, mythic prophecies) paradoxically projects the limit of the "revolutionary paradigm" of the French revolution itself as the locus of the underlying political assumption of the bourgeois revolution and its ideologies (e.g., humanitarian individualism, succinctly epitomized by the motto "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity"). As a distinctive cultural critic, Blake can be located at the margin of antinomian dissent against bourgeois rationalism15 as well as against the established values of aristocracy and church-rule. I will analyze three crucial issues as the fundamental targets of Blake's cultural critique— war, religion, and Enlightenment epistemology, which constructed the prevailing ideological apparatuses of his age, and around which the poet's incisive questioning of social conflicts, his aphoristic diagnosis, and his construction of femininity seems to revolve. 13Terry Eagleton, Criticism and Ideology (London: Verso, 1978), p. 153. l4Eagleton, p. 153. l5For a detailed and historical treatment of the topic, see E. P. Thompson, Witness Against the Beast. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 116 2. 1. W arrior Epic vs. Self-Annihilation War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight, the lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade. — Percy Shelley, Queen Mab Blake as a "visionary prophet" asserts in the beginning of Milton that his work's project is "an Endeavor to Restore what the Ancients called the Golden Age" ("Preface"). Blake's proclamation seems to signal a unique combination of Romantic desire, an echo of the Bible and Western mythology, and his own vision; while an incessant projection of utopian power in creating "the imaginary organic whole" might be linked to a typically Romantic yearning, his criticism of the Greek aesthetic tradition for its war-orientednes s is contrary even to the later generation of the Romantics who idealized Greek culture. Blake underlines his objection to Homeric war- poetics by harshly refuting classical literature's destructive, exploitative code ("general malady & infection from the silly Greek & Latin slaves of the sword"; Preface). This critique of warrior values in classical literature raises a significant question about their literary tradition and form-— epic-—on the one hand, and about their embedded patriarchal ideology on the other. As to the classical epic Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 117 tradition and Milton's legacy in Blake's Milton (as in his other prophecies) Joseph Wittreich makes a probing speculation in his "Opening the Seals."16 Emphasizing Milton's creative impulse to destroy artistically, politically, and socially conventional orthodoxies, wittreich grasps Blake's radical cultural criticism and literary interpretation of Christianity in accordance with the Miltonic sublime allegory. Blake's sublime allegory, in other words, is summarized as an original, prophetic "patchwork" (Wittreich 45), or a peculiarly symmetrical combination of precedent visions (such as the Book of Revelation. Pareus, and Milton’s writings) and the minute particularizations of his own imagination (Wittreich 44). Against the grain of the traditional epic or mimetic mode with "violent absolute confrontations,"17 Blake's later prophecies share with l^while most critics view Blake as a progressive, Harold Fisch illuminates a certain conservative drive in Blake related to romantic idealism. See his "Blake's Miltonic Movement," ed. Alvin Rosenfeld, William Blake: Essays For S. Foster Damon (Providences Brown UP, 1969), pp. 36-56. From a slightly different angle, Joseph Wittreich Jr. in his comparison of Blake with Milton says that, in respect to the epic tradition, both poets shared in their culture's malaise, not because either poet had undaunted faith in naive apocalyptism but because both saw their expectations for reformation through revolution dashed. See "Opening the Seals: Blake's Epics and the Milton Tradition," Blake's Sublime Allegory. ed. Stuart Curran and Joseph Anthony Wittreich Jr. (U of Wisconsin P, 1978), p. 54. All further page references are in text. l^The phrase is Helen T. McNeil's; Quoted in Wittreich Jr., p. 43. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 118 Milton's verse forms and politics the aspect of a radically new version of Christianity. Wittreich' s conundrum in his search for a radical break occurs when he has to confront the paradox in Blake's radicalism: "To consider Blake in relation to Milton's tradition is to end in something of a paradox: to define the revolutionary character of Milton's art is to reveal the tradition of Blake's" (Wittreich 58). In other words, "the revolutionary aspects of Milton’s art, so often represented as distinguishing elements in Romantic art, are, by virtue of Milton's use of them, traditional."18 While Wittreich highlights the aesthetic influence of Milton on Blake, I want to focus on the conceptual and thematic radicalism of Milton: Blake's provocation of self- annihilation in contrast to the warrior culture depicted in traditional epic literature. In Blakean terms, he would forge a "Mental War" to redeem the whole state and of the struggle for "eternal salvation." Blake's invocation of radical change through annihilation finds one of its most powerful images in America: The bones of death, the cover'ng clay, the sinews shrunk & dry’d Reviving shake, inspiring move, breathing! awakening! Spring like redeemed captives when their bonds & bars are burst (America. 6. 3-5) 18Wittreich Jr., footnote 85 on p.58. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 119 Distinct from the logic of conquest, or that of the biblical "Last Judgment," Blakean self-redemption requires the redemption of the proposed enemy. He painstakingly reminds the reader that a partial way of producing pity brings further perpetuation of the distorted fallen state: without total recuperation, an alternative condition is impossible. In Milton, Blake summarizes the whole purpose of Milton's quest as "self-annihilation," a pursuit of Apocalyptic change— "in self-annihilation giving thy life to thy enemies" (II. 40:8, E 141 )19— and selfhood which "must be put off & annihilated away/ To cleanse the Face of [Milton's] spirit by self-examination" (II. 40:36-7, E 142). Blake's provocation of self-annihilation, however, still renders a violently heroic progression and echoes the powerful "masculine" implantation of new values. Historically repeated in Western Europe, the heroic manifestation has a common scheme, as Wittreich formulates it: "a hero descends into himself to annihilate selfhood and accomplishing that, descends into the world to become its 'Awakener'" (Wittreich Jr. 57). This heroism, echoing the Promethean ethos certainly contains a mark of gender. Feminists have argued that the 19The Complete Poetry & Prose of William Blake, ed. David Erdman (Garden City: Anchor Books, 1982), p. 142. Quotations from the Milton text will hereafter be cited by book, plate and line number, followed by page number, of this edition. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 120 "development" of productive forces, or (heroic) progressivism, has justified violence and warfare (warfare against nature, women and other peoples), since progressive, extra-economic violence typically involves the man-warrior ideology (as the carrier of the predatory mode of production), which perpetuates the sexual division of labor. By arms, the means of direct coercion, male predatory warriors have appropriated and subordinated other producers (i.e., women, slaves, colonials) and their products. Blake's equivocal attitude— negation of blind massive violence, and employment of the concept of male protagonist/agent's violent annihilation— locates the subject position of this annihilating perspective as that of a male visionary prophet. His conventional metaphoric adoption of the "sword" as "the pen" confirms the gendered subject position: "I will not cease from Mental Fight/ Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand/ Till we have built Jerusalem/ In Englands green & pleasant Land" (Milton 1: 13-6, E. 956). A more telling example is his visual presentation of the emblematic self-annihilation (pi. 18; fig. 1): the plate shows a critical poise between the old (Urizen) and young (Milton) men, while above in the distance four female figures led by "a young bard" are ritualistically engaged in dancing and playing instruments. At the bottom, the narrative reads, "To Annihilate the Self-hood of Deceit & False Forgiveness," with "Self" and "hood" literally set apart by the right foot of Milton's figure. The female Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 121 auxiliary musicians are interpreted positively by Erdman as "the five liberated senses or daughters"20 who spur on Milton's "life-giving act." The representation of Milton and his wives and daughters calls attention to the ideological boundary of the text— e.g., a certain silence of the text about the possibility of Milton's repressive aspect as a "patriarch" towards surrounding women. 2. 2 On Church and Religion "Christ died an Unbeliever." — Blake's Annotation on Watson21 It is a well-known fact, that we, the people of England, have a son whom we scarecely know what to do with— we make a clergyman of him — Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men The role of religion in Blake's poetics is a contentious and complicated issue. Ever since Songs of Innocence and Experience. Blake criticized the underlying 20David Erdman, ed. with Annotation, The Illuminated Blake (Garden City: Anchor Books, 1974), p. 235. 21 See Blake's annotation to Bishop Watson's An Apology for the Bible, an attack on Paine. In this annotation, Blake suggests that Paine is the real Christian and the bishop is not. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 122 ideologies of institutionalized religion and dogmatic human behavior as systematic violence against the mind: his utmost target seems to be the church-system, the crux of the ideological apparatus of his time. Needless to say, the church was a "dominant Ideological State Apparatus, which concentrated within it not only religious functions, but also educational ones, and a large proportion of the functions of communications and 'culture.'"22 Countering the most efficient hegemonic apparatus, ideological struggles in seventeenth- and eighteenth-, (and even nineteenth-) century England, revolved around an anti-clerical and anti-institutional mode of belief, if hardly ever a totally atheistic one. One of the criticisms Blake makes of Milton (from the vantage point of a later generation) certainly concerns Milton's inevitable puritanical proclivity for strictly dividing Good and Evil, pride and punishment, regret and resurrection (which Blake negates as a "Natural Religion"). Blake's ultimate yielding to religious terms, such as "divine," "holy," "God" or "Jesus" is different from Shelley's complete refutation as seen in The Revolt of I s l a m or The Necessity of Atheism. Blake's attack on institutionalized religion has been often understood as part of a long-standing tradition of dissent within Christianity. 22Louis Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, trans. Ben Brewster (NY and London: Monthly Review P, 1971), p. 151. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 123 Thomas Altizer, for example, sees Blake's unprecedented originality in the wake of the radical Christian movement (stemming from the sixteenth century) by reinscribing the Christian terms in Blake's text (in his The New Apocalypse: the Radical Christian Vision of William Blake).23 That such vastly different interpretations are possible in understanding Blake's poetics reveals the density of Blake’s thoughts and language and the critics' s own implication in ideologically entrenched paradigms in reading Blake. Related to these concerns is the trope linking the female image with that of the church in Blake's poetics. Blake himself labels war-politics as a "male" principle and religion as a "female" code— "A Female hidden in a Male, Religion hidden in War" (Milton. II. 40:20). Blake's female forms, located one step below the (hu-)man, appear always already suspect exactly because of their sexuality, whereas male forms do not have that baggage. Either angelic or beastly, the female form (as the symptom of the male subject) thus often indicates a transitional state that is either vanquishable or incorporable. Blake's fusion of the female image with the church appears repeatedly, as in the concept of the archetypal "Whore of Babylon" who blocks Apocalypse,24 23Thomas J. J. Altizer, The New Apocalypse: The Radical Christian Vision of William Blake (Ann Arbor: Michigan State UP, 1967). 2 4 As Steven Goldsmith notes, Blake's representation of Apocalypse is "organized by and centered on the female sex." Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 124 or as a minor visual manifestation. One example of the latter is a sketch from the Vala Manuscript p.44 (fig. 2), in which two figures are shown with a written narrative. On the left is a naked woman with a spiked crown on her head and a Gothic tabernacle on her genital area; on the right, a bearded man has his right hand raised. John E. Grant in his "Visions in Vala," a full discussion of Vala's pictorial narrative, suggests that this female figure is either Enion (for whom the bearded man Tharmas is calling) or Enitharmon (who is coldly looking and hovering around).25 In tracing various interpretations of the female figure, Grant concludes that while the sinister spiked crown uniformly conveys a negative connotation, the meaning of the tabernacle on the woman's genital area is controversial. Bentley sees it as mere scribbling on the woman's belly, possibly configurable as an ideal "living form," whereas Hagstrum considers it as a kind of lure to a high priest. Thus, as Grant states, it could be equivocal— referring to both redemption and corruption, the Virgin Mary and harlotry. Leopold Damrosch notes the evident analogy of the church door to the female vagina and sees the See Unbuilding Jerusalem; Apocalypse and Romantic Representation (Ithaca and London: Cornell UP), p. 148. 25John E. Grant, "Visions in Vala," in Wittreich and Curran, ed. Blake's Sublime Allegory. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 125 figure as a positive one,26 referring to the line in Jerusalem. "The Divine Vision with the Curtain & Veil & fleshy Tabernacle" (Jerusalem 56:40, E 204). The line from Jerusalem is as much mystifying as illustrative. Yet, given Blake's keen critique of church-rule, the implication is rather negative, especially if we consider his possible association of the female body with the generator of religious ideology, as shown in Milton: "those who condemn Religion & seek to annihilate it/ Become in their Femin[in]e portions the causes & promoters/Of these Religions" (II. 40:9-11, E.141). Thus, Milton's narrative conflates the use and abuse of femininity, the female body, motherhood, and the mystification of and desire for something unfathomable and uncontainable, all of which have been exhaustively explored through western literature. 2.3 On the Enlightenment Ideas from the Protestant Reformation in the seventeenth century were widely spread in conjunction with social atomism, Newtonian rationalism, and a belief in technological progress; the bourgeois individualist mode of social relations and the (re-)containment of patriarchal 26Leopold Damrosch Jr., Symbol and Truth in Blake's Myth (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1980), pp. 205-6. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. family systems were deployed as the fundamentally "true" (apropos) social forms. The "affective" mode of the (nuclear) family system was constituted hand in hand with a formulation of the relationship between the individual and government under bourgeois state rule. John Locke, for example, advocated the wife's relinquishing her right of decision making to her husband, just as the individual relinquishes his natural liberties of decision to the government. In other words, this bourgeois socio-symbolic contract naturalizes domesticated women, who are excluded from the political ground. At the base of the "public realm," where the political economy strengthened the bourgeois regime, what Julia Kristeva calls "a sacrificial contract" of sexual economy confined women to the private domain of the household. Thus the question of gender becomes more complicated when the writings of the progressive Enlightenment writers foreclose such issues as how women's status has changed, for example, from a preindustrial European society to a more established bourgeois regime with its strengthened status apparatuses. They also overlook how women's domestication and the distribution of power have been constituted along gender lines, and also silence the ideology of gender embedded in the notion of democratic social contract. In seventeenth-century Europe, however, the Protestant Reformation in conjunction with bourgeois individualism not only displaced feudal regimes, but also Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 127 deployed a social atomism and technological progressivism that go hand-in-hand with the re-construction of the family system. The gender ideologies of the Enlightenment writers who wrote of justice for "the more" are indicative of the profound conflicts that were to emerge later. Also, the notion of the state's rule over an individual is interwoven with that of a naturalization of inequality between the genders: the individual's relinquishing of natural liberties to the government is equated with the wife's relinquishing her right of decision-making to her husband. A recognition of the "tendentiousness" of these democratic discourses and practices urges a re-investigation of Enlightenment logic itself, and provides a tangential explanation as to why Blake's radical politics targets Enlightenment logic,27 while enthusiastic about the French Revolution. Blake's scornful treatment of the Enlightenment's advocates (not to mention Urizen, the embodiment of Reason) seems to be equivalent to a cultural critique of such trends, a critique couched in the biblical language of radical Christianity: "I [Milton] come in Self-annihilation & the grandeur of Inspiration/ To cast off Rational Demonstration 27Jean H. Hagstrum in "William Blake Rejects the Enlightenment" argues similarly and compares Blake's thoughts more extensively with the trends set by philosophers of the Enlightenment. See William Blake: Twentieth Century Views, ed. Northrop Frye (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1966), pp. 142-155. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 128 by Faith in the Savior/. . . To cast off Bacon, Locke & Newton from Albions covering" (Milton I. 41:2-5, E. 142). Instead, Blake proffers inspirational forms of "living" (more inclusive and organic) arts, against the Age of Reason's splitting-up of knowledge: But in Eternity the Four Arts: Poetry, Painting, Music, And Architecture which is Science: are the Four Faces of Man. Not so in Time & Space: there Three are shut out, and only Science remains thro Mercy: & by means of Science, the Three Become apparent in Time & Space, in the Three Professions Poetry in Religion: Music, Law: Painting, in Physic & Surgery: That Man may live upon Earth till the time of his awakening, And from these Three, Science derives every Occupation of Men. (I. 27:55-62, E. 125) Thus the positive pole he suggests comprises passion, creation and inspiration, through which the "Infinite put[s] off the Indefinite" (28:4). Blake's intervention into the Enlightenment seems to be impelled by his "visionary" and transitional imperative but also contains a sharp attack on humanistic individualism (the logic of "Self-righteousness"), rationality (the Urizenic principle), and science (a Satanic principle). For instance, Satan contests Palamabron (who stands for Truth and is linked with Eden) and perverts the divine voice, declaring that ... I am God alone There is no other I let all obey my principles of moral individuality Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 129 I have brought them from the uppermost innermost recesses Of my Eternal Mind, transgressors I will rend off for ever . . . (I. 9:25-28, E.103; emphasis added) The "Satanic" state is derived from the separation of a Being into several forms, such as Spectre, Shadow and Emanation, and results in the loss of inner light and living form (10:21, E.104). "Milton's vision," as Blake’s alternative, therefore, comes close to a holistic view, aspiring to an encompassing, eternal, and infinite state (See I. 15:21-9, E.109). Blake advocates that "We are not Individuals but States: Combinations of Individuals/. . . We were combined in Freedom & holy/ Brotherhood" (II. 32:10/15, E. 131). As shown here in his invocation of "Brotherhood" however, Blake's radical if mystical critique of the Enlightenment constitutes an irrevocably conservative sexual politics: In families we see our shadows born & thence we know That Man subsists bv Brotherhood & Universal Love We fall on one anothers necks more closely we embrace Not for ourselves but for the Eternal family we live Man liveth not by Self alone but in his brothers face Each shall behold the Eternal Father & love & joy abound (Four Zoas IX, 133:21-6, E 402) How can we explain Blake's tarrying with "Brotherhood"? Certainly, in eighteenth-century England, the ideal ethos of manliness and brotherhood exists firmly at the heart of the writings of conservatives and progressives alike. The fact that Blake shared the same gender ideology with his critical Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 130 target28 complicates our examination of the writer's ideological position and the question of female subjectivity. Thus, a discussion of the political radicalism in Blake's narrative leads us to an investigation of his view of gender relations. 3. Between the Virgin and the Whore The Sexes sprung from Shame & Pride, Blow'd in the morn; in evening died; But Mercy chang'd Death into Sleep; The Sexes rose to work & weep. — Blake, "To Tirzah" Since the gender issue is intertwined with a political matrix in Blake, we need to analyze the textual concealment of sexual ideology in his extraordinary configuration and revelation of social relationships. Several biographical footnotes reflect Blake's struggle toward embodying his poetic/political vision in relation to the gender issues. From around 1780 he was associated with sculptor John Flaxman who introduced him to the bluestocking coterie of Harriet Mathew: it was Flaxman and A. S. Mathew who apparently paid 28Cora Kaplan, Sea Changes: Culture and Feminism (London: Verso, 1976), p. 157. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 131 for the printing of Blake's Poetical Sketches (1783).29 Blake was also associated with William Godwin as printer of his engraving work and with Mary Wollstonecraft, and in 1791 Blake designed and engraved six plates for Mary Wollstonecraft's Original Stories.30 Blake's somewhat heterodox view of marriage and his portrayal of the conditions of women in the "Visions of the Daughters of Albion" seem to have been fostered by this association. In this vein, it is often noted that "Visions of the Daughters of Albion" was published one year after A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Thus the way Blake configures male-female relations in his Apocalyptic vision of Eternity emerges as a compelling issue. Blake's idealized state after apocalypse is itself ideologically marked. If we do not touch the gender guestion, his formation appears similar to the state of "organized innocence," or the "Holy Image," of Song of Innocence, in which the "human form divine" is fully realized. Heather Glen elaborates: It is satisfying and complete in itself, aiming at nothing beyond itself: this one feels most acutely in the absence of conventional moral directives, and in the 29See G. E. Bentley Jr. and Martin K. Nurmi, A Blake Bibliography: Annotated Lists of Works. Studies, and Blakeans (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1964). 30see Dennis Welch, "Blake's Response to Wollstonecraft's Original Stories," Blake: Illustrated Quarterly 13: 1 (Summer 1979): 4-15. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 132 circular, 'ecchoing' rather than linear, structure of the poems. It is not static, but it does have a curiously timeless quality; a quality epitomized in the archetypal serpent with its tail in its mouth that the dancing children form on the plate for "Nurse's Song." . . . For all these experiences are framed, and the framing makes a space within which potentia can creatively be realized.31 This interpretation indicates Blake's presentation of utopian desire, which takes account of an indestructible, inexhaustible power that remains beneath the whirling currents in life. In his later poetry (where the gender question is foregrounded), Apocalypse brings an end to oppressive social conditions (disunion or separation) and promises New Jerusalem, from which an absolutely new realm emerges. The metaphor of "the Last Judgment" is often used as the defining moment of the coming Utopia. Until the Savior Jesus appears by the help of Los— the mediator, prophet, and poet— the world is assumed to be oscillating continuously, going nearer to the goal of salvation and in turn, coming back to the starting point. Susan Fox indicates a characteristic aspect of Milton' s narrative form: "This curious pattern of temporally and spatially divergent events 31Heather Glen, Vision and Disenchantment: Blake's Songs and Wordsworth’s Lvrical Ballads (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1983), p. 130. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 133 unified only by a network of verbal echoes reveals that all the events are a single event."32 The arrival of the new world, in which all the separated forms come into a harmonious whole, is signaled through a sexual union. Just as the marriage of New Jerusalem and Christ the Lamb in Revelation alludes to the beginning of the new heaven and the new earth, Blake uses the resurrection image for the wedding of Jerusalem and Albion. On "Night the Ninth" (the culminating night) of Four Zoas. for example, the coupling of Los and Enitharmon (117), the death/salvation of Ahania and Urizen (121-2, 125), and the reunion of Luvah and vala (126) and Tharmas and Enion (130:5 ff., 132:36) are drawn: Luvah & Vala henceforth you are Servants obey & live You shall forget your former state return 0 Love in peace Into your place the place of seed not in the brain or heart If Gods combine against Man Setting their Dominion above The Human form Divine, Thrown down from their high Station In the Eternal heavens of Human Imagination: buried beneath In dark oblivion with incessant pangs ages on ages In Enmity & war first weakend then in stern repentance They must renew their brightness & their disorganizd functions (Four Zoas IX. 126:6-14, E 395) Here the sexual segregation or dominion that happened before "Night the Ninth" ends completely. Before "the Ninth Night," 32susan Fox, Poetic Form in Blake's Milton (New Jersey: Princeton UP, 1976), p. 53. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 134 neither male part (due to patriarchal authority) nor the female part (due to "Female Will") dared to stop fighting or revolting. In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Blake argues that the Apocalypse will be realized through "the Improvement of sensual enjoyment." In Leopold Damrosch’s study of Blake's Apocalypse, he stresses that Beulah is sexually "passive and moony": "Blake has demoted the green pasture aspects of paradise to Beulah in order to preserve the vitality of his Eden; but he has damaged the power of his insight by demoting sexuality, too. In Blake's Eden they make war, not love."33 Damrosch's argument, although it perceives female passivity, presumes passionate heterosexual lovemaking to be the epitome of the liberated state, and thus anticipates Gleckner's defense of Blake. In his review of Damrosch, Gleckner argues: "[In Blake's vision] apparent contraries assimilate or are reconciled. Eternal contraries are marriageable."34 Such an endorsement of the author's sexualized ideology tends to gloss over the point that the self-sufficient state strangely implies an equality among "men" or fraternity. Indeed, how inclusive are Blake's allegedly generic words "man" or "fraternity" (as always-already gendered)? How can we 33Leopold Damrosch Jr., Symbol and Truth in Blake's Myth (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1980), p. 238. 34Robert F. Gleckner, "Book Review of Leopold Damrosch Jr.'s Symbol and Truth in Blake's Myth." SiR XXI: 4 (Winter, 1982), p. 672. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 135 appraise his elaborate sexualization of the states of being (sexual overtones, undertones, principles, and presuppositions), which overtly work for the broader sex- gender system? How can we construe the patriarchal family structure encoded in his poetic dramatization of father- daughter, mother-son, conjugal, reproductive relationships? And, how can his conceptualization of femininity as the core of jealousy and female relationship be explained? In Blake, the negative ideologies of Enlightenment individualism are presented as the symptoms of the fallen state, and the convoluted social relations under these ideologies become the center of concern: Rahab created Voltaire; Tirzah created Rousseau; Asserting the Self-righteousness against the Universal Saviour, Mocking the Confessors & Martyrs, claiming Self- righteousness ; With cruel Virtue: making War upon Lambs Redeemed; To perpetuate War & Glory to perpetuate the Laws of Sin: They perverted Swedenborgs Visions in Beulah and in Urlo; To destroy Jerusalem as a Harlot & her Sons as Reprobates; To raise up Mystery the Virgin Harlot Mother of War (I. 40-48, E. 117) Dense criticism of contemporary philosophy, and the disruption and perturbation of its ideology, strenuously leads to the female symbol of the "Virgin Harlot Mother of War," an astringent attack on the morality of religious dogma, war, and established sexual norms. This is certainly one of Blake's typically powerful moments, one which fuses the whole problematics of his poetic reflection into a sexual Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 136 representation. Before this scene, we are told that one of the most negative divisions (atomizations, or individualizations) occurring in the fallen state is the further separation of the female from the male, since, according to Blake, isolated female space fixes the form of life into "frigidness”s Then Los & Enitharmon knew that Satan is Urizen Drawn down by Ore & the Shadowy female into Generation Off Enitharmon enterd weeping into the Space, there appearing An aged Woman raving along the Streets (the Space is named Canaan) then she returned to Los weary frighted as from dreams. (I. 10sl-5, E. 104) This scene certainly recalls the vicious generic circle of "The Mental Traveler," in which the repressive gender system is internalized as an eternal pattern in which the outgrown exploited becomes the new exploiter. In Milton, we are given a conclusive diagnosis: "The nature of a Female Space is this: it shrinks the Organs/ Of Life till they become Finite & Itself seems Infinite" (I. 10:6-7, E. 104). By the same token, at the striking moment of disclosing Urizen out of Satan, Satan's fatal struggle with Palamabron also generates his Spectre, which descends into the Space. In Milton, what should we make of the fact that his (ideal) femininity, Ololon, the collective being (Polypus) of three wives and three daughters, is represented provocatively as a "Virgin" and aspires toward reunion with Milton; while Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 137 Milton as a prophetic epic persona (in this sense, a collective being) desires an Apocalyptic incorporation with Los and Blake (and vice versa)? To renovate and redeem the corrupted state of the world, Ololon should be incorporated into Milton (as Milton should be mediated by Ololon) and should have no aspiration for a positive connection with the Daughters of Beulah or other female figures. Blake preempts to a considerable extent any explicit gender struggle between Milton and his daughters or wives by stressing the importance of the union between Milton and Ololon. Ololon, as Milton's ideal partner and the ritualistic composite of three wives and three daughters,35 ought to follow and embrace Milton with almost unconditional "love." An autobiographically compelling aspect of patriarchal oppression by the heroic poet is effectively canceled, while the drastic "common" enemy Urizen seems the prime target to be vanquished. A glance at another visual representation of Milton and "his women" might offer an interesting contrast: George 35While W. J. T. Mitchell in his "Blake's Radical Comedy" (in Blake’s Sublime Allegory) uses the plural pronoun for Ololon, I use a third person female singular form, not only because Blake attributes an immediate physical tangibility to Ololon, but because the very representability of Ololon should be questioned. Blake sometimes indicates "the multitudes of Ololon" (II. 35:37, E.1365), yet clearly writes that "as One Female, Ololon. . ./ Appear'd: a Virgin . . ." (II. 36:36-7, E.137). See Mitchell's footnote 15, p. 300- 1. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 138 Romney's portrayal of Milton (fig. 3) as a rather old and fallen figure in his Milton and His Two Daughters (published as an illustration in The Poetical Works of John Milton, with a Life of the Author bv William Hay ley. 1794) provides a useful reference’ . Since George Romney visited Hayley at Felpham in 1792,36 eight years before Blake himself, and since it is highly likely that Blake would have seen the picture while he was staying at Felpham (1800-1803, before he finished Milton), the contrast between Romney's and Blake's pictorial narratives suggests more than just a coincidence. Here Milton's shape (except the haggard, grief-ridden face, which nevertheless retains its gentle and sensitive aspects) is covered by a somber shroud that dominates the dark half of the canvas. Also observed is his obtrusive, imposing left foot, in contrast to the daughters' rather voluptuous, healthy bare arms. That foot seems to indicate Milton's gloomy domination of the other half of the scene, where two ^ A c c o r d i n g to Damon and Michael Davis, George Romney is seen as a very neurotic painter whom William Hayley supported for years at Eartham and Felpham. In 1777 Hayley published The Epistle on Painting, Addressed to George Romney. and later, he worked on the Life of Romnev. for which Blake engraved one plate after he came back to London. The relationship with Romney as well as with Hayley seems to be particularly important in Blake's period of writing Milton, and the quarrel scene between Palamabron and Satan in Milton represents the conflict between Blake and Hayley. For further detail, see S. Foster Damon, A Blake Dictionary: The Ideas and Symbols of William Blake (Boulder: Shambhala, 1979), pp. 176-8. Also see Michael Davis, William Blake: A New Kind of Man (Berkley: U of California P, 1977), pp. 86-114. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 139 young and blooming female figures read and write under his control. The expression of the centered young girl's face, depicting a mixture of awe and playful resistance, seems to let us glance at the possible tension between them. Blake's critique of the king-priest-father falls short of exposing the sexual politics involved in the father- daughter dynamic. The Daughter is unquestionably aligned with the father's position. Milton and his daughters share the same affinity assumed in the father-daughter relationship with the Satan-Palamabron pair. The daughter is always already an arbiter or a mediator, or even a scapegoat for the father. 4. Splitting up and Regrouping No sooner [Ololon] had spoke but Rahab Babylon appeard Eastward upon the Paved work across Europe & Asia, Glorious as the midday Sun, in Satan's bosom glowing: A Female hidden in a Male, Religion hidden in War, Namd Moral Virtue; cruel two-fold Monster shining bright, A Dragon red & hidden Harlot which John in Patmos saw. (Milton, II. 40: 20-22) Blake's goal for Milton, in his own words, is an imaginative pursuit of ’ ’ the Sublime state of the Bible"— the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 140 ideal organic society in the New Age. For this reason, he advocates "our own [English] Imagination," while negating the destructive Greek or Roman models. In this vein, he makes an assessment of Miltonic (epic) achievement as well as of Shakespeare's influence: when the New Age is at leisure to Pronounce; all will be set right: & those Grand Works of the more ancient & consciously & professedly Inspired Men, will hold their proper rank, & Daughters of Memory shall become the Daughters of Inspiration. ("Preface," pi. 1, E 95) Again, even though his "Man" is not exclusively male, his contrast of "Men" with "Daughters" (of Inspiration or of Memory) seems to imply a two-fold ideology regarding the naming of women; women stop short at being the diminutive "daughters"— the helpers or arbiters in his vision of the Golden Age. The Miltonic prescription for the Father-Son relationship, in which woman is always-already a daughter, is encapsulated in Blake's provocation, "Rouze up 0 Young Men of the New Age I" Starting the poem with an epic convention, he indeed echoes Paradise Lost: "Daughters of Beulah! Muses who inspire the Poets Song/Record the journey of immortal Milton thro' your Realms/ Of terror & mild moony lustre, in soft sexual delusions/Of varied beauty, to delight the wanderer and repose/ His burning thirst & freezing hunger!" (I. 2:1-5, E 96). The Daughters of Beulah take the role of Muses at first, and their role then expands to include the prototype Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 141 of Womanhood/Motherhood (the soul-giver and the source of creation, yet not quite the agent or creator of the world— the male poet): "Come into my hand/ By your mild power; descending down the Nerves of my right arm/ From out the portals of my Brain, where by your ministry/ The Eternal Great Humanity Divine, planted his Paradise" (I. 2:5-8, E 96). While reaffirming the notion of a male-female dichotomy, Blake expects the feminine role of soul-making and nurturing from his Beulah-Muse. Certainly, the trope of the Muse, coupled with the Madonna and Eve, has been used to represent a compensatory role for women's actual eviction, "if not from society, at least from the political arena which was more than ever in the hands of the Father."37 Partly conventional, partly Blake's own engendering process of invocation, a dynamic of contrariety in Beulah's realm is articulated. Here one pole is an ideal state of being, liberated and fulfilled, while the other is beguiling and oppressive: "Tell also of the False Tongue I vegetated/ Beneath your land of shadows: of its sacrifices and/its offerings" (I. 2:10-11, E.96). Blake then moves toward the dramatization of Satan and Palamabron's fiery argument, with Leutha finally showing up to resolve the conflict. Compared with Beulah, Leutha 37C6cil Dauphin, Anette Farge, Genevieve Fraisse and others, "Women's Culture and Women's Power: An Attempt at Historiography," trans. Camille Garnier, Journal of Women's History (Spring 1989), p. 77. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 142 (Beulah's daughter), has an even more serious problem: while (soft, passive) Beulah contains a seed of recuperation, guilt-ridden Leutha shows that her inner conflicts have progressed further. She has internalized the feminine ideology as the arbiter of destruction and becomes a scapegoat for Father-figure Satan, when Satan is condemned after contending with Palamabron, Leutha shows up and confesses, "I am the Author of this Sinl by my suggestion/My Parent power Satan has committed this transgression" (I. 10:35-6, E 105). The alleged reason is that she aspired with every feminine charm to usurp "beautiful . . . heart-piercing and lovely" Elynittria's position in order to gain access to Palamabron, yet her recognition of the impossibility of doing so leads her (in despair and jealousy) to disrupt Palamabron's terrain. Subsequent to Leutha's poignant confession (of her sin in the heart of Satan), a temporary resolution of the whole dispute is signaled by Elynittria's bringing Leutha to Palamabron's bed. Yet by so doing, she generates further complication, because this pandering brings forth more distorted/divided forms: "In moments new created for delusion, interwoven round about,/In dreams she [Leutha] bore the shadowy Spectre of Sleep, & named him Death./In dreams she bore Rahab the mother of Tirzah & her sisters/In Lambeths vales" (I. 13:39-42, E.107). This moment of temporary resolution marks a crucial ending of the Bard's song and necessitates Milton's appearance. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 143 In Book II, Milton's descent goes hand in hand with unraveling the deepened problems of the fallen state; and at the same time, the various levels of trouble in "eternal death" eventually prepare for Milton's silent and intense confrontation with Urizen. Throughout the process of Milton’s descent and travel, as well as Los's appearance and his entrance into Blake, sexualized and thus problematized spectres and shadows are generated whose latent conflicts have become potent. In this process, Blake dialectically negates dogmatic binaries of good and evil and their assorted poles (such as heaven and hell— e.g., Los "in his wrath curs'd heaven & earth" altogether, because they produce destructive warfare [I. 9:13]— or innocence and experience), but he nonetheless deploys sexualization with deterministic gender roles that reaffirm the established male/female status. This binary opposition between male and female gradually widens its gap as Blake ambiguously presents an androgynous form as Milton's shadow. When he descends, Milton confronts "hermaphroditic: male & female/ In one wonderful body" (1.14:37-8, E.108), and later these forms are rendered more concrete when Ololon descends and faces "I" (Blake the narrator) in his cottage: . . . these the names of the Twenty-seven Heavens & their Churches Adam, Seth, Enos, Cainan, Mahalaleel, Jared, Enoch, Methuselah, Lantech: these are Giants mighty Hermaphroditic Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 144 Noah, Shem, Arphaxad, Cainan the second, Salah, Heber, Peleg, Reu, Serug, Nahor, Terah, these are the Female- Males A Male-within a Female hid as in an Ark & Curtains, Abraham, Moses, Solomon, Paul, Constantine, Charlemaine Luther, these seven are the Male-Females, the Dragon Forms Religion hid in War, a Dragon red & hidden Harlot All these are seen in Miltons Shadow who is the Covering Cherub (II. 37:35-44, E 138) This cataloguing is particularly intricate and ambiguous, since while Blake indeed examines hermaphroditism as a possible category of human existence, he tenaciously continues sexualizing. In fact, the notion of a hermaphroditic society or androgyny as a Utopian state was not uncommon among Blake's intellectual contemporaries. Because the very existence of hermaphroditism "confounded the law that distinguished the sexes and prescribed their union,"38 the spreading of such notions was prohibited by laws. Still, the intellectual milieu of Europe provided discourses on hermaphroditism or androgyny as an antithesis to fixed sexual differentiation and to the relative power imbalance between the sexes.39 Blake, however, maintained a 38Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality. Vol 1: An Introduction. Trans. Robert Hurley (NY: Vintage Books, 1978), p. 38. 3^Natalie Zemon Davis lists a very interesting case involving the notion of hermaphrodite in early modern France, quoting Les avantures de Jacques Sadeur. Davis notes an attempt to depict an ideal society done by a French writer named Gabriel de Foigny who imagined "Autralie" as a hermaphroditic utopia. In the book, a French traveler, who is entrenched with father/ patriarch-oriented ideas, is questioned on the European notion of marriage by an Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 145 strong hostility towards such a possibility: "A Vegetated Christ & a virgin Eve cure the Hermaphroditic Blasphemy" (Jerusalem 90: 34). In Milton. Blake considers the state of hermaphrodite as "two-fold Monsters" (II. 40:22), and then splits up the Hermaphrodism into three forms— Mighty giants, Female-Males (A Male within a Female) and Male-Females (A Female within a Male), tracing the hidden faculties which originated from sexual division. In view of these polarized male/female states, some critics attempt to account for Blake's imposition of the gendered role not as a reinscription of the sexist norm, but as a delineation of problematic reality (while highlighting that "There is no such thing in Eternity as a Female Will" in A Vision of the Last Judgment 85, E 552). For example, while defending Blake, Irene Tayler focuses on the woman question and stresses "Blake's revolutionary attack on the limited sex-roles of a patriarchal culture" and emphasizes that in Blake's liberated Eternity "there are no sexes, only Human Forms" which Australian, the hermaphrodite: "The Australian, in whom the sexes were one, could not understand how a conflict of wills could be avoided within the 'mutual possession' of European marriage. The French traveler answered that it was simple, for mother and child were both subject to the father. The hermaphrodite, horrified at such a violation of the total autonomy that was the sign of complete true 'men,' dismissed the European pattern as bestial." See Davis, Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1975], p. 128). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 146 experience no divisions between male and female but exist as "one will," as seen in the male-female relationship of Beulah (Eden): "For the point is not that man is supreme and woman dependent, but rather that there is no longer a division between the two: they have one will. These human forms Blake calls "Men," who communicate by a radiant energy that might in the metaphors of fallen language be called their "female" emanations."40 This line of argument either ends up by designating Blake as an advocate of an androgynous society (in the sense of total sexual equality),41 or insisting that "Blake's fraternity seems not to exclude women" and that "most of Blake's female figures are symbols of mental states or their projections that can be found in any mind, male or 40lrene Tayler, "The Woman Scaly," ed. Mary Lynn Johnson and John Grant, Blake's Poetry and Designs (NY: Norton, 1979), P. 551. 