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SOME disorder had surely crept into the course of
the elements, destroying their benignant influence. The wind, prince of air,
raged through his kingdom, lashing the sea into fury, and subduing the rebel
earth into some sort of obedience.
That fable is unjust, which gives the superiority to the sun over the wind.
Who has not seen the lightsome earth, the balmy atmosphere, and basking
nature become dark, cold and ungenial, when the sleeping wind has awoke in
the east? Or, when the dun clouds thickly veil the sky, while exhaustless
stores of rain are poured down, until, the dank earth refusing to imbibe the
superabundant moisture, it lies in pools on the surface; when the torch of
day seems like a meteor, to be quenched; who has not seen the cloud-stirring
north arise, the streaked blue appear, and soon an opening made in the
vapours in the eye of the wind, through which the bright azure shines? The
clouds become thin; an arch is formed for ever rising upwards, till, the
universal cope being unveiled, the sun
Then mighty art thou, O wind, to be throned above all other vicegerents of nature's power; whether thou comest destroying from the east, or pregnant with elementary life from the west; thee the clouds obey; the sun is subservient to thee; the shoreless ocean is thy slave! Thou sweepest over the earth, and oaks, the growth of centuries, submit to thy viewless axe; the snow-drift is scattered on the pinnacles of the Alps, the avalanche thunders down their vallies. Thou holdest the keys of the frost, and canst first chain and then set free the streams; under thy gentle governance the buds and leaves are born, they flourish nursed by thee.
Why dost thou howl thus, O wind? By day and by night for four long months thy
roarings have not ceased--the shores of the sea are strewn with wrecks, its
keel-welcoming surface has become impassable, the earth has shed her beauty
in obedience to thy command; the frail balloon If
Balloons in the
early nineteenth century were still strongly associated with the
Enlightenment goals of the
The
eleven-year-old Mary Godwin produced a prose sketch (now lost) of a
popular comic song, "Mounseer Nongtongpaw"; an imitation of Dibdin perhaps based on this sketch tells of an
English tourist impressed with a "vast balloon" in Paris. The young
Percy Bysshe Shelley was no doubt responding to these same
associations of balloons with revolutionary (and French) ideas when
he sent up incendiary political poems attached to balloons, as
commemorated in his sonnet,
England
The opening paragraph of the novel establishes a central theme: the relationship of England to the rest of the world. Its status as a powerful island empire and ancient seat of learning, a "rock" amid the sea of time and change, is immediately set against the less stable image of England as a "ship"--one which can just as easily be wrecked on the "rocks" of time, change, chance and fate.
As the novel progresses, the metaphors of island and ship are reconfigured, again and again, in relation to shifting contexts. See passages in II.5 and III.4, among other examples. Related keywords for fruitful searching include "wrecked" and "shipwrecked," as well as "bark" and "vessel."
What are we, the inhabitants of this globe, least among the many that people
infinite space? Our minds embrace infinity; the visible mechanism of our
being is subject to merest accident. Day by day we are forced to believe
this. He whom a scratch has disorganized, he who disappears from apparent
life under the influence of the hostile agency at work around us, had the
same powers as I--I also am subject to the same laws. In the face of all
this we call ourselves lords of the creation, wielders of the elements,
Thus, losing our identity, that of which we are chiefly conscious, we glory in the continuity of our species, and learn to regard death without terror. But when any whole nation becomes the victim of the destructive powers of exterior agents, then indeed man shrinks into insignificance, he feels his tenure of life insecure, his inheritance on earth cut off.
I remember, after having witnessed the destructive effects of a fire, I could
not even behold a small one in a stove, without a sensation of fear. The
mounting flames had curled round the building, as it fell, and was
destroyed. They insinuated themselves into the substances about them, and
the impediments to their progress yielded at their touch. Could we take
integral parts of this power, and not be subject to its operation? Could we
domesticate a cub of
Thus we began to feel, with regard to many-visaged death let loose on the
chosen districts of our fair habitation, and above all, with regard to 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.
