HI, ladies!!
It is Monday, November 17, 2008, today, and has been a bit cloudy.
Alice, are you getting all right? You must have had hard days these days, and I’m afraid of having been one of the causes …Take care!
Today’s summary: The crusade against marriage
To many in the middle ranks of society “the gilded cage” of bourgeois marriage meant the dark ages. Hostility to Judaeo/Christian marriage and the laws and social customs which upheld it were circulating in England. The political thinkers, such as W.Godwin, Shelly, Byron and Southey, hated it because of its emphasis on monogamy. Their fervent belief in unrestrained sex confused the love ideals of succeeding generations. Though The Times wanted to prevent the plea for free love from passing into popular circulation, their works became a formative text of the 19C crusade against marriage.
Names&aims
Robert Owen—His main interests were national education, community life, co-operation, trade unionism, the abolition of property. (Later added marriage in his list of evil customs, as ‘a Satanic device of the Priesthood to place and keep mankind within their slavish superstitions…’)
Frances Wright—She was a supporter of R. Owen and the most Radical female opponent of her day, assuming married women’s control of their own property, greater educational opportunity, breaking an unsatisfactory marital tie, and entering into sexual relations. She was the first woman to lecture on these subjects in the US publicly.
Fanny Wright—she became the first woman to act publicly opposes slavery in America, founding a commune in Tennessee. She was regarded as the advocate of anarchy, atheism and free love, and thus praise for her efforts was drowned by outcries against her ‘licentiousness.’
--- They seems rather extreme even from our time, but this article is very intriguing, isn’t it? SO, see you next. Bye!
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Dear Cherry and friends,
Hello! How are you?
Thank you for giving me a warm message, Cherry. Don’t worry about me. All I need to do is to make myself physically.
Coincidentally, we are reading about William Godwin, Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley, and Lord Byron from different books.
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Last night, I mentioned the difference between two versions of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Although the 1831 version retains that Frankenstein’s father’s negligence contributes his fatal character, his mother and his fiancé were described as his guardians. Despite such circumstantial changes, this version suggests that he cannot change his destiny. He was the victim of nature in the 1831 version.
• 5 “Ideal and Almost Unnatural Perfection” Revising Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley’s last three books are completely different from earlier books, which were labeled as “unorthodoxy.” Her retreat from unorthodoxy was not immediate. The series of domestic catastrophes she suffered between 1816 and 1822 could be suggested as indirect cause. She lost her baby, friends and friends’ babies during this period.
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