Laura Miller Response 4 William Godwin’s argument about marriage as an institution suggests that in a peaceful world people would not need to bind themselves together by law in order to find a mate and reproduce. Rather they would socialize with another person and come to the consensual agreement that they enjoy each other and want to procreate with one another in an unbinding agreement. He reasons marriage is a result of human “vices” and “it flows from the desire of being loved and esteemed for something that is not desert” (154). Godwin is inferring that because people need to be loved they want to ensure its reception by contractually bonding another human who theoretically should give them unearned love they do not deserve. Marriage also supposes that love is shown by the physical act which brings immediate pleasure instead of working to “assiduously cultivate the intercourse of that woman whose accomplishments shall strike…in the most powerful manner” (155). This means men and women should be attracted to one another by their discourse not visual beauty and sex should be a “very trivial object” in the affair between the two. Sex is an addition to the intellectual relationship between two people which Godwin supposes would be sophisticated because they two have chosen each other based on qualities deeper than beauty and vanity. Godwin also supposes marriage is a near criminal concept because when two people are committed to each other they can no longer share themselves with anyone else. He understands that a single person is able to have good conversation with several other people who all should be able to derive pleasure from their interaction. Perhaps some relationships are more intense than others while some have equal intensity and if people cannot rely on one person to provide them with the love they need then they should not be deprived from anyone who could provide for that time at one point or another (154). It seems in Godwin’s time, a man owned his wife’s body therefore he could feasibly keep her from interacting with other people. While the situation Godwin creates to substitute for marriage seems adequate in a thought process, he still does not reconcile his major argument against marriage. Whether the institution exists or not, people continue to have the need for love which means when they find a person who they are compatible with they are inclined to stay with that person until their compatibility collapses. It also does not make sense to discredit physical attraction because that encourages sex and reproduction. Godwin recognizes the necessity of mating as “essential to our healthful existence” and “propagation” of humans (155). While good conversation can create pleasure within people, physical attraction should be considered a part of sex. Finally, Godwin’s argument only considers the relationship up to conception. With the institution of marriage, both partners care for the children and provide for the entire family because all the children come from the same two people. If people procreated with several different partners during Godwin’s time when men were supposed to provide the biggest source of income it would be unclear how women and children would be financed, both in monetary value and affection. It seems the real problem Godwin faces is not the institution of marriage but the way in which it “is an affair of property” (154). He supports the idea of two people finding mutual pleasure within each other but not the covertures men hold over women which keeps them from interacting with others. If all women could converse intellectually with men then the problem of sharing the pleasure of discourse would be fixed. In that case, men and women could as he suggests find each other based on conversation instead of physical prowess and commit to each other on a deeper level. Then, the love each acquires from the other would be deserved by his logic because they would earn it through thoughtful means and still sustain the physical relationship necessary to propagate. Instead of destroying marriage as an institution, the position of women needed to be reformed within society to fix Godwin’s anxieties about binding two people, through legal and emotional promise, to each other.
Brigette Jolene Todt Eng 344 May 2, 2008 Response #4
William Godwin has a fascinating perspective on reason and the passions in the writings assigned for this week. In [On Poverty] Godwin writes, “Accumulated property threads the powers of thought in the dust,” (Godwin 153) and then that,
“If superfluity were banished, the necessity for the greater part of the manual industry of mankind would be superseded, and the rest (being amicably shared among all the active and vigorous members of the community) would be burdensome to none.” (Godwin 153).
Godwin’s idea would have to rely heavily on the assumption that not only are all people are capable of reason but also that they will act reasonably. It depends a lot on a kind of social contract and consciences in order to work, and therefore, putting the passions aside.
Then in [Love of Justice] Godwin explains the kind of chain reaction that justice and justification can begin. He explains,
“So necessary a part is this of the constitution of mind that no man perpetrates any action, however criminal, without having first invented some sophistry, some palliation, by which he proves to himself that it is best to be done,” (Godwin 153).
He also goes on to explain,
“The man on the other hand who determined to put an end to this monopoly, and who peremptorily demanded what was superfluous to the possessor and would be of extreme benefit to himself, appeared to his own mind to be merely avenging the violated laws of justice. Were it not for justice the plausibleness of this apology, it is to be presumed that there would be no such thing as crime in the world,” (Godwin 153-4).
Godwin is insinuation then that the idea of justice is more appealing than that of reason and that it can cause a good man to do criminal things, not because of malicious intent, but because he feels justified in doing so. Instead of seeing reason, people justify first. This kind of thing can start a cycle of revenge.
In [On Marriage] Godwin suggests almost a kind of legalized prostitution, an abandonment of traditional marriage and courtship customs, to be instead replaced by reasonable interaction between the sexes. Godwin begins by writing, “It is absurd to expect the inclinations and wishes of two human beings should coincide through any long period of time,” (Godwin 154). He goes on to describe that it is ridiculous for people to get married when the have only seen “each other for a few times and under circumstances full of delusion, and then to vow to each other eternal attachment,” (Godwin 154). He argues the marriage is illogical, simply not reasonable, and in fact that is it selfish, describing that if a man were married he would be “guilty of the most odious of monopolies,” in reference to his wife (Godwin 154).
Therefore Godwin introduces some alternatives. He insists that the idea of pleasure is not as important as it is thought to be. He explains, “The intercourse of the sexes will in such a state fall under the same system as any other species of friendship,” and that, “I shall assiduously cultivate the intercourse of that woman whose accomplishments shall strike me in the most powerful manner,” (Godwin 155). Godwin suggests that accomplishments of a woman, and her appeal in the realm of good conversation, should outweigh the preference for beautiful but unaccomplished and simply decorative women. Physical pleasure is not as important as intellectual pleasure in this alternative.
In regards to physical pleasure Godwin suggests, “We may all enjoy her conversation, and we shall all be wise enough to consider the sensual intercourse as a very trivial object,” (Godwin 155). He goes on to write,
“Reasonable men now eat and drink not from the love of pleasure, but because eating and drinking are essential to our healthful existence. Reasonable men will then propagate their species not because a certain sensible pleasure in annexed to this action, but because it is right the species should be propagated. And the manner in which they exercise this function will be regulated by the dictates of reason and duty,” (Godwin 155).
Godwin is suggesting that reason should be capable of regulating what is usually thought to be regulated by the passions in most regards, courtship and love and marriage. The way he describes the alternative depicts people as being very detached. Someone in class best described it as a sort of ‘Don’t think she loves you,’ situation. However, it is okay to engage in physical pleasures with your friends, because this is reasonable.
Though some of Godwin’s arguments on property, or justice, or marriage seem ridiculous or even ludicrous, at times, when one thinks about it, they make a twisted sort of sense.
