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EVENTFUL winter passed; winter, the respite of our
ills. By degrees the sun, which with slant beams had before yielded the more
extended reign to night, lengthened his diurnal journey, and mounted his
highest throne, at once the fosterer of earth's new beauty, and her lover.
We who, like flies that congregate upon a dry rock at the ebbing of the
tide, had played wantonly with time, allowing our passions, our hopes, and
our mad desires to rule us, now heard the approaching roar of the ocean of
destruction, and would have fled to some
We began our preparations at first with alacrity. We did not now bid adieu to
our native country, to the graves of those we loved, to the flowers, and
streams, and trees, which had lived beside us from infancy. Small sorrow
would be ours on leaving Paris. A scene of shame, when we remembered our
late contentions, and thought that we left behind a flock of miserable,
deluded victims, bending under the tyranny of a selfish impostor. Small
pangs should we feel in leaving the gardens,
Yet our spirits flagged, as the day drew near which we had fixed for our departure. Dire visions and evil auguries, if such things were, thickened around us, so that in vain might men say--
Shakespeare--Julius Caesar
[I.iii.30]
[External link: the complete play.]
On mustering our company, we found them to consist of fourteen hundred souls,
men, women, and children. Until now therefore, we were undiminished in
numbers, except by the desertion of those who had attached themselves to the
impostor-prophet, and remained behind in Paris. About fifty French joined
us. Our order of march was easily arranged; the ill success which had
attended our division, determined Adrian to keep all in one body. I, with an
hundred men, went forward first as purveyor, taking the road of the Cote
d'Or, through Auxerre, Dijon, Dole, over the Jura
My friend accompanied me a few miles from Versailles. He was sad; and, in a tone of unaccustomed despondency, uttered a prayer for our speedy arrival among the Alps, accompanied with an expression of vain regret that we were not already there. "In that case," I observed, "we can quicken our march; why adhere to a plan whose dilatory proceeding you already disapprove?"
"Nay," replied he, "it is too late now. A month ago, and we were masters of
ourselves; now,--" he turned his face from me; though gathering twilight had
already veiled its expression, he turned it yet more away, as he added-- "a
man died of the plague "The plague" refers to an acute virulent disease, usually one
reaching or threatening to reach epidemic proportions, and
historically one caused by a bacterium. The medieval Black Death set
much of the tone and metaphorical conventions still operating in
many modern-era descriptions of plagues.
The history of nineteenth-century epidemics, and their construction as "the plague," reveals telling narrative and figurative patterns, all of them relevant to reading this novel (with its fabric of interwoven political, military, social, sexual, and medical narratives). As the histories are explained by Ranger and Slack (pp. 3-4),
Flight from an infected place was usual, and had to be defended (or attacked) since it took people away from charitable, neighbourly or political duties. Carriers of disease were identified and scapegoats stigmatised: foreigners most often, as in Renaissance Italy and modern Hawaii, since epidemic disease came from outside, but also inferiors, carriers of pollution of several kinds, among whom disease had its local roots--untouchables in India and ex-slaves in Africa, for example, or Jews at the time of the Black Death (though less commonly in Europe in later outbreaks of plague). For their part, the inferiors themselves thought epidemics the consequence of plots by external enemies, or governors and elites, to 'poison' the poor. (p. 4)
In our own moment at the end of the twentieth century, as Susan Sontag has suggested, the very idea of "virus" itself (rather than any actual bacterial infection) has become the metaphorical equivalent of "plague." Today a "virus" can infect computers and cultures (where it takes the form of a "meme") as well as individuals (p. 157). The very real plague of our time is AIDS, a syndrome that has most often been figured (at least until very recently) as a potential pandemic threatening a mass population.
The comparison of Mary Shelley's fictional depiction of a world-wide apocalyptic plague to the actual plague of AIDS has been the subject of works by critics such as Audrey Fisch, Mary Jacobus, Anne K. Mellor, and Barbara Johnson.
last night!"He spoke in a smothered voice, then suddenly clasping his hands, he
exclaimed, "Swiftly, most swiftly advances the last hour for us all; as the
stars vanish before the sun, so will his near approach destroy us. I have
done Cf. P. B. Shelley's
[External link: the complete poem.]
Would that it were over--would that her procession achieved, we had all entered the tomb together!"Tears streamed from his eyes. "Again and again," he continued, "will the tragedy be acted; again I must hear the groans of the dying, the wailing of the survivors; again witness the pangs, which, consummating all, envelope an eternity in their evanescent existence. Why am I reserved for this? Why the tainted wether of the flock, am I not struck to earth among the first? It is hard, very hard, for one of woman born to endure all that I endure!"
