Shelley and the Marriage Question — Themes and Context

Shelley's Ideal vs. Practical Reform

Todhunter characterizes Shelley as a 'better physician than Goethe' who diagnosed lust as 'the undying worm at the root of the Tree of Life.' Yet he faults Shelley for believing that abolishing marriage would end prostitution, arguing instead that 'abolish prostitution and marriage will cease.' The essay insists that Shelley's vision of 'absolute freedom of contract' in marriage is unworkable because 'men are not yet harmonious creatures.' Todhunter's critique is sharp: Shelley, he claims, did not see that 'the abolition of marriage would no more get rid of lust than the abolition of private property would get rid of selfishness.' This section reveals Todhunter's central tension—admiring Shelley's diagnosis while rejecting his prescription.

The British Ratepayer and the Tenth Case

Todhunter grounds the debate in practical politics, personifying the 'British ratepayer' who 'cares nothing about women and children, except in so far as there is a danger of their coming upon the rates.' He acknowledges that marriage may work well 'in nine cases out of ten,' but insists 'the tenth case must be considered, and relief given if possible.' This leads him to endorse greater facility of divorce while dismissing Mrs. Caird's proposal for 'greater laxity of the marriage bond ab initio' as 'quite outside the sphere of practical politics.' Todhunter's tone is wry: 'law and society are the most impertinent things in the world, always binding with briers our joys and desires.'

The Cythnas of the Present Day

Todhunter invokes Shelley's poem Laon and Cythna to connect the poet's revolutionary heroine with contemporary feminists: 'There are a good many Cythnas ready to rush about on their black Tartarian hobbies, of whom Mrs. Mona Caird is the one who has recently made most noise.' He notes that these 'Cythnas of the present day have felt their burthens more directly than Shelley did,' particularly in demanding 'economic independence, that they may not be forced into marriage or prostitution by the various degrees of starvation.' Todhunter endorses this demand as 'a just one,' but remains skeptical of Shelley's ideal of free love, warning against imperiling 'the progress' represented by monogamic marriage.

Todhunter's essay is a curious hybrid: part literary criticism, part social commentary, part polemic. Readers should note that his argument relies on a selective reading of Shelley—he uses Laon and Cythna as a touchstone but does not engage with Shelley's other prose works on marriage. The essay is best approached as a document of its time, revealing how a late-Victorian intellectual wrestled with the tension between radical ideals and the perceived realities of human nature and social order.

That grey afternoon, Todhunter’s critique of Shelley’s free love stuck with me—his worry that abolishing marriage without confronting lust leaves something raw. Later, fishing through my shelf for distraction, I stumbled upon Revolted Woman: Past, present, and to come — Background and Themes, which seemed to answer his unease from the other side. Rain kept falling; the pages turned themselves.