41The concept of Androgyny itself is controversial. In favor of the term, Carolyn Heilbrun argues that an androgynous undercurrent runs throughout Western humanism, which, if recognized, would help us to free ourselves and society from the role-playing and division of labor required under patriarchy. (See Toward a Recognition of Androgyny [NY: Norton, 1982].) On the other hand, many critics consider "androgyny" an imaginary concept disguising real oppression; as Catherine Stimpson perceives, "the androgyne still fundamentally thinks in terms of ' feminine' and ' masculine. ' It fails to conceptualize the world and to organize phenomena in a new way that leaves 'feminine' and 'masculine' behind." See "The Androgyne and the Homosexual," Where the Meanings Are: Feminism and Cultural Spaces (NY and London: Methuen, 1988), pp. 54-61. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 147 female."42 However, Blake's replication of the sexual dichotomy is too persistent for such a resolution, and his complicated (sometimes equivocal) attitudes toward women rather reveals "a serious self-contradiction in his version of the universe."43 The question is: if Blake's differentiation of male and female is not just physically or "biologically" demarcated (because his concept of an entity is not an individual human being but a state), then what are the most fundamental and determining characteristics of maleness and femaleness in Blake? 5. The Mystery of "Female Hill" There is no such thing in Eternity as a Female Will. — A Vision of the Last Judgment 85, E 552 In Blake's negative scheme of the fallen state— that is, the split and distorted condition— the most distinctive feminine character is jealousy, which is defined rather inclusively and symbolically as "Female Will." "The Mental 42Michael Ferber, "Blake's Idea of Brotherhood," PMLA 93 (May, 1978), p. 446. 43Susan Fox, "The Female Role as Metaphor in William Blake's Poetry." Critical Inquiry 3:3 (Spring, 1977), p. 507. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 148 Traveler" succinctly demonstrates that the female part [Emanation and Female Shade] of a healthy whole becomes afflicted with terrible jealousy over the male part; while being stricken with a possessive "Female will," the female part undergoes the continuous reproduction of torture, which becomes her distorted pleasure. In Four Zoas. where the fragmentation based on sexual dichotomy is extensively dramatized, Enitharmon in the fallen state declares "the joy of woman is the Death of her best beloved/ who dies for Love of her/ In torments of fierce jealousy & pangs of adoration" ("Night II," 34:63-5). In the songs of Beulah to Ololon in Milton, the "Divine Voice" (which Harold Bloom rightly suspects as "the unfallen Male-God") speaks: Thy love depends on him thou lovest & on his dear loves Depend thy pleasures which thou hast cut off by jealousy Therefore I shew my Jealousy & set before you Death. Behold Milton descended to Redeem the Female Shade For Death Eternal; such your lot, to be continually Redeem'd By death & misery of those you love & by Annihilation When the Sixfold Female perceives that Milton annihilates Himself: that seeing all his loves by her cut off: he leaves Her also: entirely abstracting himself from Female loves, She shall relent in fear of death: . . . (II. 33: 8-17, E 132-33) Indeed woman is defined by the man she loves, and once she erroneously cuts off the man because of her excessive jealousy she will be punished with his renunciation of her, until she is saved by a (male) redeemer through annihilation. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 149 The "Female will," a judgmental conception (and a naturalized, internalized view) of "female possessiveness," is then extended to the notion of the controlling, domineering Phallic mother.44 This scenario illustrates the fascinating fantasy and fear of the male subject who constructs the imaginary power of threatening woman as Female Will and then strives to annihilate such power: only when the female figure completely subjugates herself to the husband's pleasure, "then and then alone begins the happy Female joy/ As it is done in Beulah." This psychical mechanism of pleasure or jealousy should always lead us to question "whose pleasure/ jealousy is at stake here?" It is plausible that by the term "Female Will," Blake stringently criticizes the corrupting mechanism of growing capitalism and the structure of repression, which function at the root of male/female relationships.45 The notion of an all-encompassing motherhood as an embodiment of nature obviously stems from Greek and Latin mythologies as well as Christian tradition, bringing about what Northrop Frye calls "mother-centered myths, where nature is an earth goddess renewing her vitality (in more sophisticated versions, her 44See Jean H. Hagstrum, "Babylon Revisited or the Story of Luvah and Vala" in Blake's Sublime Allegory, especially, pp. 108-9. 450n this point, see David Aers "Blake: Sex, Society and Ideology" in Romanticism and Ideology (London: rkp, 1981). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 150 virginity) every spring."46 Therefore, the mother-goddess becomes "morally a most ambiguous figure, who, depending on her phase, may be anything from the blushing bride of the Song of Sonas to the ferocious Cybele of Catullus' Attis Ode."47 This male-centered myth sees motherhood as "the magical power invested in women by men, whether in the fom of Goddess-worship or the fear of being controlled and overwhelmed by women," exaggerating woman's "biological potential or capacity to bear and nourish human life."48 As Anne Mellor notes, Blake's construction of femininity falls into a masculinist notion in the ways it "implicitly affirms [the] image of the woman as passive earth-mother by presenting its alternative, the aggressive, independent woman, as someone who thwarts imaginative vision (by insisting on the primacy of the five senses) and at the same ^Northrop Frye differentiates mother-centered myths from father-god myths (the more aggressive myths of Judaism, Christianity, and Plato's Timaeus), which reflect an urban, tool-using, male-dominated society where the central figure usually develops out of a father-god associated with the sky. See his A Study of English Romanticism. (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1968), p.6. 47Frye, p. 6. 48Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution (NY and London: Norton, 1986), p. 13. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 151 time frustrates sensual pleasure (by chastely denying man sexual satisfaction in order to gain power over him). "49 Blake identifies the "Female Will"— and femininity itself— with egoistic selfhood, while precluding a possibility of women's existence independent of men. And as shown in the dramatic reversal of Leutha's confession, it is always suspect when a switch— from mediator to agency— takes place in the female role. Thus as a generative source of the oppressive system, the internalized, ferocious, power-hungry woman proves to have a possessive "Female Will," which then perpetuates a system oppressive to other people, and especially frustrating to men: "There is a Throne in every Man, it is the Throne of God/ This Woman has claimd as her own & Man is no more!" (J 30 [34]: 27-8, E 175). The attribution of traumatizing will to women as the origin of all ills can be seen as "an inversion and displacement of a masculine trauma, an awareness of rift and a doubt about the safe continuity of mothering functions."50 Therefore, Blake's supposedly non-biological bifurcation of the state-beings becomes even more problematical: it superficially negates the biological dichotomy of man/ woman, 4^Anne k . Mellor, "Blake's Portrayal of Women," Blake: an Illustrated Quarterly (winter, 1982-3), p. 148. SOpavid Punter, "Blake, Trauma and the Female," NLH XV: 4 (1981), p. 486. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 152 only to come back metaphysically to a male/female state of being. This epistemic construction of female sexuality also leads to a confirmation of the heterosexual gender system. In Blake's logic, tearing off the female "veil of mystery" and subjugating the female will thus signal the redemption of the divided, afflicted fallen state. In Four Zoas, Jesus initiates such a redemption with an inevitably violent action upon the female body of (vegetating) Vala: "then was within/ The bosom of Satan the false Female as in an ark & veil/ Which Christ must rend & her reveal. . ("Night VIII," 105: 24-6). In Milton. Milton descends to Redeem the Female Shade (II. 33:11, E.132), and Ololon as a representative female collaborates with him to construct an "Eternal Form," or human form divine. The redemption of the fallen state, including Milton and Ololon, is symbolized by their union, which confirms the idea that this is an ultimate reward for Ololon's spiritual "virginity." Before this scene, Blake portrays Ololon's descent as follows: For Ololon step'd into the Polypus within the Mundan shell They could not step into Vegetable Worlds without becoming The enemies of Humanity except in a Female Form And as One Female, Ololon and all its mighty Hosts Appear'd: a Virgin of twelve years nor time nor space was To the perception of the Virgin Ololon but as the Flash of lightning but more quick the Virgin in my Garden (II. 36:13-8, E.136-7) Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 153 Here the repeated emphasis on Ololon's virginity does not refer to the physical chastity normatized by sexist, patriarchal tradition, although the signifier is inseparable from such social implications. The term "virgin" in Blake often carries negative associations— repression or inhibition of "Gratified desire," especially when combined with the term "Harlot" to signify a problematic social condition. It manifests the will to victimize oneself and to deploy such status only to control others, as evidenced in Beulah's song or her giving "Her maidens to her husband" to evoke others' pity" (II. 33 :17-8, E.133). Blake thus stresses that Ololon is spiritually a "virgin" and suggests her holiness, innocence, "purity," sweetness, and beauty. And as the collective form of three wives and three daughters, Ololon "might be resum'd/By giving up of Selfhood" (I. 17:2-3, E.110), with the implication that "virginity" is replaceable with "female selfhood." 6. A Vanishing Mediator, or, Preempted Self-Annihilation Blake's construction of innocent womanhood in Thel seems to introduce the ideal femininity he later elaborates. Thel, the figure of female innocence, is described in the beginning of Thel as follows: ... She in paleness sought the secret air, Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 154 To fade away like morning beauty from her mortal day... 0 life of this our spring! why fades the lotus of the water? Ah Thel is like a watry bow. and like a parting cloud. Like a reflection in a glass, like shadows in the water. Like dreams of infants, like a smile upon an infants face, Like the doves voice, like transient day, like music in the air; (I: 2-11) The chain of similes rendered to capture the essence of Thel forms a loose circle of metaphoric slippage. In the end, however, Thel's maturation, especially her discovery of the sexual dimension in human behavior, leads her to a traumatic flights She wandered in the land of clouds thro' valleys dark, listening Dolorous & lamentations; waiting oft beside a dewy grave She stood in silence, listning to the voices of the ground, Till to her own grave plow she came, & there she sat down. And heard this voice of sorrow breathed from the hollow pit: The virgin started from her seat, & with a shriek, Fled back unhinderd till she came into the vales of Har. (pi. IV: 6-22; emphasis added) This emblematic ending repeats itself in Milton, as far as the role of ideal woman is concerned. In Milton. Ololon’s descent in search of Milton ends with their confrontation, which closes the whole epic poem: beholding Urizen, Los, Ore, Tharmas, and other divided forms, Ololon inquires into the reason of Milton's self annihilation and asks if she caused "this impossible absurdity" (II. 40:13, E. 141)— evidence of Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 155 her internalized guilt. To this question Milton replies "in terrible majesty": Obey thou the Words of the Inspired Mein All that can be annihilated must be annihilated That the Children of Jerusalem may be saved from slavery. There is a Negation, & there is a Contrary: The Negation must be destroyed to redeem the Contraries. The Negation is the Spectre, the Reasoning Power in Man. This is a false Body: an Incrustation over my Immortal Spirit: a Selfhood, which must be put off & annihilated away To cleanse the Face of my Spirit by Self-examination To bathe in the Waters of Life; to wash off the Not Human I come in Self-annihilation & the grandeur of inspiration To cast off Rational Demonstration by Faith in the Savior (II. 40:29-37, 41:1-3, E 142) Casting off femininity for divinity apparently eliminates the problematic state of a "Negation" for the sake of a "Contrary," yet there is no simultaneous casting off of masculinity. The first three lines construct an immense patriarchal family scheme in the "new" world by an inspired man, an almost non-existent (and obedient) woman, and "newly born" children. Why does Milton's painful self-examination end with a "bathing in the Waters of life" to enter into Jesus' realm, instead of a world of natural birth and its attendant bonds to a natural mother? In Paradise Lost, Milton inverts the creation process— "He for God, she for God in him." Similarly, in Blake's claim that "In Eternity Woman is the Emanation of Man," woman melts away, and her status is far from that of the creator of life. Blake's solution to the problematics of sexual politics seems to have stemed from the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 156 same "sexological" common ground of myth-making: female creation by man. As Jean-Joseph Goux shows in his analysis of "a history of symbolization," the founding fantasy of Judeo-Christian myth has been the active negation of the Mother51— women's power of reproduction and motherhood under male control. Literature actively participates in this myth: for example, the rhetorical power behind the creation of Eve out of Adam's rib, or MacDuff's negation "of woman born" ("MacDuff was from his mother's womb/untimely ripp'd"; Macbeth V. viii: 11-15), powerfully inscribes the male appropriation of women's natural procreation. The principle of maleness and femaleness in politically charged discourse represents a deep-rooted gender politics, which can be reinforced through implicit metaphors. Blake's resolution of the sexual dichotomy into "human form divine" (which often means the feminine part absorbed within man) thus inevitably proposes the voluntary subjugation of women; they willingly disappear, as exemplified by Ololon's self-subjugation. Toward the epic finale, Milton's tone becomes more and more magisterial and demands an unconditional voluntary obedience from questioning Ololon ("To cast off the idiot 51Jean-Joseph Goux, Economie et symbolique (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1973), and Les iconoclastes (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1978); qtd in Alice A. Jardine, Gvnesis: Configurations of Woman and Modernity (Ithaca and London: Cornell UP, 1985), p. 32. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 157 Questioner who is always questioning/But never capable of answering;" 41:12-3). Milton's mythic voice is used to declare the eternal salvation based on female submission in peace. Ololon responds: Is this our Femin[in]e Portion the Six-fold Miltonic Female Terribly this Portion trembles before thee 0 awful Man Alth' our Human Power can sustain the severe contentions Of friendship, our Sexual cannot: but flies into the Ulro. Hence arose all our terrors in Eternity I & now remembrance Returns upon usl are we Contraries 0 Milton, Thou & I 0 Immortal I how were we led to War the Wars of Death Is this the Void Outside of Existence, which if enterd into Becomes a Womb? & is this the Death Couch of Albion Thou goest to Eternal Death & all must go with thee (II. 41:32-42:2, E 143) Ololon voluntarily and dolorously tears herself off and is reabsorbed into Milton's body as a dove: "the Virgin divided Six-fold & with a shriek/Dolorous that ran thro all Creation a Double Six-fold Wonder 1/Away from Ololon she divided & fled into the depths/Of Miltons Shadow as a Dove upon the stormy Sea" (42:3-6, E 143). Traditionally this has been interpreted as a desirable surrender to the "Human Form Divine," and Blake seems to say joyfully that it is the completion of resurrection (42:27-8). Bloom annotates: "The sexual fears of Ololon in Eden are now revealed and purged. . . . The Ololon of Female Love joins Milton's rejected shadow in the depth of the chaotic sea, the watery world of the Ulro. But the Ololon Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 158 who has chosen Human Love appears as the Dove sent to Noah" (E 927). Why should Ololon's sexuality qua female be alluded to as the most resistant enigmatic residue to be purged? Since she becomes a dove to fulfill "Human Love," Ololon loses her "human" voice and cannot answer. In this picturesque ending, suddenly "soft" Oothoon (of "Visions of the Daughters of Albion") appears to weep happily over her "Human Harvest." Once depicted as the "Female Prometheus" character in "Visions of the Daughters of Albion" (fig. 4),52 Oothoon shows up only to cry: "soft Oothoon/ Pants in the Vales of Lambeth, weeping over her Human Harvest" (42:32-33, E 144; fig. 5). Another visual depiction related to the Promethean theme is the rather enigmatic pi. 42 (fig. 6), in which archetypal Albion and his bride Jerusalem lie on the rocky shore of the "Sea of Time and Space" under the hovering eagle. Here again, the female figure is passive and decorous, next to the Promethean male figure. Further, the final plate of Milton53 5 2 The Oothoon figure is hovered over by the Theotormon-eagle in "Visions of the Daughters of Albion" 3j: Oothoon ("the soft soul of America") on a cloud is harassed by the beak of Theotormon's eagle. Yet this image could be seen as a Oothoon's rhetorical imagination. The image reappears in America 13, where it is a true vision of the horrors of war and where the beak of the eagle is ravenous. In America. Blake displays the physical and mental horrors of war as felt by female and male bodies (later depiction Jerusalem pi. 58). 53The final plate (pi. 50) arouses different opinions about the identification of the central figure. Damon sees it as an abstracted "Soul in ultimate ecstasy, between Seraphims Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 159 (fig. 7) shows the "crucified" female figure with two male figures on each side, almost gloriously balanced. Considering that Ololon has gone through an elaborate and complicated process of reunifying with a heroic male subjectivity (Milton), this mysterious final plate seems to raise many more questions than it attempts to resolve. Erdman considers the central figure as the combined character of Ololon and Oothoon, and he seems to sanctify Blake's painstaking project of making (via annihilating) the human form divine: "Where is Milton? In Blake. Where is Blake? One Man with Los— in Jesus. The text would seem to prepare us to see in the central figure the human form divine that presides at the harvest as One Man, Jesus, in whom all the figures, male and female, have consolidated."54 For a feminist reader, the process of re-figuring the weeping Oothoon and the disfigured Ololon begins with interrogating the inscribed difference between Milton’s and Ololon's process of becoming/annihilating. The most striking difference is that whereas in Milton's persona the collective being of Milton, Blake and Los merge and re-emerge as a "new man," in Ololon the conflict-ridden process of annihilation is inconceivable, other than as the dependent of Milton's of Love." Irene Tayler observes the figure as Ololon in her "Say First1 What Mov'd Blake?" in Blake's Sublime Allegory, p. 257. 54oavid Erdman, The Illuminated Blake (Garden City: Anchor Books, 1974), p. 266. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 160 reconciliation or mediation. Ololon always functions as the figure of "the woman," constituted by six women, who are wonderfully all alike. Thus when revolutionary Milton confronts Urizen, Ololon embodies the most enduring and auxiliary soul-nurturer. Female sexuality, however, as the enigma to be resolved, should be annihilated in a most voluntary manner for the reconstructed "human form divine." Since Ololon never undertakes the role of agent, this celebrated "human form divine" inevitably effects Milton's containment of Ololon— the female absorption into the male. Can this be called a fearful "asymmetry"? Does the central figure of the final plate indeed feature "crucified" Ololon? Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 161 fig. 1 Milton pi. 18 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 162 4£m±M y i Z ^S^facLT^ ujLiq • j C ( t i l n ) > * V J LjAfiSrn>£ * m < / * £ * 0 ( 2 L m \ ^M* ¥<. , jLjL*A I • C S^j' y^ * • * - 9 » 7 » f7*^"* SZm& &£" * ££ + mm, m . J , s/jf tu. 2U ~ - ? * r v «■»; Tr* *> z-j/^uL «'*£r ’ Vi £::fc < M L v F " v . . i - V ^ X* a f ; % fig. 2 Vala p. 44 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 163 fig. 3 George Romney, "Milton and His Daughters" Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 164 dnd none but Jiramtan. can. hear my lametxtatuocr . . * Mcff 3ense ^ dt that th* t d t i c f t e n . s/urns' the ravenous’ ht“h ’ V t dj j . wjuit sense floes' the tatne oigeon measure nut the expanse? WfOT trnot decs ti ut f j ee form cells? 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Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 168 Chapter 3 Drawing the Female Prometheus, or the Mystery of the Medusan Gaze Yet I fear Her subtle mind, her awe-inspiring gaze, Whose beams anatomize me nerve by nerve And lay me bare, and make me blush to see My hidden thoughts. — Orsino from The Cenci, I. ii. 83-871 1. Reading Shelley Reading: A Feminist Inquiry Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it. — Shelley, A Defence of Poetry. 491 What does it suggest that a poet's fascination with a beautiful woman in a painting triggered a lengthy poetic representation of the historical figure that is not the woman in the painting after all? How can we explain that Percy Shelley, a poet with a Promethean ideal, stopped after the third act of Prometheus Unbound (considering it done at the time), and wrote a play invoking a female Prometheus, who ipercy B. Shelley, The Cenci: A Tragedy in Five Acts, in Shelley's Poetry and Prose, ed. Donald H. Reiman and Sharon Powers (NY and London: Norton, 1977), Act I, Scene iii, lines 83-87. Quotations from the Cenci text will hereafter be cited by act, scene and line number from this edition. References to the "Preface" to The Cenci and Shelley's other works will hereafter be cited by page number from the Norton edition unless otherwise noted. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 169 turns out to be at once fascinatingly enigmatic and formidably monstrous? What does it mean that while undertaking a "just" representation of an awe-inspiring figure in a tragic maelstrom, Shelley still faces "the chasm" in the character of Beatrice on which he cannot help but equivocate? By examining these interconnected questions on The Cenci. as well as the focal points of the play—"a nameless wrong" (the rape), an unspeakable crime (the patricide), and an unanswered answer (Beatrice's "casuistry"), I argue that The Cenci provides a feminist reader with a particularly useful textual instance to investigate not just abominable incidents of paternal tyranny and patricide but much more complex operations of violence, law and desire that intersect with gender issues. Shelley's "Preface" to The Cenci starts with a description of his encounter with the transcription of an "eminently fearful and monstrous" tragic incident; "A Manuscript was communicated to me during my travels in Italy which was copied from the archives of the Cenci Palace at Rome, and contains a detailed account of the horrors which ended in the extinction of one of the noblest and richest families of that city during the Pontificate of Clement VIII, in the year 1599" ("Preface" 238). The violent sequence of the Cenci tragedy comprises Count Cenci's calculated rape of his daughter Beatrice, the murder of the Count, and the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 170 Pope's execution of Beatrice and her allies. Although it happened two centuries before his arrival at Rome (1818), Shelley notes that this tragic family history was not only widely known among "all ranks of" contemporary Romans, but never failed to generate their "deep and breathless interest," or "a romantic pity for the wrongs, and a passionate exculpation of the horrible deed to which they urged [Beatrice]" ("Preface" 239). Shelley's emphasis in his "Preface" on the Romans' sympathetic attitude towards Beatrice seems to have stemmed from his projection of the audience's sympathetic reception of his play at home, especially since he strongly wished for its production on the London stage. With an eye to his British readership in an increasingly reactionary milieu,2 Shelley stresses both his own "delicate" approach to the subject and its highly "dramatic" (tragic, aesthetic) nature, while downplaying the political implication of Beatrice's active involvement in patricide: "The highest moral purpose aimed at in the highest species of the drama, is the teaching 2Stuart Curran, for example, notes, "Deprived by George Ill's senility of the symbol of England's constitutional monarch, the Tory leadership during the Regency confused agitation for needed reforms with Jacobin revolution. And the successful conclusion of the war with France only strengthened their conservatism" (Shelley's Cenci: Scorpions Ringed with Fire [Princeton: Princeton UP, 1970]), p. 6; also see Michael Scrivener, Radical Shelley: The Philosophical Anarchism and Utopian Thought of Percy Bysshe Shelley (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1982), esp. chapters 1 and 2. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 171 the human heart, through its sympathies and antipathies, the knowledge of itself" (240). Shelley thus asks his readership to suspend "vulgar" and "dogmatic" moral judgment of Beatrice’s act. Such a view also corresponds with his later description of drama (or dramatic lyric) in the Defense of Poetry (1821): "In a drama of the highest order there is little food for censure or hatred; it teaches rather self- knowledge and self-respect" (491). Since Shelley proposes teaching the knowledge of the human heart itself through a literary representation of a historical event, the question of how he does it in the play becomes his great concern: "I have endeavoured as nearly as possible to represent the characters as they probably were, and have sought to avoid the error of making them actuated by my own conceptions of right or wrong, false or true, thus under a thin veil converting names and actions of the sixteenth century into cold inpersonations of my own mind" ("Preface," 240; emphasis added). This concern with representation leads him to a related query on poetic language: I have avoided with great care in writing this play the introduction of what is commonly called mere poetry, and I imagine there will scarcely be found a detached simile or a single isolated description, unless Beatrice's description of the chasm appointed for her father's murder should be judged to be of that nature. In a dramatic composition the imagery and the passion should interpenetrate one another, the former Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 172 being reserved simply for the full development and illustration of the latter. Imagination is as the immortal God which should assume flesh for the redemption of mortal passion. (241; emphasis added) On the one hand, Shelley expresses his alliance with Wordsworthian poetics especially where dramatic poetry is concerned ("it-must be the real language of men in general, and not that of any particular class to whose society the writer happens to belong" [241]); on the other, the climactic point of the play, Beatrice's patricide (and its unnameable cause—the Father's rape of her), is construed through a literary trope, because it is perhaps beyond "the real language of men in general." And the precise links between imagination and passion, imagination and "real language," remain open to interpretation. While constructing Beatrice's "chasm” as unrepresentable by "real" language, Shelley nonetheless turns to an exemplary and "just" representation of her character— the famous "Guido portrait of Beatrice Cenci." In the well- known painting of Beatrice that Shelley saw at Palazzo Colonna (22nd of April, 1819), he finds a paragon of the fearful symmetry of gentleness and energy, and simplicity and profundity. It was perhaps this paradoxical combination of beauty and terror that intrigued and inspired the English poet in exile to draft a five-act play in two months: The portrait of Beatrice at the Colonna Palace is admirable as a work of art: it was taken by Guido during her confinement in prison. But it is most Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 173 interesting as a just representation of one of the loveliest specimens of the workmanship of Nature. There is a fixed and pale composure upon the features: she seems sad and stricken down in spirit, yet the despair thus expressed is lightened by the patience of gentleness. Her head is bound with folds of white drapery from which the yellow strings of her golden hair escape, and fall about her neck. The moulding of her face is exquisitely delicate; the eyebrows are distinct and arched; the lips have that permanent meaning of imagination and sensibility which suffering has not repressed and which it seems as if death scarcely could extinguish. Her forehead is large and clear; her eyes, which we are told were remarkable for their vivacity, are swollen with weeping and lustreless, but beautifully tender and serene. In the whole mien there is a simplicity and dignity which united with her exquisite loveliness and deep sorrow are inexpressibly pathetic. ("Preface" 242; emphasis added) The poet sees in the figure a striking combination of a saintly victim and a tragic heroine. This delineation of the "Guido portrait" attests to the poet's appreciative reading of the aesthetic object at hand, which he believed to be the subject of his poetic elaboration. Ironically, however, this "just representation" turned out (decades after the poet himself died) not to be Beatrice, and further, the painter, not Guido Reni. According to D. Stephen Pepper, the painter might have been Elisabetta Sirani, and the subject is thought to be a hermitage posed as Sibyl, based on a tradition of turbaned sibyls derived from Guido and his studio.3 Even if we put aside another rich well of allusions the (real) object of the painting, Sibyl, evokes, Shelley's claim of a truthful 3See Guido Reni: A Complete Catalogue of His Works with an Introductory Text (NY: NYUP, 1984), p. 304. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 174 representation of Beatrice thus could be undermined from the start by his own misrecognition, although his was the prevailing assumption at this time.4 Hence a crucial question: what is the distance between an inspired misrecognition (coming from his "imagination for the redemption of mortal passion") and a "cold impersonation of [one's] own mind," the target of Shelley's critical attack? The subject of a "just" representation leads us to examine the manuscript of the incident on which Shelley based his artistic endeavor-archival material behind the literary text. It records that Beatrice was rather tall, of a fair complexion; and she had a dimple on each cheek, which, especially when she smiled, added a grace to her lovely countenance that transported every one who beheld her. Her hair appeared like threads of gold; and, because they were extremely long, she used to tie it up, and, when afterwards she loosened it, the splendid ringlets dazzled the eyes of the spectator. Her eyes were of a deep blue, pleasing, and full of fire. To all these beauties she added, both in words and actions, a spirit and a majestic vivacity that captivated every one. She was twenty years of age when she died.5 ^Curran compiles some interesting responses to the painting by other literary figures before the painter’s and the subject's names were questioned: "Dickens hung [a copy of the painting] reverently among his Pictures from Italy: Hawthorne, praising it as 'the saddest picture ever painted or conceived,' made it central to the seventh chapter of The Marble Faun: and Melville appeared haunted by 'the sweetest, most touching, but most awful of all feminine heads,'" (Shelley's Cenci. xi). In sum, the painting seems to have fostered the Romantic adulation of a rebel victimized in tragic circumstances, epitomized in the form of a dead beautiful woman. 5"Appendix: Relation of the Death of the Family of the Cenci," eds. Alfred Forman and H. Buxton Forman, The Cenci: A Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 175 Compared with this transcript, Shelley’s reading of the painting actually shows another (more subtle) misrecognition on his part: as the pivotal feature of Beatrice's countenance, he conjoins Beatrice's captivating vivacity in words and actions with her fiery eyes into a symbolic feature of "vivacious eyes.” If we come back to Shelley's description of the portrait and compare his natural assumptions (that the figure in the painting is Beatrice) with historical findings (that it is not), we find that the poet takes an interesting leap in reading and highlighting the eyes of the figure: "swollen with weeping, lustreless, but beautifully tender and serene." In the poet's mind's eye (not "cold impersonations of [his] own mind"?) the "swollen" vivacious eyes of the Tragedy in Five Acts (London: Reeve & Turner, 1886), p. 106. The editors note that in Shelley's letter to Peacock, dated "Livorno, July 1819," he gives an account of The Cenci. asks Peacock to have the play performed at Covent Garden, with the following stipulation: "I send you a translation of the Italian manuscript on which my play is founded, the chief subject of which I have touched very delicately. . . The translation which I send you, is to be prefixed to the play, together with a print of Beatrice." The transcription was not printed in the editions of The Cenci that came out during Shelley's lifetime, although the print of Beatrice was prefixed to the play as the author wished. Alfred and H. Buxton Forman published the transcript, Beatrice's painting, and The Cenci as "given from the poet's own editions" in 1886, along with their introduction and John Todhunter's "Prologue." They speculate on the reason of the transcript's omission from the previous editions as follows: it "may perhaps have arisen from the consideration that, to the public of that day, the bare horrors of the story might, if given, negate that very delicacy and reticence to which Shelley refers" (p. 92). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 176 portrait (that seem to conceal and reveal at the same time her tragic fate) becomes the core of her being. Shelley's illustration of the "Guido portrait" shows that "Beatrice's" piercing gaze works as the symbolic repository in which he invests his profoundly paradoxical desire. Already marked by the tragicality of Beatrice's predicament, "the swollen. . . but beautifully serene and tender" eyes seemed to intrigue and impress the beholder with their radical ambiguity. Certainly this gaze, the most unforgettable and unfathomable manifestation of "Beatrice," is inscribed in Shelley's main text in multifarious ways, even if he, at the same time, seems to avoid presenting Beatrice's countenance in a direct authorial voice. For any writer, representing Beatrice's gaze would be a fundamentally paradoxical task, not only because to do so would imply freezing the active force of a body into a still image, but more profoundly, because her subjectivity lies beyond the writer's conscious grasp. Such alterity, in fact, might have been what haunted Shelley and inspired his impossible Utopian passion to give a face to the broken fragments of an image, despite his ambivalence about a "chasm" or "casuistry" in Beatrice's character.6 A woman rebellious against a matrix of 6The notion "casuistry" was a part of privileged discourses in the Renaissance culture, and still had a residual impact in eighteenth-century literary discourse. See Lowell Gallagher's Medusa's Gaze; Casuistry and Conscience in the Renaissance (Stanfords Stanford UP, 1991) and George Starr's Defoe and Casuistry (Princeton: Princeton Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 177 masculinist, authoritarian and systemic violence thus emerges through the "imagination . . . that assumes flesh for the redemption of mortal passion" ("Preface" 241). Reconstructing "a thing-world of destructive forces in which human autonomy was drowned,"7 Shelley ironically gives face (the painting) to a name (Beatrice), brings "the dead" to life, and remaps the conflicting forces of the past. With its relevance and cross- references to his contemporary world (which outraged the self-designated bourgeois moralists),8 The Cenci is an attempt not only to destabilize the norms and values of his UP, 1971). Gallagher's study is particularly interesting in the ways in which he links the problematics of casuistry with the gaze and the trial. In the seventh chapter, Gallagher explicates the textual operation of "the gaze of conscience" in The Faerie Queene. cantos 9 and 10 of book 5: ". . . the discourse of power was inextricably caught up in the problematic ambiguities of the discourse of conscience; it is therefore no coincidence that the episode at hand, which celebrates and asserts Elizabeth's absolutist pretensions in the figure of the apotheosized Mercilla, should at the same time conduct, as a textual operation of the gaze of conscience, one of the most penetrating and destabilizing ’ anatomies' of the economy of the Elizabethan structure of power" (p. 215). I think that Beatrice’s casuistical gaze that accompanies "answer answerless" is even more interesting in that she takes the place of a victim in the state trial, not the authority. 7Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form: Twentieth-Centurv Dialectical Theories of Literature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1971), p. 77. 8Newman I. White compiles an almost complete list of contemporary reviews of The Cenci in The Unextincmished Hearth: Shelley and His Contemporary Critics (Durham, N.C.: Octagon, 1938). Based on White's compilation, Stuart Curran provides extensive comments upon contemporary reviews and British literary and social context of the period in his first chapter, "Shelley and His Critics," of Shelley's Cenci. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 178 contemporary culture but to re-write history through and through, re-staging the present according to a re-imagined past. Shelley's endeavor to represent Beatrice's "casuistical" gaze shows the blindness and insight of the author's desire to grasp the alterity in the other and the problematics of representation. 2. Revolutionary Violence and Sexual Differences . . . the monster of my thought. . . grew familiar to desire . . . — Giacomo from The Cenci. V. i. 23-24 "The real difference between Byron and Shelley is this: those who understand them and love them rejoice that Byron died at thirty-six, because if he lived he would have become a reactionary bourgeois. They grieve that Shelley died at twenty-nine because he was essentially a revolutionist and he would always have been one of the advanced guard of socialism."9 This famous remark by Karl Marx, underlining the revolutionary impetus in Shelley, could be substantiated by lines from The Cenci. such as "what a world we make/ The oppressor and the oppressed" (V. iii. 74-5). But Beatrice's ^Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels, fiber Kunst und Literatur, M. Kliem, ed. (Berlin, 1967), pp. 536-7; Quoted in S. S. Prawer, Karl Marx and World Literature (Oxford, NY and Melbourne: Oxford UP, 1978), p. 396. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 179 remark towards the end of the play connotes layers of implications, especially because the sentence is in active voice. It also suggests Shelley's continuous struggle to conceptualize and configure social relations and revolutionary ideas in literary form. In a letter to his publisher, Charles Oilier, dated Aug. 16, 1819 (as he completed the tragedy), Shelley links the agony of an intellectual faced with the Peterloo Massacre10 directly to Beatrice Cenci's situation in his dramatic poem: "I was anxiously [waiting to] hear how the Country will express its sense of this bloody murderous oppression of its destroyers. 'Something must be done .... What yet I know not.'"11 Indeed, "Something must be done .... What yet I know not" is the urgent question on which victims of any social injustice have to reflect. That Beatrice has to deal with intense shame and guilt after victimization and that she cannot forget or escape from it could be seen as the tragic social condition under which such domestic crimes were calculated, committed and perpetrated. Sharply contrasted with Cenci's assertion of phallic will ("it [the rape of Beatrice] must be done; it shall be done. I swear"), the 10The Cenci was written just before Peterloo. Shelley wrote The Masque of Anarchy as a more direct response to and reflection on the Massacre, of which he heard more detail in early September. Upercy B. Shelley, The Letters of Percy Bvsshe Shelley, ed. Frederick L. Jones (Oxford, 1964), 2: 117. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 180 regressive attitude shown in her haunting thought, "What have I done?" (III. i. 69) shares in the self-reproaching, "self- lacerating mystification" that Eagleton analyzes in his study of the rape of Clarissa.12 Even different from Orsino's "what may be done," her "what is to be done?" impels her to assert that "neither life [n]or death can give me rest" (III. i. 140) to revolt against the situation. Later in her conversation with Lucretia, Beatrice says "O, fear not/ What may be done, but what is left undone:/ The act seals all" (IV. iii. 5-7). Beatrice's profound question as to the gap between action and inaction can be seen as the theme of Shelley's writing of the period, including Laon and Cythna (The Revolt of Islam). Prometheus Unbound. A Philosophical View of Reform and The Masque of Anarchy.13 The inscription of a revolutionary impulse to action by a radical writer in exile evoked "hysterical fears" (to use Newman White’s phrase) from the reviewers at home, who preached against the regicidal/ parricidal element in the French Revolution and the violence committed in Robespierre's Reign of Terror (1793-94). Whereas most republican writers became fearful of revolutionary 12gee The Rape of Clarissa: Writing. Sexuality, and Class Struggle in Samuel Richardson (Minneapolis: Minnesota UP, 1982). 13The relationship between The Cenci and The Revolt of Islam is particularly noteworthy in that both works deal with revolutionary female characters who suffer rape. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 181 disorder and reinscribed prescriptive sentiments of horror into their representation of the Revolution,14 Shelley took a position different from typical bourgeois progressives in enacting and inscribing the revolutionary violence.15 14Shelley's stance on the French Revolution is still in dispute. James K. Chandler argues that Shelley considered the French Revolution only a "partial" success because of the following Reign of Terror: "For Shelley, the explanation for the Reign of Terror, and thus for the failure of the Revolution to achieve what its proponents had hoped of it, lies less in the history of French Politics, in the narrow sense, than in French Poetics." (James Chandler, "Representative Men, Spirits of Age, and Other Romantic Types," in Romantic Revolutions: Criticism and Theory, ed. Kenneth R. Johnston, Gilbert Chaitin, Karen Hanson, and Herbert Marks [Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1990], p.123. See Shelley's View on Philosophical Reform, ed. Donald H. Reiman, Shelley and His Circle: 1773-1822. The Carl H. Pforzheimer Library Manuscripts (Cambridge, MA; Harvard UP, 1973), pp. 13-14. 15There are two conflicting or complementary assessments of the role of bourgeois progressives or Romantic revolutionary forces in England in the period following the French Revolution. Marilyn Butler suggests that English Jacobin writers who were advocates of the French Revolution "[took] from French ideologues a tendency to look askance at old regime literature, the arts, scriptures, and mythologies.” Marilyn Butler, "Plotting the revolution: Political Narratives of Romantic Poetry and Criticism," Romantic Revolutions, p. 135. Gary Kelly, while calling the English Jacobins "Romantic revolutionaries," criticizes their ideological limit. The Romantic revolutionaries, according to Kelly, were leaders among the competing literary discourses, the aim of which was a consolidation of the bourgeois hegemony: they "change[d] literature from a humanist institution of 'polite learning' designed to serve court culture, and from an Enlightenment institution of demystification and social criticism designed to oppose court culture and serve a coalition of gentry and professional classes, into a written verbal art, centering and ordering all other discourses of language, written or spoken, to represent and serve the interests of the professional middle classes, who were led by the Romantic revolutionaries." ("The Limits of Genre and the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 182 Act of resistance and hope for change were on-going concerns of Shelley's work. In A Philosophical view of Reform he displaces stability-oriented moralism with change-oriented historical consciousness when he elaborates on the "Probability and Necessity of change" or the "practicability and utility of such change." When he states, "Let us believe not only that it is necessary because it is just & ought to be, but necessary because it is inevitable & must be,"16 he seems to advocate an initiating action against the customary rule. Against a general background of anxiety and complacency, Shelley further articulates how "The doctrine of Necessity" tends to introduce a great change into the established notions of morality, and utterly destroy religion. . . . we are taught by the doctrine of Necessity, that there is neither good nor evil in the universe, otherwise than as the events to which we apply these epithets have relation to our own peculiar mode of being.17 Institution of Literature: Romanticism in Fact and Fiction," in Romantic Revolutions, p.158.) Michael Scrivener argues that not only did Shelley endorse violent revolution even after the Reign of Terror, in Spain, Italy, and Greece, but also entertained ideas of violent revolution if all hopes of peaceful reform were blocked. See Michael Scrivener, Radical Shelley: The Philosophical Anarchism and Utopian Thought of Percy Bysshe Shelley (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1982), pp. 210-218. See also P. M. S. Dawson, The Unacknowledged Legislator: Shelley and Politics (Oxford: Clarendon P, 1980). 