Revolutionary Politics (Edmund Burke, Percy Shelley, Mary wollstonecraft)

Question 1

2 key contexts

Answer 1

• French Revolution (1789-99)
  
  • followed by Hatian revolution: led by enslaved people
• Peterloo Massacre (August 1819)

Question 2

“Reflections on the Revolution in France”

Question 3

The chaos of the French Revolution

Answer 3

All circumstances taken together, the French revolution is the most astonishing that has hitherto
happened in the world. The most wonderful things are brought about in many instances by means the
most absurd and ridiculous; in the most ridiculous modes; and apparently, by the most contemptible instruments. Every thing seems out of nature in this
strange chaos of levity and ferocity, and of all sorts of crimes jumbled together with all sorts of follies.
In viewing this monstrous tragi-comic scene, the most opposite passions necessarily succeed, and
sometimes mix with each other in the mind; alternate contempt and indignation; alternate
laughter and tears; alternate scorn and horror

Question 4

analysis

Answer 4

• Burke writes about beauty and sublime but also in politics
• for political cause to succeed, needs to be unified in what you’re asking/hoping for
• in French Revolution: finds chaotic feelings where emotion is overtaking thought
• progressive politics: moving things forward
• conservative politics: conserving the things they are, reforming what already exists
• conservative politics as an aesthetic idea:
  
  • beauty in the hierarchy of things
  • in S&S, as long as those with power act in a way that’s sympathetic and sensible
• French revolution is ugly in an aesthetic view
• fears:
  
  • don’t know how long it will go on => can descend into anarchy
  • afraid same thing will happen in England
• attempt to explain and confine ideas

Question 5

Inheritance and succession

Answer 5

You will observe, that from Magna Charta to the Declaration of Right, it has been the uniform policy of our constitution to claim and assert our liberties, as an entailed inheritance derived to us from our forefathers, and to be transmitted to our posterity; as an estate specially belonging to the people of this kingdom without any reference whatever to any other more general or prior right. By this means our
constitution preserves an unity in so great a diversity of its parts. We have an inheritable crown;
an inheritable peerage; and an house of commons and a people inheriting privileges, franchises, and liberties, from a long line of ancestors.

Question 6

analysis

Answer 6

• inherit what is gained before you
• born in US => inherit Bill of Rights
  
  • entering in a system of rules that already existed
• gradual shift => reforming things from within

Question 7

Inheritance and family crucial to the English nation

Answer 7

By a constitutional policy, working after the pattern
of nature, we receive, we hold, we transmit our government and our privileges, in the same manner in which we enjoy and transmit our property and
our lives. The institutions of policy, the goods of
fortune, the gifts of Providence, are handed down, to us and from us, in the same course and order.
Our political system is placed in a just correspondence and symmetry with the order of
the world, and with the mode of existence decreed to a permanent body composed of transitory parts; wherein, by the disposition of a stupendous
wisdom, moulding together the great mysterious incorporation of the human race, the whole, at one time, is never old, or middle-aged, or young, but in a condition of unchangeable constancy, moves on through the varied tenour of perpetual decay, fall,
renovation, and progression.

Thus, by preserving the method of nature in the
conduct of the state, in what we improve we are
never wholly new; in what we retain we are never
wholly obsolete. By adhering in this manner and on
those principles to our forefathers, we are guided
not by the superstition of antiquarians, but by the
spirit of philosophic analogy. In this choice of
inheritance we have given to our frame of polity the
image of a relation in blood; binding up the
constitution of our country with our dearest
domestic ties; adopting our fundamental laws into
the bosom of our family affections; keeping
inseparable, and cherishing with the warmth of all
their combined and mutually reflected charities, our
state, our hearths, our sepulchres, and our altars.

Question 8

analysis

Answer 8

• like how he described bird’s beak & woman’s neck
• beauty is symmetrical, something harmonious
  
  • “unchangeable” = conservative
• family and politics
  
  • idea of emotional attachment to British monarchy
  • need to have reverence & respect to status quo

Question 9

Gothic history

Answer 9

History, who keeps a durable record of all our acts,
and exercises her awful censure over the
proceedings of all sorts of sovereigns, will not
forget, either those events, or the aera of this
liberal refinement in the intercourse of mankind.
History will record, that on the morning of the 6th
of October 1789, the king and queen of France,
after a day of confusion, alarm, dismay, and
slaughter, lay down, under the pledged security of
public faith, to indulge nature in a few hours of
respite, and troubled melancholy repose.