Alright, just trying to “reason” through Godwin’s Love of Justice. So some basic premises: 1.) We (humans) are loathe to hurt other people. 2.) We never hurt people unless we have to (“the sharp sting of necessity”) 3.) If we hurt someone, we have to prove to ourselves that it was the “best” course of action. Godwin also says that we hate hurting people because of either some natural inclination to helping people or “his perception of the reasonableness of such assistance.” So this is to say that whenever we help someone, we do it because our nature drives us to or because it seems like the most reasonable thing to do. Godwin is here arguing that men not only “love justice” but also love reason. Functioning inside this understanding of the world, Godwin presents the scenario of a monopolizer (yes, I just made up a word) and a person who seeks to end monopolies. Godwin is clearly aware of people in the world who hurt other people but the question remains of how these people work. And in looking at how these people work, it seems Godwin is contradicting himself. If people only hurt other people when the must, isn’t it necessary for the monopolizer to hurt those he is taking from? However, Godwin clearly thinks otherwise, seeing as he denounces the monopoly as “superfluous.” Now if the monopoly is hurting people and it is not necessary, according to Godwin, there is a malfunction of perception on the part of the monopolizer. The monopolizer must see his actions in one of a few ways: it is either necessary (so an unfortunate action that he must convince himself was the “best to be done”) or helpful to other people or simply reasonable. I’m really interested in Godwin’s argument that the good we do for other people can be derived from our perception of “the reasonableness of such assistance.” [I’ll address for a moment the possibility of that innate driving force to help other people. Even if this does exist, it is clear that it can simply be overridden by our minds (otherwise no one would ever hurt another person unless they absolutely had to) so I think it is fair to ignore it entirely.] Godwin seems to be arguing that we help people purely because it seems reasonable. Now this is interesting because he specifies that we follow our “perception” of reason. So if we help people by following our perception of reason, it seems totally fine that people who hurt other people are also merely doing what seems reasonable. However, Godwin is also arguing that people hurting other people is bad. This raises the question of how reason and good interact. It seems that Godwin since offers such high praise to reason, he is arguing that they are identical, so I’m going to run with that. And in this system, there is an important distinction between what is reasonable and what seems reasonable. And I think this is the point Godwin is ultimately making (or perhaps failing to make) –that we do not know how to reason naturally. This is a skill we have to develop in order to function in the world with other people. Our instinct, Godwin says, is to follow our reason. Problems only arise when we are not being truly reasonable. And all this amounts to, importantly, is that there is an objective moral code to the world that we can discern through reason. I find this to be pretty attractive in some ways –the idea that there are not rules to follow (always treat your neighbor like this, etc) but that we may come to a place where we have such a great understanding of the world that we can always do the right thing. Which makes me think of Blake in Marriage of Heaven and Hell and the devil arguing about Jesus disobeying the Ten Commandments by acting from impulse. Same idea –we shouldn’t follow rules, but should develop some central moral tool for determining the right thing to do at all times. Pretty tastey.
Reading Wordsworth’s “On the Character of Rivers” in such close quarters with Godwin’s ‘Love of Justice’ from “Political Justice” has inevitably caused me to consider the dialogue between the two works. Regardless of how much Wordsworth considered Godwin’s philosophies during the conception of the Rivers character, Wordsworth’s explanation of Rivers’ logical process complicates the ideas of justice and moral relativity brought up by Godwin.
In ‘Love of Justice’ Godwin suggests that the first crime occurred when one person “took advantage of the weakness of his neighbors to secure certain exclusive privileges to himself.” (Godwin 153) By creating an imbalance, it becomes easier for those who have less than others to justify actions that other individuals and society would deem criminal. Wordsworth implies that Rivers is such a character who, after being involved in some manner of crime, loses the privileges he previously possessed. He becomes with obsessed with the idea of good and evil and “to hunt out whatever is bad in actions usually esteemed virtuous and to detect the good in actions which the universal sense of mankind teaches us to reprobate.” (Wordsworth 62) This reinvention of his worldview goes hand-in-hand with his quest to regain the power he lost. Rivers attempts to assuage his guilt, but his guilt is the direct result of self-pity and selfish fixation rather than a genuine repentance for his crimes.
Godwin implies and Wordsworth expounds upon the idea of crime as the result of an obsessive fixation. The creation of the moral relativity, the process of ‘justifying’ the act, is a highly intellectual task. Wordsworth describes Rivers as “a young Man of great intellectual powers, yet without any sold principles of genuine benevolence.” (Wordsworth 62) Godwin also describes the creations of a “sophistry” (Godwin 153) to which the perpetrator attributes his actions. Wordsworth borrows this language to describe Rivers’ actions: “He is perpetually imposing upon himself; he has a sophism for every crime.” (Wordsworth 64) Rivers cannot help but fixate on the crimes he has committed and in fixating he spurs a need to constantly reassure himself of his own justifications. In constructing justification for previous crimes he allows for the enactment of future crimes. Thus, the cycle is perpetuated.
There is an implication made that the obsessive ‘meditations’ that Rivers uses to construct his own morally gray reality is the function of passion and not of reason. Wordsworth states that “[t]he mild effusions of thought, the milk of human reason, are unknown to him.” (Wordsworth 64) Furthermore, Rivers turns more easily to vice than virtue because vice offers a sense of immediate gratification that is rarely present in the doing of good deeds. The exact words used are “immediate, palpable and extensive” to describe the effects of a vicious act. This creates a clear separation of mild, reasonable thought from the impassioned, obsessive act of Rivers’ cycle of criminal acts. Rivers begins with the goal of reestablishing the power that was lost to him, but to fill the void left by his trauma he naturally turns to obsession and repetition. Rivers is also impressed by his own cleverness in that he takes pleasure in the idea that he can justify his crimes. Attaching passion and pleasure to moral ambiguity further complicates the issue of universal human justice and the ability of humans, even those of “great intellectual powers” to uphold those ideals.
Emily Mutchler Response 4 (Ideas for Thesis Proposal II)
I would argue that initially, in Frankenstein and later, in Mathilda, Mary Shelley critiques and dialogues with the Burkean concept of a sympathy originating within one’s own body, and the imaging, or idealization of the Beautiful love object. She critiques, as Susan Lanser observes in “Romantic Voice: The Hero’s Text,” a concept of love which has become a troupe of male Romanticism: “woman is muse, object or servant of the male quest, source of sorrow or ecstasy, at best the man’s double, a narcissistic projection of himself””(Lanser, 156). I would argue that, in the case of Mathilda, “the love object” or rather “the lover’s projected idea of the love object” could substitute “woman.” It is then no wonder that Mathilda is a tragedy of incest, if Shelley is investigating the problems inherent in a sympathy, or love, originating within ones own body and a desire which requires an eroticized distance to maintain the image which the lover has drawn of his object. It is a loving to love, also, later manifests itself in Mathilda’s desire to be loved, as she read over the words of her father letter with “devouring eyes; I kissed them, wept over them and exclaimed, “He will love me!””(Mary Shelley, 186), and imagines that, because he has been a wanderer, she is “all that he had to love on earth” (Mary Shelley, 188). Similarly, in his solitude, Malthilda’s father loves to love as well, as he imagines his daughter in all of the inanimate objects he loves: “All delightful things, sublime scenery, soft breezes, exquisite music seemed to me associated with you and only through you to be pleasant to me” (Mary Shelley, 208). Shelley then extends this problem of Burkean sympathy to spirituality, as Matilda worships, her father from afar, in solitude, as a “Father,” to whom she longs to return, in death, as she laments: “to feel a transient sympathy and then to awaken from the delusion, again to know that all this was nothing,- a dream, a shadow… leaving only memories and an eternal barrier between me and my fellow creatures” (MS, 229). A potential result of this pursuit is despair, distance from all others on earth, rather than universal sympathy and consolation.
