Mary Shelley on the therapeutic value of language

Papers on Language and Literature, Fall 1994 by Brewer, William D

Thus Shelly balances her presentation of positive language therapy, Beatrice's narration before the loving and sensitive Euthanasia, with an example of how baring one's psyche before a manipulative and unscrupulous person can lead to madness. Moreover, Beatrice's dependence on Euthanasia, and her rapid decline into insanity after she decides to stop confiding in her friend, suggest that although spoken words can be therapeutic, a traumatized person's prognosis depends on the availability of a sympathetic and supportive listener. And in an oppressively patriarchal world, a psychologically disturbed woman needs another woman to hear her--in Mathilda and "The Mourner" women refuse to tell their emotionally-charged stories to men, no matter how well-intentioned the men may be, but Beatrice gains at least a temporary respite when she relates her tale to Euthanasia. In every case, however, there are some words which must remain unsaid.

Although Shelly does not explicitly deal with the theme of language therapy in two of her later novels, The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck and Lodore, she does address the issue of language's power to effect positive change. In Perkin Warbeck, for example, Monina de Faro uses words to entrance one of the novel's villains, the treacherous Robert Clifford: "They spoke of the desolate waste of waters that hems in the stable earth--of the golden isles beyond: to all these subjects Monina brought vivid imagery, and bright painting, creations of her own quick fancy. [Robert] Clifford had never before held such discourse....The melodious voice of Monina, attuned by the divine impulses of her spirit, as the harp of the winds by celestial breezes, raised a commotion in his mind, such as a prophetess of Delphi felt, when the oracular vapour rose up to fill her with sacred fury." But Monina only succeeds in enchanting (and, significantly, feminizing) Clifford for a moment: "A word, a single word, was a potent northern blast to dash aside the mist, and to re-apparel the world in its, to him, naked, barren truth" (II: 26). Her praise of Richard of York (Perkin Warbeck) inspires Clifford's jealous hatred, and "a single word" is enough to recall him to his evil nature. While Monina is, like Woodville in Mathilda, a poetic and spellbinding speaker, both characters fail in their efforts to use words to inspire others. Not even the most powerful and imaginative discourse can wean Clifford and Mathilda away from their self-destructive passions. In Perkin. Warbeck, Shelly suggests that words cannot convert--they can only reinforce tendencies and beliefs already present. Thus Monina is able to inspire Edmund Plantagenet because he thinks as she does: "her bold, impetuous language had its effect on Edmund: it echoed his own master passion" (III: 67).

Fanny Derham, a minor character in Shelley's Lodore, believes passionately in the power of words to cause change. She declares her convictions to Ethel Villiers, the novel's heroine: "Words have more power than any one can guess; it is by words that the world's great fight, now in these civilized times, is carried on; I never hesitated to use them, when I fought any battle for the miserable and oppressed. People are so afraid to speak, it would seem as if half our fellow-creatures were born with deficient organs; like parrots they can repeat a lesson, but their voice fails them, when that alone is wanting to make the tyrant quail" (153). Moreover, when Ethel and her husband are in need of help, Fanny's conversation with Ethel's estranged mother, Lady Lodore, saves her friend from much suffering. But Shelly repeatedly undercuts Fanny's idealistic sentiments by presenting her as other-worldly and unrealistic; after the speech quoted above, Fanny asserts that "while [she] converse[s] each day with Plato, and Cicero, and Epictetus, the world...passes from before [her] like a vain shadow" (153). And when Fanny inherits a fortune, she cannot grasp its significance: "Fanny was too young, and too wedded to her platonic notions of the supremacy of mind, to be fully aware of the invaluable advantages of pecuniary independence for a woman. She fancied that she could enter on the career--the only career permitted her sex--of servitude, and yet possess her soul in freedom and power" (206). Thus, although Shelly presents a character in Lodore who steadfastly believes in the power of language, Fanny is too inexperienced and bookish to be taken as a reliable authority on this subject. In fact, Shelly suggests that lie will test Fanny's idealism: "One who feels so deeply for others, and yet is so stern a censor over herself--at once so sensitive and so rigidly conscientious--so single-minded and upright, and yet open as day to charity and affection, cannot hope to pass from youth to age unharmed" (228). Even in this late novel, Shelly seems skeptical about the efficacy of words, particularly when they are employed by a naive idealist.