Hitherto, with an undaunted spirit, and an high feeling of duty and worth,
Adrian had fulfilled his self-imposed task. I had contem-
"Pardon me, Verney, I pain you, but I will no longer complain. Now I am
myself again, or rather I am better than myself. You have known how from my
childhood aspiring thoughts and high desires have warred with inherent
disease and overstrained sensitiveness, till the latter became victors. You
know how I placed
His vehemence, and voice broken by irrepressible sighs, sunk to my heart; his eyes gleamed in the gloom of night like two earthly stars; and, his form dilating, his countenance beaming, truly it almost seemed as if at his eloquent appeal a more than mortal spirit entered his frame, exalting him above humanity.
He turned quickly towards me, and held out his hand. "Farewell, Verney," he cried, "brother of my love, farewell; no other weak expression must cross these lips, I am alive again: to our tasks, to our combats with our unvanquishable foe, for to the last I will struggle against her."
He grasped my hand, and bent a look on me, more fervent and animated than any smile; then turning his horse's head, he touched the animal with the spur, and was out of sight in a moment.
A man last night had died of the plague. The quiver was not emptied, nor the
bow unstrung. We stood as marks, while Parthian Pestilence aimed and shot,
insatiated by conquest, unobstructed by the heaps of slain. A sickness of
the soul, contagious even to my physical mechanism, came over me. My knees
knocked together, my teeth chattered, the current of my blood, clotted by
sudden cold, painfully forced What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of
man, that thou visitest him? For thou (Psalms 8:4-6) (Shakespeare,
hast made
him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with
glory and honour. Thou madest him to have dominion over the
works of thy hands: thou has put all things under his feet . .
.sterile promontory; this most excellent
canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this
majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why it appeareth nothing
to me but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors. What [a]
piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in
faculties, in form and moving, how express and admirable in action,
how like an angel in apprehension, how like a god! the beauty of the
world; the paragon of animals; and yet to me what
is this quintessence of dust? . . .
External link: the complete play.
We repined that the pyramids had outlasted the embalmed body of their builder. Alas ! the mere shepherd's hut of straw we passed on the road, contained in its structure the principle of greater longevity thanSudden an internal voice, articulate and clear, seemed to say:--Thus from eternity, it was decreed: the steeds that bear Time onwards had this hour and this fulfilment enchained to them, since the void brought forth its burthen. Would you read backwards the unchangeable laws of Necessity?
Mother of the world! Servant of the Omnipotent! eternal, changeless
Necessity! Compare P. B. Shelley's long note to a line in
his radical poem,
"He who asserts the doctrine of Necessity means that, contemplating the events which compose the moral and material universe, he beholds only an immense and uninterrupted chain of causes and effects, no one of which could occupy any other place than it does occupy . . . . The doctrine of Necessity tends to introduce a great change into the established notions of morality, and utterly to destroy religion. . . ."
who with busy fingers sittest ever weaving the indissoluble chain of events!--I will not murmur at thy acts. If my human mind cannot acknowledge that all that is, is right; yet since what is, must be, I will sit amidst the ruins and smile. Truly we were not born to enjoy, but to submit, and to hope.Will not the reader tire, if I should minutely describe our long-drawn
journey from Paris to Geneva? If, day by day, I should record, in the
Yet the last events that marked our progress through France were so full of
strange horror and gloomy misery, that I dare not pause too long in the
narration. If I were to dissect each incident, every small fragment of a
second would
Weed-grown fields, desolate towns, the wild approach of riderless horses had now become habitual to my eyes; nay, sights far worse, of the unburied dead, and human forms which were strewed on the road side, and on the steps of once frequented habitations, where,
Elton's Translation of Hesiod's "Shield of Hercules".
