Chapter II

It will doubtless seem, to many readers, that the question of Shelley’s inversion is at once answered in the negative by the simple fact of his marriage. This, however, is a superficial view. Many quite inverted men have married, either without themselves realising the nature of their own abnormality, or for purely conventional and social reasons, or even with the hope of thus curing themselves of their inversion. We have to remember that Shelley was not conscious of having homosexual impulses; he had never admitted them to himself. He married twice, and all through his life women influenced him. Yet his relations with them were strangely troubled, and his most intimate “affairs” were erotic failures. His calf-love for Miss Grove had no concrete basis of physical attraction, and it soon died out. Then came his marriage with Harriet Westbrook. He was not in love with her, however. It is certain, though not always recognised, that he married her from quixotic motives, and that the element of erotic attraction was almost entirely absent. Harriet appealed to him to save her from petty tyranny and misery at home and at school, and Shelley, feeling himself called upon to play the hero, rescued her. Doubtless he imagined that he would soon love her in the proper romantic way, but Dowden makes it clear that Harriet never at any time held the first place in his affections.

This place was held, as a matter of fact, by a young man, Thomas Hogg, to whom Shelley, a supposedly joyful groom on the eve of his romantic marriage, writes thus: “Your noble and exalted friendship, the prosecution of your happiness, can alone engage my impassioned interest. This (i.e. his approaching marriage) more resembles exerted action than inspired passion.”

In another letter he says: “The late perplexing occurrence which called me to Town occupies my time, engrosses my thoughts. I shall tell you more of it when we meet, which I hope will be soon. It does not, however, so wholly occupy my thoughts, but that you and your interests still are predominant.”

This letter is quoted in Hogg’s _Life of Shelley_, with the date of August 16, 1811, _the same month in which Shelley married_.

The story of the failure of this absurd and tragic marriage is well enough known. Mary Godwin, who, like her mother, had a noticeable strain of the masculine in her, roused Shelley to a genuine romantic passion, which supplanted the remnants of his spurious chivalry for Harriet. He saw that his union with the latter was a mere mockery, founded on self-deception, and he did not hesitate to break it up. He had never been in love with Harriet; always he was in love with Love. His subsequent marriage with Mary was in many ways happy, and on the surface it seemed successful, for she had more than the ordinary intellect and was devoted to him. Yet it was not truly successful from the erotic point of view, as is obvious from the tone of sadness and melancholy in his later poetry. To the last he was the victim of melancholy, and in conflict with himself, for his love-impulses remained unsatisfied. As long as he did not acknowledge the inverted component in these impulses, he was forced to seek ideal love in the guise of a woman; and the same force which kept up this repression also made him idealise Woman so extravagantly. All through his poetry we find the same quest for an unreal ideal woman, who is at once a sister, a friend, a leader of men, and a sexual mate. It is the theme of _Alastor_ and _The Revolt of Islam_; and in _Epipsychidion_ he relates how his whole life has been spent in seeking:

The shadow of that idol of my thought.

It would seem that at last he had found the ideal, for _Epipsychidion_ is a rhapsody of love for Emilia Viviani. But scarcely had the ink dried on the paper than he realised that Emilia, like Harriet, Mary, and Jane, was no Cythna, but a quite ordinary woman.

In spite of the views of romantic persons, the truth is that Shelley was not very susceptible to the _physical_ charms of real women. He was wholly influenced by his own conception of the ideal Heroine; and this conception was a curious mixture of sexual qualities. It is worth while contrasting Blake again with Shelley, in order to illustrate this point. Blake was unusually masculine. All his characters and his figures are strongly polarised--that is to say, he emphasised and exaggerated their typical sexual characteristics. His men all represent energy, passion, intellect, and muscular strength; his women are sweetness and tenderness incarnate. Women attracted him by reason of their specifically feminine qualities; but he did not idealise them, either collectively as a sex, or individually. Indeed, he thought they were entirely negative and passive in character: “In Heaven, there is no such thing as a female will.” Yet his married life was placid and very happy.

Now Shelley, on the other hand, loved to create androgynous types. He loved the feminine qualities when they were in men, and the masculine qualities in women. It would seem as if he were continually striving to create an ideal _bisexual_ character. For example, consider the sensitive, graceful Prince Athanase or Laon; or, by contrast, the rebel Cythna, whose chief qualities are her vigorous intellect, her will-power, and her Amazonian heroism. And Shelley idealised women, both collectively and individually, in spite of the fact that his experience always contradicted him. His married life, to say the least, was not conspicuously successful. In this connexion it is interesting to note how constantly Shelley introduced a third party into his household, as if he were quite without the ordinary domestic jealousy of those who are “attached to that great sect whose doctrine is, that each one should select out of the crowd a mistress or a friend, and all the rest, though fair and wise, commend to cold oblivion.”

When he married Harriet he quickly took her to York, to live there with Hogg. After this plan had broken down he induced Miss Hitchener to share his home; and when she departed, Elizabeth, Harriet’s sister, came in. Even when he eloped with Mary Godwin, Claire Clairmont accompanied the pair to the continent. Finally at Pisa, and at Casa Magni, he shared his house with Edward and Jane Williams.