From this sleep the queen was first startled by the
voice of the centinel at her door, who cried out to
her, to save herself by flight—that this was the last
proof of fidelity he could give—that they were upon
him, and he was dead. Instantly he was cut down. A
band of cruel ruffians and assassins, reeking with his
blood, rushed into the chamber of the queen, and
pierced with an hundred strokes of bayonets and
poniards the bed, from whence this persecuted
woman had but just time to fly almost naked, and
through ways unknown to the murderers had
escaped to seek refuge at the feet of a king and
husband, not secure of his own life for a moment.

Question 10

analysis

Answer 10

• politically charged moment where they’re heading to guillotine
  
  • get us to sympathize monarchs
• portray them as moments of terror, violence than sophisticated political society
• anyone can rise => French revolution ignores that
• sees French revolution as the end of sensibility
  
  • carnage shows society disregards sensibility

Question 11

Chivalry, nobility, and sensibility

Answer 11

This mixed system of opinion and sentiment had its
origin in the antient chivalry; and the principle,
though varied in its appearance by the varying state
of human affairs, subsisted and influenced through
a long succession of generations, even to the time
we live in. If it should ever be totally extinguished,
the loss I fear will be great. It is this which has given
its character to modern Europe. It is this which has
distinguished it under all its forms of government,
and distinguished it to its advantage, from the
states of Asia, and possibly from those states which
flourished in the most brilliant periods of the
antique world.

It was this, which, without confounding ranks, had
produced a noble equality, and handed it down
through all the gradations of social life. It was this
opinion which mitigated kings into companions, and
raised private men to be fellows with kings. Without
force, or opposition, it subdued the fierceness of
pride and power; it obliged sovereigns to submit to
the soft collar of social esteem, compelled stern
authority to submit to elegance, and gave a
domination vanquisher of laws, to be subdued by
manners

Question 12

analysis

Answer 12

• checks and balances = sense and sensibility
• has conservative nostalgic viewpoint of sense and sensibility => starting to wane
  
  • French revolution = social collapse
  • Is Austen writing about something nostalgic? (S&S published 20 years after revolution)

Question 13

Revolution as violence

Answer 13

Already there appears a poverty of
conception, a coarseness and vulgarity in
all the proceedings of the assembly and of
all their instructors. Their liberty is not
liberal. Their science is presumptuous
ignorance. Their humanity is savage and
brutal.

Question 14

analysis

Answer 14

• “savage” “brutal” = aesthetic
  
  • differentiated b/twn civilized people
  • a certain humanity that’s not human enough => closer to savage and violence
• humanity = reasonable, rational, logical OR something violent, emotional

Question 15

Peterloo Massacre

Answer 15

• August 1819
• 60K organize: hundreds are injured and 11 died
• “The Mask of Anarchy” originally published as “The Masque of Anarchy”

Question 16

“The Mask of Anarchy” - Percy Shelley

Question 17

The prophetic voice

Answer 17

As I lay asleep in Italy
There came a voice from over the Sea,
And with great power it forth led me
To walk in the visions of Poesy

• “voice” = wind, idea of corresponding breeze
  
  • sound, voice as a prophecy to come
  • a glimpse of what might be on the horizon

Question 18

Allegory and the real people

Answer 18

I met Murder on the way–
He had a mask like Castlereagh–
Very smooth he looked, yet grim;
Seven blood-hounds followed him:

All were fat; and well they might
Be in admirable plight,
For one by one, and two by two,
He tossed them human hearts to chew

Which from his wide cloak he drew.
Next came Fraud, and he had on,
Like Eldon, an ermined gown;
His big tears, for he wept well,
Turned to mill-stones as they fell.