We can see that Burke’s concept of sympathy becomes problematic in Frankenstein, as all of the characters love each other by, or through, representations of each other. These representations include letters and the portraits which have come to represent the dead Caroline. The characters also love each other based primarily on their resemblances and relationship to other characters, as Alphonse Frankenstein loves Caroline because he was friends with her father, Elizabeth’s love for Justine is inspired her resemblance to Caroline. This love also becomes extended to Victor's love of Natural Science, which is inspired by the handsome M. Waldman's representation of it; he dislikes another branch of science because he finds M. Krempe physically repulsive.
This sort of Burkean conception of sympathy also causes problems for Mathilda. I would argue that the incestuous desire in the story is not just Freudian, but also a criticism of the self-centered and eroticized, because it's physical and deals with "beauty" tragectory by which people are said to love, both eachother and figure/godheads.
Carolyn Hanig Professor Franco Romantic Literature 1 May 2008 Response to “Christabel,” Part Two During class, we talked a lot about the mother imagery as well as the allusions to the biblical figures. The biblical imagery is propounded upon when Christabel has a vision of Geraldine turning into a serpent creature. Her eyes “[shrink] in her head/… up to a serpent’s eye” (571-572). It makes no reference to there being any more change in Geraldine suggesting that perhaps she is deceptive. Clearly she represents Satan since he was portrayed as the serpent in the Adam and Eve story. This is an interesting parallel since this story can be taken to be interpreted in the sense of that story. Eve is the one that tried the apple first and Christabel is the one that let in Geraldine. Leoline is like the Adam too since he is likewise lured into Geraldine’s trick: his “heart and brain” (625) “only swelled with rage and pain” (626). This rage and pain comes both from Geraldine’s assault and because he feels “dishonoured by his only child” (632). Geraldine wins over this time since she won over Christabel’s father’s trust. Geraldine represents the eternity of sin in the human race. Christabel, as we discussed in class, contains two names “Christ” and “Abel;” Christabel’s name incorporates the span of time passed in the entire bible from the first murder to the last. Evil has triumphed over Christabel and therefore it makes it seem like evil has won over good in this poem. Indeed, as I have talked about in the last paragraph, Geraldine usurps Christabel of her father’s affection. Christabel represents the bible and truth within the story and her father represents the human race because he is taken in by Geraldine’s deception. The message that seems to be hidden is that evil is deceptive and that causes it to win over the fallacy of human race. Christabel is also taken in similarly, which makes sense because the bible was written by humans and humans are fallible. We see that Geraldine takes the place of the mother at the end of the poem, but she is portrayed in a negative light. Christabel has a vision where she knows Geraldine’s bosom is “old” (444) and “cold” (445). The choice of the word bosom is something that is related to both womanliness and motherhood since the bosom is used to give milk to infants. Yet it is not warm which suggests there is something either dead about her. It appears as if she is deceiving or trying to deceive Christabel and her father. When Sir Leoline “[leads] forth the lady Geraldine” (643). They say that he does this “turning from his own sweet maid’ (641). Christabel is overthrown because she should be the cherished woman in Leoline’s life when he looses his wife because she is his only kin left. The poem calls out to him saying “Thy only child/Lies at thy feet, thy joy, thy pride” (609-610), yet to not avail. Instead he chooses Geraldine and perhaps this is because Coleridge is trying to suggest more strongly that not only is Geraldine represents something evil. Geraldine represents many things but there is certainly something evil about her since she disrupts the lives of Christabel and her father. It is hard to say exactly what Geraldine represents except that it is fairly explicit that there is something strange or malicious about her. Perhaps it is sufficient to say that she represents evil.
Coleridge, S.T. “Christabel.” Ed. Wu, Duncan. Romanticism: An Anthology, Third Edition. Blackwell Publishing, copyright 2006. Published in Oxford, UK.
Quinnetta Bellows English 344 Professor Franco May 1, 2008 Coleridge “Frost at Midnight”
Coleridge takes an interesting look at the relationship between nature and the individual, nature and childhood, and nature and memory. Assuming Coleridge is himself the speaker of the poem, he immediately brings the reader into the fanciful work of the frost. As the “Frost performs its secret ministry” it appears that nature’s affect on Coleridge’s imagination is a religious experience. In this excessively quite cottage, minute almost unheard noises are the very objects that plunge Coleridge into memories of childhood. In solitude, it is the “cradled infant” that “slumbers peacefully” and the “film, which fluttered on the grate” that evokes memories and allows Coleridge to “toy” or play with his “thought[s].” And as Coleridge plays with his own thoughts, Coleridge leaves the immediate present and thrust himself into the past. As in the first stanza, where there are the images of the child (Coleridge’s child), “the frost” with its “secret ministry;” the second stanza repeats the same images, where there is Coleridge and his “sweet birth-place” and “the old church-tower.” However, in the second stanza there is almost something prophetic about nature as it “articulate sounds of things to come.” It is interesting how the present events of his adult relationship with nature connect with his childhood memories in the second stanza. As the second stanza is nostalgia of childhood, it also points out the source of his imaginative connection with nature. Nature, as his “companionable form,” which “sympathies with [him] who lives” was first discovered while he pretended to study his books as a child. However, the “toy of thought,” “birth place,” and the “sound of things to come” does not only comment on Coleridge’s relationship to nature, but, as if prophetically hoping, it speaks about his relationship to the “cradled infant” or “Babe.” As the “babe” breathing fills “momentary pauses of thought” so does the poem go back and forth between memory and present, future and present, past and future. As Coleridge connects his childhood and adulthood with nature, he ingeniously connects the child with nature. As the images of Coleridge’s childhood, the frost, and the babe are interconnected, the poem forces the reader to look at the child as an extension of Coleridge’s relationship to nature. The last two stanzas are themselves prophetic. Coleridge hopes for a continued relationship with nature through his posterity. He finds his exposure to nature limiting being “reared/ in the great city.” However, his child will exceed him and will see “far other lore/ and in far other scenes.” “Like a breeze” the cradled infant will be unbound in observing land, lakes, mountains, and seas. In observing nature, the child with “hear and see” all the works that “God utters.” As this poem evokes an overall religious sentiment, Coleridge finds spirituality in nature and hopes that his child will too do the same. If the child does same, he too will find contentment in all of the seasons of the earth. Not only will he find contentment, but it will also elicit thoughts even in the minute solitude of the frost.