[lines 206-8]
We arrived at Fontainebleau, and speedily prepared for the reception of our
friends. On mustering our numbers for the night, three were
We passed four days at Fontainebleau. Several sickened and died, and in the
mean time neither Adrian nor any of our friends appeared. My own troop was
in commotion; to reach Switzerland, to plunge into rivers of snow, and to
dwell in caves of ice, became the mad desire of all. Yet we had promised to
wait for the Earl; and he came not. My people demanded to be led
At length, on the fifth day, a messenger arrived from Adrian, bearing
letters, which directed us to proceed to Auxerre, and there await his
arrival, which would only be deferred for a few days. Such was the tenor of
his public letters. Those privately delivered to me, detailed at length the
difficulties of his situation, and left the arrangement of my future plans
to my own discretion. His account of the state of affairs at Versailles was
brief, but the oral communications of his messenger filled up his
omissions,
I was thrown into a most painful state of uncertainty by these
communications. My first impulse was that we should all return to
Versailles, there to assist in extricating our chief from his perils. I
accordingly assembled my troop, and proposed to them this retrograde
movement, instead of the continuation of our journey to Auxerre. With one
voice they refused to comply. The notion circulated among
We arrived the same night at Villeneuve-la-Guiard, a town at the distance of
four posts from Fontainebleau. When my companions had retired to rest, and I
was left alone to revolve and ruminate upon the intelligence I received of
Adrian's situation, another view of the subject presented itself to me. What
was I doing, and what was the object of my present movements? Apparently I
was to lead this troop of selfish and lawless men towards Switzerland,
leaving behind my family and my selected friend, which, subject as they were
hourly to the death that threatened to all, I might never see again. Was it
not my first duty to assist the Protector, setting an example of attachment
and duty? At a crisis, such as the one I had reached, it is very difficult
to balance nicely opposing interests, and that towards which our
inclinations lead us, obstinately assumes the appearance of selfishness,
even when we meditate a sacrifice. We are easily led at such times to make a
compromise of the question; and this was my present resource.
I was glad to escape from my rebellious troop, and to lose sight for a time,
of the strife of evil with good, where the former for ever remained
triumphant. I was stung almost to madness by my uncertainty concerning the
fate of Adrian, and grew reckless of any event, except what might lose or
preserve my unequalled friend. With an heavy heart, that sought relief in
the rapidity of my course, I rode through the night to Versailles. I
spurred Representations of gender and sexual identity in
A "woman's heart and sensibility"
and even "woman's work" are defined in the early chapters especially
as tied to deep feeling (I.7, II.1, II.2). But both Lionel and
Adrian are described as "effeminate" (e.g., III.6--though Lionel
says there that "a man must repress such girlish ecstacies") and
instances of cross-dressing, homosocial and homoerotic feeling
(e.g., I.2), and the sense that gender and sexual identity, like
other roles, are
In Volume III, chapter 5, a child is assigned shifting pronouns--male, female, and even the neuter "it"--an authorial or editorial mistake, clearly, but one that it has been argued may unconsciously reflect the book's deeper gender ambiguities.
When it comes to female figures from mythology, the novel opens with a Sybil (who may be a type of Cassandra) and contains important evocations of Pandora and Ariadne, as well as the modern myth of Corinne, to name a few, all potentially significant for any reading of representations of gender in
I found everything in a state of tumult. An emissary of the leader of the
elect, had been so worked up by his chief, and by his own fanatical creed,
as to make an attempt on the life of the Protector and preserver of lost
mankind. His hand was arrested while in the act of poignarding the Earl;
this circumstance had caused the clamour I heard on my arrival at the
castle, and the confused assembly of persons that I found assembled in the
Sâlle d'Hercule. Although superstition and demoniac fury had crept among the
emigrants, yet several adhered with fidelity to their noble chieftain; and
many, whose faith and love had been unhinged by fear, felt all their latent
affection rekindled by this detestable attempt. A phalanx of faithful
breasts closed round him; the wretch, who, although a prisoner and in
Discipline and peace were at length restored in the castle; and then Adrian
went from house to house, from troop to troop, to soothe the disturbed minds
of his followers, and recall
It was a moment of suspense, that shook even
His grand hold upon the minds of men, took its rise from the doctrine
inculcated by him, that those who believed in, and followed him, were the
remnant to be saved, while all the rest of mankind were marked out for
death. Now, at the time of the Flood, the omnipotent repented him that he
had created man, And it
repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved
him at his heart. And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have
created from the face of the earth: both man, and beast, and the
creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I
have made them. (Genesis 6:6-7)
At length the plague, slow-footed, but sure in her noiseless advance,
destroyed the illusion, invading the congregation of the elect, and
showering promiscuous death among them. Their leader endeavoured to conceal
this event; he had a few followers, who, admitted into the arcana of his
wickedness, could help him in the execution of his nefarious designs. Those
who sickened were immediately and quietly withdrawn, the cord and a
midnight-grave disposed of them for ever; while some plausible excuse was
given for their absence. At last a female, whose maternal vigilance subdued
even the effects of the narcotics administered to her, became a witness of
their murderous designs on her only child. Mad with horror, she would have
burst among her deluded fellow-victims, and, wildly shrieking, have awaked
the dull ear of night with the history of the fiend-like crime; when the
Impostor, in his last act of rage and desperation, plunged a poignard in her
bosom.
They left his miserable remains even where they lay; they placed the corpse
of poor Juliet and her babe upon a bier, and all, with hearts subdued to
saddest regret, in long procession walked towards Versailles. They met
troops