16Shelley, A Philosophical View of Reform, ed. Donald H. Reiman, Shelley and His Circle: 1773-1822. 6: 963. l7Shellev,The Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. Roger Ingpen and Walter E. Peck (NY, 1965), VII: 55. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 183 Beyond the moralizing norms of good and evil, the "doctrine of Necessity" invokes annihilating forces against the structure of domination. It is also directly linked to the critical question, "what is to be done." In The Cenci. the doctrine of Necessity is manifest in the voice of Beatrice: "Even whilst/ That doubt is passing through your mind, the world / Is conscious of a change" (IV. iii. 38-40). An inevitable clash between hegemonic power and revolutionary forces is foreshadowed from the beginning of The Cenci. when Cardinal Camillo makes a troubled statement, "Methinks [Beatrice's] sweet looks, which make all things else/ Beauteous and glad, might kill the fiend within you [the Count]" (I. i. 44-45). The dialogue between Count Cenci and Cardinal Camillo alludes to the legitimized violence the ruling segment of the society depend upon: the partnership of violence and wealth (for an absolution of the Count’s murder, the Pope demands one third of Cenci's possessions) is established between the two power-sharing parties to the extent that the rule of reciprocity governs whether they are foes or allies. Count Cenci shows what it takes for the male head to retain the "order" of the aristocratic household: A Man you knew spoke of my wife and daughter— He was accustomed to frequent my house; So the next day his wife and daughter came And asked if I had seen him; and I smiled. I think they never saw him any more. (I. i. 61-65) Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 184 Anticipating the repressive gender dynamics of Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess," the passage depicts the competition for domination, whether the foe be a mindless admirer of the male head's wife or daughter, or the potential rivals coveting his position-his sons. The linear, autocratic logic of "and" attests to the granted dynamics of swift and brutal male violence against his rivals. This logic does not really surprise Camillo, because he fully understands such operations of the paternal sexual and social economy. Needless to say, the debased wife and daughter are caught in this male contest of power, existing at the pre-social margins. "My wife and daughter" are equivalent to "my house," over which the Count can fully exercise his "rights" against other men. This rule of reciprocity in violence (constituted by the aggressor Cenci, the crushed rival, and the listener Camillo) provides not only a rivalry between the participating men, but also a sense of bonding as the active players of the social game for domination. (The theme of the talk between Cenci and Camillo can be summed up as "manhood.")18 The orchestration of violent reciprocity is seen at the banquet where all the aristocratic male heads gather, and 18See Irigaray's conceptualization of the exchange of women by men in "hom(m)osocial" bonding at the center of the existing symbolic order. "Women on the Market," This Sex Which Is Not One, trans. Catherine Porter (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1985), pp. 170-191. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 185 where a call for collaboration and display of a threat go hand in hand. Although Cenci's abuse of power (with unheeded cruelty against his sons) becomes obvious in front of his guests, they evade or refuse to accept Beatrice's desperate plea for their intervention into the family affair under Cenci's control. Part of the reason that Beatrice's entreaty to the guests proves vain is that Cenci curtails it with a most effective appeal—to the affinity in position between them as fathers/patriarchs ("I hope my good friends here/ Will think of their own daughters— or perhaps/ Of their own throats—before they lend an ear/ To this wild girl" [I. iii. 129-132: emphasis added]): it is not so much their fear of Cenci's power that keeps them in check as it is their anxiety about breaking bond with the bellowing male head and risking questioning the precondition of the patriarchal social order itself. Half dismayed and half disturbed by the implications and consequences of Beatrice's serious charges against her father for murdering her brothers, they conspiratorially silence their doubts and agree not to disrupt Cenci's authority as Father. This incident thus results only in their retreat to their safe homes, and in strengthening Cenci's desire to crush Beatrice's daring resistance. On the other end of the spectrum of violence, revolutionary violence has culturally been constituted as male, with an association with patricide-sons against fathers. This gendering of political and social discourses is Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 186 witnessed in a typical British representation of the French Revolutions "That the French Maniacs should pay such adoration to Roman murderers as to adore the statue of Brutus, who stabbed his father (as Caesar certainly was) is not to be wondered at, when we read of a frenchman bringing his father and mother's heads to the Jacobin club."19 Such logistics of power often go unquestioned by the revolutionary forces as well (as exemplified in the typology of the "manly" revolutionary forces usurping the aristocratic regime). When driven to take action, Giacomo assumes the role of the rebellious son, as does Demogorgon in Prometheus Unbound. Soon the vague idea becomes a more clear argument for revolutionary violence: Does my destroyer know his danger? We Are now no more, as once, parent and child, But man to man; the oppressor to the oppressed; The slanderer to the slandered; foe to foe: He has cast Nature off, which was his shield. And Nature casts him off, who is her shame; And I spurn both. Is it a father's throat Which I will shake, . . . (III. i. 282-289; emphasis added) l^Times. Sept. 15, 1792, quoted in Alan Liu, William Wordsworth: The Sense of Poetry (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1989), p.140. Also see Lynn Hunt's The Family Romance of the French Revolution (Berkeley and Los Angeles: U of California Press, 1992) which explores the gender and family relations in the discourses surrounding the French Revolution, drawing upon novels, newspapers, pornography, illustrations and speeches. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 187 In this reconceptualization of the father-son relationship as man-to-man rivalry,20 male subjects are cast as the active forces engaged in the power struggle, while the feminine remnants are obscured into the familiar topos of nature which functions as a "symptom" of social men. With his compassion towards Beatrice, Giacomo assumes that she needs to be represented and protected. Yet from the moment he and Orsino plot patricide in Act II Scene ii, he shows a hesitation that arises from his own status as a male head of a family. Giacomo vacillates between anger or rebellion against the common oppressor and recognition of his patriarchal affinity with the father's position. Sensing his own fate through self-identification with a patriarch, he trembles at the 20Such lines as "My disobedient and rebellious sons/ Are dead" (I. iii.) evoke the Freudian analysis of father-son rivalry as the basis of civilization. See Totem and Taboo, trans. James Strachey (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983 (1950), pp. 140-149, et passim. Teresa de Lauretis terms this rivalry "violent reciprocity," using Rend Girard's notion. This concept accounts for the acting out of 'rivalry' between brothers or between father and son, and which is socially held in check by the institution of kinship, ritual, and other forms of mimetic violence. . . . The distinctive trait here is the "reciprocity" and thus, by implication, the equality of the two terms of the violent exchange, the "subject" and the "object" engaged in the rivalry; and consequently the masculinity attributed, in this particular case, to the object. For the subject of the violence is always, by definition, masculine; "man" is by definition the subject of culture and of any social act. (Technologies of Gender: Essays on Theory. Film, and Fiction [Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1987], p.43. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 188 implication of his Oedipal desire: "That word parricide,/ Although I am resolved, haunts me like fear" (III. i. 340-1). Verbalizing the dynamic of patricide, Giacomo thus states poignantly: "the monster of my thought. . . grew familiar to desire ..." (V. i. 23-4). This pithy statement strikingly depicts the uncanniness of the generative will to power—the revolutionary iconography of father-son rivalry. Yet, his identification with his father intensifies when he reflects upon his own position to his son: My son will then perhaps be waiting thus, Tortured between just hate and vain remorse; Chiding the tardy messenger of news Like those which I expect. I almost wish He [the Count] be not dead, although my wrongs are great. (III. ii. 26-30) Later, in the face of prosecution, the escalated tension in Giacomo that has driven him to patricide finally collapses into the pole of identification: "Alas! Alas!/ It was a wicked thought, a piteous deed,/ To kill an old and hoary- headed father" (V. i. 9-11). Given the sexual economy that naturalizes male aggression and female victimization, Beatrice's patricidal desire could strike one as even more monstrous than Giacomo's. The basis for the "inevitability" of such action, however, lies in the web of legitimized violence. When Count Cenci contemplates the incestuous rape of his daughter, he asserts his will to dominate in terms of phallic universalization: "If, when a parent from a parent's heart/ Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 189 Lifts from this earth to the great father of all/ A prayer, both when he lays him down to sleep,/ And when he rises up from dreaming it;/ One supplication, one desire, one hope" (I. iii. 22-26; emphasis added). The situation thrust upon Beatrice runs parallel with the master-slave system, as she articulates it when confronted with the charge of patricide. Further, the sense of oppression is intensified because she is faced with the obstacle that has no name and no public accountability s My pangs are of the mind, and of the heart, And of the soul; aye, of the inmost soul, Which weeps within tears as of burning gall To see, in this ill world where none are true, My kindred false to their deserted selves. And with considering all the wretched life Which I have lived, and its now wretched end, And the small justice shown by Heaven and Earth To me or mine; and what a tyrant thou [the judge] art, And what slaves these; and what a world we make, The oppressor and the oppressed . . . (V. iii. 65-75) The "tragic awareness" that Beatrice reaches comes from her difficulty in addressing fully the content of her "wretched life" in the "ill world" and the impossibility of living beyond such socio-sexual conditions. In other words, because of the socially imposed silence surrounding sexual violence, Beatrice sees herself squarely implicated in the unbreakable chain of oppression. That is the reason why we need to rearticulate her position within a gender-specific intersubjective network in order to analyze Beatrice's action and reaction against the Count and against the system. We Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 190 need to note, in other words, that individual characters resisting systemic violence are also constrained by the sexual politics of the social structure, resulting in utterly different conditions of possibility for each. A comparison between Beatrice's character and Prometheus' may shed light on the complexities of Beatrice's predicament.21 Not only the thematic s i m i l a r i t y but the context of Shelley's writing suggests interesting parallels between Prometheus Unbound and The Cenci. Shelley started Prometheus Unbound in 1818 (the same year that Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; The Modern Prometheus was written). The next year, after completing the third act of Prometheus Unbound, he wrote The Cenci — interrupted once by their son William's death (Giacomo's remarks on his own son are considered allusions to Shelley's loss). In Prometheus Unbound. Shelley, by focusing on a male figure, inevitably connects the protagonist's struggle and liberation to male fantasy and 21In critical readings of Prometheus Unbound and The Cenci. the moral and psychological "superiority" of Prometheus is often noted in contrast to Beatrice's "tragic flaw." Earl Wasserman makes an assessment in which the ultimate difference between Prometheus and Beatrice falls into the impatience of Beatrice and the endurance of Prometheus. Wasserman argues that "Because [Beatrice] should have defeated the tyrant with patient, stoic endurance and pity, her choice is a 'mistake' ..." From the same moral perspective, he stresses that the two works "are not the contrary means to the same moral end- the warning against the wrong and the advocacy of the right." See Shelley; A Critical Reading (Baltimore and London; The Johns Hopkins UP, 1971), pp. 100-1. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 191 harnesses the gender question to a "personal," peripheral domain, subsidiary to the primary power struggle. As a male revolutionary, Prometheus does not suffer from articulating the nature or implications of infliction; he fully receives due recognition as the resistant power against the dominant regime, and his perseverance outlasts the punishment, however harsh it might be: "No change, no pause, no hope!— Yet I endure" (I. 24). While Prometheus proves to have the capacity to forgive his enemy and thus reach the status of self-knowledge, Beatrice is always already deprived of such "subjecthood" because of the social and linguistic operations of gender politics:22 passive endurance as a female virtue has already been imposed upon women by the dominant social structure. Prometheus unbinds himself from the chain of the master and slave through Shelleyan love and patience, particularly because he has support from Demogorgon-the figure of action- and from his sister-lover Asia— the figure of redemption. Beatrice's "peculiar mode of being"— that is gender-specific— makes the exercise of Promethean patience almost absurd for her. 22Gayatri Spivak sees the woman's body as "the last instance" in a structure that revolves around the interests of male hegemony. See "Woman in Difference: Mahasweta Devi's 'Douloti the Bountiful,'" Nationalisms and Sexualities, eds. Andrew Parker, Mary Russo, Doris Sommer, and Patricia Yaeger (NY and London: Routledge, 1991), p. 101, et passim. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 192 3. "A Nameless Wrong": The Symbolic Economy of Sexual Crime . .. If there should be No God, no Heaven, no Earth in the void world; The wide, gray, lampless, deep, unpeopled world!" — Beatrice, V. iv. 57-59 From the beginning Count Cenci tells Camillo that "I am what your theologians call/ Hardened; . . . / Manhood remained to act the thing I thought;/ . . . When I was young I thought of nothing else/ But pleasure" (I. i. 93-4, 96, 103-4). This libidinal self-attention symptomatically explains Cenci's drive for phallic identification. When his authority is challenged by Beatrice at the banquet scene, Cenci, in reaction, immediately debases her by resorting to typical misogynist tropes:23 "Thou painted viper!/Beast that thou art! Fair and yet terrible!/ I know a charm shall make 23If Beatrice were to leave home to marry or go to a convent, the Count would have to pay a considerable sum of money for her dowry or donation. According to the historical record, Beatrice's elder sister had succeeded in escaping the Count's rule by attaining the Pope's approval for marriage, which resulted in the Count's payment of a large dowry for her. Now that Beatrice is trying to find a way of doing the same (her letter to the Pope implies such a solution for her), the Count faced the danger of losing more money, after having bribed the Pope with a third of his possessions. While he cannot refuse the Pope's demand, the Count is determined to deprive Beatrice of any chance of taking money from him. By removing her from the marriage market, and by debilitating her spiritually, he could be relieved from worries about the prospective financial loss. See "Appendix: Relation of the Death of the Family of the Cenci," The Cenci: A Tragedy in Five Acts, pp. 106-107. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 193 thee meek and tame" (I. iii. 165-167). This battle between the tyrannical father and the rebellious daughter takes the form of a battle of the sexes, triggering his desire to control her and obliterate any excess in women (to quell "her stubborn will," to make her "stoop . . . low" [IV. i. 10, 11]). Acted out by the male gaze ("one word, . . . one look, one smile" in Beatrice's words [II.i.64]), Cenci's masculine fantasy grows to be the self-fulfilling force of "one supplication, one desire [and] one hope" (I. iii. 26). In Lacanian terms, Beatrice figures now for Cenci as the Law or Name-of-the-Father, "the censorious, castrating agency which places a taboo on the very desire it provokes into being.”24 Since the phallus is the effect of an imaginary fantasy of bodily completion, to Cenci, Beatrice embodies the fetishistic signifier of male power and desire. And since the phallus is the object of desire, insofar as Beatrice is Cenci's object of desire she is the phallus, a "phallic woman."25 In Beatrice the Count sees the recalcitrantly integral phallus, and his desire to penetrate the imaginary selfhood in Beatrice is precipitated after the banquet scene: "Be thou [the wine he is drinking] . . . manhood's purpose 24This analysis is derived from Terry Eagleton's reading of Lovelace's rape of Clarissa in The Rape of Clarissa: Writing. Sexuality, and Class Struggle in Samuel Richardson (Minneapolis: Minnesota UP, 1982), p.59. 25see Elizabeth Grosz, Sexual Subversions (Sidney: Allen & Unwin, 1989), p. xx. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 194 stern,/ And age's firm, cold, subtle villainy;/ As if thou were indeed my children's blood/ Which I did thirst to drink! The charm works well;/ It must be done; it shall be done. I swear!" (I. iii. 173-8). With a self-serving logic of elevated urgency (" It must be done; it shall be done"), accompanied by an orgiastic fervor ("I did thirst to drink"), Count Cenci reveals his intent to Beatrice: . . . from this day and hour Never again, I think, with fearless eye, And brow superior, and unaltered cheek, And that lip made for tenderness or scorn, Shalt thou strike dumb the meanest of mankind; Me least of all. Now get thee to thy chamber! Thou too, loathed image of thy cursed mother, [To Bernardo. Thy milky, meek face makes me sick with hate! [Exeunt Beatrice and Bernardo. (Aside.) So much has passed between us as must make Me bold, her fearfull (II. i. 115-124; emphasis added) While Beatrice's countenance is delineated through Count Cenci's gaze, what is traceable, if disavowed by the Count, is indeterminacy in Beatrice-"the lip made for tenderness or scorn." Cenci is driven to compensate for the humiliation caused by Beatrice's challenge in front of the banquet guests; even the presence of his unmasculine son ("Thy milky, meek face") compels him to strengthen his phallic identity by subjugating his strong-willed daughter ("me bold, her fearful"). By penetrating the imaginary whole of Beatrice's body, Cenci attempts psychically to subjugate her: he boasts his intention to "drag her, step by step,/ Through infamies Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 195 unheard of among men" (IV. i. 80-81), and ultimately to "poison and corrupt her soul" (IV. i. 44). Even in a state of shock, fear, delirium, and inertia after rape, Beatrice sees the sexual economy as well: "'Twere better not to struggle any more./ Men, like my father, have been dark and bloody" (II. i. 54-55). Highlighting her father's masculinity, Beatrice equates him with other men who share the same subject position. After all, she lives in a society where men perpetrate brutal and inexplicable sexual crimes, while female sexuality is considered to be a "circulating property which cements the system of male dominance." 26 Such sexual dynamics become precariously intensified when they occur within the confines of the family circle, in which the power imbalance between family members plays a critical role. Considered as a private realm, a family is insulated from outside intervention, and the patriarch can have full access to female family members and exert absolute power over them. The most crucial aspect of the Count' s rape of his daughter in The Cenci is that while such a heinous crime is easy for the Father to commit, it has no name and thus no appropriate channel to be exposed and prosecuted. From all aspects of violence, the Count's articulation of the crime as an "incest" stems from his instinct to 26Eagleton, The Rape of Clarissa, p.56. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 196 valorize the virulent crime of rape into a more ambiguous interaction. The Count clearly takes advantage of the family institution from the beginning, when he plots the rape after the dialogue with Camillo. For the patriarch, "sexualizing" his power imposition is an available avenue to harass and control his victim. Thus to follow the Count's own interpretation, to see his underlying motive as a "desire for the liberation of libidinal energy,"27 is to render masculinist violence free of the mark of gender with no account of the always already female victim. In fact, Shelley institutes such a frivolous position in the character of Orsino.28 From the beginning, Orsino reveals a combination of ostentatious masculinist presumptions and blatant dismissal of the other when he considers Beatrice's description of her predicament as "much exaggeration": "A man may stab his enemy, or his vassal,/ And live a free life as to wine or women,/ And with a peevish temper may return/ To a dull home, and rate his wife and children;/ Daughters and wives call this, foul tyranny" (I. 2^Anthony Kubiak, The Stages of Terror: Terrorism. Ideology and Coercion as Theatre History (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1991), p. 96. 280rsino is the most intelligent and yet morally problematical character in the play. Although an outsider to the Cenci family feud, he is still implicated in the patricide plot as a suitor of Beatrice, from which he is precluded as a prelate at the outset. Faced with imminent arrest, he narrowly escapes by betraying Giacomo. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 197 iii. 76-79; emphasis added). As an extension of such logic, Orsino equates Count Cenci's blind will with Beatrice's resistance against it—all absurd and "dark." Indeed what matters to him is self-serving designs and power games: It fortunately serves my close designs That 'tis a trick of this same family To analyse their own and other minds. Such self-anatomy shall teach the will Dangerous secrets: for it tempts our powers, Knowing what must be thought, and may be done, Into the depth of darkest purposes: (II. ii. 107-113) While Orsino is capable of intelligent analysis of the situation, he subjects the analysis to opportunistic calculations and compromises. Far from family affinity as articulated here, the heart of "dangerous secrets" lies in the power imbalance saturated in the f a m i l y structure-the father’s socially sanctioned absolute authority over female family members. This hierarchical structure and the practices of the social victimization of women within a family unit are the central problematics29 that debunk Orsino's pretentiously "rational" advice: "Accuse him of the deed, and let the law / Avenge thee" (III. i.152-53). The very namelessness of the rape erases power imbalance between the victim and the perpetrator, and perpetuates the abusive structure in which the victim is caught. Cenci's power hinges upon the rule of silence and 29 see Teresa de Lauretis, "The Violence of Rhetoric," Technologies of Gender, esp. pp. 33-42. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 198 repression, which makes it easy for authority to strike its victim while making it almost impossible for the victim to vindicate herself. As in Clarissa, the rape in The Cenci occurs in the private space that is still open to manipulations of male authority: "It was one word, Mother, one little word;/ One look, one smile. (Wildly.) Oh I He has trampled me/ Under his feet, and made the blood stream down" (II. i. 63-5). The available linguistic components for Beatrice fail to characterize the nature and implications of Cenci's crime: "Ask me not what it is, for there are deeds/ Which have no form, sufferings which have no tongue" (III. i. 141-2). Even after the Count's death, Cenci's assault is still called "a nameless wrong" (Orsino, V. i. 44; emphasis added). Beatrice's sympathizers, Lucretia or her brothers, are also unable to articulate the criminality of Cenci’s action. Under the "undistinguishable mist" that blurs the fine line between rape and incest, the victim of sexual crime faces further public stigma. Beatrice knows that in the eyes of society she would be seen as a suspicious collaborator in an incestuous relationship. She murmurs: Do you know I thought I was that wretched Beatrice Men speak of, whom her father sometimes hales From hall to hall by the entangled hair; At others, pens up naked in damp cells Where scaly reptiles crawl, and starves her there Till she will eat strange flesh. (III. i. 42-48) Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 199 If the Count aimed at incapacitating Beatrice, he seems to have succeeded when Beatrice cannot name the crime, nor accuse her assailant, nor even escape self-inflicted guilt. Like Clarissa, Beatrice can speak truth only by speaking from the verge of delirium: "I am mad beyond all doubt" (III. i. 25); "What are the words which you would have me speak?/ I, who can feign no image in my mind/ Of that which has transformed me. I, whose thought/ Is like a ghost shrouded and folded up/ In its own formless horror" (108-111). For Beatrice, the Cenci Palace is the prison-house where Cenci's will is the will of Heaven (IV. i. 138), and where her father can drag her "from hall to hall by the entangled hair," where such utmost violence swirls into the dark void of silence, where her scream for help is submerged under "a gloomy pile of feudal architecture" ("Preface" 242): "Never to change, never to pass away. / Why so it is. This is the Cenci palace" [III. i. 63-64]) Competing with her acknowledgment of the persistence of the existent symbolic economy, however, is the urge to initiate a change through obliterating the "lasting circumstance of life": "If I try to speak/ I shall go mad. Aye, something must be done" (86). Beatrice takes up an active role by engaging herself in the patricidal plot and indeed by "becoming" a rival to the father and patriarchal authority. Traditional readings of Beatrice's "reproduction" of patriarchal modes in her violent revolt, emphasizing her Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 200 lack of endurance or lack of conscience in confessing her crime, miss the point in explaining the gender-specific quality in Beatrice's struggle.30 The crux of the matter of mad Beatrice,31 however, is that she is situated in the maddening network of the sex-gender system, not that she lacks patience. The paradox and complexity of Beatrice's action as a female victim against the rule of the father (including that of the Pope) can never be fully explained if we put her in the same position as her father. At the outset, the Count and the daughter seem to share one quality: both he who violates his daughter's body so readily and she who revolts against her tyrannical father so radically pose direct challenges to the idealized notion of a "natural family." In contrast to the dominant fiction of 30wasserman in Shelley; A Critical Reading argues that "Count Cenci's rape of his daughter is, of course, an evil deed, but achieves its evil effect only because Beatrice mistakenly allows herself to believe it dishonors her and demands revenge. . ." (pp. 108-9). In the same vein, he says that "because Beatrice accepts the oppressive doctrine of paternal authority, divine and therefore human, she progressively misdirects her will until she suddenly, 'impatiently,' resolves on revenge" (98); Michael Scrivener considers Beatrice as one of "the self-conscious characters [who] align themselves with patriarchy by an act of the will," and "the play illustrates how the patriarchal principle is reproduced in those very characters who have the least to gain from it" (Radical Shelley, p. 193). 31 It would be interesting to relate this to Shelley's own fate as a rebel ("mad Shelley") in the constraining university environment at Oxford. On theoretical ramifications of the state of "madness" or abjection, see Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, trans. Leon S. Roudiez (NY: Columbia UP, 1982). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 201 family as an organic unit composed of domestic bliss, fatherly love and family bonding, the Cenci family shows how institutionality itself generates criminality. Family structure as a central apparatus of patriarchal social relations effectively silences the voice of discontent: Beatrice thus laments, "In this mortal world/ There is no vindication and no law/ Which can adjudge and execute the doom/ Of that through which I suffer" (III. i. 134-137). The naturalized notion of family bonding is continuously put into question, as Beatrice raises epistemological questions: "What thing am I" (III. i. 38); "Thou are not what thou seemest . . . ." (III. i. 58). Cenci condemns his murdered sons as "most unnatural sons" at the banquet scene and in his conversation with Lucretia (II. i. 133); Lucretia and Beatrice speak of Cenci's "unnatural pride," "unnatural desire" and unspeakable violence, and reevaluate sacrosanct codings; finally, Giacomo declares that "She [Beatrice] . . . alone in this unnatural work [patricide],/ Stands like God's angel ministered upon/ By fiends" (V. i. 42-5; emphasis added). Here dialectical movement allows the whole incident to be seen from an alternative perspective, in which Beatrice alone is an avenger of the "unnatural" world. The Cenci certainly questions the roles of home, family, and father in the Count's crime through laying bare the disruption and fragmentation of socially assumed Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. identities and subject positions, and through resituating family as a social construction that also organizes individual subjects [daughters, wives] according to the interests of patriarchal structure. Giacomo offers a textual test-ground for family organization: as the inverse of Cenci, meek and pusillanimous Giacomo lives with a disillusioned family romance. Irrevocably tarnished by Count Cenci's manipulation, Giacomo's family resentfully enacts hollow repetitions of coded activities: "It is my wife complaining in her sleep:/ I doubt not she is saying bitter things/ Of me; and all my children round her dreaming/ That I deny them sustenance" (III. ii. 80-83). Indeed when he realizes that because of his father's exploitation he cannot live up to the fiction of an affective family, he declares, "I looked, and saw that home was hell" (III. i. 330). In this light, an altercation between Orsino and Beatrice, where Orsino asks "what is he who has thus injured you?" and Beatrice answers, "The man they call my father: a dread name," not simply condemns the Count as a "bad" father. More subtly, she puts the father's name itself into question. Beatrice's ambivalence toward the signifier "father," her glimpse at the realm of fathers, and her unarticulated imaginary aspiration beyond such, are remarked when Lucretia asks, "My dearest child, what has your father done?"; Beatrice retorts "Who art thou, questioner? I have no father" (III. i. 37-40; emphasis Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 203 added). Beatrice then makes an "impossible" attempt at surpassing the law of the father and dreaming a space "outside" the hegemonic order through the patricidal plot and its execution. Yet the text also suggests that the father's name works as the "transcendental signifier," not an easy target to be refuted or dismantled. At the pivotal patricide scene, for example, Marzio approaches Cenci in sleep and is overwhelmed by the operation of the-name-of-the-Father: . . . now my knife Touched the loose wrinkled throat, when the old man Stirred in his sleep, and said, 'Godl hear, 0 hear, A father's curse, What, art thou not our father?’ And then he laughed. I knew it was the ghost Of my dead father speaking through his lips, And could not kill him. (IV. iii. 16-22)32 Beatrice releases Marzio's tension by disavowing the trajectory of fearful paternal presence. Despite all her painful efforts of denial, the play also reveals (even after Cenci's death) the eternal presence of the Father: For was he not alone omnipotent On Earth, and ever present? Even though dead, Does not his spirit live in all that breathe, 32Here, textual reference to Macbeth is obvious. Marzio's words echo Lady Macbeth's recognition of the resemblance between Duncan and her dead father, which prevents her from killing Duncan herself. Further, Beatrice seems to embody a composite of Lady Macbeth and Macbeth: while her involvement in Cenci's murder invokes Lady Macbeth's role, her resolute struggle to maintain her stature when faced with crisis later runs parallel with Macbeth's struggle after Lady Macbeth's death. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 204 And work for me and mine still the same ruin, Scorn, pain, despair? Who ever yet returned To teach the laws of death's untrodden realm? Unjust perhaps as those which drive us now, O, whither, whither? (V. iv. 68-75) Socially and psychically, the name of the Father dominates the lives of the rest of the family more decisively after the physical death of the father than it had before. Beatrice's revolt against this pervasive order thus marks (only) a moment of rupture, with resounding echoes of her suffering voice, "What name, what place, what memory shall be mine?" (III. i. 75) and "O, whither, whither?" Then, what does Beatrice's attempt of voiding, a severing the tie from which one can never fully escape, mean? Beatrice's patricidal action is captured in the form of her name on the dagger that she passes on to the assassins. If the dagger would effect the break-up of her tie with her father, the inscription will bear the mark of her implication in the forbidden act. Indeed The Cenci is a story about "a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, . . . consumes the scabbard that would contain it" (A Defense of Poetry 491). A sacrificial element in her handing out her dagger for the murder weapon is unmistakable: after the murder she rewards Olimpio and Marzio with her grandfather's mantle, saying that "Thou wert a weapon in the hand of God/ To a just use" (iv. iii. 54-55). Such an ostentatious gesture suggests her performative invocation of a just cause, which amounts to a Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 205 fundamentally political resistance. Beatrice's action thus paradoxically allows a space for interrogating the operation of power and desire. In effect, as an eruption of uncontained and uncontainable energy, her action attests to the dialectically tenuous nature of the established power structure. Further, by refusing to give into the legal authority, she ruptures the normalized process of the state juridical system that also adopts and naturalizes the logic of paternal authority. 4. Beatrice on Trial . . . For the jealous laws Would punish us with death and infamy — Lucretia from The Cenci. III. i. 229-31 The convention-defying author's exploration of the parallel fantasies of "incest" and patricide,33 along with the image of woman actively participating in revolutionary violence,34 must have struck gentle(men) readers as ^while in the "Preface" Shelley calls Count Cenci's motivation "incestual passion," I believe The Cenci examines the fine line between incest and rape. The British reviewers of course were not concerned about differentiating the two notions. 34The figure of Republican Marianne signifies such revolutionary violence in 1789 in France. Female participation in the French Revolution elicited the disruption of convention, often evoking the trope of Medusa. Because of its socio-political implications of "excess," any Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 206 scandalous. The first British reviewers of the play not only disapproved of the rebellious female subjectivity Shelley desired to stage but condemned the "base" morality of the author's life altogether. Out of a dozen full-fledged reviews from March 1820 to June 1821, only one (The British Review and London Critical Journal) articulated the nature of Count Cenci's crime upon Beatrice's body as an "incestuous rape." The rest of them still blurred the line between the criminal rape and the taboo of incest, and highlighted the "unnatural" character of the violence while rendering Beatrice's suffering invisible or ambiguous. The Monthly Review, for example, declares that "we honestly confess that the story of the Cenci, chosen as a subject for tragedy in the twentieth [sic] century, does indeed astonish and revolt us: for it involves incest committed by a father, and murder perpetrated by a daughter."35 If The British Review and London Critical Journal labels the Count’s crime as incestuous rape, it still argues that "incestuous rape, murder, the rack, and the scaffold are not the proper materials of the tragic Muse: female subjects engaged in a radical revolt could be construed as symptomatic of troubled hegemonic power. 35The Monthly Review 94 (February, 1821) 161-168; Newman I. White, The Unextincmished Hearth, p. 203. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 207 crimes and punishments are not in themselves dramatic." 36 On the character of Count Cenci the reviewer also says: . . . no such being as Cenci existed: none such could exist. The historical fact was in itself disgustingly shocking; and, in Mr Shelley's hands, the fable becomes even more loathsome and less dramatic than the fact. . . . the most hateful forms of vice and suffering, preceded by involuntary pollution and followed by voluntary parricide, are the materials of this mis-called tragedy. They who can find dramatic poetry in such representations of human life must excuse us for wondering of what materials their minds are composed. . . The ties of father and daughter, of husband and wife, ought not to be profaned as they are in this poem. It is in vain to plead, that the delineations are meant to excite our hatred; they ought not to be presented to the mind at all. . . 37 On the British reviewers' part, such a radical destablization of the "natural" affective family—Beatrice' s patricidal desire as much as Count Cenci's rape-was indeed threatening, especially since the ideology of affective family was a badly needed fuel for bourgeois nationalist moralism, especially at its burgeoning imperialist stage. Furthermore, the main player of the revolt is the daughter of the family, the moral backbone of the system. Among the strident attacks Shelley evoked with the publication of the play, The Literary Gazette typifies the hostile criticism poured onto the work. According to its reviewer, "Of all the abominations which intellectual 36The British Review and London Critical Journal 17 (June, 1821): 380-389; White, p. 211. 3?White, P* 213. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 208 perversion, and poetical atheism, have produced in our times, this tragedy appears to us to be most abominable. "38 it is "the dish of carrion, seasoned with sulphur as spice, which Mr. Shelley serves up to his friend Mr. Leigh Hunt."39 This characteristic response sent a sobering message to Shelley's rather optimistic expectation of The Cenci's reception. Although Shelley never lacked adversaries among the conservative reviewers of his time, the ferocious attacks on The Cenci seem peculiarly vicious. The London Magazine recapitulates the most disturbing aspect of the play as follows: [Shelley's] style, though disgraced by occasional puerilities, and simpering affectations, is in general bold, vigorous, and manly; but the disgraceful fault to which we object in his writings, is the scorn he every where evinces for all that is moral or religious. If he must be sceptical— if he must be lax in his human code of excellence, let him be so; but in God's name let him not publish his principles, and cram them down the throats of others.40 (emphasis added) Valorizing the notion of masculinity on the one hand, the reviewer emphasizes the writer's need to exercise self- 38The Literary Gazette, and Journal of Belles-Lettres, Arts. Sciences, etc. 167 (April 1 1820): 209-210; White, p. 168. 39White, p. 169. The reviewer does not fail to mention his nationalist outrage against Hunt's pronounced sympathy for imprisoned Napoleon Bonapart. 40 The London Magazine and Monthly Critical and Dramatic Review. 1 (April, 1820): 401-407); White, p. 176. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 209 censorship against the dissemination of such "unnatural" or "immoral" material on the other. Often such ideologues advocate complete suppression of the discourse of "incest" or patricide, while erasing the logic of power couched in such repressive hypotheses. The New Monthly Magazine argues, for instance, for the voluntary suppression of literary transgression by resorting to the dictum, "Where there is no law, there is no transgression."41 Evoking the golden rule of the control of information, and denouncing the already 43-The New Monthly Magazine and Universal Register. 13 (May 1, 1820) 550-553; White p. 182. In essence, the New Monthly argues that Shelley is exploiting the monstrous historical incident by writing a play based on it: "All know that for many centuries there was no punishment provided at Rome for parricide, and that not an instance occurred to make the people repent of this omission. And may it not be supposed that this absence of crime was owing to the absence of the law — that the subject was thrown far back from the imagination — that the offense was impossible because it was believed so — and that the regarding it as out of all human calculation gave to it a distant awfulness far more fearful than the severest of earthly penalties? We know well, indeed, that crimes like those intimated in the Cenci can never be diffused by any mistaken attempt to drag them forth to the world."The reviewer then, predictably, reproaches Shelley's lack of judgment by attacking his character: "In justice to Mr. Shelley we must observe that he has not been guilty of attempting to realize his own fancy. There is no attempt to lessen the horror of the crime, no endeavor to redeem its perpetrator by intellectual superiority, no thin veil thrown over the atrocities of his life. He stands, base as he is odious, and, as we have hinted already, is only thought of as a man when he softens into a murderer" (New Monthly; White, p.182). Interestingly, Shelley in the "Preface" addresses this kind of logic as follows: "The deepest and the sublimest tragic compositions, King Lear and the two plays in which the tale of OEdipus is told, were stories which already existed in tradition, as matters of popular belief and interest, before Shakespeare and Sophocles made them familiar to the sympathy of all succeeding generations of mankind" (239). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 210 existing law of prohibition, the ideological pretension of decency reaches its apogee: "The exposure of a crime too often pollutes the very soul which shudders at its recital, and destroys that unconsciousness of ill which most safely preserves its sanctities." Assuming the role of moral guardian, the reviewer not only denounces the crime but actually denies its possibility, resorting to essentialist logic in explaining the "nature" of "ordinary" people's minds and souls. However, the undeniable existence of rape within a family circle, which could go unexposed partly because of the suppression of the actuality of rape, defies the ideological pretensions of reviewers who would ignore and thus contribute to the continuing victimization. Viewing Beatrice caught in an act of violent insurrection, most reviewers were compelled to take either of two positions: first, they condemned her as murderous and outrageous; second, they acquitted her on the ground of gender-specific victimhood. The British reviewers' condemnation of Beatrice took the form of fierce campaigning against the literary work itself. Ironically, of course, this kind of indictment repeats the trial structure of act V, where a revolutionary transgression is punished under the same old law. As the producers of "the system of knowledge," the editors of the gentlemen's literary magazines became frustrated with the patricidal elements in a story that could not be disputed on the ground of fictionality, and leak the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 211 morals violated in The Cenci text to the "essential" traits of the two sexes. The New Monthly, while justifying the patricidal action itself (which it considers "almost Blameless parricide"), reveals a particular blend of anxiety: We are far from denying that there is great power in many parts of this shocking tragedy. Its author has at least shown himself capable of leaving these cold abstractions which he has usually chosen to embody, and of endowing human characters with life, sympathy, and passion. With the exception of Cenci, who is half maniac and half fiend, his persons speak and act like creatures of flesh and blood, not like the problems of strange philosophy set in motion by galvanic art. The heroine, Beatrice is, however, distinguished only from the multitude of her sex by her singular beauty and sufferings. In destroying her father she seems impelled by madness rather than will, and in her fate excites pity more by her situation than her virtues. Instead of avowing the deed, and asserting its justice, as would be strictly natural for one who had committed such a crime for such a cause—she tries to avoid death by the meanest arts of falsehood and encourages her accomplice to endure the extremities of torture rather than implicate her by confession.42 (emphasis added) Raising the crucial issue of Beatrice's "inconsistency," the reviewer reveals his imposition upon Beatrice of an idealized femininity—a virtuous damsel in distress, a person who has fallen into "the dark pits of fathomless infamy," and the "daughter of sentiment.1, 4 3 Such a depiction does not allow 42The New Monthly Magazine and Universal Register. May, 1, 1820; White, pp. 183-4. 