Percy Shelley states that once the desire to seek self in other is extinguished, humans are “living sepulchres” of themselves. The most obvious reading of this refers to a certain quality of spirit that is lost once the desire to seek love is gone, though I believe the language resonates in a biological sense as well. The loss of desire to propagate one’s family line and raise children by seeking out a partner effectively halts one’s “survival” genetically. I think this reading does not signal Shelley’s conflation of the two ideas, but rather signals the naturally entwined way that romantic love and physical love function in human beings. Romance is often said to give meaning to physical love and the two are considered complimentary to one another.
When Shelley suggests that love is the “thirst for likeness” he is most obviously referring to a type of romantic love that seeks out a partner of like-mind or disposition. This basic idea can be extended to the realm of familial love, where there is innate sense of connection because the likeness to self is often as obvious as physical features. This connection is much more rudimentary and innate, being based in biology rather than personality. However, education plays a key role in the shaping of personality, and likewise is a significant factor in the development of familial love.
The problem raised in Mathilda is a result of the notion of romantic/physical love becoming conflated with the concept of familial love. Although Mathilda is repulsed by the idea of her father holding a physical desire for her, she constantly holds him up in her fantasies as the “beloved” object. Her education has not equipped her to separate the idealized, romantic love she had read about in stories from the familial love that she is naturally inclined to feel towards a parent. It is interesting to note that modern day psychology has studied the realities of genetic sexual attraction and found that it is a regularly occurring phenomenon, almost exclusively in cases where the two relations have grown to adulthood without meeting. Close domestic proximity during formative years creates what is known as the Westermarck effect, which essentially inhibits the mechanisms of genetic sexual attraction.
If perpetual longing for the reflection of self constitutes a vivacious quality in human beings, what of Mathilda’s fantasy world? Her fantasy of the father is certainly born from her own mind, since he abandons her shortly after her birth, and his letter and miniature function as props to give a concrete image to her imaginings. She projects this idealized image onto him until the reality of the father is no longer able to coexist with Mathilda’s imaginary figure. Although Percy Shelley presents the idea of love as a longing for sameness, a distinction between love and narcissism must be made. Mathilda’s fantasy is ultimately narcissistic; her imaginary world is a part of her that she has forged by her own mind. When the reality of her father’s confused feelings for her is brought to light, the two cannot co-exist in the living world. Once the father is no longer a real, physical presence, Mathilda indulges once more the idealized image that she has created. Thus, I would argue that Mathilda’s unconscious confusion with romantic love and familial love inhibits her from pursuing love as Percy Shelly has outlined it. Without this ability to project the self onto other in a realistic way, she is left with only the narcissistic self-indulgence of her fantasy life.
After reading “On the Character of Rivers” and discussing it in class, I thought it was interesting that Rivers resembles both Victor Frankenstein and Mathilda in a way which similarly calls the moral implications of Enlightenment deductive reasoning, reflection and deceptive self-representation into question. In Wordsworth’s play, The Borders, Rivers and Mortimer belong to a group of rebels who are hoping for an uprising against the current monarchy. In class, we discussed Wordsworth’s mixed feelings about the French Revolution; it is particularly interesting then, that Rivers is in a group of revolutionary rebels, who are hanging out in the margins hoping to organize. It is telling that the play should be “The Borders,” as the rebels not only inhabit the outer-edges of society, but also as Rivers inhabits the borders of those outer borders; separated from his comrades through his solitary plotting and introspection. In The Borders, we learn that Rivers ultimately deceives Herbert to wander the heath alone, merely to make a likeness of himself; Rivers himself had been previously left on an island. This replication becomes a sort of allegory of the replication of the “first” trauma. Like Victor Frankenstein and Mathilda, we “chase phantoms” as we try to find the “cause,” assuming that one’s life is a narrative in which there can be a beginning, or an original “cause.” In class, the question arose: “How does Wordsworth feel about Reason, in relation to Godwin? What does he want to parse about superstition?” Considering that Wordsworth was ambivalent toward the French Revolution, it seems that he might be taking issue with Godwin’s Enlightenment idea of the arguable right of those who do not have property to rise up against the elite, to take what they need to avenge “the first offence,” as Godwin explains in “Love of Justice” that “it is evident that the first offence must have been his who began a monopoly, and took advantage of the weakness of his neighbors to secure certain exclusive privileges to himself. The man on the other hand who determined to put an end to this monopoly, and who peremptorily demanded what was superfluous to the possessor and would be of extreme benefit to himself, appeared to his own mind to be merely avenging the violated laws of justice” (Godwin 153-54, my emphasis). However, it seems that whether or not Godwin views this sort of execution of justice as being objectively, morally good becomes slippery, particularly as he points out that people tend to rationalize their actions to avoid cognitive dissonance, rather than judging them rationally: “no man perpetrates any action, however criminal, without having first invented some sophistry, some palliation, by which he proves that it is best to be done” (Godwin 153). We can see that Wordsworth illustrates this sort of rationalizing through Rivers, as he describes his intellect: “While the general exertion of his intellect seduces him from the remembrance of his own crime… as his skepticism increases he is raised in his own esteem” (Wordsworth 62). Thus, even criminals and villains, like Rivers, can feel just, and love justice. Wordsworth repeatedly describes Rivers as being “superstitious” and writes that “his pride impels him to superstition” (Wordsworth 66), as the seeming chain of “necessity” of his actions is really a chain of signifiers. So, superstition is to view events (and people) as necessarily being connected, even though they are not. This superstition applies to Mathilda (like Victor Frankenstein) because, as she writes her narrative, she looks for and emphasizes signs (such as lightening striking a tree branch, as she pursues her father) and reasons to justify what she does and to try to understand why things are happening to her. Similarly, Rivers (much like Heathcliff, arguably the quintessential Byronic hero, will be, later) is roaming these heaths, imposingly proud, yet constantly fighting off a creeping sensation of inferiority, and is still brooding over prior injustices, long after the fact. He is exacting a vengeance which, really, cannot be exact. He is merely creating a replication in misery; Herbert himself probably did not even leave Rivers on the island. (Similarly, Heathcliff’s is left to toil abroad, until he can torment the next generation. After all, what did young Catherine or Hareton, or even Linton Heathcliff, really do to him, personally, besides being born the children of his enemies?)
