Conclusion: The Ends of Romanticism

This conclusion proposes understanding Romanticism through a model of internal conflict instead of discrete distinctions of genre and political orientation, which have traditionally served as Romanticism’s defining categories. In replacing Aristotle with Rousseau modern culture moves to a socially contingent model of polity in which a newly-minted individualism contends with its own contingent social grounding. In Sartor Resartus Thomas Carlyle suggests that the Romantic era has come to an end. Sartor Resartus repeats the imagery of Frankenstein, relating monstrosity to empiricism and accusing the Scottish Enlightenment of excessive materialism. Carlyle reclaims Rousseau as an anti-empiricist who recognizes socialization as a fundamentally unhappy development that can barely contain the inherently violent forces of human nature. The post-Romantic modern self as articulated by Carlyle is defined by its exile from social totality, and by an account of human beings as inherently antisocial.

Gendering the General Will: Frankenstein’s Breaches of Contract

As a sociable being that is barred from society, Frankenstein’s monster presents a sustained engagement with social contract theory’s major dilemma of whether individualism can produce sociability. The male creature’s isolation and inner disunity suggest that contract theory displaces men and is unable to concatenate even those members that should be eligible for full citizenship. Shelley focuses on the gender inequality of contract theory through her different creation stories of the creatures’ bodies. In Victor’s decision not to complete the female creature she rejects Wollstonecraft’s revisionist approach to Rousseau, and demonstrates that social contract theory cannot be rewritten to include women. Women are not defined as political subjects but do have independent wills. Therefore, they are potentially resistant to contract and a threat to political control. Contending with Wollstonecraft and Rousseau, and also Coleridge and Godwin, Shelley suggests that intertextual relations produce unpredictable results. The creatures are test cases for the social contract’s respective failures in terms of social cohesion and gender.

Coleridge’s Exile from the Social Contract, 1795–1829

Coleridge wrote frequently about Rousseau throughout his varied career. His early lectures and letters draw on Rousseau’s critique of luxury and frequently allude to the general will, depicting Rousseau as a Christ-like figure. Coleridge’s subsequent disappointment with Pantisocracy led him to reject Rousseau and the social contract. Comparing Rousseau to Luther in The Friend, Coleridge argues that Rousseau’s unhappiness arises from a conflict between an age of individualism and an ongoing need for community. According to Coleridge, poetry tolerates this conflict better than philosophy. In ‘Reflections on Having Left a Place of Retirement’ Coleridge suggests that social retreat offers illusory solace from war and social crisis. He critiques the state of nature, sympathy, and even religion for failing to balance the self with its environment. Thematically and formally The Rime of the Ancient Mariner explores this crisis in cohering systems. Through the mariner’s relationship to the albatross, the wedding that frames the poem, and episodes of the supernatural that disrupt the ballad form, Coleridge defines a breaking point between the individual and general wills.

Individual Sovereignty and Community: Wordsworth’s Prelude

Wordsworth understood poetry as a development of political economy. The 1805 Prelude describes his personal growth as a transition from a state of nature to society. Echoing Rousseau’s Second Discourse and Social Contract, Wordsworth presents nature as a socializing force and initially assumes that the French Revolution realizes the general will. When the revolution degenerates into violence, Wordsworth also blames its failure on Rousseau’s theory for its weak account of community. In the final books of the 1805 Prelude Wordsworth qualifies his withdrawal to the private will and to poetic vocation by comparing himself to Adam Smith, David Hume, and Godwin, all of whom he regards as excessively individualistic. In his revisions to the 1850 Prelude and in The Excursion Wordsworth eclipses individual sovereignty and turns to utopian communitarianism. This resolution of the tension between private and general wills explains the lesser popularity of these poems for modern readers. Nonetheless, the 1805 and 1850 Preludes and The Excursion map out an epic concern with the struggle between individual and community as central to Wordsworth’s poetry.