43Linda Zwinger in her study of the novel argues that the literary trope of the daughter of sentiment, "who lives a life of duress, distress, and strangely belied adoration," is defined not only in relation to her fictional father, "but by extension, her literary fathers as well—the definitions and Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 212 room for woman's will, drive, complexity, leadership, or even arts of falsehood. While attempting to arrest Beatrice as an abstracted feminine icon of virtue and victimhood, the reviewer also minimizes the socio-political implications of her action. What he betrays in the end is precisely his vexation by the sexually unsettling and enigmatic quality of Beatrice that the conventional notion of femininity cannot construe—Beatrice' s refusal to come to terms with the patriarchal trial process. The reviewers thus resort to identifying/allying themselves with the magisterial position from which the official version (the Pope's version, that is) of history is written. Such moral judgment on a victim's active resistance justifies the structure of the status quo, and perpetuates the imbalance of power. Leigh Hunt, on the other hand, while denounced by the other reviewers, provides a telling explanation of Beatrice's so-called inconsistency. In a positive review in The Indicator Hunt gives his interpretation of Beatrice's inconsistency: We see the maddened loveliness of her nature walking among us, and make way with an awful sympathy. It is thought by some, that she ought not to deny her the guilt as she does . . . whatever she may think of the relations encoded in patriarchal readings of her." See Daughters. Fathers, and the Novel: The Sentimental Romance of Heterosexuality (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1991), pp. 4-5. Here, the reviewer of the New Monthly certainly measures Beatrice against the emblematic notion of an innocent, sentimental daughter. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 213 guilt. But this, in our opinion, is one of the author's happiest subtleties. She is naturally so abhorrent from guilt,—she feels it to have been so impossible a thing to have killed a FATHER, truly so called, that what with her horror of the deed and of the infamy attending it, she would almost persuade herself as well as others, that no such thing had actually taken place,—that it was a notion, a horrid dream, a thing to be gratuitously cancelled from people's minds, a necessity which they were all to agree had existed but was not to be spoken of, a crime which to punish was to proclaim and make real,—any thing, in short, but that a daughter killed her father. It is a lie told, as it were, for the sake of nature, to save it the shame of a greater contradiction.44 Attuned to the polemics involved in reviewing rhetoric, Hunt here exaggerates the notion of the patricide as unthinkable and unspeakable and thus masterfully plays upon the reviewers' deeply held assumptions. If they think the unthinkable crime should be suppressed, it is only natural that Beatrice suppress it herself. At the same time, in his desire to solve the mystery of Beatrice's "contradiction," Hunt rushes into reducing her into a time-honored feminine icon. Shelley must also have anticipated the conservative camp's dogmatic moralizing. The troubling ethical question of Beatrice's "inconsistency," especially her unequivocal refusal to accept her involvement in patricide at the trial, constitutes the crux of what Shelley calls the "chasm" in Beatrice: in the "Preface" he argues that the "crimes and 4^The indicator. July 26, 1820 (no. 42, pp. 329-337); White, p. 200. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 214 miseries in which [Beatrice] was an actor and a sufferer are as the mask and the mantle in which circumstances clothed her for her impersonation on the scene of the world." One might argue that Beatrice's earlier experiences of the futility of protest (her plea at the banquet and her intercepted appeal to the Pope) compel her to redefine the "official" process of seeking justice. Beatrice's absolutely unflinching denial of her criminality inscribes a certain unarticulated insistence that the patriarchal structure itself be subjected to a rigorous interrogation. Still, Shelley expresses his ambivalence about the excess in Beatrice that he associates with patricide: Undoubtedly, no person can be truly dishonoured by the act of another; and the fit return to make to the most enormous injuries is kindness and forebearance, and a resolution to convert the injurer from his dark passions by peace and love. Revenge, retaliation, atonement, are pernicious mistakes. If Beatrice had thought in this manner she would have been wiser and better; but she would never have been a tragic character: . . . ("Preface" 240) This rare judgmental moment (of downplaying his sympathy and fascination with Beatrice's character) comes hand in hand with his emphasis on the aesthetic quality of her character (echoing the classical concept of the tragic flaw). Beatrice in fact ends up becoming a traditional tragic scapegoat, who assumes the sins of the community as a precursor of change. But here, does Shelley at the same time reinscribe the saintly victimhood as the ultimate way to deal with the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 215 unrelenting tyranny, while silencing precisely what has driven Beatrice to make "pernicious" mistake in the first place? In light of that question, Shelley's invention of the Pope's death warrant for Cenci after his murder needs further investigation. Clearly differentiating his text from the transcribed version of the historical incident (in which there is no such voluntary attempt to prosecute Cenci on the Pope's part), Shelley inserts his ambivalence about the necessity of the patricidal act. Shelley's distancing strategy thus allows him to preempt his contemporary critics' attacks on the "excessive" political content of The Cenci. At the same time, Shelley offers in the "Preface" to define Beatrice's involvement in the patricide and her firm refusal to admit it before the law in terms of "casuistry": "It is in the restless and anatomizing casuistry with which men seek the justification of Beatrice, yet feel that she has done what needs justification; it is in the superstitious horror with which they contemplate alike her wrongs and their revenge; that the dramatic character of what she did and suffered, consists" (p.240). Here, casuistry "is that part of ethics which resolves cases of conscience, applying the general rule of religion and morality to particular instances in which circumstances alter cases, or in which there appears to be a conflict of duties," as the Norton editors annotate (p.240, n. 6). Earl Wasserman highlights the concept of Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 216 "sublime casuistry" Shelley uses to explain Falkland's nature in Godwin's Caleb Williams; "Inherent purity of character can coexist with moral error; and, since sublime casuistry reveals that error cannot be reconciled with the purity, that purity is unaltered by the error."45 Through the concept of "casuistry" and through maintaining Beatrice's action and non-action as a "mystery," Shelley also registers his own ambivalent feelings of fascination, reservation, and moral judgment. The claims and disclaimers made by the poet in the "Preface" certainly invite us to explore the difference between the writer's "intention" and the end- product, and between the "Preface" and the main body of the play. What is the distance between his (male) subject position and the masculine law-of-the-father that is exposed critically throughout the play? 45Wasserman, Shellev; A Critical Reading, pp. 119. Further, concerning the "persistent difficulty" in interpreting Beatrice's character, Wasserman writes: That we have been baffled in our efforts to make . . . simplistic evaluations of Beatrice is not, as has been frequently concluded, Shelley's failure or even his own confusion of objective, but the actual fulfillment of his goal. The inadequacy of all our critical impulses either to exculpate or to condemn her is evidence that Shelley's sublime casuistry has created a situation that both excites our "pernicious casuistry" and thwarts its satisfactory completion so that the dramatically activated moral ambiguity—the impossibility of ignoring or explaining away either Beatrice's faults or her noble character—may, by engendering our internal debate, cause us to know ourselves, (p. 121) Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 5. The Gaze of the Other 217 The textual configurations of gendered power relations in The Cenci show his "political unconscious" that reveals more than Shelley states in the "Preface." In his "Dedication" to Leigh Hunt, Shelley's unconscious battle for radical poetics becomes poignantly ambiguous: "Those writings which I have hitherto published [especially, Queen Mab. Alastor. and Laon and Cythnal . . . are dreams of what ought to be, or may be" (237; emphasis added). While Shelley seems unaware of his train of thought, he is vacillating between Beatrice's "what ought to be done" and Orsino’s "what may be done." However, instead of lumping the revolutionary forces into furious multitudes lashing out their destructive vengeance against stability, the play distinguishes rebellious, anti-systemic violence from patriarchal, hegemonic, legitimized aggression. To further examine the political unconscious of the male poet and the depiction of the other in the text I go back my point of departure, the gaze of "Beatrice." The horrific grandeur and mysterious power engendered by the textual configuration of Beatrice evoke the original mythic figure of Medusa. If madness is often the fate of the female transgressive, Medusan monstrosity is a trope readily Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 218 available to be associated with the female revolutionary.46 With the active force of "striking" and "fixing" agent, Medusa turns around the traditional icon of passive femininity in force. Stuart Curran links Beatrice's image and the theatricality of the Cenci Palace to the icon of Medusa: The Palazzo Cenci was built in the Middle Ages across from the western wall of the Jewish Ghetto and just north of the small island that breaks the surface of the Tiber. An ugly, massive building, it impressed Shelley as "a vast and gloomy pile of architecture." Yet, though struck by the immense stones and . . . gloomy subterranean passages, he seems not to have been aware of the single architectural detail that aptly redeems the otherwise austere and prison-like fagade, a grim Medusa's head staring down on those entering the edifice. Later in the year Shelley was to note in the countenance of another Medusa "the tempestuous loveliness of terror": in Beatrice Cenci he found its embodiment. The Palazzo Cenci was a fitting complement to the portrait he so admired. In both, the heroic and the horrifying, the beautiful and the revolting, the extremities of good and evil, were fused into irreducible symbol.47 46Neil Hertz in "Medusa's Head: Male Hysteria Under Political Pressure" investigates the psyche of the male gazer at the Medusa's head, a standard iconographic image of the unruly woman in the period following the French Revolution. (Representations 4 [Fall 1983] 27-54); Nigel Leask in his study of Shelley's interest in mesmerism and somnambulism links them to what he calls the "Medusa effect," via the concept of "female sublime" — the intriguing combination of horror and grace in woman's body. Comparing the Shelleyan "Medusa effect" with the Coleridgean "Pygmalion effect," Leask interrogates the gendered power relation between the object and subject of the gaze ("Shelley's 'Magnetic Ladies': Romantic Mesmerism and the Politics of the Body," ed. Stephen Copley and John Whale, Beyond Romanticism: New Approaches to Texts and Contexts 1780-1832 [Routledge: London and NY, 1992], pp. 53-78. 47Curran, Shelley's Cenci. p. xii-xiii. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 219 Curran keenly draws a connection between Beatrice and Medusa, while reenacting the role of the gazer of the Medusa's head. Faced with the "tempestuous loveliness of terror," as Curran appropriately cites Shelley's "On the Medusa of Leonardo Da Vinci in the Florentine Gallery,"48 the male gazer is depicted as torn between desire and fear vis-^-vis the devastating power of the feminine in which horror, sublimity and aesthetic enjoyment are all conjoined. Obviously, Shelley's explicit and implicit references to the figure of Medusa in his poems 49 show his keen interest in the subject, as he ponders the difference between the male gaze and the Medusan gaze in this poem: the narrator of the poem undergoes the experience of a gazer-turned-to-a-thing by his own desire for Medusa and subjects himself to the perspective of the others "And from a stone beside, a poisonous eft/ Peeps idly into these Gorgonian eyes." The "tempestuous loveliness of terror" seems to attest to a belated recognition that Burke's awe inspiring sublime has come home: against the background of 48 por a more detailed discussion of the poem see Jerome McGann, "The Beauty of the Medusa," Studies in Romanticism 11 (1972): 3-25; Carol Jacobs, "On Looking at Shelley's Medusa," Uncontainable Romanticism: Shelley. Bronte. Kleist (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins UP, 1989), pp. 2-18. 49in "The Witch of Atlas" (1820) the Witch lives in Atlas mountain, which is derived from the mythic figure of Atlas, a brother of Prometheus, who turns to a mountain when shown Medusa's head by Perseus. The witch figure also renders supernatural, mysterious and transformative power. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 220 the prevalent representation of woman as a fixed, framed, and still image, a spectacle, object, and fetish, the Medusan gaze evokes an unappropriable realm of female power. Medusa's petrifying gaze monstrously disrupts any narrative, bringing to a standstill the time-honored expectation of the virtuous damsel, saintly-martyr, maternal or sisterly muse, despite all the patriarchal apparatuses of appropriation, containment, or "othering. "50 How could Shelley stage such Medusan gaze of Beatrice Cenci? The very first account of her gaze is given by Orsino, who encapsulates the powerful yet mysterious effect of that gaze: Yet I fear Her subtle mind, her awe-inspiring gaze, Whose beams anatomize me nerve by nerve And lay me bare, and make be blush to see My hiding thoughts.—Ah, no! A friendless girl Who clings to me, as to her only hope:— I were a fool, not less than if a panther Were panic-stricken by the Antelope's eye, If she escape me. (I. ii. 83-91) 50See, for example, a feminist critique of the dynamics of othering in philosophy: "Thus shadow is within the very field of light and woman is an internal enemy. For in defining itself through negation, the philosophical creates its other, it engenders an opposition which from now on, will play the role of the hostile principle, the more hostile because there is no question of dispensing with it. Femininity as an internal enemy? Or rather the feminine, a support-signifier of something that, having been engendered by philosophy whilst being rejected by it, operates within it as an indispensable deadweight which cannot be dialectically surpassed." (Michdle Le Doeuff, "Women and Philosophy," Radical Philosophy 17: 7; Qtd in Elizabeth Grosz, Sexual Subversion, p. 210.) Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 221 In spite of his apparent condescension towards the helpless "antelope" from the eye of the powerful "panther," Orsino is irrevocably struck by her anatomizing gaze. "Laid bare," and incapacitated, Orsino faces the spectacle of himself as seen by the Other, with a disavowed recognition that Beatrice will ultimately escape his grasp. This "anatomizing" gaze is a prominent and awful feature to her father, who is plotting the rape of his daughter. While apparently subjecting her to his own power, the Count still expresses his frustration over her "fearless" eyes: . . . from this day and hour Never again, I think, with fearless eye, And brow superior, and unaltered cheek, And that lip made for tenderness or scorn, Shalt thou strike dumb the meanest of mankind; Me least of all. (II. i. 116-121; emphasis added) While imposing his will just before the rape, the Count exhibits a curious hesitation with the insertion, "I think." Count Cenci's fetishistic attempt to define Beatrice tells more about his state of mind-i.e., his phallic drive and obsession—than about hers. At once admiting that he is stupefied, speechless, by her gaze, Cenci is now determined to crush her with an overpowering masculine will. Finally, in the trial scene of Act V, Shelley construes "the gaze of the Other," obliquely enough, through Marzio’s final declaration of Beatrice's innocence (in Marzio's words, to comply with "a higher truth"). Beatrice advances towards Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 222 Marzio, the Count's assassin, who consequently ”covers his face, and shrinks back," shouting "Oh, dart/ The terrible resentment of those eyes/ On the dead earth 1 Turn them away from me!/ They wound: 'twas torture forced the truth" (V. ii. 29-32). Beatrice asks him to "fix thine eyes on mine;/ Answer to what I ask, . . . What! wilt thou say/ That I did murder my own father?" (81-81; 86-87), to which Marzio exclaims, "Oh! Spare me! . . . Let her not look on me!" (88; 90). In the face of impending death, Marzio sees ungraspable, intractable, and almost sublime power in Beatrice's Medusan eyes that wound: Beatrice's transvaluational claim of innocence with a dramatic miming of the judges results in the mysterious submission of Marzio to her power and logic. Marzio finally declares: "A keener pain has wrung a higher truth/ From my last breath. She is most innocent1" (164-5). Beatrice's gaze cuts across class-differentiation by also turning Camillo, in effect, to a "soul-less" thing: "I would pledge my soul/ That she is guiltless" (V. ii. 61-2).51 Beatrice's gaze thus thrusts the allegorical, self-reflexive Slcamillo further shows the effect of Beatrice's gaze: I would as soon have tortured mine own nephew: (If he now lived he would be just her age; His hair, two, was her colour, and his eyes Like hers in shape, but blue and not so deep) As that most perfect image of God's love That ever came sorrowing upon the earth. She is as pure as speechless infancy! (V. ii. 63-69) Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 223 structure of the play to the fore. As if to defy even the author's desire for a just representation, it effects "an alien viewpoint with a voiding force, functioning as the reverse side of consciousness, and elides itself."52 Put face to face with the "blind" law that refuses to recognize how patriarchal oppression fosters crimes, and after identifying the nature of her struggle as the battleground of power and meaning, Beatrice refuses to be represented and tried by the state's legal apparatus. Beatrice's gaze allegorizes that otherness in her character, an "excess" or alterity of her subjectivity, that cannot be contained by the all-pervasive symbolic order. Stubbornly refusing to be a part of the system, Beatrice makes an impossible attempt at transcending it and dreaming "elsewhere." 6. A Critique of Law ... at this time genius was thought to manifest itself by overstepping existing laws. — Goethe53 52Ellie Ragland-Sullivan, Jacques Lacan and the Philosophy of Psychoanalysis (Urbana: U of Illinoi Press, 1986), p. 94. 53J. W. von Goethe, Poetry and Truth, ed. K. Bruel, 2. vols. (London, 1913), II, pp. 286. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 224 . . . what is philosophy today— philosophical activity, I mean— if it is not the critical work that thought brings to bear on itself? In what does it consist, if not in the endeavor to know how and to what extent it might be possible to think differently, instead of legitimating what is already known? — Foucault54 Beatrice's violence and the apparently inscrutable denial of her action are indeed inexplicable unless we try to construe the dark, "undistinguishable mist” that permeates the whole story as the condition of social existence. Throughout the trial scene, the neutrality and objectivity of the law and the judicial system are called into question, and the assumptions of the "knowing subject" and the regime of the truth are interrogated. What Shelley evokes is the scandalous Benjaminian insight that the activity of law- preserving in and of itself is violence :55 In this mortal world There is no vindication and no law Which can adjudge and execute the doom Of that through which I suffer (Beatrice, III. i. 134-137) Also, Lucretia poignantly states, "For the jealous laws/ Would punish us with death and infamy/ For that which it 5^Michel Foucault, "Introduction," The Use of Pleasure: The History of Sexuality, trans. Robert Hurley (NY: Vintage Books, 1986), pp. 8-9. 55see Walter Benjamin, "Critique of Violence," Reflections. trans. Edmund Jephcott (NY: Schocken Books, 1978), pp. 277-300. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 225 became themselves to do" (III. i. 229-31). The Shelleyan aspiration for a poet-legislator in A Defense of Poetry and A View on Philosophical Reform maps out a radical reformist imposition of a different law, different morals, philosophy, and aesthetics on individuals and societies. On the other hand, what seems to be a most significant insight in The Cenci is an "unacknowledged" configuration of the radical tour de force of annihilation against institutional legislative power, which is epitomized in the voiding force of Beatrice's gaze. Shelley debunks blind faith in the rule of the father- Pope-God and foregrounds the identificatory alliance between them. Earlier, when he heard of Beatrice's initial appeal at the banquet, the Pope had blatantly declared his alliance with the Count in the term of "neutrality:" "I pity the Count Cenci from my heart; /. . .In the great war between the old and young/ I, who have white hairs and a tottering body,/ Will keep at least blameless neutrality" (II. ii. 35, 38-40). Later at the trial, he does not hesitate to scapegoat Beatrice in order to reconsolidate the hegemonic power structure: "Parricide grows so rife/ That soon, for some just cause no doubt, the young/ Will strangle us all, dozing in our chairs./ Authority, and power, and hoary hair/ Are grown crimes capital " (V. iv. 20-4). Such statements by the Pope seem to prove the Foucauldian idea that the regime of truth in some ways represents its concealment. Even by his own Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 226 subordinates the Pope is construed as a controlling machine with Urizenic will, brutally demanding sacrifices to keep the system in motion: He looked as calm and keen as is the engine Which tortures and which kills, exempt itself From aught that it inflects; a marble form, A rite, a law, a custom: not a man. (V. iv. 2-5) Beatrice's testimonies at the "Hall of Justice" fundamentally challenge the presumptions, normalities, and "law" of the trial system-all of which occupy the regime of truth and the center of authority. Against the workings of the "controlling machine,” the subject position delineated through Beatrice evokes the Benjaminian "divine strike," instrumental and Messianic, which tears apart the existent moral scheme. Beatrice points out the arbitrariness of law making and law-imposing forces and questions the whole terrain of faith in the name of which human exploitation is committed: "To see, in this ill world where none are true,/My kindred false to their deserted selves./And with considering all the wretched life/ Which I have lived, and its now wretched end, / And the small justice shown by Heaven and Earth/ To me or mine;" (V. iii. 68-73). The truth-effect of Beatrice's problematization of justice is sharply contrasted by the judge's concept of truth as supported by law-preserving violence: "Let tortures strain the truth till it be white/ As snow thrice sifted by the frozen wind" (V. ii. 169-70); "I'll wring the truth/ Out of Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 227 those nerves and sinews, groan by groan." (193-4). Here, the absurd juridical condition under the absolutist rule is exposed: in the name of "truth"-seeking, the legal system resorts to nothing other than violence and distortion: What! will human laws, Rather will ye who are their ministers, Bar all access to retribution first, And then, when heaven doth interpose to do What ye neglect, arming familiar things To the redress of an unwonted crime, Make ye the victims who demanded it Culprits? 'Tis ye are culprits! . . . If it be true he [Marzio] murdered Cenci, was A sword in the right hand of justest God, Wherefore should I have wielded it? Unless The crimes which mortal tongue dare never name God therefore scruples to avenge. (IV. iv. 116-129) As a victim of the crime that the very system perpetrated with complacency, she attempts to challenge the boundary between the criminal and the innocent and thus equivocates upon the officially determined set of oppositional binaries: "0 white innocence,/ That thou shouldst wear the mask of guilt to hide/ Thine awful and serenest countenance/ From those who know thee not" (V. iii. 24-7). To Savella, a legate of the Pope, who mechanically repeats the short-hand question, "Art thou not guilty of thy father's death?" Beatrice responds with a wry twist of wit: "Guilty! Who dares talk of guilt? My Lord, / I am more innocent of parricide/ Than is a child born fatherless" (IV. iv. 111-113). Refusing to fall into the frame of the questioner, Beatrice points out the very condition of the demand. She recognizes the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 228 impossibility of proving one's innocence under the existing order that does not recognize the other side of the legitimized truth: "Which is or is not what men call a crime,/ Which either I have done, or have not done" (V. iii. 84-85). By refusing to define her action by the law of her society, and by rhetorically cutting across the literal dimension of the legal question, Beatrice paradoxically penetrates the blind faith in the existing authority that underlies the legal system. After having been silenced by the always already "unnameable" or "unspeakable" crime, Beatrice seems resolutely at odds with the presuppositions of a literality based on binaries and points out the potential abuse of the verbatim truth within a society where mystified, reductive logic prevails: the textual intricacy surrounding the notions of truth or falsehood points at their arbitrariness and susceptibility to be abused by an authority that never deliberates beyond the narrowly defined legitimacy of the case at hand.56 However, having shared the sufferings 56A series of questions can be articulated with respect to the shifting grounds between truth and falsehood. Eagleton, for example, powerfully points out the political and ideological dimension of value: . . . such values [as truth or justice] are indissociable from the shifting power strategies in which they are embedded. To be false or unjust, in conditions where the other has the power advantage, may be a productive error, as near to 'genuine' truth and justice as one can get . . . truth is always a matter of power and position, a function of social relations, an effect of particular discourses in particular conditions. How are women to live by truth Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 229 under the tyrannical patriarch and realized the dream of eliminating him once and for all, and finally having faced the vengeance of law-preserving power, Beatrice is forced to see the shortfall of her own allies. Giacomo repeats the demand of the judge and urges her to confess the "truth” in terms of the law-preservers: "They will tear the truth/ Even from thee at last, those cruel pains:/ For pity's sake say thou art guilty now" (V. iii. 52-4). Even Lucretia implores, "0, speak the truthl Let us all quickly die" (55). Epitomizing compassionate but passive motherhood, Lucretia gradually gives in to the role of the repenting, guilt- ridden, and grieving criminal, without challenging the power structure that reconsolidates its legitimacy and makes scapegoats of those who attempt to transgress it. Still, the driving force behind Beatrice's daring challenge to truth-categories stems from her passion for her step-mother and the desire for solidarity that has grown out of their common experience of oppression by Cenci. "Like a protecting presence: your firm mind/ Has been our only refuge and defense" (II. i. 48-49), Lucretia tells Beatrice, and and justice in a society where the very criteria for defining what counts as such are already in the hands of patriarchy? . . . Or can one falsehood be countered only by another more fruitful falsehood, which in shifting the balance of power in one's favor may bring a deeper demystification to birth? Can those who are stripped of power from the outset, excluded by the rules of discourse from full subjecthood, enter the power game at all without being instantly falsified? (p. 79; emphasis added) Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 230 later Beatrice says, "The suffering we all share has made me wild" (II. i. 74). In this light, the play's ending that draws on the last moment of Beatrice and Lucretia before execution takes a complex tone. Apparently, in the face of (re)victimization, the mood of Beatrice can be characterized as resignation, sharply distinguished from her tempestuous, annihilating strike against the law of the father, or, from her indignant rejection of the "truth"-jerking trial process: Here, Mother, tie My girdle for me, and bind up this hair In any simple knot; aye, that does well. And yours I see is coming down. How often Have we done this for one another; now We shall not do it any more. My Lord, We are quite ready. Well, 'tis very well. (V. iv. 159-165) The tragic fate Beatrice and Lucretia will paradoxically "share" attests to the efficacy of the established regime in resealing its jealously guarded "boundaries." Beatrice's last utterance, "Well, 'tis very well," certainly takes a tone of ironic renunciation for the "wretched end." The feminine ritual—doing each other's hair—Beatrice and Lucretia are engaging in here, however, also resonates with previous moments of the play. At the beginning of the third act, for example, Beatrice speaks of her violated state: "How comes this hair undone?/ Its wandering strings must be what blind me so,/ And yet I tied it fast—" (III. i. 6-8). By horrible acts of rape and abuse, the once "splendid ringlets" that "dazzled the eyes of the spectator" have become a maddening Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 231 reminder of victimization. In the image of the knotted hair in the ending, then, Beatrice's pain and despair after the rape and her murderous anger (evoking snaky hair of Medusa) come together, as well as her final resolve in the face of death. Further, the action of last knotting shared by Beatrice and Lucretia projects their desire for different space. The encoded bonding between them symbolically prefigures a restorability after violation, or, a radically different female desire that is yet to be realized. As Helen's efforts in Rosalind and Helen to "Unbind the knots of her friend's [Rosalind's] despair,/ Till her thoughts were free to float and flow" (214-5) signal a transformation, Beatrice's last "knotting" marks a gesture against the insurmountable condition of obliteration, not merely the re subordination to authority of the two women. If these anticipations cannot in and of themselves embody the Utopian space, they nevertheless point to the space as a future possibility.57 Beatrice's waiting inscribes such a faint yet persistent principle of hope, with her enigmatic repetition, "Well, 'tis very well." Could this be the voice of the dead Beatrice commenting upon Shelley's poetic endeavors, which can best be described as ambiguous? 57gee Fredric Jameson's discussion of Ernst Bloch's concept of Utopian hope in Marxism and Form, pp. 145-159. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 232 7. Afterword . . . myth and allegory would seem forms in which the empirical units are arbitrary and easily permutated, systems which allow for a degree of free play between general 1 set' and specific elements. . . . without realism the allegory is empty, without allegory the realism is blind. Such texts demand a double reading, whereby psychological empathy coexists with 'exemplary' ins ight. — Terry Eagleton, The Rape of Clarrisa58 Prefiguring the ending of the play, there is a culminatory scene that depicts the way in which even the darkening prospect for Beatrice could be dialectically reversed, and the "misty shadow" of her thoughts is superseded by lightness and freedom: The deed is done, And what may follow now regards not me. I am as universal as the light; Free as the earth-surrounding air; as firm As the world's centre. Consequence, to me, Is as the wind which strikes the solid rock But shakes it not. (IV. iv. 46-52) With an ethereal post-mortem effect, Beatrice defines herself through multiple and indeterminable images of light—air—rock. Beatrice's invocation of the Other here is comparable to the "Maniac" maid's profoundly sacrificial action against tyranny in The Mask of Anarchy. The image of a "Shape" growing out of 58j;agleton, The Rape of Clarissa, p. 18; p. 20. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 233 "A mist:, a light, an image" (103) in The Mask reemerges in "The Triumph of Life," when "the Shape all light" takes over the night: "like day she came, Making the night a dream; "Triumph of Life" 392-3). In all cases, the suffering of the female victim dialectically becomes a Messianic voice. The play then presents, in a most intriguing way, Beatrice's self-ironization, which also includes an allegorization of the process of poetic enunciation itself: [Lucretia] knows not yet the uses of the world. She fears that power is as a beast which grasps And loosens not: a snake whose look transmutes All things to guilt which is its nutriment. She cannot know how well the supine slaves Of blind authority read the truth of things When written on a brow of guilelessness: She sees not yet triumphant Innocence Stand at the judgement-seat of mortal man, A judge and an accuser of the wrong Which drags it there. (IV. iv. 177-186; emphasis added) Here, Beatrice's "obligation" to address the criminal charge is displaced with a masterful critique of the legal procedures at the "Hall of Justice." At the same time, she acknowledges her own awareness of her performance ("a brow of guilelessness") vis-A-vis law-preserving authority. More interestingly, Beatrice's speech also evokes, in a paradoxical sense, Shelley's own depiction of "Beatrice" in the painting in the "Preface." It seems that suddenly the character on trial starts to talk about not only the fellow sufferer on trial and the trial process, but the process of representation itself; this is when "Beatrice" in the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 234 painting suddenly looks back, and the beholder mocks oneself through the voice of the other. We, the reader of the play, instead of judging Beatrice, are also subjected to a trial, and reflect upon the limitation of our own positions from an alien point of view. Indeed, the "anatomizing casuistry" is directed to us, who are struck by Beatrice's awe-inspiring gaze, by her silence that defies an easy solution, and by her death that puts her in the judgment-seat of the living. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 235 Chapter 4 The Double Move of Mary Shelley: The (Un)making of the Modern Prometheus So much has been done, exclaimed the soul of Frankenstein— more, far more, will I achieve; treading in the steps already marked, I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation. — Mary Shelley, Frankenstein . . . man, the queller of the elements, the lord of created nature, the peer of demi-gods, existed no longer. — Mary Shelley, The Last Man 1. The Frankenstein Effects It is only from a participant's perspective on technological society and cyberculture— with its power of limitless multiplication, genetic en/de-coding and virtual anything— that the reader of Frankenstein1 now reflects upon 1There are six textually significant versions of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus: Shelley's manuscript, the fair copy manuscript, the 1818 first edition, Thomas copy with Shelley's annotation, the 1823 second edition, and the 1831 edition with the author's introduction. The anonymously published 1818 text consists of Percy Shelley's "Preface" and 23 chapters in 3 volumes (Vol. I: Robert Walton’s 4 letters and 7 chapters; vol. II: 9 chapters; vol. Ill: 7 chapters and Walton's letter in Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 236 the "origin" of the text, when a creature not of woman born was a shocking phenomenon. In other words, the reader in approaching the novel is already situated in Frankenstein's legacy, with vivid images of (Frankensteinian) monsters encoded in various forms. By now, cultural products evoking the novel's theme have proliferated,2 especially since James continuation). The 1831 edition came with Mary Shelley’s "Introduction" and Walton's 4 letters and 27 chapters in one volume. I refer to both the 1818 "original" and the 1831 editions, although I follow the 1818 text’s punctuations. I use D. L. Macdonald and Kathleen Scherf's edition (Peterborough: Broadview Press, 1994) for the 1818 edition, although James Rieger's edition (Chicago and London: U of Chicago P, 1974) is also consulted. For the 1831 edition, I use Maurice Hindle's 1985 Penguin classics edition. All the subsequent references to these editions will be given between parentheses in the text, in the order of the volume number, chapter number and page number of the 1818 version, followed by the chapter number and page number of the 1831 edition in brackets. When there is a discrepancy between the two texts, I try to show both versions whenever possible, except differences in punctuation; and when the 1831 edition is the sole source, I indicate it by using brackets alone. 2Much credit has been duly paid to Boris Karloff's powerful rendition of the monster in the two films. Filmic adaptations of the novel have been made as early as in 1910, and John Whale's Frankenstein and The Bride of Frankenstein led numerous followers thereafter amidst the blooming of the horror film genre, including Terence Fisher’s The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958), Freddie Francis's The Evil of Frankenstein (1964), and Jimmy Sangster's The Horror of Frankenstein (1970). See James Rieger, "Introduction," James Rieger ed., Frankenstein, or. The Modern Prometheus: the 1818 Text (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1974; 1982), pp. xxxiv-xxxv; Albert J. Lavalley, "The Stage and Film Children of Frankenstein: A Survey" and William Nestrick, "Coming to Life: Frankenstein and the Nature of Film Narrative" in George Levine and U. C. Knoepflmacher, ed. The Endurance of Frankenstein (Berkeley: U. C. Press, 1979), pp. 243-315. Television also churned out various adaptations in the form of TV movies and sit-com series. In the written medium, cyberpunk novels featuring Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 237 Whale's films, Frankenstein (1931) and The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), unearthed the cult-hero in the monster.3 Some of the popular notions of the Frankenstein theme obscure the subtleties and complexities of the work, if they at the same time hint at intriguing alternative interpretations. One example is the notion that the name Frankenstein refers to the monster (not the creator as in the novel). The figure of the monster k la Frankenstein has since achieved mythical statures while focusing on the effect of the man-made "savage," these phenomena based on misreadings illustrate a process of textual formation, especially the way in which Frankenstein has gained a currency in social discourse, capturing (and shaping) the cultural imagination for generations. According to the popular version, the honorary role designated by the subtitle, "the Modern Prometheus," intended for Victor Frankenstein (a character with aspirations for Enlightenment that the author's father and partner shared), has fallen various cyborgs (William Gibson, Neuromancer and Burning Chrome; John Shirley, City Come a Walkin'. among others) have imitated, parodied and echoed the Frankenstein theme overtly or implicitly. 3I do not capitalize the monster throughout my discussion, following the text, but I found it problematic that he cannot be referred to in any other way but as a monster and his "monstrosity" gets naturalized, and his singularity deeply marred. On the other hand, by leaving the monster character an indefinite one, the novel generates the sense that readers themselves are also implicated in the monstrosity of the character. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 238 firmly upon the monster, a savage counterpart of Milton's Adam. Another commonly accepted notion is that Victor Frankenstein, marginalized by the weight of the overwhelming monster, is always already a mad scientist, whereas the novel remains ambiguous about this, repeatedly asserting (especially through the record of the sympathetic eyewitness, Walton) that the scientist Frankenstein is a humanist with a "noble" aim till the end: "Even broken in spirit as he is, no one can feel more deeply than he does the beauties of nature. . . . Such a man has a double existence: he may suffer misery, and be overwhelmed by disappointments; yet when he has retired into himself, he will be like a celestial spirit, that has a halo around him, within whose circle no grief or folly ventures" (Walton's Letter 4. 61 [78]). If Walton sees the "double existence" in Victor, he puts it in a decidedly positive perspective. One might argue that the seeds of "modern" readers' confusion are well planted in the novel: oscillations between the realistic and the marvelous, the scientific and the supernatural, and the empirical and the dream-like permeate the narrative throughout; the blurred atmosphere— between reality and fantasy, amidst the eternal presence of dream— begets a strange and singular subjectivity. Critics have stressed the experimental quality (or, "myth-making" impact) of the novel: in terms of genre, it is seen either as the culmination of the Gothic novel or as the origin of Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 239 science fiction; focusing on its ideological underpinnings, it is considered to have inaugurated "the Age of Frankenstein"; it also has gained recognition for its narrative experimentation——e. g., its multivalent points of view or layers of narrative and competing viewpoints.4 In 4The notions respectively come from Paul Alkon, Science Fiction Before 1900: Imagination Discovers Technology (NY: Twayne Publishers, 1994) (Also, George Slusser in the same light calls the impact of the novel "The Frankenstein Barrier." See Fiction 2000: Cvberpunk and the Future of Narrative, ed. George Slusser and Tom Shippey [Athens: U of Georgia P, 1992]); Eve Sedgwick, The Coherence of Gothic Conventions (NY: Methuen, 1986); Beth Newman, "Narratives of Seduction and the Seductions of Narrative: The Frame Structure of Frankenstein," ELH 53 (1986), 141-63, and Gayle Ormiston and Raphel Sassower, Narrative Experiments: Discursive Authority of Science and Technology (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota Press, 1989). In terms of the genre of Frankenstein. Paul Alkon highlights the break the novel made from Faustian tradition that is seen to be linked to the magical, mythic or fantasy dimension: "The most significant point of Mary Shelley's emphasis on Frankenstein's education is that he has left the realm of magicians and Faustian compacts, that is to say the realm of fairy-tale and fable— and theism— for the secular outlook of modern science" (Science Fiction Before 1900. p. 30.) On the other hand, critics such as Muriel Spark, Ellen Moers and James Rieger treat the novel as primarily Gothic. Spark considers it "both as the apex and the last of Gothic fiction— for though many other works of the Radcliff school were to follow, their death-stroke was delivered, their mysteries solved, by Frankenstein's rational inquisition" (Muriel Spark, Mary Shelley: A Biography, revised edition of Marv Shelley: A Child of Light, p. 154.) Spark also indicates the surrealist element in Frankenstein and notes the affinities between science fiction and surrealist literature. In her important article, "Female Gothic," Ellen Moers highlights the theme of the traumatic experience of child birth that effects gender-specific literary terror in Frankenstein. Moers also notes that the novel "made the Gothic novel over into what today we call science fiction." Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 240 relation to traditional narrative, therefore, Frankenstein represents a critique of western origin stories by reshaping or reinventing one of its own. The specific invention of the monster in Frankenstein might be seen as an answer to a historical and cultural demand. The parallel undertakings of Walton's Arctic journey and Victor Frankenstein's journey to the source of life and his mind, for example, reflect the cultural obsession with exploration on both macro- and micro-cosmic levels (the microscope and telescope were dramatically improved at the time)s under the imperialist banners explorations were undertaken all over the globe, scientific/ technological advances were made, and geographical exploration5 went hand in hand with intensified curiosity about the power of science, including the possibility of parthenogenesis.6 The See "Female Gothic," ed. George Levine and U. C. Knoepflmacher, The Endurance of Frankenstein, p. 79. 5Nigel Leask convincingly argues that technological progress in nineteenth century Europe, such as the telescope, allowed the British imperialist subject to penetrate the extremities of space. See Leask, British Romantic Writers and the East: Anxieties of Empire. (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1992), p. 228. ^Virginia P. Dawson, "The Scientist in Shirt-sleeves: Charles Bonnet's Letters on Parthenogenesis," eds. Donald C. Mell, Jr. Theodore E. D. Braun, Lucia M. Palmer, Man. God, and Nature in the Enlightenment, pp. 193-203. Dawson follows the eighteenth-century empirical scientist Bonnet's account of his discovery through the microscope ("that the plant lice are capable of reproducing without male fertilization— the phenomenon known today as parthenogenesis"; p.195) in 1740. Dawson also notes that the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 241 population debate in the later part of the eighteenth century, especially heated by Maithus through his devastating Essay on the Principle of Population (1798), impelled British intellectuals to speculate not only on natural resources but on reproductive power with wonder and fear.7 The public's increasingly stimulated curiosity about the human body and automata worked as a backdrop not only for Frankenstein but for an array of works, including E. T. A. Hoffmann's "Sandman" (1816) in Germany and Fdlix Bodain's The Novel of the Future (1834) in France. It was high time that the subject of natural philosophy (that is, science) be tackled in relation to cultural and psychical underpinnings.8 term parthenogenesis was first used by Richard Owen in 1849 (OED). 