9 comments:
Laura Miller
Response 4
William Godwin’s argument about marriage as an institution suggests that in a peaceful world people would not need to bind themselves together by law in order to find a mate and reproduce. Rather they would socialize with another person and come to the consensual agreement that they enjoy each other and want to procreate with one another in an unbinding agreement. He reasons marriage is a result of human “vices” and “it flows from the desire of being loved and esteemed for something that is not desert” (154). Godwin is inferring that because people need to be loved they want to ensure its reception by contractually bonding another human who theoretically should give them unearned love they do not deserve. Marriage also supposes that love is shown by the physical act which brings immediate pleasure instead of working to “assiduously cultivate the intercourse of that woman whose accomplishments shall strike…in the most powerful manner” (155). This means men and women should be attracted to one another by their discourse not visual beauty and sex should be a “very trivial object” in the affair between the two. Sex is an addition to the intellectual relationship between two people which Godwin supposes would be sophisticated because they two have chosen each other based on qualities deeper than beauty and vanity.
Godwin also supposes marriage is a near criminal concept because when two people are committed to each other they can no longer share themselves with anyone else. He understands that a single person is able to have good conversation with several other people who all should be able to derive pleasure from their interaction. Perhaps some relationships are more intense than others while some have equal intensity and if people cannot rely on one person to provide them with the love they need then they should not be deprived from anyone who could provide for that time at one point or another (154). It seems in Godwin’s time, a man owned his wife’s body therefore he could feasibly keep her from interacting with other people.
While the situation Godwin creates to substitute for marriage seems adequate in a thought process, he still does not reconcile his major argument against marriage. Whether the institution exists or not, people continue to have the need for love which means when they find a person who they are compatible with they are inclined to stay with that person until their compatibility collapses. It also does not make sense to discredit physical attraction because that encourages sex and reproduction. Godwin recognizes the necessity of mating as “essential to our healthful existence” and “propagation” of humans (155). While good conversation can create pleasure within people, physical attraction should be considered a part of sex. Finally, Godwin’s argument only considers the relationship up to conception. With the institution of marriage, both partners care for the children and provide for the entire family because all the children come from the same two people. If people procreated with several different partners during Godwin’s time when men were supposed to provide the biggest source of income it would be unclear how women and children would be financed, both in monetary value and affection.
It seems the real problem Godwin faces is not the institution of marriage but the way in which it “is an affair of property” (154). He supports the idea of two people finding mutual pleasure within each other but not the covertures men hold over women which keeps them from interacting with others. If all women could converse intellectually with men then the problem of sharing the pleasure of discourse would be fixed. In that case, men and women could as he suggests find each other based on conversation instead of physical prowess and commit to each other on a deeper level. Then, the love each acquires from the other would be deserved by his logic because they would earn it through thoughtful means and still sustain the physical relationship necessary to propagate. Instead of destroying marriage as an institution, the position of women needed to be reformed within society to fix Godwin’s anxieties about binding two people, through legal and emotional promise, to each other.
Brigette Jolene Todt
Eng 344
May 2, 2008
Response #4
William Godwin has a fascinating perspective on reason and the passions in the writings assigned for this week. In [On Poverty] Godwin writes, “Accumulated property threads the powers of thought in the dust,” (Godwin 153) and then that,
“If superfluity were banished, the necessity for the greater part of the manual industry of mankind would be superseded, and the rest (being amicably shared among all the active and vigorous members of the community) would be burdensome to none.”
(Godwin 153).
Godwin’s idea would have to rely heavily on the assumption that not only are all people are capable of reason but also that they will act reasonably. It depends a lot on a kind of social contract and consciences in order to work, and therefore, putting the passions aside.
Then in [Love of Justice] Godwin explains the kind of chain reaction that justice and justification can begin. He explains,
“So necessary a part is this of the constitution of mind that no man perpetrates any action, however criminal, without having first invented some sophistry, some palliation, by which he proves to himself that it is best to be done,”
(Godwin 153).
He also goes on to explain,
“The man on the other hand who determined to put an end to this monopoly, and who peremptorily demanded what was superfluous to the possessor and would be of extreme benefit to himself, appeared to his own mind to be merely avenging the violated laws of justice. Were it not for justice the plausibleness of this apology, it is to be presumed that there would be no such thing as crime in the world,”
(Godwin 153-4).
Godwin is insinuation then that the idea of justice is more appealing than that of reason and that it can cause a good man to do criminal things, not because of malicious intent, but because he feels justified in doing so. Instead of seeing reason, people justify first. This kind of thing can start a cycle of revenge.
In [On Marriage] Godwin suggests almost a kind of legalized prostitution, an abandonment of traditional marriage and courtship customs, to be instead replaced by reasonable interaction between the sexes. Godwin begins by writing, “It is absurd to expect the inclinations and wishes of two human beings should coincide through any long period of time,” (Godwin 154). He goes on to describe that it is ridiculous for people to get married when the have only seen “each other for a few times and under circumstances full of delusion, and then to vow to each other eternal attachment,” (Godwin 154). He argues the marriage is illogical, simply not reasonable, and in fact that is it selfish, describing that if a man were married he would be “guilty of the most odious of monopolies,” in reference to his wife (Godwin 154).
Therefore Godwin introduces some alternatives. He insists that the idea of pleasure is not as important as it is thought to be. He explains, “The intercourse of the sexes will in such a state fall under the same system as any other species of friendship,” and that, “I shall assiduously cultivate the intercourse of that woman whose accomplishments shall strike me in the most powerful manner,” (Godwin 155). Godwin suggests that accomplishments of a woman, and her appeal in the realm of good conversation, should outweigh the preference for beautiful but unaccomplished and simply decorative women. Physical pleasure is not as important as intellectual pleasure in this alternative.
In regards to physical pleasure Godwin suggests, “We may all enjoy her conversation, and we shall all be wise enough to consider the sensual intercourse as a very trivial object,” (Godwin 155). He goes on to write,
“Reasonable men now eat and drink not from the love of pleasure, but because eating and drinking are essential to our healthful existence. Reasonable men will then propagate their species not because a certain sensible pleasure in annexed to this action, but because it is right the species should be propagated. And the manner in which they exercise this function will be regulated by the dictates of reason and duty,”
(Godwin 155).
Godwin is suggesting that reason should be capable of regulating what is usually thought to be regulated by the passions in most regards, courtship and love and marriage. The way he describes the alternative depicts people as being very detached. Someone in class best described it as a sort of ‘Don’t think she loves you,’ situation. However, it is okay to engage in physical pleasures with your friends, because this is reasonable.
Though some of Godwin’s arguments on property, or justice, or marriage seem ridiculous or even ludicrous, at times, when one thinks about it, they make a twisted sort of sense.
Alright, just trying to “reason” through Godwin’s Love of Justice.
So some basic premises:
1.) We (humans) are loathe to hurt other people.
2.) We never hurt people unless we have to (“the sharp sting of necessity”)
3.) If we hurt someone, we have to prove to ourselves that it was the “best” course of action.