And the little children, who
Round his feet played to and fro,
Thinking every tear a gem,
Had their brains knocked out by them

Clothed with the Bible, as with light,
And the shadows of the night,
Like Sidmouth, next, Hypocrisy
On a crocodile rode by.

And many more Destructions played
In this ghastly masquerade,
All disguised, even to the eyes,
Like Bishops, lawyers, peers, or spies.

Last came Anarchy: he rode
On a white horse, splashed with blood;
He was pale even to the lips,
Like Death in the Apocalypse.

And he wore a kingly crown;
And in his grasp a sceptre shone;
On his brow this mark I saw–
“I AM GOD, AND KING, AND LAW!”

Question 19

analysis

Answer 19

• embodiments of destruction, anarchy, death => four horsemen
• acknowledging certain people who are active and alive in England => embodiments of abstractions like anarchy
• thinking of hypocrisy & ridiculousness of humans having power that becomes authoritarian
• hiding what they actually are & what they actually want => “disguising”
  
  • pro-porting to be acting for the citizen’s good but really for themselves

Question 20

Wreaking havoc upon England

Answer 20

And a mighty troop around,
With their trampling shook the ground,
Waving each a bloody sword,
For the service of their Lord.

And with glorious triumph, they
Rode through England proud and gay,
Drunk as with intoxication
Of the wine of desolation.

O’er fields and towns, from sea to sea,
Passed the Pageant swift and free,
Tearing up, and trampling down;
Till they came to London town.

Question 21

analysis

Answer 21

• apocalyptic wave of what comes next
  
  • desolation, intoxication => tearing down ordinary citizens
• recasting massacre as British militia to quell ambition
  
  • use poetry to recalibrate historical event
  • violence is wreaked by militia
  • realigns us with revolutionary politics

Question 22

Poetry’s rallying cry

Answer 22

And Anarchy, the ghastly birth,
Lay dead earth upon the earth;
The Horse of Death tameless as wind
Fled, and with his hoofs did grind
To dust the murderers thronged behind.

A rushing light of clouds and splendour,
A sense awakening and yet tender
Was heard and felt – and at its close
These words of joy and fear arose

As if their own indignant Earth
Which gave the sons of England birth
Had felt their blood upon her brow,
And shuddering with a mother’s throw

Had turned every drop of blood
By which her face had been bedewed
To an accent unwithstood,–
As if her heart had cried aloud:

“Men of England, heirs of Glory,
Heroes of unwritten story,
Nurslings of one mighty Mother,
Hopes of her, and one another;

“Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number,
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you –
Ye are many – they are few.

“What is Freedom? – ye can tell
That which slavery is, too well –
For its very name has grown
To an echo of your own.

Question 23

analysis

Answer 23

• disproportionately more people being exploited
  
  • trying to get us to rise => odds are in their favor
• “They are few” => using poetry to wake up the masses
• how to achieve freedom when you are many and they are few
• poetry as an archive for understanding history
  
  • archiving the 11 people who perished

Question 24

Pacifism

Answer 24

“On those who first should violate
Such sacred heralds in their state
Rest the blood that must ensue,
And it will not rest on you.

“And if then the tyrants dare
Let them ride among you there,
Slash, and stab, and maim, and hew,–
What they like, that let them do.

“With folded arms and steady eyes,
And little fear, and less surprise,
Look upon them as they slay
Till their rage has died away.

“Then they will return with shame
To the place from which they came,
And the blood thus shed will speak
In hot blushes on their cheek.

Question 25

analysis

Answer 25

• if blood is shed, the guild won’t be on those who died
• Shelley is critiquing violence and subduing revolution
  
  • can have revolution without bloodshed
• poetry can conjure up a new end of form

Question 26

Poetry as politics

Answer 26

“And these words shall then become
Like Oppression’s thundered doom
Ringing through each heart and brain,
Heard again – again – again–

“Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number–
Shake your chains to earth like dew

Which in sleep had fallen on you–
Ye are many – they are few.