We feared the coming summer. Nations, bordering on the already infected countries, began to enter upon serious plans for the better keeping out of the enemy. We, a commercial people, were obliged to bring such schemes under consideration; and the question of contagion became matter of earnest disquisition.That the plague was not what is commonly called contagious, like the scarlet
fever, or extinct small-pox, was proved. It was called an epidemic. But the
grand question was still unsettled of how this epidemic was generated and
increased. If infection depended upon the air, the air was subject to
infection. As for instance, a typhus fever has been brought by ships to one
sea-port town; yet the
These were questions of prudence; there was no immediate necessity for an
earnest caution. England was still secure. France, Germany, Italy and Spain,
were interposed, walls yet without a breach, between us and the plague. Our
vessels truly were the sport of winds and waves,
These speculations were rife among us; yet not the less we proceeded in our
daily occupations, and our plans, whose accomplishment
At the commencement of summer, we began to feel, that the mischief which had
taken place in distant countries was greater than we had at first suspected.
Quito was destroyed by an earthquake. Mexico laid waste by the united
effects of storm, pestilence and famine. Crowds of emigrants inundated the
west of Europe; and our island had become the refuge of thousands. In the
mean time Ryland had been chosen Protector. He had sought this office with
eagerness, under the idea of turning his whole forces
Can it be true, each asked the other with
O, yes, it would--Countrymen, fear not! In the still uncultivated wilds of
America, what wonder that among its other giant destroyers, Plague should be
numbered! It is of old a native of the East, sister of the tornado, the
earthquake, and the simoon. Child of the sun, and nursling of the tropics,
it would expire in these climes. It drinks the dark blood of the
Our own distresses, though they were occa- At the time
William Godwin, whose
Mary Shelley's futuristic fiction on a plague that first decimates, then destroys the population of the earth, taking with it social institutions as well as individual lives, is obviously written with an eye to the same brightly-lit public arena in which her father, Godwin, played his role in this battle between optimistic and pessimistic scenarios for the future. In the novel, however, the suffering and imbalance of disease, rather than playing its role as a natural, impersonal, check on population growth, silences all debate.
out of the country. Even the source of colonies was dried up, for in New Holland, Van Diemen's Land, and the Cape of Good Hope, plague raged. O, for some medicinal vial to purge unwholesome nature, and bring back the earth to its accustomed health!Ryland was a man of strong intellects and quick and sound decision in the
usual course of things, but he stood aghast at the multitude of evils that
gathered round us. Must he tax the
Calm was now restored to the metropolis, and to the populous cities, before driven to desperation; and we returned to the consideration of distant calamities, wondering if the future would bring any alleviation to their excess. It was August; so there could be small hope of relief during the heats. On the contrary, the disease gained virulence, while starvation did its accustomed work. Thousands died unlamented; for beside the yet warm corpse the mourner was stretched, made mute by death.
On the eighteenth of this month news arrived in London that the plague was in
France and Italy. These tidings were at first whispered about town; but no
one dared express aloud the soul-quailing intelligence. When any one met a
friend in the street, he only cried as he hurried on, "You know!"-- while
the other, with an ejaculation of fear and horror, would answer,--"What will
become of us ?" At length it was mentioned in the newspapers. The paragraph
was inserted in an obscure part: "We regret
The English, whether travellers or residents, came pouring in one great
revulsive stream, back on their own country; and with them crowds of
Italians and Spaniards. Our little island was filled even to bursting. At
first an unusual
Adrian did not rest only with the exertions he could make with regard to his
own possessions. He addressed himself to the wealthy of the land; he made
proposals in parliament little adapted to please the rich; but his earnest
pleadings and benevolent eloquence were irresistible. To give up their
pleasure-grounds to the agriculturist,
It may be imagined that things were in a bad state indeed, before this spirit
of benevolence could have struck such deep roots. The infection had now
spread in the southern provinces of France. But that country had so many
resources in the way of agriculture, that the rush of population from one
part of it to another, and its increase through foreign emigration, was
less
Winter was hailed, a general and never-failing physician. The embrowning woods, and swollen rivers, the evening mists, and morning frosts, were welcomed with gratitude. The effects of purifying cold were immediately felt; and the lists of mortality abroad were curtailed each week. Many of our visitors left us: those whose homes were far in the south, fled delightedly from our northern winter, and sought their native land, secure of plenty even after their fearful visitation. We breathed again. What the coming summer would bring, we knew not; but the present months were our own, and our hopes of a cessation of pestilence were high.