Godwin also says that we hate hurting people because of either some natural inclination to helping people or “his perception of the reasonableness of such assistance.” So this is to say that whenever we help someone, we do it because our nature drives us to or because it seems like the most reasonable thing to do. Godwin is here arguing that men not only “love justice” but also love reason.
Functioning inside this understanding of the world, Godwin presents the scenario of a monopolizer (yes, I just made up a word) and a person who seeks to end monopolies. Godwin is clearly aware of people in the world who hurt other people but the question remains of how these people work. And in looking at how these people work, it seems Godwin is contradicting himself.
If people only hurt other people when the must, isn’t it necessary for the monopolizer to hurt those he is taking from? However, Godwin clearly thinks otherwise, seeing as he denounces the monopoly as “superfluous.” Now if the monopoly is hurting people and it is not necessary, according to Godwin, there is a malfunction of perception on the part of the monopolizer. The monopolizer must see his actions in one of a few ways: it is either necessary (so an unfortunate action that he must convince himself was the “best to be done”) or helpful to other people or simply reasonable.
I’m really interested in Godwin’s argument that the good we do for other people can be derived from our perception of “the reasonableness of such assistance.”
[I’ll address for a moment the possibility of that innate driving force to help other people. Even if this does exist, it is clear that it can simply be overridden by our minds (otherwise no one would ever hurt another person unless they absolutely had to) so I think it is fair to ignore it entirely.]
Godwin seems to be arguing that we help people purely because it seems reasonable. Now this is interesting because he specifies that we follow our “perception” of reason. So if we help people by following our perception of reason, it seems totally fine that people who hurt other people are also merely doing what seems reasonable.
However, Godwin is also arguing that people hurting other people is bad. This raises the question of how reason and good interact. It seems that Godwin since offers such high praise to reason, he is arguing that they are identical, so I’m going to run with that. And in this system, there is an important distinction between what is reasonable and what seems reasonable. And I think this is the point Godwin is ultimately making (or perhaps failing to make) –that we do not know how to reason naturally. This is a skill we have to develop in order to function in the world with other people. Our instinct, Godwin says, is to follow our reason. Problems only arise when we are not being truly reasonable. And all this amounts to, importantly, is that there is an objective moral code to the world that we can discern through reason. I find this to be pretty attractive in some ways –the idea that there are not rules to follow (always treat your neighbor like this, etc) but that we may come to a place where we have such a great understanding of the world that we can always do the right thing. Which makes me think of Blake in Marriage of Heaven and Hell and the devil arguing about Jesus disobeying the Ten Commandments by acting from impulse. Same idea –we shouldn’t follow rules, but should develop some central moral tool for determining the right thing to do at all times. Pretty tastey.
Relocated to the proper week! :)
Crime, Pleasure and Obsessive Thought
Reading Wordsworth’s “On the Character of Rivers” in such close quarters with Godwin’s ‘Love of Justice’ from “Political Justice” has inevitably caused me to consider the dialogue between the two works. Regardless of how much Wordsworth considered Godwin’s philosophies during the conception of the Rivers character, Wordsworth’s explanation of Rivers’ logical process complicates the ideas of justice and moral relativity brought up by Godwin.
In ‘Love of Justice’ Godwin suggests that the first crime occurred when one person “took advantage of the weakness of his neighbors to secure certain exclusive privileges to himself.” (Godwin 153) By creating an imbalance, it becomes easier for those who have less than others to justify actions that other individuals and society would deem criminal. Wordsworth implies that Rivers is such a character who, after being involved in some manner of crime, loses the privileges he previously possessed. He becomes with obsessed with the idea of good and evil and “to hunt out whatever is bad in actions usually esteemed virtuous and to detect the good in actions which the universal sense of mankind teaches us to reprobate.” (Wordsworth 62) This reinvention of his worldview goes hand-in-hand with his quest to regain the power he lost. Rivers attempts to assuage his guilt, but his guilt is the direct result of self-pity and selfish fixation rather than a genuine repentance for his crimes.
Godwin implies and Wordsworth expounds upon the idea of crime as the result of an obsessive fixation. The creation of the moral relativity, the process of ‘justifying’ the act, is a highly intellectual task. Wordsworth describes Rivers as “a young Man of great intellectual powers, yet without any sold principles of genuine benevolence.” (Wordsworth 62) Godwin also describes the creations of a “sophistry” (Godwin 153) to which the perpetrator attributes his actions. Wordsworth borrows this language to describe Rivers’ actions: “He is perpetually imposing upon himself; he has a sophism for every crime.” (Wordsworth 64) Rivers cannot help but fixate on the crimes he has committed and in fixating he spurs a need to constantly reassure himself of his own justifications. In constructing justification for previous crimes he allows for the enactment of future crimes. Thus, the cycle is perpetuated.
There is an implication made that the obsessive ‘meditations’ that Rivers uses to construct his own morally gray reality is the function of passion and not of reason. Wordsworth states that “[t]he mild effusions of thought, the milk of human reason, are unknown to him.” (Wordsworth 64) Furthermore, Rivers turns more easily to vice than virtue because vice offers a sense of immediate gratification that is rarely present in the doing of good deeds. The exact words used are “immediate, palpable and extensive” to describe the effects of a vicious act. This creates a clear separation of mild, reasonable thought from the impassioned, obsessive act of Rivers’ cycle of criminal acts. Rivers begins with the goal of reestablishing the power that was lost to him, but to fill the void left by his trauma he naturally turns to obsession and repetition. Rivers is also impressed by his own cleverness in that he takes pleasure in the idea that he can justify his crimes. Attaching passion and pleasure to moral ambiguity further complicates the issue of universal human justice and the ability of humans, even those of “great intellectual powers” to uphold those ideals.
Emily Mutchler
Response 4
(Ideas for Thesis Proposal II)
I would argue that initially, in Frankenstein and later, in Mathilda, Mary Shelley critiques and dialogues with the Burkean concept of a sympathy originating within one’s own body, and the imaging, or idealization of the Beautiful love object. She critiques, as Susan Lanser observes in “Romantic Voice: The Hero’s Text,” a concept of love which has become a troupe of male Romanticism: “woman is muse, object or servant of the male quest, source of sorrow or ecstasy, at best the man’s double, a narcissistic projection of himself””(Lanser, 156). I would argue that, in the case of Mathilda, “the love object” or rather “the lover’s projected idea of the love object” could substitute “woman.”