Question 27

analysis

Answer 27

• repeating phrases = rallying cry
• showing brutal savagery resting on conservative governors who would rather kill members of their own society

Question 28

Mary Wollstonecraft

Question 29

1759

Answer 29

born to abusive father and long-suffering mother

Question 30

1780s

Answer 30

opens a girls’ school with other women near London (closes within years); loses friend Fanny Blood to childbirth

Question 31

1786

Answer 31

Publishes Thoughts on the Education of Daughters

Question 32

1790

Answer 32

publishes A Vindication of the Rights of Men, a response to Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France

Question 33

1792

Answer 33

publishes A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

Question 34

1793-94

Answer 34

lives in France, bears a child with Gilbert Imlay, an American expat (don’t marry)

Question 35

1796

Answer 35

publishes Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark
- meets and falls in love with Willian godwin, radical philosopher (don’t marry but work in separate quarters)

Question 36

1797

Answer 36

gives birth to Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin and dies 10 days afterward from blood poisoning

Question 37

more on Mary Wollstonecraft

Answer 37

• explores the social and cultural construction of femininity
• part of a larger discussion of human rights at a time when women lacked political representation
• most women worked as servants, nurses, and governesses
• most women received haphazard, scant education (if at all)
• coverture and primogeniture: wealth and inheritance pass from fathers to (firstborn) sons

Question 38

“A Vindication on the Rights of Women”

Question 39

Differentiating between nature and nurture

Answer 39

either nature has made a great difference
between man and man, or that the
civilization, which has hitherto taken place in
the world, has been very partial… The conduct
and manners of women, in fact, evidently
prove, that their minds are not in a healthy
state; for, like the flowers that are planted in
too rich a soil, strength and usefulness are
sacrificed to beauty; and the flaunting leaves,
after having pleased a fastidious eye, fade,
disregarded on the stalk, long before the
season when they ought to have arrived at
maturity

Question 40

analysis

Answer 40

• self-fulfilling prophecy of womanhood that keeps them from achieving or succeeding
• civilization has preferred one sex over the other: there’s no different b/twn them
• women are socialized and trained to want in society to expect certain things in their lives and not ask for more
• men are prepared for professions, women are not, women’s lives are oriented around marriage => not the same for men

Question 41

Weakness socially defined as femininity (and vice versa)

Answer 41

My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat
them like rational creatures, instead of
flattering their FASCINATING graces, and
viewing them as if they were in a state of
perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone. I
earnestly wish to point out in what true
dignity and human happiness consists—I wish
to persuade women to endeavour to acquire
strength, both of mind and body, and to
convince them, that the soft phrases,
susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment,
and refinement of taste, are almost
synonymous with epithets of weakness, and
that those beings who are only the objects of
pity and that kind of love, which has been
termed its sister, will soon become objects of
contempt.

Dismissing then those pretty feminine
phrases, which the men condescendingly use
to soften our slavish dependence, and
despising that weak elegancy of mind,
exquisite sensibility, and sweet docility of
manners, supposed to be the sexual
characteristics of the weaker vessel, I wish to
show that elegance is inferior to virtue, that
the first object of laudable ambition is to
obtain a character as a human being,
regardless of the distinction of sex; and that
secondary views should be brought to this
simple touchstone.

Question 42

analysis

Answer 42

• all attributes that are desirable of marriage are “epithets of weakness”
• in a state of “perpetualized childhood”
• it’s not good or bad that women are perceived as the weaker vessel but they prevent women from “obtaining a character as a human being”
• having an intellect that can differentiate b/twn right and wrong, think on your own etc.
• “slavishly dependent” on men, fathers, brother, husbands etc.

Question 43

The cult of sensibility

Answer 43

Novels, music, poetry and gallantry, all tend to
make women the creatures of sensation, and
their character is thus formed during the time
they are acquiring accomplishments, the only
improvement they are excited, by their station
in society, to acquire. This overstretched
sensibility naturally relaxes the other powers
of the mind, and prevents intellect from
attaining that sovereignty which it ought to
attain, to render a rational creature useful to
others, and content with its own station; for
the exercise of the understanding, as life
advances, is the only method pointed out by
nature to calm the passions

Question 44

analysis

Answer 44

• obtaining sovereignty
• women are creatures of sensation
• women improved standing in society will benefit everybody, not just individual

