Lodore

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Title page of Lodore (1835)

Lodore , also published under the title The Beautiful Widow , is a novel by the author Mary Shelley . She completed her work on this book in 1833 and published it in 1835.

action

In Lodore , Mary Shelley deals again with the topic of power and responsibility, but here concentrates on the microcosm of a family. The central storyline follows the fate of the wife and daughter of the title character, Lord Lodore, who dies after a duel. The bereaved have a variety of legal, financial and family problems to overcome. Ethel, Lodore's daughter, is used to being under fatherly control. His wife, Lady Cornelia, who has long been estranged from him, is above all under the influence of the conventions and norms of aristocratic life. The intellectual and independent Fanny Derham is the contrast to these two people.

According to the current editor of the novel, Lisa Vargo, Mary Shelley is once again addressing political and ideological issues. In particular, the education and social role of women are questioned. According to Vargos, Mary Shelley's novel criticizes the patriarchal society that separates the sexes and makes women dependent. According to literary scholar and Shelley expert Betty T. Bennett, Mary Shelley once again calls for an equal upbringing of both sexes with this novel, as this brings social justice and an intellectual ability to cope with the misfortunes of life.

reception

Lodore was well received by the critics when it appeared. Fraser's Magazine praised its depth of thought and The Literary Gazette used the novel as an opportunity to name Mary Shelley one of the most original of contemporary writers. At the end of the 19th century, critics were more cautious. In 1886, Edward Dowden described the novel as a biography that had been turned over in favor of a novel. In 1889, Florence Marshall noted that Lodore was old-fashioned.

supporting documents

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Vargo, Introduction to Lodore , 14; Bunnell, 153.
  2. ^ Bennett, An Introduction , 91-92, 97.
  3. ↑ Bennett, An Introduction , 93-95; Bunnell, 155.
  4. ↑ Vargo, Introduction to Lodore , 21, 32.
  5. ^ Vargo, Introduction to Lodore , 35.
  6. ^ Bennett, An Introduction , 92,96.
  7. ^ Vargo, Introduction to Lodore , 18-19.
  8. ↑ Vargo, Introduction to Lodore , 19-20; Bunnell, 161.

literature

  • Bennett, Betty T. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley: An Introduction . Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. ISBN 0-8018-5976-X .
  • Bunnell, Charlene E. "All the World's a Stage": Dramatic Sensibility in Mary Shelley's Novels. New York: Routledge, 2002. ISBN 0-415-93863-5 .
  • Bunnell, Charlene E. "The Illusion of 'Great Expectations': Manners and Morals in Mary Shelley's Lodore and Falkner ". Iconoclastic Departures: Mary Shelley after "Frankenstein": Essays in Honor of the Bicentenary of Mary Shelley's Birth . Eds. Syndy M. Conger, Frederick S. Frank, and Gregory O'Dea. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997.
  • Cronin, Richard. "Mary Shelley and Edward Bulwer: Lodore as Hybrid Fiction". Mary versus Mary . Eds. Lilla Maria Crisafulli and Giovanna Silvani. Naples: Liguori, 2001.
  • Gonda, Caroline. " Lodore and Fanny Derham's Story". Women's Writing 6.3 (1999): 329-44.
  • Hopkins, Lisa. "'A Medea, in More Senses than the More Obvious One': Motherhood in Mary Shelley's Lodore and Falkner ". Eighteenth-Century Novel 2 (2002): 383-405.
  • Joffe, Sharon Lynne. The Kinship Coterie and the Literary Endeavors of the Women in the Shelley Circle . New York: Peter Lang, 2007.
  • Jowell, Sharon. "Mary Shelley's Mothers: The Weak, the Absent, and the Silent in Lodore and Falkner ". European Romantic Review 8.3 (1997): 298-322.
  • Kilroy, James F. The Nineteenth Century English Novel: Family Ideology and Narrative Form . New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
  • Shelley, Mary . Lodore . Ed. Lisa Vargo. Ontario: Broadview Press, 1997. ISBN 1-55111-077-6 .
  • Sites, Melissa. "Re / membering Home: Utopian Domesticity in Mary Shelley's Lodore ". A Brighter Morn: The Shelley Circle's Utopian Project . Ed. Darby Lewes. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2003. ISBN 0-7391-0472-1 .
  • Stafford, Fiona. " Lodore : A Tale of the Present Time?". Mary Shelley's Fiction: From Frankenstein to Falkner . Eds. Michael Eberle-Sinatra and Nora Crook. New York: Macmillan; St. Martin's, 2000.
  • Vallins, David. "Mary Shelley and the Lake Poets: Negotiation and Transcendence in Lodore ". Mary Shelley's Fiction: From Frankenstein to Falkner . Eds. Michael Eberle-Sinatra and Nora Crook. New York: Macmillan; St. Martin's, 2000.
  • Vargo, Lisa. "Further Thoughts on the Education of Daughters: Lodore as an Imagined Conversation with Mary Wollstonecraft". Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley: Writing Lives . Eds. Helen M. Buss, DL Macdonald, and Anne McWhir. Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2001.
  • Vargo, Lisa. " Lodore and the Novel of Society". Women's Writing 6.3 (1999): 425-40.
  • Vargo, Lisa. "The Aikins and the Godwins: Notions of Conflict and Stoicism in Anna Barbauld and Mary Shelley". Romanticism 11.1 (2005): 84-98.