It is then no wonder that Mathilda is a tragedy of incest, if Shelley is investigating the problems inherent in a sympathy, or love, originating within ones own body and a desire which requires an eroticized distance to maintain the image which the lover has drawn of his object. It is a loving to love, also, later manifests itself in Mathilda’s desire to be loved, as she read over the words of her father letter with “devouring eyes; I kissed them, wept over them and exclaimed, “He will love me!””(Mary Shelley, 186), and imagines that, because he has been a wanderer, she is “all that he had to love on earth” (Mary Shelley, 188). Similarly, in his solitude, Malthilda’s father loves to love as well, as he imagines his daughter in all of the inanimate objects he loves: “All delightful things, sublime scenery, soft breezes, exquisite music seemed to me associated with you and only through you to be pleasant to me” (Mary Shelley, 208).
Shelley then extends this problem of Burkean sympathy to spirituality, as Matilda worships, her father from afar, in solitude, as a “Father,” to whom she longs to return, in death, as she laments: “to feel a transient sympathy and then to awaken from the delusion, again to know that all this was nothing,- a dream, a shadow… leaving only memories and an eternal barrier between me and my fellow creatures” (MS, 229). A potential result of this pursuit is despair, distance from all others on earth, rather than universal sympathy and consolation.
We can see that Burke’s concept of sympathy becomes problematic in Frankenstein, as all of the characters love each other by, or through, representations of each other. These representations include letters and the portraits which have come to represent the dead Caroline. The characters also love each other based primarily on their resemblances and relationship to other characters, as Alphonse Frankenstein loves Caroline because he was friends with her father, Elizabeth’s love for Justine is inspired her resemblance to Caroline. This love also becomes extended to Victor's love of Natural Science, which is inspired by the handsome M. Waldman's representation of it; he dislikes another branch of science because he finds M. Krempe physically repulsive.
This sort of Burkean conception of sympathy also causes problems for Mathilda. I would argue that the incestuous desire in the story is not just Freudian, but also a criticism of the self-centered and eroticized, because it's physical and deals with "beauty" tragectory by which people are said to love, both eachother and figure/godheads.
Carolyn Hanig
Professor Franco
Romantic Literature
1 May 2008
Response to “Christabel,” Part Two
During class, we talked a lot about the mother imagery as well as the allusions to the biblical figures. The biblical imagery is propounded upon when Christabel has a vision of Geraldine turning into a serpent creature. Her eyes “[shrink] in her head/… up to a serpent’s eye” (571-572). It makes no reference to there being any more change in Geraldine suggesting that perhaps she is deceptive. Clearly she represents Satan since he was portrayed as the serpent in the Adam and Eve story. This is an interesting parallel since this story can be taken to be interpreted in the sense of that story. Eve is the one that tried the apple first and Christabel is the one that let in Geraldine. Leoline is like the Adam too since he is likewise lured into Geraldine’s trick: his “heart and brain” (625) “only swelled with rage and pain” (626). This rage and pain comes both from Geraldine’s assault and because he feels “dishonoured by his only child” (632). Geraldine wins over this time since she won over Christabel’s father’s trust.
Geraldine represents the eternity of sin in the human race. Christabel, as we discussed in class, contains two names “Christ” and “Abel;” Christabel’s name incorporates the span of time passed in the entire bible from the first murder to the last. Evil has triumphed over Christabel and therefore it makes it seem like evil has won over good in this poem. Indeed, as I have talked about in the last paragraph, Geraldine usurps Christabel of her father’s affection. Christabel represents the bible and truth within the story and her father represents the human race because he is taken in by Geraldine’s deception. The message that seems to be hidden is that evil is deceptive and that causes it to win over the fallacy of human race. Christabel is also taken in similarly, which makes sense because the bible was written by humans and humans are fallible.
We see that Geraldine takes the place of the mother at the end of the poem, but she is portrayed in a negative light. Christabel has a vision where she knows Geraldine’s bosom is “old” (444) and “cold” (445). The choice of the word bosom is something that is related to both womanliness and motherhood since the bosom is used to give milk to infants. Yet it is not warm which suggests there is something either dead about her. It appears as if she is deceiving or trying to deceive Christabel and her father.
When Sir Leoline “[leads] forth the lady Geraldine” (643). They say that he does this “turning from his own sweet maid’ (641). Christabel is overthrown because she should be the cherished woman in Leoline’s life when he looses his wife because she is his only kin left. The poem calls out to him saying “Thy only child/Lies at thy feet, thy joy, thy pride” (609-610), yet to not avail. Instead he chooses Geraldine and perhaps this is because Coleridge is trying to suggest more strongly that not only is Geraldine represents something evil.
Geraldine represents many things but there is certainly something evil about her since she disrupts the lives of Christabel and her father. It is hard to say exactly what Geraldine represents except that it is fairly explicit that there is something strange or malicious about her. Perhaps it is sufficient to say that she represents evil.
Coleridge, S.T. “Christabel.” Ed. Wu, Duncan. Romanticism: An Anthology, Third Edition. Blackwell Publishing, copyright 2006. Published in Oxford, UK.
Quinnetta Bellows
English 344
Professor Franco
May 1, 2008
Coleridge “Frost at Midnight”
Coleridge takes an interesting look at the relationship between nature and the individual, nature and childhood, and nature and memory. Assuming Coleridge is himself the speaker of the poem, he immediately brings the reader into the fanciful work of the frost. As the “Frost performs its secret ministry” it appears that nature’s affect on Coleridge’s imagination is a religious experience. In this excessively quite cottage, minute almost unheard noises are the very objects that plunge Coleridge into memories of childhood. In solitude, it is the “cradled infant” that “slumbers peacefully” and the “film, which fluttered on the grate” that evokes memories and allows Coleridge to “toy” or play with his “thought[s].”
And as Coleridge plays with his own thoughts, Coleridge leaves the immediate present and thrust himself into the past. As in the first stanza, where there are the images of the child (Coleridge’s child), “the frost” with its “secret ministry;” the second stanza repeats the same images, where there is Coleridge and his “sweet birth-place” and “the old church-tower.” However, in the second stanza there is almost something prophetic about nature as it “articulate sounds of things to come.” It is interesting how the present events of his adult relationship with nature connect with his childhood memories in the second stanza. As the second stanza is nostalgia of childhood, it also points out the source of his imaginative connection with nature. Nature, as his “companionable form,” which “sympathies with [him] who lives” was first discovered while he pretended to study his books as a child.
However, the “toy of thought,” “birth place,” and the “sound of things to come” does not only comment on Coleridge’s relationship to nature, but, as if prophetically hoping, it speaks about his relationship to the “cradled infant” or “Babe.” As the “babe” breathing fills “momentary pauses of thought” so does the poem go back and forth between memory and present, future and present, past and future. As Coleridge connects his childhood and adulthood with nature, he ingeniously connects the child with nature. As the images of Coleridge’s childhood, the frost, and the babe are interconnected, the poem forces the reader to look at the child as an extension of Coleridge’s relationship to nature. The last two stanzas are themselves prophetic. Coleridge hopes for a continued relationship with nature through his posterity. He finds his exposure to nature limiting being “reared/ in the great city.” However, his child will exceed him and will see “far other lore/ and in far other scenes.” “Like a breeze” the cradled infant will be unbound in observing land, lakes, mountains, and seas. In observing nature, the child with “hear and see” all the works that “God utters.”