Question 45

Women’s education critical for all human society

Answer 45

Contending for the rights of women, my main
argument is built on this simple principle, that if
she be not prepared by education to become the
companion of man, she will stop the progress of
knowledge, for truth must be common to all, or it
will be inefficacious with respect to its influence
on general practice. And how can woman be
expected to co-operate, unless she know why she
ought to be virtuous? Unless freedom strengthen
her reason till she comprehend her duty, and see
in what manner it is connected with her real
good? If children are to be educated to
understand the true principle of patriotism, their
mother must be a patriot; and the love of
mankind, from which an orderly train of virtues
spring, can only be produced by considering the
moral and civil interest of mankind; but the
education and situation of woman, at present,
shuts her out from such investigations

Question 46

analysis

Answer 46

• subjucation of women is hampering mankind at large

Question 47

Women’s moral lives not tenable in current situation

Answer 47

Women ought to endeavour to purify their hearts;
but can they do so when their uncultivated
understandings make them entirely dependent on
their senses for employment and amusement, when
no noble pursuit sets them above the little vanities
of the day, or enables them to curb the wild
emotions that agitate a reed over which every
passing breeze has power? To gain the affections of
a virtuous man, is affectation necessary? Nature has
given woman a weaker frame than man; but, to
ensure her husband’s affections, must a wife, who,
by the exercise of her mind and body, whilst she was
discharging the duties of a daughter, wife, and
mother, has allowed her constitution to retain its
natural strength, and her nerves a healthy tone, is
she, I say, to condescend, to use art, and feign a
sickly delicacy, in order to secure her husband’s
affection? Weakness may excite tenderness, and
gratify the arrogant pride of man; but the lordly
caresses of a protector will not gratify a noble mind
that pants for and deserves to be respected.
Fondness is a poor substitute for friendship

Question 48

analysis

Answer 48

• what do some women do in order to secure a husband?
  
  • feigning weakness and inferiority
• but then you can never be friends or respected
• how do you care for someone who you are not biologically related to?
• friendship and equality

Question 49

Education leads to reason and virtue

Answer 49

Consequently, the most perfect
education, in my opinion, is such an
exercise of the understanding as is best
calculated to strengthen the body and
form the heart; or, in other words, to
enable the individual to attain such
habits of virtue as will render it
independent. In fact, it is a farce to call
any being virtuous whose virtues do not
result from the exercise of its own
reason

• exercise virtue by thinking on your own

Question 50

From private to public sphere

Answer 50

the more understanding women acquire, the
more they will be attached to their duty,
comprehending it, for unless they comprehend it,
unless their morals be fixed on the same
immutable principles as those of man, no
authority can make them discharge it in a
virtuous manner. They may be convenient slaves,
but slavery will have its constant effect,
degrading the master and the abject dependent.

But, if women are to be excluded, without having
a voice, from a participation of the natural rights
of mankind, prove first, to ward off the charge of
injustice and inconsistency, that they want
reason, else this flaw in your NEW
CONSTITUTION, the first constitution founded on
reason, will ever show that man must, in some
shape, act like a tyrant, and tyranny, in whatever
part of society it rears its brazen front, will ever
undermine morality

I have repeatedly asserted, and produced what
appeared to me irrefragable arguments drawn
from matters of fact, to prove my assertion, that
women cannot, by force, be confined to domestic
concerns; for they will however ignorant,
intermeddle with more weighty affairs,
neglecting private duties only to disturb, by
cunning tricks, the orderly plans of reason which
rise above their comprehension.

Question 51

analysis

Answer 51

• current institution of marriage excludes both men and women
• tyranny
• interlocking social justice issues are all tied together

Question 52

Aiming for a more just society

Answer 52

Yet, if love be the supreme good, let
women be only educated to inspire it,
and let every charm be polished to
intoxicate the senses; but, if they are
moral beings, let them have a chance to
become intelligent; and let love to man
be only a part of that glowing flame of
universal love, which, after encircling
humanity, mounts in grateful incense to
God

• women be only educated to inspire it
• women’s education will improve everything
• a glowing flame of universal love
• if we are dissatisfied with our society, what do we do about it?