William Godwin, chivalry, and Mary Shelley's The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck

Papers on Language and Literature, Spring 1999 by Brewer, William D

But while Richard fails miserably in the political arena, he clearly surpasses King Henry in the "cultivation of the private affections." In St. Leon and Perkin Warbeck chivalry is associated with the elevation of women, and the pursuit of wealth is linked to their devaluation and mistreatment. Godwin's endorsement of the "domestic and private affections" in the preface to St. Leon (xxxiv), which contrasts sharply with his denunciation of marriage in Political Justice, was a result of Mary Wollstonecraft's personal and intellectual influence on him (see Clemit xv, Marshall 204) . Wollstonecraft complains in A Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark ( 1796) that "the tyranny of wealth" (150) undermines human relationships: "A man ceases to love humanity, and then individuals, as he advances in the chase after wealth; as one clashes with his interest, the other with his pleasures: to business . . . every thing must give way; nay, is sacrificed; and all the endearing charities of citizen, husband, father, brother, become empty names" (193). According to her, "the sordid accumulators of cent per cent . . . term all virtue, of an heroic cast, romantic attempts at something above our nature" (191).

Whereas "the chase after wealth" requires men to sacrifice the "domestic affections," Godwin believes that the chivalric code celebrates selfless love and other virtues "of an heroic cast." As he observes in Life of Chaucer, "a candidate for knighthood" was taught to feel an "enthusiastic veneration . . . for female beauty when united with female virtue, and . . . the actions and habits which flowed from [the theories of honour and gallantry], are of the most poetical cast, and deeply interesting to the imagination" (1: 200). Moreover, "The lady loved and adored the military adventurer; the man of generous strain became a military adventurer that he might gain the favour of his mistress" (1: 49) . The influence of Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman ( 1792) can be detected in Thoughts on Man, published a year after Perkin Warbeck, in which Godwin credits "the institutions of chivalry" with transforming relations between men and women: "the fair perpetually stood in need of a protector and a champion. The knights on the other hand were taught to derive their fame and their honor from the suffrages of the ladies. Each sex stood in need of the other; and the basis of their union was mutual esteem" (Political and Philosophical Writings6: 198) .5 Before St. Leon is corrupted by the philosopher's stone, his relationship with his wife is characterized by "mutual esteem," which, in his view, "is the only substantial basis of love" (41). He confesses his "extreme inferiority to [his] incomparable partner" (42) and declares that they are "two bodies animated by a single soul" (133).

Similarly, in Perkin Warbeck Richard venerates Lady Katherine Gordon. Shelley writes that "his soul was in her hands, plastic to her fairy touch, and tenderness and worship and wonder took his heart, ere passion woke" (229). While Henry VII generally regards women with contempt, Richard considers them his most powerful allies: "in every adversity," he realizes, "women had been his resource and support; their energies, their undying devotion and enthusiasm, were the armour and weapons with which he had defended himself" (352). In contrast to the avaricious king, who subjects his queen to a "systematized and cold-hearted tyranny" (52), Richard claims that being married to Katherine makes him "richer than Tudor" (258). Shelley describes her protagonist as "the mark of man's hate and woman's love" (275).