7The issue of population growth was discussed by Jean- Antoine-Nicolas Caritat Condorcet in his Essai sur 1' application de 1' analyse aux probability (1785), in which he proposed birth control instead of sexual abstinence. As a response to Malthus, William Godwin published Of Population: An Inquiry concerning the Power of Increase in the Numbers of Mankind. Being an Answer to Mr. Malthus's Essav on That Subject (1820). 80f course, many of the recent subversive and alternative readings from feminist and psychoanalytical perspectives are possible through picking such textual clues that intersect the psychical and the social. See Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, "Horror's Twin" in The Madwoman In the Attic (New Haven: Yale U, 1979); Mary Poovey, The Proper Ladv and the Woman Writer: Ideology as Style in the Works of Marv Wollstonecraft. Marv Shelley, and Jane Austen (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1984); Barbara Johnson, "My Monster/ Myself" Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 242 Interrogating the juncture of the personal and the social in terms of the fantasy structure that begets monstrous figures, especially in the context of the Enlightenment, Slavoj Zizek argues that [T]he emergence of the empty surface on which phantasmagorical monsters appear is . . . strictly correlative to what Heidegger calls "the advent of Modern-Age-subjectivity," i.e., to the epoch in which the symbolic "substance" can no longer contain the subject, can no longer bind him to its symbolic mandate.9 In Zizek's analysis, the cutting off of the "substantial tradition" is the constitutive gesture of the Enlightenment, and monsters appear in the discourse as the "missing link" in A World of Difference (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins UP, 1987); Anne K. Mellor, Marv Shelley: Her Life. Her Fiction. Her Monsters (NY and London: Routledge, 1988); George Levine and U. C. Knoepflmacher, ed. The Endurance of Frankenstein: Essays on Mary Shelley's Novel (Berkeley: U of California P, 1979); Rosemary Jackson, "Narcissism and Beyond: A Psychoanalytic Reading of Frankenstein and Fantasies of the Double, " Aspects of Fantasy: Selected Essays from the Second International Conference on the Fantastic in Literature and Film, ed. William Coyle (Westpot, CT: Greenwood, 1986), 43-53; Margaret Homans, "Bearing Demons: Frankenstein and the Circumvention of Maternity," Bearing the Word: Language and Female Experience in Nineteenth-Century Women's Writing (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1986), pp. 100-119; Mladen Dolar, "'I Shall Be with You on Your Wedding Night': Lacan and the Uncanny," October 58 (Fall 1991); 5-23. ^Zizek, Enioy Your Symptom: Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and Out (NY and London: Routeledge, 1992), p. 134. See esp. Chapter 4, "Why does the Phallus Appear?" pp. 114-146. I am indebted to Yu-mi Yang for directing my attention to Zizek's theorization of the juncture between the Enlightenment and the monster and for helping frame this part of my discussion. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 243 between nature and culture. The monster figure is a kind of "answer to the real" to the Enlightenment's endeavor to find a bridge that links culture to nature," enabling to produce "cultured" people who would simultaneously conserve their "unspoiled nature." The "ambiguity of the Enlightenment" lies precisely in such contradictions the very proliferation of the "origins" discourse (origins of language, of culture, of society) in the period of the Enlightenment is the reversal of "a fundamental prohibition, the prohibition to probe too deeply into the obscure origins, which betrays a fear that by doing so, one might uncover something monstrous. . ." (136). In other words, the Enlightenment discourse of the origin is nothing other than an attempt to fill neatly the inevitable void that cannot be positivised; and the subject turns out to be "the surplus" that cannot be subjected to the social. In this vein, Zizek goes as far as saying that "the pure subject" of the Enlightenment is a monster in the sense that it is the "fantasmatic appearance of the 'missing link' between nature and culture" (136).10 In a most suggestive and illuminating lOzizek continues: "The subject is nonsubstance; he exists only as a nonsubstantial self-relating which maintains its distance from inner-worldly objects; yet in monsters, this subject encounters the Thing which is his impossible equivalent— the monster is the subject himself, conceived as Thing" (137; emphasis in the original). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 244 moment, zizek links the figure of monsters with the function of capitals The ultimate "social mediation” of the monster figure is therefore to be sought in the social impact of capital, this terrifying force of "deterritorialization" which dissolves all traditional ("substantial") symbolic links and marks the entire social edifice with an irreducible structural imbalance— it is by no accident that "monsters" appear at every break which announces a new epoch of capital: in its rise (Frankenstein, . . . ); its transformation into imperialism (The Phantom of the Opera. . .); today’s emergence of the "postindustrial" society (the revival of the motif of the "living dead"). This structural imbalance is inscribed into the very form of anamorphosis [radical deformation], namely in its radical ambiguity: anamorphotic distortions of reality may function as repellent horror . . . yet phallophancy may also occasion an effect of sublime beauty. (139-140) With this insight on the linkage between the monster figure and symbolic economy as well as political economy in mind, I focus on the analysis of a combinatoire of cultural, geopolitical, scientific and psychical discourses in Frankenstein. The novel deploys the techniques of a mystery novel, in which fine layers of mysteries are wrapped in the operation of cultural, social and psychical forces. Ideology-ridden issues such as territorial exploration, domination, and reproduction locate the issue of gender. Ever since the author's identity became known, Frankenstein has drawn particular attention because of its theme of parthenogenesis linked to the gender of the author. On the other hand, with its overt theme of reproduction and Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 245 yearning for domestic affection, the novel is fatally marked by the "glaring absence" of women, or the near- conspiratorial obliteration of the female characters, one after another (Caroline Beaufort, Justine Moritz, "the bride" of the monster, and Elizabeth Lavenza). These other worldly female characters cure more often than not irrevocably idealized and fetishized with descriptions such as "fairer than a garden rose among dark-leaved brambles," or "a creature who seemed to shed radiance from her looks and whose form and motions were lighter than the chamois of the hills." Was it too much of a burden for a woman writer who simultaneously vied for domestic bliss and intellectual aspiration to make her female characters sustain contradictory positionalities and survive in the novel? Figures of femininity seem to work in the novel as an empty operational axis in the narrative structure, marking the haunting desire of the Other. The paradoxical duality that Elizabeth Lavenza embodies can be seen as an example: Elizabeth is an extension of Victor's mother, and functions as the object of the Mother’s desire and as an (empty) vehicle for Victor's desire for the mother; she vows domestic affection towards Victor as the pre-Victorian "angel in the house," but finally does not grant Victor a homey security, as if she already knows too much; Elizabeth keeps reminding him of the Other (either the inscrutable in her or in the monster), the eruption of an alien body. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 246 Justine Moritz also hovers at the tricky intersection between femininity and monstrosity. Justine's position as an ultimate victim of the blind legal system and as the voice of conscience for Victor certainly challenges the boundary of normalcy and monstrosity. Justine states: I did confess; but I confessed a lie. I confessed, that I might obtain absolution; but now that falsehood lies heavier at my heart than all my other sins. The God of Heaven forgive me! Ever since I was condemned, ray confessor has besieged me; he threatened and menaced, until I almost began to think that I was the monster that he said I was. (I. 7. 114 [8. 133]; emphasis added) Justine's predicament cannily illustrates the constructed nature of monsterism, echoing Giacomo's sentiment in The Cenci: "... the monster of my thought. . . grew familiar to desire ..." (The Cenci. V. i. 23-24). Both Justine's and Giacomo's situations show monstrosity not as preordained or inherent, but as a symbolic construction marked by the lack or difference (which is often produced by the hegemonic order of things itself).11 Further, to the monster, the sleeping Justine embodies the bewitching doubleness of femininity and monstrosity: between her redemptive feminine beauty and her satanic condemnation of his being, there 11-Along these lines, Peter Brooks says that the fate of monsterism can best be described as textual. See Peter Brooks, "Godlike Science/ Unhallowed Arts," in The Endurance of Frankenstein, ed. George Levine and U. C. Knoepflmacher, p. 219. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 247 exists the historically guaranteed masculinist will to power. The following discussion will explore the textual junctures of Enlightenment, Prometheanism, femininity and monstrosity, especially in terms of the novel's historicity, psychical dynamics and gender-rooted subjectivity. I will make a double movement in examining this text fraught with double movements: while closely pursuing the historicity of Frankenstein's "progress" towards scientific achievement on the one hand, I will interrogate the implications of the eruption of fantasy in terms of maternal desire, the gaze and the primal scene. I will offer an ideological or symptomatic reading that puts Victor and the monster on the shifting ground of contradictory positions— sometimes viewing the two figures as conflicting and sometimes as identical or complementary. The effect of such an endeavor is Mary Shelley's critique of deeply male-oriented Prometheanism, which I designate by the term "Prometheus unmanned." A parallel thrust of my argument concerns the novel's problematization of the boundaries between the human and the mechanical— another symptom of unmanned Prometheus. Further, while acknowledging the female writing subject who exposes the blurred boundary of Prometheanism and monsterism, I also locate the ideological juncture between the monstrous and the feminine that is effected by the text. By analyzing the cultural phenomena of monsters through an Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 248 investigation of the intricate dimension of the fantastic, I attempt to address the cultural significance of the propagation of monster figures in the here-and-now. Finally, I suggest that the Frankenstein effects have contributed to the proliferation of what we might call the illegitimate children of the monst(e)r/esses in this cybernetic age. 2.1. Making Departures: Men-In-Action and Their Doubles Why not still proceed over the untamed yet obedient element? What can stop the determined heart and resolved will of man? — [Walton's Letter 3. 72], Frankenstein ". . . You travelled to seek happiness, but a fatality seems to pursue you. . . " — Alphonse to Victor Frankenstein, Frankenstein. III. 4. 206 [20. 225] Is it because acts are not lovely, that thou seekest solitude, Where the horrible darkness is impressed with reflections of desire. — Blake, Visions of the Daughters of Albion, pi. 7, 10-11. "What may not be expected in a country of eternal light? I may there discover the wondrous power which attracts the needle and may regulate a thousand celestial observations that require only this voyage to render their seeming eccentricities consistent forever." Frankenstein first introduces a zealous follower of Enlightenment logic— Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 249 a man in action equipped with enchanting, if limited, scientific knowledge. The contradictory image of eternal sunlight coexisting with panoramic celestial configurations12 reflects the all-encompassing mode of operation of Robert Walton— a pioneering explorer, frontier- gazer and trail-blazer, admirer and conqueror of nature. After the irrevocable course of his journey has been taken, he finds time to inform his perennially passive counterpart— —his sister Margaret Saville (the female addressee who stays at home, and who makes no direct utterances throughout the novel)— of his "enterprise": I shall satiate my ardent curiosity with the sight of a part of the world never before visited, and may tread a land never before imprinted by the foot of man. These are my enticements, and they are sufficient to conquer all fear of danger or death, and to induce me to commence this laborious voyage with the joy a child feels when he embarks in a little boat, with his holiday mates, on an expedition of discovery up his native river. But, supposing all these conjectures to be false, you cannot contest the inestimable benefit which I shall confer on all mankind to the last generation, by discovering a passage near the pole to those countries, to reach which at present so many months are requisite; or by ascertaining the secret of the magnet, which, if at all possible, can only be effected by an undertaking such as mine. (Vol. I. Walton's Letter 1. 49 [pp. 63-4]) Here we see an amalgamation of "ardent" desire for knowledge and "laborious" undertaking, fueled by an unreserved self !2walton himself says previously, "There [in the North pole], Margaret, the sun is forever visible; its broad disk just skirting the horizon, and diffusing a perpetual splendour" (Walton's Letter 1, 49 [63]). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 250 assurance that goes unhindered toward "all mankind to the last generation." The "actual" voyage for the unknown marks a "real" beginning of Walton’s adult life, a distinction that separates a man's task from a child's enchantment.13 Walton emphatically stresses the bourgeois entrepreneurial work ethic and its governing principle, biding prudence, in the adventurers "I am practically industrious— painstaking, a workman to execute with perseverance and labour" [Letter 2. 70]; "Be assured, that for my own sake, as well as your's, I will not rashly encounter danger. I will be cool, preserving, and prudent" (Letter 3. 56 [71]). At the same time, he highlights his need to receive emotional support from a female correspondents "Continue for the present to write to me by every opportunity s I may receive your letters (though the chance is very doubtful) on some occasions when I need them most to support my spirits" (Letter 2, 55 [70; "(though the chance is very doubtful)" is deleted in the 1831 edition]). Walton's attitude toward his sister runs parallel with his attitude towards natures "the very stars themselves being witnesses and testimonies of my triumph" [1831s 71-72]. Both are summoned forth and disposed of at his convenience, functioning as sources of inspiration and 13In childhood Walton goes through a phase in which "I also became a poet, and for one year lived in a Paradise of my own creation; I imagined that I also might obtain a niche in the temple where the names of Homer and Shakespeare are consecrated" (Walton's Letter 1. 51 [64]). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 251 witnesses to his conquering journey. Objectified and spiritualized, the woman and nature nevertheless need to be there for the formation of the male ego, if only for him to strive to separate himself from them later. The theme of Frankenstein, the struggles of "the modern Prometheus"— the topos of bourgeois man in new, "modern," socio-sexual relations— is thus introduced as the backdrop of the "monstrous" main story. With the ambition and anxiety of a modern man in action Walton asserts his masculinity qua warrior over thingified nature and comfortably distanced worrier sister. Indeed, the assumptions of an explorer of nature, like those of scientific discourse, amply suggest the equation of women and nature as passive objects in the course of subjugation by masculine, civilizing force/violence. The male subject-in-the-making signals his coming of age by embarking upon a journey to the city from a home (since the domestic space is considered to be feminine)— or further, to a mysterious foreign land or uninhabited part of the world.14 As shown in the proliferation of travel narratives, this period saw an unprecedented number of young men of the aristocracy or of the ascending bourgeois class 14In that sense, M. H. Abrams's archetypal thematization of journey-making and an eventual home-coming motif in Romantic poetry could find another example in Frankenstein. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 252 traveling throughout Europe as a necessary part of their education. A man striving under the dictates of the emotionally elevated Enlightenment notion nourished the optimistic possibility of human improvement, in opposition to the religion- and temperament-bound essentialist mode of a century before. Indeed, the conviction of human perfectibility— a condition of possibility for the French Revolution— constitutes the typical mode of operation for victor Frankenstein and Walton. Both men attempt to realize the notion of absolute freedom of the autonomous subject, a driven and restless self in search of "the secret" that lies beneath the surface. Keats would label this mode "the egotistical sublime": "'I' as the localized site of a cosmic struggle between powers which have an existence external and anterior to it." The spirit common to the two men constitutes a bond, or a union of two soul-mates, composed of a male friend who observes and appreciates the already- achieved struggle of the other, a Promethean hero. The mirroring activity of the self-designated "apprentice" sustains the mission the Promethean hero has begun. This homoerotic tableau, often characterized by the Romantic obsession with friendship and its flip-side insistence on solitude, dictates nothing short of each man's destiny. The thematic similarity between Frankenstein and Godwin's Things Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 253 as They Are: or. the Adventure of Caleb Williams (1794), for example, has been noted by critics,15 and Byron's story fragment that resulted from the same "ghost story contest" (on June 17th of 1816) also has the key element of friendship between Augustus Darvell, a mysterious and well- traveled nobleman, and the male narrator, his admirer.16 As Eve Sedgwick points out, this "tableau of two men chasing one another across a landscape" locates the common tenet of "the age of Frankenstein."17 Promethean ambition, the egotistical sublime, and Enlightenment zeal are the principles in Victor Frankenstein's quest for "a human being in perfection" (I. 3. 84 [4. 103])— in Kantian terms, an attempt to "make use of his own understanding without the guidance of another." The image of Victor "enter[ing] the world" (I. 2. 74 [3. 93]) for a purposeful task accompanying his drive to self- affirmation exemplifies what Horkheimer and Adorno call the 15See, for example, Muriel Spark and James Rieger for their comparison of the two works. Of course, when Frankenstein was anonymously published in 1818, the author dedicated the novel "To William Godwin, Author of Political Justice and Caleb Williams." Partly as a result, many readers speculated that the novel's author was either Godwin or Percy Shelley. See Lord Byron, "Fragment," in "Appendix C" of James Rieger's edition, Frankenstein. The 1818 Text, pp. 260-265. l7Eve Sedgwick formulates the notion in The Coherence of Gothic Conventions. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 254 "dialectic of Enlightenment," a primal case of which is Ulysses. Hunger for "continual food" and the indefatigable drive for action signal a man’s coming of age, especially at a time when Europe was eager for colonial projects that would provide aspiring young men with fertile ground for imperialist projects. Frankenstein recognizes a kindred spirit instantly when he sees it in his childhood friend, Henry Clerval, who envisages an "Indian enterprise." The ambition that characterizes Victor's science project and Robert's North-pole enterprise has also taken over the sensitive and feminine Henry, who now distances himself from his early infatuation with chivalry and romance: But in Clerval I saw the image of my former self; he was inquisitive, and anxious to gain experience and instruction. The difference of manners which he observed was to him an inexhaustible source of instruction and amusement. [He was also pursuing an object he had long had in view. His design was to visit India, in the belief that he had in his knowledge of its various languages, and in the views he had taken of its society, the means of materially assisting the progress of European colonization and trade. In Britain only could he further the execution of his plan. ] He was forever busy; and the only check to his enjoyments was my sorrowful and dejected mien [mind]. (III. 2. 185 [19. 203-4]; emphasis added) Often Clerval is seen as "the poet figure in the Wordsworthian mold, nourished on 'the very poetry of Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 255 nature.'"18 There certainly is also an element in him from which one might draw an idealized Percy Shelley, as James Rieger does.19 Franco Moretti, focusing on the early Clerval, sees him as "placidly traditionalist" compared with Victor: "[Clerval] has chosen to stay in his parents' town, in his family home, and keep their values alive. These values are cooperative, localistic, unchanging."20 Nonetheless, I think his "transformation" into a masculine, colonial agency is a significant inscription of historical phenomena. Clerval does eventually leave his home with a colonialist's dream which hardly could be called "cooperative, localistic, unchanging." Thus, highlighting only the "feminized" aspect of Clerval, as Marlon Ross does, is also misleading: in contrast to Victor's "monstrously self-consuming desire," Ross sees Clerval as "a rare type" in Frankenstein, "a man whose desire has been shaped by feminine influence without an aggressive, resistant counter-reaction. . . "21 Attending to Shelley's scrupulous revisions, we may trace Henry ISpeter Brooks, "Godlike Science/ Unhallowed Arts," p. 206. 19Rieger, "Introduction," Frankenstein, p. 7. 20Franco Moretti, "Dialectic of Fear," Signs Taken for Wonders (London: Verso, 1983), p. 88. 21Marlon Ross, The Contours of Masculine Desire: Romanticism and the Rise of Women's Poetry (NY and Oxford: Oxford UP, 1989), p. 114. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 256 Clerval’s allegorical passage towards a bourgeois subject engaged in colonialism:22 Clerval, a man with means and aspiration, saw only "in Britain," where blooming commerce activated the mobility of capital, the full opportunity that was generated by the colonizing enterprise of Britain's East India Company. Just like Walton, who stresses his self- discipline and purposefulness, Clerval eagerly fashions himself into an indefatigable schemer, entrepreneur, and trader; his knowledge of Oriental languages, once acquired with "love" for "its own sake" [2. 86], now turns into the means of his colonial conquest. While Frankenstein is full of "a criss-crossing of [European] languages implicit in the text," as Peter Brooks puts it, especially French, English, and German (in addition, Greek and Latin at times),23 "Oriental" languages make an entry as a vehicle for colonial imagination. Clerval comes to the university with the 22Anne Mellor notes a fairly extensive revision of the characterization of Clerval's formative years that she concludes was made by Mary Shelley for the printed version (Marv Shellev: Her Life. Her Fiction. Her Monsters, p.66). The point becomes clear when we juxtapose the 1818 text with the 1831 text: in the latter Clerval is much more concretized as an imperial subject in the making, exemplifying the corollary between a Romantic subject and the imperial subject, the link Nigel Leask expounds in his British Romantic Writers and the East (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1992). 23Brooks notes, for example, "with the arrival of Safie, we have a lesson in French being offered to a Turkish Arab, in a German-speaking region, the whole rendered for the reader in English" ("Godlike Science/ Unhallowed Arts," p. 210). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 257 "design of making himself complete master of the Oriental languages, as thus he should open a field for the plan of life he had marked out for himself. Resolved to pursue no inglorious career, he turned his eyes towards the East as affording scope for his spirit of enterprise. The Persian, Arabic, and Sanskrit languages engaged his attention. . ." [116] The "Oriental" cultures and literatures conveyed to Victor and Clerval are passive, primitive, and feminine, not to mention exotic, seductive, and mysterious, as opposed to the masculine western classic: Their melancholy is soothing, and their joy elevating to a degree I never experienced in studying the authors of any other country. When you read their writings, life appears to consist in a warm sun and garden of roses, — in the smiles and frowns of a fair enemy, and the fire that consumes your own heart. How different from the manly and heroical poetry of Greece and Rome. (I. 5. 97 [6. 116-7]) The setting, characters and the plot of Orientalist literature are all feminized, from the warm sun and garden of roses to the fair enemy's tantalizing invitation for (male) colonialist passion. One might ask: what Romantic subject wouldn't enter the career of an imperialist agent? Clerval's transformation from a sensitive, fanciful character with feminized "virtues" to a calculating schemer for a profit-making pursuit demonstrates the engendering of the colonial subject as male. The conflict and resolution of Clerval's quest for his "identity" reflect the ongoing negotiation that feeds "the myth of masculine self- Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 258 possession,"24 or mastery over objectified others. Clerval firmly places himself at the Western (European) center, in unproblematically "assisting the progress of European colonization and trade" (emphasis added). Obviously, he assumes the role of an enlightened subject, advancing "the progress" of the subaltern who is lacking this progress. Victor Frankenstein stands at another forefront of Enlightenment— science, knowledge and power. Early on he defines himself as a philosopher seeking "the metaphysical" truth, or in its highest sense, the physical secrets of the world" [2. 86]; but what motivates him to "natural" science (or, natural philosophy at the phase later to be labeled as the "Second Scientific Revolution")25 is, rather than speculative philosophy, his ever-increasing attraction to authority. In fact, that has been clear in his own mind from 24See Marlon Ross, "Romantic Quest and Conquest: Troping Masculine Power in the Crisis of Poetic Identity" in Romanticism and Feminism, ed. Anne Mellor, pp. 26-51; the article is incorporated into the first chapter of Ross' The Contours of Masculine Desire, pp. 15-54. 25see Romanticism and the Sciences ed. Andrew Cunningham and Nicholas Jardine (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990), p. xix and p. 1: "Indeed two 'Scientific Revolutions' are now commonly recognized— a first revolution around the turn of the sixteenth century, in which new mathematically and experimentally oriented branches of natural philosophy were created, and a second revolution around the turn of the eighteenth century, in which was formed the federation of disciplines that we call 'science"' (p.l). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 259 his youth, especially when he compares himself with Elizabeth26: While my companion contemplated with a serious and satisfied spirit the magnificent appearances of things, I delighted in investigating their causes. The world was to me a secret which I desired to divine. Curiosity, earnest research to learn the hidden laws of nature, gladness akin to rapture, as they were unfolded to me, are among the earliest sensations I can remember. [2. 85; emphasis added] As Victor grows to assume the role of divinity, the potential for mastery is precisely what attracts him to science: "In other studies you go as far as others have gone before you, and there is nothing more to know; but in a scientific pursuit there is continual food for discovery and wonder" (I. 3. 79 [4. 98]). His drive for domination is a major ingredient of Enlightenment ideology, which as Peter Osborne defines it is to be the "colonizing spirit of scientific rationalism, especially in the form of positivism 26The contrast is more meticulously highlighted in the 1831 version. The 1818 version goes as follows: I was more calm and philosophical than my companion; yet my temper was not so yielding. My application was of longer endurance; but it was not so severe whilst it endured. I delighted in investigating the facts relative to the actual world; she busied herself in following the aerial creations of the poets. The world was to me a secret, which I desired to discover; to her it was a vacancy, which she sought to people with imaginations of her own. (I. 1. 66) Note that the term "discover" in the 1818 edition is later replaced with "divine" in the 1831 version. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 260 and empiricism."27 In other words, what drives Victor to become an aspiring master is not the inherent secret that nature possesses, but his will to power, which projects continual secrets into an objectified nature. "The secrets of heaven and earth" that Victor finds so fascinating, and what he also calls "the deepest mysteries of creation” [3. 96; emphasis added], concretize as the animation of a dead body into a living human being. In order to fulfil such a goal Victor declares that one needs to go beyond an "indiscriminate" learning (which, again, could be seen as speculative philosophy). He reasons: The untaught peasant beheld the elements around him and was acquainted with their practical uses. The most learned philosopher knew little more. He had partially unveiled the face of Nature, but her immortal lineaments were still a wonder and a mystery. He might dissect, anatomize, and give names; but, not to speak of a final cause, causes in their secondary and tertiary grades were utterly unknown to him. I had gazed upon the fortifications and impediments that seemed to keep human beings from entering the citadel of nature, and rashly and ignorantly I had repined. [2. 88; emphasis added] The secret, which Victor Frankenstein now pursues in a continual displacement of the savage other, presents itself as a feminized body. In other words, projecting the female body onto nature, the knowledge-seeking philosopher turns 27See Peter Osborne's "Editorial," where he critically assesses Michel Foucault's work as a critique of enlightenment ideology, in Radical Philosophy 63 (Spring 1993): 1. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 261 into a gender-specific gazer. The driving force in Victor is articulated in terms of lack (something "unknown,” "the fortifications," "impediments," and "the citadel"). In line with a regime of positivism and empiricism, Victor's focus shifts from speculative philosophy to the manipulation of the object inside the laboratory and physical endeavor encumbent upon it. Objectification and control mechanisms ("dissect, anatomize, and give names") become the prevailing mode of operation. When his science project gets closer to completion, Victor starts to question the status of the gazer at the veil as well as the belief in exploring the "Truth" behind the veil. Victor sees himself succumbed to the purpose (the "law") of the enterprise. While realizing that he is in a wretched state, however, he nonetheless continues his work: ". . . often did my human nature turn with loathing from my occupation, whilst, still urged on by an eagerness which perpetually increased, I brought my work near to a conclusion" (I. 3. 83 [4. 102]). With a semblance of the will to continue, he swings back and forth between fascination with and disgust for the defined objective: But my enthusiasm was checked by my anxiety, and I appeared rather like one doomed by slavery to toil in the mines, or any other unwholesome trade than an artist occupied by his favourite employment. Every night I was oppressed by a slow fever, and I became nervous to a most painful degree; (a disease that I regretted the more because I had hitherto enjoyed most excellent health, and had always boasted of the firmness of my nerves. But) [the fall of a leaf Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. n mniTimfr —■ - ■ ■ vr - — — — ’ 262 startled me, and I shunned my fellow creatures as if I had been guilty of a crime. Sometimes I grew alarmed at the wreck I perceived that I had become; the energy of my purpose alone sustained me: my labours would soon end, and] I believed that exercise and amusement would then drive away incipient disease; and I promised myself both of these, when my creation should be complete. (I. 3. 85 [4. 104]; emphasis added) The vivid depiction of alienated labor— resulting in the schism between labor (toil) and pleasure (leisure)— suggests the link between power and knowledge. What pushes Victor to tireless toil for production is his fixation ("for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body;" I. 4. 86 [5. 105]; emphasis added), to the extent that domination survives as an end in itself.28 A depiction ensues of Victor as a "wreck," a scientist confined in his "solitary chamber, or rather cell" (I. 3. 83 [4. 102]), who then undertakes strikingly described trips to charnel-houses, the dissecting room, and the slaughterhouse in order to collect bones, organs and tissues. If Victor's wandering echoes Wordsworth's leech-gatherer (in "Resolution and Independence") who roams around lakes and moors, Victor’s case seems more problematical, not because it involves a more gruesome collection, but because this self-imposed mission is closer to a mechanistic drive than the pathos- filled wandering. When he redefines his work now, he 28Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of the Enlightenment. trans. John Cumming (NY: Continuum, 1989; 1944), p. 104. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 263 juxtaposes two different images: his original attitude of "pursu[ing] nature to her hiding places" and its repercussion— "disturb[ing], with profane fingers, the tremendous secrets of the human frame" (I. 3. 83 [4. 102]). Indeed, his Promethean ideal is by now turned into a maddening drive for production. An endless series of action and reaction constitutes the cycle of repetition in which Victor is subjected to its force rather than having control over it. The amusement Victor dreams of at the completion of his mission seems to be the source for his endurance, yet the production line becomes a closed circuit that has the sole purpose of continuation. Once he completes the monster, Victor comes up with a new reason to go back to make another. After his secret-searching scientific project is completed, and after the mystery-solving game with the monster has unfolded, Victor guestions himself concerning another secret. At the crucial moment of recounting the making of the monster to Walton, he suddenly puts forth the question of the subject entirely, in the form of "the secret of happiness." In an admittedly "moralizing" gesture to Walton, Victor preaches that the secret of happiness does not lie in the single-minded pursuit of knowledge: If the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your affections, and to destroy your taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then that study is certainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the human Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 264 mind. If this rule were always observed; if no man allowed any pursuit whatsoever to interfere with the tranquillity of his domestic affections, Greece had not been enslaved, Caesar would have spared his country; America would have been discovered more gradually, and the empires of Mexico and Peru had not been destroyed. (I. 3. 84 [4. 103]; emphasis added). The "tranquillity of domestic affections"29 is stressed in a double negative as an intangible rule, only the lack of which can be felt through devastating, violent, and apocalyptic consequences. This revelation seems to nullify the basis of Victor's task: not only does this new insight30 contradict his previous travails; it is also incompatible with Victor's governing mode of operation. Even upon death, Victor tries to compel Walton and his sailors to "be men, or be more than men," to "be steady to your purposes and firm 29Here we can detect Mary Shelley's complex response to Rousseau's thoughts. Rousseau in his celebration of a virtuous simplicity in place of a civilization of art and science criticizes the idea of scientific progress and speculative philosophy. In his Second Discourse (1754), Rousseau appeals to the human heart and to the voice of conscience, calling it the "sublime science of simple minds" (The Social Contract and Discourses. G. D. H. Cole, translated, edited and revised by J. H. Brumfitt and John C. Hall (Everyman edition: London, 1973), p. 26. 2^This view on civilization is more or less shared by the monster. He has formed his view through his reading of Volney's Ruins of Empires (1719): "Through [Volney] I obtained a cursory knowledge of history and a view of the several empires at present existing in the world: it gave me an insight into the manners, governments, and religions of the different nations of the earth. ... I heard of the discovery of the American hemisphere and wept with Safie over the hapless fate of its original inhabitants" [13. 165]. It seems that such critical observation of history reflects, more than anything else, Mary's own view. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 265 as a rock," to be "the benefactors of your species, for our[selves] and the benefits of mankind" (III. Walton, in continuation, 239 [24. "Walton, In Continuation," 257]. Of course, the purposes in Victor's terms are the "honourable undertaking" of the voyage, from which they should "return as heroes who have fought and conquered, and who know not what it is to turn their backs on the foe" (239 [254]).) In his moralizing lesson to Walton, then, Victor preaches on the nature of the secret— rather than the secret of Nature: for the first time he seems to notice that it was his desire to unveil that kept casting veils upon things. Indeed, it was he who invented layers of veils to penetrate and lift, in order to feed his perpetual curiosity for "discovery and wonder" (I. 3. 79 [4. 98]). Victor's ambition to become "more than [a] man"— "the master" of nature, the "modern Prometheus "-—drives him to become a hollow man by enacting a maddening circuit of exploitation of nature's tranquillity from which his own "destiny" becomes inseparable. 2.2. Close Encounters with Domestic Space "You [Margaret Saville] have been tutored and refined by books and retirement from the world, and you are therefore somewhat fastidious; but this only renders you the more fit to appreciate the extraordinary merits of this wonderful man [Victor]" — [Walton's Letter 4. 78], Frankenstein Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 266 As to a Memoir, as my sex has precluded all idea of my fulfilling public employments, I do not see what the public have to do with me— I am a great enemy to the prevailing custom of dragging private life before the world, taking the matter generally— and with regard to myself there be no greater <misfortune> annoyance than in any way to be brought out of my proper sphere of private obscurity. . . . — Mary Shelley to ?James Robins, 5 Jan. 1828 (Letters of MS. vol. II. p.22) To examine Victor Frankenstein's complex attitude towards domestic space as he completes his science project, we might go back to examine his personal history in chapter l,31 where, recounting his childhood to Walton, he tells the story of how his father (Alphonse Frankenstein) met his mother (Caroline Beaufort): . . . my father had filled several public situations with honour and reputation. He was respected by all who knew him for his integrity and indefatigable attention to public business. He passed his younger days perpetually occupied by the affairs of his country;32 and it was not until the decline of life In the 1831 edition, the original chapter 1 is heavily revised and divided into chapter 1 and 2. 32flereafter the 1831 version is considerably different from the 1818 original: a variety of circumstances had prevented his marrying early, nor was it until the decline of life that he became a husband and the father of a family. During the two years that had elapsed previous to their marriage my father had gradually relinquished all his public functions; and immediately after Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 267 that he thought of marrying, and bestowing on the state sons who might carry his virtues and his name down to posterity. (I. 1. 63) When my father became a husband and a parent, he found his time so occupied by the duties of his new situation, that he relinquished many of his public employments, and devoted himself to the education of his children. (I. 1. 64) Alphonse Frankenstein's marriage is marked by his renunciation of the public arena for the private, domestic realm. The domestic sphere— evidently exhausting and demanding— is presented as an oppositional pole to public service. After withdrawing from public space, Alphonse Frankenstein took to traveling ("rambling") until the birth of the couple's second son, upon which Victor's parents "gave up entirely their wandering life and fixed themselves in their native country" [2. 85]. Although Alphonse Frankenstein and Caroline Beaufort have formed an idealized familial relation, there lingers a suppressed suggestion that domestic bliss is just the other side of "Romantic imprisonment," 33 since as the monster notes later, "all the their union they sought the pleasant climate of Italy, . . . [1. 80] 33Nina Auerbach in Romantic Imprisonment uses the term to explain the social practice based on Romantic affection by which women were put in domestic boundaries. I am applying the same concept to the male members of the family who might have felt such boundaries stifling. I agree, of course, with Auerbach's point that women could not escape this condition dictated by culture, and in that sense, gender difference is crucial in understanding the uneven social conditions. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 268 various relationships," especially kinship relation and gender relation, "bind one human being to another in mutual bonds" (II. 5. 149 [13. 166]).34 The presupposition, of course, is that a man has choice, accessibility to the outside of such boundaries, and can settle down any time if and when he chooses. To emerge from their "self-imposed minority," men in Shelley's time were indeed encouraged to leave home to cultivate a self-perfecting process and "educate" themselves in the ways of the world. In essence, the Enlightenment project can be translated into a mobility between home and the social: a grown man constructs and organizes a nuclear family under his control and heads towards the public space, avowing "betterment" of society. Then, while pursuing socio economic roles outside, he recharges his emotional reservoir through the women at home and maintains his social function as a respectable patriarch. Victor stresses his anxiety-ridden expectations concerning his departure when he first left his home for a foreign place. Once the initial dislocation occurs, however, Victor becomes single-minded, driven to and fixed on his 34The quotations come from the monster's observation of and learning from the De Lacey family. In sum, the text presents the two opposite psychical investments that constitute the domestic: while the monster sees kinship relations and gender roles in the most positive terms, Victor is burdened with the norms of "mutual bonds," which he unconsciously resists. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 269 project. The gap between the two domains— one, that of science, logic, knowledge, and the other, the (more and more disenfranchised) realm of the domestic, the native place— grows ever wider. Victor begins to distance his hometown, Geneva, once he gets involved in his scientific pursuits at the University of Ingolstadt: "Two years passed . . . during which I paid no visit to Geneva, but was engaged, heart and soul, in the pursuit of some discoveries, which I hoped to make" (I. 3. 79 [4. 98]). Victor's preoccupation with the science project goes hand in hand with his growing dissociation from home. Even more remarkable is his attitude towards home after the completion of the project on the "dreary night of November." After he reads Elizabeth's letter filled with domestic affection and news from home, he jubilantly spends another season with Clerval, delaying his return. When he finally fixes his return trip to Geneva for the latter end of autumn, his mind seems fluctuating: but being delayed by several accidents, winter and snow arrived, the roads were deemed impassable, and my journey was retarded until the ensuing spring. I felt this delay very bitterly; for I longed to see my native town and my beloved friends. My return had only been delayed so long from an unwillingness to leave Clerval in a strange place . . . The winter, however, was spent cheerfully; and although the spring was uncommonly late, when it came, its beauty compensated for its dilatoriness. (I. 5. 98 (6. 117]) Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 270 in sum, he spends a year and a half after the "fatal night, the end of his labours," marking a total of six years of separation from his family, before he finally rejoins them. Indeed, he does not return until he receives his father's letter informing him of William's death. The return trip home proves tortuous: it "was very melancholy. At first I wished to hurry on, for I longed to console and sympathize with my loved and sorrowing friends; but when I drew near my native town, I slackened my progress. I could hardly sustain the multitude of feelings that crowded into my mind" (I. 5. 