The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck

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Title page by Perkin Warbeck , 1857 edition

The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck: A Romance is a historical novel writtenby Mary Shelley about the life of Perkin Warbeck .

Subject

With this novel, Mary Shelley takes up a theme that she had already represented in her apocalyptic novel The Last Man : It is not possible to create an ideal political system unless human nature also improves. The novel is influenced by the historical novels of Walter Scott and Mary Shelley was in correspondence with Scott when she wrote the novel.

action

The plot is about the life of Perkin Warbeck . This historical person posed as Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York during the reign of Henry VII , and would have been the legitimate heir to the throne. Mary Shelley assumed that Warbeck was indeed the heir to the throne and had successfully escaped from the Tower of London . Perkin Warbeck shows characteristics of Percy Bysshe Shelley in her story . Mary Shelley portrays him as a sympathetic figure with an " angelic behavior, incapable of any harm to other people ". He becomes a political pawn because of his sensitivity. Mary Shelley seems to have identified herself primarily with Richard's wife, Lady Katherine Gordon. She survived her husband's death because she compromises with his political opponents. Lady Gordon's character in this story stands for the values ​​of friendship, domesticity and equality. In her person, Mary Shelley offers a female alternative to the male striving for power that Richard destroys.

Perkin Warbeck was received favorably by the critics when it appeared. The Edinburgh Literary Journal describes the novel as a book that shows the mark of a capable head. Today the novel is considered to be one of the secondary works in Mary Shelley's oeuvre.

supporting documents

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Frank, " Perkin Warbeck "
  2. ↑ Spark, 201; Lynch, 135-41
  3. ↑ Bunnell, 132; Brewer, " Perkin Warbeck ".
  4. ↑ Wake, 246-47; Brewer, " Perkin Warbeck ".
  5. ↑ Bunnell, 132; Lynch, 143-44.
  6. ↑ Bunnell, 133.
  7. ↑ Wake, 246-47.

literature

  • Bennett, Betty T. "The Political Philosophy of Mary Shelley's Historical novels: Valperga and Perkin Warbeck ". The Evidence of the Imagination . Eds. Donald H. Reiman, Michael C. Jaye, and Betty T. Bennett. New York: New York University Press, 1978.
  • Brewer, William D. " William Godwin, Chivalry, and Mary Shelley's The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck ". Papers on Language and Literature 35.2 (Spring 1999): 187-205. Rpt. on bnet.com. Retrieved February 20, 2008.
  • 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 .
  • Garbin, Lidia. "Mary Shelley and Walter Scott: The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck and the Historical Novel". Mary Shelley's Fiction: From Frankenstein to Falkner . Eds. Michael Eberle-Sinatra and Nora Crook. New York: Macmillan; St. Martin's, 2000.
  • Hopkins, Lisa. "The Self and the Monstrous". 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.
  • Lynch, Deidre. "Historical novelist". The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley . Ed. Esther Schor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-521-00770-4 .
  • Sites, Melissa. "Chivalry and Utopian Domesticity in Mary Shelley's The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck ". European Romantic Review 16.5 (2005): 525-43.
  • Spark, Muriel . Mary Shelley . London: Cardinal, 1989. ISBN 0-7474-0318-X .
  • Wake, Ann M Frank. "Women in the Active Voice: Recovering Female History in Mary Shelley's Valperga and Perkin Warbeck ". Iconoclastic Departures: Mary Shelley after "Frankenstein". Essays in Honor of the Bicentenary of Mary Shelley's Birth. Ed. Syndy M. Conger, Frederick S. Frank, and Gregory O'Dea. Madison, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997. ISBN 0-8386-3684-5 .

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