As this poem evokes an overall religious sentiment, Coleridge finds spirituality in nature and hopes that his child will too do the same. If the child does same, he too will find contentment in all of the seasons of the earth. Not only will he find contentment, but it will also elicit thoughts even in the minute solitude of the frost.
Response for 05/09/08
Love and Narcissism
Percy Shelley states that once the desire to seek self in other is extinguished, humans are “living sepulchres” of themselves. The most obvious reading of this refers to a certain quality of spirit that is lost once the desire to seek love is gone, though I believe the language resonates in a biological sense as well. The loss of desire to propagate one’s family line and raise children by seeking out a partner effectively halts one’s “survival” genetically. I think this reading does not signal Shelley’s conflation of the two ideas, but rather signals the naturally entwined way that romantic love and physical love function in human beings. Romance is often said to give meaning to physical love and the two are considered complimentary to one another.
When Shelley suggests that love is the “thirst for likeness” he is most obviously referring to a type of romantic love that seeks out a partner of like-mind or disposition. This basic idea can be extended to the realm of familial love, where there is innate sense of connection because the likeness to self is often as obvious as physical features. This connection is much more rudimentary and innate, being based in biology rather than personality. However, education plays a key role in the shaping of personality, and likewise is a significant factor in the development of familial love.
The problem raised in Mathilda is a result of the notion of romantic/physical love becoming conflated with the concept of familial love. Although Mathilda is repulsed by the idea of her father holding a physical desire for her, she constantly holds him up in her fantasies as the “beloved” object. Her education has not equipped her to separate the idealized, romantic love she had read about in stories from the familial love that she is naturally inclined to feel towards a parent. It is interesting to note that modern day psychology has studied the realities of genetic sexual attraction and found that it is a regularly occurring phenomenon, almost exclusively in cases where the two relations have grown to adulthood without meeting. Close domestic proximity during formative years creates what is known as the Westermarck effect, which essentially inhibits the mechanisms of genetic sexual attraction.
If perpetual longing for the reflection of self constitutes a vivacious quality in human beings, what of Mathilda’s fantasy world? Her fantasy of the father is certainly born from her own mind, since he abandons her shortly after her birth, and his letter and miniature function as props to give a concrete image to her imaginings. She projects this idealized image onto him until the reality of the father is no longer able to coexist with Mathilda’s imaginary figure. Although Percy Shelley presents the idea of love as a longing for sameness, a distinction between love and narcissism must be made. Mathilda’s fantasy is ultimately narcissistic; her imaginary world is a part of her that she has forged by her own mind. When the reality of her father’s confused feelings for her is brought to light, the two cannot co-exist in the living world. Once the father is no longer a real, physical presence, Mathilda indulges once more the idealized image that she has created. Thus, I would argue that Mathilda’s unconscious confusion with romantic love and familial love inhibits her from pursuing love as Percy Shelly has outlined it. Without this ability to project the self onto other in a realistic way, she is left with only the narcissistic self-indulgence of her fantasy life.
Emily Mutchler
Response #4
04/05/08
After reading “On the Character of Rivers” and discussing it in class, I thought it was interesting that Rivers resembles both Victor Frankenstein and Mathilda in a way which similarly calls the moral implications of Enlightenment deductive reasoning, reflection and deceptive self-representation into question.
In Wordsworth’s play, The Borders, Rivers and Mortimer belong to a group of rebels who are hoping for an uprising against the current monarchy. In class, we discussed Wordsworth’s mixed feelings about the French Revolution; it is particularly interesting then, that Rivers is in a group of revolutionary rebels, who are hanging out in the margins hoping to organize. It is telling that the play should be “The Borders,” as the rebels not only inhabit the outer-edges of society, but also as Rivers inhabits the borders of those outer borders; separated from his comrades through his solitary plotting and introspection.
In The Borders, we learn that Rivers ultimately deceives Herbert to wander the heath alone, merely to make a likeness of himself; Rivers himself had been previously left on an island. This replication becomes a sort of allegory of the replication of the “first” trauma. Like Victor Frankenstein and Mathilda, we “chase phantoms” as we try to find the “cause,” assuming that one’s life is a narrative in which there can be a beginning, or an original “cause.”
In class, the question arose: “How does Wordsworth feel about Reason, in relation to Godwin? What does he want to parse about superstition?” Considering that Wordsworth was ambivalent toward the French Revolution, it seems that he might be taking issue with Godwin’s Enlightenment idea of the arguable right of those who do not have property to rise up against the elite, to take what they need to avenge “the first offence,” as Godwin explains in “Love of Justice” that “it is evident that the first offence must have been his who began a monopoly, and took advantage of the weakness of his neighbors to secure certain exclusive privileges to himself. The man on the other hand who determined to put an end to this monopoly, and who peremptorily demanded what was superfluous to the possessor and would be of extreme benefit to himself, appeared to his own mind to be merely avenging the violated laws of justice” (Godwin 153-54, my emphasis).
However, it seems that whether or not Godwin views this sort of execution of justice as being objectively, morally good becomes slippery, particularly as he points out that people tend to rationalize their actions to avoid cognitive dissonance, rather than judging them rationally: “no man perpetrates any action, however criminal, without having first invented some sophistry, some palliation, by which he proves that it is best to be done” (Godwin 153). We can see that Wordsworth illustrates this sort of rationalizing through Rivers, as he describes his intellect: “While the general exertion of his intellect seduces him from the remembrance of his own crime… as his skepticism increases he is raised in his own esteem” (Wordsworth 62). Thus, even criminals and villains, like Rivers, can feel just, and love justice.
Wordsworth repeatedly describes Rivers as being “superstitious” and writes that “his pride impels him to superstition” (Wordsworth 66), as the seeming chain of “necessity” of his actions is really a chain of signifiers. So, superstition is to view events (and people) as necessarily being connected, even though they are not. This superstition applies to Mathilda (like Victor Frankenstein) because, as she writes her narrative, she looks for and emphasizes signs (such as lightening striking a tree branch, as she pursues her father) and reasons to justify what she does and to try to understand why things are happening to her.
Similarly, Rivers (much like Heathcliff, arguably the quintessential Byronic hero, will be, later) is roaming these heaths, imposingly proud, yet constantly fighting off a creeping sensation of inferiority, and is still brooding over prior injustices, long after the fact. He is exacting a vengeance which, really, cannot be exact. He is merely creating a replication in misery; Herbert himself probably did not even leave Rivers on the island. (Similarly, Heathcliff’s is left to toil abroad, until he can torment the next generation. After all, what did young Catherine or Hareton, or even Linton Heathcliff, really do to him, personally, besides being born the children of his enemies?)
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