102 [6. 121]). Victor's anxiety about home is characteristic of an attitude that idealizes the domestic space only by dissociating from it. At first, in order to keep going in the alienated work circuit, Victor fed on a sense of duty and defined his project in relational terms, against what he does not view as worthy of his pursuit. The opposite pole proves to be domestic, native, and organic. In other words, only outside the encircling boundary of home, the routine of domestic life, does there lie an earnest purpose, social duty and concern for humanity. When he begins to face the outcome of his project, he suddenly realizes his "wretched" state. The reconstructed past in which he was thoroughly occupied with his project is now defined at best as "selfish" and at worst as a prelude to madness. When he meets Clerval at Ingolstadt just after completing the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 271 monster, Victor reflects, "A selfish pursuit had cramped and narrowed me until [Clerval’s] gentleness and affection warmed and opened my senses; I became the same happy creature who, a few years ago, loved and beloved by all, had no sorrow or care" (I. 5. 98 [6. 117]). In other words, the locus of "humanity" moves from the scientific realm to the domain of nature and home. The discourses of science and myth that underlie the course of his quest constitute each other, while apparently competing for dominance.35 While Victor has pursued his science project "for the sake of humanity," he becomes more and more obsessed with a mystified notion of life, the necessarily suppressed counterpart of his scientific project. By the end of the novel, when Victor hollowly struggles to chase down his own creation, his noble ideals vanish from the trail-blazing scientific forefront. Victor warns Walton: "Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he 35Kristeva comments on the logic of contest between humanity as nature and science as culture: "both, of course, are discourses that mutually presuppose each other, and their reciprocal negation constitutes a single and same mode of language, that is a fiction that is precisely this nonsynthetic reunion of 'is' and 'is not,1 opposing and formulating each other all at the same time, and in this way adding to their dichotomy a third 'term,' undefined, where the subject in process searches for itself" (Kristeva, Revolution in Poetic Language, pp. 352-53). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 272 who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow" [4. 101]. Of course, one might note in the Rousseauan cultural primitivism36 professed by Victor at this point— in his celebration of the simple pleasures of country life and domestic felicity— that the whole idea is always already structured around the male subject. Inserted at the crucial moment of Victor's narration— the making of the monster— the question of happiness leads to a validation of domestic affection. "The tranquillity of domestic affections" is what Victor has been struggling to escape, and what the monster would pursue at all costs. On the other hand, what Frankenstein and the monster share is their male subjectivity; the monster's adaptation of and identification with male subjectivity enables him to articulate and actively pursue his objectified other against an insurmountable barrier. If the modern Prometheus gets involved in cultivating the (colonizing) knowing subject and distancing the domestic space (becoming what Jane Flax calls "homocentric"), a 36soth Percy and Mary Shelley enjoyed Reveries in 1815 and La Nouvelle H41oise in 1816 when they were widely circulated among the British reading public. British magazines including Gentleman's Magazine. London Chronicle. London Magazine. Monthly Review Scots Magazine, and Critical Review printed since 1761 excerpts from Rousseau's writing, such as Emile. La Nouvelle Hdloise or commentaries on them. See Edward Duffy, Rousseau in England: The Context for Shelley's Critique of the Enlightenment (Berkeley: U. C. Press, 1979). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 273 crucial question arises: what happens to all the objectified others? One of the first things to be acknowledged in pursuing the question is that the gender ideologies that situate women’s function in the realm of domestic harmony are interlocked with the process of character formation. In their youth, while Victor saw the world as "a secret which I desired to discover [divine] (I. 1. 66 [2. 85]),” Elizabeth considered it a "vacancy which she sought to people with imaginations of her own" (I. 1. 66 [2. 85]).37 Clearly, the difference in their way of seeing the world is linked to their gender difference. In the 1831 edition Elizabeth was presented to Victor as "a promised gift":38 "And when, on the morrow, she [Caroline Beaufort] presented Elizabeth to me as her promised gift, I, with childish seriousness, interpreted her words literally and looked upon Elizabeth as mine— mine to protect, love and cherish. All praises bestowed on her I received as made to a possession of my own. . . No word, no expression could body forth the kind of relation in which she stood to me— my more than sister, since till death she was to be mine only" [1. 84]. Of course, regarding woman as the (exclusive) possession of man is not just Victor's 37According to James Rieger, the above passage was written by Percy Shelley. See the Rieger edition, p. 30. ^^This echoes William Wordsworth's relationship with Dorothy, whom William considered "gift of God." I thank Margaret Russett for pointing this linkage. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 274 trait, but a prevalent assumption throughout the novel. In the interpolated narrative of the De Laceys, Felix considers Safie "a treasure which would fully reward his toil and hazard" (II. 6. 150 [14. 169]). Through the example of Safie's resolute pursuit of Christian education, Frankenstein seems to suggest that in order to change their unequal condition, women should aspire for education beyond the conduct book level. Yet, various characters' pursuits of knowledge show that the techniques of gender are often ingrained in the education process itself. Whereas male status allows and encourages independent thinking, expansive self-projection of the future, and self-mastery and mastery over others, women's learning revolves around (limited) self-reliance, often focusing on domestic functionality. If such functions are linked to intellectual pursuit at all, they rely heavily on the tolerance and approval of male counterparts. A brief examination of key characters' education will clarify the point. In Walton's case, his instantaneous attachment to the thrill of exploration, detestation of the life of "ease and luxury," and free range through various fields in his youth all show the attributes that are reserved for and encouraged among men. Clerval's case further illustrates how much one's gender determines the directions one is impelled to take in a society. Although Clerval has in his youth all the traits that are socially considered to be feminine— caring Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 275 softness, sensitivity and fancifulness— he becomes aggressive and adventurous when he redefines his "future" and his role in society [6. 116]. And, like Walton and Victor, Clerval is given the chance to take the active position in choosing his profession in society: "He came to the university with the design of making himself complete master of the Oriental languages, as thus he should open a field for the plan of life he had marked out for himself" [6. 116]. Justine Moritz undertakes a distinctly different path of (self-)education (or acculturation), marked by its emphasis on natural grace, innocence and sensibility. According to Elizabeth, [Justine] looked so frank-hearted and happy. . . My aunt [Caroline Beaufort] conceived a great attachment for her, by which she was induced to give her an education superior to that which she had at first intended. This benefit was fully repaid; Justine was the most grateful little creature in the world: I do not mean that she made any professions, I never heard one pass her lips; but you could see by her eyes that she almost adored her protectress. . . . [Justine] thought her [Caroline] the model of all excellence, and endeavoured to imitate her phraseology and manners, so that even now she often reminds me [Elizabeth] of her. (I. 5. 94 [6. 113]) Although the exact nature of the "superior" education Justine received is unclear, one thing is certain: precluded from making professions, or interacting with other members in social spaces, "phraseology and manners" are naturally her field of orientation. Obviously, quite unlike men's Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 276 situation, women's minority status is not just "self- imposed" but culturally reinforced. Social constraints induce a paradoxical positionality for a woman. She perceives that her representation in society is taken up by her father and later her male partner. Thus in order to sustain her energy for intellectual pursuit, she has to take the external condition (other than herself) most seriously— which often turns out to involve affection for and care of the enlightened male leader. She learns that domestic tranquillity becomes a (displaced) precondition for a woman with intellectual ambition, who faces an exhausting struggle against fundamentally uneven social conditions. The stories of the "successful" unions in Frankenstein. those of Alphonse Frankenstein-Caroline Beaufort and Felix de Lacey-Safie show the compelling pattern of gender difference that is implicitly and explicitly imposed by bourgeois society. The rise and fall of Caroline Beaufort's and Safie's fathers show examples of mobility in a society that provides the bourgeois male subject with a series of chances for self-representation in the public sphere. The case of Caroline Beaufort's father demonstrates that a bourgeois man in action, like capital itself, faces his demise when his mobility is arrested and contained: ". . .he hoped to procure some respectable employment in a merchant's house. The interval was Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 277 consequently spent in inaction; his grief only became more deep and rankling, when he had leisure for reflection; and at length it took so fast a hold of his mind, that at the end of three months he lay on a bed of sickness, incapable of any exertion." (I. 1. 64 [1. 81]). On the other hand, a woman's terrain consists of the distance between the homes of her father and her prospective husband, regardless of the physical distance between them. The destinies of Caroline Beaufort and Safie are handled by their fathers and future husbands, who construct the primary link, or bond, between them. The case is vividly illustrated in Mary Shelley's own life, since the shift of her last name from Godwin to Shelley is primarily mediated by the mentor-disciple relationship between the two men. The course of Mary Shelley's Romantic alliance with the enlightener/rebel/poet as a way to sustain her intellectual aspirations shows the constraint of gendered consciousness by the very person the woman turns to for guidance and support.39 Mary Shelley's struggle to attain Godwin's acceptance of her union with Percy vividly demonstrates that the ultimate condition and barrier for this intelligent, persevering, and courageous person was her gender. Her minority status became paradoxically intensified •^In q u i r i e s on this issue from a feminist perspective, of course, have contributed to illuminating studies in Frankenstein. See my note 8. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 278 when she emerged from adolescence to become a "woman"— especially when she was ready to forge a romantic relationship. William Godwin's attitude towards Mary shows a clear shift between Mary in her youth and Mary as a "grown" woman. When she was about fifteen, Godwin expressed his expectations of her as follows: "I am anxious that she should be brought up . . . like a philosopher, even like a Cynic. It will add greatly to the strength & worth of her character. . . — I wish too that she should be excited to industry. She has occasionally great perseverance; but occasionally too she stands in great need to be roused" (emphasis added).40 The focus here is on her character and education, and on the philosopher/ father's expectation that she would become an enlightened mind. Two years later, a crisis in the father-daughter relationship ensued when Mary defiantly decided— against Godwin's will (let alone the social code)— to live with Percy, who was still married to Harriet. Despite his radical denunciation of the institution of marriage, Godwin found his daughter's romantic love for a married man unacceptable, and he vehemently opposed their involvement. However, upon the prospect of the couple's social acceptance, arising from Harriet's tragic suicide,41 40William Godwin's letter to William Baxter, June 8, 1812. 41The couple formally married on December 30, 1816, twenty days after the discovery of Harriet’s drowned body. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 279 Godwin abruptly reconciled with Mary and contentedly reported to his brother on her prospects that "... according to the vulgar ideas of the world, [Mary] is well married, and I have great hopes the young man will make her a good husband. You will wonder, I daresay, how a girl without a penny of fortune should meet with so good a match. But such are the ups and downs of this world. For my part I care but little, comparatively, about wealth, so that it should be her destiny in life to be respectable, virtuous, and contented." (William Godwin to Hull Godwin, Feb. 21, 1817; emphasis added).42 This sounds like the self-absorbed, complicitous and incompetent pseudo-philosopher father of Elizabeth Bennet commenting on her match with aristocratic Darcy (in Pride and Prejudice), not a radical philosopher who called marriage "a system of fraud" and who wanted his daughter to share his philosophical mind and cynical faculty. But even more is at stake: this construction of Mary's happiness curiously resonates with the patriarchal philosophical assumption that what a woman needs (lacks) is a man, not philosophy. When the gap between the social norm and the couple's behavior has narrowed, the father gives his daughter an endorsement as if indifferent to social norms. 42Quoted from C. Kegan Paul, William Godwin. His Friends and Contemporaries (London: Henry S. King & Co., rpt NY: AMS Press, 1970), II: 246. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 280 Yet there certainly is more than meets the eye: Godwin's consideration of her well-being and future is now completely redefined in the context of her minority status as a dependent upon her husband. This typical regressive expectation for a married woman (would Godwin call it the way things are?) is not only a naturalized facet of the marriage-defying radical thinker but an internalized assumption for a woman who grew up learning the virtue of self-denial and who happened to be "extremely attached to her father." Mary Shelley, as if embodying such contradictory desires, resolves to establish a partnership that makes such an aspiration possible and sustainable. Her notion of an ideal match (which certainly is more "radical" than Godwin's, we must conclude) consists of a leader, protector and guide— that is, male— for an intelligent but still innocent nurturer and follower— that is, female. The complex textual operations of Frankenstein reveal its author's own entangled desires and fears as well as those of its female characters, especially when it deals with gender-related issues— such as the split in domestic and public space, child-bearing, and psychically charged familial relations. Mary Shelley's relationship with Percy Shelley thus emerges and complicates the narrative dynamic. In her "Introduction" to the third edition (1831), Mary Shelley speaks of her dreamy conception of the monstrous Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. nm in > i ...... ... 281 story: "My imagination, unbidden, possessed and guided me, gifting the successive images that arose in my mind with a vividness far beyond the usual bounds of reverie" [58-59; emphasis added]. In Cassandran mode, she continues, I saw— with shut eyes, but acute mental vision— I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half-vital motion. Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world. His success would terrify the artist; he would rush away from his odious handiwork, horror-stricken. . . He sleeps; but he is awakened; he opens his eyes; behold, the horrid thing stands at his bedside, opening his curtains and looking on him with yellow, watery, but speculative eyes. [59] The peculiar interplay of the opening and closing eyes of the author and her protagonist, and then of his automaton like creature, opens the door to the twilight zone, the key to which is her "unbidden" imagination. As a "parent" impregnating a story, Mary Shelley acutely envisions the crossed gazes between her characters, who also play the roles of the parent and his child. The entangled scene locates the creature as the point of pure gaze. Contrary to the Wordsworthian mode of projecting a blessed babe, the "parent" fantasizes the "child" looking at its own "birth." To this specular scene, I want to juxtapose another scene where Percy Shelley’s glimpse of otherworldly space is foregrounded. On June 19, 1816, the very night the ghost Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 282 story contest was agreed upon among Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley, Byron, and Polidori, Percy displayed an odd behavior that is recorded by Polidori:43 Twelve o'clock really began to talk ghostly. L[ord] B[yron] repeated some verses of Coleridge's "Christabel," of the witch's breast; • • • Beneath the lamp the lady bowed, And slowly rolled her eyes around; Then drawing in her breath aloud Like one that shuddered, she unbound The cincture from beneath her breast; Her silken robe, and inner vest Dropt to her feet, and in full view, Behold! her [Geraldine's] bosom and half her side Are lean and old and foul of hue. 0 shield her! shield sweet Christabel! When silence ensued, and [Percy] Shelley, suddenly shrieking, and putting his hands to his head, ran out of the room with a candle. Threw water on his face, and after gave him ether. He was looking at Mrs. Shelley, and suddenly thought of a woman he had heard of who had eyes instead of nipples, which taking hold of his mind, horrified him. (emphasis added) Against the backdrop of Byron's incantatory recitation of "Christabel," Percy either stages a dramatic performance in tune with the atmosphere, or more likely, displays a sudden 43ihe following is Polidori's account of the night when Mary Shelley, Byron, Polidori and Percy Shelley decided each to compose a ghost story. See John Polidori, The Diary of John William Polidori. ed. W. M. Rossetti, London: Elkin Mathews, 1911. p. 128; Quoted in Nigel Leask, "Shelley's 'Magnetic Ladies': Romantic Mesmerism and the Politics of the Body," Beyond Romanticism: New Approaches to Texts and Contexts 1780-1832. ed. Stephen Copley and John Whale (Routledge: NY and London, 1992), pp. 56-57. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 283 outburst of anxiety over the active force of a . female body, not just a passive space for masculine fantasy.44 "Christabel" of course is also a ghost story that revolves around the question of maternal desire, "the duplicity of the female body” or "fantastic exchanges of" two women,45 all of which, one might say, are linked to the gaze of the primal scene. To quote the famous lines from "Christabel," what could be a sight "to be dreamed of . . . [but] not to tell," or what could be the content of Geraldine's speech to the (phantom of?) Christabel’s mother, "Off, wandering motherI peak and pine"? Where Percy fantasizes eyes in the mother's breasts, we might see a curiously reticulated version of the primal scene— as though the child not only recollects the putative sight, but also fantasizes the mother looking back at him looking.*6 Or, doesn't this scence ^Nigel Leask points out Percy Shelley's fear of the female gaze, quoting Medwin's invocation of Medusa in his account: "a beautiful woman 'looking down on him with four eyes, two of which were in the centre of her uncovered breasts' . . . he 'conjure[s] up some frightful woman of an acquaintance of his at home, a kind of Medusa, who was suspected of having eyes in her breasts."' Thomas Medwin, The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley (London: 1847), vol. 1, p. 258; Qtd in Leask, "Shelley's 'Magnetic Ladies,'" Beyond Romanticism, p. 57. ^Karen Swann, "Literary Gentlemen and Lovely Ladies: The Debate on the Character of Christabel," ed., Cynthia Chase, Romanticism (London and NY: Longman, 1993), p. 142; p. 146. 46i owe this insight to Margaret Russett who drew my attention to the anxiety about the primal scene underlying "Christabel." Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 284 siginify the threat of/upon the (maternal) breast, the ultimate partial object for a (male) subject, especially when condensed with the gaze and the voice? To elucidate the desire and fear played out in this episode, it might be useful to go back a bit further. In a letter to Thomas Jefferson Hogg, Percy recounts his first encounter with Mary, inscribing his ego ideal in her: The originality and loveliness of Mary's character was apparent to me from her very motions and tones of voice. The irresistible wildness and sublimity of her feelings showed itself in her gestures and her looks— her smile, how persuasive it was, and how pathetic! She is gentle, to be convinced and tender; yet not incapable of ardent indignation and hatred. I do not think that there is an excellence at which human nature can arrive, that she does not indisputably possess, or of which her character does not afford manifest intimations. I speak thus of Mary now. . . and so intimately are our natures now united, that I feel whilst I describe her excellencies as if I were an egoist expatiating upon his own perfections. (emphasis added) The swift mode in which Percy builds up his characterization of Mary typifies the central tenet of Romantic love. In the person of Mary, Percy constructs, rather than discovers, idealized femininity ("irresistible wildness and sublimity"). Percy dwells on her "nature" in a panoramic sweep and even admits his egoistic terms of endearment: the last sentence depicts the culmination of self-possessing masculine desire through a woman who seems to embody the male subject's ego-ideal. The "intellectual Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 285 magnificence" of the feminine other is magnified only to be reabsorbed into the thinking male subject. The "wildness and sublimity" of femininity can be viewed as dif fere nee-in- same ness , something the egoist can appropriate for his own purpose. Is it possible to contemplate a link between what Mary Shelley sees in her inception dream and what Percy Shelley sees in Mary on that night? (It is interesting that Mary Shelley completely erases this incident when she recollects the "originating moment" of the novel in her 1831 Introduction.) Could Frankenstein's depiction of the male spectacle47 be a dramatic miming of Percy Shelley’s anxiety about the bewitching doubleness of the female body— its angelic and innocent figure of beauty and its monstrous excessiveness, as exaggerated and mystified in Christabel? It seems that Percy's hysterical reaction to "Christabel" (that dramatizes hysteria— as the fact that "Christabel cannot tell” what ails her attests48) on that ghostly night presents Percy's intimation of a difference that is not sameness in the form of an eruption of fantasy. In this radical deformation, the female body mutates from an angelic beauty to a monstrous other. Juxtaposed with Percy Shelley's 470n the subject, see Bette London, "Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, and the Spectacles of Masculinity" PMLA 108.2 (Mar. 1993): 253-67. 48Swann, ibid, p. 158-9. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 286 anxiety-ridden conception of femininity, the elective affinity between Victor and the monster that is highlighted in Mary's dream and disavowed and reaffirmed throughout the novel can be read as a Mary's dramatization of masculinity and "original fantasy." Mary Shelley's other writing inscribes her desire for an ideal partnership through a reconstruction of the short lived (and thus even more idealized) relationship between her father and mother. Mathilda, for example, sketches out through the daughter's narrative the growth of a male mind into an enlightened subject. Certainly, the "enlightened lover of truth and virtue"49 that Mary Shelley repeatedly projects in her male characters is what she wished from Percy. Percy Shelley, however, though a flesh and blood version of the enlightened Romantic, not only maintained a radical defiance of institutionalized marriage and social convention, the principle of which was shared by Mary, but kept up his practice of unbounded Romantic love towards 49Mary Shelley, Mathilda, ed. Betty Bennet and Charles E. Robinson, The Mary Shelley Reader (Oxford UP, 1990), p. 179. Mathilda was written during the time of Mary Shelley's intense mourning for her son William (1819), about two years after she finished the first version of Frankenstein. Of course, during the spring and the summer of 1819, Percy Shelley wrote The Cenci. The triangle relationship between Mathilda's (nameless) father, Woodsville, and Mathilda, locates an incestuous desire between father and daughter and an unfulfilled Romantic union between the youthful poet and the emotionally tormented narrator, Mathilda. With strong and evident allusions to Mary Shelley's autobiographical situation, Mathilda was not published in her lifetime. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 287 other women, which she could not wholeheartedly embrace. In addition, the socially prescribed chores for women, child care and household management, fell exclusively into the hands of Mary. "Domestic tranquillity," an emotionally charged goal, then seems like a practically unrealizable, if not totally oxymoronic one, when the term points at an ideal state in which mutually exclusive affection is voluntarily sustained by both parties of a married couple against all the prosaic facets of marriage. The unacknowledged gap between the avowed "Enlightened lover of truth and virtue" and the pursuer of domestic affection turned out to be nothing less than the distance between a Promethean partner and his monstrous other. The thinly disguised challenges and difficulties that are built into the division of labor 50 start to take their toll on Romantic aspirations. A dawning awareness of this discrepancy permeates Shelley's novels from Mathilda to Frankenstein and to The Last Man (1826). These novels contain a bitter recognition of the impossibility of sustaining perfect harmony between a loving, intelligent couple. The author's increasing 50Conditions for women's existence in the bourgeois state are primarily defined by their representation of the domestic sphere, family, child care, and household labor— all of which consume most of the energy of women with intellectual aspirations— yet get inimically erased and unaccounted for. Here, it is also worthwhile to note that the industrial revolution induced a keen denigration of domestic labor compared to heightened surplus value through machines at the factories and marketplaces. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 288 awareness of the impossibility of sustained happiness in a bourgeois family unit pushes the characters— especially the female characters— towards no man's land. The female characters in these novels (Mathilda, Justine Moritz, Elizabeth Lavenza, Perdita and Idris) suffer emotional indifference from their male counterparts. The keen interrogations of the boundary between confession and concealment, self-deceit and self-knowledge, "truth" and "falsehood," and "good" and "evil" that take place in the female characters' minds may be seen as symptomatic displacements of Mary Shelley's double consciousness. Her self-effacing struggle to contain and control her desires51 takes various forms, such as the consistent appearance of the metaphor of the veil, the double negative, and above all, her employment of a multi-layered structure, with its complicated arrangement of different points of identification. Such struggles tend to spill over the restraining will, however, especially when efforts for containment intensify. Frankenstein deploys double and multiple narrative movements, along with the narrator's discursive struggle for signification (as is especially 51-Mary Shelley later stated her purpose in life: "we are sent here to educate ourselves, and self-denial, and disappointment, and self-control, are a part of our education." Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UCL^Cli IBE£X^ZK£Ji 289 prevalent in Victor's case, who struggles to "express" himself, only to fail52). Romantic union in Frankenstein is idealized as complementary and harmonious, but it does not always completely conceal the deep-seated conflicts between the sexes. The text contains moments of ominous tension between Elizabeth and Victor which erupt after the persecution of Justine. Embodying "the vessel of domestic purity," Elizabeth speaks as if she unveiled the deep secret of Victor, as if she knows too much, inadvertently and despite herself: "Before, I looked upon the accounts of vice and injustice, that I read in books or heard from others as tales of ancient days or imaginary evils; . . . but now misery has come home, and men appear to me as monsters thirsting for each other's blood" (II. 1. 121 [9. 138]; emphasis added). She addresses the monster-in-Victor and interrogates him in a profoundly ironic way, because she at the same time assumes the role of self-sacrificing mate and confidante: ' . . . Alas! Victor, when falsehood can look so like the truth, who can assure themselves of certain 52see James Kincaid, "Words Cannot Express: Frankenstein's Tripping on the Tongue," Novel 24.1 (Fall, 1990): 26-47. Kincaid contrasts Victor's incapability of finding the right words to the monster's remarkable capacity to articulate his needs and desires. I would highlight the gendered authorial position and the strategy of masquerade through which Mary Shelley inscribes (and obscures) her authority. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 290 happiness? I feel as if I were walking on the edge of a precipice, towards which thousands are crowding and endeavouring to plunge me into the abyss. William and Justine were assassinated, and the murderer escapes; he walks about the world free, and perhaps respected. But even if I were condemned to suffer on the scaffold for the same crimes, I would not change places with such a wretch. . .' (II. 1. 122 [9. 139]) From Victor's point of view (he knows, but would not tell— or "cannot tell," like Christabel— that he is "the true murderer" of William, and Justine), this statement is certainly Elizabeth's declaration of war between them, however desperately both of them might disavow it thereafter. Indeed, such an unconscious battle was already fought between Victor and Justine, when Justine demonstrated her moral superiority by taking responsibility for her words (even if the confession was false) by death: "I feel as if I could die in peace, now that my innocence is acknowledged by you, dear lady, and your cousin" (I. 7. 116); ". . .if you remember me and think of me as of one unjustly condemned, I am resigned to the fate awaiting me" [9. 134]. While Justine's words are addressed to Elizabeth, Victor poignantly recognizes the addressee in himself. While failing to take the consequences of his own action— the creation of the monster— and to reveal to legal authorities information that only he can provide, Victor cannot but compare his own action with Justine's. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 291 After Justine's execution, Elizabeth takes on the dual function of the torturer of his conscience and the comforter of his ego. Victor almost reveals his ambivalent attitude towards Elizabeth, if only to refute "the fiend that lurk[s] in his heart"! "Even as she spoke I drew near to her, as if in terror, lest at that very moment the destroyer had been near to rob me of her" [9. 139]. This could be a premonition (and possibly an invocation) of the actual death of Elizabeth, in contrast to his conscious attempt to forget their incompatibility and to protect her. To continue any "normal" interaction with her, in other words, Victor either has to ignore (the truth-effect of) Elizabeth's words or disavow his own sense of guilt. Compounding the whole situation is his father's stern demand of sublimation rather than indulgence in grief: "... is it not a duty to the survivors, that we should refrain from augmenting their unhappiness by an appearance of immoderate grief? It is also a duty owed to yourself; for excessive sorrow prevents improvement or enjoyment, or even the discharge of daily usefulness, without which no man is fit for society" (II. 1. 119-120 [9. 136]).53 The psychical burden Victor experiences 53it is clear throughout the novel that Alphonse Frankenstein takes up the role of the law of the Father, teaching Victor the social order, the reality principle, and sublimation. As we have already examined, Alphonse has considered his marriage as a stepping stone for "bestowing on the state sons who might carry his virtues and his name down to posterity" (I. 1. 63). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 292 through his interaction with Elizabeth on the one hand and his father on the other compounds his struggle with himself: "The wounded deer dragging its fainting limbs to some untrodden brake, there to gaze upon the arrow which had pierced it, and to die— was but a type of me" (139). Thus Victor takes his journey to Alpine valleys54 "to forget myself and my ephemeral, because human, sorrows" [9. 140]. The sublime indifference of Mont Blanc temporarily blocks his all-too-human anxiety and leads him to the state of the "blessed oblivion" or transcendence. The very invocation of blessed oblivion, however, ironically magnifies the state of Victor's split subjectivity, since his biggest enemy is himself: "I spurred on my animal, striving so to forget the world, my fears, and more than all, myself" (II. 1. 124 [9. 141]). As with the modern man Novalis depicted,55 it now becomes clear that Victor lifts the veil of the Nature- 54«rhere is an interesting discrepancy between the 1818 version and the 1831 edition. In the former, Alphonse Frankenstein proposes the trip and Victor is accompanied by his father, brother Ernest, and Elizabeth; in the latter, Victor "suddenly" takes the journey himself, and his solitariness is highlighted. Of course, this excursion is very important, because Victor encounters the monster at the summit of Alps. 55Novalis's following passage is indeed to the point: "One succeeded— he lifted the veil of the Goddess at Sais. But what did he see? He saw— wonder of wonders— himself." Novalis, Werke, ed. H.-J. Mahl and R. Samuel (Munich, 1978- 87), II, p. 234; Qtd in Andrew Cunningham and Nicholas Jardine, "Introduction," Romanticism and the Sciences, p. 1. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 293 Goddess only to see "the wonder of wonders— himself," that is, his monstrous other in himself. Happiness and the "innocence" are only a thing of the past, only the loss of which can be retroactively lamented through flickering fragments of memories. 3.1. Masculine Fantasies I: Between the Mother and the Monster I have often attributed my attachment to, my passionate enthusiasm for, the dangerous mysteries of the ocean, to that production of the most imaginative of modern poets. There is something at work in my soul which I do not understand. . . — Walton's letter 2 to Margaret Saville in Frankenstein . . . if the work of Copernicus, as others have remarked before, is not as Copernican as is customarily believed, it is in this that the doctrine of double truth continues to offer shelter to a knowledge that until that time, it must be said, had every appearance of being quite content with it. So here we are at this sensitive frontier between truth and knowledge; and it might be said after all that, at first sight, our science certainly seems to have re-adopted the solution of closing the frontier. — Jacques Lacan, Ecrits . . . he knows, a frightful fiend Doth close behind him tread. — Coleridge, Ancient Mariner If Walton introduces the theme of an enlightener' s will to power over nature and women, he also confesses the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 294 anxiety of modern man. The haunting albatross that Walton confesses to seeing in his mind's eye foreshadows the burden Victor Frankenstein has to struggle with after the completion of his project. For Victor, the death of Justine signals his exploration of the interior on an unforeseen level: "I saw an insurmountable barrier placed between me and my fellow-men; this barrier was sealed with the blood of William and Justine. ..." (III. 2. 185 [19. 203]). In a state of intense guilt and despair, Victor finds himself on the thin line between self-deceit and self-knowledge, between action and inaction, between hope and fear, and above all, between life and death: Nothing is more painful to the human mind, than . . the dead calmness of inaction and certainty which follows, and deprives the soul both of hope and fear. Justine died; she rested; and I was alive. The blood flowed freely in my veins, but a weight of despair and remorse pressed on my heart, which nothing could remove. Sleep fled from my eyes; I wandered like an evil spirit, for I had committed deeds of mischief beyond description horrible, and more, much more (I persuaded myself) was yet behind. . . . Now all was blasted: instead of that serenity of conscience which allowed me to look back upon the past with self-satisfaction, and from thence to gather promise of new hopes, I was seized by remorse and the sense of guilt, which hurried me away to a hell of intense tortures, such as no language can describe. (II. 1. 119 [9. 136]) The unspeakable remorse and guilt seizing Victor after Justine's death will haunt him forever. Later, when "Clerval, my friend and dearest companion, had fallen a victim to me and the monster of my creation" (III. 4. 209 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 295 [21. 221), Victor feels "the fiend's grasp in my neck, and could not free myself from it" (III. 4. 210 [21. 227]). That albatrossean grasp, of course, originated in the " a n i m a t i o n project" that stood upon what Lacan would call the "sensitive frontier between truth and knowledge." All along Victor carried out an exteriorization of nature in which he had to be autonomous and unitary, allowing no room for inner conflict. Victor could solve "the secret of life" only when he assumed the role of a benevolent master over objectified others. As the self-designated "guardian of humanity," however, he could not predict the catastrophe that would arise from the source closest to himself. Still, his heroic zeal for the defense of humanity against the "evil other" looms large. The sufferings and struggles of (and between) the protagonist and the antagonist constitute the props for the literary effect of pervasive mutability. Fragments from such texts as The Ancient Mariner or "Mutability" are inserted throughout the text, from which to convey the pervasive futility of painstaking human endeavors that seek to exert supernatural power over natural wilderness. In that regard, Frankenstein unfolds the doomed course for the always-already last man. Frankenstein's last moment attests to his ineptitude concerning the full-blown mutiny within— his attempts both to steer the course of Walton ’ s ship and to convince Walton to kill the monster will have failed. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 296 A blurry confusion of reality and dream prevails after Victor's creation of the monster (Vol. I, chapter 4 [chapter 5]), teasing out the radically ambiguous area of "fantastic" space, be it imprisoning or liberating.56 Raising vexing questions about the imaginary realm beyond the symbolic, Frankenstein transgresses the line between the real(-istic) and the fantastic. Dreams, nightmares, or "dream-like" situations intervene in Victor's activities and thinking processes, releasing his latent fears, anxieties and residual desires, especially when he is under an unavoidable burden or overwhelming circumstances. None of the people around him, however, believes his story, and they consider the monster as "a form conjured up by [Victor's] fancy” (III. 6. 221 [23. 240]). Victor himself, of course, often confuses the two dimensions. The psychical dimension becomes of utmost importance when Victor returns to Geneva after having destroyed the monstress and been tried for Clerval's death in Ireland. He often enters the realm of reversed reality, where reality touches upon the sur-real and where the familiar and the strange merge into one: 56Tzvetan Todorov uses the term to suggest a literary genre that explores the uncanny and the marvelous, and the relationship between the self and the other. I do not follow, however, Todorov's notion of the fantastic as a defining genre but consider it as a literary mode or aspect that can be deployed with other modes. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 297 The past appeared to me in the light of a frightful dream; . . . I repassed, in my memory, my whole life— my quiet happiness while residing with my family in Geneva, the death of my mother, and my departure for Ingolstadt. I remembered, shuddering at the mad enthusiasm that hurried me on to the creation of my hideous enemy, and I called to mind the night in which he first lived. . . . . . sleep did not afford me respite from thought and misery; my dreams presented a thousand objects that scared me. Towards morning I was possessed by a kind of night-mare; I felt the fiend's grasp in my neck and could not free myself from it; groans and cries rang in my ears. (III. 4. 209-210 [21. 227]) This reflection sheds light on a seed of madness inherent in the zealous enthusiasm required for the science project. Thus the dream narrative overshadows the actual, disrupting the sequence of chronology and intensifying the effect of fatality. In retrospect, perhaps Victor invited the burden of fatality and mutability when he took on the role of Promethean heroism "for other human beings." Things that were always-already unraveled are seen from a new angle: "some destiny of the most horrible kind hangs over me, and I must live to fulfill it" (III. 4. 207 [21. 225]). Now caught between the glimmer of two eyes— both Clerval's "dark orbs nearly covered by the lids, and the long black lashes" and "the watery, clouded eyes of the monster" (III. 4. 208 [21. 226])— Victor realizes that the cost of desire is high. At this moment, as if placed in the eye of the storm, he experiences the eerie feeling of "calm forgetfulness," a shaky balance between fantasy and reality, "a sense of security, a feeling that a truce was established Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 298 between the present hour and the irresistible, disastrous future" [21. 228]. After the death of Elizabeth, Victor sees in his dreams the "estranged" or dead family members living: "During the day I was sustained and inspirited by the hope of night: for in sleep I saw my friends, my wife, and my beloved country; ..." (III. 7. 228 [24. 248]). Indeed, in Victor's psychical operation, "reality appears more dreamlike than dreams themselves."57 Mary Shelley frequently uses the juxtaposition of dream and reality to achieve a reversal effect. In The Last Man. for example, Lionel Verny, after becoming the sole survivor on earth, describes his life as dream-like reality. Such a fantastic reversal could be seen as a culmination (of the intersection between the real and the fantastic) from the initial unraveling of Victor's conflict- ridden desires, when he resists going back from Ingolstadt to his native place, his family and Elizabeth. Considering that Victor left home upon the death of his mother ("My mother was dead, but we had still duties which we ought to 57Theorizing fantasy space, Zizek notes that "the unearthed fragment of experience is not simply the 'actual' point of reference enabling us to reduce fantasy to reality but, on the contrary, the point at which reality itself touches fantasy (one is even tempted to say: impinge upon it)— that is to say, the point of short-circuit by means of which the fantasy-trauma invades reality— here, in this unique moment of encounter, reality appears 'more dreamlike than dreams themselves ’" (For They Do Not Know What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor [London: Verso, 1991], p. 218). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 299 perform. . . I. 2. 73 [3. 92]), the break he made was indeed a critical and irrevocable one. Now his native place becomes a fantasy space where his mother resides. Victor's guilt surrounding the death of his mother (of scarlet fever, from attending Elizabeth’s sickbed) triggers his ambivalent feelings towards the two women, especially the living one. The inevitable outcome of the exchange of one woman for another not only presents "an omen" to him (91] but a perpetual "void" [I. 2. 72 [3. 92]) as well. The void at the center of his being is indelibly marked by that loss, for which the "objects" of his desire serve as inadequate compensation. Thus the maternal superego might explain Victor's indefinite delay of his return to the domestic scene which requires his marriage to Elizabeth. In fact, the first thing Victor notices upon his much-delayed arrival at home is the portrait of his mother that depicts her as the grieving daughter of her father's death (as inscribed in the memory of Alphonse Frankenstein). This painting, commissioned by Alphonse Frankenstein to commemorate the moment he first beheld his wife-to-be, triggers the intervention of the dead mother, comes at the moment of the Unheimlich: Six years had elapsed, passed as a dream but for one indelible trace, and I stood in the same place where I had last embraced my father before my departure for Ingolstadt. Beloved and respectable [venerable] parentI He still remained to me. I gazed on the picture of my mother, which stood over the mantelpiece. It was a historical subject, painted at Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 300 my father's desire, and represented Caroline Beaufort in an agony of despair, kneeling by the coffin of her dead father. (I. 6. 106 [7. 