Littéra’Tour
creation exhibited before him could not fill the void
in his irreversibly damaged heart. Indeed, the injury
afflicted to his very soul was everlasting. Through
Lionel’s misery at the eradication of his entire species,
we perceive Mary’s own anguish and distress; for when
she wrote this novel, all of her peers were defunct:
her friends were gone, her lover had joined his maker,
her fellow romantics were deceased; she was the final
survivor of an entire literary generation.
(Illustration here-opposite: Portrait of Marry
Wollstonecraft Shelley, by Samuel John Stump- 1831)
She laments her many misfortunes: first, the loss
of her three children and later that of what she called
the community of the “elect” leaving her in a society of
individuals with questionable integrity of intellect and
sharpness of judgement. Accordingly, Lionel had lost
his three children and their gentle mother, in addition
to his comrades endowed with a benevolent nature,
remarkable moral awareness and nobility as well as
genuine goodness.
All things considered, it goes without saying
that this story is dismal, dreary and gloomy. Indeed,
it intimately depicts man’s deepest sorrows and most
momentous afflictions. Ironically nevertheless, the
tale is embedded in laud of art, nature, magnificence,
beauty of creation, companionship, devotion, human
value and good humour to lighten the heart. These gay
and colourful aspects of the novel contrast the deeper
desolate intoxicating series of tragedies it relates. The
whole pays allegiant homage to reality as it is: for
stainless goodness and pure evil are seldom found
separately.
54
AUTOMNE 2018 /HIVER 2019