Writing the Social Contradiction: Rousseau’s Literary Politics

This chapter explores Rousseau’s account of the tension between community and individual by examining the Second Discourse and the Social Contract on the one hand, and Julie on the other. In his political theory Rousseau defines the state of nature as a mere fantasy which belongs to an optative imagined past. In leaving the state of nature, people trade basic needs for decadent desires. Rousseau introduces the general will as a practical device for managing the asociability of the private will, which is driven mainly by appetite. To safeguard the general will from its wayward members, individuals must form a social contract which transforms them into sociable beings. In Julie Rousseau explores the sacrifices that individuals make in joining the general will, as Julie is torn between personal desire on the one hand and social conformity on the other. Rousseau’s literature suggests that the two are incompatible and thus ‘judges’ his philosophy, exploring the deathly outcome of contract. Rousseau’s use of literature to critique the social contract constitutes his major legacy to British Romantic writers.

Empiricism’s Secret History: Fleetwood and Rousseau

Criticism often organizes Godwin’s career by genre, suggesting that Godwin progressed from political theory to sentimental fiction. Instead this chapter argues that Godwin follows Rousseau in writing literature to ‘judge’ his own philosophy. In Enquiry Concerning Political Justice Godwin posits society as prior to the individual. He regards the general good as mandatory rather than voluntary. Godwin’s novels examine the struggles of individuals in conforming to his model of compulsory sociability. In Fleetwood and Mandeville Godwin explores the shortcomings of Rousseau’s theory of individualist education. He fictionalizes Rousseau, Hume, Wollstonecraft, and the First Earl of Shaftesbury, exploring the shortcomings of their theories. In Fleetwood Godwin uses elements of the genre of the secret history to explore political theory’s failure to validate women within the public sphere. Deloraine extends Godwin’s criticism of the social contract tradition for being inherently patriarchal. In Godwin’s writings Rousseau eclipses Aristotle as the founding theorist of sociability.

Forming a Social Contract: Hobbes to Anti-Jacobinism

Despite the attempt of social contract theory and its critics to banish Aristotle’s concept of natural sociability, imagery of dismembered bodies resurfaces in political writings circa 1650-1810. Fractured body imagery is a metaphor for a cadaverous commonality that is inherent to modern political theory. From different perspectives, British empiricism, the Scottish Enlightenment, German Idealism, and Romanticism all express a crisis in theories of community through the imagery of a fragmented body politic. Hobbes and Locke unbind the state from metaphysical legitimizations but are unable to reconcile concepts of individuality, freedom, and sovereignty. Adam Smith’s invisible hand retains a visceral memory of the lost body politic, which finds an outlet in the workings of sympathy. German Idealism recasts the conflict between private individuals and commonality as a productive dynamic. British caricatures of the 1790s reproduce the fragmentation of individuals from the social body in visual terms. Together with anti-Jacobin fictionalizations of the social contract these caricatures break down boundaries between ‘radical’ and ‘conservative’ engagements with contract, demonstrating the ubiquity of Aristotle’s ghostly body politic.

Introduction: Romanticism and the Social Contract

This introduction argues that not only have Romantic works been shaped by social contract theory’s tensions, but also their reception. The historical-political turn in Romanticism studies has brought attention to politics but often regards Romantic literature as promoting social retreat. Yet Romanticism’s preoccupation with retreat responds to social contract theory and its alienation of individuals from the social body. British Romanticism was affected by a rift in theories of sociability as European culture shifted away from an Aristotelian model of natural sociability to a modern view of sociability as a secondary property of human nature. The introduction considers differences between genres of political theory and Romantic poetry and novels. Social contract theory developed a subversive approach to literature as a medium suited to political critique. Whereas Romantic poetry maintains a critical distance from philosophical discourse based on formal discreteness, narrative fiction had always been an integral part of philosophical argumentation and particularly of empiricism. Therefore, novelists focus their works on dissident individuals excluded from the general will and on a crumbling social body.