124-5]; emphasis added) Fixed on the emblematic painting which embodies the desire of the other (maternal desire) and the law of the Father at the same time, Victor becomes a point of gaze from which to watch the unwedded Caroline who is about to meet his father- to-be. The inscribed meaning of the painting is an oblique depiction of the enjoyment of Victor’s parents while at the same time it is the primal scene for Victor. We already know that Caroline Beaufort, after her father fell ill, attended him with the greatest tenderness; but she saw with despair that their little fund was rapidly decreasing, and that there was no other prospect of support. . . She procured plain work; she plaited straw; and by various means contrived to earn a pittance scarcely sufficient to support life. . . . and in the tenth month her father died in her arms, leaving her an orphan and a beggar. This last blow overcame her; and she knelt by Beaufort's coffin, weeping bitterly, when my father entered the chamber. He came like a protecting spirit to the poor girl, who committed herself to his care, and after the internment of his friend he conducted her to Geneva, and placed her under the protection of a relation. Two years after this event Caroline became his wife. (I. 1. 64 [1. 81]) The specularization of Victor's gaze on the painting of Catherine Beaufort thus amounts to staging the "pure gaze" of the p r i m a l scene. This scene indeed sheds light on the fantasy structure of origins itself. I turn to Zizek's theorization again: Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 301 The basic paradox of the psychoanalytic notion of fantasy consists in a kind of time loop— the "original fantasy" is always the fantasy of the origins— that is to say, the elementary skeleton of the fantasy-scene is for the subject to be present as a pure gaze before its own conception, or, more precisely, at the very act of its own conception. The Lacanian formula of fantasy ($ 0 a) denotes such a paradoxical conjunction of the subject and the object gua this impossible gaze: the "object" of fantasy is not the fantasy-scene itself, its content (parental coitus, for example), but the impossible gaze witnessing it. . . . The basic paradox of the fantasy consists precisely in this "nonsensical" temporal short circuit whereby the subject qua pure gaze so to speak precedes itself and witnesses its own origin.58 Once the subject enters the symbolic realm and subjects himself to the law of the father, separated from the maternal, the subject's fantasy is structured by the desire of the (m)other. In Victor's relationship with his mother, Caroline Beaufort is the driving force behind his (doomed) engagement with Elizabeth. Also, given that Caroline Beaufort's last wish was for their marriage, Elizabeth's desire for Victor had already been constituted through Caroline Beaufort's desire. Precisely because of that, Victor is incapable of motivating himself to (sexual) action, saying "To me the idea of an immediate union with my Elizabeth was one of horror and dismay" [10. 145]); He thus creates progeny by himself (parthenogenesis), with the result of excluding (any) woman from reproduction. It is not surprising, then, that Victor has chosen to create a man. 58zizek, Ibid, p. 197. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 302 This structure of desire explains why the dead mother erupts in Victor's fantasy space (especially as she merges with the other woman, Elizabeth) when the job of "infusing life into an inanimate body" is completed: The different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feelings of human nature. I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body. . . I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart. Unable to endure the aspect of the being I had created, I rushed out of the room and continued a long time traversing my bedchamber, unable to compose my mind to sleep. . . . I slept indeed, but I was disturbed by the wildest dreams. I thought I saw Elizabeth, in the bloom of health, walking in the streets of Ingolstadt. Delighted and surprised, I embraced her, but as I imprinted the first kiss on her lips, they became livid with the hue of death; her features appeared to change, and I thought that I held the corpse of my dead mother in my arms; . . . I started from my sleep with horror; . . . I beheld the wretch— the miserable monster whom I had created. (I. 4. 86 [5. 105]) His intimation after finishing the creation demonstrates that the crux of Victor's desire lies between his mother and the monster. Amidst the blurry atmosphere of the waking dream, the duality of his action— i.e., giving birth and registering loss (the creation of progeny by parthenogenesis and loss of the "woman")— encroaches upon him. Looking back upon the project's inception, Victor knew its visceral implication: "To examine the causes of life, we must first have recourse to death" (I. 3. 80 [4. 99]). In fact, the death of Caroline Beaufort has set in motion his "dutiful" pursuit of life ("My mother was dead, but we had still Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 303 duties which we ought to perform"). The dead mother, the desire of the Other, comes back in the form of the monster. The dream also indicates Victor's anxiety over (the) woman who serves as a vehicle for the dead mother.59 At the same time, Victor's literal (scientific) interpretation of life is now shaken by the dream, the eruption of the lack in his symbolic being: his mother has an effect on him beyond the physical absence of her body and still holds the key of his life (his psychical reality). He now recognizes the double implication of his creation: he has reenacted the role of mother; and his uncanny "child" has the capacity to look back at him. From this point on, Victor precipitously plunges toward his downfall. The operation of the gaze is crucial to understand the dynamic of the Victor-monster relationship. There are compelling references to eyes/ eyeballs/ gazes throughout Victor's experiment: "my eyeballs were starting from their sockets in attending to the details of my employment" (I. 3. 59In the 1831 "Introduction," Mary Shelley also speaks of the German ghost stories that directly influenced her, one called History of the Inconstant Lover, in which the protagonist "thought to clasp the bride to whom he had pledged his vows, found himself in the arms of the pale ghost of her whom he had deserted." There was another tale on "the sinful founder of his race whose miserable doom it was to bestow the kiss of death on all the younger sons of his fated house, just when they reached the age of promise" [57]. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 304 83 [4. 102]). Upon his completion of the monster (whom he immediately calls a "catastrophe;"), Victor states: . . . I beheld the wretch I — the miserable monster whom I created. He held up the curtain of the bed; and his eyes, if eyes they may be called, were fixed O n ID6 • • • • Ohl no mortal could support the horror of that countenance. A mummy again endued with animation could not be so hideous as that wretch. I had gazed on him while unfinished; he was ugly then; but when those muscles and joints were rendered capable of motion, it became a thing such as even Dante could not have conceived. (I. 4. 86-87 [5. 106]) Yet this "thing" with a fixing gaze begins to haunt him. The more he perceives the monster gazing back at him, the more he realizes the impossibility of escape from the other (or the gaze of the Other). In fact, his control over the object is more and more swayed by his growing realization of the monster's eyes that look back. The novel stages two "real" encounters between Victor and the monster, in which they engage in an intense interaction. The first one occurs after William's death at Lake Lausanne: "I [Victor] perceived in the gloom a figure which stole from behind a clump of trees near me; I stood fixed, gazing intently. . . " (I. 6. 104 [7. 123]). As soon as Victor sees the monster, he instantly identifies it as the killer of William: "What did he there? Could he be (I shuddered at the conception) the murderer of my brother? No sooner did that idea cross my imagination, than I became convinced of its truth" (6. 104 [7. 123]). Victor's reaction to the monster here is a form of recognition, but the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 305 monster demands a step forward. And through his long and powerful narrative, the monster remarkably succeeds in changing Victor's attitude: the monster at first seems to Victor "almost too horrible for human eyes" (II. 2. 127 [10. 145]), but the creator succumbs to the monster's plea to "turn a favorable eye upon thy creature" (II. 2. 128 [10. 146]). The crucial element in the monster's rhetoric lies in establishing an essential link between them: the monster calls Victor his "natural lord and king." Indeed, after listening to the monster's story, Victor goes so far as to promise a female companion for the monster. Victor thus learns to see the monster looking (at him and at others), and that awareness provokes sympathy, fear and anger. While engaged in making the "female form," Victor increasingly finds the phantasm of the monster's gaze maddening. The result: "As I looked on him, his countenance expressed the utmost extent of malice and treachery. I thought with a sensation of madness on my promise of creating another like to him, and trembling with passion, tore to pieces the thing on which I was engaged" (III. 3. 193 [20. 211]). It might be added that Victor's anger at the monster is discharged against the semblance of a female body, which represents to him both an embodiment of the monster's desire and a reflection of his own male ego. In the second talk between Victor and the monster (after Victor has destroyed the monstress), the monster Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 306 calls Victor a "tyrant" and "tormentor" and ends the conversation with his vow of revenge. Victor is now left with the image of the monster who turned his back on him, and the resounding echo of the monster's ominous remark, "J will be with you on your wedding-night:" "I would have seized him, but he eluded me, and quitted the house with precipitations in a few moments I saw him in his boat, which shot across the waters with an arrowy swiftness, and was soon lost amidst the waves" (III. 3. 195 [20. 213]). Now the monster not only eludes Victor's gaze, but gains control over Victor. From that point the rivalry between Victor and the monster precipitates their last clash, where Victor witnesses "the murderous mark of the fiend's grasp" (III. 6. 220 [23. 239]) on Elizabeth's neck. The fatal mark of strangulation on her neck bespeaks the monster’s superior power over Victor. The truth-effect of the monster's protest disarticulates and subverts Victor's refusal of the relationship. The monster exclaims, "'Hateful day when I received lifel' . . . '[Ac]cursed creator1 Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust?. . . '" (II. 7. 158 [15. 175-6]). This protest resonates with the epigraph of the novel's 1818 edition— Adam's protest against God in Paradise Lost; "Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay/ To mold me Man, did I solicit thee/ From darkness to promote me. . . ?" (Book 10. 11. 743- Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 307 5). The monster also strongly claims, with an allusion to the Adam-God relation, his uncanny resemblance to Victor: "My form is a filthy type of yours" (158 [176]). Peter Brooks argues that the intense relation between Victor and the monster forms "an exacerbated dialectic of desire," in which each needs the other because "the other represents for each the lack or gap within himself."60 The text links the monster to the haunting Doppelganger, just after Victor's first confrontation with his creature: Coleridge's Ancient Mariner is inserted at the juncture in which the exhausted Victor, after his creation, wanders around in a trance (". . . he knows, a frightful fiend/ Doth close behind him tread."). By the time Victor destroys the monster's "bride-to- be," and the monster kills Clerval, they thus become secret sharers61: I avoided explanation, and maintained a continual silence concerning the wretch I had created. I had a feeling [persuasion] that I should be supposed mad, and this in itself [would] forever [have] chained my tongue[. But besides, I could not bring myself to disclose a secret which would fill my hearer with consternation and make fear and unnatural horror the inmates of his breast. I checked, therefore, my impatient thirst for sympathy and was silent], when 60peter Brooks, "Godlike Science/ Unhallowed Arts," p. 214. 61George Levine accounts for the impact Frankenstein made on Joseph Conrad's "Secret Sharer" in his article, "The Ambiguous Heritage of Frankenstein," in The Endurance of Frankenstein. pp. 25-26. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 308 I would have given the world to have confided that fatal secret.(III. 5. 210-211 [22. 230]; emphasis added) While this struggle between Victor and the monster takes the course of relinquishing humanist vanguardism for Frankenstein, the monster who radically challenges his authority bears the mark of his creator's obsession, a single-minded, maddening pursuit for "proper" recognition at all costs. The monster's struggle in this light locates his desire to repeat Victor's act— perhaps with a touch of difference. Indeed, through a subject identification (the monster's repetition of Victor), the monster emerges as a masculine subject proper, more and more assimilated to an Enlightenment position, rather than the point of radical difference as he has come into being.62 Thus at this point I would differ from Zizek's formulation that tends to take for granted the heterosexual relation centering a masculine subjectivity. Above all, Victor's ambivalent relationship with his mother is replicated; like Victor's, the monster’s desire is mediated by the (desire/lack of the) mother. After seeing the portrait of Caroline Beaufort that Elizabeth put ^2The monster's discovery of Victor's journal (which contains the process of forming knowledge about the life- giving experiment as well as a detailed description of the application of such knowledge) throws the monster into a state of bleakness, compelling him to strive for knowledge [9. 137]. In that sense, the monster also undergoes a quest for knowledge, just like Victor. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 309 around William's neck, the monster is struck by the desire of the (M)Other. Through this "encounter," Caroline/ Elizabeth is inscribed in the monster's psychical trauma: the picture works as the symbolic register of the ideal feminine in the monster's mind, propelling him to want (and at the same time to resist) his woman. The monster says to Victor of this encounter: "it was a portrait of the most lovely woman. In spite of my malignity, it softened and attracted me. For a few moments I gazed with delight on her dark eyes, fringed by deep lashes, and her lovely lips" (II. 8. 170 [16. 187-188]). As soon as the reality principle intervenes, however, the monster's admiration for Caroline/Elizabeth is displaced into a discharge of anger toward another woman— Justine: "but presently my rage returned: I remembered that I was forever deprived of the delights that such beautiful creatures could bestow; and that she whose resemblance I contemplated would, in regarding me, have changed that air of divine benignity to one expressive of disgust and affright" (170 [16. 188]). Thus the monster plants on Justine the portrait that provokes his complex emotion of admiration, desire and rage, as if to defend his indulgence in forbidden enjoyment and to condemn any interference with the operation of his fantasy. In that sense, when he breaks Elizabeth's neck and leaves the fatal wound, he finally freezes his objet a into a fixed Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 310 form (as in a portrait) and thus closes off his own fantasy realm.63 The growth of the monster's male subjectivity is manifested in a masculine power contest, the self-possessing quest and conquest, to use Marlon Ross' terms. For example, the order of the monster's targets (William— (Justine)— Henry— Elizabeth— (Alphonse)— Victor) suggest an increasing will to power that is reflected in the strength of his enemies.64 This oblique quest for self-perfection and self- annihilation can only lead to one destiny— his becoming one with the master/ tyrant. The intense tension between Victor and the monster shows that indeed they are bound by the "tenuous link to the signifying chain,"65 the law of the Father. In this respect, Victor's and the monster's murder of each other's "brides" reflects the duplicitous bonding between them as much as their ambivalent feelings toward 63Similar psychical dynamics can be found in "Porphyria's Lover." 64From a slightly different angle, William Veeder sees victor as a personification of Percy Shelley with Oedipal (patricidal) desire against Sir Timothy Shelley (and also William Wordsworth and Godwin in extension) and considers the monster as Victor's surrogate who ultimately drives Alphonse Frankenstein to death. While discussing the symbolic meaning of the order of the monster's victims in detail, Veeder links Percy's Prometheus Unbound and The Cenci to Victor's deep wish for patricide. See Mary Shelley and Frankenstein: The Fate of Androgyny (Chicago: U of Chicago P), 1986, pp. 149-153; n.10 (pp. 252-253). 65Peter Brooks, "Godlike Science/ Unhallowed Arts," p. 214. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 311 their brides. No matter how desperately Victor disavows the monster, he is forced to realize that they are marked by each other. Indeed, they follow each other’s trail almost dutifully until the end. When the monster stops his chase of Victor, perhaps out of desire to mirror his point of identification, Victor in turn follows the monster to the extent of becoming an automaton in pursuit of the source of power: ” ... I pursued my path towards the destruction of the daemon, more as a task enjoined by heaven, as the mechanical impulse of some power of which I was unconscious, than as the ardent desire of my soul" (III. 7. 228 [24. 248]). The dialectical cycle of the chase between the two could not end without the "annihilation" of them both. 3.2 Masculine Fantasies II: the Gender of the Monster The pervasive narrative of the fantastic interacts with a continuous operation of various ideologies. The ideological dimension of the fantasy structure is discernible when the monster's position is compared with Safie's. While Safie and the monster share the outsider's position in Eurocentric culture and as seekers of romantic love, the intersections amongst racial, class and gender differences separate one from another. As opposed to the untamable, unthinkable monster, Safie— a fashionable Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 312 Romantic invention— serves as an appropriatable, controllable other (or, rather, an addition to sameness) from the viewpoint of the "civilized" French family. As such, Safie is welcomed by European sensibility only insofar as she subjects herself to the dominant structure, whereas the monster is much more difficult to accommodate and appropriate. As if to prove the point, he learns to assert his masculine subjecthood at the expense of others. Safie is an exotic pagan (Turkish) woman in love with the Frenchman Felix de Lacey, the romantic savior of her father, and when her father turns out to be manipulative and treacherous in betraying Felix, she chooses to leave him and her native country to join the de Lacey family. Safie's choice of transculturation into a Western country thus takes a typical pattern in stories of Romantic affection. While a decidedly active seeker of an enlightened society who deserts her father's land, she goes no farther than her future husband's home. In other words, the crucial factor that makes the whole transition possible for both Safie and the de Lacey family is the patriarchal context. Besides, Safie already privileged the Western, Christian value system while she was brought up by her mother, an enslaved Christian Arab who "taught her to aspire to higher powers of intellect, and an independence of spirit, forbidden to the female followers of Mahomet [Mohammad]" (II. 6. 151 [14. 169]). Thus "sickened at the prospect of again returning to Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 313 Asia, and being immured within the walls of a harem," she liked the "prospect of marrying a Christian and remaining in a country where women were allowed to take a rank in society" (151-152 [169-170]). Couched in inevitable Orientalism, the passage nonetheless inscribes the author's investment in the status of women, especially the concerns addressed by her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft. Safie becomes the site to criticize the "Oriental” social norms which dictate that women be occupied with "puerile [infantile] amusements" that are "ill suited to the temper of her soul, now accustomed to grand ideas and a noble emulation of virtue" (151 [170]). Mary Shelley's criticism of the Oriental social bondage over women, of course, has the effect of exonerating some of the oppressive Western social practices over middle class British women that Mary Wollstonecraft criticized a generation earlier. On the other hand, it implies a more subtle critique of the contemporary patriarchal condition: what happens if Western women are not actually taking a rank in society, or not so free from the appalling practices of female dependency that are believed to exist only in the Orient? As is shown in section 2.2 of this chapter, comparing Safie's span of interests with the monster's and Victor's with Elizabeth's (and Walton's situation with Margaret Saville) suggests that gendered consciousness runs deep, cutting across cultural variables. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 314 The monster's bloody struggle for "making use of his own understanding without the guidance of another" exposes the exclusionary end of Enlightenment logic. From the perspective of the outsider who identifies himself with the "imagined community," the monster's futile and disastrous imposition of "humanity" (his espousal of membership in the society which always-already excludes him) ultimately points at the discursive apparatuses that keep the logic of insider/ outsider intact. It is through exclusion that the idea of "structure" is maintained, even if the structure might be an empty one. In other words, the automatic rejection of the monster shared by the "human" (that is, European) community, ranging from Victor's instantaneous revulsion against his own creation, and young de Lacey’s horror-ridden reaction to the monster's "invasion" of their home,66 to William's "innocent" refusal to like him, shows the productive nature of the cultural policing mechanism that "naturally" and effectively shuts out the outsider. The 6*>David Marshall in his Surprising Effects of Sympathy explains "the drame bourgeois, or tragddie larmoyante of the de Lacey family" depicted by the monster, "the spectateur ignord." Marshall points out that the de Lacey family suggests the model of bourgeois family that could be confirmed and frustrated, and that the whole picture could unfold itself by repeating it with Victor's participation. The Surprising Effects of Sympathy: Marivaux, Diderot. Rousseau, and Mary Shelley (Chicago and London: U of Chicago P, 1988), p. 214. By the same token, this "sympathy" exactly shows the limit of bourgeois humanism itself in absolute rejection of the monster's appeal for inclusion. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 315 rejection of the monster demonstrates how "naturally" or automatically the ideological operation of culture works. The monster's modest proposal for his own happiness ("misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous"; II. 2. 128 [10. 146]) is a demand that can never be met unless Victor (who happens to assume the guardianship of humanity on the frontier) transgresses the naturalized value system67 he firmly holds. Victor's treatment of the monster obviously corresponds with the way British culture exercised colonial domination— through establishing and maintaining identities by excluding others, and through constituting sites and objects as Other. The cultural operation is indeed relentless, to the extent that "those whom repressive culture has held at a distance can easily enough become its most diehard defenders."68 The monster himself internalizes the law and the concepts of beauty and "monstrosity" only through Eurocentric lenses. At first, the monster sees language 67Both Victor and the monster are heavily indebted to the naturalized dominant culture; Victor to Euro-centric hegemony and the monster to the Rousseauan "natural law." Rousseau's famous thesis (Second Discourse) poses questions such as what is the origin of inequality among men, and is it authorized by natural laws? According to Rousseau, "man in a state of nature" is free of disease, naked, and filled with "natural compassion," which is "the pure emotion of nature, prior to all kinds of reflection" (p. 67). ^^Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia; Reflections from Damaged Life, Trans., E. F. N. Jephcott (London: Verso, 1978; 1951), p. 53. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 316 acquisition as a way of "enabl[ing him] to make them overlook the deformity of [his] figure." Yet, just as Percy's Prometheus Unbound declares that "[Prometheus] gave man speech, and speech created thought,/ Which is the measure of the universe," the monster's self-education in language and culture leads him to subject himself to the symbolic chain, even to the point of recognizing himself as the other. This process of interpellation is vividly illustrated in the following scene: I had admired the perfect forms of my cottagers— their grace, beauty, and delicate complexions: but how was I terrified, when I viewed myself in a transparent poolI At first I started back, unable to believe that it was indeed I who was reflected in the mirror; and when I became fully convinced that I was in reality the monster that I am, I was filled with the bitterest sensations of despondence and mortification. Alas I I did not yet entirely know the fatal effects of this miserable deformity. (II. 4. 142 [12. 159]; emphasis added) This scene depicts what Lacan would call "the mirror-stage" in the constitution of the monster's subjectivity, or the formation of his ego-the ideological moment at which he "recognizes" himself through a specular relation. The monster's image of himself (as deformed) is defined by the difference of his appearance from those of the idealized cottagers (the dominant culture). In other words, his identification with monstrosity is nothing but the mirroring of symbolic encodings.69 The structuration of the ego (and 6^see translator's notes (Alan Sheridan) in Jacques Lacan, Ecrits (London: Tavistock, 1977), pp. ix-x, as well Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 317 desire) derived from a splitting of the subject into conscious and unconscious parts, demarcates the individual in the social by means of identification and language. This scene is particularly crucial to my reading because the monster's peculiar pursuit of the masculine subjecthood from this point on leads me to a considerably different reading from Zizek's interpretation of the monster, zizek highlights the monster as the surplus and the void located between nature and culture and highlights the monster's refusal to accept the mirrored form. But the above scene shows that the monster does indeed follow the logic of the specular relation and starts to believe that only by "having his woman" can the primary bond he has made with his creator— whom he learns to call his master, "natural lord and king"— be safeguarded. Anticipating the monster's mirror stage, a curiously significant parallel moment takes place in Victor’s narrative just after the trial and execution of Justine. Wandering around in a wounded spirit, Victor states: I was now free. Often, after the rest of the family had retired for the night, I took the boat, and passed many hours upon the water. Sometimes, with my sails set, I was carried by the wind; and sometimes, as chapter 1, "The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience," pp. 1-7; Louis Althusser, "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatus," Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, trans., Ben Brewster (London: New Left Books, 1971), pp. 127-186. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 318 after rowing into the middle of the lake, I left the boat to pursue its own course, and gave way to my own miserable reflections. I was often tempted, when all was at peace around me, and I the only unquiet thing that wandered restless in a scene so beautiful and heavenly. . . often, I say, I was tempted to plunge into the silent lake, that the waters might close over me and my calamities forever. But I was restrained, when I thought of the heroic and suffering Elizabeth, whom I tenderly loved, and whose existence was bound up in mine. (II. 1. 120 [9. 137]; emphasis added) The dark surface of the lake here fails to reflect Victor’s image, intensifying his experience of loss and mortality. Victor's realization of the impossibility of sharing his guilt with his family or friends drives him to the point of suicidal agony. So far, his desire for masculine self- sufficiency and control as an autonomous bourgeois subject has steadily driven infantile dependency and domestic entanglement into the repressed realm. Victor's project in that sense was propelled by a yearning to transcend a sexual and mortal body— a potentially threatening element to autonomous subjectivity. And yet, when fear erupts after he faces "the return of the repressed" in the form of the monster who demands Victor's attention to the dreaded domestic ties, he curiously clings to Elizabeth, who would, in Victor's mind, assume the role of recuperating his whole being. Victor shows again the male libidinal economy in that he defines identity by the feminine other and deprives her of her otherness. Any excess in Elizabeth is arrested and redefined through his eye. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 319 Thus both Victor and the monster seem to need the phantasm of a woman in order to establish or restore their sense of being. This is more clearly manifested in the course of the monster's identity construction: first, the monster enters the symbolic realm, i.e., language acquisition, through Safie, a Turkish woman whom the monster secretly observed during her language lesson; second, his murder of William is bound up with his discovery of the ideal woman, the portrait of Victor's dead mother; and finally, he indulges in the fantasy of possessing his own woman by observing Justine in the passive, sleeping state. The monster's observation of Justine shows his longing for the [m]other as much as for the actual woman he faces: . . . she [Justine] was young, not indeed so beautiful as her whose portrait I held, but of an agreeable aspect and blooming in the loveliness of youth and health. Here, I thought, is one of those whose [ joy-imparting] smiles are bestowed on all but me. [And then I bent over her and whispered, 'Awake, fairest, thy lover is near — he who would give his life but to obtain one look of affection from thine eyes; my beloved, awakel'] (II. 8. 170 [16. 188] )70 The monster’s male position allows him to take the aggressive role of possessing and harassing women. He becomes blindly mad when he stops dwelling on the imaginary female partnership and faces the possibility of Justine's 70The monster's encounter with Justine is more elaborated in the 1831 version, where the monster finds her asleep rather than casually passing him by as in the 1818 version. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 320 rejections "The thought was madness; it stirred the fiend within me— not I, but she, shall suffer; the murder I had committed because I am forever robbed of all that she could give me, she shall atone. The crime has its source in her; be hers the punishment" [188]. Such thoughts lead him to demonize and sacrifice the woman in order to consolidate his ego. Seeing the woman alternately as redeemer and seducer, the monster now takes pleasure in exercising his knowledge of the symbolic system— "the sanguinary laws of man"— on a woman who has done no harm to him. The fact that she will wake up and thus will break his self-aggrandizing illusion is threat enough for him to condemn her. Now the monster not only uses but represents the law in the sense that he would codify his power over her through the power of the law; he could not bear her existence to be independent from or indifferent to him, and he wants her to sleep forever so that she will not interfere with his fantasy space. The identificatory process of the monster— his self representation through (self-)education— evinces the process of identity construction according to the elaborate symbolic order that regulates social life. The assembled texts that are "quoted" to him (Volney's Ruins, Milton's Paradise Lost. Petrarch's Lives) induct him into the cultural logic of his society. In other words, the "sample" texts he comes across teach him social conventions, domestic affection and its corollary, family romance. It might be added that the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 321 imaginary relations the monster constructs cancel out any fine distance between a "true history" and a fiction: But Paradise Lost excited different and far deeper emotions. I read it, as I had read the other volumes which had fallen into my hands, as a true history. It moved every feeling of wonder and awe that the picture of an omnipotent God warring with his creatures was capable of exciting. I often referred the several situations, as their similarity struck me, to my own. Like Adam, I was created apparently united by no link to any other being in existence; but his state was far different from mine in every other respect. He had come forth from the hands of God a perfect creature, happy and prosperous, guarded by the especial care of his Creator; he was allowed to converse with, and acquire knowledge from beings of a superior nature: but I was wretched, helpless, and alone. Many times I considered Satan as the fitter emblem of my condition; for often, like him, when I viewed the bliss of my protectors, the bitter gall of envy rose within me. (II. 7. 157 [15. 175]; emphasis added) Literary and cultural quoting impels the monster to learning and reproducing the cultural ideologies imbedded in the relentless and elaborate semiotic network. The ambivalence he feels as both Adam and Satan in his relation to God/ the master indicates that he puts himself in a father-son dynamic, which interpellates him as a gendered subject. Thus he "naturally" discards the link between himself and Eve71 and embarks on the restless pursuit for an imaginary "bride." Indeed, what he sees and actively constructs through the reading of given cultural texts is an adoption 7*In this sense, some feminist critics’ (re-)reading of the monster as Frankenstein's feminine Other, thus linking him with Eve, seems indeed an instance of Copernican reversal. See Gale Robin, and Gilbert and Gubar. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 322 of the patriarchal symbolic economy, perhaps in order to survive in such a system. In that respect, the monster's eventual success in "usurping" the father's name, Frankenstein (thus becoming both Satan and Adam), is the ultimate reward he could attain. Apparently, the turning point in the relationship between the monster and Victor comes when the monster eloquently narrates his story of suffering, alienation and despair. The monster gains sympathy from Victor even for the most brutal acts he has committed against other people. In other words, by recounting the past from his point of view, the monster now gains the status of a "grown" man as a thinking male subject. He thus makes clear that he identifies with (the father's) masculinity and asserts his distance from the mother, seeking his version of the ego ideal: "My companion must be of the same species and have the same defects. This being you must create" (II. 8. 171 [16. 189]). In essence, the monster argues that his companion should reflect himself. As such, his desperate demand for a female partner goes hand in hand with his willful erasure of "the fiend within"— the unknown or other in himself. Yet the precariously naturalized gender norms implied in his demand— i.e., his female should be domestic, complying, and without any capacity of resistance or self- sufficiency— goes unnoticed (and that is crucial for the narrative's logic): Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 323 What I ask of you is reasonable and moderate; I demand a creature of another sex, but as hideous as myself: the gratification is small, but it is all that I can receive, and it shall content me. It is true, we shall be monsters, cut off from all the world; but on that account we shall be more attached to one another. Our lives will not be happy, but they will be harmless and free from the misery I now feel. Oh I my creator, make me happy; let me feel gratitude towards you for one benefit 1 Let me see that I excite the sympathy of some existing thing . . . . (II. 9 172 [17. 191]) Mirroring Victor's own notion of femininity as his ego ideal, the monster seems to know how to speak Victor's masculinist language. The "moderate" demand for his own happiness ("misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous"), based on the mutual acknowledgment of each other's prerogative of an exclusive heterosexual arrangement, rhetorically preempts any rejection from Victor. Yet the unquestioned problematic that props this mutual agreement is the hierarchized master-slave relationship on par with the "sexual" right a male authority ought to have over "his woman." This contract between Victor and the monster satisfies the logic of the patriarchal male bond mediated by the exchange of women. Before the monster recounts his experience, he has warned Victor about his potential power for revenge, even though he still insists on establishing the relationship between two male subjects: "But I will not be tempted to set myself in opposition to thee. I am thy creature, and I will be even mild and docile to my natural Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 324 lord and king, if thou wilt also perform thy part, the which thou owest me" (II. 2. 128 [145-6]). Anchored by the logic of natural law, male rivalry, and codependency, the monster's offer of a truce is what Victor cannot refuse, because it is carefully drawn on their mutual respect of the "boundary." The "surprising effect of sympathy" the monster exerts on victor here has interesting textual resonance, too. The linguistic component of "sympathy" not only goes back to Victor's original creation of the monster but to the author's inception of the novel itself. Mary Shelley explains in her introduction that she conceived the idea of giving life to assembled body parts in the following terms: "Perhaps a corpse would be re-animated} galvanism had given token of such things: perhaps the component parts of a creature might be manufactured, brought together, and endued with vital warmth" [1831 "Introduction," 58 ; emphasis added ]. The vital warmth that energized the body of the monster correlates with the monster's exertion of power over Victor. With each acknowledging mutual power (/sympathy) upon each other, they are about to make a contract based on their commonality— that is, their position as (potential) patriarchs. They reach an agreement that the monster, a male and come of age, is entitled to exclusive possession of a female of "his kind," "his woman," the embodiment of his desire. This boon will rectify their much troubled Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 325 relationship. As a man, Victor must admit that the monster’s suggestion is a perfect solution to their volatile, unpredictable relationship, especially compared to the destructive alternative, which the monster has demonstrated both his will and capability to realize. It is as if in the name of humanistic interdependency the monster offers a de facto colonial relationship that the colonizer cannot refuse. Accepting such a premise fully, Victor embarks on creating the second sex: a monstress for the monster. Victor naturalizes the presupposed power imbalance between the sexes; which is to say, the question of self-sufficiency or self-determination of the female creature is from the beginning completely buried. Pairing up the potentially volatile monster would seem the only way of containing the monstrous threat of invasion of human space. But such a defensive strategy saps all joy from his work: It was indeed a filthy process in which I was engaged. During my first experiment, a kind of enthusiastic frenzy had blinded me to the horror of my employment; my mind was intently fixed on the consummation of my labour, and my eyes were shut to the horror of my proceedings. But now I went to it in cold blood, and my heart often sickened at the work of my hands. (III. 2. 191 [19. 209]) Victor's growing anxiety about the creation of the monstress touches upon the problematic of the monster's demand— precisely the implications the monster's rhetoric has successfully concealed. The creeping thoughts come about not Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 326 from the monstress' perspective but from a masculinist/colonialist position. Victor's anxiety is unleashed at the sight of the female body, "the surplus" of which exceeds the male scientist's design. When Victor contemplates the possibility of that excess within the material that is designated as female (the female's domineering power over the male), and foremost, the reproductive power of the female body, he cannot continue his work. As a creator of life himself, he views her procreative power as most threatening to his authority and will. Victor's fear of such mystifying power, the unnegotiated element of a possibly unfathomable nature, strikes him as even more monstrous than the monster's rage. His decision to dissolve his agreement does not come from his ignorance of the monster's potential fury. On the contrary, given the monster's intelligence and power, Victor knows the consequence, and further, he almost prepares for the sacrifice attendant upon his decision. For Victor, in other words, what is more frightful than renunciation of his enjoyment is female subjectivity— now elaborately equated with monstrosity par excellence— which, when leashed, bears uncontrollable consequences. When Victor dissolves the hom(m)osocial contract, he is guilt-ridden about his own "enjoyment." After his wedding, Victor "had been calm during the day, but so soon as night obscured the shapes of objects, a thousand fears Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 327 arose in [his] mind." The ensuing conversation between Victor and Elizabeth is vague and duplicitous. Victor fears the implication of the monster's threat, "I shall be with you on your wedding night." At the same time, it could be said that Victor equally fears female desire and waits for the realization of the monster's threat in any fashion it might take. Elizabeth's inquiry, "What is it that agitates you, my dear Victor, What is it you fear?" drives him to say, "Oh! Peace, peace, my love" and "this night, and all will be safe; but this night is dreadful, very dreadful" (III. 6. 219 [23. 238]). It is as though Victor himself does not know what he fears, but keenly waits for something to happen: I passed an hour in this state of mind, when suddenly I reflected how fearful the combat which I momentarily expected would be to my wife, and I earnestly intreated her to retire, resolving not to join her until I had obtained some knowledge as to the situation of my enemy. She left me, and I continued some time walking up and down the passages of the house, and inspecting every corner that might afford a retreat to my adversary. But I discovered no trace of him, and was beginning to conjecture that some fortunate chance had intervened to prevent the execution of his menaces; when suddenly I heard a shrill and dreadful scream. It came from the room into which Elizabeth had retired. As I heard it, the whole truth rushed into my mind, my arms dropped, the motion of every muscle and fibre was suspended; I could feel the blood trickling in my veins and tingling in the extremities of my limbs. This state lasted but for an instant; the scream was repeated, and I rushed into the room. (III. 6. 219-220 [23. 239]; emphasis added) Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 328 Between Victor’s conflicting remarks and hesitating gestures, it is not difficult to detect his deeply ambivalent attitudes toward the death of his wife. The whole truth of the return of the repressed, which Victor now believes he recognizes, is still only half-translucent, because he does not fully acknowledge the operation of his own fear and desire. To see this passage in its "whole truth," it might be useful to return to another critical moment. Just after Justine’s execution, Elizabeth speaks of an "abyss" between "falsehood" and "truth," referring to the "edge of a precipice": "Alas, Victor, when falsehood can look so like the truth, who can assure themselves of happiness? I feel as if I was walking on the edge of a precipice, towards which thousands are crowding and endeavoring to plunge me into the abyss” (II. 1. 122 [9. 139]). Here "the angel of the house" becomes the questioner of the cause of the crisis. That precarious space, the abyss or the edge of a precipice, is where Prometheanism converges with monsterism. It is also the fantasy space in which Victor and the monster conspiratorially plunge her. In other words, the monster realizes Victor's desire in killing Elizabeth, since her desire exceeds Victor's. Analyzing the events that culminate in the death of Elizabeth— from the monster's ominous remark, "I shall be with you on your wedding night," to Victor's discovery of the dead body of Elizabeth on the very night— -one might Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 329 employ Slavoj Zizek's notion that "the fantasy erupts into the actual event": "Where we would expect rapid movement, an intense, swift clash, we get hindered, slowed-down, protracted movement, as if the 'normal' rhythm of events had undergone a kind of anamorphotic deformation. This renders perfectly the immobilizing, crippling effect the fantasy object has upon the subject: from the interpretive movement induced by the ambiguous register of symptoms, we have passed over to the register of fantasy, the inert presence of which suspends the movement of interpretation."72 This masculine fantasy that interconnects Victor's and the monster's desire is indeed difficult to label either "murderous or amorous," as Eve Sedgwick suggests. As Victor buries the monster’s victims one after another— William, Justin, Clerval, Elizabeth, his father— he gradually becomes a kind of automaton in pursuing the monster, until finally his obsession with the monster dictates the reversal of their roles: "I pursued my path towards the destruction of the daemon more as a task enjoined by heaven, as the mechanical impulse of some power of which I was unconscious f than as the ardent desire of my soul" (III. 7. 228 [24. 248]; emphasis added). The reversal ?2siavoj Zizek, Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture (Cambridge, Massachusetts: An October Book, The M. I. T. Press, 1991), p. 91. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. of fortune between Victor and the monster completes the story. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 331 4. Between the Monster and the Cyborg [Frankenstein] would hope . . . that this thing which had received such imperfect animation would subside into dead matter • • • — Mary Shelley, "Introduction” to Frankenstein. 1831 edition In the traditions of "Western” science and politics—the tradition of racist, male- dominant capitalism; the tradition of progress; the tradition of the appropriation of nature as resource for the productions of culture; the tradition of reproduction of the self from the reflections of the other—the relation between organism and machine has been a border war. The stakes in the border war have been the territories of production, reproduction, and imagination. — Donna Haraway, Simians. Cyborgs, and Women Frankenstein's resounding and ambivalent ending, where Victor becomes something like an automaton, and the command- obedience relation between the human and its creation is overturned, signals a new era. The legacy of the (illegitimate) modern Prometheus lives on in our daily incidence of path-breaking inventions and discoveries. The questions that accompany scientific discoveries and technological advances— such as the implications of ground breaking scientific experiments— remain still unresolved today. Addressing the blurred boundary between the human and the mechanical, or organic and anti-organic, some critics Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 332 point out that the 1831 edition is more oriented towards a mechanistic view of non-human nature than is the original version of 1818. Anne Mellor sees the shift of emphasis stemming from the change in Mary Shelley's view of life after her experience with personal loss, and especially from her leaning towards fatalistic determinism in her later years.73 In a similar light, Marilyn Butler, in her recent study of the scientific discourse of the period, traces evolutionist William Lawrence's influence on the first edition of Frankenstein. Butler follows through the biologist and physician's "mechanical” materialist ideas (vis-A-vis the spiritualized vitalism advocated by John Abernethy) and associates Lawrence with the scientist-hero of the novel in its first edition: "The fact is that in 1818 Mary Shelley's portrayal of her hero is harsh, contemptuous, with a touch of Lawrence's sarcastic debating manner."74 73Anne Mellor, "Revising Frankenstein," Marv Shelley, p. 172 passim; also, see her "Possessing Nature: The Female in Frankenstein," Romanticism and Feminism, pp. 220-232. Mary Poovey points out Shelley's growing ideological, political conservatism. See Poovey, Chapter 4, "My Hideous Progeny: The Lady and the Monster," and Chapter 5, "Ideal and Almost Unnatural Perfection: Revising Mary Shelley," of The Proper Ladv and the Woman Writer. ^Marilyn Butler, "The First Frankenstein and Radical Science," Times Literary Supplement (Apr. 9, 1993), 12. Of course, scientists such as Erasmus Darwin are acknowledged in the 1818 "Preface," and two conflicting views of nature had been in competition for some time when Mary Shelley wrote the text: one, Paley's mechanical world-view (in harmony with his Utilitarian moral philosophy), and the other, Davy's rejection of mechanical metaphors in favour of Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 333 On the other end of discourse analysis stands Donna Haraway, with an anti-organicist and anti-humanist perspective on nature. In her ground-breaking "Cyborg Manifesto," Haraway argues for "transgressed boundaries [between the organic and inorganic], potent fusions, and dangerous possibilities."75 Haraway situates Frankenstein in the traditional Western discourse of self-making that is irreparably linked to the Oedipal project and the organic family. Against the mainstay of "distinctions between organism and machine and similar distinctions structuring the Western self" (174), Haraway salutes today's postmodern phenomenon of hybrid social relations that break down clean boundaries between machine and organism: Unlike the hopes of Frankenstein's monster, the cyborg does not expect its father to save it through a restoration of the garden; that is, through the fabrication of a heterosexual mate, through its completion in a finished whole, a city and cosmos. The cyborg does not dream of community on the model of the organic family, this time without the oedipal project. (151) The postmodern cybernetic culture thus calls for the subversion of command and control and the undoing of (phallogocentric) origin myths and apocalyptic endings organic ones. See Romanticism and the Sciences, p. 14 for a detailed discussion of the two contrasting perspectives on nature in the so-called "Second Scientific Revolution." 7^Donna J. Haraway, "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century," Simians. Cyborgs. and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (NY: Routledge, 1991), p. 154. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 334 (175), because the futurist vision of the cyborg is about dispersion rather than identification (170), affinity rather than identity (155). Indeed, the dramatic Harawayan reversal of the order between organism and machine is a long way from Frankensteinian crossing. What does Frankenstein's anxiety- ridden experiment on "inanimate nature" amount to— a prophetic warning against a technocratic society (following Anne Mellor's argument), or a fatal crisis of the enduring oedipal plot (following Haraway)? With Frankenstein Mary Shelley certainly travels a dramatic length, setting and upsetting preexisting intellectual boundaries— "originating" or ushering in a new discursive domain (later designated as science fiction). Shelley makes a crucial commentary on her contemporary culture, providing the reader with her insights into the other (monstrous) side of Enlightenment and Romantic aspirations. And just as the seed of "the world turned upside down" is always planted in the beginning, Frankenstein may be read as an attack on the boundaries or distinctions it purports to be establishing. The very moment of the inception of the scientific experiment suggests that between the switching on of the flickering light and its extinction, there is only a phantasmic blink: "[when Victor] imprint[s] the first kiss on her lips, they became livid with the hue of death." When Frankenstein faces a crisis after his creation of the monster (which Ellen Moers links Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 335 to post-partum depression76) his view of nature is ambivalent: "When happy, inanimate nature had the power of bestowing on me the most delightful sensations" (I. 5. 98 [6. 117]; emphasis added). Here he apparently regrets his "animation" project, which implies his irrevocable departure from the position of a recipient of nature's power. But by putting two senses of nature— 'natura naturata’ (passive and complete) and 'natura naturans’ (active, and in process)— together in one sweep ("the inanimate nature that has power. . . on him. . . "), he expresses his ambivalent attitudes toward nature. He cannot assess his relationship with nature any other way than retroactively, and from a standpoint at which the violence has always already occurred. Analogously, at its various crucial moments, Frankenstein certainly blurs the distinction between human and machine. For example, Victor's destiny-forming meeting with Dr. Waldman is described as follows: Such were the professor's words— rather let me say such the words of fate, enounced to destroy me. As he [Mr. Waldman] went on, I felt as if my soul were grappling with a palpable enemy; one by one the various keys were touched which formed the mechanism of my being: chord after chord was sounded, and soon my mind was filled with one thought, one conception, one purpose. So much has been done, exclaimed the soul of Frankenstein,— more, far more, will I achieve. . . [3. 96; emphasis added] 76See Ellen Moers, "Female Gothic" in The Endurance of Frankenstein. p. 81. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 336 The Faustian desire for knowledge is seen to be the key to the mechanistic side of his being; it is equated with a well-coordinated musical instrument/ automaton, with a soul of one dimensional purposefulness. He soon imparts the same mechanical will to his own creations "With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet. . . . It was already one in the morning . . . when . . . by the glimmer of the half extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs" (I. iv. 85 [5. 105]; emphasis added). By the same kind of initiating spark and with the same modality of mechanical coordination, only this time slightly less finely tuned, the monster is born. It is no surprise then the monster, hovering between "half-vital motion" and a full-blown demonic "thing," turns out to carry the inscription of the creator's single-mindedness in pursuing the goal. In her depiction of the "birth" of the novel which revolves around the monster's creation, Mary Shelley again stresses the precarious and almost permeable boundary between the organic and inorganic: [In my dream] I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half- Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 337 vital motion. Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world. His success would terrify the artist; he would rush away from his odious handiwork, horror- stricken. He would hope that, left to itself, the slight spark of life which he had communicated would fade; that this thing which had received such inperfect animation would subside into dead matter . • • (1831 "Introduction," p. 9; emphasis added) Even God's system is seen as a mechanism; the human being, created by the stupendous mechanism, adopts, imitates and mocks it through his own handiwork. Moreover, a contiguous link is established between animating the human engine, putting flesh onto a (dead) skeleton, and putting a narrativizing form upon an elusive dream. In this light, the writing is but "the machinery of a story," a process and result of an "inventions" Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos; the materials must, in the first place, be afforded: it can give form to dark, shapeless substances, but cannot bring into being the substance itself. In all matters of discovery and invention, even of those that appertain to the imagination, we are continually reminded of the story of Columbus and his egg. Invention consists in the capacity of seizing on the capabilities of a subject; and in the power of moulding and fashioning ideas suggested to it. (1831 "Introduction," p. 8) Quite different from Wordsworth's formulation of "spontaneous overflow," Shelley strenuously points out "the dead matter" (material substance) that lies underneath linguistic structuring power. From seizing upon the capabilities of a subject and molding and fashioning the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 338 substance to releasing it, writing is something equal to creating a "monster." The character, the monster, and the novel, all thus could be seen as "hideous progenies," which have become "the first of a new and hybrid fictional species."77 Certainly Shelley knew that her "hideous progeny" would have its own life over which the author has no control. What is the function of a reader vis & vis this hybrid? Since "[e]ach tale interlocked within the tale touches its listener with the taint of monsterism" (Brooks 219), the reader cannot be immune to it: ". . . the fact of monsterism is never either justified nor overcome, but is simply passed along the chain, finally to come to inhabit the reader himself [sic.], who, as animator of the text, is left with the contamination of monsterism" (220). Readers are not just tainted with monsterism, but, in effect, become (transformed— utopian and genderless) monsters, according to Haraway: By the late twentieth century, our time, a mythic time, we are all chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism; in short, we are cyborgs. The cyborg is our ontology; it gives us our politics. The cyborg is a condensed image of imagination and material reality, the two joined centers structuring any possibility of historical transformation. . . . (150) 77Muriel Spark in Mary Shelley so describes Frankenstein (p. 153). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 339 The Frankenstein effect still persists here and now, with a reversal of fortune. Are we all monsters struggling to bring about historical transformations? Inducing tremendous cultural as well as literal critiques, Frankenstein remains today still more monstrous to tackle than ever before. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Epilogue Promethea in the Poetic Veil 340 . . . [There are] some sublime geniuses who can penetrate beyond the veils that hide truth, . . . some privileged souls capable of resisting the stupidity of vanity, the baseness of jealousy, and other passions engendered by a taste for literature. — Rousseau, "Preface" to Narciss&1 We had been used to look forward to death tremulously— wherefore, but because its place was obscure? But more terrible, and far more obscure, was the unveiled course of my lone futurity. I broke my wand; I threw it from me. . . . — Mary Shelley, The Last Man2 Throughout this dissertation, I trace the inscription of gendered subjectivity in the radical revolutionary writings of the post-French Revolution era. I indicate that the subjects of my inquiry, William Blake, Mary lj. J. Rousseau, Oeuvres 2s 970; I use Paul de Man's translation in his discussion of Rousseau's thoughts on writing itself. De Man annotates Rousseau: "The only reason for writing is to put oneself to the test in the solitude of one's own consciousness." Highlighting the "disinterested character of the work of art," de Man concludes, "Rousseau clearly recognizes that the authenticity of an aesthetic consciousness is defined by the ability of the self not to use the product of its aesthetic activity for its own gratification." All quotes are from Romanticism and Contemporary Criticism: The Gauss Seminar and Other Papers, ed. E. S. Burt, Kevin Newmark, and Andrzej Warminski (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins UP, 1993), p. 42. 2The Last Man. ed. Hugh J. Luke, Jr. (Lincoln and London: U of Nebraska P, 1993), p. 333. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 341 Wollstonecraft, Percy Shelley and Mary Shelley, all examined the destabilized power relations of the turbulent times and engaged in the discursive struggles configuring and displacing the Revolution. As ousted or self-designated rebels themselves, these writers invented and reinvented literary figures of dissenters, outlaws, rebels and monsters. In their writing, they often captured not only the radicalism in the "spirit of the age" amid the maelstrom of change, through the discourse of annihilation, parricide, and apocalypse, but also the sense of void, monstrosity, and anxiety that accompanied "progress" and instability. Percy Shelley, for example, speaks of poetry as "creatfing] anew the universe, after it has been annihilated in our minds by the recurrence of impressions blunted by reiteration" (Defense of Poetry1; and Blake explores the sense of a violent rupture in the internal kernel of the self: "The bones of death, the cov'ing clay, the sinews shrunk & dry'd/ Reviving shake, inspiring move, breathing! awakening!/ Spring like redeemed captives when their bonds & bars are burst" (America. 6. 3-5). These textual constructions of the "self-annihilating" radical subject against the backdrop of internal and social conflicts, often locate the topos of "the new man," the Romantic self embodying the Promethean ideal. Through a critical intervention in the gender ideologies of such radical Romantic discourse, I attempt to articulate the obscured or latent desire of the female Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 342 revolutionary subject with all its contradictions and paradoxes. The questions involved in the historical topography of Promethean/Revolutionary subjecthood, with its challenges to the existent forms of social and textual relations and its ingrained ideology of masculinism, lead me to investigate Blake's ferocious systematization of "female will" (in The Four Zoas and "The Mental Traveler," for example) and Shelley's ambivalent treatment of Beatrice's Medusan monstrosity (in The Cenci1. Both texts suggest displacement as well as the inscription of female energy that is figured as much as a threat as an inspiration. In Blake’s Milton. Ololon, the female figure who plays the roles of muse and a new Eve, finally functions as a "vanishing mediator" who serves the male revolutionary character's process of self- annihilation and regeneration by mutating and assimilating into him to produce the "human form divine." The disappearance of Ololon, along with the cry of Oothoon, marks the expropriated femininity and reinforces, in a graphic form, the familiar logic of delegitimation of the female subject both in the political and the symbolic economy. Beatrice Cenci of The Cenci. the fascinating counterpart of (the feminized) Prometheus of Prometheus Unbound as a (castrating) female Prometheus, enacts the excess of female resistance in the most radical and violent terms, after having been subjugated to the violent sexual Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 343 victimization. Beatrice's Medusan gaze as delineated by Shelley registers the male author's allegorization of the radical ambiguity that cathects her utopian (or Messianic) desire and a monstrosity beyond containment. The vanished female characters come back in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein in a more internalized and stratified form: it seems that the female writing subject does participate in the fantasy of sexual and discursive divestiture from (phallic) masculinism but in a displaced and inflected way. Critique of the masculine subjectivity of "the modern Prometheus" comes through a fantastic invention of the male monster against the backdrop of a prevalent lack of female subjects of speech. In this case, the monster occupies an ambiguous positionality as the illegitimate son yearning for the father's recognition, while Victor Frankenstein, the Promethean subject who has been the authority-defying rebel against the regime of God the father, is faced with the terrifying scenario of becoming the father himself. Investigations of the subject-formations of Victor and the monster, and the multi-layered relationship between the two, often lead to the question of the Other in the text— Prometheus's other, the fantastic other (the unconscious), the monster's other, the absent (m)other, etc. This testifies not only to the haunting surplus energies that are not contained inside social boundaries and categorical Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 344 identities, but in a figurative way, also to the function of capital at a certain historical juncture. Blurred boundaries between Prometheus and the monster, human and machine, organic and inorganic also indicate a complicated psychic spillage between the author and the characters: authorial desire finds expression through Victor, the monster, Justine or Elizabeth, not as coherent points of identification but as disjunctive sites of excess at different moments. This excess also suggests the non-identity of Promethea and uncontained female desire that exists in fragmentation and mutation. Thus even while examining more literal and empirical manifestations of female Promethea in historical figures, we need to be wary of the positivist implication (rational-subjects-in history) often attached to the project of radical-subjects-in-history. At this juncture, we seem to have reached a complex point in the metastases of "Promethea(s)"— resisting/ revolutionary women-in-effect: the authorial subject. In Mary Shelley and other women writers we often find their interrogation of masculinist ideology and struggle for divestiture from phallic economy through what Derrida calls the "logic of spectrality," or the haunting of the Other.3 ^See Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx: the State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New Internaitonal. trans. Peggy Kamuf (New York and London: Routledge, 1994). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 345 Herman Rapaport explains the radical dimension of the other in the following terms: It is . . . this inscription of otherness, which breaks the continuity of being and history, and it is here that the ethical projects itself as excess, that a curious genealogy of morals reveals itself in the midst of cataclysm. Yet if the ethical intrudes on its own veiling, it maintains its withdrawal in terms of the radicality of a break whose facticity eludes thought, and whose morality is eclipsed by the unnameable, the unspeakable, the unrecuperable, the unrepresentable. Hence "the movement of meaning is swallowed up," even if its trace still makes itself known to us.4 The promise and challenge involved in reading and refiguring the radical desire of Promethea as the haunting of the Other, however, is that it exists enveloped in the poetic veil. Desiring Promethea, resisting the societal forces of appropriation, seeks to emerge from the absence and loss through which she has been shaped. The reader, and criticism itself, take the position of the beholder of this signifying process.5 4Rapaport, Between the Sian and the Gaze (Ithaca and London: Cornell UP, 1994), p. 248. Rapaport's interpretation here is directed to Maurice Blanchot's evocation of the other in The Writing of the Disaster. 5This deconstructionist notion derives from Carol Jacobs's remark in Uncontainable Romanticism: Shelley. Bronte. Kleist: "... poetry or Imagination can never close definitively on that to which it makes its internal adjustment. ’ Lift[ing] the veil from the hidden beauty of the world' as it spreads the curtain of figural language, it must always refuse to expose meaning, creating, rather, intrevals of noncoincidence with that upon which it [poetry] reflects. It is in this sense that criticism, too, another attempt to behold, might well be regarded as an act of Imagination" (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins UP, 1989, p. 18). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 346 According to Percy Shelley, the act of writing can be best explained through the trope of the veil: Poetry . . . arrests the vanishing apparitions which haunt the inter lunations of life, and veiling them in language or in form sends them forth among mankind, bearing sweet news of kindred joy to those with whom their sisters abide— abide, because there is no portal of expression from the caverns of the spirit which they inhabit into the universe of things. (505; emphasis added) In this intriguing illustration of poetic figuration, Shelley indeed equates veiling (and unveiling) with encoding or constructing linguistic components into a poetic form. Writing arrests the apparitional being, capturing the haunting desire of spectral configuration. Through the trope of the veil, the sexual and textual realms are conflated. The arresting act of writing is also lodged in feminine space: the sisters, the abiders in the cavern of spirits, the receptors of poetic language, make it possible that the veiled apparitions reach the end of signification.6 In Blake and Shelley, Prometheanism and the "annihilation” of the self are mediated through the trope of the veil. The veil links the notion of apocalypse and annihilation in the sense that the end after apocalypse and annihilation unveils itself in a spectral form as the new 6Derrida speaks of the process of signification: "the text veils itself by itself unveiling itself." See Jacques Derrida, Glas, trans. John P. Leavey, Jr. and Richard Rand (Lincoln and London: U of Nebraska P, 1986), pp. 159-62. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 347 Jerusalem, the ultimate knowledge, Truth, the female body, and often feminized nature. While the idea of veiling and unveiling the precious, mysterious, and the "essential" goes back to the Bible and Plato, we see a profusion of the veil trope in the period when epistemological questions about the gap between appearance and reality are foregrounded, when questions surrounding the symbolic order and anxieties about the absent other are brought to the surface. As a key to the realm "too deep for words," the veil is intermittently linked to the realm of inferiority, where the British Romantics with their yearnings for "vision(s)" are famed to dwell. In Percy and Mary Shelley, as well as in Blake, Wordsworth and Coleridge, there are ample references to the veil, the secret, and the mystery, as well as to acts of veiling and unveiling.7 In Byron's elaboration of Astarte, it is as though she is in swirls of signifying veils, seducing and frustrating Manfred: Manfred. She [Astarte] was like me in lineaments— her eyes, Her hair, her features, all, to the very tone Even of her voice, they said were like to mine; But softened all, and tempered into beauty; She had the same lone thoughts and wanderings, The quest of hidden knowledge, and a mind To comprehend the universe; nor these Alone, but with them gentler powers than mine 7 Also, William Godwin in his later years contemplated a book on religion, entitled, The Genius of Christianity Unveiled, although when it was published posthumously, the book was retitled to Essays Never Before Published (1873). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. (II. ii. 105-23)8 348 As the sliding signifier resists articulating its content, Astarte frustrates Manfred and impels him to renounce his masculine subject. This "unmanning" power, which eventually makes it impossible for him to speak from an unreflective masculine position, thus ultimately leads to his desubjectification.9 At this point, I would like to suggest that this privileged signifier of the veil provides the Romantics with insights into the role of language itself in its continuous displacement. Language indeed can only seem to the subject "a veil which cuts off from view a reality that is other than what we are allowed to see," since it "stretches beyond, or delays, determinate meaning . . . produces always something more, something indeterminate, some question of meaning's reliability."10 Through the veil, Romantics seem to suggest the "opacity" of signifiers to the subject, the (feminine) otherness within, this incongruity, or even 8George Gordon Byron, Byron, ed. Jerome McGann (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1986). 9 In an expanded version of this work, I would like to examine through Manfred the issues of (spectral) subjectivity, sexual difference, and the function of the veil trope in conjunction with the texts I deal with here. Joan Copjec, "Cutting Up," Feminism and Psvchoanalvisis. pp. 237-8. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 349 uncertainty of the future for the traumatized subject who has faced death (as the Other).11 In assessing Promethean iconography so far, I have not completely focused on the linguistic process of disfiguration of Prometheanism; I do not elide, however, the significance of reading textual as well as sexual difference, especially since we are dealing with a discursive as well as a gendered subject.12 If the paradox of signification lies in the possibility of its own negation (the possibility of the annihilation of all signified reality itself), I would argue that a gendering mechanism operates even in the texts of annihilation and self- annihilation (as shown in Blake and Percy Shelley). Between the mutations of female desires and figurations of the metastases of Promethea(s) lies the power, as well as the challenge of the haunting Promethean desire. And we can only access that apparitional subjectivity through the arresting power of the veil of poetry. I1See my second epigraph of this section where Lionel Verney in Mary Shelley's The Last Man muses on his future vis-A-vis the apocalyptic past in the end of the novel. l^Luce Irigaray says in This Sex Which Is Not One; "In and of herself, [woman] does not exist: she is a simple envelope veiling what is really at stake in social exchange" (p. 186). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Selected Bibiliography 350 I list in the following the works cited or referred to in the text and other works I find of immediate and crucial importance to my topic. 1. Primary Sources Aeschylus. Prometheus Bound. Trans. James Scully and C. J. Herington. NY and Oxford: Oxford UP, 1975. Anonymous. (Mary Hays) A Defence of the Character and Conduct of the Late Marv Wollstonecraft Godwin. 1799. Barbauld, Anna Laetitia. "Song V." Works. London, 1825. Blake, William. The Complete Poetry & Prose of William Blake. Ed. David Erdman. Garden City: Anchor Books, 1982. ________ . Blake's Poetry and Designs. Ed. Mary Lynn Johnson and John E. Grant. NY and London: Norton, 1979. ________ . Blake: The Complete Poems. Ed. W. H. Stevenson. NY: Norton, 1972. ________ . The Illuminated Blake. Ed. David Erdman. Garden City: Anchor Books, 1974. Burke, Edmund. Reflections on the Revolution in France. Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett, 1987. Byron, George Gordon, Lord. Byron: The Oxford Authors. Ed. Jerome J. McGann. Oxford and NY: Oxford UP, 1986. ________ . "Fragment" in "Appendix C" of James Rieger’s Frankenstein. The 1818 Text. Chandler, George. William Roscoe of Liverpool. London: Batsford, 1953. Condorcet, Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat. "Letters of a Resident from New-Haven to a Citizen of Virginia" ("Lettres d'un bourgeois de New-Haven"} 1787) in Filippo Mazzei, Recherches historiaues et politiques Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 351 sur les Etats-Unis de 1 'Am€r±que septentrionale. par un citoven de Virainie. Paris: 1788. _______ . On the Admission of Women to Rights as Citizens of a State. Paris, 1789. Cooper, Thomas. A Reply to Mr Burke’s Invective against Mr Cooper, and Mr. Watt, in the House of Commons, on the 30th of April. 1792. London and Manchester, 1792. De la Barre, Poullain. The Woman as Good as the Man: Or. the Equality of Both Sexes. London, 1677.Trans. A. L. (Archibld Lovell?) [Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1988]. Ferguson, Adam. History of the Progress and Termination of the Roman Republic. Vol. V. Edinburgh, 1799. Gentleman's Magazine. Vol. 61 (February 1791). Goethe, J. W. Von. Poetry and Truth. Ed. K. Bruel, 2. Vols. London, 1913. Graham, Catherine Macaulay. Letters on Education. London, 1790. Gregory, John. Dr. A Father's Legacy to His Daughters. London, 1774. Hayley, William. The Epistle on Painting. Addressed to George Romney. London, 1777. Hume, David. "Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences." London, 1742. Mathias, Thomas J. The Shade of Alexander Pope on the Banks of the Thames. London, 1799. Medwin, Thomas. The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley. London, 1847. McGann, Jerome J. Ed. The New Oxford Book of Romantic Period Verse. Oxford and NY: Oxford UP, 1993. Miles, Alfred H. Ed. The Poets and the Poetry of the Nineteenth Century: vol. 9. Joanna Baillie to Jean Ingelow. London: George Routledge & Sons and NY: E. P. Dutton & Co, 1891. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 352 Milton, John. John Milton: Complete Poems and Manor Prose. Ed. Merritt Y. Hughes. NY: Macmillan Publishing Co, 1957. _______ . Prolusions. The Complete Prose Works of John Milton. Ed. Don M. Wolfe et al. vol. 1. New Haven: Yale UP, 1953-82. Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg). Werke. Ed. H.-J. Mahl and R. Samuel. Munich, 1978-87. Polidori, John. The Diary of John William Polidori. Ed. W. M. Rossetti. London: Elkin Mathews, 1911. (Polwhele, Reverend Richard.) "The Unsex'd Females: A Poem, Addressed To The Author Of The Pursuit Of Literature." London: Cadell and Davies, 1798. Reni, Guido. Guido Reni: A Complete Catalogue of His Works with an Introductory Text. Ed. D. Stephen Pepper. NY: NYUP, 1984. Roberts, William. Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Mrs. Hannah More. 4 Vols. London: R. B. Seeley and W. Burnside, 1834. Robertson, William. "A View of the Progress of Society in Europe from the Subversion of the Roman Empire to the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century," History of the Reign of the Emperor Charles V. London, 1769. Robinson, Mary. Letter to the Women of England, on the Injustice of Mental Subordination, with Anecdotes. London, 1799. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. The Confessions. Trans. J. M. Cohen London: Penguin Books, 1953. _______ . Politics and the Arts: Letter to M. D'Alembert on the Theatre. Trans. Allan Bloom. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1988. ______ . The Social Contract and Discourses. Trans. G. D. H. Cole. London: Everyman Ed, 1973. Shakespeare, William. Macbeth. Ed. Kenneth Muir. London: Metheun, 1962. _______ . Othello. Ed. M. R. Ridley. London: Methuen, 1973. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 353 Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein, or. The Modern Prometheus; the 1818 Text. Ed. James Rieger. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1982 (1974). _______ . Frankenstein, or. The Modern Prometheus. Eds. D. L. Macdonald and Kathleen Scherf. Peterborough: Broadview Press, 1994. ________ . Frankenstein, or. The Modern Prometheus (1831 edition). Ed. Maurice Hindle. London: Penguin Classics edition, 1985. _______ . The Last Man. Ed. Hugh J. Luke, Jr. Lincoln and London: U of Nebraska P, 1993 (1965). _______ . The Marv Shellev Reader. Ed. Betty Bennet and Charles E. Robinson, Cambridge: Oxford UP, 1990. Shelley, Percy Bysshe. The Cenci: A Tragedy in Five Acts. Eds. Alfred Forman and H. Buxton Forman. London: Reeve & Turner, 1886. _______ . The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bvsshe Shelley. 4 Vols. Ed. Neville Rogers. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975. _______ . The Complete Works of Percy Bvsshe Shellev. Ed. Roger Ingpen and Walter E. Peck. NY, 1965. _______ . The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Ed. Frederick L. Jones. Oxford, 1964. 2: 117. _______ . A Philosophical View of Reform. Ed. Donald H. Reiman in Shelley and His Circle: 1773-1822. Vol. 6. NY: The Carl H. Pforzheimer Library and Harvard UP. _______ . Shelley's Poetry and Prose. Ed. Donald H. Reiman and Sharon Powers. NY and London: Norton, 1977. Walpole, Horace. Horace Walpole's Correspondence with Hannah More. Vol. XXXI. Eds. W. S. Lewis, Robert A. Smith, and Charles H. Bennett. New Haven, 1961. Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Ed. Carol H. Poston. NY and London: Norton, 1988. _______ . The Collected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft. Ed. Ralph M. Wardle. Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell UP, 1979. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 354 . The Works of Mary Wollstonecraft. 7 Vols. Eds. Janet Todd and Marilyn Butler. NY: NYUP, 1989. Wordsworth, Wordsworth. The Prelude— 1799. 1805. 1850. Eds. Jonathan Wordsworth, M. H. Abrams, and Stephen Gill. NY: Norton, 1979. ________ . Wordsworth. Ed. Stephen Gill. Oxford and NY: Oxford UP, 1984. ________ . and S. T. Coleridge. Lyrical Ballads. London and NYs Methuen, 1963. Wu, Duncan. Ed. Romanticism: An Anthology. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1994. 2. Secondary Sources Adorno, Theodor. 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Romantic imprisonment: Women and other Glorified Outcasts. NY: Columbia UP, 1985. Belsey, Catherine. Critical Practice. London and NY: Methuen, 1986 (1980). Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations. Trans. Harry Zohn. NY: Schocken Books, 1969. _______ . Reflections. Trans. Edmund Jephcott. NY: Schocken Books, 1978. Bentley, G. E. Jr. and Martin K. Nurmi, A Blake Bibliography; Annotated Lists of Works. Studies, and Blakeans. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1964. Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. London: BBC and Penguin, 1972. Bindman, David. The Shadow of the Guillotine: Britain and the French Revolution. British Museum Publication, 1989. Blanchot, Maurice. The Space of Literature. Trans. Ann Smock. Lincoln and London: U of Nebraska Press, 1982 (The original French version in 1955). Bloch, Ernst. The Principle of Hope. Vol. 1. Trans. Neville Plaice, Stephen Plaice, and Paul Knight. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1995 (The original german version in 1959). Bloom, Harold. Blake's Apocalypse. Ithaca and NY: Norton, 1963. Blum, Carol. Rousseau and the Republic of Virtue: The Language of Politics in the French Revolution. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1986. Brennan, Teresa. Ed. Between Feminism and Psychoanalysis. London and NY: Routledge, 1989. Bronfen, Elizabeth. Over Her Dead Body: Death. Femininity and the Aesthetic. NY: Routledge, 1992. Butler, Marilyn. Romantics. Revels and Reactionaries: English Literature and Its Background 1760-1830. Oxford and NY: Oxford UP, 1981. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 356 _______ . "The First Frankenstein and Radical Science," Times Literary Supplement. Apr. 9, 1993. Chase, Cynthia. Decomposing Figures; Rhetorical Readings in the Romantic Tradition. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins UP, 1986. _______ . Ed. Romanticism. London and NY: Longman, 1993. Cixous, H61dne. Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing. Trans, Sarah Cornell and Susan Sellers. NY: Columbia UP, 1993. _______ . "Castration or Decapitation?" Trans. Annette Kuhn. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 7 (1981): 41-55. Copley, Stephen and John Whale. Beyond Romanticism: New Approaches to Texts and Contexts 1780-1832. London and NY: Routledge, 1992. Coyle, William. Ed. Aspects of Fantasy: Selected Essays from the Second international Conference on the Fantastic in Literature and Film. Westpot, CT: Greenwood, 1986. Cunningham, Andrew and Nicholas Jardine, Eds. Romanticism and the Sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990. Curran, Stuart. Shelley's Annus Mirabilis: The Maturing of an Epic Vision. San Marino, CA: Huntington Library, 1975. _______ . Shelley’s Cenci: Scorpions Ringed with Fire. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1970. _______ . and Joseph Anthony Wittreich Jr., Ed. Blake' s Sublime Allegory. U of Wisconsin P, 1978. Damon, S. Foster. A Blake Dictionary: The Ideas and Symbols of William Blake. Boulder: Shambhala, 1979. Damrosch, Leopold Jr. Symbol and Truth in Blake's Mvth. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1980. Darnton, Robert. The Literary Underground of the Old Regime. Cambridge, Mass, 1982. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 357 _______ . and Daniel Roche. Ed. Revolution in Print: The Press in France 1775-1800. Berkeley: UCP in collaboration with the NY Public Library, 1989. Dauphin, Cdcil, Anette Farge, Genevidve Fraisse and Others, "Women's Culture and Women's Power: An Attempt at Historiography.” Trans. Camille Garnier. Journal of Women's History (Spring 1989): 63-88. Davis, Michael. William Blake: A New Kind of Man. Berkley: U of California P, 1977. Davis, Natalie Zemon. Society and Culture in Early Modern France. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1975. Dawson, P. M. S. The Unacknowledged Legislator: Shellev and Politics. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1980. De Lauretis, Teresa. Technologies of Gender: Essays on Theory. Film, and Fiction. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1987. ________ . Ed. Feminist Studies/ Critical Studies. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1986. De Man, Paul. Allegories of Reading: Fiqural Language in Rousseau. Nietzsche. Rilke, and Proust. New Haven and London: Yale UP, 1979. ________ . The Rhetoric of Romanticism. NY: Columbia UP, 1984. ________ . Romanticism and Contemporary Criticism: The Gauss Seminar and Other Papers. Eds. E. S. Burt, Kevin Newmark, and Andrzej Warminski. Baltimore and London: johns Hopkins UP, 1993. Deleuze, Gilles. and Fdlix Guattari. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia Vol. 1. Trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Jelen R. Lane. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota Press, 1983 (The original French version in 1972). ________ . A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia Vol. 2. Trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987 (Original French in 1980). Derrida, Jacques. A Derrida Reader: Between the Blinds. Ed. Peggy Kamuf. NY and Oxford: Columbia UP, 1991. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 358 _______ . Acts of Literature. Ed. Derek Attridge. NY and London: Routledger 1992. _______ . Given Time: 1. Counterfeit Money. Trans. Peggy Kamuf. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1992. _______ . Glas. Trans. John P. Leavey, Jr. and Richard Rand. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1986. _______ . Specters of Marx: the State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New Internaitonal. Trans. Peggy Kamuf. New York and London: Routledge, 1994. DiSalvo, Jackie. War of Titans: Blake's Critique of Milton and the Politics of Religion. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1984. Dolar, Mladen. "'I Shall Be With You On Your Wedding Night': Lacan and the Uncanny." October 58 (Fall 1991): 5- 23. Duffy, Edward. Rousseau in England: The Context for Shelley's Critique of the Enlightenment. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979. Eagleton, Terry* Against the Grain: Essays 1975-1985. 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Bloomington and Old Westbuty: Indiana UP and The Feminist Press, 1985. Fisch, Harold. "Blake's Miltonic Movement." Ed. Alvin Rosenfeld, William Blake: Essavs For S. Foster Damon. Providence: Brown UP, 1969. Fox, Susan. "The Female Role as Metaphor in William Blake's Poetry." Critical Inquiry 3:3 (Spring, 1977): 507- 19. ________ . Poetic Form in Blake's Milton . Princeton: Princeton UP, 1976. Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality. Vol 1: An Introduction. Trans. Robert Hurley. NY: Vintage Books, 1978. ________ . The Use of Pleasure: The History of Sexuality. Trans. Robert Hurley. NY: Vintage Books, 1986. Fraisse, Genevieve and Michelle Perrot. Eds. A History of Women in the West, vol. 3. Emerging Feminism from Revolution to World War (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, The Belknap Press of Harvard UP, 1993 (Translation of Storia delle donne in Occidente originally published in 1991]). Freud, Sigmund. Character and Culture. Ed. Philip Rieff. NY: Collier Books, 1963. ________ . Civilization and Its Discontents. Trans. James Strachey. NY and London: W. W. Norton and Co., 1961 (1930). ________ . Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. Trans. James Strachey. NY: Basic Books Inc., 1975. ________ . Totem and Taboo. Trans. James Strachey. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 360 Frosch, Thomas R. The Awakening of Albion; the Renovation of the Body in the Poetry of William Blake. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1974. Frye, Northrop. A Study of English Romanticism. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1968. _______ . Ed. William Blake: Twentieth Century Views. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1966. Gallagher, Lowell. Medusa's Gaze: Casuistry and Conscience in the Renaissance. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1991. Gilbert, Sandra and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman In the Attic. New Haven: Yale U, 1979. Gilham, D. G. William Blake. London: Cambridge UP, 1973. Glen, Heather. Vision and Disenchantment: Blake's Songs and Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1983. Godineau, Dominique. Citoyenes tricoteuses: Les Femmes du peupie a Paris pendant la Revolution frangaise. Aix- en-Provence : Alinea, 1988. Goldsmith, Steven. Unbuilding Jerusalem: Apocalypse and Romantic Representation. Ithaca and London: Cornell UP, 1992. Goodman, Dena. The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1989. Gramsci, Antonio. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. Eds. Q. Hoare and G. Nowell-Smith. London, 1971. Grosz, Elizabeth. Sexual Subversions. Sidney: Allen & Unwin, 1989. Gutwirth, Madelyn. The Twilight of the Goodesses: Women and Representation in the French Revolutionary Era. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1992. Haraway, Donna J. Simians. Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. NY: Routledge, 1991. Heilbrun, Carolyn. Toward a Recognition of Androgyny. NY: Norton, 1982. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 361 Hertz, Neil. The End of the Line: Essays on Psychoanalysis and the Sublime. NY: Columbia UP, 1985. Homans, Margaret. Bearing the Word: Language and Female Experience in Nineteenth-Centurv Women's Writing. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1986. Huet, Marie-Hdldn. Monstrous Imagination. Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard UP, 1993. Hunt, Lynn. The Family Romance of the French Revolution. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. ______ . Politics. Culture, and Class in the French Revolution. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. ______ . "Engraving the Republic: Prints and Propaganda in the French Revolution." History Today 30 (October 1980): 11-17. Irigaray, Luce. This Sex which is Not One. Trans. Catherine Porter. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1985. Jacobs, Carol. Uncontainable Romanticism: Shellev. Bronte. Kleist. 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Creator An, Young-ok (author)

Core Title Between Prometheus and the monster: Gender configurations in Romantic revolutionary poetics

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program English

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag history, European,literature, English,OAI-PMH Harvest

Language English

Contributor Digitized by ProQuest (provenance)

Advisor Manning, Peter (committee chair), Landry, Donna (committee member), Russett, Meg (committee member), Yang, Yumi (committee member)

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c17-509635

Unique identifier UC11349882

Identifier 9705067.pdf (filename),usctheses-c17-509635 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier 9705067.pdf

Dmrecord 509635

Document Type Dissertation

Rights An, Young-ok

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the au...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus, Los Angeles, California 90089, USA